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July 3, 2020 - The Muckrake Political Podcast
51:27
Trump Declares White Supremacy Week

Pandemic news just gets worse and worse. Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the damage Republicans and Trump have done in the effort to get Americans to wear masks, signaling to white supremacists by the president's campaign, and get into the founding of the country and things to consider over the holiday weekend. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Well, look, let me just tell you what I think here.
I think that Birx and Fauci have gone well past their... They've expired.
Their time of usefulness has expired.
But other places were long before us, and they're now... It's a life.
It's got a life.
And we're putting out that life, because that's a bad life that we're talking about.
Hey everybody, welcome to the Muckrake Podcast.
I'm your co-host J.D.
Sexton.
I'm here as always with Nick Halseman.
bunch of slave-owning aristocratic white males didn't want to pay their taxes.
Hey everybody, welcome to the Muckrick podcast.
I'm your co-host, J.D. Sexton.
I'm here as always with Nick Halseman.
I don't even know how to properly begin this.
There's so much happening today.
You You know, that unfortunately is one of the side effects of living in the Trumpian era of American politics.
It's just flooding the zone.
So much to keep track of.
But the first things first, we have to talk, Nick, about the fact that coronavirus It is spiking all around the country in more places than it's not.
It's disrupting things all over again.
It's actually worse than it was in the very beginning.
We're being told by experts that perhaps we're looking at an escalation that is going to be even worse than what we've seen so far in terms of not just infections but tragedies.
It's a really hard thing to stay on top of, yeah?
You know, it's interesting.
It's a culmination of a lot of things, too.
We've seen some reports that show that there didn't seem to be a connection between spiking and the protests.
But I just feel like, rationally, it's hard to swaddle that because so many people were out.
Now, I would say, and I kept my close eye on it, there were a lot of masks and it was outside.
So in theory, there should have been some mitigating circumstances there.
But it also coincides with the premature opening of businesses in a lot of these states as well, which seems to be an easier way to track whether that spike is connected to that.
So a perfect storm.
And then also a perfect storm of people who simply, on a political lines, won't wear the mask when in the face of the science every day coming out showing more and more connection to mask wearing being the real critical I mean, we talked about this, you know, back during... And by the way, it's so funny.
The protests are still going.
Yeah.
They're still occurring, even though national media has... What's the phrase?
Oh yeah, screwed the pooch on that one.
And instead, what we've actually seen is that local media and independent journalists have picked up the baton to show everyone that these things are still going on.
And of course, that protesters are being brutalized.
But we talked about it.
You know, it wasn't just that the protests would necessarily spread the thing.
It was the fact that people thought it was necessary to put themselves at risk in order to protest injustice.
And obviously there's been some spread from that, even though studies have shown.
That maybe it wasn't as bad as what other people thought.
I think it is this indignant quote-unquote resistance.
You know what I mean?
It's this and one thing that we've seen and I think it's important for us to talk about is The old guard Republicans, and I wrote about this on the muckrake this week, the old guard Republicans, I think, are trying to walk back their original opposition to, you know, taking the coronavirus seriously.
We're seeing people like Mitch McConnell and Lamar Alexander and, you know, Dick Cheney.
Right?
Showing up and wearing masks and being like, oh no, like the coronavirus is a real thing.
We have to do this.
We have to take care of it.
And I think looking around in total abject horror at what they've created.
You know, they've created a voting base, and we talk about this all the time, a voting base that is violently opposed to experts in science.
And this is the perfect scenario.
It's the perfect storm for those people to be in a public health crisis and not just pay attention to what experts say, but to angrily defy them.
You know, it's funny, before we started taping, the governor of Texas, who the last time I checked, Nick, is not a bleeding heart liberal, correct?
Okay, I'll give you that.
Okay, yeah, the extremely aggressive conservative governor of Texas just passed an executive order that mandated masks in public places.
His deputy governor, who is, what's the word for it?
He's insane.
He's a frightening dude.
Dan Patrick is a frightening dude who went on Laura Ingraham and said, I've heard enough from Dr. Fauci and I don't need to hear any more, right?
But, you know, you have like the aggressive new Republicans who have just declared war on science and reason and the old guard who are now putting on masks and being like, no, let's all pitch in and do the thing.
And it's that indignant, violent reaction to it, I think, that has fueled so much of this.
I think it's just indicative of what's going to happen if Trump loses, when Trump loses.
I think he's lost.
I think this is over.
Barring, you know, Russia involvement, which we'll get to later.
But I think they're going to do the same thing for Trump.
They're just simply going to pretend that he, you know, they were always against him.
And they never wanted to, you know, go along with any of the things he wanted to do.
Just like they're doing now.
We're like, oh, you know, never mind that we actively encourage everybody not to wear masks.
Or, on the flip side, didn't emphasize how important it was, which is basically the same result.
It's just the common cold, Nick.
It's the common cold.
Didn't you watch Fox News?
It's just, it's the flu.
Ingram hasn't changed, by the way.
I saw her.
She still wants to mockingly just make fun of people wearing masks and just politicize it.
It's insane.
And by the way, when I was watching it, they don't have a ton of advertisers, by the way.
Just FYI.
