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July 31, 2020 - The Muckrake Political Podcast

32:58

Trump And Barr Expose Their Plans For The Election

Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss what Donald Trump means when he suggested delaying the election in November. Jared warns that there's a very significant fear of violence if Trump loses and his supporters won't accept the results. And while William Barr and Trump get called out for their lies, it doesn't seem to have any effect. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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	I want to have the election.
	But I also don't want to have to wait for three months and then find out that the ballots are all missing and the election doesn't mean anything.
	That's what's going to happen, Steve.
	That's common sense.
	And everyone knows it.
	Smart people know it.
	Stupid people may not know it.
	Is it ever appropriate, sir, for the president to solicit or accept foreign assistance in an election?
	It depends what kind of assistance.
	Is it ever appropriate for the president or presidential candidate to accept or solicit foreign assistance of any kind in his or her election?
	No, it's not appropriate.
	Okay.
	I'm sorry you had to struggle with that one, Mr. Attorney General.
	Hey everybody, welcome to the Muckrake Podcast.
	I am Nick Hauselmann and as always I'm joined by Jared Yates Sexton via phone as he's traveling across the country.
	And we have a lot to talk about tonight because there's a lot of things going on this past week.
	I think we need to first start off with what is happening with Trump and his constant attack on the election itself.
	So Jared, talk to us.
	What are your feelings about what's going to happen?
	I know you predicted a lot of things, but where are we now with you?
	Well, first of all, I just want to apologize for the poor quality.
	I had a family emergency I'm taking care of, which is not fun, but I mean, you know, Muckrig podcast needs to go on and we need to talk about this emergency.
	And unfortunately, and by the way, just a quick note, like we kind of predicted an earthquake in California in our last episode, so we need to be careful with our predictions, particularly that we've been trying to tell everyone who would listen that Donald Trump was Probably not going to pay attention to the results of the election, probably would not accept a loss, and would probably look for a possibility to delay the election.
	I think what we saw today was, again, unfortunately really predictable.
	The economy has obviously suffered a major blow.
	He got on Twitter and mentioned the possibility of delaying the election.
	Not only is his numbers are underground, But we saw that the economy has just suffered this massive, massive blow.
	So I mean, this is him grasping at straws.
	But also people need to remember, because you and I have both seen this and unfortunately been shaking our heads about this for, what, years now.
	Everyone wants to say there's no way Donald Trump can do this.
	There's no way Donald Trump can do that.
	And unfortunately, our rules, our laws, our Constitution, our democratic institutions are only as strong as our ability and our willingness to fight for them.
	This is a rough situation, and people need to understand, yeah, can he legally do it?
	Absolutely he can't, but authoritarians do not care about what they can do illegally.
	They only care about what they can do and what they can get away with.
	Well the pattern I've seen for them is they're like water and they just try and find the easiest path to manipulate these things.
	So I'm of the mind that they understand that they can't change the date of the election.
	It seems too many hurdles to jump through across state and federal laws to get that to change.
	It looks like the Focus now for them is to simply challenge the election and try and get the wheels moving on that end after the election happens.
	The frustrating thing is that Trump is by no means a smart person, but he does seem to have a few people around him that are sort of nefariously smart and can look at these things and figure out some weird loophole.
	And I think that there was a reporting a few weeks ago that seemed kind of far-fetched But as we move closer to the election, it does seem like what he's trying to do now is attack the notion of mail-in voting as fraud.
	And that can trigger certain ways to contest the election that then might, in some very narrow way that the Constitution is written, somehow allow them to interpret it that they can have a vote and the 14th Amendment The 12th Amendment allows them, at some point, if no one gets 270 electoral college votes, to have a vote by state in the House.
	And right now there's 26 states that are controlled by Republicans and only 24 that are controlled by Democrats.
	And that's a weird, strange, almost impossibility, but it looks like they're pushing something towards that.
	Yeah, this is one of those situations where we can talk about Donald Trump and whether or not he has good instincts or whatever – He throws a lot of things at the wall to see what sticks.
	And that's the really frightening thing here is if you actually look, if you want to consider this a chessboard, no, I'm not saying he plays three-dimensional chess.
	I don't even think he's capable of playing checkers.
