It's been...a week. Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman react to the news that CNN CEO Jeff Zucker advised Donald Trump in 2016 and even offered him a weekly show, dive deep into the fabricated rivalries of modern politics, and express general frustration at all the dangerous illusions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| Keep calm and carry on. | |
| That's what I did. | |
| This whack job that wrote the book, he said, well, Trump knew a little bit. | |
| They wanted me to come out and scream, people are dying, we're dying. | |
| No, no. | |
| We did it just the right way. | |
| We have to be calm. | |
| We don't want to be praised lunatics. | |
| I watch some of the shows. | |
| I watched Liz McDonald. | |
| She's fantastic. | |
| I watched Fox Business. | |
| I watched Lou Dobbs last night. | |
| Sean Hannity last night. | |
| Tucker last night. | |
| Laura. | |
| I watched Fox and Friends in the morning. | |
| You watch these shows. | |
| You don't have to go too far into the details. | |
| They cover things that are... It's really an amazing thing. | |
| Hello, everybody. | |
| Welcome to the Muckrake Podcast. | |
| I am Nick Hauserman. | |
| And as always, I'm joined by Jared Yates Sexton. | |
| And on a nice Thursday afternoon, we're here to talk a little bit about what's going on with the Jeff Zucker, Donald Trump extravaganza that we have going there. | |
| It turns out that they've they talk as much as probably him and Hannity do. | |
| And it's an interesting conundrum because Trump loves to just destroy CNN every chance he gets. | |
| So, Jared, What's your thought on that? | |
| My thought is I'm tired, Nick. | |
| I'm just so tired of all this bullshit. | |
| I'm just so tired of it on every front. | |
| It's bad enough yesterday, of course, we recorded this emergency podcast about the Bob Woodward revelations and the fact that, you know, Woodward is profiting off of human misery, but that's neither here nor there. | |
| Which, by the way, I had a fun time today watching journalists stand up for him and say, well, and this is my favorite thing. | |
| Well, it wouldn't have mattered anyway, so why do it? | |
| And then it's like, yeah, that's the authoritarian mindset right there. | |
| Like, that's where we need to be for Donald Trump to become an authoritarian dictator, but that's neither here nor there. | |
| I'm tired of Trump lying, but on top of that, I'm tired of the people who are profiting off of this who know better. | |
| Like, this Zucker thing, it's not... | |
| Shocking. | |
| Do you know what I mean? | |
| And for those who haven't listened to it yet, Michael Cohen has released these tapes because, I mean, he's trying to get rich, Zucker's trying to get rich, everybody's just trying to get rich off of this disaster. | |
| And Zucker was talking to Cohen back in 2016 when Trump was running, and Zucker's like, Oh, the boss. | |
| He called him the boss. | |
| He's doing great, and he's so good in these debates, and let me offer you a little bit of advice to make him better in the debates, and hey, if things don't work out with this presidential run, I'd love to give him a weekly show or, you know, give him airtime on CNN. | |
| Not like he was gifting him, you know, millions in free advertising anyway, and going everywhere and saying, yeah, he might be bad for America, he's great for CNN. | |
| And, you know, I'm just tired of it. | |
| I'm tired of this mindset, this destructive, corrosive, toxic mindset that you just got to get paid and everything else, it just doesn't matter, right? | |
| Because you can live in this world where you make millions and millions and millions of dollars and it doesn't matter if people are being killed in a pandemic, they're being locked up in cages at the border, Rights are being trampled. | |
| People's lives are being threatened. | |
| White supremacists and white terrorists are being emboldened and empowered. | |
| As long as I get paid. | |
| And I have to say, that is at the very heart of what's wrong with this country. | |
| You know, it does harken back to the golden age of television, which is sort of like this same notion of make America great again. | |
| Let's go back to the 50s and the 40s where, you know, the theory goes that Edward R. Murrow was unassailable, right? | |
| And all the news rooms in ABC and NBC, CBS, they operated at a huge loss. | |
| And that was part of the deal because it wasn't going to be a moneymaker. | |
| This was journalism. | |
| They needed to tell the truth and cover these things fairly. | |
| Walter Cronkite being probably the biggest face of that. | |
