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Sept. 4, 2020 - The Muckrake Political Podcast

45:05

Losers and Suckers and Criminals

Donald Trump has shown time and again that he can't care about anyone or anything but himself, but this latest news that he's continually referred to veterans as "losers" and "suckers" is shocking even by his standards. Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman break down how broken Trump is as a person and politician and the criminality of Bill Barr and the men who aid the president. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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	Let them send it in and let them go vote.
	And if their system's as good as they say it is, then obviously they won't be able to vote.
	If it isn't tabulated, they'll be able to vote.
	So that's the way it is.
	I did say that I do think that there appears to be a phenomenon in the country where African Americans feel that they're treated, when they're stopped by police frequently, as suspects before they're treated as citizens.
	Hey everybody, welcome to the Muck Rig Podcast.
	I'm Jared Yates Sexton.
	As always, I'm here with Nick Hausselman.
	There is so much disgusting stuff happening in this country right now.
	I really don't even know where to begin with it.
	We were talking about before we started recording, like, how do you even start diving into this muck?
	And we have to start, unfortunately, today with a report coming from The Atlantic and Jeffrey Goldberg that, by the way, has been confirmed by multiple sources now within the military.
	That Donald Trump has referred consistently to dead soldiers, dead veterans of wars, including World War II, as losers.
	He's called them suckers for volunteering for the country and fighting for the country.
	He doesn't understand sacrifice.
	Surprise, surprise.
	He also is apparently unclear on why we fought for the Allies, which, I mean, isn't that weird that he would sort of side with the fascists intuitively?
	But you know, that's what it is.
	Um, you know, obviously this is a person in the president who doesn't understand duty or selflessness or even the very beginnings of the idea of patriotism.
	But it really just, when you really see it brought out into the light, it just really drives home how disgusting this person is.
	You know, when he mentions the fact that he doesn't understand necessarily why we would fight on the side of the Allies in World War II, it kind of makes sense when you've heard reports, and I think I'm going to choose just to believe it at this point, that he had Mein Kampf on his, you know, bedside table and he would read that, even though he doesn't read anything.
	I don't know if he read it.
	I don't know if he read it, but I'm sure he liked having it nearby.
	Do you know what I mean?
	Like, he liked having the visage next to him.
	So yeah, so through osmosis he's gonna somehow, you know, understand what's being written in there because, you know, if that's the case, here's the thing, you know, there was an Academy Award-nominated short documentary about, in 1939 or 1940, there was this Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden.
	So it's not a stretch to imagine, like, Trump's father probably going to that, right?
	And being part of the Lindbergh crowd, right?
	It would fit right into what their MO is anyway.
	Yeah, you know, the Madison Square Garden rally with the German-American Bund or, you know, as their friends called them, the American Nazis, is one of those moments in American history that we actually don't look at very much because it's disgusting and awful.
	And I didn't know the full extent of it until I started writing about it in my book, American Rule.
	And what I found was that, like, over 20,000 people attended this rally.
	And it wasn't like, it wasn't like the American first rallies, you know, with Charles Lindbergh, who was very, very quietly, you know, supporting Nazism and Hitler.
	Like, this was a full-blown wannabe Nuremberg type thing.
	And it wasn't just American Nazis, because we always think about the idea of Nazis being German, obviously.
	The iconography was George Washington.
	It was the American flag.
	And it was a bunch of people who thought, yeah, America can be both America, the United States of America, and also Nazi.
	And that's exactly what we're dealing with here, is we have a person who has no idea of anything even resembling basic human decency.
	All he can understand is people who fight and survive and win for whatever it is.
	It's a transactional view of life.
	And I think intuitively, we've talked about this, not only is he an authoritarian, but he's a neo-fascist.
	And for him to sit there and not be able to understand World War II, which by the way, I don't know about you, I got World War II on a philosophical, political level when I was a child.
	Do you know what I mean?
	Like, it wasn't hard to figure out what happened in that war and who was on what side and what the good side and the bad side was.
	For the President of the United States of America not to get that, not only does he have to be broken, but there has to be something within him that is incredibly twisted and perverted.
	You know, we already know the Bonespur thing that got him out of Vietnam, and you know what?
	We don't have to blame him for that because nobody wanted to go to Vietnam.
	Very unpopular war.
	But, you know, and I never served in the military, but I do understand the sense of sacrifice and how heroic it is to serve and go to war for your country.
	I mean, and with the utmost respect for our soldiers.
	And certainly growing up in the, you know, mid-late 70s and early 80s and seeing how we responded to soldiers coming back from Vietnam, Like it is an important thing that we honor these people and honor what they have done and their sacrifice.
	So for him to live in that space where he doesn't understand that, you know, we already know that he's sort of diminished mentally as it is with dementia or whatever you want to call that, but he's starting out from such a horrible place to begin with.
	That whatever decline he's suffering now is really just exacerbated to the point where, you know, there needs to be some other kind of litmus test for being a president because this ain't it.