	I think what ends up happening is you just see so much at play.
	We currently have this crisis that he's developing in America's major cities, particularly Democrat-led ones.
	in swing states.
	I mean, you know, you got to look at Pennsylvania, you got to look at Michigan.
	I believe Wisconsin is in play with this whole thing.
	And so he's got these troops going in that are gonna create a crisis.
	We have this developing crisis that the Republican Party has just ushered into being with the post office.
	And of course we have the pandemic and an economic crisis, All these things are coming together.
	It's not like this is a master plan, but it's just a continual attempt to do anything possible.
	And that's why people need to be aware and need to be wary, is because any one of these things, unfortunately, gives an authoritarian or somebody who's looking to destroy democratic institutions an opportunity.
	And that's all Trump is looking for.
	He, his entire life, has had the guts of a robber.
	And one of the things that he's always doing, I don't think when he gets into things he has an exit strategy, but he'll get in and he'll cause enough havoc and raise enough hell that he'll survive however necessary.
	And we're in another one of those situations where we have so much at stake and we have so much going on that we really need to be careful about how we proceed here.
	Here's the thing, the Trump he tweeted today, and he pinned it to the top of his profile, it's the last sentence I think is pretty revealing.
	Because he says, delay the election until people can properly, securely, and safely vote.
	To me, that indicates that he's recognizing that there is a real concern about people's health in terms of COVID, about going to the actual polls and voting.
	But that's interesting because he's also pushing for kids to go back to school.
	So how can you have it both ways where you don't think it's a big deal and kids can go back to school and it's obviously to him it's not going to affect any of the teachers or anybody working in those schools and then certainly not the parents who when the kids come back with it can spread it but now he's also acknowledging that you could you know it could be a problem with with going to the ballot box.
	It's those kind of moments that I know won't ring true to anybody who supports him anyway but that would be a great way to point to them and say look he's trying to have it both ways and clearly there's something off.
	Right, and everything you just said, and this is the unfortunate part about it, that's exactly what needs to be said.
	That's exactly what needs to be recognized in this situation, that this is a burgeoning crisis that should be taken seriously.
	And one of the problems that keeps happening with Trump, and we've seen this since 2015, we saw it take place in 2016, and unfortunately come into fruition over the past couple of years, We have so many people in America who should be sounding alarms about these things, just kind of throwing up their hands and saying, oh, he's not serious.
	We can't take him literally.
	We only have to take him figuratively.
	He can't get away with this.
	These are the laws.
	This is the Constitution.
	And they're resting on their laurels.
	And here's the thing.
	Authoritarians and fascists, to be particular, are really good at taking advantage of people who should be aware of what they're doing, resting on their laurels.
	They take for granted and take advantage of people who should know better and should be speaking out and should be fighting them.
	Like we talked about this, God, Nick, back when this pandemic started, we talked about this way back, I believe in March, that there needed to be a concentrated effort to get the elections ready for November and that it needed to start immediately because there were going to be legal battles.
	There was going to be showdowns over this.
	There were going to be political battles.
	And the longer that we wait on this, and the longer that we let this guy sit there and negotiate and start to gain gravity towards his ideas, and particularly as he starts to inoculate and prepare his supporters for some sort of a fight in the street or some sort of a constitutional battle, the more chance there is of something really, really bad happening.
	That doesn't mean it will, but it means that every day that we pretend like it can happen, there's more of a chance that it will.
	That's a great point.
	I think that the importance of what we're doing, a lot of people are doing, is trying to get ahead of this.
	To prepare people for what they are trying to do so that it's not a shock and surprise or any kind of notion that it will push people into being apathetic about it when it does come.
	I think it's a fine balance between trying to predict this and warn people to some degree, but also not to sound alarmist where they'll just tune you out anyway.
	And it seems right now that that side is winning.
	People understand that he's a problem and needs to be voted out.
	Even Republicans are moving away from the party, which only serves to ratchet up his rhetoric because he thinks he's getting more percentage of the Republican Party supporting him when it's really just the Republican Party is shrinking.
	And it's a real interesting problem.
	You know, Trump is running, he's basically running George Wallace's campaign, the governor of Alabama.
	But he's not running the campaign from like 1972.