| And I don't I'm starting to wonder now if that really was just a facade as well. | |
| You know, I mean, it's interesting because we could certainly pinpoint, you know, having, you know, we're going to do a pod for the Patreon folks on Network, you can pinpoint like that's sort of around when this the notion of this started happening. | |
| But just like we thought we have this idea of politicians being upstanding citizens who really cared about the country and the 20s and 30s and 40s, and then the Senate was this really wise group of men. | |
| It really wasn't the case at all. | |
| And so now I'm trying to figure out just how long we have been in this situation where our ethics have been so compromised by consumerism and commercialism and money. | |
| I want to, you know, I'm so pissed off about this thing today. | |
| I'm just gonna... Wait, I thought you were tired. | |
| You said you were tired. | |
| I'm tired. | |
| I'm pissed off. | |
| I don't, I don't give a shit right now. | |
| I'm going to talk in some hard truths. | |
| I don't care. | |
| I really just don't give a shit, Nick. | |
| I want to tell, I want to tell people this. | |
| And, and, and this is, you know, when you get inducted into like a secret society, right? | |
| Like when you get into like the Masons or the Shriners or the Illuminati, whatever, the first thing that happens, is they start delivering to you some mysteries, right? | |
| They start telling you, here's the truth that you didn't know and now welcome to a new world. | |
| And by the way, there are a lot of other mysteries. | |
| I'm going to deliver some mysteries to our muckrakers because I'll tell you what, they are wonderful. | |
| They are supportive. | |
| They're here for us. | |
| They're so good to us. | |
| So I'm going to deliver some mysteries. | |
| Here is the first thing, is you need to understand that politics as they have been described to us, It isn't how things work. | |
| It's not left and right, Democrat, Republican, blue, red, all of this stuff. | |
| CNN is not a liberal network. | |
| MSNBC is not a far-left network. | |
| I mean, Fox News is a propaganda tool, but the rest of them are pretty much in the center or maybe a little center-left. | |
| But I want to introduce something to people that they might not know about. | |
| It's a thing called Kayfabe. | |
| K-A-Y-F-A-B-E. | |
| Kayfabe, and by the way, go look it up because if you want to understand modern politics, go and understand the idea of kayfabe. | |
| Kayfabe is a wrestling term, a carnival term, which is the idea of the presentation of an illusion to people. | |
| And by the way, if you've ever watched professional wrestling or understand what it's about, it's like, Nick, I'm going to wrestle you tonight and I'm going to beat your ass and I hate you. | |
| And you're like, no, I hate you. | |
| And then later on you have beers and count the money that the rubes gave you. | |
| Okay? | |
| This is why, by the way, everyone keeps asking questions in, like, my weekly bourbon talk and stuff. | |
| They're like, why don't the Democrats do more? | |
| Why aren't they fighting Trump with more fire? | |
| It's like, no, Donald Trump is making them so much money. | |
| And it's getting them elected to things. | |
| And that's not all of them. | |
| There are people in the Democratic Party who are in good faith and they're doing the right thing. | |
| There are others who are just stockpiling the money. | |
| He makes incredible money for the Democrats. | |
| Do you know who else he makes incredible money for? | |
| The cable news networks. | |
| Donald Trump needs CNN, and CNN has needed Donald Trump. | |
| Particularly Jeb Zucker. | |
| Right? | |
| Because they're in the entertainment business. | |
| There's some of the people over there, and by the way, I've talked to some of them off the record when the cameras are off, and they're like, I hate what is happening here. | |
| I hate how this company treats Donald Trump, and I hate the relationship. | |
| The truth is, it's like a couple of professional wrestlers squaring off on a Saturday night. | |
| They have a huge feud. | |
| One of them might even bleed before the whole thing's over. | |
| They might even have a steel cage match. | |
| And then what do they do afterwards? | |
| They share a steak, dinner, and they count their profits. | |
| Kay Fabe is the honest-to-God truth about American politics, and the sooner the people get wise to it, the sooner they'll be able to protect themselves. | |
| And I'm so tired of people not knowing that and not understanding that. | |
| For sure and then I'll throw in red is green is another one of those phrases they used back in the in the wrestling days. | |