	Well, I mean, he's already been on Twitter telling everyone who will listen that he didn't have a series of mini-strokes, which, by the way, wasn't even something that conspiracy theorists were talking about.
	But I will say, when we're talking about Trump and Vietnam, what you just brought up is something that we need to actually look at.
	Trump obviously got out of service in Vietnam.
	That's fine.
	I don't want to hold it against anybody.
	Like, that was an unjust, illegal, awful, immoral war.
	Like, fine, if you don't want to go to war, don't go to war.
	But that wasn't enough for Donald Trump.
	And if you actually look in the 1980s when Ronald Reagan became president and Ronald Reagan began spreading around his own knife in the back mythology, which is exactly what Hitler and Mussolini and all these people were spreading around conspiracy theories about.
	how their countries could lose wars or lose power.
	Reagan did the same thing about Vietnam, and he spread the mythology that, like, soldiers came back and that they were spit on and they were mistreated, which didn't happen.
	It's been completely debunked.
	That never actually happened.
	It was something that the right could use to gain power and, you know, claim that they were, like, patriots and pro-troops.
	Well, Donald Trump jumped right on that train.
	And if you actually look back, and again, I was working on American Rule when I found this, there were all these rallies in the 1980s to make up, you know, quote-unquote, for, like, the poor treatment of those veterans.
	Donald Trump was at every one of them.
	And he was just like rousing everybody up, pro-American, and these troops deserve better.
	And what we have learned is not only that Donald Trump doesn't understand service, it's that all of these things that he holds himself up as, which is like conservative, pro-troops, pro-America, he has no concept about what any of these things actually mean.
	He doesn't live them.
	He doesn't understand the idea of duty or patriotism or service.
	He is a completely narcissistic, self-motivated creature.
	And as he diminishes, like you were saying, that other stuff is just melting away.
	He doesn't even understand even the beginnings of it anymore.
	In the past, he could put on the act and, you know, he could wave a flag and pretend he was whatever.
	But, much like the patron saint of the right, Ronald Reagan, the more that he melts away and he's not really there anymore, there's not even the artifice of it.
	We have a person in the White House who is a grifter.
	And intuitively and instinctually a neo-fascistic authoritarian.
	This stuff that they've been claiming, like loving the troops, loving the army, all that stuff, it's bullshit.
	It doesn't even approach anything resembling the truth.
	Now we know that he didn't want to go to the D-Day commemoration in France when he was there.
	You know, it was raining.
	And so it was already being whispered, yeah, he didn't want to be cold and in the rain.
	He has cotton candy hair.
	Right.
	Let's not forget that.
	the reporting.
	He didn't want his hair to get messed up.
	But, you know, we also know that when they were congratulating the World Cup soccer and it was raining then as part of this, you know, Macron, no jacket.
	He's a young, fit guy.
	And I think Trump, the reports there, he was extremely threatened by that and that how, you know, how could he be stood up by that?
	And so it's just as concerning to me because if he's going to start to conjure up all these different conspiracy theories and these sort of justifications for how he how he's behaving.
	If you didn't believe that was happening, just look at what happened yesterday when he's talking about these plane of thugs that were going to fly to the RNC and cause mayhem.
	Where did he hear that, by the way?
	Was that an intelligence agency that told him that, Nick?
	Yeah, yeah.
	It's the Facebook intelligence agency, right?
	Oh, the Facebook Intelligence Agency!
	I forgot about that branch of the government.
	The one in which just complete random assholes on the internet just say shit.
	And then the President of the United States hears it and believes it and tells people on national news that there was a plane of black uniformed thugs coming to interrupt the RNC with absolutely no proof.
	Yeah, and he's saying, oh, I can't talk about it, it's under investigation, and oh boy, thank God that Bill Barr could confirm that this investigation is, you know, they're knee-deep in it right now and they're going to come up with some answers pretty quick.
	They're not.
	Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's like in The Big Lebowski where he asks if they're working on finding his car and he's like, yeah, they've got us working on shifts on it, you know?
	It's an absolute farce.
	And again, I think this is the thing that people really need to start wrapping their heads around if they haven't yet.
	This whole thing is a farce.
	There's nothing real about any of this.
	Like, for the longest time, we've been trying to find some morsel of truth or something in Donald Trump that you can like, you know, stick a thumbtack in and say, oh, that's real.
	There's nothing that's real beyond his drive to protect himself and to empower and profit for himself.
	This thing that we've seen, and I want to say this, I believe this reporting, It has been confirmed by multiple people.
	In any sane country, is there a way that the president who said these things could, number one, be re-elected, and number two, wouldn't be treated like a public pariah for the rest of their lives?
	Is there any country that is sane or actually has their shit together where any of this would be permissible?
	No, well, yeah, I mean, I suppose dictatorships, you know, China or North Korea, that would happen, perhaps.
	But here's the thing, like, as of today, if you ask that question, of course he's not getting re-elected.
	He is historically unpopular for an incumbent.
	The polls indicate across the board that there's no way an incumbent could win an election based on these poll numbers.
	So, in theory, that's a moot point.
	He's not going to be re-elected.
