The entire world was thrown into chaos as the news broke that president Donald Trump contracted covid-19. Hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the ramifications of this news, including its veracity, what it means for the debates, the election, and the government itself.
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Hey everybody, this is Jared Yates Sexton of the Buck Creek Podcast.
I just wanted to let everybody know really quickly about a couple things that I've got going on.
Number one, American Rule, How Nation Conquered the World but Failed Its People, is out and about.
If you haven't already, please go out and get yourself a copy.
This is a real look at not just American history, but an explanation of how we've reached this moment of crisis, What's at stake and and a look at how we could possibly escape this terrible terrible gravity that we're in right now Also to that same effect.
I have started up a lecture series based off of American rule That way we can really get deep into the weeds of this stuff and start getting some of the basic knowledge so we can understand what the threat is and How we got to this point, and again, ways to get out.
That is over on my YouTube channel at jsexton3.
That is the American Rule lecture series.
The first episode is out with more to follow.
Go check that out, get you a copy of the book.
Hey everybody, welcome to an early morning edition.
Good morning, Nick.
I'm Jared Sexton hanging out in my bathrobe with a cup of coffee My loyal and wonderful co-host Nick houseman who lives on the west coast and according to my calculations It is a 6:48 a.m. in the morning.
That's right Good good morning, Nick.
How are you?
I We taped a show that was gonna air today with We've now had to scrap that show because, let me check my notes, is there anything going on?
Oh, the President of the United States of America has COVID-19.
Sure.
Which is the biggest bowling ball thrown in the biggest bathtub of water imaginable.
We gotta talk about the fact that many Americans don't believe he even has it.
We have to talk about the irresponsibility of what has occurred here, the ramifications of it.
It really doesn't get bigger than this, really.
It's October 2nd.
Hell of a time for an October surprise.
Well, I have been DMing you just before the news broke.
I'm like, I guess the Melania's war on Christmas is the October surprise with her recording that came out.
And literally, within 30 seconds, it exploded.
But we need to address this notion that he's not telling the truth because there is no version of the Matrix that I can see that would indicate to me that this would be a lie, like to get out of the debates or whatever that is.
There's no way that they would lie about this for that.
Well, OK, so one of the problems is whenever you're with Donald Trump, you say there's no way he would lie about this because there's always a way that he would lie about it.
But I think one of the things that we need to say is this.
A perfect situation for an authoritarian is a society where you never believe anything.
And even when the authoritarian comes down with a life-threatening disease right before an election, a disease that he's underplayed and pretend like it wasn't real, and that his entire presidency can be defined by his bungling with that disease, for the society to be like, no, this helps him, that is the society that a person like Trump thrives in, right?
And by the way, we haven't even talked about the fact The President of the United States having COVID is a national security threat.
That's a massive vulnerability for the country and the fact that he has screwed this up so badly and that we can't even understand as a society and agree as a society that he actually has it.
Like, that's more than enough reason why he can't be president anymore.
I mean, this is so bad and he's fractured reality so bad that we're like, people are sitting here trying to like five dimensional chest this thing and talking about how he'll overcome it and he'll seem stronger.
Like, This is bad for him.
Really, really bad for him.
And bad for the country.
Well, here's what's interesting because it seemed like behind the scenes he understood the severity of this virus because he talked to Woodward about it, you know, on those tapes we heard.
But, you know, if you want to accept the premise that they simply did not treat this thing very seriously at all, and we've seen that even from the masks that nobody wore at the debates, Then it kind of makes sense that they would be so cavalier with all these things.
There's a timeline here that is criminal, basically, because Hope Hicks was already exhibiting symptoms of this thing when she was on Air Force One on the way towards the debate.
How she was ever able to be near him after that or just before that anyway is completely and utterly criminal.
It also tells you, it tells me at least, that this story they tell about how everybody around him in the White House gets tested every day has to be completely.
It's completely and utter bullshit.
It has to be.
And maybe it was true like in March or April, but I feel like I've heard them say that even more recently.
And we know like, you know, I think even Junior, Trump Junior was saying, oh, I'm not wearing my mask.
I was tested earlier today.
I don't have it.
Oh, shit.
at the convention.
So there's a lot of this sort of criminality that's going to creep out here because she never should have been anywhere near him.
And I kind of want to sound mad that he got it because the lack of protocol there is really, really concerning.