Like, they'll have the same advertisers, and they don't have that many commercial breaks.
I mean, they have the breaks, they don't have that many commercials in their breaks, and then they'll do, like, Fox News commercials to fill it in.
Anyway, the point being that it's strange to me that anyone, anybody, still is going to advertise on that show.
But, yes, there is a shift, but it's too late.
We're now right in the midst of this spike that's really probably the end of the first wave.
Anything that you thought was going to happen that you could plan in August, September, October is now cancelled without question.
And that will bring us through the end of the year anyway because there's probably going to be resurgence due to the cyclical nature of this thing anyway.
Well, I'll start here.
I'm really glad that you brought up Ingram and their advertisers.
Have you watched Tucker Carlson recently?
Have you caught any of Tucker Carlson?
I haven't, believe it or not.
Okay, so for our listeners, for anybody who has seen the movie Network, And the character of Howard Beale who loses his mind and starts believing that he is receiving messages from God.
Tucker Carlson is in receiving messages from God mode right now.
Like it is just unbridled, paranoid, violent, white nationalism.
It is just turned into Really one of the most insane hours of TV that you can watch every night on American television But there is a bridge that and of course this all started with Fox News And we were making light of it right about how it's the common cold.
It's not really a danger I mean studies have now shown that Fox News has killed people Right.
But Jared, you just called Tucker Carlson's hour one of the most batshit crazy hours on TV.
But you're not even saying who leads into that hour before him in Hannity.
And then you have Ingram.
I mean, it's a triple crown, man.
Well, and it's a bridge, right?
So Fox News is the glitzy sort of red pill into everything else, right?
So Fox News gives this sort of, you know, antisepticized New World Order conspiracy theory, right?
White America is under attack by traitors and all this stuff.
They won't come out and say that, but they'll sort of say it.
The next thing that you know, so if you tell all these Americans who listen to you that the pandemic isn't real, Well, the next question that people ask is, well, if it's not real, why are Democrats and everyone else worried about it, right?
And then all of a sudden, it gives room for an answer, which is what Fox News never gives, right?
The only thing Fox News ever gives towards an answer is, go out and vote for a Republican in the next election, right?
But the answer to all those questions is always filled by extremists.
So it's filled by Plandemic.
Right?
It's filled by white supremacists.
And I've been keeping an eye on the white supremacy beat.
And let me tell you something, the radicalization right now is off the charts.
And the way that it starts is it's like, white privilege, and then all of a sudden it's talking about rioters and looters.
And the next thing you know, it's just like, we have to protect our civilization.
You know, just like straight, straight neo-Nazi shit.
And so what you end up having is this domino effect where Fox News says it's not real and these other people provide the answers.
Those people aren't coming back.
They're not suddenly... I mean, like, we've heard it, right?
Everyone's like, oh, a mask is actually a way to strangle people and it keeps the carbon dioxide or monoxide or whatever in the hell they're saying in and it makes you die and it's actually a way to restrict you.
And there's even videos out there that are like, Oh, if you wear a mask, you'll enter a suggestive state, right?
Where the deep state can control your brain.
Those people aren't going to wear a mask, Nick.
We're seeing videos left and right of people in grocery stores losing their minds on people.
The video du jour today was a woman pointing a gun at a woman and her child.
Those people aren't going to suddenly realize they're in a public health emergency because Mitch McConnell or Lamar Alexander, who by the way, none of these people trust in the first place, right?
That's why the Tea Party existed in the first place, was to counter all of those people.
They're not going to put on masks.
Dick Cheney's not going to have... maybe he'll... maybe a couple of the people down in the country club will put it on before they hit 32.
But those other people aren't coming.
They're not coming along.
They're not gonna like suddenly... or 36.
I did the math wrong.
I saw the look on that.
I did the wrong double there.
No, they're not gonna suddenly wear masks because of Dick Cheney and Lamar Alexander and Mitch McConnell.
That's just not going to happen.
No, too much work has been done the opposite way for too long that, you know, that influence to put the mask on that happened overnight might take months before those people might actually consider it.
But I think that what would actually convert them into doing that would be knowing somebody directly that died from COVID, which will almost be a guarantee, or not necessarily die, but certainly be very sick.
You'll know somebody who's been very sick from COVID, I would say, by the fall.
I think everybody in America will know somebody within one or two degrees.
That's the interesting part of all of this, right?
Is one of the problems with America, and that doesn't mean that like the suffering is going to necessarily abate, right?
Like, you know, like some people are going to know people who suffer or whatever, but there's so many excuses out there.
We've talked so much about Religious extremism and cultism on this show.
Like a lot of those people see like their relatives get sick with it and they're like it was their time, you know, or God gave them that right?
It was it was God's plan or whatever.
So for everyone like that who should be seeing how this stuff works and to be honest and this isn't to cast dispersions.
The QAnon stuff, the plandemic stuff, that conspiracy stuff, it breeds from religious programming.
Is what happens, right?
It's the idea that they're being persecuted and martyred and there's some sort of evil outside thing acting upon them.
They're going to find excuses not to even care if people in their family die.
I mean, there's been interviews left and right where people are like, yeah, my sister died, but I still don't believe it's real, right?