| I can remember as a kid watching probably 2020 and doing they did a thing about this and I remember a wrestler beat the crap out of the guy saying is this fake and then hitting him hitting him and you know what I have to wonder if like maybe that was fake too because the guy made it see the reporter made it seem like his hearing was not working anymore and whatever. | |
| I mean that was how and I was probably 10 11 12 they were still hitting me. | |
| But red is green was a big one that they did and they would cut themselves and then they would start to bleed as the match went on. | |
| They would make a lot more money. | |
| People get more crazy for that. | |
| So, you know, the interesting background about Zucker is that he was the guy that created the apprentice with Trump. | |
| And Burnett. | |
| And Mark Burnett. | |
| - Yeah, right. | |
| And so we were always sort of wondering why the tapes, which we know exist of Trump saying the N word and whatever, and just being just a generally horrible person, never came out. | |
| We'd heard a little mumblings from here and there. | |
| And he never thought, well, it couldn't be Jeff Zucker Zucker couldn't possibly be, you know, so in Trump's corner that he's going to protect him that way. | |
| But I think he realized that, yes, this is, but not only is it a cash cow for him, where they want to make sure they can prop him up and keep going, but the fact that he's consulting basically with him, and I'm sure he's talking to him on the phone, is just sort of makes this whole thing Really problematic and we know that he's in this article that they reported from Woodward's. | |
| I'm sorry. | |
| It's Woodward's book is what we're getting Oh, no from Cohen's tape. | |
| Sorry what we are learning from that is hard to keep track I know who is profiting off of this and who is recording who but I think what's interesting is that he doesn't want anyone to know that but the question is why is I don't think it anything to do with journalistic ethics and Right, or any kind of notion that, oh, the president of CNN can't be, you know, known to be, you know, talking to the president like Hannity does. | |
| I just think he didn't want to do it because he didn't want to get any, you know, involve or potentially hurt the cash that they were making through this, you know, whatever deal they have going on. | |
| The whole thing is kind of falling apart. | |
| I mean, and by the way, the only question here is, is whatever I'm talking about as far as the tapes that exist in The Apprentice, which probably don't anymore because I'm sure At this point, Zucker probably had been erased. | |
| It wouldn't have mattered, right? | |
| Nothing he would say at this point would move the needle for the people that need to be moved because Trump has been such a terrific, I mean, con man is the word, but also just a builder of cults, a cult leader. | |
| He just has been so brilliant at that that it doesn't matter what we find out about him now. - Well, I just, I'll give a second mystery. | |
| I'll give a second mystery of the Secret Society of American Politics. | |
| It's not really so secret. | |
| If you get elected to something or if you work for these people, you understand it. | |
| They want to create villains and heroes. | |
| Just like in professional wrestling. | |
| You have things called faces. | |
| You have things called heels. | |
| Faces are the good guys. | |
| Heels are the bad guys. | |
| Donald Trump is an A-class world record holding heel. | |
| Everything about him is hateable and dislikable, but I'll tell you something that has happened in recent years, which is people have come around to liking villains. | |
| They like villains because they, you know, they do what they want. | |
| They don't necessarily play within the rules. | |
| People have stopped liking faces so much, but they still look for heroes. | |
| Here is something that our listeners need to understand. | |
| We have to stop looking for heroes. | |
| We did it with Robert Mueller. | |
| We've done it with Nancy Pelosi. | |
| Right now people are doing it, by the way, the whole Woodward thing that I've dealt with all day today, it's like, no, listen, we can't criticize him because, listen, he helped with the Watergate thing and he's at least revealing Trump. | |
| This is part of his master plan. | |
| Bob Woodward doesn't have a master plan. | |
| He does this with every president. | |
| He writes two to three books on every single president. | |
| He's not out headhunting like he did with Richard Nixon. | |
| You know why? | |
| Because that's when he was young and he was hungry. | |
| And do you know what he's done over the past few years? | |