And his safety is not a concern for them.
And who knows how far that goes.
Does that also go for how cavalier they might be when he's walking around and there could be threats to his life that way?
I don't know, but that's a tipping point that needed to be addressed, and it wasn't.
It's frightening.
It is a haphazard, sloppy presidency, is what it is.
Like, it just doesn't work, and it's so shambling and such a disaster.
Because, I mean, if you actually look at the timeline, man, it's so gross, Nick.
So they thought that he was exhibiting symptoms on Wednesday.
There were people in the White House who worried.
And then it's not like they put on masks.
It's not like the government put on masks.
The administration, the people who work for Trump, the parties who have to deal with him, who come into contact with him, couriers, secretaries, all of those people were put in danger.
And then Trump went to a fundraiser.
While people were openly asking him if he was exhibiting symptoms of the coronavirus.
And it wasn't just a regular fundraiser.
It was at one of his own clubs, which supposedly is his community.
It's supposedly his group of people that is closest to him, right?
He went in and it wasn't like he just gave a speech.
He like shook hands with these people.
He posed for pictures with these people.
He turned his own club into a super spreader type event like it's it's it's it's shocking and in the fact that he's been so poor with like state secrets and intelligence and dealing with other countries Like, it's just top-down.
It's a shambling disaster of a sloppy-ass presidency and it's just terrible.
But that detail gets worse because what you realize about him going to Bedminster on Thursday was that Hope Hicks was diagnosed and kept hidden in secret on Wednesday.
He knew about this.
He knew about it when he was talking to Hannity last night while he was waiting for his results, which another thing is bullshit because we all know... Why wasn't he tested when she tested positive?
Right.
And because here's the thing.
And by the way, he could have gotten tested.
He got a 15 minute result.
I just did that with my daughter.
It's like so easy.
And you know, boom, it's done.
He was trying to pretend on Hannity, Oh, we're waiting for the results.
That had to have been bullshit because within 15 minutes of him getting that test, they would have known the results.
And maybe they want to do like another one just to confirm, but without question, it would have, he would have already known he was positive on Hannity.
Which I suppose maybe swirls around the notion of like, is he just kind of lying about the whole thing?
But none of this makes sense as it is.
He's got COVID.
He's probably going to be very sick if not lucky not to die because of his age and obesity.
Now, Ronan McDaniel now has it.
Kayleigh McEnany was with Hope Hicks a lot over the last week, and she then briefs, oh, having known that Hope Hicks was sick, McEnany goes in front of the entire press corps for a full briefing, and apparently nobody maybe didn't tell her that that was what happened, although I find that hard to believe.
That might be their cover your ass story.
This is a shit show, and by the way, what's that TV show where everybody dies and like there's one guy who's left to like take over the government?
You know, what's that show?
Isn't that Designated Survivor?
Yeah, like this is what could happen, you know, Jared, and maybe not everyone... Secret Mutation?
Yeah, maybe not everyone dies, but everyone is so sick that they can't do their jobs for several weeks, and that's what we have to deal with now.
This is, this is... I'm angry now.
I'm angry because of how bad this was this handled, and how little... That's how stupid it is.
Yeah.
That's how stupid it is.
Like, okay, so like, let's just be human beings for a second, right?
Not even like political analysts or pundits or anything.
Let's just be human beings.
The amount of people who have been exposed now to a life-threatening disease where people die agonizing lonely deaths, others have lifelong problems because of this thing, right?
God knows how many people have been exposed because of this bullshit presidency.
On top of that, our government has been exposed to it.
Whether you like Republicans or not, The government of the United States of America has now been compromised with a life-threatening disease.
And again, say what you want about Amy Coney Barrett, probably exposed to the coronavirus now.
You know what I mean?
Joe Biden!
I am worried sick about Joe Biden.
I want to go back on the footage and see afterwards how close they ended up getting on that stage when they were like hugging their wives and stuff.
Because remember, six feet radius is sort of like the guideline, but I don't know.
I've seen stuff where it could be... We've already seen.
It gets around.
That's the thing.
Is there an enclosed...
And by the way, we haven't even talked about that.
