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Oct. 9, 2020 - The Muckrake Political Podcast

45:21

Governor Who Survives Terrorist Plot Attacked By Republicans

The FBI foiled a white terror plot in Michigan to kidnap and possibly execute the governor, leading Nick Hauselman and Jared Yates Sexton to discuss the problem of white supremacy, the Right's paranoid, radicalizing alternate reality, and the damage it's caused the country. Visit patreon.com/muckrakepodcast for even more great content. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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	If people want to play that game, we could look into why an evangelical Christian like Mike Pence wants to be on a ticket with a president caught with a porn star, or how he feels about the immigration policy that he called unconstitutional before he decided to team up with Donald Trump.
	If folks want to play that game, we could do it all night.
	We have a choice between a leader who is going to have his minions attack people when they are being targeted by domestic terror groups and we have a leader who calls to see how you're doing to check in and to see what they can do to help and to be supportive.
	And it tells you everything you need to know about the character of the two people on this ballot that we have to choose from in a few weeks.
	Hey everybody, welcome to the Muckery Podcast.
	I'm J.D.
	H. Sexton.
	As always, I'm here with Nick Halseman.
	Luckily, I've got Nick with me because there's a lot to go over and it just never, ever, ever possibly ends.
	And this stupid merry-go-round continues to go around.
	So here we are.
	We have to start with the...
	The revelation today that multiple members of a white supremacist militia in Michigan have been arrested for planning the kidnapping of the governor of Michigan.
	They plan to take Whitmer.
	They plan to ferry her to Wisconsin, by the way, which is just a real matter of states' rights, if you ask me, where they were going to try her for treason and, I would have to assume, Nick, presumably execute her.
	This was seen as a real pressing threat.
	White supremacist terrorism continues to be an actual problem in this country that no one actually wants to talk about.
	And on top of it, it's all about coronavirus, it's all about Republican radicalization, Trump telling people to liberate Michigan.
	How about it?
	I mean, there were talks of they were going to try and blow up a bridge near the house to thwart authorities that would come in to rescue her.
	I mean, I don't I really want to find out ultimately how competent these people really were, because it does sound a little bit like a Coen Brothers movie where everything would just go wrong.
	But by the way, in a Coen Brothers movie, she gets killed because they completely bungle whatever this is supposed to be.
	But it does sound like that.
	And when you look at the pictures of these guys, I swear it was like photoshopping the same face four times in a mugshot.
	And it's not surprising that they look the same and they are the same people.
	And it really is concerning because now, if you notice, the Republicans are trying to attack Whitmer for her response, as if, how dare you be angry that a president encouraged people to kidnap you, basically.
	It's really, really troubling, and I think it's safe to say that Michigan, it's not surprising that it's in Michigan of all places.
	No, and Michigan has been a hotbed of militia activity, which by the way is just a media code word for white terrorism, right?
	It hides it behind the Constitution, this idea of a well-regulated militia or whatever bullshit they want to hide behind.
	It's white terrorism, and this is the most pressing thing in America, and by the way, has been for decades.
	Matter of fact, if you even want to get crazy, you could say centuries, and go back to the Confederate States of America, and call that a white terrorist organization, which I would.
	I would go ahead and call that a white terrorist nation threat.
	Yeah, Michigan's had this problem for forever.
	It was not a surprise whatsoever that the reopen protests began in Michigan, which of course Betsy DeVos and that entire cabal of wealthy Republican donors and power brokers created this movement to try and reopen the country in order to get their businesses running again and help their own private bank accounts.
	And what did they do?
	What did they do?
	What did Donald Trump do?
	What did the Republican Party do?
	What does the NRA do?
	They continue to flirt with fascism and white terrorism, and it always leads to these types of situations where people either get murdered or these plots have to be foiled before they blow something up and kill somebody.
	And thank goodness they did that, and thank goodness the FBI is still on top of it, and not, I guess, so demoralized by what Trump has done to them that they aren't as effective in their jobs.
	But that's the point, is that these people tend to be a little bit not great at what they're trying to do, and easily found out.
	They were posting shit online, and they've been monitoring this group for a while.
	So it wasn't necessarily hard for them to sort of infiltrate.
	I'm just glad they got there before they did anything terrible.
	Although, I have to imagine, this wouldn't have worked.
	I mean, I don't know what they would have thought.
	She's got a security detail.
	And also, let's not shit on everybody in Michigan because, remember, they elected her, right?
	There's a lot of people in Michigan who are sane people, who are not like these white supremacy, you know, cosplay people.
	So, you know, I would imagine that most of the state actually understands the importance of what she needs to do, which is shutting down the state in terms of protecting them and their from COVID.
	So that's the one thing I wanted to make clear, because I feel like we don't want to lump Michigan in as like just, you know, like Mississippi or anything.
	The poor Mississippians!