	Well, but here's the thing, Nick.
	What you're talking about is, um, what's the word I'm looking for?
	Rational.
	But what if, because your support is only like 20 to maybe 30% on a good day of the country, what if you talk them into voting for you twice?
	It's so crazy, it just might work.
	It's so crazy it might just work.
	What if you, as the President of the United States of America, under the auspice of finding fraud, which by the way, how many people have been caught committing voter fraud?
	Like one person.
	Like maybe two, if we really want to get crazy.
	Right.
	And by the way, are those people traditionally Democrats or Republicans?
	I'm sorry.
	Well, most of them seem Republicans, but I will say that there's a woman in Texas, I think last year, who got a five-year sentence for accidentally voting when she wasn't registered or whatever, and I feel so bad for that person.
	I'm not sure she's going to get reduced either.
	So here you have a guy, and so they want to prosecute these cases.
	They're really all intent on doing this.
	And here you have a guy who's calling for, I mean, listen, that's just the tip of the iceberg for what he's calling for people to do.
	And that's why it's getting scary.
	But yes, not only did he come out, but then Barr, It's also casting all sorts of aspersions politically.
	We've never had an attorney general be so wound up with the White House and crossing all kind of boundaries before.
	That's probably more frightening than anything Trump has done.
	Yeah, Bill Barr is a real frightening son of a bitch, and do not take your eye off him.
	I mean, he'll steal your silverware.
	I mean, while you're looking the other way, and then prosecute you for it.
	This whole thing that we're watching here And actually, I have to tell you, I don't know how it is that you absorb Trump news, right?
	But I always feel like I'm a wash rag at maximum dampness.
	And I'm like, I could never absorb more and be shocked!
	I'm at 100% shocked.
	I woke up this morning and before I got moving, I read about Trump telling North Carolinians to go ahead and send in their vote and then vote in person just to figure out if the system is right.
	Just to find out if the system is a go, if it's in good shape.
	And I have to tell you, Nick, his ability to surprise me.
	Is shocking because it's regularly and like you learn this stuff and it's like this stuff with the veterans Yeah, I assume Trump said stuff like this.
	I assume Trump is really offended by the sight of Disabled and maimed veterans like yeah, I totally get that but to hear it and to see it laid out in pure black and white It makes you realize it's like, no, this literally is a bottomless hole.
	Like, this election, they're not going to stop at any place.
	And that's, I think, the thing that people need to be aware of, and people need to be afraid of, is there is no end to what they're trying to do.
	Because on one hand, Trump is trying to get double the votes.
	And on the other hand, he literally is trying to set some sort of a trap so he can claim that there's voter fraud.
	Like, they will do literally anything, including telling their supporters to carry out Class A felonies.
	Jared, before the reporting broke today of what he said about the troops and how, you know, losers are in the cemeteries of, you know, of these war heroes.
	And before we found out that he was encouraging people to commit voter fraud today, this is yesterday.
	I'm old enough to remember yesterday I was ruminating on this notion of what you just talked about, the depths of where they could go.
	And I wrote it down because I wanted to make sure I remembered it for this.
	I kind of... Here's the thought that came to my head.
	Are they going to create another 9-11?
	And I almost feel like that's what's going to happen.
	Because here's the thing.
	It's not going to be enough to say, whoops, we got the vaccine.
	October surprise.
	Hey, you know, you're not going to get it yet, but we got it.
	And that's because of all of us.
	Thank the dear leader.
	So they're going to get more and more desperate.
	So it's almost like, so I had written a screenplay once about, it's a fake documentary about a small town with two funeral homes and they're battling for business.
	And you have these scenes where they're trying to figure out how to get more business because it's a cutthroat business, right?
	And one suggestion was, well, we could start killing people and then we'll have some more business because we have to bury them.
	And I almost feel like that's what's happening right now in the White House.
	There's no policy meetings.
	There's no things to address what's issues, deep-seated problems with policing or unemployment.
	I have a feeling the only serious meetings they're having are, what can we drum up and gin up to ensure we win the election in November.
	Well, so the thing that most people will jump to is the Reichstag fire.
	Right, obviously, in Germany.
	They'll point to that and they'll point to the fact that after that Hitler was able to seize power and then really come into his own as an authoritarian.
	I would actually like to transport everybody back 11 years ago to Russia in 1999.
	And by the way, at this point, and we have just done such a piss poor job as a country of understanding not just the Cold War, but the aftermath of the Cold War.
	You know, we don't like to look at it.
	We just like to be like, hey, we won that fight.
	Well, we didn't really win that fight.
	We struck a mortal blow on both sides.
	It happens to be that we're still bleeding and the Soviet Union is, you know, trying to pick themselves off the map.
	Well, so in the lead-up to the presidential election, so we end up at a point where Vladimir Putin is looking at possibly becoming the leader of Russia after Boris Yeltsin.
	And Vladimir Putin, by the way, was just completely a nobody at this time, right?
	He just came out of nowhere, out of the mist, and was suddenly a candidate for president, a former KGB agent, which, by the way, a lot of people say you're never a former KGB agent.