The people working at the debate, the TV crew, the news crews, all of these people were put in harm's way because this idiot couldn't be trusted with the presidency of the United States of America to take precautions with the disease that he has spoken about at length on tape that he understands. all of these people were put in harm's way because Couldn't be trusted with the presidency of the United States of America to take precautions with a disease that he has spoken about at length on tape that he understands.
Like, this is a giant, and forgive me, put the earmuffs on your kids, this is a giant clusterfuck of a situation.
And by the way, let's do the thing that other people aren't talking about.
We have to talk about the possible scenarios that we're looking at here.
And I think we're in agreement.
I'm glad that we are.
I don't think this helps Trump at all.
I don't.
And first of all, I'm not going to sit here and I'm not going to say really terrible things about the president of the United States.
So be careful, Nick.
We've got to be careful.
We are a podcast of reputable nature.
Wait, now I need my earmuffs.
If something happens with the president before the election, God knows what will happen.
God knows if Mike Pence is going to emerge as some sort of savior, if the President of the United States is incapacitated and put in an ICU unit and intubated Yeah.
We have the 25th Amendment.
God knows what happens there.
On top of that, and let's just take it to the next step.
Can you imagine what the paranoid right is doing right now?
They're either trying to convince themselves that Trump doesn't have it and this is a master plan, or I haven't even looked yet.
I haven't even gotten to my usual haunts.
I guarantee that some of them are saying that Joe Biden dosed him with coronavirus at the debate.
You know what I mean?
Like that this is a democratic ploy to make him sick before the election and there are going to be people who believe that and are going to believe that this is somehow or another a poisoning or an act of war.
Like this thing, the irresponsibility of Donald Trump has so many ramifications as it always does and it's just going, it's going to be such a mess.
A couple things.
QAnon has already had their whole, they were roiled last night about how this is fake.
They think this is some sort of 4D chess like you mentioned, which is insane.
They're already insane.
This is just even more insane.
That's scary.
Luckily the QAnon people don't have the guns generally and aren't doing the Proud Boys shit.
But I shudder to think what they're going to go through with this because again, They're unquestionably the ones who think, oh, this was planted and Biden gave it to them or whatever.
But I've said this before during the impeachment process, where I had said the Republicans would have been really smart to impeach the guy, get Pence in there, and Pence would probably win this election.
Now that was back in February or whatever, or January during the impeachment process.
I don't know, man.
If Pence became the guy who was running, I think he's got a much better shot than Trump.
And it's already kind of close and weird anyway.
So this is the kind of thing that would ultimately could get the White House back in the Republicans' hands.
I mean, we talked about it before on the podcast.
Pence has done a masterful job of just sort of standing in the background and avoiding all of the mud being thrown around.
Like he has it's really kind of been a masterclass of how to be close to power without taking the consequence of power.
You know, like there have been times I've trotted him out in order to push the line about COVID and stuff like that.
But for the most part, Mike Pence has not done wrong to traditional Republicans.
So there could be a possibility that we could be tiptoeing up to an election where, oh God, I didn't even consider this until now, where you have an incapacitated President Trump.
So you get all of his support in name only, without the consequences of what he's done, plus the bolstering of traditional Republicans who are voting for Mike Pence.
Which is actually, now that we're talking about it, the best case scenario for the Republican Party.
At that point you're actually working like five different angles all at once and somehow or another they interconnect.
And by the way, that's not to say that I think that he doesn't have it.
I'm not going down that rabbit hole.
But I'm telling you that that thought just crossed my mind and the hair on the back of my neck just stood up.
Wait a minute.
Wait, let's play that one out for a second.
Do you think, I mean, this is so stupid, but let's just, I don't know, it's early.
It's early!
It's 7am now.
Are you saying he polls like a Boris Johnson after the election, and like, hey, I'm fine again, alright, we won the election, I'm back in power, like, that, that could, that can't be it, can it?
No, I don't think so.
I don't think that this is a... I mean, what you're talking about is like a country revival preacher, right?
Who comes up on stage and is like, I've been struck lame, and then all of a sudden does a somersault and is like, who wants to give me some money?
Like, I don't think that's what's going on.
Right.
But I do think that there is a possibility here that you could see the Republican Party, because they have no other strategy available at this point.
What else do you do?
I mean, like the coronavirus isn't just real, the President of the United States has, you know, cocked it all up, and now all the way around, like, what do you do?
The only thing you can argue at this point is we have the better VP, so to speak.
