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Sept. 1, 2020 - The Muckrake Political Podcast

47:08

Trump Caravans and the Threat of Sectarian Violence

Another hard week as Right Wing vigilantism turns to roving bands of MAGA supporters driving into cities and doling out violence. Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss this escalation, its implications for potential tragedy, why this is happening, and what we might see in the not-too-distant future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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	The reason we're continuing to see violence in left-wing cities today is that liberal politicians, mayors, prosecutors, and judges are refusing to enforce the law and put the rioters in jail.
	These are rioters.
	These are dangerous people.
	These are killers.
	They kill a lot of people.
	My supporters are wonderful, hard-working, tremendous people.
	And they turn on their television set, and they look at a Portland, or they look at a Kenosha before I got involved and stopped it.
	They're looking at all of this, and they can't believe it.
	They can't believe it.
	Whether it's my supporter or not.
	But you don't want them showing up?
	Well, it's a peaceful protest.
	I mean, they were protesting.
	Hey everybody, welcome to the Muckrake Podcast.
	I'm Jared Yates Sexton.
	As always, I'm joined with my wonderful co-host Nick Halseman.
	We're gonna talk today about some really Disturbing developments.
	We're watching right now something that, unfortunately, we have been talking about on this podcast for a while.
	We've felt coming and we've... Predicted isn't necessarily the right word.
	It's not like we were trying to, like, tell you what the future is going to be like, but we've been telling you that this stuff was a possibility, which is something that we have to remember and something we have to be on guard towards.
	Of course, we have had the shooting in Kenosha, Wisconsin, which was tragic enough.
	And now, of course, over the weekend, we saw a new development, a new piece of escalation in rising fascism and Trumpism sort of reaching its new level of evolution.
	We have now seen the development of Trump caravans.
	And for those of you who haven't seen it by now, these are parades of Trump supporters decked out in Trump iconography, fascistic iconography, Blue Lives Matter iconography, all these fascistic stuff that we've talked about.
	And they're going into Democratic-controlled cities, including Portland and Los Angeles, and they're going through, they're brutalizing people, they're hitting people with their trucks, they're shooting them with paintballs, they're hitting them with pepper spray and shooting them with mace, throwing objects at them.
	We've had one person die already as a consequence of this thing, and unfortunately it is evidence of growing sectarian violence and something that unfortunately we We need to be aware of, and we need to be really cautious about, because this is bad news all the way around.
	I agree, because you know, here's the thing, you could argue that these are the agitators that Trump keeps talking about.
	The only problem with that is, and my wife had brought this up, is a good point, hi honey, that if we're gonna hold them to task for, you know, to say that Trump people are agitators and that's what's stirring us up, then in theory, Charlottesville, The people who were protesting the protesters, the right-wing protesters, then they would be on the same roll there, right?
	And that sparked all the other issues as well.
	So I'm kind of conflicted in a way about trying to characterize this.
	Because again, it's messy.
	It's hard to kind of get a handle on what we're supposed to feel with all this stuff.
	Because again, if we are true patriots, we should be able to say, no, they're allowed to protest just like the people in Portland are protesting, right?
	No, they are, and that's the thing about it.
	If people want to go into... If people want to go and they want to express their political beliefs, that's one thing.
	These people are, like, outfitting their trucks with, like, weaponized mace and pepper spray.
	You know what I mean?
	These people are going into cities... And by the way, the groups that are doing this...
	Our groups that very recently have been caught, like, lurking on top of buildings with long guns, with sniper rifles.
	They've been going into BLM protests carrying guns, explosives.
	They've been creating artificial chaos.
	They've been destroying buildings.
	They, of course, have been partnering with local police, being all buddy-buddy with these people.
	The problem here, it isn't necessarily that they're protesting, which is one thing.
	Drive around town with your Trump flag, all you want.
	That's fine.
	Just do that, engage in your freedom of speech, whatever.
	These people are looking for violence.
	And the problem here, and this is something I think Americans really need to sort of wrap their heads around, is that we've seen this around the world.
	Like in states that are having trouble where there are growing divisions between people.
	There's like an us group and a them group.
	Particularly when it comes to like a hierarchical power structure.
	There are all kinds of these men who go out into their trucks, into villages and cities and areas, and they go out as a sort of flash mob, right?
	And they go out and often they'll murder hundreds, if not thousands, if not millions of people.
	And this is how it always takes place.
	They grab an identity.
	They have a conspiracy theory.
	In this case, it's Trumpism, QAnon, New World Order, Deep State, whatever you want to pick.
	And then they believe that they have to go out and dole out violence, particularly if a leader tells them to, right?
	You'll have like an authoritarian leader who will like call to them, whether it's on the radio or the internet or on TV and say, go out and do this.
	And Trump's doing that.
	Trump has told them now.
	He has called them great patriots.
	He's lended his support to it.
	And now not only do they have his support, they have his blessing, they have his energy, and it's the beginning of a movement here.
	And we're going to start seeing more and more sectarian violence.
	And I think also that the notion of protesting generally is like a community.