	These poor Mississippians just hanging out at home listening to the Muckrake podcast and all of a sudden one of their favorite co-hosts and all podcasting shits all over them.
	I will say this that Michigan has a special level of paranoia to it.
	I've had conversations with people in Michigan and I'm talking like really rational sensible people that I thought this would never happen Who in the middle of the conversation would talk about defending their water and their lakes and their rivers and, you know, being willing to die to protect that water.
	And I was like, ooh, that took a turn real fast.
	So Michigan has an interesting culture, but I will say this.
	These people are the worst white terrorists, right?
	These are the ones who are just like, they're on Facebook openly posting about it.
	They don't even try and hide this thing.
	Like, and by the way, I don't want people to stay awake at night.
	The FBI is not very good at this stuff.
	Like, they catch the people who float up near the surface.
	The people who, like, send up a signal and they're like, look at this.
	Because I have to tell you, the FBI has missed out on a lot of attacks simply because maybe they even knew something was going on.
	Like, um, God, what was that thing in 2001, Nick?
	It was getting colder outside.
	I think it was a Tuesday.
	It'll come to me later on.
	But the whole point of this is, this group is like Junior Varsity C Team.
	Is who this group was.
	And who knows?
	Like you said, maybe even like something could have happened.
	Like something could have ended up going wrong.
	Terribly, terribly wrong.
	And somebody could have got hurt or gotten killed.
	I mean, they were on their way to pick up explosives.
	Like, that's when they got picked up.
	The problem is that this JVC team represents a group of people that many of them are good at what they do.
	Many of them are ex-military.
	Many of them are ex-law enforcement.
	Many of them are well-trained terrorist cells.
	A lot of them are well-connected.
	A lot of them have arsenals.
	A lot of them have weapons training and all of these backgrounds that make them more effective.
	A lot of them are linked up to groups around the world that share information, they coordinate actions, they're part of a neofascistic group.
	It doesn't help, of course, that the President of the United States Not only refuses to distance himself from these people, but he sends out signals to them constantly.
	I'm sorry, but liberate Michigan, liberate Virginia, liberate any of these states.
	These were open calls for violence, and Donald Trump and the Republican Party and the NRA, these are people who profit off of these people, but they also radicalize them.
	They created a situation where Whitmer could have been murdered, and people serving around Whitmer and protecting her could have been murdered.
	Right and we also know that the local congressmen of Michigan were also threatened at the time at the Capitol building where they had all these guys with their guns on balconies looking down at them and there were reports that some of the Official had to put on, you know, bulletproof vests and stuff like that.
	So, this is not cosplay anymore.
	This is serious stuff.
	And what kind of wraps my head around this, or what I'm trying to wrap my head around is, like, how did we get to this place?
	How did we get to a position where, you know, people were protecting public health means it's a complete violation of constitutional rights?
	And because it doesn't feel like it's always been that way.
	And it feels like we must have had moments in our history where when the government came in to protect the public over a pandemic, for instance, we listened.
	And so I did a little deep research into this.
	And it turns out, like certainly in the very beginning of the country, In the, you know, after 1776.
	This happened all the time.
	There was every kind of disease attacking these cities, whatever you want to call them at that point.
	And they were having lockdowns left and right.
	And it was not a problem at all for anybody to listen to it because they were, your average life expectancy was like 25 years old there.
	So they got it.
	Like we have to keep a dengue fever out of here.
	And it kind of progressed that way for a while.
	Then in the 1800s at some point it became much more of a local thing, which made sense because let the local governments control this.
	They know what's happening on the ground.
	But again, people would listen.
	It wasn't an issue.
	They're like, OK, we're going to social distance.
	That was a big one.
	And I think the last one we really had was the Spanish flu.
	A long enough time has passed where we don't have any connection to the history of that civic duty.
	So I suppose 100 years of non-civic duty and feelings have contributed to this mindset where you are an affront to my civil liberties basically because you need to wear a mask and social distance and not go into stores.
	So here's the thing about all of those situations that you just talked about.
	I assume in all of those situations there was some town idiot out ringing a bell on the corner and he's like, ye olde smallpox!
	It's a plot against us!
	And like screaming about demons in the woods and people being possessed.
	I saw Goody Brown with the devil underneath an elm tree or whatever.
	I assume there were some people screaming that at the time.
	The problem is that there wasn't like a tightly knit group that ran throughout the entire United States where one crier went to another crier who went to another crier.
	Until it was like, you know, a Fox affiliate.
	Like, this entire situation is based on the fact that the American right has been living in a paranoid alternate reality for decades now.
	And it's been living in that.
	So, for a while, it was absolutely a fear of, like, Soviet infiltration, right?
	They were totally afraid of that.
	But they also used that as a way to legitimize white supremacist terrorism.
	Right?
	To go around lynching people, murdering people, burning down neighborhoods in African-American towns and neighborhoods.