	He's running a campaign as if he'd be running in 1950.
	And it's a real interesting choice, I would think.
	And it's frustrating to me, I know it's more frustrating to you, that it's kind of working, or it's enough that he's legitimate and he's going to be able to run this campaign and get a lot of votes and have it be however close it's going to be.
	But it's really kind of striking when you look at the rhetoric he's pitching where he's now trying to cast Democrats as people who completely hate the country and who are out there to destroy it and are terrorists.
	And it's that kind of stuff that, you know, should never be allowed to be said by anybody, any politician, much less the president.
	So here's the danger with everything that you just said.
	And you're exactly right, because you came, you came at this from one angle, which is talking about the electoral politics of this.
	Which is, all Donald Trump needs to win re-election is to keep his base and basically win out in a couple of key battleground states.
	And one of the reasons that is, is of course because the Electoral College was created to privilege slave-holding southern states, and as a result, modern Republicans have an instant advantage in every contest.
	But there's a secondary thing that's happening.
	And that's not to say that this, and again, this isn't a conspiracy theory, this isn't talking about a big master plan.
	What happens with people like Trump is that you always have a natural consequence and side effect of him talking about traitors and enemies and terrorists.
	And what happens is he starts to build a base, which he already has, which becomes anti-democratic.
	And I mean, small D, not big D. And so one of the things we're looking at is there are a lot of Republicans who are starting to abandon Trump.
	But we're not talking about votes.
	We're not talking about an actual electoral result.
	When you have an authoritarian or a fascist take power or then keep power, they're not interested in democratic results.
	What they're interested in is creating a volatile situation, a crisis, in which they have a group of supporters who are more willing to be violent and to violate democratic institutions.
	So when these things come together, when we're talking about an electoral strategy, but we're also talking about a rhetorical cultural strategy, That's where the real danger comes in.
	It's not necessarily that he could lose an election or win an election.
	It's whether he'll actually look at the results or whether or not he'll just subvert democracy altogether.
	And that's who he is naturally.
	I doubt he wakes up in the morning thinking that he's going to do that.
	It just happens to be his inherent nature and his instincts.
	And so he's instinctually an authoritarian, and that's what's going to happen come November.
	The question is whether or not that base is going to become violent and whether or not he has set up the Game board so to speak for it to turn into a situation like that.
	And I suppose what you're describing is a scenario where Trump loses but it's close and we're having to wait for a lot of mail-in ballots and they're going to try and pressure the voters to be certified from like the night of and whatever results are there.
	Right.
	I mean, the violence, are you worried about the violence being caused by Trump supporters who don't feel like Biden won officially?
	Or could it be the opposite, too, where somehow Trump pulls this thing out and then it's all the other people on the Democratic side that are going to take the streets?
	Yeah, I imagine this is a pretty volatile situation, no matter how you look at it.
	And, you know, I've talked to a lot of people who are like, well, Joe Biden needs to win in a landslide.
	That's the only way to take care of this.
	Well, I want you to put yourself in the mind, unfortunately, of someone as, you know, paranoid and insecure as Donald Trump.
	If he loses on a landslide, I don't think he'll believe that either.
	That will actually just sort of push the idea that it was a stolen election or a rigged election.
	So I think in any situation, you're going to be looking at how Donald Trump reacts to it in a negative way.
	And even if he wins, I think there will probably be protests in the streets, but I can't necessarily see violence.
	But if he does lose, there is a potential that if Americans aren't ready for what happens next, so if our media, our pundits, our politicians, and unfortunately this has been the case for years, if they continue not to meet the moment and they're not prepared for this thing, we could be looking at a powder keg that could blow up at any minute.
	But the first step to stopping that is to realizing that it's a possibility.
	It doesn't mean it will happen, but the more that we pretend that it couldn't happen, the more that it actually could happen.
	You know, I think that a lot of the bluster we're reading about with mail-in voting and that kind of stuff, and the rigged elections that he's yelling about, take the focus off of the influence that Russia will have on this election, and that how we have not done anything to try and prevent that by passing any laws or appropriating any kind of funds for that, which is really the biggest issue.