| He just keeps bringing in the money and he does whatever. | |
| He's not trying to take down Trump. | |
| Do you know why? | |
| Because if he doesn't take down Trump and if Trump gets more years and Woodward goes in to talk to him, what happens, Nick? | |
| Are those books going to sell better than books about Joe Biden or Barack Obama? | |
| You're damn right they would. | |
| They would absolutely sell better because he is the the goose that lays the golden egg. | |
| The people that we've been holding up as heroes are not heroes. | |
| They are fallible humans and we have to stop looking to them because when we're looking at heroes, we're throwing the buck towards them. | |
| We're not doing it personally. | |
| We're not taking responsibility personally. | |
| We're not working on a ground level to make things happen. | |
| We're waiting on champions to come in and take care of things for us. | |
| And that is a problem. | |
| Yes. | |
| You know, I'm not even sure that that's what we feel either. | |
| I mean, the question is, who are we? | |
| Who are the people you're talking about waiting? | |
| Are these like the Democrats? | |
| Are these Republicans? | |
| Are these Independents? | |
| Are these just sort of normal people that live their lives just trying to go to work and go home and see their kids before they go to sleep? | |
| You know, I think we're beyond that. | |
| I mean, I think that we've already got into the post waiting for Superman to come swooping in using his x-ray vision and solving all of our problems. | |
| Can I say one thing real fast? | |
| Because what you just said made me realize something that I think has been like working around in my head for a while. | |
| We've talked about this a lot. | |
| The American who just wants to go to work and then chill out and not have to worry about this shit. | |
| Right. | |
| Here's the sad truth. | |
| We do have to worry about this shit. | |
| Like, whether Donald Trump is in office or not. | |
| Part of the reason why Donald Trump is in office is because we didn't worry about this stuff, right? | |
| Like a Barack Obama, everyone's like, oh, he'll take care of it. | |
| We don't have to worry about it. | |
| Like, he's confident, he's talented, or whatever. | |
| We've looked at all these presidents and all of these politicians, and the truth is that we have, and this isn't going to make me popular in some circles, but I have to say it, we've abdicated responsibility for governing over ourselves. | |
| And we have given it to a group of people who are not worthy of it. | |
| We have to take it back and we have to start running for things. | |
| We have to start voting. | |
| We have to start going to meetings. | |
| We have to make politics something that we participate in as opposed to something we watch. | |
| Okay, then let's move up a chain a little bit because what we're not seeing, so let's go back. | |
| I'm old enough to remember that when Hillary Clinton had described Benghazi initially, they thought it was in reaction to this movie that came out about Muhammad and then there was protests. | |
| And because they spent about 10 days talking about it in those terms before they finally said this was a coordinated terrorist attack, that sparked The whole Benghazi thing of 8 to 10 investigations across the House, which then found out about the emails, which then basically sunk her campaign. | |
| Where are the Democratic people in Congress right now? | |
| Why isn't this, I called for an impeachment yesterday, they should just do it anyway, get the process started. | |
| But why, at the very least, aren't they dragging everybody through the fucking muck right now, just like the other people did? | |
| I don't want to hear about we're like higher-minded or we're more fair. | |
| This is absolutely ridiculous. | |
| And so, if you wanted to inspire people, in theory, to tap into the hate and all the bullshit we can't stand anymore, then they need to call these people in front of Congress, they need to expose all the I have a question for you in a theoretical world. | |
| We need more of these of these audio tapes, you know, between Woodward and Trump saying this bullshit. | |
| We have it just has to be every day in the news. | |
| And they're doing nothing except, I suppose, running for their own seats. | |
| I have a question for you in a theoretical world. | |
| If somehow or another a Democratic president had done what Trump had done and been exposed for doing what Trump had done, would a Republican Congress impeach them before the election? | |
| Yes, absolutely. | |
| They would break, like, the speed of sound. | |