Or which is so sad, but true.
And meanwhile, I mean, I guess at the heart of this thing, Nick, I'm so frustrated about it.
And I'm sure that you are.
And I'm sure the people who are listening at home are.
I just saw a poll before we got on here.
I want to say it's like 75% of Americans feel like this thing is heading in a worse direction.
And there's no hope in sight.
The FDA said today that there's no chance of a vaccine until at least the end of the year, if not the beginning of next year.
And that is like hustling.
Right, it feels bad and it feels bad because I mean society is breaking.
That's what we're watching.
This was the perfect storm to sort of break this society.
It was susceptible to this.
Well, for sure.
But the reason why it's breaking isn't necessarily because this is happening in a vacuum by itself.
What we are having on top of that is what's making all of this really, really problematic.
But also, what Trump has been doing is why we're here anyway.
And by the way, it's not just Trump.
It goes back to Reagan.
It goes back to before then.
You know, we had some sort of, I guess, you know, we have Shark Week coming up.
We had some sort of White Supremacy Week this week, is what we had, right?
Trump decided to launch, you know, Infrastructure Week, that's old news.
We're now doing White Supremacy Week, and it started with him tweeting out this video.
Do you want to talk about the video of these old folks on golf carts?
Hold on, we can't.
We can't move past this so fast.
Is Shark Week actually coming up?
Yes.
Well, they didn't call it Shark Week.
I saw the commercial.
Wait, okay.
I was going to say, I already know a lot about you from this podcast.
I just didn't know that maybe your brain was just like, oh, two more weeks, two more weeks until Shark Week.
I saw a video of a condor flying around with a shark in its talons, a hundred feet over the water.
It was amazing.
I've never seen anything like it.
I almost felt bad for the shark, by the way.
I almost felt bad.
The shark started to thrash around and I felt bad.
I don't know if I can do the rest of this podcast after you bring it up shark week.
Listen, we've got to find levity where we can find it because we're getting ready to talk about neo-Nazi bullshit.
So we've got to find it.
I remember watching that as a kid and that was just like...
That was grade A entertainment back in the day, Shark Week.
But I did not... I don't have a developed circadian rhythm for when Shark Week's coming up.
So I just thought for a second that maybe this was like an integral part of your life.
And it really made me happy.
Shark Week 2020, you know, it's coming up.
Oh, it's actually in August apparently.
But hey, it's coming up.
I can't wait any longer for it.
It's like the kid waking up early on Christmas.
No, it's July.
The better part, because it's White Supremacy Week, did we talk about old people like in that movie?
What's the sci-fi movie WALL-E?
Where they're so fat and out of shape they can't even walk anymore so they're in their little scooters?
Oh, the poor villages is what we're talking about here.
I will give the benefit of the doubt to that old guy who was yelling white power as if he was just like, you know, white power, that's what we all say, all the Trump people, but it doesn't matter because if you share that in that context as the president of the fucking United States, then you are advocating for that.
Okay, so we're... No, Shark Week!
Shark Week!
It's just, it's just like, in my mind's eye, I can just see the fawns on the skis, you know?
And it's like, muckery podcast enthusiasts are just gonna be like, they couldn't recover.
There was no way to recover from Shark Week.
It was just done.
No, so a couple things for what you're talking about there.
I assume everybody has heard about this at this point.
Trump, you know, shared a video from The Villages, which is this giant, I want to say it's like three counties large.
Like it's this intentional retirement community.
Sounds great.
Where they've done all these like profiles of and they keep finding that like they keep finding like these retired older white people who are like we just want an America like the 1950s and it's like oh what happened after the 1950s right oh yeah that's right the whole civil rights thing.
Whoa, whoa.
You can say what happened during the 50s if you want to.
That's exactly right.
By the way, let me throw this in there.
I think the last time... America was great, like, for a minute when we got into World War II.
I feel like that was the one minor time where we really were great.
I think Asian Americans might disagree with that, but I hear you.
There are problems right before World War II, during World War II.
I mean, we're going to talk hopefully a little bit about Independence Day before we sign off.
Like, it's hard to say that anything is ever great.
You know what I mean?
Like infallible or great or perfect.
It's a mindset that has no relationship to reality.
But so, you know, Trump retweets this video and this guy in a golf cart just starts saying white power, which is disgusting on its face.
Anybody who would just say that is just repugnant.
I actually, I drew a little bit of friendly fire this week.
Because here's the truth.
And by the way, Nick, you've known me for a couple of years now, right?
No.
We've been doing this podcast.
We've been talking politics.
Am I am I a Trump apologist?
No.
OK.
Am I am I a vocal, vocal critic of Donald Trump?
Yes.
OK.
I do buy the explanation that he didn't hear it.
I really do.
I do.
Because here's the thing.
We're going to talk about not just this, but we're going to talk about some other stuff that's going on in his campaign.
There was a tweet.
There's been a shirt.
I mean, it is just like white supremacy, neo-Nazi rollout week, right?
Do I think that Donald Trump literally reads and listens to everything that he retweets?
No.
I think his brain is so addled and messed up that he sees it's like, oh, they like Trump.
Sure, I'll give that a retweet.