That would be their argument, right?
Bring all of the evangelicals and traditional Republicans home to roost.
This is no time to switch horses in midstream, right?
And this is a national emergency.
We shouldn't do this.
I think there are a lot of avenues here that they're going to push that are different than him pretending to have.
Right, but I think that scenario is basically what we're saying is if Trump does not survive this, it sounds like, right?
And remember, what you mentioned about the 25th Amendment, if you're intubated, you can't speak, you're probably sedated, that's it.
Yeah, he's not president anymore.
And obviously, who knows what happens after that?
Now, just for full disclosure, for more information that's coming in piecemeal, Trump has symptoms.
He was said to be tired at his event in Bedminster.
You know, Bedminster and I think sweaty.
I know he fell asleep on the plane, is what someone else was saying, on Air Force One, which I guess must be a rare thing for him.
I sleep on planes all the time.
That shouldn't be reported, you know, for me.
But, you know, I guess... You're also not all coked up on Diet Coke all day.
Yeah, well, or whatever it is he's, you know, hopped up on.
So that's not working.
Yeah.
So, so this seems pretty clear, you know, I, you know, and again, are they finally going to acknowledge that he's obese and that he's not like the perfect weight and the perfect size and the perfect, you know, heart and all that stuff.
I mean, this is the time for Ronnie Jackson to finally come out and say, uh, you know, I was just kidding about my, uh, my evaluation of his health.
Um, I, I have to tell you, I, so real fast, cause we like to give historical context on this podcast.
Um, For those who don't know, Woodrow Wilson, after World War I, when he was trying to get the League of Nations passed in America and he was fighting that battle, he suffered a massive number of strokes that debilitated him, just absolutely destroyed him.
While he was recuperating, his wife illegally ran the government.
I mean, just was the functioning president of the United States.
There was a small, like, A coup by Woodrow Wilson's closest advisors, his doctors, and his wife.
And his wife became the de facto president of the United States of America.
Never elected, never understood, never revealed.
I have to say, if we're going to get in, like, Gonzo territory, like, you can't go 25th Amendment on this president before the election.
That just wouldn't work.
There's no way that could possibly work.
If we have a situation where this president is quarantined for the next month and doesn't get in front of any cameras, maybe some tweets come out that are pretty well worded and pretty well pointed.
We're going to be looking at conspiracy theories that we have a president who's incapacitated and, you know, is basically a vote in tribute candidate at that point.
The stuff we're talking about, 25th Amendment, moving on, moving to Pence, that stuff would all take place after an election, but the election would be a referendum on this idea that pence would probably take over for trump and you would be voting for the legacy of trump and you get the best of all worlds in that case which is just really gross but yeah and by the way if if they're saying he's showing mild symptoms you have to wonder what he really is feeling right now right
because that there now we can't really trust so we can get as far as trusting that he does have it and that makes sense to me because remember markets go into collapse when these things happen i I, by the way, I checked the Dow Jones and it looked like it hadn't really moved, which is really shocking to me because I heard some of the foreign markets had gone down overnight.
And, you know, you have to imagine there's going to be a big stock market adjustment on this one.
But, you know, that is a really interesting thing.
Are we really going to get the true, you know, what he really is, what his symptoms really are?
Like, I would probably Say no, you know if they are as bad as one would might think they might you know Try and shine it on now.
The one thing is we wouldn't see him This is like the Kim Jong-un thing where he disappears for a while and everyone wonders This is much more of a thing because Trump disappearing for a week straight Which would speak so many volumes because he's never not on camera for more than a day Or tweeting.
I can't believe we have to live like this.
Let me just have that moment in all of this.
Like, there's no reason that a society has to function like this.
That we have to sit around being like, does the president have this disease?
Does he not have the disease?
What's it mean for him?
Is this a master plan?
Oh, is he going to be honest about his symptoms?
Oh, is he going to, you know, level with us about what's going on?
Is this party going to use it to maintain control or consolidate power?
Like, this is ridiculous.
Like, this is no way to live.
I don't know about you.
Well, no, you didn't because you saw this happen in real time, right?
Like, you saw when this was announced, and I was asleep.
I was trying to wake you up.
Sorry.
I was exhausted.
I watched this Melania tape that got rolled out, right?
Which, by the way, now feels like, what, three, four months ago that that came out?