	Right, like you can leave the KGB but the KGB doesn't leave you.
	And what ends up happening is there are all these bombings in Russia and there's about 300 people that end up dying and there's all this evidence that these bombs were actually being set by the government in order to gin up insecurity, in order to gin up fear.
	If you think for a second, and by the way, we're not just talking about Donald Trump doing stuff like this.
	We've already seen white terrorists, white extremists, and white separatists who have been instigating violence and destruction during protests.
	They're also going into cities right now like Portland and Los Angeles and God knows, probably Chicago, Kenosha, wherever, looking to start something, right?
	They keep looking to escalate things in order to feed this fire.
	Now, do I think they're planning something like this?
	I don't know.
	But would I say that they wouldn't do it?
	Absolutely not!
	I wouldn't.
	These people don't care about laws or lives.
	They don't even care about military lives, much less public lives or people that they see as potentially violent or terrorists, by the way.
	And real fast, I would be remiss if I didn't point out, Trump has even pushed something that said that federal funds will not be given to cities that quote-unquote defund police.
	That means even reducing their budget a little bit, right?
	Like, the things that these people are trying to do, the problem is that they are shameless.
	It's not that they are necessarily focused.
	It's that they're shameless.
	And this person is more than willing to try literally anything to hold on and to consolidate power.
	So we talked about last time about the the notion of protests that are always local protests that are now being infiltrated by other people from other areas of the country descending upon them and causing more mayhem.
	Now we've known as a fact and they've arrested people like the white supremacists who are intentionally doing these things in multiple cities.
	Yet you hear Bill Barr go on the news and continue to paint this picture of radical leftists doing this across the country.
	Basically flipping the entire narrative in a very untruthful way.
	I think it's proof that they're going to do that, that that's going to happen.
	They've already set it up that way.
	And I think that's all we need.
	Now, the only problem is, is do we ultimately get the evidence and the proof before the election?
	Because they're sloppy.
	They're not good at this thing.
	People will talk.
	So they'll find out, as we've done before.
	But that's the question, is are they going to be able to be effective enough at that up until the election, which is all they need until they can quash it or make it go away anyway if they win re-election again.
	Nick, you always put your finger right on the pulse of something that I think is like a really important impression, but we have to talk about it in all honesty because we are a mature podcast that doesn't pull punches with our listeners.
	They've already been caught.
	They've already been caught.
	And it didn't matter.
	Nobody gave a shit.
	That's the problem.
	I mean, like, it was like in D.C.
	They had created a war zone in D.C.
	They ran, you know, federal troops, many of them unidentified, to go and just crack skulls and tear gas people and brutalize people.
	They had helicopters come down in order to throw people to the ground.
	I've seen enough from reporters that I trust and people that I trust on the ground to know that there were buildings set on fire left and right by white separatists and white extremists.
	Some of them have been reported about.
	Others don't even make it to the front page.
	Other ones aren't even mentioned on the news.
	I have to tell you the honest to God truth, and this is where we are, and I hope that people will hear this not as, not from a defeatist standpoint, but from a realist standpoint to understand how bad things are.
	If it came out next week that there was some sort of attempted try by the Trump administration to create a disaster that could possibly kill Americans in order to help the re-election, which by the way, they've already done with the pandemic.
	They already made blue states and blue cities hurt because they wanted to hurt them politically based on the pandemic, carrying out a genocide or a democide or whatever you want to call it.
	It could turn out that they were thinking about planting bombs, and this is the sad truth that we have to realize.
	It wouldn't matter.
	It wouldn't matter.
	They could get caught.
	Bill Barr could be caught red-handed, you know, setting up some dynamite outside of a building.
	And right now, the way this country works, it wouldn't matter.
	I don't know if you saw this.
	This is important.
	A poll came out today that showed that like 35% of Republicans think that QAnon is completely true.
	And when you add in partly true, it's like 54%, 55%.
	They're gone.
	They're gone.
	That party and that group is gone.
	And they could see something with their eyes.
	They could see, I don't know, a young man in Kenosha being shot and paralyzed and see a knife where there's not a knife.
	You know what I mean?
	They could see a 17-year-old killing people in cold blood and say, oh, that was obviously self-defense.
	It wouldn't matter.
	And that is the damned, honest, sad truth of the matter.
	You know, Bill Barr.
	If you haven't seen it, just go on YouTube and watch the Bill Barr.
	It's ten minutes or so.
	You know, they asked him about that as well.
	And he, you know, Wolf was saying, you know, he was unarmed.
	And he goes, that's not what I heard.
	That's not what I saw.
	And it's like, there's nothing to see.
	Now, again, the argument is going to be, well, if the knife was in the car, and he's now getting into the car, that he could have it, throw it, whatever, they've got to shoot him.
	You know, it's just... What is he?
	The Black Widow?
	Is he Hawkeye?
	He's gonna grab a knife and just take down a bunch of police officers?
	Like, my good, why is this the way that law enforcement handles, like, to be honest, aren't all of us a walk away from a knife at all times?