	It's based on a community from where you are.
	And you go out locally and you do your protesting.
	So I think it's safe to say that most of the protesters in Lake Portland, for instance, are in Portland, right?
	That's where they're from.
	And that's why they're upset about what's happening with the police department there and what they want to get done.
	I think it's also safe to say that a lot of these, the Trump caravan things, are from out of town.
	And they're being signaled you know by Trump and everything and they feel like this this what their version of pride in our country is and patriotism is yes we're gonna have to kind of stand up to these people because they also feel like based on what the what Trump keeps saying is that the cops can't do anything, won't do anything.
	So they feel like they suddenly need to be some sort of version of a police.
	Untrained, you know, completely biased on their side.
	That's really where it gets dangerous.
	Let me ask you this, Jared.
	We don't often have protests and then anti-protests clash as much, I feel like, on a grand scale.
	I mean, when I think about that, I think about the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Alabama.
	You know, I think of the really horrible stuff that we studied, you know, during the civil rights movement, where you have people, you know, these clashes.
	Generally, what you have when you have protests are everyone agrees on what the protest is.
	And so you don't need to necessarily have that kind of violence.
	I might be wrong on that one.
	I don't know if you want to check me on that.
	But I do feel like when you especially if you're going to instigate that and invite these anti-protests to the protest, all you're doing is guaranteeing violence.
	We have a history of it, but not in recent history.
	That's the whole thing about this, right?
	Is that enough time passes in America, and actually, you know, American history is very, very short when compared to other countries.
	Like, you know, it's a couple of centuries old.
	And in recent history, if you go back to the turn of the century, right, we used to have armed conflict between unions and organizations, and like Pinkertons, hired mercenaries, right, that were hired out by, you know, your Vanderbilts and, you know, all of these people, the Carnegie's or whatever.
	So you would have basically these Pinkertons and mercenaries alongside the National Guard or the Army or, you know, local police that would go out and have a warfare.
	And you would have entire cities basically destroyed within a couple of days.
	Like they were like private little wars.
	Then later on, particularly after World War I, You had all the unions and organizations and like progressive units out there protesting.
	And you would have a lot of like right-wing hardliners who would meet them and they would beat them, right?
	And they would beat them because it was the first Red Scare.
	They believed that they were terrorists in league with the communists.
	Well, guess what?
	That also happened in the 1950s and the 1960s and the 1970s.
	We haven't seen it for a few decades.
	But we've often had a lot of these right wing vigilantes.
	And by the way, let's go ahead and throw it in there.
	Lynchings, mobs, you know, all these people.
	These are in the same group.
	The thing that is changing here is it's a little bit different.
	And I think you put your finger on it, which is it's the difference between the city slash urban scape and the people outside.
	The suburban people, or middle Americans, if you will, right?
	And anybody who's grown up in middle America or the suburbs, they know there's a tension between the city and the people outside of the city.
	The people outside the city kind of resent the people in the city.
	They think they take all their money, they think they take all of the focus and all the energy, and they've spoken about them in conspiratorial terms for years and years and years.
	So I'm from Indiana.
	I have to tell you, the people in Indiana don't care for Indianapolis too much.
	You know what I mean?
	There's like a natural spike.
	That's where all the sitting is taking place.
	Exactly.
	Or in Michigan, by the way, any of our listeners from Michigan, you'll know that if people start talking about Detroit, they're not talking about Detroit, right?
	They're talking about race.
	They're talking about white supremacy, right?
	And white paranoia.
	What we're seeing here is red America and blue America, this sort of fiction that's been created, particularly by people like Sarah Palin, Which, you know, they were talking about real America versus non, you know, unreal America.
	We now have two identities.
	We have red America and blue America, and red America considers itself the only true Americans, and as a result, they're trying to fight a war.
	Right?
	They're trying to fight off that terroristic menace that they believe in, whether or not it's Antifa or the liberal QAnon, whatever you want to call it.
	They believe that they are going to war against people and this is what always happens for sectarian violence.
	Every time you see in another country there's like one group going in and carrying out ethnic cleansing or genocide or sectarian violence, they do it because they believe a conspiracy theory about the other group and they believe that they are dangerous And that they require preemptive violence to keep their violence from attacking them.
	Absolutely.
	And that's the problem.
	I think this is where the leadership comes in, where a typical president of a country, or of our country, would have said, would have issued words about how we have to keep listening to what these protesters are saying, and we want to keep everybody safe, and let's not encourage anybody else to violence against them.
	Everyone has the right to peacefully protest.
	And Trump seems to want to lump everybody in as one, as one violent looting and rioting body.
	When in reality, and then the liberal media gets in trouble for when they keep trying to describe us as mostly peaceful.
	And they are mostly peaceful for most of the time.
	And that becomes a problem because fires get set and you start to see the images that look like the city is burning.
	It really isn't, but that's what it looks like.
	And then you start having the rhetoric ratcheted up.
	And then you have people coming.
	I don't want to overlook what I mentioned and what you just talked about too.
