Nick Hauselman is fresh off his vacation and has been immersing himself in Right Wing media for nearly a week. He joins co-host Jared Yates Sexton to report the fever-dream madness on the Right, the conspiracy theories they're floating, and the psychological toll of consuming these lies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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| We're up very nicely, 4 or 5, but we're really up much more than that. | |
| Don't forget, if we're up 4, add another 4, 5, 6, 7 to it. | |
| I'm not sure I'm proud of it, but people don't want to talk about it, right? | |
| They don't want to talk, but they vote. | |
| That's Natalie Biden, she is the niece of Hunter Biden, and the pictures depict her in ways that are very questionable. | |
| Hey everybody, welcome to the Muckrake Podcast. | |
| I'm your co-host Jared Yates-Sexton. | |
| A lot of developments today. | |
| A lot of exciting news. | |
| We found water on the surface of Mars. | |
| Let me tell you something that is even more exciting than that. | |
| And that is that Nick Houselman is back on the Muckrake Podcast after a brief respite. | |
| Nick, how we doing? | |
| I am. | |
| I'm good. | |
| I'm glad to be back. | |
| It was all too quick, the trip, but bedding back and forth from Chicago to back to Chicago and then back to LA was an interesting thing where, you know, there were lots of stretches where nary a mask to be found. | |
| Very interesting. | |
| Yeah, I have to tell you. | |
| So I live down in Georgia. | |
| So when I talk to people about my experience during the pandemic versus my friends and compatriots and loved ones, Who live in blue states. | |
| It's a little bit different. | |
| It's a little bit different when you start getting into different parts of America. | |
| How did you feel as a Californian traversing our highways and byways and saying that people just do not care about the pandemic, which just keeps getting worse and worse? | |
| I mean, I was somewhere in Wyoming, and I went to pick up some food at the restaurant, and I walk in there with my mask. | |
| Now, everyone who worked at the restaurant had masks on. | |
| It was actually a Thai restaurant somewhere deep in Wyoming, but nobody had a mask. | |
| It wasn't quite the record needle scratch, and then everyone just completely staring at me, but... So I didn't feel completely, like, you know, glared at when that would happen in different places, the rest stops and whatnot. | |
| I was probably the one glaring at them for not wearing masks. | |
| So it kind of was just like, whatever, I was sort of unseen to some degree. | |
| But it was really troubling. | |
| Now I was also at a hotel last night, or two nights ago, where the only bar in the city that was open, and it was a closed bar, And it looked like the cast from Duck Dynasty was there, playing pool, sitting around the tables at the park, you know, in this no-windows-whatever, closed-in little room, and I literally hightailed it out of there when I walked by. | |
| I couldn't believe what I was seeing. | |
| Maybe that's normal for a lot of people in the country, but for me, I hadn't seen anything like that before, since March. | |
| It was crazy. | |
| I think you made the right choice. | |
| I'll just give you that. | |
| I think you made the right choice. | |
| I will say that in Nick's absence, I did not destroy the podcast, nor did I have a technological total meltdown. | |
| Although, unfortunately, I had to bother Nick by sending him files because I have no idea what I'm doing. | |
| And I have to tell you that the reaction from the Muckrake universe was unanimous in missing Nick terribly. | |
| And here's the bad news to go with the good news. | |
| Is that for the past five days, is that correct? | |
| For the past five days, Nick while on vacation has been submerging himself with right-wing media has completely kept himself away from the liberal reality. | |
| He does this, and he has done it before, he does this in order to get an approximation of an idea of what it is like right now to be a person in the American right. | |
| Nick, do you want to report back to us? | |
| Our astronaut of the right. | |
| How are you feeling? | |
| How are you feeling about the world? | |
| What does reality look like to you right now? | |
| Well, it's interesting because I think the last time I did this it was sort of exhausting and soul-killing. | |
| And that's not what it feels like now. | |
| You're inspired. | |
| You're ready to vote for Donald Trump is what I'm telling you. | |
| Well, it really feels like, listening to that, like Donald Trump is going to win. | |
| And that is a real, you know, if this goes on longer, if I were to do this longer, then yes, I would be, I'm like, it's got, it's like 60-40 Trump's gonna win, right? | |
| Like that's, that's what it seems like from my end listening to this stuff. | |
| And it's very, you know, it's a swan song of, you know, these sirens call to make it really seem like that. | |
| I do want to call, one thing that's interesting that didn't happen last time was I've had two very vivid nightmares. | |