	And it kind of came to a head this week when we saw William Barr testify in front of Congress And they had representative Cicilline asked a really easy question about whether it was appropriate for a president to accept foreign assistance in an election and he tried to equivocate and say well it kind of depends before he finally said it's not appropriate and it was outrageous to me that they didn't ask him is it legal because we know the answer to that and you have to get him on the record as saying that and they let him weasel his way out of that.
	That was a pretty stark moment in the ridiculous circus of his testimony.
	Yeah, so Barr's testimony was really disturbing on many levels.
	For those who didn't have a chance to hear it, I'm very jealous of those who didn't have to watch it.
	It was obvious that Bill Barr either was completely lying or was actually unfamiliar with a lot of his business.
	But the most disturbing part about it was some of these ways, and of course this is how Barr is, he sort of snaked out of these things.
	He didn't want to go on the record saying that, you know, a politician should be seeking foreign interference.
	He kind of, you know, kind of waffled on that for a minute before he got nailed down.
	But he also refused to say whether or not he thought that a president could move an election, which was weirdly timed.
	It was very coincidental.
	And I want to point out to people, because again, I'm trying to send out a warning to people who think that none of this could possibly ever happen.
	That's the Attorney General of the United States saying that.
	And on top of that, it wasn't really a big, giant moment in his testimony.
	What should have happened is the Democrats should have immediately have just raised hell about this.
	and just gone after him until he went on the record saying that a president could not move or delay an election.
	That's how it should work in a functioning society.
	We should have been talking about that for the past couple of days nonstop.
	But we live in such an accelerated media world and political world, that it was just barely a blip on the radar.
	And what that does is it normalizes the idea.
	Now that Trump has even said it out loud and it's now out in the public discourse, means it's more likely to happen.
	So the way these loops end up happening is you bring it up and it just continually gets more and more possible.
	And we need to take a look at that and understand that unless we're outraged and unless we're prepared, this is an actual possibility, which it sounds horrible, but we just have to name it and we have to place it and we have to diagnose it.
	Right, which is precisely why he tweeted it out today saying, maybe, maybe we should just, you know, look at delaying the election.
	What a joke, am I right, Nick?
	What a joke.
	Yeah, and he would say, well, you know, I'm just joking.
	I'm being facetious.
	I mean, the thing, even like what he had said with, you know, shining light in different parts of your body to cure COVID is that he could try and slough it off as being, I was just kind of, you know, Not, you know, not really serious, but this is, this is the Constitution.
	This is dead serious stuff.
	You know, the other thing that he, that Barr weighed in on for unbeknownst reasons is the mail-in voting and whether that might be, you know, corrupted or not.
	And, you know, without any evidence, and they asked him, they said, what evidence do you have for this massive voter fraud that he's talking about?
	And he goes, well, we don't have evidence, but I have common sense.
	This captures everything.
	This quote-unquote common sense that the Republicans think that they have is just fraught with all sorts of racist, misogynist, classist ideology and they can hide under this notion of, well, it kind of sounds like Foreign governments could send massive amounts of, you know, these paper ballots that are exactly the same and match the signatures and the barcode that's on there.
	It's just, it's insane when you hear it that way.
	But again, it just goes out and then never comes back and no one ever talks about it.
	You know, I just got done reading a really good book called A Brief History of Fascist Lives, and they make something really, pretty incredibly transparent.
	And it was something that I hadn't really come across in a lot of my studying of fascists or authoritarians, and it's the idea that one of the reasons that fascists and authoritarians lie so much is because they feel like they have their own internal truth.
	Right?
	They don't need evidence outside of what they believe, what their gut feeling is.
	So when Donald Trump looks at something like this and he's like, oh, there's obviously going to be fraud because they're going to go after me.
	It's just this paranoid worldview, but he believes it so strongly that it becomes real in his mind.
	And so you're exactly right.
	When the Republican Party is just having these gut feelings and they're rejecting any sort of evidence and actually rejecting the fact that, you know, they've received help from Russians and God knows who else.
	The truth is that they have their own truth, and they've had their own truth for decades now that they have hewed to.
	And unfortunately, Trump has not only gained control of that, but he's actually drove it even further into the abyss.
	So you're exactly right.
	This truth isn't truth, but it most definitely is their truth.