The next thing you know, it's like, oh, that was a mass murder.
Oh, well, we probably need to take that off, right?
So there's a part of me that believes that maybe even if he had the volume up, maybe he didn't understand it because his brain is scrambled.
Yeah, they only said it three times in the video.
I know!
Five times okay, but three, no.
No, the fourth time would have been the charm, right?
I kind of feel like this is a situation, I actually think it's very indicative of Trumpism.
Which is, I don't think Donald Trump thinks he's a racist.
I think Donald Trump really believes that he is a big-hearted, genuinely good person.
But he's a realist, right?
He sees things the way that they really are.
But in fact, he is just like one of the most strident white supremacists in America today.
Which I actually think... I think if you track down the White Power Villages guy, he would tell you the same thing.
I'm not racist.
I just believe that whites should be proud or whatever.
And it's just like...
No, you just shouted a neo-Nazi slogan.
You are a white supremacist.
I'm sorry.
So, yeah, I drew some friendly fire for saying that, but that being said, I mean, the brain, the man's brain is like a wet Nerf football.
Well, here's the thing.
This gives him an opportunity to then denounce that, and he won't do it.
And that's the thing.
And I predicted right away, oh, he's going to delete the tweet, and then that's going to be his denouncing of it.
Hold on, did you hear their official explanation where they were like, well we would have deleted it quickly, but he was out on the golf course and we couldn't get a hold of him.
Did you hear that?
Oh yeah, because you know you can't disturb a President of the United States when he's playing golf.
The President of the United States of America.
The only person with the capability of launching nuclear weapons or a counter-strike against a nuclear attack.
They couldn't get a hold of him, Nick.
I don't know about you, I'm sleeping great.
I'm sleeping great lately with things like that.
You know what?
Maybe that isn't a bad thing.
Let's let him be out of the loop for a while.
Seriously, right?
I wish he'd play golf the rest of his term.
Wouldn't that be great?
It'd be great.
Just play golf every day, all day.
Let him do it.
I'm sure he'd be happy with that.
He'd be happy with that.
He doesn't like this job.
He hates this job.
Yeah.
I mean, he has one thing he does every day.
He's lucky if his schedule has at least one thing.
I love how they tweet out the presidential schedule, and they like to preface it by saying, not everything is on the schedule when it's released, but it is.
That's the only thing he does all day.
It's frightening.
It really is frightening when you consider what he's supposed to be doing and what the traditional role the president would be and that you still have people who want to support him.
But I mean he was busy tweeting out wanted posters of black people that he was thinking I guess we're pulling down some statues and like and the punitive Punishment he wants to hand out to people for desecrating the statues is just this is worse than you know having like a Some weed and going to prison for 40 years.
I mean he wants to give them 10 15 20 years for doing this kind of stuff Again, he doesn't really mean it right.
He's just saying shit because he wants to appeal to certain people and sound tough, right?
They're never going to do that, but who knows at this point.
I'm willing to believe whatever he says I Well, and that is the side effect of Trumpism, right?
Like, he can say, like, he can say enemy of the people.
He can say that Antifa are terrorists.
He can say that Barack Obama committed treason, right?
And whether or not, like, in his diseased, addled mind, whether or not he actually believes it, and I think he probably does.
I think he's a really messed up dude.
I really do.
You know, whether or not the government will act on that is one thing.
There is a whole really unwell group of people supporting him who believe that they're in an invisible war.
They do.
They believe that they are soldiers in an invisible war and they're being told by their leader who the enemies are.
So if you just start outing and doxing a bunch of people at protests, right?
Like you're putting not just them in danger, but anyone who might look like them.
You know what I mean?
My God, I can't believe we're talking about this.
I can't believe that this is a thing.
The President of the United States is tweeting out wanted pictures of unidentified people.
Who knows what they did?
Nobody knows if they did anything.
If they just got captured in like a thing.
And that's the other thing.
It's not like Donald Trump is sitting in the White House with his free time Copy and pasting, you know, wanted poster pictures.
And, you know, we were going to talk about this, um, what do you call it?
What do you call this shirt?
It's, um, it's a Nazi shirt.
It's the Iron Eagle of the Third Reich, but it's made a Trump.
2020 shirt that says America First, which was a fascistic movement in America, right?
So I, and I don't think Donald Trump, I think if you said, Hey, Donald Trump, what does America First mean to you?
He would say, Oh, it means jobs.
And it's like, no, what do you think about the American first committee with Charles Lindbergh and the, you know, the neon or the Nazi sympathizers.
And he'd be like, no jobs.
You know, I don't think that he made that shirt, but he's surrounded by people.
Who know this stuff, right?
I mean, Stephen Miller is up to his ugly eyeballs in this stuff.
He knows what this is.
And just so you're in case it's hard to picture, I mean, the eagle itself is very similar to what you'd see on the Nazi propaganda.
Those huge, they had these huge banners behind Hitler.
And the key here is that the shoulders of the eagle kind of come up near the head and then the wings kind of go straight out away from them versus a normal where the wings are outstretched and it's like majestic like what we normally see for America.
And I remember somebody on Twitter was trying to say, "I was in the Marines.
We use eagles for everything like that." And there's an expert saying, "Oh yeah?