	I think it delegitimizes a counter-protest when you start bringing people in from all over the country from different parts to descend upon one place in some respects.
	to descend upon one place in some respects.
	Because, again, it kind of sort of flies in the face of what protests generally should represent because it's the community, the local community that's speaking out.
	Because again, it sort of flies in the face of what protests generally should represent.
	Because it's the community, the local community that's speaking out.
	And probably another reason why you can keep violence down is because everybody around there is all part of this community and probably knows each other to some degree and feels part of that.
	And probably another reason why you can keep violence down is because everybody around there is all part of this community and probably knows each other to some degree and feels part of that.
	And when you bring these outsiders in who have no respect or sense of what that community is like, and they're also now intent on committing violence, like you saw, shooting paintballs at people and just screaming and yelling awful stuff.
	By the way, and the flags, you also mentioned around the world how this can incite violence and kill hundreds of thousands of people.
	It looks a lot like what we see with ISIS, right?
	I mean, on Twitter, they're now showing side by side, you know, the same pickup trucks and the same flags flying.
	And, you know, I know it's it's sort of, you know, just by looks, you're looking at it that way.
	But like, I can't help but think that this is just like what you see in Mogadishu, you know, when those militia start pulling through and, you know, kidnapping people.
	So here is one of the hard truth that we have to talk about, which is what you're describing right now, this relationship between Trumpism and an ISIS or an Al Qaeda.
	We're talking about fundamentalism is what we're talking about, right?
	We're talking about a group that says.
	Through like this conservative ideology or mythos, right?
	The idea that we need to go back into the past and we've somehow or another gone wrong.
	It is an apocalyptic conspiracy theory, which is what ISIS is all about.
	It's like, no, we have to go back into this place of caliphate, right?
	And we have to like raise statues and you either have to conform or you die or you put into slavery or whatever.
	These are, like, brethren, right?
	Like, they're not going around killing people left and right the way that, like, an ISIS or an Al Qaeda had done, right?
	But that doesn't mean that they don't share a relationship in the way that they view the world.
	They do not see a pluralistic society.
	That's the whole point of what I've been warning about.
	These are not people who are like, oh, we really want to have a good showing at the next election.
	That's not what they're worried about because they're losing elections.
	They do not have the numbers to win in elections.
	And when an institution realizes that it cannot win elections anymore, it throws out democracy.
	It throws out the concept of pluralism.
	They want to go in and take this over.
	They want to go in and intimidate people.
	They want to go out and strike violence against them.
	You said yourself it's like they're going into these cities
	and they're not it's not right now it's paintballs right like right now it's paintballs and but in other places in places like Ferguson in places like Minneapolis we saw people going in in Kenosha we saw people going in with actual weapons right I mean one of these people who was like loosely affiliated with them again was caught on a rooftop like sniping people wasn't actually shooting but was thinking about shooting right and was ready to shoot
	The difference between a brutal counter-protest, if we want to call it that, and blood in the streets is just a couple of seconds.
	You know what I mean?
	Everything is primed.
	And if you think that there weren't people who went into Portland or who went into Los Angeles and wherever these people are going to go, if you think that there weren't people in these quote-unquote counter-protests and caravans who didn't go into this thing with the mindset of, I might have to hurt somebody today, I might have to kill somebody today.
	They think that.
	That's the mindset because they believe that they're righteous.
	They believe that they have, you know, the universe and patriotism or whatever they want to claim today.
	There were people in this protest who were ready to carry out and mete out that kind of final violence.
	And we need to understand that the line between potential violence and violence is so thin it can break at any given moment.
	And we have to make the point that we had a death in Portland from one of the caravan people.
	So this isn't limited to just the people driving the caravans looking for violence.
	It does work both ways.
	And that's why nothing really good comes out of these cheerleader Trumpy guys trying to drive through these crowds aggressively and knocking people back.
	And then, you know, like if I had somebody shooting a paintball gun at me like that, it kind of looks like a real weapon.
	You don't know.
	So, you know, that's the instigation.
	That's the agitator that Trump is really talking about.
	And that's what's so horrible about it.
	And, you know, agitator is that word that was from the 60s that they used to describe, you know, and try and really have the silent majority feel negatively against any of their protests and what people were doing.
	And Trump keeps invoking that now.
	And first of all, it makes me feel like he's just so out of touch.
	Like he's just stuck.
	He is stuck in in another time.
	And but also if there is something so negative, I think, to that term, even now, even though people probably don't remember what that what that meant back then.
	You know, if you just watch The Graduate, when Norman fell, the the the.
	He's a landlord.
	And by the way, Richard Dreyfuss makes an appearance really quickly in that.
	He goes, you're not one of those agitators.
	I don't want those agitators.
	He's going to kick them out of his boarding house.
	So you'll see that he's there.
	But nonetheless, we have to be acknowledging that it's both ways.
	And nothing good comes out of that kind of stuff, especially the way their rhetoric has been ratcheted up and the way that Trump paints these protests.
	That's really, I think, the biggest issue we have here.
	And that's why a different leader would do a lot better job, you know, handling that and sort of just leading the country in a way that we would avoid more of this.