And I was just watching that and it was like one thing after another.
And I was like, man, I hate this.
I hate this presidency.
I hate this administration.
I hate having to feel like this all the time.
It's totally unnecessary.
The country is taking on the tone and the tenor of Donald Trump and it's exhausting.
It's exhausting and demoralizing and, and, and just so frustrating as hell.
And so like I woke up and, and to find this, man, I want off this merry-go-round.
You know what I mean?
Like, we don't need this.
Like, we have to find... And this is the argument I keep making.
Joe Biden is not a perfect candidate for president.
Joe Biden has a lot of problems and a lot of things that he's done in his history that I have real issues with.
He wasn't ever my candidate.
But I have to tell you, we have to get off this merry-go-round.
We have to get away from this point where we can't even trust that the President of the United States is telling the truth about having a life-threatening disease, which is a national security threat.
It is a global security threat.
And like you just said, It could tank our markets.
Like, the next thing you know, there could be a panic, and who knows what the hell could possibly happen.
I mean, it is not safe or sane to have somebody like this in the office.
Right.
And just getting back to the anger I had when we started, it's all, this could have been avoided.
That's the thing.
This could have all been avoided.
They could have just practiced proper protocols, you know, and with distancing and masks.
And, you know, I mean, listen, I can't get out of my mind.
It was hard for me to go to sleep last night because I'm starting to feel symptoms just by, you know, psychosomatic listening to all this stuff happening.
But, you know, I can't get out of my mind that, like, Joe Biden was exposed and could get it.
And, you know, and then what happens there?
You know, I don't even want to go there.
It's not worth it until we have to worry about that.
This is the presidency.
This is what he's thrown us into by such incompetence.
This is the kind of thing that you should be impeached for, right?
Yes.
You should get impeached for this.
Can you imagine the contact tracing they're going to have to try and deal with now?
Which they've never ever done.
We've never had that in this country really at all in any kind of a normal way.
But at least with him and what he did now, they have to do that, right?
They're going to have to go to everybody who's at Bedminster, everybody who works at Bedminster, everybody who's at the debates.
You know, it's coming in now as you look on Twitter, who's getting tested.
Amy Coney Barrett has been tested negative today for COVID-19.
But you have to remember the other thing is you have several, like a week or two of needing to be tested and be quarantined.
By the way, quarantine is not what Trump is in.
He's in isolation now.
Quarantine is when you don't have it and you have to stay away from everybody.
He's in isolation and apparently they're not even talking about her being quarantined, which she should definitely be, to eliminate a risk of infecting anybody else maybe.
I'm going to go get a test.
I wasn't going to get one.
I haven't been anywhere.
I haven't seen anybody.
I'm probably going to go get one now just because I'm worried that somehow I've gotten it.
Is this part of the podcast where you suddenly reveal near the end that you're at a fundraiser hanging out with a candidate and taking pictures?
Is that what this is?
No, I thought I was going to say this is where I reveal I've been on the hydroxychloroquine this whole time.
Which, by the way, you know, you have to laugh or else you cry.
It's so terrible.
You know, I have said this before.
The problem is we've started treating the American presidency like it's a mascot.
Right?
Like it's the guy who gets out front and he's like, hey, America's great, which is what Donald Trump has turned it into.
There's a reason why Donald Trump is president.
It's supposed to be someone who exercises good judgment and caution and leadership.
He's failed in every regard.
And this, this test right now, and the way that it's happened and the way that he's responded to it and the way that he's behaved, not only to mention, by the way, we would be remiss if we didn't mention the fact.
That this man lied about the pandemic, what he knew about it, what he thought about it.
He used it for politics.
He made sure that people in blue states, probably even people who voted for him, most assuredly people who voted for him, died because he wanted to score political points with it, which by the way is genocide.
He's also put us in a state of disbelief and unreality where Our, you know, our neighbors and our community members, some of them don't wear masks.
Some of them think we're in the middle of a pandemic.
He's given rise to massive conspiracy theories, which put our national security at risk.
All of this stuff adds up to this.
This man should never have been able to walk into the White House as a visitor, much less to be president of the United States.
It is an absolute, total, repulsive failure of an administration and a presidency.
Are you old enough to remember that Donald Trump mocked Hillary exactly four years ago today for having pneumonia?