| And obviously rooted in what I'm doing. | |
| Can I lay them on you? | |
| Because I need maybe somebody to tell me what they mean. | |
| Well, before we get into them, I don't know if you saw this because you were on the road. | |
| Did you see what Representative Clay Higgins tweeted that has gotten a lot of attention? | |
| Nope. | |
| What do you do? | |
| Okay, I'm gonna read. | |
| What do you do? | |
| Look at you, just bright-eyed, ready to go talk about the decline of the country. | |
| I love it. | |
| Okay, so he tweeted this on October 23rd at 3 p.m. | |
| exactly, which tells me, by the way, that he probably set this up to automatically tweet itself out, which is even more maddening when you think about it. | |
| Alright Nick, I'm going to read you this tweet and then I want to hear from you if this somehow or another predicates your experience. | |
| By the way, I'm going to read it in the appropriate tone, just to be fair. | |
| My wife has the gift of premonition. | |
| Last night, she dreamed that federal squads were in our home, seizing our guns, knives, unauthorized foods. | |
| I don't know what the unauthorized foods are. | |
| I assume there's some sugar in it or something. | |
| and stored water they said we had been reported becca awoke crying what happened to our freedom she asked what indeed wow that's like a uh something like a hemingway story then first of all how dare you besmirch the name of anyone who's ever been published with that a | |
| Can we point out that this guy, Representative Clay Higgins, who should absolutely be defeated, by the way, in this election, he's in charge of representing a group of Americans. | |
| And in this, by the way, I just want to take everyone through a quick tour of it, he claims that his wife is a psychic. | |
| By the way, the first line, my wife has the gift of premonition. | |
| Claiming his wife is a psychic. | |
| Then, claiming that she had had a dream in which the federal government broke into their home, seized their guns, their knives, their unauthorized... You know. | |
| And stored water. | |
| They'd been reported. | |
| She awoke crying. | |
| And then she said, what happened to our freedom? | |
| And he said, what indeed. | |
| These are people who are drowning in paranoia. | |
| Does this at all reflect these nightmares that you have had? | |
| Um, maybe. | |
| I mean, okay, I can beat that no problem with what I was dreaming. | |
| This is a friendly podcast. | |
| How bad is this gonna get? | |
| Oh, well, let me tell you. | |
| So I dreamt that I was at a party that was hosted by Melania and Donald Trump. | |
| Wait, real Melania or fake Melania? | |
| Real Melania. | |
| Who's the fake Melania? | |
| Oh, you mean like the one I think is not? | |
| That's still going around. | |
| That didn't bubble up in my timeline, though. | |
| It's still going around. | |
| Oh, Nick, there was a really, really fake Melania that I'm going to look up and I'm going to find for you while you're telling the story. | |
| So this one's kind of a short one, but it was a nightmare nonetheless. | |
| So I'm at this party and all of a sudden it comes out that Donald Trump had... I don't want to be lewd or lascivious here, but... Don't be too lewd. | |
| Okay well he had intercourse with a horse and they were going to bring out the spawn of this mating and I was so frightened by what that might look like and I always have the images of the thing you know from that movie when you know that I think I woke up in a very quick start because I was so afraid of seeing what this was going to look like even though I didn't luckily see it in the dream but that was what was going to happen. | |
| You know, interpret away. | |
| Okay, number one, I will just say, you're coming in hot. | |
| I know. | |
| You're coming in extremely hot. | |
| That is a really, really grotesque thing. | |
| By the way, on the record as we're recording, this is the Melania. | |
| Oh, you know, it's not her. | |
| What do you think? | |
| Yeah, it kind of looks like a younger version of her or something. | |
| But that had come up a while ago, like a year ago, whatever. | |
| Oh, yeah. | |
| I think there are fake Melanias. | |
| I don't think that's a conspiracy theory. | |
| I think that they have doubles who come in. | |
| Wow. | |
| That's a horrid nightmare. | |
| Oh yeah. | |
| That's really bad. | |
| The other one I had though was I was in a cargo van with all these sort of professional like maybe like FBI kind of guys like heroes you know we're driving we're heading toward New York City and all of a sudden as we get close to the bridge there's a huge explosion a building just like falls down maybe like a nuclear bomb had exploded in that building or something crazy like that and then We were stuck trying to prepare to have to go in and save people or something like that. | |
| But it was definitely New York. | |
| It was definitely a building and definitely rooted in what I've been studying the last five days. | |