	Well, what became obvious for me over the past couple of days is that Donald Trump is not running on re-election.
	Like, that's not his strategy.
	It's not saying give me four more years, although I believe he'll take 12 more if you'll give it to them or if he can take them.
	Donald Trump is running as a wartime president.
	He's not running on his record with COVID because it's not just embarrassing, it's been a national tragedy.
	He's not running on an economic record because he's completely cratered the economy.
	He's not running on any achievement because he really doesn't have any achievement.
	It's all been fake, you know, chest puffery.
	There's nothing actually that Trump has done that he can hang his hat on.
	What he is telling his supporters is that they are engaged in a cold and sometimes hot civil war and that they need a president who will be there and be on their side.
	That is the argument that Trump is making.
	And by the way, part of his ludicrous, this whole thing where it's like scenes from America in 2020, like this could be Joe Biden's America.
	Well, no, it's Trump's America because this is the only environment where he can succeed.
	And like, if you want to take a look at who he is, Other presidents would not do this.
	They simply would, right?
	Because that's, and we've talked about this before, so much of politics is like business.
	It's willing to see how much risk you can take, right?
	And who's willing to like push the envelope further than the next person?
	Trump doesn't care.
	Trump has never suffered consequences in his entire life.
	He will push the envelope until it's completely off the table while others are like, oh my god, I don't want to do this.
	People would be mortified if they thought that their supporters were carrying out this type of violence or were capable of sectarian violence.
	Trump doesn't care.
	He's said over and over that people should be carried out of his rallies, that he would take care of the legal fees for anyone who beat up a protester.
	Or, you know, in the past we used to be a lot tougher, we need to be a lot tougher, or whatever.
	You know, knock the hell out of them.
	Those types of things.
	He doesn't have a conscience with this.
	He's going to push this envelope, and I have to tell you, we still have months until this thing happens.
	Every single day is a new opportunity for a massive tragedy.
	And you know, and I know, that one tragedy is going to beget another tragedy, which will beget another, and it will just multiply.
	If the floodgates open, and there is a very real chance that they will open, We're looking at massive sectarian violence.
	We're looking at a massive, massive tragedy, and Donald Trump would not blink about that.
	And I think what we saw in Kenosha shows us the Republican Party is more than willing to embrace it.
	They're not going to shy away.
	They are in on this thing.
	They've got their chips in.
	There's no pulling it back at this point.
	They are in on whatever happens from this point on.
	Right, and you make a good point to want to hammer at home that, you know, he keeps describing what this country would be like under Joe Biden.
	Meanwhile, it's what's happening right now because of Donald Trump, which is part of the reason why, you know, they were talking about Joe Biden visiting Kenosha.
	And I think what Joe Biden needs to do from now until the election is act like the president.
	I think he should be going to all of these places, touring them just like the President would normally do, and act and look just like the President would be already.
	I think that would really help him because it would fill that void that we are missing right now.
	You saying that has just suddenly made me think about some really screwed up possibilities.
	So I'm working on another project and I'm like looking at the history of like the modern world.
	There are these weird moments where there are schisms in like the Catholic Church where there are like multiple popes.
	Where like one group believes a guy is a pope and the other one believes that this guy is the pope and you'll actually have like two or three popes at any given time.
	And then all of a sudden you start thinking about, oh, I don't know, you think about Lincoln and Jefferson being presidents at the same time, you know, with the Confederate States and the Union or whatever you want to call it.
	The schism that you are describing between Trump and Biden feels so sickeningly familiar.
	and so disturbingly familiar like this idea of like in these nations that sort of start to reach their conclusion or these states that start to reach their conclusion and there are two people with like a um a claim to the throne so to speak yeah and you basically and i mean that that that is the that is the root cause of every coup and every you know major sectarian or civil war that we've ever seen um
	Yeah, I mean, people need to understand that we're tiptoeing up onto the precipice of something really bad here.
	You describe President Trump as a wartime president, or he feels like he's a wartime president, that's how he's governing.
	I'm not sure that's accurate.
	I think what he is, is he's acting like a secessionist president.
	He is acting like there's blue and red and that he only wants to govern the red.
	Well, our people, right?
	That's the only people he cared about in the coronavirus situation.
	Which is like when we talked about the possibility of it being called a genocide or that it is genocide, right?
	It's because, exactly, it's our people.
	There's one group and then there's the other group.
	Right.
	And I don't think he even gives a shit about his groupie anyway.
	That's the other point.
	They're only useful until they don't vote for him and don't care for him.
	And that's what's keeping this whole thing going, because there's just enough of those people in just enough of those states that keeps it closed.
	But then again, as we see these polls tighten, which I know would probably make everyone's hands ring over this post conventions, it almost doesn't matter.
	I don't really give a crap about any kind of national poll anyway.
	I need to know what the poll is and who's leading in Michigan, Wisconsin, you know.
	I don't even know Ohio is in play anymore.
	I suppose Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, whatever the usual suspects.
	Those are the places where you really got to keep your eye on it because that ends up, you know, deciding these things.