Here's your marine eagle," which is how I described it with like more majestic.
And here is what they use, and here's what the Nazis use.
And it's pretty clear, even down to the talents holding a circular insignia, which they put our flag in there on this one, versus the swastika inside the German version.
Right, I agree with you that Trump never saw the design.
He didn't see the design.
It's going out there by other people, right?
I don't think Trump will care either way, but I don't think he obviously is involved in that kind of level of stuff. - So somebody sent me the shirt picture.
I wanna say it was like three or four or five days ago, right?
I and they sent it to me and they were like we Talk about this get the word out about this and I didn't want I I take my responsibility Seriously, right like I'm a journalist.
I report about this stuff.
I don't want to just like cock off and do whatever I Started doing research on it.
And the only thing that you can find is like some Turn-of-the-century American Eagle, like, war bond stuff.
That's it, right?
But it looks so much like the Neo-Nazi... or Neo-Nazi... I keep saying Neo-Nazi because I just want to pretend like it's not the same.
It's Nazi iconography.
And here's the thing.
So, like, let's say, for instance, let's give them the benefit of the doubt.
Let's say that they did not intend to signal white supremacist.
And actually, I think they did.
Because the answer to what I'm getting ready to lay out is what I'm talking about.
So you get in a room with these design people, right?
And they're not dumb.
You bring them this eagle, and like you said, the circular logo, which used to be the swastika.
Nobody in the room says, hey, quick little thing, do you think that people might think that this is a Nazi Eagle.
And somebody in the room would say that, right?
It's the fact that they would say, no, that's not a bug, that's the design.
Right?
That's the intention.
It's supposed to talk about a fascistic history in America, and that's what it evokes.
On purpose.
It totally does.
Right.
And that's why, see, I think the thing about government that used to give me solace was that I always felt like when Clinton was in power, it always felt like, you know, it just feels like there are people much smarter than me in charge of a lot of really important decisions.
And so I felt comfortable with that, knowing that, OK, there are people who are very smart.
They're, you know, the best, the brightest in a good way.
But that's the flip side here.
We don't have any of those kind of people in our government now.
So, there isn't going to be anybody who has any historical context.
I mean, Stephen Miller probably is the one guy.
I'm not sure.
I don't think he's dealing with t-shirt design either.
There is some evidence.
I feel like I saw a link to something that showed it was that actual eagle design might have been a template that you order off of something and just whatever.
That said, who knows where that website was from and who designed that?
Because again, these are all, this is all iconography and there's no mistakes.
When you're designing something, you're making decisions based on, you know, stuff.
It's a presidential campaign!
Yeah, and they should be aware of these things, but I certainly think there's a possibility that, like, yeah, nobody involved with any of these things had any clue.
Not even a clue.
And then it's out there, and they look foolish for it, but I don't know.
I would give a 30% chance that that's what happened.
Well, and that's generous.
By the way, is it still being sold?
I believe so, yeah.
Yeah, so that's the other thing.
But here's the, and I think this is the larger thing, like we can talk about them being morons, which I think is fair.
I mean, this campaign has just been terrible.
But there has been a really consistent, obviously concerted effort for Trump, his social media, his family's social media, his campaign's social media, they highlight extremists.
It happens all the time.
They highlight QAnon accounts.
They've... I mean, you know, the infamous Hillary Clinton sheriff star, which was the star of David.
You know, tons of anti-Semitic memes.
All that stuff.
Then, there was a tweet the other day, and this wasn't written by Donald Trump.
And I'm going to read it for people real fast.
And for anyone who isn't familiar with this, I assume you might hear this and it might just make your stomach hurt a little bit and you might not know why.
So here is a tweet from the President of the United States.
This was on June 30th.
This is a battle to save the heritage, history, and greatness of our country.
Now, that right there is a problem, okay?
And the reason it's a problem, and it wasn't written by him, and it sounds gross, but it's meant to sound innocuous, this is obvious.
It's 14 words, by the way, and for anyone who isn't familiar, Let's do it.
The 14 words which are the slogan of white supremacists, organized white supremacists, not just people who walk around thinking this.
We're talking about neo-Nazis, we're talking about white supremacists who are parts of groups.
They say, we must secure the existence of our people in a future for white children.
And they are looking all the time for people to say that.
To either do it in little parts or do it all at once.
It's like a shibboleth.
Between these people.
And let me tell you what, that tweet is not on accident, Nick.
That is not just, it's not a bunch of monkeys in a room typing out Shakespeare.
Like, that's intentional.
So there are people, and by the way, probably Stephen Miller, right?
And people around Stephen Miller who are like-minded, who are obviously signaling to extremists all the time.
This is an intentional thing.
It's not accidental.
Well, let's talk a little bit about the t-shirt.
It's still up there.
You can go online.
They changed the picture, though, because what was originally shared was a woman, a white woman with blonde hair, smiling, you know, like what you typically have, you know, when they're modeling a t-shirt.
Well, the new picture, and we'll put this up, and if you watch it on your YouTube channel, we'll put it up there so you can see it and our beautiful faces the whole time, is a black man, tattoos all up and down his arms, hands in his pockets, staring right at the camera with a, like, you talking to me?
look, you know, really like kind of hostile.