	And then, of course, it grows and it grows and grows until we've reached a point where we have 24-hour news networks and online websites that do nothing but tell people that there is a secret clandestine conspiracy against everyone.
	And as a result, people are living in this alternate reality where masks either don't work or they make it worse.
	You know what I mean?
	And these shutdown orders are about... Who knows what these people are saying the shutdowns are?
	They're either trying to wreck the economy to hurt Donald Trump or I assume there's some sort of New World Order, Deep State Plan that needs everybody out of the streets probably to put up 5G towers and you know cause us all to go sterile or become gay or whatever it is Alex Jones is screaming about while ripping his shirt off.
	The entire situation has changed because there is a profit to be made off of this alternate reality.
	There are elections to win out of this reality.
	But the people who are using this to profit and gain power, they're sitting at home with guards.
	Do you know what I mean?
	Like, they're sitting in cushy neighborhoods away from these morons.
	And these morons are being turned and radicalized left and right.
	And there's a reason why white terrorism is the biggest threat.
	It's because the right has continued to stoke the racial paranoia to the detriment of not just our politics and culture, but now our health.
	It's a hell of a thing.
	So it sounds like you want to trace it like the Venn diagram here would overlap racists with it's not libertarian but it's the the motivation to stand up to the government for like this tyrannical you know I would say sovereign citizens it would be like the people who believe that the government has no right to actually exist yeah I mean and if it does If it does exist, it should simply be there to protect our liberties.
	It's a very self-focused thing, which is what white supremacy is, right?
	It's like everybody else in the world can suffer as long as I get mine, which is a lot what the sovereign citizen type of thing is all about.
	It's the idea that there should not be such things as laws and governments.
	I mean, it's a challenge against shared society, which is what a lot of these anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers, all those people are about in the first place.
	It's about, I don't want to be put at risk, and so everybody else has to be put at risk.
	It's a very selfish Venn diagram.
	Okay, so I think we're getting somewhere here with it.
	It's selfish.
	It is a lack of sense of community, basically, where... I'm curious, what would they do if they get pulled over?
	I mean, I imagine they're gonna listen, you know, they'll pull their car over, the flashing lights are behind them, right?
	Maybe it has to be a white cop?
	I don't know how that works.
	I mean, do they... if the fire department comes and says, like, get the hell out of here, we gotta put the fire out, like, they're gonna listen to firemen, right?
	Like, I wonder.
	I, you know, first of all, like, the hypocrisies of all of this, they never cease.
	They just don't.
	Like, in order to live in a society, I think all of us have to take on hypocritical viewpoints every now and then, you know?
	We have to go against our own principles.
	Which I think a lot of these people are totally about.
	They're much more ideological than they are in practice.
	But I have to tell you, the question about whether or not, what they do when they get pulled over, A lot of these people are cops and a lot of these people are in tight with the cops because the idea behind it is that my rule of law should rule over your idea of law.
	And as a result, I'm in really tight with law enforcement because we're all about these hierarchical structures.
	So, you know, a lot of these people, I would have to assume, and by the way, we're not going to dive deep into it as a culture.
	We're not going to talk about these guys who got caught.
	We're not going to have big stories talking about who they are, what they are in their community, what radicalized them, none of that.
	Because our media and Americans in general don't like to talk about white supremacy.
	And they don't like to talk about white terrorism because it really unravels the idea about American exceptionalism.
	But if you got that story, if you got that deep dive, I would assume a lot of them are, you know, volunteer firefighters or something.
	Or they are friends with the police, or have been part of a police, or have worked as security guards.
	Like that mindset is inborn in a lot of these people.
	Is it safe to say that their mindset also believes that their version of government is the best version, and that needs to be how government needs to be run, and we will do anything we can to achieve the version of a government that they have in their brains, right?
	That's safe to say that that's probably where they exist, right?
	Well, so, let's take these guys to their logical end point, right?
	Like, they wanted to cause a civil war.
	And at the end of the day, it wasn't just about Whitmer, but all these groups have one idea in mind.
	The idea in mind is that through their actions, they will destabilize America.
	This is the reason it was like the emergency podcast that we did.
	We're white supremacists.
	And by the way, we were on that and nobody has given us the dap for that, but we'll take it.
	It's fine.
	The white supremacists were going into these protests and causing riots and causing a destabilizing, like sort of a racial unrest.
	Well, what they wanted to do is they wanted to lead to a civil war.
	They wanted to destabilize the system so that they could come out of the shadows and take over the system and create their own government.
	Right?
	Their idea is that other people have screwed things- and by the way, this is what fascism is, right?
	It's the idea that other people had a shot, and democracy had a shot, and it failed so badly that you need me to come in, take over, and build something up.
	So these people, at their logical extremes, it's not just that they have that fantasy of being like, you know, an apocalyptic warrior or something, but they also, at their logical endpoint, they truly believe that they would run things better.
	And that their type of government is inherently and intrinsically better than anything that we've got.
	Exactly.