| So what these dreams or this sort of thing, you felt like that right-wing talking points in the right-wing ecosystem has made you paranoid and unsettled and unwell. | |
| You feel that way? | |
| I would certainly say paranoia is a good word for that, because it's all it is. | |
| Everything is so rooted in fear. | |
| I've got to get my notes in front of me just to make sure. | |
| It's a fear. | |
| The word coup came up a lot. | |
| This has been a coup, a soft coup, or just a coup in general. | |
| The deep state, all these things that are conspiring. | |
| Actually, to jump back on your side for a second, none of these things actually ever came true. | |
| If there really was a coup, then Donald Trump wouldn't be in the White House. | |
| But, you know, the word coup is coming up from, you know, you're talking about Jim Jordan and Doug Collins, you know, I think even Meadows might have even said it, too. | |
| Are you aware? | |
| OK, so I have to also explain this, because here's the thing. | |
| If you listen to Fox News, there are, and we talked about this before, there are big chunks of the day where it actually is fair and balanced. | |
| It really, really is. | |
| So, if you listen to it on a Saturday afternoon, they have, you know, progressives on the shows, and they present their point of view, and the moderator, whoever it is, is like, reasonable. | |
| I kind of almost want to turn that part of it off, just because I'm like, wait a minute, this is going to be, I just kind of want to hear the crazy shit, but that's not necessarily fair to Fox News. | |
| You put on Chris Wallace. | |
| Chris Wallace comes after Maria Bartiromo, who, oh my goodness gracious, she has become the Hannity of the morning, whatever she was. | |
| I guess she used to be different, but she had on all the greatest hits on Sunday morning, yesterday morning, with Jordan and Meadows and Doug Collins and somebody else. | |
| Schweitzer maybe. | |
| It was crazy. | |
| But then Chris Wallace comes on and he's very reasonable. | |
| And he had on somebody else who was completely cogently, you know, defending Biden and his side. | |
| And Wallace was, you know, listening. | |
| It's almost like schizophrenic in that way. | |
| Yeah, first of all, I think Maria is auditioning for a future show. | |
| Whether it's on Fox News or whatever competitor rises from... Right now, Fox News isn't far enough right for the right. | |
| That's one of the things I've been talking about is that the right actually views Fox News now as a centered, you know, fair and balanced network. | |
| And I was actually listening the other day to some leaked audio from a QAnon conference. | |
| And they were like, well, we all know that Fox News is actually liberal media. | |
| And there's a couple of people on there that you can listen to. | |
| And, of course, they're talking about Hannity. | |
| They're talking about The Judge. | |
| They're talking about Tucker. | |
| The woman. | |
| Oh yeah, and they're also talking about Laura Ingraham. | |
| That's what they're pushing. | |
| But I think we're probably looking, and we've talked about it before, with market niches, that there's going to be something further right of Fox News, whether it's OANN or possibly a Trump alternative. | |
| Did it seem like Fox News outside of maybe the daily actual journalistic enterprise? | |
| Are they even contemplating the possibility that Donald Trump loses? | |
| Or is it just this whole cake is baked and he's going to be reelected and that's just the way that it is? | |
| I got no sense that he was losing or the polls were real from them. | |
| So yeah, I mean, as far as I could tell, these rallies he's having are the biggest he's ever had. | |
| They do, they appear that way from what I've seen in these video snippets. | |
| And that's another reason why I'm concerned is because, you know, these, they do, it's hard to remember exactly how big they were. | |
| You were actually at them on the ground in 2016. | |
| That's not even close to being true. | |
| in the way they're making it look and describe, it seems like there's double the interest as there was and double the excitement as there was in 2016. | |
| I don't know if that's true or not, but that's what they're making it seem like. | |
| That's not even close to being true. | |
| I mean, the rallies in 2016 were arena-sized, to the point where you had people who were having to wait outside in the concourses in order to even hear what he had to say. | |
| But no, the rallies right now... I love this when we're deprogramming. | |
| No, the rallies are not performing up to 2016. | |
| No. | |
| Okay, good. | |
| Because Trump has been saying that, which I'm like, yeah, but then, again, the way the images are coming in, it feels that way. | |
| We've always known that there's a cult to this anyway, so the fervor is overwhelming in the images that they're sharing. | |
| I mean, what's interesting is that from starting on Thursday until today, there's an evolution of the news cycle, just like there is on other stations. | |