You tell me what that's about because it's not the kind of model, it's even the expression, not that the fact that the color of his skin or whatever, but he's shaved head and he's looking really surly.
What kind of person would have taken a picture like that and said, oh yeah, this is going to get people to buy this shirt?
I have to tell you, you could not pay me enough money to be a generic shirt model.
You know, the one where they like Photoshop on whatever they want to sell.
You could not pay me enough money for that.
It's crazy.
And the fact that somebody in the campaign decided the way to fight against this is to put that on somebody, a person of color, is crazy.
Forgive me.
Yeah, right.
Here's what it is.
It's a stock picture because he's wearing another, same photo, different shirt and other ones.
But by the way, all the white people modeling have nice smiles on their faces.
Like, I don't want to get into this like this, but having been in design before and worked on this level of editing and that kind of stuff, that is not mistaken either.
There's something going on.
Oh, actually, excuse me, I found one person of color that has a smile on his face.
Why?
It's not unintentional.
That's the thing about this.
I've been getting in a lot of conversations with people about Trump and what he knows and what he doesn't know.
Trump doesn't know what the 14 words are.
You know what I mean?
He has a hard enough time putting together four words.
There was 88 in there somewhere too, I feel like, in that same tweet.
Yeah, it's not something he understands.
Like, when Trump retweets a QAnon account, he doesn't understand QAnon.
He's not on there, you know, watching Fall of the Cabal or, you know, he's not like, he's not baking the crumbs together, you know, and burning them in night oil.
It's just he likes it when people say nice things about him and he's broken, you know, and he, I assume, again, I think if you got Donald Trump to, what's truth serum?
What's that called?
Is that sodium penthol?
Is that what it is?
Yeah, sodium penthol.
If you got some truth serum in Donald Trump and you're like, Donald Trump, are you racist?
He'd be like, I love everybody!
And then he'd be like, me and Don King are great friends.
Well, no, I would actually go the other way.
I would think he'd get upset that you'd even dame ask him that question.
Exactly.
And that's the, and I think that's one of the things that Americans...
Unfortunately don't understand which is that racists who believe that they're not racist are just as dangerous as avowed racist right because that's one of our main problems like you find people left and right who are like defending the confederacy and they're like oh it's history not hate and it's like No, you're in complete denial about what you're doing right now.
And I know some people understand it, and some people will tell you that they're racist, but there are just tons who are delusional about it, and I think he's one of them.
I think it's also the notion of self-reflection, or the inability to have any of that.
And I don't know if it was taught to us at a certain level and we lost that as we and people were raised.
If it's geographical or certain areas of the country simply lack that ability.
I don't know if that's the case because I know plenty of people who live in LA who don't have self-reflection either.
It could very well just be whatever version of the spectrum you're on personality-wise.
You just simply don't have the ability to do that.
But that's a big one because what does that deal with?
That deals with the ability to look at like, okay, am I right about this?
Can I have a conversation with myself and figure, you know what, maybe there's a better answer to this or a different way we should go about it?
And that also directly influences this notion of how are you going to dare tell me to wear a mask?
How are you going to dare tell me to stay in my house?
You know, they're all sort of versions of the Venn diagram there and of the personality traits that lend itself to these kind of situations.
It's really interesting.
I would make the argument that what you just described is one of the defining traits of America.
I think that this country is built on the concept of inherent greatness that supersedes flaws.
Right like yes, I may be a flawed person, but I'll tell you the good parts of me are so much greater than that that I need to go ahead and I would make the argument and we were going to talk a little bit about the 4th of July today and the independence of the country.
I would say that's the defining characteristic of our founding fathers.
I think that you know, I did a lot of research on the on the book American rule and I've been doing a lot of research on the Enlightenment in this period of revolution against like Kings and Monarchs and all of this.
I really think that they were like, this is the movement that is right.
But meanwhile, it was the self-reflection that you're talking about that was missing, which is talking about liberty and freedom while owning hundreds of human beings.
You know what I mean?
And like breeding them and tearing them apart and selling them to other people and, you know, punishing them with corporal punishment.
I think that is the inherent paradox at the heart of America that we have not reckoned with.
And unfortunately, we're just now, I think, as a country starting to really sort of wrap our minds around.
I agree.
I mean, we've always had people who could do this and who could break out of the molding of what you want to believe and what you've been taught to believe.
But I think we need to do this all over again.
I feel like there was a moment there out of the 60s and the early 70s where You know, the argument would be the kids were indoctrinated into a lot of things like environmentalism, treating your fellow man kindly, being fair, all these things.
You know, even racial equality.
Those things were, I think, there was a moment there for a many generation, and I think we've lost that.
And I think that the people older than that, if you're older than 55, 60, they got more ensconced in those views.
And it's just really troubling because it's holding us back, right?
That's what's going on in this country is we're being held back.
We've had this notion of progressivism for going in different directions over the course of the last several decades, and we've been getting somewhere.
But this is the opportunity now where if we don't do anything about it with Trump, we've been talking about this for the last several months, this is where we're going to go.
We could easily slide right back to where we started from.
Yeah, you know, I, I spent a lot of time talking about sort of the religious myth of America.