	Now it sounds awfully familiar to me, Jared, when you frame it that way.
	It sounds awfully familiar to, um, what are they called?
	Republicans.
	Yes.
	The Republican platform basically is built on this.
	Whereas it's completely messed up.
	We have to fix it.
	There's only one way to run the government.
	We know how to do it.
	You guys are too stupid to understand this.
	So by any means necessary, we're allowed.
	We are privileged or allowed to be able to do anything we can to get to this shining city on a hill thing.
	And I think it directly connects to what Mike Lee was talking about in his tweets earlier today.
	Which by the way, so those of you who might not have seen it, I was tweeting about this earlier.
	So Mike Lee during the debate last night was listening.
	Apparently Kamala Harris said democracy at some point and Mike Lee just had a problem with the word democracy and he was like, we are not a democracy.
	And by the way, that was enough, because we're technically a republic.
	He's not wrong.
	And by the way, if you haven't yet, just to let everyone know, the second episode of my American Rule lecture series dropped today, in which I talked about how America was founded as a republic because of white supremacist aristocracy.
	So check that out if you haven't already.
	Mike Lee says we're not a democracy, which he's right.
	He then went on to say, what did he say, Nick?
	How did he say it?
	Here's the actual, ready for the quote?
	He says, democracy isn't the objective, semi-colon.
	Hey, semicolon.
	Hey, that's an interesting semicolon, isn't it?
	It is.
	I mean, it does a lot.
	Yeah, it's a pregnant pause there.
	Liberty, peace, and pros... well, he wrote prospifity, which I can't imagine who gets a prospifity, because it must be the next level.
	Well, by the way, the Republican Party can't run an economy, so maybe it is prospifity.
	Yes.
	Maybe that's something different.
	Sure, but liberty, peace, and I'm assuming prosperity are.
	We want the human condition to flourish Flourish.
	Flourish.
	Whatever that word is.
	Ranked democracy can thwart that.
	And I have an... Have you heard of the term ranked democracy before?
	No, I sat around with it.
	I thought that it meant, like, stink.
	Like something that was, like, something that was, like, so... Maybe I'm wrong, but I've never heard of that term before.
	To me, it's like they're sitting on their yachts in the country club and, you know, Muffy, would you pass me a... Look at this rank democracy!
	Mike Lee and them, they're not there.
	They're actually, like, on a pontoon boat.
	Is what they're on.
	They're on a very, very fancy...
	So, but I'm thinking that he's thinking rank democracy like we are like sheep heading over the cliff because we all fall in line, you know, with a rank, you know, like a low rank in the army.
	That was sort of what I'm thinking he meant.
	But again, I've called this, we've talked about this before, they don't want democracy because the will of the people clearly dictates things like Roe v. Wade, right?
	The will of the people clearly wants Roe v. Wade to be the law of the land.
	And they don't care.
	That's what the thing is crazy about this.
	They have control over the government and even though the fact that they represent so far fewer than 50% of the people in the country and they don't care and again it's just like they have the same objectives as these people in Michigan where they will do anything they can by all means necessary because they're so convinced that You know, anytime a Democrat's run something, it's gone in the ground.
	It's terrible.
	It's a catastrophe.
	And whenever we've done it, whenever the Republicans have done it, it's been on the way to Shangri-La and heaven on earth.
	And that's the stakes they've raised it to.
	And here's where we are.
	That's, I mean, you can't see that that Venn diagram overlaps quite a bit.
	And that's why it's so dangerous in this country.
	Why I'm so worried about the election.
	What's in the center of that Venn diagram?
	Can we just take a second?
	Maybe a little Jeopardy music?
	Where white terrorism...
	And the Republican Party, who do not believe in democracy, what's in the center there?
	What is it?
	It's, it's, wait a second, I'm looking at it closer.
	White supremacy.
	It is the idea that, and by the way, this has been at the center of, like, most major American movements.
	There's a reason why earlier in the 20th century, which, by the way, inspired Nazism and fascism, but we don't have time to get into all of that right now.
	There's a reason why when we were What is time?
	There's a reason why during the immigration debates in the early 20th century everyone's like, we have to preserve the white race.
	We have to make sure that we are not overtaken because we are special and there's something inherently good about us that puts us ahead of everyone else.
	The white supremacist problem in America, particularly during a time of changing demographics, has led to white terrorism because they believe that they are being overtaken and being overrun and that there's a clandestine conspiracy against them.
	And the Republican Party has told them that there is a conspiracy against them and that they're being overtaken to make sure that they continue to 1.
	Vote 2.
	Donate money and 3.
	Perform Asynchronous terrorist attacks and to keep people terrified.
	It doesn't mean that Mike Lee wants people to go out and shoot up Walmarts in El Paso and leave behind manifestos about having to do it and kill minorities, right?
	But that's what happens.
	And it's happened so many times.
	Like, this is linked directly to Timothy McVeigh.