	And that's what's not fair, because I feel like we have to finally, once we're all finished or fixed, is that, you know, this is supposed to be a government governed by the people.
	The will of the people should be what controls what the government does.
	And it simply doesn't do that anymore.
	We've lost the ability to have a consensus of Americans, and the majority of Americans have the pull and the sway with where this country goes.
	And it's just, it gets more and more frustrating when you realize it's not how it is.
	Maybe it was never that way, but we need to fix that.
	Well, I'll say this first, Paul, and we were talking about this before we started taping.
	Presidential elections, it's like watching a rerun.
	It always is.
	Like, there's new things that occur that maybe you didn't notice the first time, or maybe, you know, you have a Donald Trump who tries to start up a sectarian civil war.
	You know, things happen.
	But the media and these polling companies, I mean, they live off the exact same narrative constantly, which is just a fluctuating horse race.
	It goes back and forth, back and forth.
	I can tell you, and I'll break some news on the Muckrake podcast.
	I wasn't going to do it, but you know, I'm feeling salty.
	The people that I talked to in the Biden campaign, their internal polling shows that they're ahead.
	That they have a comfortable lead on Donald Trump.
	They are not afraid of the Electoral College at the moment.
	They actually feel like they have a pretty comfortable lead in the Electoral College.
	But they are very concerned about whether or not he will accept the loss.
	And by the way, I want to point this out.
	Joe Biden has gone through an incredible evolution in just a few months.
	And I want people to be aware of this.
	When Joe Biden began his presidential campaign, he told everyone, he's like, Oh, Donald Trump is an aberration.
	We'll get past this and we'll be fine.
	And I'm going to talk to Republicans again and America will just figure it out.
	And this will just be like a little blip on the radar.
	He's gone from that to talking in private with people about how to deal with a president who will not concede a loss.
	That's a problem.
	You know what I mean?
	That is one of the conversations.
	That is part of the strategy.
	And I have to tell you, it's keeping people up.
	Because they truly believe that that is who he is.
	And what do you do?
	What do you do if you win the electoral college, plus you win the popular vote, and you have a president who will not allow, or will not concede, and will not allow his followers to believe that the election was real?
	And even if you do somehow or another manage to get through that without major sectarian violence and blood in the streets and, you know, civil war, even if you do get to January and you take the oath of office, what do you do when like 30% of the country believes that you are Not really the president and that you have engaged in a coup.
	What do you do when there are tons of people to make money off of building off that type of hysteria?
	How do you rule a country or how do you how do you serve as president of a country where 30% of the people are lost in an alternate reality where you are somehow or another a usurper of power?
	How does that happen?
	Well, you can ask the same question to Trump, because the same thing happened in 2016, but like 70% of the country didn't recognize him as legitimate, or whoever that was.
	I bet you it wasn't 70, but I would say 50% of the country probably recognized that it wasn't necessarily a legitimate election, combined with the fact that he got outvoted by 3 million and then the Russian interference.
	I mean, we can talk a lot.
	We'll get to that in a second.
	But I do want to kind of pose the notion of because we're talking about sort of governing and what this is going to mean if he loses.
	I had, you know, you might if you're listening to this, you might recall we had Jason Needleman on, who is a professor of politics at University of La Verne.
	So he was over.
	We basically had our own six hour podcast the other day.
	And he kind of posed the idea that, you know, the Republican Party, if they lose the Senate and, you know, the Democrats maintain the House and then they win the White House.
	Probably, and I think we even mentioned this before, that kind of signals probably the last gasp effort.
	Like, they're probably never going to win again, the majority.
	Like, it seems like they'd only get marginalized if, you know, if the Democrats can enact the kind of things that we believe that they should, that will start to alleviate these issues and making people's lives better.
	You can only imagine that, like, to get back into the power of the majority would be really difficult.
	I mean, that's safe to say, right?
	No, I disagree with that.
	And here's the reason I disagree with that.
	I mean, on its face it's sound, but I have to tell you that modern American political history is just riddled with times where everyone thought the Republican Party was done.
	Like, post-Nixon, right?
	They'll never get elected again!
	Like, you know, they had Ford, but how could they ever?
	You know, like, post-W, like, how could they ever win an election again?
	They've, you know, embarrassed the country and ruined the country or whatever.
	The Republican Party has a knack for always stealing power back after events that you didn't expect.
	So whether or not it's like a terrorist attack or, you know, like a like a national security threat or a 9-11 or something along those lines, right, where you can coalesce around fear.
	Now, I wouldn't make an argument if we're just going to go ahead and forecast like the future.
	I think that that is a possibility.
	I think it's also a possibility that, and we've talked about this before, there could be a small political civil war within the Democratic Party between the progressive wing and the more moderate wing.
	I mean, you still have the Project Lincoln people out there floating in the ether.
	Who knows what the hell they're going to do?
	Neoconservatives are gonna try and take over the party again.
	QAnon's gonna try and get its slice of the pie.
	All this stuff will come together.
	So I don't think the Republican Party is going to be rendered obsolete.