| There would be, like, a sonic boom for them to take that vote. | |
| Yeah, it would be a simultaneous... Can we get... Anyway, you know... No, we know! | |
| I know where you're going with that, and I think our listeners do, too, without having to say it. | |
| What would happen... What is happening is that the Democratic Party is so worried at all times about how it will be perceived and whether or not they're making the right choice or the wrong choice. | |
| I have to say again, and not to beat this drum too much, Nick, I watched so many people today who I believe have good consciences, who are decent people. | |
| I watched them today being like, yeah, maybe Woodward should have said something about what he found out. | |
| But don't you think it'd be better if it happened nearer to the election? | |
| Don't you think that would help with the election? | |
| And it's like, we're at over 190,000 Americans dead. | |
| We have God knows how many people who have permanent damage from the coronavirus, right? | |
| We don't even know long-term what this is going to do. | |
| It destroyed our economy. | |
| I mean, God knows how many Americans right now are facing eviction or have been evicted, right? | |
| Why are we acting like pundits? | |
| Why do we treat this like it's a game? | |
| When you treat it like it's a game, you lose. | |
| Treat it like you're human beings who have an oath to take care of people and run government in an ethical way. | |
| I have to tell you, the times that I hear people say, yeah Trump lies, yeah Trump breaks laws, Trump has killed people, Trump has done this, he's done that, but what's it matter? | |
| Is anything going to change? | |
| That's an authoritarian society. | |
| That's what happens when somebody has broken your will. | |
| Stop playing games and do what's right. | |
| He should not only be impeached. | |
| He should be in jail, Nick. | |
| He's committed crimes against humanity. | |
| There's no arguing against that fact. | |
| Everyone knows it. | |
| I even think the Republicans know it and actually rejoice in it. | |
| They think it's good politics. | |
| We have to stop this bullshit. | |
| We have to stop treating this like it's a game and a spectacle and something to watch and cheer on. | |
| You might remember that I referenced Shakespeare and Julius Caesar a couple episodes ago to no response, but I found... Wait, wait, wait! | |
| Don't let anybody say we're not a high-minded podcast. | |
| Right. | |
| Well, listen, I was surprised that you wouldn't at your fingertips have the quote ready to go, and I'm not even sure why I do because I was never... Listen, I guess I read my share of Shakespeare and memorized whatever, but it was Julius Caesar and what he says, you know, in the beginning to Antony And I won't say Anthony. | |
| I'll say Antony. | |
| And that was what I was trying to get at before. | |
| This is what Trump has been doing. | |
| And that was what I was trying to get at before. | |
| And this is what Trump has been doing. | |
| He's been getting these fat senators around him who just want to hang out and have a good time and party and keep the fire burning as long as they can until they can just move on and let someone else deal with it. | |
| That is what is really frustrating because out of that is when you get things like this ridiculous Supreme Court list. | |
| People he might nominate if he wins again. | |
| And people like Tom Cotton on there and Ted Cruz. | |
| you know. | |
| Now, I have to insist to my wife that you don't have to be a lawyer to be a Supreme Court Justice. | |
| In fact, right? | |
| You don't have to have any legal background. | |
| No. | |
| But, you know, it's remarkable, you know. | |
| Listen, I'll even say it this way. | |
| When John Roberts was nominated, you know, none of us were, let me, that excited about it, whatever. | |
| But when he went in front of the Senate, It was like this guy could have taught a class in constitutional law. | |
| He was so smart and was so qualified to be what he is. | |
| And of course now we're maybe he's the last gasp before we lose our democracy. | |
| These idiots and you got Kavanaugh already in there. | |
| You know, that's the difference. | |
| And by the way, that might be exposing what the Supreme Court is. | |
| Alito and Thomas, they're the same as Ted Cruz. | |
| They're the same as Tom Cotton. | |
| We just don't know it because they weren't in the public life like that, spewing all this terrible stuff. | |
| But they're as political and they're as the same ideology as those guys. | |
| So it's almost like, great, let's put these guys in. | |
