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May 1, 2020 - The Muckrake Political Podcast

50:09

Armed Protests Smell Like Masculine Desperation

Armed white nationalists are storming the capitol in Michigan, highlighting a growing problem with white terrorism engaging in paramilitary intimidation. Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the history of these movement and how they plan to use societal discord for their own purposes, as well as Trump's recent push to pardon Michael Flynn. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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	Hey, everybody.
	It's Jared Yates Sexton, your co-host on the MuckRig podcast.
	We just want to say, first of all, thank you.
	We have just been getting tons of emails and new listens, and we are so excited about this growing audience and growing opportunity.
	We just wanted to share a couple things and ask for a little bit of help.
	First things first, we will be offering a video of our podcast going forward.
	We're really excited about that and all these new opportunities that we're going to have.
	So don't forget to go over and like and subscribe on iTunes.
	And listen, I'm going to dip my toe and actually read some of the comments.
	So be nice, please.
	But we love it when you do that.
	It's awesome.
	It really, really helps us, too, in the algorithm.
	So keep listening, keep enjoying, and keep giving us feedback.
	We love it.
	And again, we're on the other side of the medical aspect of this.
	And I think that we've achieved all the different milestones that are needed.
	So the government, federal government, rose to the challenge.
	And this is a great success story.
	General Flynn is a fine man, 35 years or so in the military.
	You don't get to be where he is by being bad, because he's in the process of being exonerated.
	If you look at those notes from yesterday, that was total exoneration.
	And, you know, look, you know every theory.
	You had the theory from the lab, you had the theory from many different, the bats, and the type of bat, and the bat is 40 miles away, so it couldn't have been here, and it couldn't have been there.
	Hey everybody!
	Welcome to the Muck Rake Podcast.
	I am your host, Nick Hauselmann, and I'm always joined by Jared Yates Sexton.
	And we've got some interesting things happening in the Midwest of the country.
	And Jared, do I hear you polishing your M16 right now?
	I am so pissed off about this.
	I don't know what it would sound like, but you know, if anyone were going to polish a gun and getting ready to bring it out into the world and show it off... It sounds like masculine desperation is what it sounds like.
	It smells like it, doesn't it?
	I have been around these people for a large part of my life.
	I'm from the Midwest.
	I've spent a large part of my time around preppers and what you would call white separatists and white terrorists.
	What is happening right now in Michigan?
	There's literally nothing else to call it besides white terrorism.
	That's what it is, and it is a despicable thing.
	And so, for those who aren't familiar, and maybe are catching up on the news this morning as this podcast drops, armed—they're calling them protesters, Nick, but it's not protesting.
	Like, when you carry weapons into a political building, and you do it as a show of force to show politicians that if they don't follow and give you your demands, That they could kill you and that is this thing that has been growing in America and people just sort of shake their heads and they're like, oh, this is terrible.
	Can you believe they're getting away with this?
	It's terrorism and it's growing and growing and growing and one of the things that we see in countries that unfortunately fall into the fascist abyss is paramilitary groups Carrying out these operations and doing it with impunity and not being stopped.
	And what it does is it erodes the idea of politics as an avenue of change and an avenue of organization.
	And they grow.
	And these groups that we're talking about right now, it's happening in Michigan, which is the epicenter of the quote-unquote patriot movement and white separatist movement.
	These people have been planning this thing for decades.
	And we have to talk about the history of that and the background of that and how all this is coming to fruition.
	But in my research and what I'm seeing surveilling these people, this is all according to plan.
	They see the coronavirus pandemic as an opportunity to either throw the country into chaos, gain power, or both.
	And what we're watching right now, it's nothing short of a terrorist tactic.
	That's all it is.
	Well, to paint the picture of what's happening there, it would be enough if they just stood there looking intimidating, brandishing their automatic weapons or semi-automatic weapons.
	They're in military gear, by the way.
	In the military gear.
	But they're also, they are shouting down and like, quote-unquote, doing their protesting part of it too, which, you know, directly ties into the notion that if you don't do what we are telling you to do, we have this gun in our hand ready to use it.
	And that is what becomes sort of the terrorism aspect of this.
	And I know that there's a state senator in Michigan who had tweeted out a picture of this and then told us that a number of the legislators in Michigan are wearing their bulletproof vests right now because they're that afraid.
	And I would be too.
	There's just a natural inclination to be on edge when you are in the presence of that kind of firepower.
	I mean, it's not often that I am, but it is completely intimidating and they certainly know that.
	And I have to tell you, it pisses me off.
	It pisses me off, Nick, that these people are, and if you look at the pictures, they're in there in paramilitary gear, which, you know, all of these losers clad themselves in, right?
	Because they are either, some of them have served, but other ones have these fantasies of being military heroes, you know, Call of Duty type heroes.
	And what they're going in, in this gear, they're wearing American flags.
	You know what America is supposed to be about?
	What the aspirational idea of America is?
	It's supposed to be about democracy and open society and shared society.
	That's not what it is.
	You do not go into political places with guns and intimidate legislators to, you know, acquiesce to your demands.
	That is fascism.
	And that is what these people are for.
	They fantasize and they plan opportunities wherein that they can subjugate American democracy because they do believe that it isn't to be trusted in the people's hands, that they know better, and that might makes right.
	That is literal fascism.
	And people need to call it that.
	It needs to stop being treated in mainstream media as protesters.
	Yeah, it's not free speech, right?
	Just because they have open carry or whatever they're doing, carrying their AR-15s around.
	That's not what that is.
	It is literal political terrorism.
	And we are going to, unfortunately, in America, because we are in denial of white terrorism, we don't think it exists.