| But it kind of went from peace in the Middle East, where they're on the verge of completely solving this with these really important peace deals between Israel and Bahrain and Israel and UAE, Israel and Sudan, even though Sudan is not really in the Middle East. Israel and Sudan, even though Sudan is not really in But, you know, Serbia and Kosovo, economic normalization. | |
| Like, you know, this is, it was really impressive to me to hear how they were touting these deals as something that was going to solve the problem in the Middle East, like just before the election, I guess. | |
| So what? | |
| It's so funny. | |
| It's so funny talking to somebody who's been in this. | |
| So I guess on one hand I would ask, so they're portraying obviously Donald Trump's first term as not just a success but a historic success. | |
| Like this is an all-time great president. | |
| This is like a major presidency. | |
| Oh yeah, he's done everything he promised in 2016. | |
| That's a big one. | |
| Everything he laid out that he wanted to do, he's done. | |
| What about the wall? | |
| What happened to the wall? | |
| Not one mention of the wall in five days. | |
| What? | |
| Are you for real? | |
| They didn't even mention the wall once. | |
| Nothing in my notes. | |
| Nothing. | |
| And I mean, you know, I was trying to be really, you know, good on taking notes. | |
| I didn't hear anything about the wall. | |
| Did you hear anything about the fact that the economy is absolutely cratered? | |
| No, I mean, all they talk about is how they created, I think, 11 million jobs in a time frame that's quicker than anybody has ever done before. | |
| You know, I think Trump mentioned something about the stock market taking a little bit of a dip at some point, but it's going to get right back to where it was at all-time highs. | |
| So, no, the economy seems to be going great. | |
| And they interview people, like real people on the ground, who are all really excited about the economy right now. | |
| Well, I don't know why. | |
| I mean, there's really no reason. | |
| I mean, we're on the precipice of something really, really bad. | |
| Did they talk about what would happen if somebody like a Joe Biden became president? | |
| Did they talk about the consequences of possibly losing this election? | |
| Or is that just so outrageous to even think that he could possibly win at this point for them? | |
| No. | |
| Well, the only time you hear that is through Trump and Trump and his rallies. | |
| At some point, I actually had to turn to the Fox Headline show or station because You know, when they're carrying his rally, it's the same thing over and over again. | |
| I wanted to try and, you know, have some variation. | |
| But it's Trump is the guy who, and by the way, he's aware that when he talks about a possible Biden presidency, he somehow is acknowledging he could lose, even though he's not going to acknowledge that. | |
| It's not going to happen. | |
| But I got to tell you anyway, what might happen if he does is sort of this weird twisted pretzel thing going on. | |
| So, I mean, certainly the litany, I'm sure we're all familiar with, is what Trump likes to trumpet as far as what might happen in terms of the country just completely falling apart. | |
| Taxes are probably the biggest thing that they're going to talk about. | |
| Everyone's taxes are going to go up, especially because Biden lied, right? | |
| Biden said that nobody, he wouldn't raise taxes over anybody making less than $400,000. | |
| That's a lie, because he said he'd repeal the Trump tax cuts. | |
| And the Trump tax cuts clearly gave cuts to people who made less than $400,000. | |
| So your taxes are going to go up. | |
| And he's got to be the worst presidential candidate of all time because of that. | |
| He's running on raising taxes. | |
| That's his big thing. | |
| Okay, that's a lot. | |
| - Okay, that's a lot. | |
| So here's what I, you know, we start talking about deprogramming a little bit. | |
| So let's start to deprogram a little bit. | |
| Let me tell you something. | |
| We have entered into a phase of the campaign which I lovingly call the rats escaping the sinking ship phase. | |
| Journalists like myself have been getting a lot of information from people within the Trump campaign because a lot of them are very worried about a possible loss being pinned on them. | |
| Right? | |
| They were the people in the room who were smart. | |
| They knew what was right. | |
| They knew what the right moves were. | |
| The candidate didn't do right. | |
| The people around him didn't do right. | |
| He was steered wrong. | |
| All of this stuff, right? | |
| So they start leaking out things, including internal polls, internal opinions, things like that. | |
| So what I will tell you, Nick, is since you have been gone on your vacation, a lot of these rats have been escaping the ship. | |
| And a lot of them have been shipping out this information that the Trump campaign is, even their internal polls, And Republican internal polls show that Donald Trump not only is in trouble, but there is a narrowing, narrowing, narrowing type of path to victory to the point where nobody within his inner circle really believes that a legitimate free and fair election could possibly end up in his favor. | |