	I think they'll either figure it out or they'll rebrand or they'll even dive further and further into the muck.
	Well, I mean, I think if you want to cast this out linearly and examine this like a graph, what I think is clear is that the amount of people who are in the Republican Party will continue to diminish.
	Like, I think that graph and that line will continue to kind of, it's not going to go up.
	I think it's flat.
	And maybe it starts to go down.
	So that's the only that's one issue.
	But then I think that the thing that kind of begets that is that, OK, you've already we've already said it.
	And you said this pretty clearly that, you know, the Democratic Party is not a left party.
	It's very centrist at most.
	But what happens if they do they do take power?
	You're going to have the Bernie AOC people.
	They're the ones who might end up creating their own party.
	That was sort of what came out of our discussion there, where it almost feels like you might end up having a third party from the deep left.
	Who comes out and says we need more progressivism.
	You guys are not doing a good enough job.
	And what that would end up doing was making the Democrats, that we know them today, even more or less progressive, more probably to the right almost.
	That probably invites the Lincoln Project people and all those people.
	Certainly then would really marginalize the Republican Party.
	We probably would still, we could probably, if that happened, you would have three parties in theory, but it would be a lot, a radically different way of governance.
	I think that would change everything. - There's a lot that could happen.
	I mean, there is always a possibility that with changing demographics and a new generation coming into their own, there's a possibility that democratic socialists will, you know, split off and do their own thing and they'll become a force.
	I do think the one thing that could possibly be a game changer in all of this, and You know, and by the way, we're talking about a future where Trump loses the election, you know, and concedes and then moves on.
	So this is a big if, I gotta say.
	But the other thing we have to keep in consideration is we have a big wave coming our way.
	And the big wave is the climate catastrophe.
	And things that we saw on the border, the way that the Trump administration engaged in politics through cruelty, right?
	Separating families, putting children in cages, this mock cruelty that was meant to try and intimidate people from coming here.
	That was just a warm-up to what's going to happen with climate refugees.
	If you think the dehumanization of immigrants and refugees is something now, I want you to imagine a future where it's not just austerity, but resources are non-existent.
	You know what I mean?
	Because that's actually what the Republican Party and the right is all about.
	They're about creating an artificial limit.
	They're about an artificial scarcity, right?
	Because you have to give all the money over to national security and to the military-industrial complex.
	You can't spread it around.
	Here's a couple of crumbs you guys can fight over.
	And then, because you're fighting over it, they can use division to create their own, you know, cudgels.
	Particularly with white identity people.
	If you think American politics changing because of demographics between white people and people of color isn't going to empower a right wing, like it is.
	And then to go ahead and have this new limit of resources, particularly post-climate catastrophe or growing climate catastrophe, I think that gives the right an advantage, particularly if Worldwide neo-fascistic ultra-right wing groups keep gathering power and influence.
	I think you could be looking at something here where you actually have The Republican Party, which is powered by perceived grievance, could actually feel like they are actually marginalized when they lose power and they deal with that.
	And you could actually see them not just embrace the stuff we've seen with Trumpism, but really, really throw some gas on the fire.
	Yeah, I mean, you exist in the world where you're constantly having to warn us about the potential, you know, violence that there is.
	I don't want to!
	I don't want to!
	I don't want that.
	I want it to be better.
	I want to be wrong in all of this.
	Okay, well then, you know, that's fine, but you're also the reminder, you're the beacon, you're the lighthouse for that, so we can't forget that.
	But I don't know, it's interesting, only because I guess I live in the notion that like, it just seems, it makes sense to me that they will be marginalized because the numbers will simply continue to go down, and they won't, they just will not be able to mount any kind of a consistent presence in our government because there's just not enough people.
	It's like my same idea with like, you know, with like the NFL, why the NFL I think is gonna end up going extinct.
	People will simply stop playing when they discover how much CTE exists, and even high school players, and the talent pool will shrink and no one wants to pay to watch these lesser athletes play.
	It kind of feels like there's a similar through line there, where the more and more, especially this, I mean, again, this is a big if, but if they took over the government, the Democrats did, and they fully prosecuted Trump, and all the details came out about what was happening, because we have to talk about how they're not even releasing They're not going to do any more briefings for election interference.
	But all the details finally did come out, you know, and it turns more and more people away.
	You know what I mean?
	Like that kind of sunlight could, in theory, can, you know, just peel off more and more every year over year.
	And there won't be hardly anybody left.
	I wish that I believe that.
	But Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush make me not believe that.
	I mean, you know, Richard Nixon was like... And by the way, Richard Nixon was what we thought was the pinnacle of corruption.
	And it was like, oh, how can you ever vote for the Republicans after this?
	And Ronald Reagan came out waving an American flag and riding a horse and just being like, America's great!
	And Americans were like, I really miss America's great, even though I know it's in a really bad shape.
	And by the way, for those listening, we're working on a feature-length documentary about just this.
	The fact that the Republican Party started living in an alternate reality where they started a revival of American exceptionalism.
	No, he wasn't.
	not forget, Nixon was not punished.