	Because we're in denial of it.
	We're going to let these psychotic assholes gain a foothold and gain power.
	And you just watch it.
	They're gaining courage.
	They're doing it out in public.
	They're not wearing masks.
	You know, we saw that in Charlottesville.
	They're not afraid to do this anymore.
	And they're just gaining power and they're gaining numbers.
	Right, now in the confines of the Statehouse, or wherever we are, the Capitol, I'm seeing all these video footage now in Michigan, you know, that's the other thing that struck me as really problematic, is that no one's wearing masks.
	And they're all piled into the lobby area of the building.
	And then you have the poor cops who are trying to keep everyone out of the chamber, and they have masks on, but these people are six inches from them, yelling and screaming, and they have surgical masks.
	They don't even have the N95s.
	So, the whole thing is completely ridiculous.
	And I also feel like most people in America understand what you're talking about as far as this, you know, the white terrorism thing.
	We certainly know the FBI reports how serious it is.
	The problem, I think, that we have, and what they report is how the crime is up in that sense by white terrorism or, you know, these groups.
	But the biggest problem that we have is that the president refuses to acknowledge it.
	Oh, absolutely.
	And listen, there's a lot that's happening here.
	And I think that is those, that's the signals that they're getting to encourage them.
	And that's why we see them maybe more than we ever have in the past.
	Oh, absolutely.
	And listen, there's a lot that's happening here.
	They do not believe that Donald Trump is necessarily one of them, but there's a symbiotic relationship.
	They believe that Donald Trump is white nationalistic in whatever ideology he has, and he's going to view them favorably, right?
	They would not have created Donald Trump as their ideal candidate.
	David Duke is their ideal candidate, right?
	And people need to understand this.
	They are literal Nazis.
	They believe in survival of the fittest.
	They think that they have prepped and maintained arsenals and trained.
	And all these people, there's been this bizarre myth about them.
	Like this idea of the rugged individual, right?
	They're Americans who are in themselves, they're ready to fight tyranny.
	They're not.
	They're Nazi, paramilitary, Goons.
	And they're not just like weekend warriors who go out in the wilderness and, you know, pop off a couple rounds.
	These people are trained in explosives.
	They are training to overthrow the government and plunge us into a racial civil war.
	They fundamentally want to destroy the country and turn it into a fascist dictatorship.
	What we're seeing in Michigan is a test run.
	It's them seeing what they can get away with and starting to gain power over time because shared society starts to erode every time that something like this happens and society doesn't reject it.
	And unfortunately our media is so bad at diagnosing what it is because they never want to go on the record and call anything racist.
	They never want to talk about white supremacy and the scourge and the poison of it.
	And so these groups have tons of cover to hide behind.
	You know, it's a little bit anecdotal, but I do feel like through all my reading, describing these groups, that very few of them are actually served in the military.
	So it's their opportunity to kind of like play soldier in a way.
	And they take it as seriously as if they were in the army, but they do not.
	For whatever reason, whether they didn't qualify or just decided not to serve, and I do feel like that perspective of actually serving the armed forces, and that's what I'm getting this from, is that a lot of the people I've seen who've criticized them have said that, like, that what they're doing is completely irresponsible, and they're not trained, and they're just playing dress-up, you know, they're not, they aren't ready to do the ultimate sacrifice, and And, you know, commit to, you know, serving their country.
	So it's more of this mental torque that we talk about all the time.
	I would almost say the entire Republican Party is just completely taught with competing ideas that don't connect with each other.
	And they live in the constant tension that would yield, like, you know, irrational behavior.
	Yeah, there's a Venn diagram, and this is the thing that when you read detailed analyses of the Republican Party, they miss completely.
	And this all started back in, you know, 93, 94.
	And this was around the time people are pretty familiar with the idea of Ruby Ridge and Waco.
	And what happens is, in the wake of Ruby Ridge and Waco, which are actually moments of incompetence from the Clinton administration, They were incapable of handling these situations.
	And instead, the NRA starts treating it like it's a despotic maneuver.
	That Bill Clinton and Janet Reno are actually dangerous New World Order people.
	which, by the way, made them tons of money.
	Wayne LaPierre was calling them Nazis left and right.
	And meanwhile, basically, the Republican Party's like, we need to get in on that.
	And so they start forming this bridge.
	And so there's a group of people who start following the Republican Party who believe this, who start going out and prepping and getting guns and all that stuff.
	But meanwhile, that's not the total edge of it.
	There's this other edge of it.
	It's the people who do have military experience, right?
	And this is the third rail.
	And the only reason we're able to talk about this is because we have our own podcast, right?
	I'm not going on CNN to talk about this.
	In law enforcement and in the military there are strains of white supremacist ideology and fascist ideology that just churn and churn and churn and churn.
	And you see these groups that develop out of them that are actually fascistic and they have plots.
	They constantly plot.
	And one of the people that keeps coming up in this is like Timothy McVeigh.
	Right?
	Who was a veteran, who actually blew up the Alfred P. Murrah building, and, by the way, was a part of this group that we're talking about, this giant movement.
	Well, that group over there uses the NRA and the GOP that use their, you know, their xenophobic, racist dog whistles.
	They get the people who are won over there and drag them over and turn them into useful idiots.
	So when you look at that Michigan protest, which I'm, you know, doing quotes, it's a bunch of people who have probably never served and don't know what they're doing with an AR-15, but I can tell you that there is a spinal cord to that entire group that knows what they're doing.
	You know what I mean?
	Right.
	And if those people go out and they carry out lone wolf attacks, that's perfect for the movement.
	They love it.
	They love when that stuff happens because it prepares them for this stuff over here.