	It's the exact same thing.
	And when these groups, when a power group realizes it's losing power, It destroys democratic institutions.
	It does it intuitively until it just starts doing it all the time.
	And that's why Mike Lee did that.
	And that's why we arrested these assholes in Michigan.
	It's because they're part of the same offensive against people of color who they believe are coming after them.
	That's why it's so fucking dangerous because it's so easy in open society like this to do the most unspeakable damage and carnage.
	We saw what McVeigh did.
	Basically one guy demolished a building and killed countless people.
	And you're almost like not going to be able to stop that, right?
	A lone wolf by himself if he's not broadcasting it, like, I don't know how you're supposed to stop that short of violating everyone's civil liberties.
	And so, one way you can stop it is to not signal these people that it's okay to do this and it's okay to form this kind of ideology.
	Did you learn, okay, so we obviously had changed at some point from the great debates about immigration back in the, like, when was that?
	When we were talking about the 20s, 30s, right?
	Yep.
	So we obviously like broke that chain.
	I know I was raised in the 70s but with the great American melting pot.
	That was the great story of the Land of Opportunity.
	We were almost indoctrinated with that.
	You're a little bit younger than me, happy birthday.
	Did you, were you raised with that?
	Well, I will also, I think this is important to point out.
	The Great American Melting Pot was propaganda.
	Great propaganda, though.
	It's great propaganda, and a large part of it had to do with the fact that, quote-unquote, white Anglo-Saxon Americans were becoming outnumbered by immigrants and people of color.
	So what did they do?
	They made all of the immigrants that they held out and all of the immigrants that they vilified, Italians, Irish, they made them white.
	They suddenly, one day, they just became white, and so America was a melting pot all over the world.
	All these people come together and they form white America.
	And there's a reason why now, all of a sudden, the white identity movement also includes like, uh, let me see, what's that group that had, that suddenly last night Mike Pence was, uh, was defending?
	Oh yeah, Catholics.
	Right?
	Because they were they were being scapegoated for forever and then all of a sudden it turned into it's like no we are one group and we are whites and then there's people of color and for the longest time it was white Anglo-Saxons and you're over here you're over there you're over there.
	So the melting pot was a political necessity and wonderful propaganda.
	I mean it was really really smart.
	I was raised up in a time where all of a sudden and this was the 1980s into the early 1990s Where all of a sudden it became this thing where the Republicans realized that certain groups of people would come into America and might vote conservative.
	Right?
	If they had enough money, they had enough means, or something like that.
	And so you've started to see it's always about political positioning.
	It's always trying to figure out the niche.
	It's always trying to figure out the demographics that will get you elected president.
	And that's it.
	They won't let anybody else in the club.
	And by the way, they sure as hell aren't going to share their spoils with you because that's the top 1%.
	But they will bring you into the in-group if it keeps out the out-group.
	And that's the problem here is that they have told a lot of these people who, by the way, have no doubt been hurt by Republican policies.
	I guarantee to a person the people in this white terrorist cell, I guarantee to a person they've been hurt by Republican economic policies.
	And probably societal policies.
	But that doesn't matter, because they have to vote for one thing, or they have to do one thing, and that's protect the white race.
	That's what they're about.
	And so the Republican Party continues to dice, dice, dice, and dice, and radicalize.
	They've created an absolute tinderbox here.
	And again, we kind of were almost comforted in the notion that they don't have to hide anymore, the Republicans.
	They don't have to hide their lies and their hypocritical stuff.
	So here's a senator, a United States senator, coming out and just saying it out loud.
	It's insane.
	It's insane that he would think that democracy isn't the objective here.
	That should be the okay again you can call it a democratic republic right with a tinge of socialism whatever we want to call it but but like he's talking about wanting the human condition to flourish I mean I don't even know what this is what this means although there's so much subtext that I guess I'm hearing it loud and clear It's just, it's just mind-blowing to me that we have this.
	And so, you know, the biggest dichotomy here is you have people who are, like, accusing, what I hear is, you know, Democrats, oh, you're just sheep.
	The ranked Democrats are just falling in line and, you know, perfect roles, and you're just going to march to these orders of these, these radical leftist people.
	But guess who really is the one following without any thought or any critical thinking or any self-reflection?
	It's them.
	And one of us is lying, right?
	One of us is wrong.
	One of my favorite subplots of the last six months is your fascination with that, which is that we're all having the same conversation and one side is lying and the other side understands it.
	Because it's true.
	It's arguing over righteousness, is what it is.
	I mean, it's a big, giant argument over who possesses the truth.
	And what you just said also about like this idea of like rank and file and being manipulated, again, I want people to go watch this American Rule lecture that I just taped because I have to tell you, the conversations the founders were having, it's, and one of the things I hate, man, is everyone's like, oh.
	The founding fathers were probably rolling over in their graves right now.
	No, this is exactly what they designed the government to do.