You know, it's sort of like a nationalistic, religious ideology.
And, and, you know, so we're, we're, uh, when you hear this, it'll be a day away from the 4th of July, which I've, I've always loved.
I come from like this small town that just like loved the 4th of July.
I mean, we had like the biggest parade in the state.
Small, small town, giant parade and festival and all that stuff.
You know, hot dogs, fireworks, the whole nine yards.
And...
It's now this day because that in itself was a religious festival.
I want people to think about that.
You know what I mean?
Where you're talking about like the founders as if they were like a group of holy people.
Like apostles, you know, bringing in the Holy Spirit.
The truth is that we are currently still in the shadow of Reaganism.
And Reaganism was a revival of the American religious mythology.
Right?
We all got taught under this indoctrinating system that we didn't really get taught how the country was founded.
We didn't really get taught about the country's problems.
It was all glorified, and it was a story that was about how America was exceptional and almost perfect, right?
And you would always say, well, there was slavery, but the Civil War took care of it, and Lincoln died for our sins, and now we're washed in the blood of Lincoln, you know?
It's not true.
And we're just a country.
And we've had some really great things that have happened in this country.
And, you know, you can't look at this country and be realistic about it without looking at the faults and understanding where we've went wrong.
But Reaganism told us not to do that.
And we're currently climbing out from the rubble of that, unfortunately.
Well, the indoctrination that you mentioned also really stressed the separation of church and state.
That was a really big one.
Anybody will remember that from their social studies classes from when they were a kid.
But the question, I'm curious about this, in your research and about how the Constitution was founded and the country was born, I wonder if that really was a thing that the Founding Fathers really held dear, was to make sure, because if that's the case, they're rolling in the graves now because you're seeing these prayer breakfasts in the White House with the President.
All these things that we learned, at least in my era, never would have been permitted.
So there was an awakening in America that led up to the revolution.
Actually, and one of the things that the founders and the revolutionaries did was they use that enthusiasm like that that new born revitalized Christianity.
They used it to inspire the idea that the revolution was like.
sent from God and they were doing godly business.
But by the time that they ended up actually putting together a government, and the Constitution, the Constitution is completely separate from the Declaration of Independence, which is something to remember on July 4th.
Actually, Jefferson's first draft of the Constitution tried to get rid of slavery as an institution.
Congress denied it because the South wasn't going to go along with it.
And then we end up a few years later having the Constitution.
Eventually, Madison and all these other people, they were happy using religion as a means of explaining how the country came together, right, and its purpose, but they were also members of the Enlightenment.
They believed in reason and they wanted to create a secular machine that they alone as rich white landholding slaveholding men could control people below them.
So actually religion kind of was a problem for them because if you had too much religion or if you had prophets out there, the religion would combat their authority.
Right.
So they wanted it to be a secular institution for for a reason.
And also, you know, they had a bunch of bad memories about how England.
I mean, if you've ever looked at England's history, it's an oppressive religious state at that point.
So, yeah, they didn't they weren't really interested in it.
And so what ends up happening is those two parts, the religion that they kept out of government and sort of the mythology they created about a perfect America, eventually, years later, start coming together.
And so American history is like that coming together, being pulled apart.
And then, of course, with Reaganism and the evangelical right and Falwell and all those people, it just combined into this big, amalgamous mess that we still haven't gotten out from underneath of yet.
Well, remember, that all came out of the Reaganism, came out of the malaise of the 70s, where, in my mind, if you have a... the more successful democracy republic that you have, in my mind, and the further it goes along, the less religion becomes important to people.
It kind of feels that way.
And I think we saw that over the course of a couple hundred years, as we got into the mid and late 70s, you know, the attendance in churches and synagogues were going way down, and they were having trouble keeping these things up.
And I think that's what they ended up letting Reagan key into.
He's like, look at these churches, look at these houses of worship.
No one's going to them.
No one's being religious anymore.
And we're having a moral decay and all these different things.
And that is why our country is so bad.
And that's why our economy is going down the shitter.
Those are the things I think that they were able to manipulate because we all know That no matter who you are, from the President to, you know, even Osama Bin Laden, they're going to manipulate their religion to their means.
It's never about the actual religion, which is the sad thing about that when you talk about these leaders of these countries and these places.
So I think that's what we got out of that.
We were moving towards getting farther and farther away from religion, and in some respects, like a more pure version of what the republic should be, and then it There's a really interesting thing.
And again, I can only speak to Christianity as someone who grew up in the church and in the teachings.
There's a really interesting, dangerous feature in Christianity.
It is a religion born out of martyrdom.
and out of persecution, right?
The idea that the state will go against them and the idea that they're going to be eradicated.
So you're exactly right.
When attendance went down, it's like, oh, the world is insane and it's going to be taken over by the devil and we're all going to be persecuted and martyred.
But when Christianity gains power, an evangelical component that still has the martyrdom and the persecution complex is then like, we have to take over the world or else we will be persecuted and martyred.
So it's like this give and take that certain parts like the Dominionist who are now in charge with Pompeo and Barr and Pence and all these people.
So it ends up becoming this weird, mutated faith, and it looks like other faiths.