	There are people who know what they're doing who use these people and they use those machinations by the NRA and the GOP to carry out their plans.
	By the way, when we see you making the air quotes, you could actually see that if you wanted to because we're posting these on YouTube now as well.
	So look up the Muckrake Podcast on YouTube and you'll be able to find it.
	You'll be able to see us actually interacting video-wise as well as hearing us talk.
	You can see me get pissed off in real time, which is fun.
	Yeah, oh, it's a barrel of lass, yes.
	And we can see Nick doing the research as it happens, crunching the numbers.
	Yeah, I hope that's what it looks like.
	But here's the thing that's interesting about that, really quickly, is that, you know, when you look at, like, a group of people, and there's protesters, too, protesting the armed militia people, and they're yelling at each other, and it's a confined space, and you start, you know, my mind goes into, like, you know, we all remember Tom Cruise was in, well, it's, It's... Born on the 4th of July.
	It's George C. Scott and Sean Penn and they take over the military school and I'll tell you the name in a second.
	Oh!
	Toy Soldiers!
	Is that what that is?
	No, it's not Toy Soldiers.
	It is... That's another one of those.
	I'll look it up in a second.
	Anyway, of course, they have this thing and the Taiwanese are getting in a fight with the military people and then the gun goes off, somebody gets shot, right?
	And you have to think that, like, this is what would be the most scary thing to me and what also comes to mind is it's the 50-year anniversary of Kent State.
	And Ken State had National Guard Guardsmen kind of marching on about 500 protesters, maybe, who were sort of milling around and then just opened fire.
	They never found out what happened there.
	But I would recommend Will Bunch wrote an article today about it commemorating the May, it's coming up, the anniversary.
	But those are the kind of moments that just sort of really get me on edge, too, because who knows what would happen if, even if it accidentally went off, it was pointing down and it goes off, what could happen out of that could be absolutely tragic.
	I, so Charlottesville showed us that, like what partly that would look like, but here's the really nefarious issue at hand.
	There are people that hope that that happens.
	There really are.
	You know, there are people, and you know, when we talk about, when we talk about the Trump administration, we talk about politicians, we always try and spread a line where we're trying to rationalize why they think they're doing the absolute worst, most damaging thing possible, right?
	Sometimes, a lot of the time, they know that they're doing wrong or that they're causing chaos or evil in the world.
	The people that we're talking about, they literally see human lives as expendable.
	And it's like they're moving pawns across the chessboard and a lot of them want this type of stuff to happen.
	And it's also important that while we're talking about that, that we do not neglect to mention that this looks so much like what happened in Putin's Russia.
	Where all of a sudden men and white nationalist separatist groups always that's always what it is paramilitary groups that way that Putin can deny that he has anything to do with it.
	It's just citizens rising up with their weapons and doing this.
	Going into buildings and intimidating and eventually at some times killing and taking out dissidents.
	Well, what happens in all of that is you start seeing these moments, right?
	You start seeing where tensions move up and if somebody dies That's not a bad thing for these people.
	They see that as an escalation, right?
	Because they literally want us plunged into a chaotic racial civil war, a cultural war.
	And by the way, who has set the ground better for that than Donald Trump, right?
	Yes.
	We're in a tenuous moment, and they know that, and they recognize it.
	And the movie's called Taps.
	And the thing about what you're saying, though, is a direct correlation to the Republican Party as well, because if there ever was, if there were any doubt that they actually cared about their constituents, well, it's just every week that goes by, it's more and more clear that that's not what they're interested in.
	And especially when you hear Trump talk about even the mortality rate of coronavirus and how he just runs out these numbers, and then Jared Kushner decides to take...
	He's like, this will be a big win for us when we only have, you know, 60,000, 70,000 deaths, you know, ignoring the massive screw-ups they've done.
	And by the way, once Nancy Pelosi gets her committee going, which they're calling Impeachment 2.0, probably rightfully so, we're gonna find out, I mean, we can list, there's about four or five articles out there right now describing how much cronyism is going on, how much waste at the cost of people's lives.
	So, I'm going to do a thing, and we have a lot of new listeners and viewers.
	Welcome.
	Yeah, welcome.
	Nick, do we or do we not predict tomorrow's news constantly on this podcast?
	Constantly.
	Constantly.
	It's weird.
	It's weird.
	I'm going to tell you what's going to happen, and unfortunately this is where things are going, and it's a nightmare.
	It's an absolute nightmare, but this is where things were always going to head.
	We just saw the GOP memo, which said that they're going to blame all this on China, right?
	And they're trying to prove that it's a bioweapon.
	And by the way, all research shows it's not a bioweapon, right?
	And they're going to blame it on China, they're going to raise up racial tensions against Asian Americans, and they're going to say that Democrats are soft on China and allude to the fact, or possibility, that Democrats are in collusion with China.
	Right?
	Joe Biden too.
	Joe Biden too.
	So as we start moving towards November, this is what's going to happen.
	Is Russia already interfering on behalf of Donald Trump?
	Absolutely they are.
	Right?
	So what do you do?
	You project it.
	So we are going to be in a country over the next few months in which the Trump administration is running for re-election while Russia is interfering on their behalf.
	Literally conspiring for them.
	While Republicans say that the Democrats are in with China.
	And that they are conspiring with China.
	Well, what happens when you say, you know what?
	I think those Democratic governors aren't opening up the states because they want China to have economic benefit.
	What happens when you have these people with arms walking into the chambers?
	You have a situation, and I saw it in 2016 when I was reporting, those things were primed for violence.
	And sometimes they would erupt in violence.
	They're primed, right now going into 2020, November, they are primed for bloodshed.