He's sitting there imitating her, making fun of her, how she got pneumonia, so it's almost like, alright, hey, we should be respectful here and be concerned.
And here's a guy who was just making fun of her for getting a little dizzy having pneumonia on a hot day, having to stand outside for a long, long time.
Uh, now the other thing we just mentioned is, you know, cause I'm still stuck on like, well, how severe is this?
We're never going to know, right?
They're never going to tell us what the real issue is or, you know, and if he gets through it, it'll just be like, Oh, I was fine.
I had a little cold.
Uh, but I guess the only way we're going to know how bad it will be or it is, is like how long we don't see him appear.
The more days we don't hear or see from him is the more severe it is.
That's the only way we're going to have to measure this.
We're not going to be able to believe the White House doctor after the Ronny Jackson incident.
We're never going to be able to really believe what they're saying.
Um, you could be pretty sick, you could be, you know, whatever, and still be tweeting, so he could be sending out tweets, but then again, somebody else could be tweeting out for him, so we're not going to know that way.
It has to be visual.
Um, this is sad, but how could we be talking about this?
What kind of a country do we live in where we have to discuss whether or not the president, we don't know how sick he is or not?
Like, that's the, that's the base.
It's the bare minimum of what we need to be, is we need to know, you know, listen, when, when Reagan had blood on his stool, that was like headlines for two weeks.
You know, and then actually that became cancer, right?
Isn't that what he ended up having?
No, did Reagan have cancer?
I can't remember.
I remember there being a brief little thing like that.
But I do remember blood on the stool, just because it was like, I think I had to ask what stool was, because that was a weird way of saying shit.
But nonetheless, back when I was in whatever that was, in grade school.
Hard-hitting podcasting, everyone.
Good morning!
So, but the point being that it was a memorable thing where people really, like, there had to be updates, and it was very official, and all those things, and so here we are.
But meanwhile, Reagan had dementia for the last four years of his presidency, and no one knew about that either, so who knows?
This is no way for a society to operate.
That's the whole point of this.
This is.
And by the way, like, you know, we we talked about it on the podcast where, you know, we've now it's now lost to the winds of time.
Nick, it's just out there floating around in the ether because it's totally irrelevant now.
But, you know, earlier this week, this president of the United States, who nobody can now trust, he now has a life threatening disease.
He was talking to white supremacist groups to get ready to enact violence on Americans.
He was promising not to accept the results of a free and fair election and actually was undermining the entire idea of it being a free and fair election.
This is no way for a society to operate.
It doesn't have to be like this.
I'm old enough to remember when it didn't work this way there were problems and America was sick and there were issues but this this is late-stage batshit crazy like This just it can't work like this and any kind of national security threat think about that This is the president getting a disease think about there being like an actual crisis.
Yeah, you know what I mean?
There's no I mean, the pandemic showed us that as well, but imagine there being some sort of a standoff or an escalation.
We would have no idea, or a major event.
We would have no idea what was actually going on.
This is unacceptable.
It can't continue.
Well, North Korea, every presidential election does something.
They will.
They're going to do something provocative, testing long-range missiles or something like that.
It's almost a guarantee and now that said because it's a guarantee we know what that may not throw us into some you know it's a chaos but it's certainly nice to know that you have a president who can stand up and walk around and you know deal with that versus what we have now you know and then these results these reports oh he's working from the West Wing and the residents you know he's everything's mild whatever I don't know you know again it's just it all it this is like you know the 13 days in September?
What's the 14th?
I believe that's right, yeah.
What is it?
Is it May?
No, wait, when was the Cuban Missile Crisis?
It's so early!
Oh, October!
Oh, it was October.
Yeah, that was in October.
I thought you were talking about the movie.
Well, the movie... October, anyway, yes.
Yeah.
OK.
I was like, I lost track of what we were talking about there because there's a really good movie.
I want to say it's like Seven Days in May, which is a really good movie about a coup.
I would just tell people this.
I think we're going to learn a lot today about what the next couple of weeks are going to look like, how Trump is going to navigate it.
I mean, I assume he's going to be on Twitter more.
I mean, you know what I mean?
Like he's not in the office.
I mean, he's going to be watching TV.
He's going to be on Twitter.
We're also going to watch the possibility that the paranoid right is again going to call this a campaign, a possible coup type situation.