	You know what I mean?
	Like, I could go, I could go in my kitchen right now and grab a butter knife.
	Does that mean I deserve to spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair because these assholes can't control Well, wait a minute, Jared.
	You don't have to go to the kitchen.
	You can just be, like, off-screen somewhere.
	I don't know where you are.
	And then get that knife.
	That's the thing.
	As soon as I can't see you, then that's over.
	It's done.
	I barely assume that I have a knife nearby.
	I'm gonna find one before we're done with this.
	Put the knife down.
	Well, listen.
	What he did say I wrote down because it struck me more hearing it than it does even reading it on the page, but he basically said that there's a phenomenon and that was the word he used.
	There's a phenomenon in this country where people think that black people are treated as suspects before they're treated as citizens.
	Oh, that's not at all true.
	I heard the Attorney General say that's not the way things work.
	I literally found a knife less than three feet away from me.
	not say that but like the fact that he's going to characterize this as a phenomenon indicates oh hey that's a serious knife you've got there you could I literally found a knife less than three feet away from me I guess I should spend the rest of my life not being able to walk you could fix your cuticles with that really easily now I think I might I I think I might take care of that while we're discussing the politics of the day.
	Can we just take a second and point out how good of a bit that is?
	That I said I could find a knife and I found a knife.
	That's a good bit.
	That's a good bit.
	It sure is.
	And then we have to say, that's not a knife.
	Now that's a knife.
	The better bit, yeah, then I pull out my knife, which is like a 6-inch hunting serrated edge.
	By the way, that's for the YouTube people.
	You can go on YouTube and find me literally search for a knife and find one.
	This isn't just pretend.
	Right.
	I literally went out and found one.
	And Jared is lit so scarily right now that it really has that feeling of a, you know, campfire, you know, scary story right now.
	Yes.
	So, uh... The Attorney General said systemic racism doesn't exist.
	Right.
	He's like, well, because he's the one of the kind of guys who says, listen, what you're ignoring is the millions of interactions that police have with people that go fine.
	You know, but it's like at some point when you have so many of these things go wrong every month, every week, you know, he actually even tried to say something like there was like, I don't know if he's characterizing it in a month or a year, but it sounds like a year.
	Like, six people have died this year from that, which is outrageously wrong, I think.
	I mean, you know what?
	I shouldn't talk out of turn.
	I'm going to check.
	But whatever it was, it seemed way too low from what we hear in the reporting from reputable sources.
	But the idea that he's going to call it a phenomenon that people believe tells you that he thinks it's completely a conspiracy, right?
	Like, you don't use that word, you know, when you're describing the notion that black people are treated like suspects right away.
	I think we know that they are.
	I mean, I think that's not even a debatable fact.
	And I almost feel like, on the merits, they could argue that that's okay.
	I almost feel like that's what they're going to do.
	They're going to say it's okay.
	They're going to say that most black people or most of the people they arrest are black people so we have to use the stats to say we need to assume that they're suspects.
	And you know what I mean?
	I think we're only a few weeks away from them arguing that and like flipping that whole thing on its head.
	They've already and this is the rhetorical games that they play.
	I mean Lee Atwater resting in hell today probably is really proud of what they've done.
	I was not resting in hell.
	I hope he's not resting.
	For those of you who aren't aware of who Lee Atwater is, if you want to understand modern Republican politics, give that dude a gander.
	Just go and look at how he stoked racism and fear.
	Just, you know, one of the original, like, really big architects of this.
	The way, the game that they play is then they'll turn it around, Nick, and then they'll actually do this really insidious thing where they're like, well, I mean, cops aren't actually racist, but I mean, let's think about black-on-black crime.
	Why don't Democrats and liberals care more about that?
	And we're actually, and so they'll actually tell African Americans, we're trying to save you from, like, yourselves, the people who are really bad in that community.
	And it's this gross, like, twisted logic that they do.
	But that's what Bill Barr was saying, is that this is all a myth.
	It's something that Democrats have made up.
	And not just Democrats, because what do they keep trying to get back to?
	It's Jewish people trying to divide people and trying to pit races against each other so they can weaken a nation and take it over.
	That's what the conspiracy theory always is.
	It's always where it ends up leading.
	That's what they're saying.
	And that's what he's saying.
	What you just said about the numbers, do you know why it's so hard to find those numbers?
	Because the police of the United States of America really don't report all their stuff.
	You know why?
	Because it's so widespread and it's so insidious and incestuous that we don't even know how bad it actually is.
	And the numbers that we get, you can't trust them whatsoever.
	So it's a lot easier for these people to say, oh, it's a conspiracy.
	None of this stuff is true.
	And oh, no, there's no such thing as systemic racism.
	It's just, it's the race card that people play to try and get ahead because they're looking for an advantage because they look at it through a transactional lens like the President of the United States.
	Right, and it's not like we're gonna see the cops at Kenosha, you know, thanking the white supremacists for being there armed to the teeth.