	Like, James Madison designed the government of the United States of America to protect the economic wealthy.
	The minority of the most wealthy people.
	You're so not patriotic, man.
	Yeah, yeah, this is not a patriotic education.
	It just happens to be what actually happened.
	And the entire point was, all of these people, and by the way, they were all wealthy merchants, slaveholders, white men, they were having conversations and it was like, should we have a democracy?
	And they're like, oh my god, are you kidding?
	Have you ever talked to people?
	They're stupid and they'll totally be manipulated and they'll be led astray.
	And then if you read the Federalist Papers, which by the way, basically every Republican has a copy of the Federalist Papers underneath their pillow tonight.
	You know what I mean?
	Thank you, Alexander Hamilton, and thank you, John Jay, and thank you, James Madison.
	And in the Federalist Papers, Madison tells them, it's like, no, you can't trust the majority of people.
	You have to create a system that, like, oppresses them and keeps them manipulated, and you have to have complete control over these morons.
	Like, they should not be allowed to vote.
	It's an excess of democracy, right?
	If you have democracy, it's a problem.
	And the Federalists, by the way, the Federalist Party went away because they were proto-fascist.
	They didn't believe that most people should be able to rule themselves and eventually Jefferson comes out and sweeps them out.
	That's neither here nor there.
	The entire point is that this is about turning the clock back and creating, and by the way, we already have a white aristocracy, it's trying to create a white aristocracy where they can just come out and say this shit.
	Like the fact that Mike Lee, He was on his phone, and he just typed in, and he's like, yeah, tweet.
	Good luck, everybody.
	And he did it twice.
	That's incredible to me, that he thought that that was okay, but they are getting to the point where they don't even have to hide anything anymore.
	Nothing.
	Yeah, and it riles them up.
	Gosh, I had something to say about that, and you covered it pretty well.
	And again, yeah, because I just feel like I'm a broken record on this thing as far as whether or not somebody... We're right, right?
	We're right.
	Oh, I know what I was gonna tell you.
	You know, this whole notion of we're all dummies, we can't, you know, be trusted to vote.
	Like, I just filled out my ballot and sent it in.
	I gotta tell you, there's propositions, there's things on there.
	I'm like, I have no idea.
	What do I do?
	I go to the LA Times, I look up the Democratic Party's recommendations.
	Like, I'm a sheep.
	I don't know half of these things.
	So, you know, they have a point to some degree, right?
	I don't even know at some point how informed, like if there's a percentage of like really informed and like not at all.
	I really wonder where we all line up on a lot of these different things.
	Now, California is not as bad as it used to be.
	There used to be a dozen propositions to deal with on every ballot and it was like, it was so confusing and they seem to have less now, more recently.
	So, um, but again, like what do I, I'm, I'm informed, but like I was still, you know, having to kind of just be a sheep on this one and sort of follow what someone's telling me to do.
	I have to tell you, I... One of the things... I was on a flight.
	Remember that?
	We used to go on the Big Metal Birds and go places?
	Like, what a time.
	What a time that was.
	I was on a flight, and it was an Atlantic article, and I can't remember who wrote it.
	I wish I could off the top of my head.
	I assume it's probably David Frum.
	It's gotta be somebody like David Frum.
	And the article was like, Donald Trump has proven that democracy doesn't work.
	We need to go back to the times before primaries and have smoky-roomed parties choosing our candidates.
	And basically it should have been titled, You're All Stupid.
	Thanks, Stupid.
	And the whole point here is we cannot be so discouraged by what democracy can wreak, especially in this environment, which is highly propagandized, which has a capitalism, which at all fronts, and we talk about this all the time, Our system of capitalism is disaster capitalism.
	It's all set up to profit off of things that are terrible for America and terrible for the individual American citizen.
	Just because democracy has been infected with that doesn't mean that we can't have it better.
	It doesn't mean that we don't deserve better and that we can be informed and that we can make smart decisions.
	It just goes back to this idea We're trapped in these mythologies and propaganda, and it's intentional that that has happened, right?
	That we've been put in a position where we don't know up from down and down from up.
	And so we have these groups of people.
	By the way, that terrorist cell, man, they're legitimately operating in an alternate reality.
	Like, that's not...
	The real world.
	The idea that the governor of Michigan shut down the state during a pandemic for some sort of, I don't know, Bill Gates, Mark of the Beast conspiracy.
	God knows what they're telling themselves at night.
	But this is not a reality that even resembles shared society or objective reality.
	It's a completely different animal.
	But we can do better.
	And we have to do better.
	And if we don't do better, man, this country's not going to be hospitable.
	And I don't mean just because of Donald Trump.
	I mean everything from climate change to coming fascism.
	If we don't figure this thing out, it's game over.
	From climate change to dealing with fascism to shopping at Walmart.
	That's a big problem.
	So I agree with you.
	I feel like You know, it's almost like the alternate reality continues to be ginned up for these kind of people, even in the littlest things that President Trump will do.