	And when they have that truth and when they operate by it, that's when authoritarianism and fascism really takes hold.
	And even the notion of, oh, we've got to call them out and catch them in the act and say it to their face.
	You know, I'm sure you dated back in the day, and I dated, you know, and when you're dating and you break up with somebody and you think, oh, I want closure.
	I want to say these things to them I never got a chance to say.
	And you do, and it has basically no effect on them.
	Maybe you feel a little bit better for a few minutes, but it has no effect on the other person that you're saying these things to.
	Well, Axios on HBO, they had an interview with Donald Trump and they actually point blank to his face, asked him, why the hell are you not calling out Putin for bounties on soldiers?
	And they let him, he squirreled away, did not give a good answer whatsoever.
	I don't think he was prepared at all for that answer.
	And then nothing.
	It doesn't have any effect on anybody.
	I don't even think any people who's against Trump felt like it had any kind of gotcha moment to it.
	You know, we've been talking for a few years.
	You and I have gone rounds on it, and I think Americans have gone rounds on it.
	Critics of Trump have, too.
	And a lot of people are just like, well, obviously he's in Putin's pocket, or he's taking bribes, or he must have some sort of evidence against him.
	I think in a lot of ways, and maybe that stuff is true, but one thing that we have to realize Donald Trump just likes people who say nice things about him.
	And it goes back to that truth, that gut feeling.
	And I think one of the things that has happened is, even though he has intelligence in front of him that tells him that Putin has done this, and that he's hurt American troops, it goes back to that gut feeling of truth, that more sort of deep-felt truth as opposed to the truth with evidence.
	I think he truly doesn't believe that this is a thing that happened, and how could it ever?
	Because Putin is so good to him and so complimentary of him.
	He would never hurt Americans or he would never hurt him.
	And then of course, he doesn't give a shit about Americans either.
	He doesn't give a shit about troops.
	So we're looking at a situation where we have a president who is actively working against the country and is closer to a foreign despot who's already interfered with our democracies, already led to the death of American troops.
	People need to understand that this is the sort of connection, the through line in terms of not just despotism, But again, authoritarianism, it's these people who view the world through their own fate and through their own interests, and everything else collapses around it.
	And that's one of the reasons why the Constitution and laws and, you know, all these things, they don't matter.
	He doesn't care.
	He doesn't give a shit about what has happened before, only what happens to him in the moment.
	It's not about us.
	It's not about the country.
	Now, if you're wondering if we could ever pin murder on President Trump or not, the news broke this morning that Herman Cain died of COVID-19, and directly having attended the Tulsa rally, not a mask in sight, and a guy, Herman Cain, who had been saying it was a hoax as well.
	These are the moments we thought would shift the thinking on COVID-19.
	And I think, I don't know, let me know what you think.
	I definitely feel like anecdotally we're seeing a lot more of these stories of guys who are like, ah, it was a hoax.
	I was watching that vaccine or whatever that horrible documentary was.
	And you know what?
	I had a family get together with 12 of us and all 12 got sick, two are dead, two are in the ICU.
	You know, we're seeing more of those stories.
	So I'm wondering if you feel like these are the moments where this is what's causing the downfall of the polling for Trump and people are maybe finally getting, coming to grips with how serious this disease is.
	You know, I think a lot of the poll numbers are going down because not only is it that, but the economy is just in tatters.
	And I think a lot of people are, you know, we talked a lot about me going to these Trump rallies and then you'd have the regular Republican up in the stamps, the ones who would be at like the County Fair representing the party.
	And then the real Trumpists who were down in front of the stage.
	I think a lot of the ones in the stands are not only tired of not being able to see their grandkids, but they just wish that he would have a turn to say it, but tone like you'd be more of a uniter instead of a divider, whatever you want to say.
	These symbolic ideas of what we think a politician should do.
	But I do think that we have seen something in the past few days, and I feel it, and I assume you feel it, and probably our listeners feel it as well, that the dam has broke with coronavirus.
	It's not just ravaging the country in terms of cases.
	The deaths are going back up.
	We know that it's not safe to go back to school.
	We understand that businesses shouldn't be open.
	We understand that this is an existential threat against the country, and it's taking a traumatic toll.