It leads to radicalism, and when you put that with nationalism, it gets really incredibly dangerous.
And it was bastardized by the Republican Party, thinking that whatever they do, by any means necessary, for the same reason, we have to get our agenda in place, because otherwise the whole country will completely fall apart.
And if we have to cheat and lie and steal and all these different things to get there, then that's going to be justified because we know that our ends will justify the means.
And it's the same thing that the religious people would say as well.
And I'm going to throw this out there because it is a holiday weekend, and if our listeners are anything like Nick and I, then you are interested in spending a holiday weekend around patriotism, discovering why this country is in such an existential crisis.
So a recommendation, if anyone wants to see the ideology behind this and why what you just said is exactly right.
The idea that America was in a quote-unquote moral decay or that liberal ideology was going to literally destroy the world.
Go online, it's all free on YouTube.
Go and watch Francis Schaeffer's How Then Should We Live, which is a documentary that influenced, starting in the 1970s, it influenced every evangelical, like radicalized church in America that said the only way to preserve society, and by society we're talking about white Western civilization, right?
The only way that we can preserve it is by creating a theocratic state.
Which is a state in which the church makes all laws and governs in totality.
And this is actually what people in power believe right now.
So if you get a chance this weekend and you want to dive deep, deep, deep into the existential dread, go and watch Francis Schaeffer's How Then Should We Live.
Absolutely.
No, it would make a lot of sense and all these things sort of make sense when we put those things together with the context of that.
And it's really, it's just frustrating only because I'm a little bit religious.
I'm, you know, a little bit of an observant Jew.
So I certainly do not want to, you know, cast any shade on people who want to dedicate their lives to religion and living a pious and righteous life.
Don't want to make any of those versions there.
I just feel like They're just manipulating this to get power and control the government in a way that certainly the founding fathers never ever intended for that to happen.
There's nothing wrong with a person having religion.
It's when they have to use that religion in order to consolidate power and oppress other people.
That's where the issue is.
And that's what the problem is that we're talking about.
Because these people are, they're using a religion that actually was a social justice religion.
I mean, if you actually look at Christianity, it's about, like, raising up the people in your culture and treating them better and being peaceful and being fair.
And they've used it and they've perverted it for consolidating power.
And it's not all Christians.
It's this particular sect, the ones that I've called the cult of the shining city, that unfortunately have taken over government and have created, like, this total crazy messiah out of Donald Trump.
But you can't talk about America and you can't be honest about America if you don't look at the problems that got us here and the problems that Donald Trump and Republicans are trying to just Concrete over, you know, I mean just pretend like they're not there This country did not start in a great way.
The founders were not perfect They were really really flawed men and the system at the time was really flawed We have to get better and the only way to get better is to recognize where we come from.
I Well, we might all have not seen the movie Dazed and Confused, but it actually is a July 4th movie because it takes place during the bicentennial summer of 1976, and as they're being let out of the school year for the last bell and they're all running out, the history teacher says, you know, don't forget, while you're celebrating July 4th, don't forget, it's really just a holiday about a bunch of white guys who didn't want to pay taxes.
And that was probably the first time I even considered that at age 20 or 21, whenever that came out.
But that is really what we were founded on, if you think about it.
And that's why we have to be aware of it so we can then adhere or aspire to something greater than that.
We have to understand that so we can transcend it.
Yeah, I keep saying, and again, this is something I wrote about in my new book, American Rule, like America has had some really exceptional people, but the really exceptional people in this country, they're exceptional because they were able to do what they did in a country that was flawed.
You know what I mean?
In spite of what the country was like.
And so I actually think, and by the way, if we're giving out more recommendations, Jaws is maybe the best 4th of July movie and also is a great allegory for the coronavirus right now.
If you really want to get down to it, it's about like all of these people who are just interested in money and putting other people's safety in danger for money.
But yeah, it's a weird thing getting ready to go into this holiday It's actually the first time I've observed the Fourth of July since writing my book.
Since learning the total history of America, which feels weird.
But I think it's important to think about your country and what it is and what it isn't.
And I think that's what we should spend the holiday doing.
And we certainly want people to have a great Fourth of July.
Be safe out there.
Enjoy your way.
Like I said, you know, catch up on some research.
Look at what this country is actually about.
But, you know, reach out to the people you love.
We need to keep reaching out to people.
All right, we need to make sure that people feel loved and taken care of.
This is important, particularly as this pandemic gets worse and worse.
Just to let you know, we all appreciate you so much.
You've been working so hard to promote this podcast and it's so appreciated.
All of the comments, the likes, the subscriptions.
And just don't put mayo on your hamburgers this weekend.
I'm anti-mayo as well.
I'm glad we have a consensus on that.
I mean, I'm anti.
I'm a ketchup and mustard guy, just for the record.
But yeah, you know, we appreciate so much all of the support.
We're growing by leaps and bounds, and it's because you've taken a role in this podcast, and we appreciate it so much.
Every like, subscription, share on social media, word of mouth, it all really, really helps us.
So thank you so much.
Until next time, please have a great Fourth of July.
For Nick, you can find him at Can You Hear Me?
SMH.
You can find me at J.Y.
Sexton.
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