	And if those two narratives start going against each other, like, you literally have a country that believes it's at war with one another.
	And these people have been waiting for that war.
	They've been waiting for that opening.
	Whether it's real or not, they've been waiting for this opening.
	Now you might not have seen this but you know Trump is speaking pretty much right now and he was asked point-blank if he felt like there was any evidence that this coronavirus was anything but a natural occurring thing that infected people and caused all these troubles.
	He refused to acknowledge that and continued to stir up this notion that it was created in the lab and he's waiting to find out what is going to happen.
	Now, it was already reported that he's been there really pissed at the CIA because they sent some spooks out to try and find out whether or not, like, they get any intel about who created this virus.
	And they came back saying, sorry, this is a naturally occurring virus.
	That's all what the evidence says.
	And this is just like what we saw in Iraq, how they're going to try and gin up any kind of evidence they can to justify.
	Now, here's the question.
	Obviously, they're not going to justify, like, a war with China because that would not go well. - Okay.
	I'm going to say two things.
	One, I'm going to step on Nick's gimmick and bring up a movie, Wag the Dog.
	You don't always need a war.
	This is really just to gin up the troops for the election.
	It's all this is. - It absolutely is.
	I'm gonna say two things.
	One, I'm gonna step on Nick's gimmick and bring up a movie, "Wag the Dog." You don't always need a war.
	Sometimes you just need the illusion and production of a war.
	The second thing I'm going to say, and that is so upsetting, that's so incredibly upsetting.
	I want to go on the record and say this.
	Whenever we're talking about the scapegoating of China, it is not at all an endorsement of China.
	It is a radical, dystopian nightmare over there.
	And the people in China deserve better.
	So when we talk about this scapegoating, it's not at all saying that China is great and that we endorse them.
	It's awful.
	But I will tell you this.
	The way that we got the war in Iraq is we got intelligence from people in Iraq who wanted to take over the government from Saddam Hussein.
	We had a lot of pro-American people who were willing to lie about weapons of mass destruction.
	Guess what?
	We have a lot of people in China who are more than willing to lie in order to get America opposed to China it happens all the time so you're going to find intelligence that is going to confirm and I'm doing air quotes around all of it it's going to confirm that there was a bioweapon in a lab in Wuhan and it's going to give all them and by the way it's not
	At all, an accident that Trump has been calling himself a wartime president, and he's been calling it the invisible enemy, and talking about the war, and all of that.
	When we go into November, he's literally going to run as a wartime president against an invisible enemy and traitorous Americans.
	He's going to claim that Joe Biden and other Americans are traitors.
	And they'll whip up deep fakes!
	They'll do whatever it takes!
	They're not afraid to just absolutely flood the zone with shit.
	They're more than willing to do it.
	The office of DNI is who came out with the statement saying that this is clearly a natural occurring virus and they asked him about that and he refused.
	He's like, well, who wrote that?
	And Roberts from Fox is like, uh, it's just a statement that the office came out of your office, your government.
	And he starts to, pontificate about bats and how, well, it's supposed to come from this kind of bat, but they're not anywhere near 45 miles of that area.
	But you know what?
	There's no way that any of his professional intelligence officers are giving him any of his information.
	Whoever is telling him about these, like how the bats somehow, it's like the Stonehenge.
	How do they build these Stonehenge things so the stones aren't, are 150 miles away from there, right?
	Like, there's no way that could happen.
	And the only way he's getting this is from his cell phone and he's looking up on conspiracy sites on Reddit.
	Oh, wait a minute.
	He knows what it is.
	But it's not listening to his own government.
	Well, he's been at war with the intelligence community since he got elected.
	Oh, we're talking about that.
	Yeah, I mean, you know, this is a thing where we're talking about malleable reality and I keep screaming about this because when you get to the point where there is no objective reality and you have a group of people who rule based upon whatever they feel like doing at any given time and laws are there to serve them but not to hold them back, That's how you end up in these authoritarian regimes.
	So he's been at war with the intelligence community because the intelligence community is like, absolutely, Vladimir Putin helped get him elected.
	We don't know if Trump knew about it or not, which he did, but, you know, Putin definitely helped him.
	And he's like, well, and then we watched him betray the intelligence community in Helsinki with Vladimir Putin.
	Just one of the most treasonous things we've ever seen an American president do.
	Like, he's going to be at war with the intelligence community and he's going to say, of course they're saying that China didn't do this.
	Of course they're in league with China.
	Look what they did.
	And it's all, we brought this up on the last podcast, it's going back to the old Henry Kissinger idea of triangulation.
	We have three major powers in the world.
	You have U.S., Russia, and China.
	That's the triangle, right?
	And they are constantly angling against each other.
	What is it in Orwell's 1984?
	Eurasia, East Asia, you know.
	Ministry of something, I don't know.
	There were three of them.
	I'm going to look it up here in a second.
	But you have these three major groups that are always angling against each other and that's what we're seeing here.
	They're triangulating each other because the route we're on right now, we're never going to have another free election.
	We're just not.
	We're going to have one election after another in which superpowers are constantly vying to, you know, tip the scales.
	Which is what we always used to do!
	It's like what we always used to do in the second and third world, and now it's coming back the other way because of the internet.
	And social media.
	And so it's just going to continue and continue.
	And that's where this thing is going, and I hate saying it, and I don't want to believe it's true, but it's 100% true.
	Well, this war on the intelligence community brings us neatly right around to having to talk about Mike Flynn because he has been tweeted ad nauseum the last couple days by Trump and clearly they're setting it up to either try and get him off somehow on a technicality or they're going to pardon him but I'm old enough to remember When a time when Mike Flynn lied to the FBI, which is just a crime, period.