| We might as well make it completely clear what they're trying to do with this court, because that's what they've been doing for decades. | |
| I have to point out real fast, the shade that you just threw on me for not knowing a random quote from Julius Caesar that you didn't even tell me that you were looking for. | |
| I find Julius Caesar a fine play. | |
| I haven't read it particularly since undergrad. | |
| I'm more of a King Lear man. | |
| I like watching a person lose his mind. | |
| I'm a Macbeth man. | |
| I like watching the consequence come through the trees. | |
| I'll just say that. | |
| Okay. | |
| Well, you know what? | |
| Can I comment on that real quick before I forget? | |
| Because it's Shakespeare. | |
| You know, the gallery loved the dirty jokes and the low-minded stuff, but that's still, that's sort of what we have now. | |
| That's what people, when they watch the news and they watch all this spectacle, it's the same thing, right, as being in the gallery of the Globe Theater, right, without any chairs or sitting down at the bottom. | |
| I would admit... | |
| I would make the argument that that is almost exactly what cable news is. | |
| It's a group of powerful people who are behaving poorly and in dramatic ways and you have a group of people who are translating it for the rubbish in the crowd. | |
| Because that's what's happening. | |
| If you actually watch cable news, cable news is not actually really analysis. | |
| It's more quote-unquote translation, right? | |
| We're going to explain to you peons what's going on. | |
| That's really what it is, right? | |
| And that's how it's approached. | |
| I will point out, and this is something to really take a look at, You brought up Tom Cotton yesterday on the emergency podcast talking about the Woodward revelations. | |
| And if you haven't listened, please do because I have to say that I thought I thought I thought that was one of our best episodes actually talking about something really important and getting to the meat of it. | |
| Right after we got done taping and talking about Cotton, Trump floating Cotton's name was one of the last things that we talked about before we signed off. | |
| We signed off and stopped recording and immediately I went to look online and Tom Cotton had tweeted out something within minutes of his name being floated by Donald Trump as a possible justice. | |
| Roe v. Wade has to end. | |
| Which you want to talk about a Shakespearean character. | |
| Tom Cotton, at every step along the way, has shown not just a willingness, but an excitedness to kill people in the streets, to float fascistic oppression, to find a way to promote himself as a protector of white western civilization, and now is just like, yeah, I'm gonna throw away women's rights. | |
| Just because somebody floated my name is a possibility. | |
| And he jumped on it like a dog on a bone. | |
| That's who these people are. | |
| That's what we're talking about here. | |
| We are talking about opportunists who are willing to destroy us. | |
| Who are willing to crush us under their boots. | |
| And it's not even about ideologies that they particularly hold close. | |
| Donald Trump doesn't have an ideology. | |
| He doesn't have a plan for America outside of stripping us for bare parts and expediting his privilege and his power and his profit. | |
| Somebody like a Tom Cotton gets a whiff of something approaching higher power, he will sell you. | |
| Period. | |
| He will sell your fate for even a whiff of higher power. | |
| That's what we're dealing with here. | |
| And people need to understand, these people are not heroes. | |
| They are not ideologues necessarily. | |
| Tom Cotton's more of an ideologue than Donald Trump, don't get me wrong. | |
| But these are people who are using it for their advantage and for their own personal empowerment. | |
| And that should terrify everyone. | |
| And that's not just them. | |
| That's also the media. | |
| That's also other politicians. | |
| It's all over the place right now. | |
| I'm not sure I buy the argument about power because I don't know how powerful you really are as a senator in theory or... | |
| Like, you know, you do some stuff, you're not passing any laws. | |
| But I think what I'm translating, since this is, you know, we have to translate ourselves, everybody has to do their own version of that no matter what they do. | |
| I feel like it's money. | |
| I really just feel like it's money. | |
| This notion and this situation she can put himself in, Can I clarify something with that though? | |
| Because I think you're right. | |