	I'm exhausted.
	I'm sure you're exhausted.
	I'm sure our listeners are exhausted.
	And that's one of the reasons these polls are going down.
	But you have to realize, again, Donald Trump sees this as a wrong done against him.
	He doesn't care about us.
	He doesn't care about our families.
	And it's one of the reasons why our election is in so much trouble and why this country is in so much trouble.
	And with somebody like Herman Cain dying, which, my God, how terrible is that?
	He went to that Tulsa rally.
	He tweeted about not wearing masks and feeling free and people not wanting to put up with this stuff anymore.
	And he paid for it with his life.
	I mean, you may not remember it, but he was leading in the polls for a little while for the Republican nomination.
	And that was an embarrassment in and of itself.
	But I mean, it's time for that party to look in the mirror.
	And I have a doubt about how much conscience they have, that if they have any, it's time for that thing to flicker on like a burnt out light.
	Yeah, but I think it's also, you know, information, correct information needs to get into their hands.
	And I think that's such a huge part of this is that they're solidifying their ideology on lies and on misinformation.
	We already know that the Russians, we actually can identify two of them who have been the source of a lot of misinformation about hydroxychloroquine and about all sorts of things that related to COVID-19 and how serious it is.
	And that's what's so frightening about this is that we don't have the kind of leadership that would help us all understand what is going on.
	Hell, Obama failed at this as well.
	They didn't want to announce that the Russians were involved in affecting the election in 2016 because they didn't want to appear partisan.
	But, you know, when you have a leader of the free world in a rational way explaining what's going on, that does a lot to shift the hearts and minds of people.
	Now, maybe the Trump people who were supporting him would have just instantly turned that off and wouldn't want to listen to it because precisely why it's Obama.
	But this is why we're here.
	The disapproval rating, by the way, I just kind of checked it on FiveThirtyEight, is still above 40%.
	And it's really just troubling because it just seems like that's the Mendoza line.
	It's got to go below 40 to really feel like there's any chance for him to really, like, you know, lose this election.
	Well, you know, everywhere you look, there's like a different number.
	I've been seeing it down around 34 here and there.
	I've heard internal polling.
	I've talked to a couple of people.
	I've heard the internal polling has reached down as low as 28 in places.
	I think the diehard cultists of Trump are down around 20 percent.
	So you've got to figure that he's still holding strong with a chunk of those traditional Republicans.
	But I'm sorry, but this country's in trouble right now.
	And I think anybody who lives in it feels it.
	And if Trump would have came out immediately talking about masks, treating this thing like it was real, I think we'd be in a completely different place.
	And I think that's the reality that a lot of people are waking up to, that, you know, maybe they don't like Joe Biden, maybe they don't like the Democratic Party, but just to get away from Trump, I think there are even a lot of Republicans who are willing to go that route at this point.
	But that's also the point.
	The people who are not going to wear masks, because you can't tell them what to do, would follow Trump off of the cliff into their death.
	Herman Cain being a great example of that.
	It's got to be the most... to be living in that headspace has to be very difficult and stressful because you're kind of like completely diametrically opposed to each idea that pops in your head as opposed to the other one right next to it.
	It doesn't have a... you got to stand for something, right?
	At some point you got to be able to understand what the reality is and understand with a little self-reflection what you're saying and where you live.
	Yeah, there's a lot that happened there.
	biggest problem is that we don't, that just doesn't exist.
	And perhaps it's always been that way.
	And a certain amount of people will always sort of, you know, be completely opposed ideologically with what they're saying from one sentence to the next.
	But there's too many for my taste right now in the United States right now. - Yeah, there's a lot that happened there.
	Trump has actually turned in sort of, you know, like an external thumb drive.
	He's turned into an external cognitive dissonance machine for his supporters.
	And it's a little bit different than it used to be in the past, because one of the things he used to see with Republicans in particular is that they would judge their politicians based on what their decisions were.
	So in one moment, George W. Bush could be a great conservative to them.
	In the other moment, they would have a problem with something that he was pushing.
	But that was also a time where, you know, you didn't necessarily have a cultist leading the party.
	And you also didn't have such like a really, really tense cultural war.