	It's not like we're seeing them hand out water bottles to those guys before the guy starts shooting people and killing them.
	Oh, could you imagine how much outrage?
	Oh wait, I'm sorry, I just checked my phone.
	That's what they're doing.
	Oh yeah, you know, it's not like...
	We just saw, you know, maybe a month ago, in one of the police, you know, trying to keep order at a rally, doing the white power sign to the counter-ralliers who were white supremacists.
	Nick, to hear you talk, you would think that law enforcement in the United States of America almost began as a way to catch fugitive slaves.
	And listen, I am not going to sit here and pretend like that is the history of America.
	And that also the FBI, which, real fast, let me check my facts, is the FBI left Leaning organization?
	No, no it is not.
	The FBI told us that law enforcement has been taken over by white supremacists who have radicalized it for their own means.
	So for the Attorney General to get out and say this, it's not just a lie.
	It's a damned lie.
	It's a damned murderous lie.
	And the fact that that jowly asshole can go to bed at night and sleep is just a testament to how grotesque of a person he is.
	It really is.
	It defies the imagination constantly, but they find new ways to be more and more disgusting.
	I mean, I'm speechless because you're right.
	It really is.
	And again, we keep hammering this with Bill Barr, but it's the truth.
	He is the guy I feel like is the most dangerous because he's so empowering to Trump and letting him do whatever he needs to do.
	Not only is he giving him the judicial cover, or whatever that would be called, but he's also giving him political cover.
	He's weighing in on political issues that no attorney general should ever be talking about.
	It's insane.
	I don't know how we ever get this back in the bottle again.
	Because you know, here's the thing, even if... I sound like Joe Biden.
	Folks, here's the thing.
	If Trump loses, but the Republicans can keep control of the Senate, we know damn well that they'll never pass any laws to prevent another Trump from getting back into power.
	That's how far gone they are.
	Because you would imagine they're going to say at some point, oh, we didn't know Trump, thank God he's gone.
	Like you think that some of those guys are going to peel off once he loses.
	But they're not going to-- I mean, come on.
	They're going to have a few of those guys probably say something, but like, you know, finally.
	But I think the point being that we know they'll never pass any of those laws that would actually protect the White House and protect the balance of power and the way the Constitution was properly-- was written and to do that properly.
	So that's really the biggest issue I thought grabbed me the other day.
	I can't believe that that's where we're at.
	Well, first of all, I want to remind everyone that the Attorney General of the United States of America is not supposed to be in the thrall, in service, of a president.
	They're supposed to be independent of one another.
	They're not supposed to be a political body.
	What we're seeing right now is an abomination.
	Oh, but Eric Holder, Obama, look at them together.
	That must be the same.
	Yeah, it must be the exact same and they must be in cahoots.
	Well, because they're both black, Jared.
	Yeah, no doubt.
	And listen.
	We're fair.
	We throw it where it goes and, you know, we call balls and strikes and just to show that we're not just sitting here banging on the right.
	One of the problems about what you're talking about, about reeling in the president, one of the problems is that Democrats aren't going to want to reign in the presidency.
	If they win the presidency, or if they want to win the presidency, they want it to have the power that it has.
	Because the presidency has grown so large, that it is outshine Congress.
	Congress can't pass anything, period.
	It is by design deadlocked and completely kept from anything even approaching power.
	The only way you can do anything anymore, unless you get rid of the filibuster, is you have to do it by executive orders or presidential memos.
	That's the only way.
	And so they're not going to want to rein it in because it's almost like that old thing, I'm sure you've seen it before, where it's like, even poor Americans don't want to tax the wealthy because they think someday they might be wealthy.
	It's the same thing with the presidency.
	It's the secret weapon.
	It's the one thing that can make anything that they want to do possibly happen.
	And so they're not going to rein it in.
	But we need to have major, major reform.
	And the United States presidency needs to be reined in by more than half.
	I mean, it really needs to be taken in.
	Well, at the very least, even though they're not going to necessarily want to take away power from the presidency itself, I mean, they would have legislation for tax returns that need to be produced before you run.
	I mean, that would be reasonable.
	They'd want to have some other foreign influence protection on elections and those kind of things.
	So, at least we'd get that.
	Which, by the way, I don't think would get passed if the Senate remains in the Republican hands.
	I hope you're right.
	I hope you're right about that.
	Because my fear is something that we've talked about before, which is once you open Pandora's box, it's really hard to put, you know, everything back in.
	So like, if you start outlawing foreign interference, well, yeah, maybe one side can't have foreign interference, but does that stop like Trump?
	From going out and getting foreign interference?
	Or somebody for reaching out and doing these?
	I mean, I mean, look what we saw from the Mueller report.
	It doesn't matter.
	You can go out and do this, like, bold-faced, you know, I mean, Manafort, Manafort handed over that polling data.
	Like, it just got found, you know?
	Like, it was definitely handed over.
	So the problem there is whether or not the arms race gets pulled back, and I certainly hope it does.
	I'm with you.
	I hope that it does.
	I don't know that it will, though.