	And then he actually said, you know what?
	I did it.
	I'm sorry.
	I am guilty.
	Here, let me cooperate.
	And now he's saying he didn't do any of this.
	In his defense, Nick, the FBI asked him questions.
	They knew the answer to.
	They knew the answer to.
	Which any lawyer in the country will tell you, that is just entrapment.
	Oh, geez.
	Yeah, right.
	Right, and by the way, it is, when you go deep, and I know that you do, you, I will say this for new listeners, my wonderful co-host Nick tries really hard to get in the head of Trump supporters.
	He wants, he desires so badly to know where they're coming from.
	When you go deep into these things, like lately, this Flynn thing is unbelievable.
	And you see Republicans who, they know better.
	You know, they went to college, they've studied things, and they're like, yeah, Trump lied to the FBI, but the FBI had to have a meeting with him in order for him to lie to them.
	And you're like, yeah, that is true.
	That is accurate.
	The FBI did ask him questions that he lied about.
	He got caught dead to rights.
	And by the way, this podcast would not be complete if we didn't completely go over what Mike Flynn has done.
	Who, by the way, we would also be remiss if we didn't mention that he was a finalist for the vice presidential position under Donald Trump.
	All right, can I interject one quick thing because I want to address what you just said about me constantly trying to get into the mind of why they're the Trump supporter.
	Tireless!
	Because it's come, I had a revelation really quickly, but don't forget because we're gonna get back to Mike Flynn in a second.
	But I had a revelation because there was a basketball Twitter account, a friend of mine tweeted about how he told people to inject bleach.
	Can you believe this and how stupid people are or whatever?
	And the response is there were there were enough of these Trump supporters who said he never said that.
	Yep.
	Oh, it's incredible.
	I absorbed it and I'm like, you're crazy.
	But I finally understood what they were saying and what they, all those people are saying is, Oh, it's incredible.
	Trump never said the word, Hey, Jared, take some bleach, put it in a syringe, shove it in your arm and hit that plunger.
	And that to them is enough to absolve him that.
	And so perhaps what we were wrong with was, it was criticizing him for, for telling people to inject bleach, but simply to even think that that would be something that you should be able to do.
	Oh, it's absolutely incredible.
	I mean, we're talking about the type of thing that makes it necessary on a shampoo bottle to put, do not ingest.
	I mean, because it really is.
	And, you know, we're laughing about this, but it's actually, and I was posting about this the other day, and you wouldn't believe the blowback I had on this, which I, you know, they're like, Trump did not tell people to ingest bleach.
	And it's like, no, he did.
	But, you know, moving along.
	But he did not say, you inject bleach or just drink it right now or shove it up your ass.
	He didn't say that.
	He also doesn't tell armed people in Michigan to go into capitals and intimidate people.
	But he does.
	Just liberate them.
	Yeah, liberate.
	That's the thing.
	He said it.
	That's why you're the best co-host in the business.
	He fucking said that.
	He did.
	He said liberate.
	That's a hundred percent right.
	He said it.
	Oh, don't tread on me.
	Okay, but I don't want to lose the Mike Flynn thread here, but okay.
	But real fast, I was just saying, it's like, this isn't that people are stupid.
	And actually, I get really defensive about this, because we're talking about my people, right?
	I come from rural Indiana.
	I know tons of Trump supporters.
	They have been subject to just a complete eradication of the public education system that has taught people not to question things.
	It's taught people not to carry out critical thinking and not to think about the country and where it came from and how we got here.
	It is by design.
	The Republican Party and corporations and the wealthy have done this.
	So that's how we get to this point.
	But you're right.
	It's that little thing.
	It's like, yeah, Mike Flynn did lie and commit crimes and he shouldn't go to jail because The FBI is crooked, I guess.
	It's an incredible way to go with your head.
	It's really something.
	Well, in the notes, when they're questioning, they say, what is the goal?
	What is our goal here?
	And it says to get him to lie.
	So you have to remember, like in that context I just gave you for the Trump thing, if you are binary like this, then what you hear is we are going to get him to lie, which would be like entrapment illegal amongst deep state.
	When in fact, what they already knew was that he lied to them already.
	Or they knew he was going to lie and they knew he already denied it and told Mike Pence that he didn't do it.
	So that is the context of the happens.
	By the way, what do you lie about?
	What do you lie about, Nick?
	What do you lie about?
	Just to refresh our memories.
	What did Glenn lie about?
	Well, there's a little thing called the Logan Act, which never really had to be enforced because no one would ever be a civilian representing the government in diplomatic talks.
	So he told Mike Pence... Wait, was this with England or France or Germany?
	It's near there.
	It's a little bit farther to the right.
	Oh, it's near there!
	Yeah, it's Russia.
	Isn't it weird?
	Isn't it bizarre how it just keeps coming around there?
	And by the way, real fast, I'm so sorry, we can't do this.
	We cannot talk about this without pointing out the fact, do you know who chose him as a potential VP candidate for Trump?
	Paul Manafort?
	Paul Manafort, who, by the way, was a political dinosaur who had no modern experience in politics whatsoever.
	He gained experience as a hatchet man with Roger Stone and Lee Atwater.
	But basically, well, not basically, he went over to Europe and helped, you know, warlords and Vladimir Putin basically take over satellite states.
	And then somehow or another ends up running the Trump campaign and then says, oh, Mike Flynn, who has weird Putin ties, which, by the way, none of this is conspiracy theories.
	Everything I'm saying at this point is the literal God's truth of what happened.
	Right.
	Now, we have to remember Mike Flynn was having dinner with Putin and being paid to speak there.