	So it's like these videos he's filming in front of the White House, and it's like we can't even decide if it's green screen or not.
	I mean, it's not green screen, so trust me, but you know, like the fact that we have to even talk about that stuff, or just the fact that like when you get a note from his doctor about how he's supposed to be doing, and we've got to talk about this because He thinks he's going to, in a few short days, appear live in the same room indoors with another candidate to debate.
	And it's disgusting, even the rhetoric and how they're trying to frame this, where he's like, Biden doesn't want to get beat up again.
	Like he got, yeah, he's the sweep the leg, Johnny.
	That was awesome.
	Yeah.
	Like that's what they're trying to do it.
	But they lost, man.
	Johnny got, you know.
	Oh, man.
	What's the what's the move?
	Dude, he got crane kicked into the coronavirus and airlifted to Walter Reed is what happened.
	By the way, can we go on the record?
	Because this is coming out.
	This is being taped on October 8th.
	It's coming out on October 9th.
	Hopefully, knock on wood, we don't have to get on here in our pajamas and record an emergency podcast at 7 a.m.
	tomorrow.
	Okay, but here's the question.
	Yes or no?
	Because we've talked about the timeline on Trump's coronavirus.
	Yeah.
	There's a real possibility this weekend it gets bad again.
	Do you think he goes back to the hospital or has an incident this weekend?
	Yes or no?
	Yeah, I think so.
	I mean, it all depends on when they stop giving him steroids.
	In my mind.
	Steroids is what's propping him up.
	And I'm not, like, making that up.
	It seems like that's what the consensus is for a lot of the medical community looking at this thing.
	Now, again, Regeneron, you know, could very well, you know, be curing people as a whatever.
	By the way, and you know the worst thing about that is that he has, he's invested in Regeneron.
	He has a financial interest in this company.
	And it's like, you know how many people have been tested for this thing?
	300, maybe 400 people tops, you know, in a short.
	Are they all named Trump?
	I'm guessing.
	Yeah.
	And so it's like, how dare he do that?
	And then frame it like the Democrats are trying to keep you all sick and not let you have access to drugs when in reality, this thing has not been tested.
	He could have a fucking aneurysm tomorrow from this stuff, or a heart attack, or anything, and he would never... We wouldn't let him know, but that's the scary thing about this thing, is he doesn't even care.
	And I think it's going to backfire on him, so yes, I think that he will make a turn for the worse by Monday, by Sunday or Monday.
	Well, first of all, and since we're on the subject, and because, by the way, we are really dedicated to maintaining an actual reality and talking about facts.
	We talked the other day, we were talking about his doctor, Sean Conley, and I want to talk about this note that he released, but we had somebody reach out to us who is in the medical field who informed me that Conley is exactly the equivalent of a doctor, has gone through all the different stuff.
	So we got that wrong in terms of the different types of things.
	So he is, he's technically a doctor.
	Right?
	Okay, so we were wrong about that the other day, but I will say that doesn't stop Sean Conley from, like, writing a note that says, like, Donnie has to miss gym class on Tuesday.
	His tummy hurts.
	Like, he's writing memos about how Donald Trump can go and have a debate.
	Which, by the way, this entire White House is infected top to bottom.
	We saw Mike Pence last night basically look like he was gonna lose an to coronavirus.
	Oh, wow.
	And then, and now we have the president of the United States saying that he should go to this debate and probably, possibly, spread the pandemic to his political opponent.
	Like, I mean, for real.
	Like, that's what's happening right now.
	And a doctor's writing this note, which is complete and utter bullshit.
	We're getting notes left and right that misspell all this stuff.
	The reason we're having these arguments is because these people have created this alternate reality and it's the only thing that makes sure that they could ever win another election possible.
	The Republican Party needs to go the way of the Federalists, of the Whigs.
	It needs to go away.
	We can have a Conservative Party or a Republican Party.
	And by the way, I want to go on the record about this.
	I've been thinking about this all day.
	I don't know if you saw this.
	There was a moment today, Pete Buttigieg went on Fox News.
	He's been going on Fox News a lot lately.
	And he goes on there and hands them their asses.
	And what Pete Buttigieg does is he goes on Fox News and he says, you know, you guys are supposedly conservatives, you're supposedly religious, here's how you're hypocrites, you're doing this wrong, you're doing this wrong.
	In a sane United States of America, Pete Buttigieg would be the leader of the Republican Party.
	That's why he can go on Fox News and kick their ass, is because in a sane America, the young Pete Buttigieg Who is openly gay would be probably the leader of the new Republican Party.
	Because right now we're in a situation where that group is so far out that everybody else is clustered together and they're like, I think we have an objective reality.
	I think we do.
	And they're over there in this fascistic world.
	That's why we're facing this problem.
	That's why we're in the middle of this crisis.
	They are not a legitimate political party.