	Well, the other thing with that is, you know, there's been some reporting going on in this week to a lot of stuff going happening.
	You know, we talk about the thugs in this plane that, you know, Trump is getting from Facebook or whatever.
	And the more and more you hear these kind of things, the more you kind of think, well, does he even get any intelligence briefings?
	Or does everything he gets comes from Fox News or from Reitbart, wherever he's getting it from?
	Which, by the way, it sounds like Bill Barr is the same way.
	It sounds like Bill Barr has been trapped in some sort of Fox News cocoon as well for the last five, six years.
	And we've seen now the reporting.
	Now, we've kind of heard it already before where they didn't want to give him Russian intelligence because that makes him so angry, but it sounds like it's even worse.
	Like, any kind of reporting on the white supremacy movement and how dangerous that is domestically is not being told to him.
	They do not want to give it to him.
	And by the way, the other reason why they don't want to give him probably any foreign intelligence is because they're worried he's going to give it away.
	He's going to ruin the secrets to Putin or whoever else he's talking to.
	What kind of a country we live in where this is the president.
	The teletransmit community can't even give him any information for fear that he's going to disseminate it to the wrong people.
	And that he'll just get angry about it.
	I don't even know what to say.
	Can we just have one of those moments where we just sort of shake our heads and talk about how insane all this is?
	I have, you know, you gotta have those every now and then or else I think you go insane yourself.
	How does he even stand a chance of winning re-election?
	We have a president who doesn't care about protecting people.
	He's let hundreds of thousands of people die, in some cases through democide or genocide.
	He's endorsing vigilantes in the street.
	He's walking through cities of rubble that he has created.
	He destroyed the economy.
	He can't even pay proper lip service to soldiers.
	And like you just said, he can't even be bothered to hear an intelligence report.
	Like, and he can't even be bothered to sit there for a couple of seconds, lest the people giving it to him have to not only prune out information that he won't like, like he's a child who will only eat hot dogs or macaroni and cheese, right?
	Or they gotta figure out a way to put his name in extra large font so he'll begin to pay attention to something and then, you know, doze off or whatever and then go and play golf.
	Like, the fact that we're living in a country where that man is not only president but stands a chance of either winning the presidency or stealing the presidency and not getting called out for it and being stopped.
	What a sick country.
	What a failing state this is.
	It's so ludicrous.
	You know what, I kind of have to be almost impressed with what Trump has been able to pull off, honestly, because in Mike Schmidt's book that came out this week, and that he's been plugging, I mean, it turns out that Mueller didn't investigate a lot of what Trump's business and personal ties were to Russia because he thought The FBI was doing it and the FBI thought that Mueller was doing it.
	And it turns out nobody did it, which makes so much sense because there is so much going on and so much smoke that didn't get really addressed in the Mueller report.
	And we assumed, oh, it's got to be the FBI.
	Then nothing comes out of that either.
	Like that's some high level, you know, functioning behind the scenes to make that happen with Rod Rosenstein.
	It really is.
	And by the way, I think the tell from Rosenstein, thinking about it now, was that he was so willing to write that memo that explained why he fired Comey to begin with, which seemed way out of left field.
	And then he pointed at Mueller.
	But that was probably the first inkling that this wasn't going to be a straight investigation.
	And in fact, I think it's pretty clear that Mueller didn't, they didn't let him finish.
	And Barr came in, Rosenstein put the kibosh on it, and then you saw what they did to spin it and then convince the people who are malleable thinking that there's no collusion and no corruption.
	No.
	No collusion, no conspiracy.
	Yeah, nothing.
	Right.
	Nothing happened.
	The phone call was perfect.
	Everything was perfect.
	Everything is real legit and real cool.
	You know, I was trying to tell somebody this the other day, and I know that this isn't fun, but it's something we need to recognize, which is, he's just, there's literally nothing with this person that can take him down in that regard.
	There's just not.
	Like, we've gotten to the point where laws don't matter.
	Institutions don't matter.
	Precedents don't matter.
	He got caught dead to rights with the Mueller Report and the Russians.
	He got dead to rights obstructing justice.
	He got caught dead to rights with the Ukraine call.
	He's gotten dead to rights with, you know, the grifting of money, the lies.
	I mean, one time after another, him not only riling people up to cause violence, but just lying about literally everything.
	The pandemic has just been An unbelievable disaster on every front.
	The economy is his fault.
	Here's the thing.
	This is what life is going to be like if we don't get rid of this guy.
	It's only going to accelerate and there's nothing that he can do.
	It's the Fifth Avenue thing.
	It honest to God is.
	That he was telling it completely true because he has enraptured a large part of this country in an unhealthy, mentally ill cult.
	And the only way to do that is to peel off the slight margins, you know, and barely win the Electoral College, it seems like.
	will twist it and turn it until they see him as perfect and infallible.
	There's just no way around it.
	He has to go.
	He just, he has to go.
	And the only way to do that is to peel off the slight margins, you know, and barely win the electoral college, it seems like.
	Although again, I still see a matrix, a version of the matrix where, you know, he loses by his 10 points, like it looks like he should.