| that i.e. the power structure of the senate is the more opportunities he can you know which goes along with selling books speaking uh you know uh getting these money from uh you know uh lobbyists and all that stuff can i clarify something with that though because i think you're right it's not about passing laws because congress is broken you know You know what I mean? | |
| They're like Bruce Wayne in Dark Knight Rises after Bane gets a hold of them. | |
| They've been broken. | |
| They are incapable. | |
| You know what I mean? | |
| It's much more about entering a sphere of power. | |
| And by the way, you know what? | |
| I didn't expect this. | |
| Here's a third mystery for our audience today. | |
| These people all hang out with each other. | |
| Once you reach a certain level of power and fame and wealth, you are hanging out with everybody. | |
| This is why Donald Trump invited the Clintons to his wedding. | |
| This is why you can't barely walk down the street without tripping over a picture of Bill Clinton and Donald Trump hanging out. | |
| There's the infamous golf photo. | |
| What is it? | |
| It's Bloomberg, Clinton, Trump, and I want to say like Billy Crystal or something, you know what I mean? | |
| This is why Ellen DeGeneres was hanging out with George W. Bush. | |
| All of these people, when they reach a certain stratified air, they are brought into a new club. | |
| They're brought up to a new level. | |
| This is why Zucker wanted to hang out with Trump and give him advice. | |
| He saw themselves on the same level. | |
| They're part of an exclusive club. | |
| And I hate to tell you that exclusive clubs are not homogenous in their ideology. | |
| As a matter of fact, once you reach a certain point, you don't really have an ideology anymore. | |
| We talk about this all the time. | |
| It's post-politics. | |
| There's a reason why Mark Zuckerberg is giving Facebook over to right-wing ideologues and misinformation. | |
| It's not that he's right-wing. | |
| He's nothing! | |
| He is a seeker and luster for power and wealth. | |
| That's it. | |
| And you're exactly right. | |
| It's not about passing laws. | |
| It's not about passing legislation. | |
| They'll do it when they can and they'll help their friends make money and themselves make money. | |
| But you're exactly right. | |
| It's much more about passing up to this next level of perceived power. | |
| Yeah, I wish. | |
| This is the culmination of centuries of commercialism of, you know, this is what happens. | |
| I mean, it's not surprising that we've all sort of, you know, everybody. | |
| And I guess there's a few monks in the world that, you know, really don't exist to own anything, you know, and are materialistic. | |
| Well, I will say real fast, just because you brought that up. | |
| I'm doing research on a project right now and I'm in ancient Rome. | |
| Let me tell you something. | |
| Do you know who was going around stealing the most gold? | |
| It was the monks, man. | |
| They were like street gangs at the time. | |
| They were going into temples and stealing treasures. | |
| It's weird that you brought that up. | |
| They were spending it though, right? | |
| Were they spending it or were they hoarding it? | |
| Well, they were either hoarding it or they were handing it over to the church. | |
| But I find it interesting that you brought that up because it is something that is like, you think about that, right? | |
| It's like there are certain people who take like, you know, vows of poverty. | |
| But dude, you know as well as I do, if you look around like at the church and certain, you know, you look in the right places, they're not living impoverished lives. | |
| No. | |
| You know, it's that kayfabe. | |
| They have pools and pool houses and pool boards. | |
| It's the cave fave. | |
| It's the whole thing. | |
| It's what you tell the world and present to the world and what you do when the world isn't looking. | |
| It's that interchange of identities and presentation. | |
| Yes, you know, I'm basically young Goodman Brown. | |
| If you haven't read the Nathaniel Hawthorne story... | |
| Young Goodwin Brown is a guy that lives in the middle, you know, somewhere in whatever, some rural town in, what is it, Pennsylvania or something. | |
| And one night he discovers, when he goes into the woods, that everybody are a bunch of devil worshippers. | |
| The priest, his wife, everybody. | |
| It doesn't matter. | |
| I mean, this is the shortest version of the story. | |
| And then he ends up living, a broken man, living the rest of his days. | |
| You know, would have been a nice life and he was a nice man and he thought people were pious and they actually, you know, were devoted toward religion. | |