We could be watching a campaign that's going to move towards what's called a waving the bloody shirt.
Which is the fact that it's like, look what they did to our guy.
Look what they did to Trump.
They'll do it to you.
They're coming for you.
They're coming for us.
And there's a possibility the tensions might rise up.
Because here's the problem in a situation like this.
When there's a vacuum, people rise up and fill the vacuum.
So in this case, is Mike Pence going to show up?
No.
Mike Pence is about standing in the back of the room.
You know what I mean?
Like, he's not a person to get out in front and be a leader.
So, does that mean Republicans are going to lead on this thing?
Hell no!
They can't be bothered to talk about Trump.
They want to go in the other room.
They haven't heard anything.
That's the reason why you have paramilitary groups.
That's the reason why you have extremists who suddenly have come up to the forefront and determined the national conversation.
We could be looking at weeks of turmoil and tension and attacks.
I mean, that's where this could possibly go.
It depends on how they handle this.
If it was a competent leader, which it's not, and we wouldn't have this situation if it was a competent leader, we wouldn't be looking at the possibility.
This is bad.
Like, this is really, really, really, really bad, and somebody needs to show up and fill the vacuum before other people do.
Right, and where it really gets bad, like if Pence gets it, and then now we're really, you know, getting down to, like, well, who's in charge if they're both incapacitated, then that would be Nancy Pelosi, I guess.
Pence was tested apparently and did not have it, which is a little bit hard to believe because I believe he was... actually they never traveled together so Pence and Trump would not be on the same plane.
Pence was at the debate, right?
I can't picture him there.
But, you know, it's safe to say that Pence and Trump have interacted, you know, a few times since, you know, Saturday, Sunday.
Because remember, you know, just because he's diagnosed yesterday, last night, he was probably had it and could be spreading it, you know, from Saturday, Friday, the night of the week before.
So, you know, and then it might take a few days, you know, for Pence to test positive.
So this, I'm telling you, this is the...
What a mess.
What an absolute mess.
this could easily turn into something like that.
And not that they die, but they could just be so sick they can't do their jobs for a while, right?
And then, you know, it's the same difference.
What an absolute mess.
I really hope we can get through this weekend without having to tape an emergency podcast.
But it kind of feels like maybe we'll have three of them.
You know what I mean?
Like maybe this will go out this morning.
Maybe we'll have one in the afternoon.
Maybe we'll have one Saturday morning.
You know, it just might be a permanent round-the-clock thing.
We might just become a 24-hour news corporation.
Any reason to hang out with you, Jared, is fine with me.
Well, I'm gonna go get my refill of coffee.
I have a feeling this might be a two-pot day.
This might be a two-pot coffee day.
I might be vibrating through walls later.
I'm out.
I don't have anything to do today.
I'm waiting for the game tonight.
So I'm free.
So I'll be staring at this all day long.
If you need us, we're going to be absorbing this, reacting to this, like you, trying to keep up with this thing.
I feel like I am like a stray dog trying to keep up with a train here.
Well, we need our Discord for the Patreon people set up soon.
So maybe that's already getting happening.
So if you're not with us on Patreon, Head over there, patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
Join the conversation.
Yeah, I have a wild feeling we're going to be doing some content on this not before too long.
Oh my god.
Happy Friday, everyone.
Yeah, nice robe.
I need a robe.
We need muckrakepodcast robes.
I'll tell you the truth, and here's the thing.
Hard-hitting podcast.
I'll be honest with you for just one second.
I never thought I would be the flannel robe type.
Changed my life.
I'm just letting people know.
It's a decision that maybe you don't realize that you need.
And once you make it, there's really no looking back.
Really no looking back.
I don't own a robe.
I actually need to own one first.
You should look into that.
And by the way, this isn't like a paid read.
It's not like we have an advertisement.
We're handing out knowledge for life.
That's what we're doing.
Yes, absolutely right.
But if anybody wants to sponsor and extend some robe coverage, we'll wear them.
So if you are hanging out in your flannel robe, if you are part of flannel robe culture and you're sitting there with your coffee, You need to find out what Nick and I are doing during all of this madness.
You can find Nick over at Can You Hear Me?
SMH.
You can find me at J.Y.
Sexton.
Strap in, everyone.
Strap in.
Because this thing just keeps getting weirder and weirder and weirder.