	And...
	Not that it will go away quietly, but at least the election will represent what the vast majority of the country feels.
	But again, we have to be so concerned right now.
	Let me ask you this.
	Obviously the Russians interfered with our election in 2016.
	I'm not so sure they didn't manipulate votes.
	I still feel like there are some issues that they never release, like in Florida, for instance.
	It certainly seems like all those voting machines are hackable.
	But let's just say they didn't, but they're going to welcome it again this year.
	Why would Trump be so intent on creating all this chaos around the voting this year if he kind of knows he's got that in his back pocket?
	It's interesting.
	And maybe he's just throwing shit at the wall.
	It's everything.
	It's everything.
	That's the thing.
	And part of the problem is, they are so...
	Shameless, but they're also so incompetent.
	That's the whole point.
	Everything's just so transparent.
	And Trump just tries everything.
	I mean, like, every time, if you actually go back and look at the history of his businesses, like, it's just flailing.
	Like, the man had no actual instincts in terms of business or in terms of organization.
	Malignant narcissists like him, instinctual authoritarians and neo-fascists, they're terrible at bringing this stuff together most of the time.
	He flailed constantly.
	He just tried things, right?
	I mean, this is how you get Trump Station, you get Trump Airlines, you get Trump Vodka, you get Trump blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	He had no idea what he was doing.
	So, no, it's not like he has a Trump card or an Ace card up his sleeve.
	He's trying literally everything, which is why they get caught on so much bullshit.
	There's so much to get caught on.
	And the votes that you were talking about, I mean, there are smart people on both sides.
	They're like, yeah, they had an opportunity to hack, but they didn't.
	Then there are other people who are like, wait, you're telling me they had the opportunity to hack and they didn't?
	Right?
	And I've never heard the definitive take on that.
	I've heard whispers, you know, off the record and stuff like that.
	I've never heard anything definitive.
	But absolutely, they're trying everything.
	I mean, I've been hearing people talk lately about things like QAnon or these conspiracy theories which come completely out of nowhere.
	There's a lot of theories now on where this stuff is coming from and who's behind it and who's like you know part of that conspiracy.
	I think it's throwing so much stuff at the wall and hoping even a strand of something sticks because they are so craven but they are also so incompetent that they have to try so many different things.
	Okay, so you keep saying the word flailing, and now I have the image of John Carpenter's The Thing in my mind of the alien and flailing.
	And by the way, it works.
	He's flailing around, whatever.
	It's almost like in my cerebral cortex, I'm scared because of this motion, and then it ultimately doesn't... By the way, The Thing gets... Well, I don't want to ruin it for anybody.
	Because we should do that movie.
	That would be another movie for our Patreon, which, by the way, we have if you want to check out our Patreon.
	Is that a good way of telling everyone that in a very smooth, quick, That is a wonderful thing, actually.
	So if you want to support this show, it's over at patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
	We're doing bonus episodes.
	I think we're going to talk after this and get our schedule down.
	I think the next bonus is probably going to be another movie podcast.
	I cannot wait for another movie podcast.
	It was so great doing those.
	What are we doing for number two?
	We've talked about it.
	Well, I don't know.
	We did talk about it.
	What did we end up saying?
	It's not going to be... Network, right?
	Yeah, network.
	Alright, let's do network.
	I think that's... One of the all-time great movies.
	And by the way, it's not just doing that, but we've been covering the conventions.
	We're in September.
	I don't know if you've looked at the calendar lately, but time is just racing.
	Supposedly, if you believe what you hear on the streets, the debates start this month.
	Supposedly, which I'm a little doubtful about whether or not the debates will happen, but it's sounding like they're gonna trudge their way forward.
	If they do happen, all four of them, three presidential debates and one vice presidential debate, which by the way is on my birthday, so we would need to have some sort of celebration, I suppose.
	Well, can we celebrate my birthday at the same time?
	Oh, we could, absolutely.
	Let's do the birthday.
	Because you're the 7th or the 9th?
	What are you?
	I'm the 7th.
	I'm the 7th.
	Alright, I'm the 11th.
	Well, yeah, we'll figure that out.
	But if you want to join us for that, we're going to be doing live coverage of that.
	We're going to have bonus podcasts, talking about movies, doing question and answer stuff.
	And on top of that, we're building a really cool community where people are getting to know each other and support each other and kind of be there for each other during all of this.
	All you have to do is go over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast and join in and help us out.
	We appreciate that and we appreciate you listening so much.
	People have been telling their friends and families and I assume loved ones.
	I don't know if you want to join in on this with your loved ones.
	about this podcast.
	We've been growing and we are so, so grateful.
	Continue to rate us, share us, comment, all that stuff.
	Go over again to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
	We're going to be back.
	Hopefully, knock on wood, we will be back next week and not have to have some sort of bizarre emergency podcast as the country catches on fire.
	We will be back next week.
	If you need us until then, you can find Nick at Can You Hear Me SMH.
	You can find me at J.Y.
	Sexton.

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