	And by the way, I'm really grateful Mike Lee said that.
	And I'm really grateful that Donald Trump has obviously just, he's just a total incompetent fraud and he lies about everything you can see through.
	I'm very grateful to them for that.
	Right, well let's not forget, we've never gotten a truthful statement from any of his doctors before.
	No.
	So there isn't a lot of reason to really believe that they wrote this memo and that it wasn't him telling them what to write.
	Because again, we've talked about this before, he is a part of the Navy.
	Well, Trump is the Commander-in-Chief.
	If Commander-in-Chief, you know, commands you to do something, you have to do it.
	So it's, you know, I worry for his career because if this backfires on him, then he, you know, could lose his license.
	I mean, it could be a bad thing for him as a doctor if we find out that none of this stuff is really true.
	But he's also just way ahead of his skis here, trying to already sort of prognosticate that after Saturday, you know, this trajectory that they're trying to, you know, predict off of this advanced therapeutic whatever, you know, can somehow predict for sure that he could appear like that.
	And, you know, I think you know what it is.
	There's also no notion of like why screw around with this at all?
	Like, okay, you know, we have the environment, right?
	And we have emissions we want to try and limit.
	Well, why would we want to err on the side of caution and really just go a little overboard just to make sure we're a little bit more safe than maybe what the standards would be?
	You know, why wouldn't they just say, you know what, we're going to give them an extra week just to really make sure?
	Like, that's the same mindset we exist in here, where everything has to be like right away, right now, and they're forcing us, especially with this I don't know.
	that they're clearly rushing and pressuring.
	Like what kind of a society do we live in where the president is allowed to pressure and he's acknowledged, he's admitted it, that he's pressured these companies to come up with some sort of vaccine before November 3rd.
	This is insane.
	This is not science.
	This is like, this is a banana republic.
	I don't know.
	There's my rant.
	I think that's a perfect encapsulation of it is we're not living in a country that has any relationship to reality.
	I mean, the basketball days have been exhausting.
	You know, they really, really have.
	By the way, we haven't even talked about the fact that Stephen Miller has coronavirus at this point, and that nobody knows where Chris Christie is, or if he's okay.
	No one's seen Donald Trump outside of the, or Bill Barr, no one has any idea what's going on with Bill Barr.
	None.
	I have a constant refresh with Bill Barr up there and nothing comes up.
	And I mean, you know, the thing about it, and we should end on this, the VP debate last night I thought was putrid in so many different ways.
	But the worst part about it was watching Mike Pence come out and not even just lie.
	But just lie as proudly and shamelessly as only Mike Pence can.
	At least when Trump peddles this bullshit, like there's that kind of, you know, he enjoys it.
	You know what I mean?
	Like he enjoys the lie.
	Mike Pence is just a creature of a different species, man.
	And that's the problem, is it's not just Trumpism.
	It's also the Republican Party.
	It's also the right wing.
	They're fellow travelers in that.
	They all work together in that ecosystem, in that malleable, alternate, subjective reality.
	And the place where they reside is completely dangerous to shared society.
	They don't work together.
	They just don't.
	So I hope, listen, I hope like hell we don't have to do an emergency podcast this weekend.
	That would be wonderful.
	Knock on wood, I would love a weekend off where we don't have to get on here and lament society crumbling into the abyss.
	That would be wonderful.
	But the good news is that we are building a wonderful community around the Muckrake podcast.
	We are so thankful for you for listening.
	If you haven't already, go over to patreon.com slash mccrakepodcast.
	Becoming a patron not only gets you free content, we're getting ready to open a Discord chat channel, which means you'll be able to talk with us, you'll be able to talk with everyone else, you'll be able to lament this stuff, share information.
	It's going to be awesome.
	On top of that, real fast, I don't think there's going to be another debate.
	Do you think there's going to be a debate?
	I mean, it would have to be virtual, but they don't want to agree to that, so I guess not.
	I mean, unless they want to throw one in, like, you know, maybe Biden would be willing to do it if he tests, you know, negative, you know, in a couple weeks or something.
	But again, we gotta, how do you prove that it's his test?
	I mean, I guess the proof is that he's alive.
	That's his negative test.
	I mean, I guess they could bring him out in, like, sensory deprivation tanks or something along those lines.
	But it's pretty clear that he had it at the debate.
	Oh yeah, for sure.
	For sure.
	You know, that's frightening.
	It really, really is.
	So the question is whether or not there's going to be another debate.
	If there are more debates, we have exclusive coverage, analysis, and response.
	Last night we hung out with a couple hundred of our faithful listeners.
	I don't know if good time is the right word.
	These things are rough and they test you, but it's good to be with other people.
	You should join us for that, for election nights, for exclusive content.
	Patreon.com slash Muckrake Podcast.
	If you need us until then, you can find Nick over at Can You Hear Me, SMH.
	You can find me at J.Y.
	Saxton.
	Listen, everyone.

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