| Hearing that, how do you feel after having watched this for five days, and now what do you think about what you've seen? | |
| What do you think that they're trying to do by peddling things I mean, that's shocking to me because they're still hashing the debate, by the way, on Sunday was a debate with debate, debate stuff. | |
| And their big thing that they really try to hammer on is how Biden lost Pennsylvania and he lost Texas in one fell swoop by saying he wants to get rid of fracking and he wants to get rid of the oil industry wholesale. | |
| And like by 2025, there'll be no more industry of all, you know, no fracking, no oil, and those two states now. | |
| And then that just gets me concerned because suddenly, okay, he loses Pennsylvania, he loses Texas. | |
| I don't know, it seems like a lot more likely that Trump can now, you know, maybe he'll grab Florida and then all of a sudden it's a toss up and who knows. | |
| That's what it felt like to me. | |
| So why do you think, as somebody who's been consuming this, why are they peddling the narrative? | |
| And I have thoughts on this, but I'm interested to hear what you have to say as someone who's undergone it. | |
| Why do you think in the face of compelling evidence that he will not win the election, why do you think that all right-wing media is peddling the idea that there's no chance that he could possibly lose the election? | |
| Because I think it's purposeful. | |
| What do you think that purpose is? | |
| Well, I mean, if you want to live in the echo chamber of Trump's mind, like, that he can't really, he'll never come to grips with that notion that they're going to lose. | |
| But, like, with my adult brain at this point, like, I don't, do I want to get, try and put my old hat back on and try and figure out some way where they're going to contest the election and somehow screw it up that way? | |
| You know, by the way, that is interesting. | |
| I didn't hear a lot of, like, there's not a ton of the ballot stuff going on, like the shenanigans. | |
| It's a little bit, but it's not as much as the other things. | |
| I think that's part of it. | |
| I think they're also trying to prop up a counter-narrative in case this goes to litigation. | |
| Because one of the things I think that the right depends on right now, and by the way, real fast I have to throw a plug out there, a reminder that on election night we're going to be offering exclusive Watch along, analysis, and reaction with the Muckrake community. | |
| That is going to be open to our patrons. | |
| Go over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast. | |
| That way you can spend election night with the rest of us and live in fear and exhilaration and come together as a community in, I don't know about you, but in what is Quickly becoming one of the more anxious nights of my life in general and in totality. | |
| So that's patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast. | |
| But I think the counter narrative is to enforce the idea among the right that anything besides a decisive victory. | |
| And I have to tell you, in preparation of this episode, I've been listening to some right-wing programming. | |
| And I've been doing some research on my own. | |
| They're saying that not only will Donald Trump win the election, but that it's going to be a landslide type victory. | |
| That it's going to be a resounding mandate. | |
| That's what a lot of these groups are really getting ready for. | |
| So if it's close, or if Biden wins in a close election, or if Biden wins in some sort of a landslide, I think that counter-narrative tells them something screwy happened. | |
| Right? | |
| The election's been stolen. | |
| This isn't on the up and up. | |
| You need to be ready for this. | |
| And I actually think that narrative is not only necessary for Donald Trump trying to undermine the election, but I think it's necessary for the Republican Party moving forward. | |
| I think that they need to be able to have that perceived persecution one way or another. | |
| It's interesting. | |
| That would make sense. | |
| And I did hear the word landslide like one or two times bubble up in what I was listening to, too. | |
| But here's the thing, though, because 80% of what I went through and listened to has nothing to do with whatever we've just been talking about. | |
| 80% of the coverage since Thursday basically indicates to me, I don't know, maybe you didn't know this, but Joe Biden isn't running for president anymore. | |
| Oh yeah. | |
| Hunter Biden is now running for president. | |
| Certainly that's what it sounds like. | |
| Because that's the only person they could talk about for 80% of the time I was listening to. | |
| It's Hunter Biden. | |
| Now I just want to tell you, are you aware that there's a sex tape out there? | |
| Starring Hunter Biden. | |
| Supposedly, yes. | |