	He was already fired by Obama.
	So he's the VP candidate or he's a potential VP candidate.
	He doesn't get that.
	He gets in Trump's administration.
	Then he calls Russia and negotiates with Russia and then lies about it.
	Here's the thing.
	Let me get into this for a second because we have to we can't forget.
	And it's easy to forget.
	It's unbelievable.
	Every thing they've done is makes you forget the last thing.
	They had a meeting in Trump Tower they knew about that talked about getting dirt on Hillary Clinton.
	They've already known that there's something going on with collusion.
	Now don't forget Jared Kushner was also talking to Kislyak wanting a private back channel to Russia.
	This is just the tip of the iceberg.
	This is just the tip of the whole iceberg.
	All hands were on deck here in the intelligence community, including Obama and the administration, because they were so worried about what was going on.
	In fact, before they left office, they dispersed a lot of this information throughout the government to make sure that the Trump administration wouldn't bury it all once they took power.
	So that's the crucible that we're looking at this through as far as, you know, why they wanted to look at Flynn so hard.
	And it's insane to think that you'd give him a pass based on all of that information.
	And you know what?
	There's 10 other things that I'm forgetting right now that would equally make him, you know, a real suspect in an FBI investigation.
	Which by the way, Flynn was working as an unregistered lobbyist for Turkey.
	Yes.
	For Turkey, trying to, trying to traffic people out of the country for them.
	Oh, but let's talk about, one second, what the purpose of the meeting was with Kislyak anyway.
	It was to tell them, hey, don't worry about these sanctions that Obama's done.
	We're going to get rid of those right away.
	We got it.
	Now, here's the thing.
	Why did Obama do this?
	This was a setup, almost, to see how they would react to this.
	That's what I'm thinking.
	Mueller the same way.
	I think that they threw all these things out there as red meat to see if they would almost take the bait.
	Now, it doesn't matter because they have Barr in there and all these different people who don't care about the country, but these are the moments that I think Obama threw out there and Mueller threw out there to see how they would react and that would indicate their guilt.
	And that's what they've done.
	Well, and by the way, everything you just said is exactly what the Republican Party and Donald Trump believe.
	That all of this was a big, giant setup for Flynn to get caught.
	Which, by the way, I just gotta tell you, what you just said possibly has legs to it, but I just love every time that Republicans and Donald Trump try and frame Democrats and liberals as grand conspirators.
	I mean, we can't even choose a candidate, you know?
	It's incredible.
	But, and by the way, I just want to say, as you're saying everything, which is not even a conspiracy, nothing you just said was a conspiracy theory at all.
	All of it has been proven and admitted and it's in the public record.
	As you go through it, and now we're like four years back from it, I can just feel the twitching in my eye.
	Do you know what I mean?
	I have a twitch in my eye.
	And now, and now, this criminal, and by the way, this treasonous criminal, Trump is probably going to pardon him because it's just like Fox News and everybody else is in his ear.
	It's like, this is terrible.
	I know Trump's all over this.
	And it's even coming out this afternoon.
	Trump's considering the possibility of bringing him back to the administration.
	Yes.
	Now, here's the thing about giving him a pardon.
	If he does that, and this is probably why he hasn't done it with Manafort or Stone, was they could now be compelled to talk to Congress, and they could not plead the Fifth.
	Right?
	And if they lie, then they're really going to get in trouble again, and that may not be pardoned.
	What is trouble?
	That is why he's not pardoning these guys.
	What is trouble, though?
	That's the thing that gets me, is it's like there's no consequences anymore.
	Right.
	It's all gone.
	And the problem is, whether we like it or not, and whatever happens in November, maybe it changes things, where we are right now in 2020, I mean, they're out there trafficking life-saving supplies during a pandemic as an organized crime unit.
	Nothing's off the board.
	And that's where you end up.
	Like when you have a precipitous decline in a country and all of a sudden your country falls.
	Crimes don't matter anymore.
	Of course he's going to get pardoned and come back in the administration.
	Do you know who'd do that?
	Vladimir Putin!
	He would do that in a heartbeat, and it would happen, and Russians would just be like, yeah, of course.
	And that's where we're at.
	It normalizes corruption and crime to the point where it doesn't even feel like it's something to talk about anymore.
	And we're just sitting there, like, I can't believe we're talking about this, the past and also now, and just being like, yeah, that's probably what's gonna happen.
	That's incredible.
	I mean, you really gotta tip your hat to him.
	You just gotta be like, this is...
	This is quite a thing that they've done.
	Yeah.
	Now, that said, this has been going on for decades.
	This is from Nixon and Watergate on into here.
	This notion of, oh, they're all corrupt, they all lie, even though it's a little bit of a pejorative statement by kind of shrugging it off.
	You know, you say that enough times over enough years, it does take hold, and that's now 50 years into it, and here we are.
	And I just want to point out that this is where it comes from.
	It comes from Ollie North, who carried out crimes for Ronald Reagan, being welcomed into the conservative establishment as an expert, as a panelist on Fox, and, you know, giving him like a historical military show, and asking G. Gordon Liddy, a bag man, you know, in an extra-legal, extra-legal, what a euphemism, In a criminal conspiracy by Richard Nixon.
	And all of a sudden he's a panelist and he's talking about security and national security.
	This thing has just continued to churn and churn and churn until you're exactly right.
	What happens is they start out with like, you know, they have him on Fox News and it's like, well they have something to say.
	And then all of a sudden they're running the country.
	And it just has continued to build and build and build until eventually you're not desensitized to it, but you're beaten down by it.
	Right.
	I mean, Mike Flynn might end up being the VP of America.
	You know what I mean?