	Aside from him.
	And by the way, here's what's frightening about the Watergate stuff.
	When you talk to people who lived through that, who were of adult age through that time, you talk to them now, and their recollection of what happened is so myopic.
	And so, you know, I hate Nixon.
	I hate what he did to our country.
	I studied it.
	I wanted to get every detail and really learn about that stuff, which you couldn't have learned back then.
	It was not released.
	We didn't know all this stuff, right?
	Well, those people don't seem to care and will never open a book and study that now.
	So their impressions of all Nixon did wrong was, oh, they tried to pay them off a little bit after they got caught to be quiet.
	That was their big crime.
	He got caught doing what everybody else does.
	I'll throw out a couple things.
	one of the great rejoiners yeah right and so that's the problem that that's what we do you know and that's why trump gets prosecuted and all these things come to light that that's the difference i would think i would hope i would okay so i'll throw out a couple things one is i have to tell you as somebody who came to age during the lead up to the iraq war i i hold a special antipathy towards george w bush and dick cheney i I really do.
	I think, by the way, this current crisis that we're in, a lot of the responsibility lays at their feet.
	I really, truly, honestly believe that.
	Like, the decline of the quote-unquote American empire is on Bush and Cheney to a large extent.
	It really, really is.
	They should have been prosecuted.
	They were war criminals.
	They carried out an illegal war.
	They killed hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people.
	And, you know, carried out completely extra-legal measures and sullied the good name of America in every single possible way.
	Do you know why Barack Obama and everybody else didn't go after that?
	I don't really think you're going to see a president prosecute a former president.
	Because all presidents are interested in not being prosecuted.
	That's the problem!
	It's like anybody who becomes occupant of the White House, they suddenly become part of a small little secret society, a little clique.
	And they're like, well, yeah, you know, the person before me kind of sucked and was a total criminal.
	But if we start prosecuting Trump for the things that he's done, well, aren't we going to start looking at drone strikes?
	Are we going to start looking at, you know, extradition?
	Are we going to look at torture?
	Are we going to look at all this stuff that we've done?
	And once you open up that problem, it gets really, really messy.
	And actually, if you look back, there aren't many instances in world history in which major powers actually open up that can of worms.
	Like, one of the few is actually the Soviet Union, where Khrushchev went after Stalin, and that's simply because he hated Stalin.
	And so he started opening up the worms and saying, we've got to de-Stalinize and we have to talk about the crimes that he committed.
	America, we don't have a lot of that.
	We really, really don't go after former presidents.
	And I have to tell you, George W. Bush has been more or less redeemed with a lot of people.
	People who, like, were totally for the Iraq War now pretend like that they never were.
	You know, and that's American people and politicians left and right.
	The Republican Party should have never won a national election after the Iraq War.
	But here we are, you know what I mean?
	So the idea that they could possibly be wiped out and not come back, I don't think I see that.
	I would see them diving deeper in this stuff.
	I see them becoming the party of Trumpism and QAnon, and I think I see it mutating into something really ugly.
	Well, for what it's worth, Biden was quoted as saying that he would not stand in the way of a future Justice Department pursuing criminal charges on a president after he leaves office.
	I would be interested to see who would be in charge of that investigation.
	If Biden gets elected and he names his cabinet, I would be interested to see Who ends up at that position?
	Right.
	Is he passing the buck here?
	We can say, oh, look, the AG doesn't want to do it.
	So I guess we can't do it like that.
	You know, that could be him, you know, sort of couching it that way.
	Hey, we want to bring in the AG, but we got to make sure that you're not going to prosecute, you know, Trump first.
	Like, who knows?
	And then he can hide behind that.
	I hear you.
	I would I would imagine, though, that there would be riots and riots.
	There'd be protests in the streets if.
	If there was a decree that Joe Biden says, I'm not going to prosecute Donald Trump, I would just find it hard to believe that we wouldn't have protests.
	Do you think that there would be protests?
	I would be the first in line.
	If I felt like I wasn't going to get shot and I wouldn't get COVID, I would be first in line at that rally.
	I think you might be a one-man parade, my friend.
	Because I'm telling you that there are going to be a lot of Americans who, if Joe Biden wins, Donald Trump concedes, and Joe Biden actually gets inaugurated, the unfortunate truth is I think a lot of people are going to breathe a sigh of relief and just be like, thank God the long national nightmare is over.
	Oh, wow.
	My wife will be with me.
	And by the way, maybe I'll show up if we're in a post-COVID environment.
	Maybe I'll be with you as well because I think it would be a national tragedy.
	What I keep trying to tell people, and this is a big thing that I think we have to keep in mind, is politics is about the long game.
	It's about a lot of different things that have to play out over time.
	There's a lot of losses on a day-to-day basis.
	There are very few wins.
	Just getting Joe Biden elected over Donald Trump is a hell of a first step.
	There's a lot more that needs to be done.
	The American presidency needs to be reined in.
	We have to deal with our cultural decay.
	We have to deal with the profit motives of the media, social media, big tech.