	Like you still had the culture wars of those times, but it's gotten even worse, particularly in the time of social media, where Trump is just now the instantaneous arbiter of what these people believe.
	And the unfortunate truth of it, and again, this isn't salacious, it's actually calling it as it is, when somebody becomes your external cognitive dissonance machine, the one who settles those debates for you, they're a cult leader.
	And you are in a cult.
	And you're exactly right.
	To think about them is to think, oh my god, to be able to change your ideology, it must be so exhausting, that it's not even exhausting to them because they've handed over all of the effort to Trump, who does it so shamelessly and without any sort of effort or stress.
	So at this point, they're just relying on him and he doesn't care.
	I mean, it's who he is and he doesn't think about consequence or anybody else.
	So it just becomes this sort of, again, this external cognitive dissonance machine and everybody else just goes along for the ride.
	I mean, that's really well said.
	And also, you know, look at where it's going on right now.
	We had a nice big drop in the Dow.
	I have a feeling that the market will be seeing a correction at some point because it's been going up a lot of this time, which is really interesting because of how bad everything else is going in terms of COVID and unemployment.
	But all I keep saying is, you know, it doesn't feel good at all.
	It feels like we're in the dark days of our country.
	But I can tell you right now with absolute certainty that a week from now,
	or two weeks from now it'll be a lot worse and it will continue to get worse primarily because this is driven by Trump as the more these polls come in the more the closer we get to the election that's really what's kind of frightening so I'm not even prepared to say it's all we're all doom and gloom right now knowing that we're really gonna be in for something he's gonna say things he's gonna do things we're gonna see the manipulation of law and that's really where I'm most worried about when we get into like October I can't even picture the hellscape we're gonna be in
	Well, I'll tell you what, I predicted an earthquake on the last episode of the McCrae Podcast, so I'm glad you're the one who's going on the record saying that, because I think you're exactly right.
	As we're moving forward, and as Trump grows more desperate, the numbers keep getting worse, and as the economy shows that it's not going to bounce back—I mean, we're all calling for, like, this V-shaped recovery—he's going to grow more desperate.
	And that's one of the reasons we're seeing him throw more things at the wall.
	But here at the McCrae Podcast, we've got you covered.
	We're going to look after every one of these emergency situations.
	Hopefully we'll be back next Tuesday.
	We won't have to come on the air this weekend and do an emergency podcast.
	But who the hell knows?
	The President of the United States is talking about delaying or getting rid of an election.
	So what do I know?
	I agree.
	And well, don't forget everybody that we are launching a Patreon very soon.
	And Jared, tell them the email that they can email us to if they have interest in becoming part of that.
	Yeah, I gotta say, everybody has been so fantastic.
	There has been an honest to God outpouring of people who are not only coming out of the woodwork to support these new projects that we're getting ready to do, but just the emails and the notes that we've been getting are just, um, they're really something, man.
	And I have to tell you, maybe I'm feeling emotional because I've got this, you know, emergency situation going on, but I've just been drawn so much comfort and energy and love out of these things.
	So thank you, everyone.
	If you want to go ahead and sign up for updates about this, We're going to be launching it probably next week as we're going to have the details out.
	Send an email over to muckrakepodcast at gmail.com.
	We'll get your name on a list.
	We'll keep you up to date.
	But we're picking up steam, and it looks like we're going to be able to do tons of projects, really, really expand.
	We've talked about, of course, doing live convention coverage, post-debate coverage, and election night coverage because we need to be together on one of those nights and be ready to take some action.
	For sure.
	And by the way, if you didn't listen to the last episode or the interview I did with the Dean of the UC Berkeley Law School, it was good in a sense that it did give you a little hope in a way that it was a very clear way of explaining what our laws are and how they are getting enacted and how we can combat whatever the illegality of the Trump administration.
	So there's been a lot of outpouring of, you know, I've gotten that kind of response from listening to it.
	So check that out if you haven't.
	And also, yeah, give us an email.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	And until next time, everybody, like we said, hopefully no emergency podcast, knock on some wood, cross your fingers, whatever it is you do for good luck out there.
	Until next time, you can find Nick at Can You Hear Me?
	SMH.
	You can find me at J.Y.
	Saxton.

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