	If Trump gets a second term, we might actually see the fruition of that, depending on who owes debts.
	Which, by the way, it just came out just a couple of days ago that Trump might have millions of dollars in debt to China.
	We haven't even talked about that on this podcast.
	And we try and get it all in, but it's just too much.
	Let's go back for a second to that notion of Nixon and what he did to the country.
	So do you know why they were protesting at Kent State on that day, what they were protesting against?
	They were protesting against the illegal bombing of Cambodia, of which a few nights before he had just gone on TV to tell the American people that he wasn't doing that.
	Well, I just want to point out, you nailed it.
	How did people think that?
	Yes.
	In fact, he had.
	He opened up an entire second front of the war in a different country, killing all sorts of people in that country.
	And we find out later, but that was what was going on at the time.
	So it's like, yes.
	Well, I just want to point out, you nailed it.
	The bombing of Cambodia is a perfect example of why we're in the situation we are and why the rule of law is malleable.
	That is a war crime.
	That was a, like, a dead-to-rights war crime that America got caught doing under the direction of Richard Nixon and our good friend Henry Kissinger.
	Wonder what rock he's sleeping under tonight.
	And you have a war crime that America commits, but we're America!
	What are war crimes, right?
	War crimes are what people do over here.
	It's what Nazis do, right?
	It's what Bosnians do.
	And all of a sudden it's just like, no, you have a malleable idea of law and justice.
	America can't commit crimes.
	What is it Nixon said on the interview with Frost?
	When the president does it, it's not illegal?
	That's the mindset here.
	And this rot that we're talking about, and that's the problem.
	I say this all the time, try to get it on every podcast.
	Trump is not the disease.
	He is a weeping symptom.
	And what we're talking about is that this has gone on and on and on and eventually it finds its way to the surface.
	So every once in a while when I'm interacting with Republicans, I get surprised by what completely triggers them to the point where they want to fight, like literally fist fight me.
	One of those once was, my father-in-law, but whatever, when I mentioned the fact that Reaganomics, trickle-down economic supply side, whatever you want to call it... Fraud.
	Simply increase the distance between the upper class and the middle and lower class and we've never recovered.
	That was like accusing him of being a war criminal.
	I've never seen a reaction like that so strongly.
	That triggered.
	Another one I saw once was when I even mentioned the illegal bombing of Cambodia with a guy who I worked with as a teacher who was much older than me.
	I served in the military.
	That just about, I don't know, he almost wouldn't talk to me again after that.
	And I was really shocked about that, but again, it's the silent majority who needed to cling to this notion of America that doesn't commit war crimes, and they have free and fair elections.
	And when you become complacent like that, and you combine it with kids, how about kids now who only know Millennials, who only know 9-11, and the housing crisis, and now this, it's like you have a really strange country where everyone's sort of stuck in this weird space.
	Well, what you just brought up, and again, that's why you're the best co-host in the business, it brings it all full circle.
	Why somebody who is a veteran would be so pissed off about you bringing up Cambodia, right, and criticizing it, is exactly the same reason why we have armed protesters in state capitol buildings.
	It's this myth that America lost its spine.
	And I wrote about this in my book, The Man They Wanted Me to Be, which is what Trump does.
	Who, by the way, dodged Vietnam multiple times.
	And he gets up on stage and he talks about how generals aren't tough anymore.
	America lost its nerve, and you know, it's just this idea that America is somehow or another, you know, lost something.
	And that starts with Vietnam, right?
	There's this idea that we have to crush, which by the way, it was a revolution that was completely based on American history, right?
	Ho Chi Minh totally idolized America and tried to get America to help him, and he wanted America and he wanted a relationship.
	As a matter of fact, their Declaration of Independence is written almost exclusively like our Declaration of Independence.
	Yeah.
	We just told them, don't worry about it until they found Russia.
	And then we're like, okay, we got to do something about this.
	So with Vietnam, we're just like, we're going to bomb this country into submission, whether it's fascist or not.
	And then eventually it's like, we can't do that.
	Ronald Reagan comes around in 1980 and he starts sowing this myth of a betrayed America.
	We betrayed the military.
	Right?
	Because we had people protesting the war, all of a sudden it was actually a betrayal of the people.
	Which, by the way, is an echo of the knife in the back myth that gave, you know, the Third Reich its teeth.
	Well, the other night, again, I'm stepping on your gimmick, I watched Rambo, First Blood.
	Oh, I gotta watch that.
	Oh, it's wonderful.
	It's actually really, really good.
	But when you watch it, and you watch movies of that era, what you suddenly realize is there's this internalized myth in America.
	And the idea is that liberals, right, and Democrats betrayed the American military.
	And that's why we couldn't win the war, is because we weren't allowed to win the war.
	And what that actually says is that, yeah, when America is fascist, it's not fascist.
	Right?
	It's America doing what's necessary.
	And that is why, again, right there on your corner, because I've been studying this a lot for a lot of my work, that's why all of your action movies, particularly of the 1980s, are about people who are restricted by the rules, who have to go outside the rules.
	Right?
	This is every Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, bad cop, dirty, hairy movie.
	Matter of fact, even Ghostbusters works this way.
	It's the idea that the government comes in and tells you what to do.
	They're vigilantes.
	And so what happens is that Reagan's myth of the betrayal of the military and the betrayal in Vietnam, it's all because liberals ...couldn't handle America doing what it needed to do.
	Guess what?
	The guys showing up at the capitals with the guns?
	Those are the guys who are, quote-unquote, willing to do what it takes.
	Right?
	And it's this idea of America that is always fighting within itself.
	But it's fascism.
	It's literal fascism.