| And he found out in the worst way that there were just a whole bunch of Satan worshipers who would sacrifice anybody to the devil. | |
| And, you know, that's the realization we're all making. | |
| I have a couple of things to say to that. | |
| Number one, there are like five to six listeners today who are like, you know what my jam is? | |
| My jam is Western civilized canon, weird literature, you know, cameos while talking about modern politics. | |
| Those five to six people are pumped today. | |
| Like, they're having a hell of an episode here. | |
| Everybody else is just like, what are we talking about? | |
| Second of all, young Goodman Brown going into the woods and finding out that everybody around you is a Satan worshipper might be pre-QAnon QAnon. | |
| I'll just say. | |
| Like, that is, that might be part of it. | |
| Part of the whole thing. | |
| Number three. | |
| You're dead on right. | |
| What we are finding out in this moment, and Donald Trump has made clear, because he's the Rosetta Stone. | |
| He makes it clear that this entire... and he told everybody! | |
| He told everybody in 2016! | |
| He's like, this whole thing is like corrupt and awful, and I'm playing this side, I'm playing that side. | |
| He wasn't lying. | |
| It really is that corrupt. | |
| It really is that screwed up. | |
| There's a reason why it doesn't work, and it's because it's been corrupted. | |
| You have to abandon this left-right, blue-red mindset that you have had. | |
| There are... and do not get me wrong, the Republican Party is completely corrupted and needs to go away. | |
| But this whole system has been corrupted and has been perverted to the point where it doesn't work. | |
| And we have to open our eyes and realize the old stories that we have are stories. | |
| They're lies. | |
| They're not real. | |
| That's a good one. | |
| All right. | |
| Yeah. | |
| And by the way, I have to say, because I because I'm feeling hot about this, because we're actually going to end this podcast and then we're going to go do our bonus episode for Network. | |
| I have to tell you. | |
| If you are interested in hearing some hot takes about today's media and how it got to where it is and how this system got corrupted, you really should become a patron. | |
| Because I'm coming in hot for this episode. | |
| I didn't plan on it. | |
| I was tired, but I'm coming in hot now. | |
| So we're gonna go do that. | |
| You can go become a patron at patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast. | |
| We're gonna be back next week. | |
| We have in store a couple of really good guests. | |
| I'm hoping, knock on wood, that they come through and we have them on the podcast. | |
| I think we're gonna have some really important discussions next week. | |
| And I actually, to make a prediction, and I don't make many predictions, I think next week is going to be absolutely bonkers shit insane. | |
| I really believe that. | |
| I think next week, all the stars are aligning. | |
| Do you feel that a little bit? | |
| I mean, I think starting next week, Yeah. | |
| I think that's right. | |
| - It's about shit bonkers. | |
| And I think every week until the election, we'll continue to get more and more bonkers. | |
| - I think that's right. | |
| - We're gonna have more and more stuff come out. - I think that's right. - And then the CNN, they're all gonna just be so excited. | |
| They're gonna pump everything up and they're gonna just keep raising it and try and get more money, get more ratings. | |
| Yeah, it's gonna be, I wish I could kind of step back and be like, this is a spectacle and let's enjoy it for its spectacle. | |
| But when you're talking about people dying, it makes it unenjoyable. | |
| It would be so much more entertaining if there wasn't so much on the line. | |
| That's the sad truth about it. | |
| But we're going to be back next week. | |
| We're going to continue trying to bring a little bit of truth to this madness. | |
| Just a personal plug, because I mean, I mean, shit, this is my podcast, too. | |
| My book, American Rule, How a Nation Conquered the World but Failed Its People, comes out on Tuesday. | |
| I'm really excited about this. | |
| I'm really proud of it. | |
| I'm going to bug you with it for a couple of weeks. | |
| I'd really love it if you picked it up. | |
| I think it's a good resource in these times. | |
| So, until next time, you can find Nick at Can You Hear Me? | |
| SMH. | |
| You can find me at J.Y. | |
| Sexton. | |
| We'll be back soon. | |
| Hopefully no emergency podcast. | |
| Go ahead and go become a Patron, because you're not going to want to miss this network discussion. | |
| I promise you. | |
| All right, everyone. |