	We have a lot of decay that we have to go in and remove.
	But yeah, those are hopeful ideas, and I would love to see those things come to pass.
	I think the Republican Party has reached a terminal point.
	It shouldn't be allowed to be in government anymore.
	It should be like de-baptization or denazification.
	Trumpism is a fascist movement.
	It needs to be removed and rejected completely and soundly.
	Let the Republicans come up with a new name, call themselves the Lincoln Party, whatever they want to do.
	Find something else.
	But that remains to be seen.
	OK.
	Yes to all of that.
	But again, the things that my wife has said she wants to see done to Donald Trump from a very nice lady who respects everybody leads me to believe there's a lot of people out there that want the same from that.
	They want a pound of flesh and want to see him die in prison, basically.
	And I think that's, you know, I was talking to my dad.
	My dad has lived through all of this.
	He's a lawyer.
	I was kind of surprised.
	He felt the same way when I mentioned it to him because he realized how important it is.
	At some point, you have to prosecute these people and tell them that it's wrong.
	I mean, that's what you said.
	Trump has never been prosecuted.
	He's never really had to account for himself.
	And that's why none of these people ever changed their behavior.
	And that's that it seems so important for the for the healing, for the healing.
	Why, you know, Ford said, oh, we need to heal a country.
	We're not going to, you know, we're going to pardon him and move on.
	Well, for that very same reason, we need to prosecute him so we can heal.
	I feel like that.
	And I wish people would think about what a different country it would have been if Richard Nixon would have spent the last years of his life in prison.
	As opposed, by the way, to writing books that tried to redeem his legacy, which he made money off of.
	He would go on TV and argue his case.
	He was a semi-celebrity.
	He would go to all the presidential functions.
	He would, you know, he would...
	Go around with all the other presidents and they would all take pictures together.
	He got treated like he was just another guy and he was a criminal.
	He was not just a criminal.
	He was a dangerous criminal who tried to subvert the United States Constitution in multiple ways, harassed American citizens and carried out his own invisible war.
	The country would have been completely different had he suffered consequences and the U.S.
	presidency would have been reigned in at a time where it was the weakest it was for a very long time and we would have been a lot better off and we wouldn't be in the situation we're in now if somebody like that would have been prosecuted.
	I agree.
	And then, you know, Dick Cheney is the guy that, you know, you mentioned Bush in that same sentence, but it's really Dick Cheney who was part of that, who recognized, you know, at that time that there's going to need to be a way to regain the power of the presidency.
	And it worked tirelessly to get there.
	And it got there with George W. Bush to the point where we're here.
	And Trump was able to misuse all the norms and safeguards that were in place, or were assumed to be in place, but aren't really.
	So that's really the key here.
	That's the guy that never got prosecuted.
	That's the guy who threw Scooter Libby under the bus for outing Valerie Plame and every other egregious violation of the law he committed.
	In fact, even the movie glossed over some of that stuff.
	So that's really where we're at.
	And again, that's why I think we need to do something.
	But I guess, first things first, this election has to go off and it has to turn the right way before we can do anything else.
	Well, I want everyone to stay safe.
	I just want to point that out because it is a the situation both with the caravan and the vigilante shootings and all that stuff.
	This is obviously a ploy.
	It's obviously a re-election strategy.
	It's a desperate attempt by Trump to Maintain and consolidate power.
	Be safe out there.
	Because I have to tell you, there are people who are looking to do violence.
	They're looking to carry out far right-wing sectarian violence.
	Be careful.
	Be ready for this thing.
	Do not hide your head in the sand.
	Don't pretend like it's not happening.
	We need to dismiss people who don't take this seriously.
	And that includes pundits, media, politicians, all of them.
	People need to be on total guard for this thing and call it what it is, which is a fascistic movement with sectarian violence.
	That's what people need to do.
	And I just want to say for everyone listening, thank you for listening and just be safe.
	Just take care of yourself and take care of others.
	All right.
	So on that note, I think that's the best that we can find on an episode of a... Like, it's been a really rough week.
	Let's admit that.
	Like, this whole thing has been ugly and awful.
	And it's so poisonous.
	And if you need us until next time, you can find Nick.
	Can you hear me?
	We didn't even... We didn't even mention the fact that, you know, the evidence now is Trump really wants this to be washed... COVID to wash over all of us, like Sweden, you know.
	Oh, yeah.
	The herd mentality.
	So on that note, like, keep washing your hands.
	Just keep washing your hands.
	Keep wearing your mask.
	Because, listen, herd mentality is not a solution.
	It's a complete and utter failure, is what it is.
	And people need to be aware of that.
	They need to be aware that in every way, shape, and form, we have a president who does not care about you and the people in your life.
	And, like, you need to be on guard because this is a bad situation.
	Until next time, if you need us, you can find Nick at Can You Hear Me?
	SMH.
	You can find me at J.Y.
	Sexton.
	If you want to support what we're doing, last week, or the last two weeks, we covered the Democratic National Convention and the Republican National Convention.
	Four nights apiece, like two and a half hours, four nights apiece.
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