	Jared, I don't want to put you on the spot, Jared, because you're not a history professor, but do you remember how... how... what's it called?
	Oh, yeah.
	America was founded?
	The United States was founded?
	Do you remember?
	We need to do an episode on that because there's a lot to talk about there.
	Yeah, well think about that.
	It's the same thing that we're trying to do to other countries.
	There's no wonder why we can't win in Vietnam or Iraq or anywhere else we try and go to for the same reason that the British couldn't win when they tried to come over here and defeat us.
	And yet we continue to do this and we continue to feed that notion of it's the military-industrial complex and all those things.
	And again, it circles all the way back Some money.
	I'm reading an interesting book right now.
	It is by Matthew Lockwood.
	It's called To Begin the World Over Again.
	And it's called How the American Revolution Devastated the Globe.
	And it's a really interesting take on the idea that when the American Revolution beats out Britain, that Britain all of a sudden is like, okay, we need to become more authoritarian.
	And also, maybe white people are able to rule themselves.
	Right?
	It's like a mindset.
	America takes on that idea, and what happens, what you're talking about, and the rise of empires, and I wrote about this in my book, American Rule, what ends up happening is we start taking on, I don't know, some places you might recognize, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and we start saying, you know what, we will civilize these people because, you know, people of color are not able to determine their future, right?
	Which is white supremacy, which was the entire foreign policy of America going into Vietnam, right?
	Why are you even saying it's American foreign policy?
	We saw the British Empire do this and fall.
	And that's what ends up happening is that right around, I want to say it's in the 19th century, you start seeing all these American presidents who are like, you know what?
	We're going to fall behind these other nations if we don't start doing what they're doing.
	And that all leads to this point where it's all about colonization.
	And America wants into it, and wants into it bad.
	And that's when we start messing around in those other countries, and that's when people like Oliver North, and that's when people like Michael Flynn, and all these white supremacists and fascism starts meeting and combining.
	And America betrays its original purpose.
	And we have never recovered.
	And just to wrap this up, the scariest thing about Oliver North and the Iran-Contra was that the actual Democrats had control of Congress at the time.
	And they let him off.
	That was the good boy network, Tip O'Neill, like, hey, we're just trying to get along here or whatever.
	Wait, Nick, you don't want a Congress where they're all going out and getting dinner and drinks every night and getting along?
	You don't think that's a good thing?
	Wait, I'm sorry.
	I just went into my cable news voice.
	My apologies.
	That was your good ol' voice.
	Well, that's the same.
	Because the myth is that that era, because you're exactly right, from the end of Nixon until Clinton, there is virtually no difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.
	and they're just hanging out constantly.
	They have a new consensus.
	They're all about making the rich richer, yada, yada, yada.
	And you're exactly right.
	They're not going to drag Reagan over the coals for a Ron Contra.
	They'll muss his hair up a little bit, right, to gain some political points.
	But they're not looking to take out a president.
	Look where that got us.
	You're exactly right.
	It should have been worse than Watergate.
	Well, and what happens when you don't punish it?
	Yeah, exactly.
	Because when you don't punish it, going back to these guys, right, in these capitals, when you don't squash this and you say this isn't what we do, what happens?
	They get emboldened.
	They do it more.
	I mean, listen, people might think I'm crazy, but you get 9-11.
	Oh, no, you're 100% right!
	You start getting into this period of time where you just start doing it everywhere, right?
	And America, the big problem with America, and this is how we ended up where we are, America wanted control over everything.
	And we have to do a show at some point or another about Dick Cheney, his role in all of this, the pursuit of American hegemony, but the idea was that America grew big enough and strong enough, particularly after the Cold War, that we could literally control everything.
	And we decayed.
	We decayed.
	Right.
	You're in college.
	You must like those analogies.
	So you can do it's actually George H.W. Bush is to Cheney as to whatever else is equivalent.
	And without question, because remember, both Reagan was was out of it and probably had Alzheimer's a lot earlier than we thought.
	And W, you know, was just the good old boy.
	What's that?
	I found an amazing quote about W. Bush by the way.
	I don't know if he was really even involved in all that stuff.
	So it's really interesting. - Do you know, I found a quote. - What's that? - I found an amazing quote about W. Bush, by the way.
	And we need to talk about W. Bush because nobody has done him more favors than Donald Trump.
	Everybody's just like, "I missed W.
	That was a good time." W, before he runs for president, he talks to, you know, one of the Saudi Arabian people, you know, who is going to help him in his campaign.
	And he says to them, he goes, I don't really know what I think about foreign policy.
	But do you know who did?
	Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.
	And so they help him do it.
	Then you have these people.
	That's how we end up in the place where we're at today.
	Yeah, so that is a long and exhaustive look, but that's what we're doing here.
	We really appreciate you listening.
	And watching!
	I can't believe people are having to watch this now.
	I threw down my glasses in disgust.
	I can't wait because that's the thing.
	We get animated.
	I can't wait until our first actual blow up where it's just like pulling hair out and gnashing of teeth.
	There are entire segments where I just put my head down.
	I'm like, I can't.
	I have no energy.
	Like you and Don Lemon.
	Oh, Don Lemon.
	If you haven't seen that yet, go seek that out.
	Don Lemon just being like, this is too stupid to even comment on.
	But we appreciate you being here.
	Our audience is growing and we appreciate you so much.
	All of the shares and the likes and subscriptions, please keep them coming.
	That helps us.
	Every single one of them.
	Tell people about the show, about how we're having conversations other people aren't having.
	My co-host Nick, you can find him on social media at CanYouHearMeSMH.
	You can find me at J.Y.
	Sexton.
	We'll be back next week.

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