| That was one of those things that started bubbling up from the cracks of like the right-wing cesspool over the past couple of days. | |
| So yeah, that has definitely started to gain some traction in the right-wing conspiracy circles. | |
| I watched this tape. | |
| I watched it so you didn't have to, Jared. | |
| And I'm going to tell you about it. | |
| Because it's interesting, you know, we don't have the pee-pee tape with Trump, right? | |
| This is, again, the clear connections here, right? | |
| Time out! | |
| Time out! | |
| Before we move any further, this is not where I thought this podcast was going to go. | |
| And I don't think anybody listening to this podcast expected that this was where this was going to go. | |
| We've got horses. | |
| We've got sex tapes. | |
| Go forward. | |
| Go forward. | |
| Okay, so it's unclear that he knows he's being filmed, and it's also unclear to me that you can smoke crack in the form of a cigarette-looking thing, but that's what he's smoking, and he's lighting it, and it's a pretty big, it's a very much brighter flame than, like, when a cigarette, when you light it and inhale. | |
| So, I guess it's crack, I don't know. | |
| He clearly is being treated to something that he probably hadn't ever been treated to before. | |
| It's a new experience for him, which is exciting. | |
| Don't worry, the phallus is blurred out, so you don't have to see that, really. | |
| But, anyway, the bottom line is, here's what I can tell you from this. | |
| The most I gleaned from this was that Hunter Biden is a righty. | |
| That's about all I can glean from that. | |
| So there's another tape out there. | |
| You came in hot today. | |
| Did you? | |
| Okay. | |
| What compelled you to watch this? | |
| I feel like indulging in this right-wing propaganda created a situation where you needed to start looking for empirical evidence towards it historically. | |
| Is that accurate? | |
| I wish I could tell you that was really easy to find this, but it wasn't. | |
| And, you know, you do a couple searches. | |
| I was going to say, you probably had to go looking for this. | |
| A little bit. | |
| Not like a lot. | |
| Like, I didn't have to go through past one page of Google search. | |
| But, you know, maybe the fifth or sixth or eighth result and then, you know, whatever. | |
| And a couple of them don't have it. | |
| They pretend that they're doing the hype bit and then it's not there. | |
| It's like some reporting of it. | |
| So, at any rate, I don't know exactly what it does. | |
| I mean, you know, it's not, it's, you know, I don't know. | |
| It's just a guy on a couch and, you know, smoking crack. | |
| I just don't know what it's supposed to do. | |
| Except for they're throwing stuff at a wall and hoping something sticks. | |
| Right. | |
| Like this whole Hunter Biden thing, it just smacks of pure desperation. | |
| Yeah. | |
| None of this narrative is hit. | |
| Not his drug use, not his supposed emails with his dad, not the Burisma stuff. | |
| None of it has stuck. | |
| And I wonder Did they treat this, when you were listening to it and watching it, did they treat this in a situation where somehow or another Hunter Biden was an extension of his quote-unquote father's corruption? | |
| Did they treat this as like this is who these people are? | |
| Like what's the narrative they tried to tell? | |
| They literally are, it just feels like they're trying to make Hunter Biden the candidate. | |
| And so it's just blurred. | |
| It's all like, this is Joe Biden because this is the kid. | |
| I mean, listen, it's OAN, by the way. | |
| I know it says OANN, but when you watch OAN, that's how they refer to themselves. | |
| The extra N is superfluous, I suppose. | |
| Time out. | |
| You were watching OANN. | |
| I did, yeah. | |
| But it's hard. | |
| You have to go on their YouTube channel and watch their clips there. | |
| Okay, okay. | |
| We have to talk about this very, very quickly. | |
| Can you talk about the difference in narrative between something like a Fox News or right-wing talk radio and what you're seeing on OANN? | |
| Oh, it looks like a high school news thing that they would have put together at that level. | |
| But people don't care. | |
| People don't care it looks terrible. | |
| I mean, and listen, it doesn't look terrible terrible because they'll have, you know, one person might be well lit in the background or whatever and it may be like a studio-ish. | |
| But what were they talking about? | |
| Okay, so the one thing was, you know the lady that comes in at the White House in the back who always gets the last question? | |
| The pretty lady? | |
| I forgot her name, but anyway, she was on there and they found on the hard drive, they started going into these reports about images they found on the hard drive. | |
| This connects to the text they found later, but in such a horribly vague way, she was trying to insinuate that the pictures they found with him and his | |
| 14 year old niece were inappropriate and but I really can't say what they are But then you wait a little bit longer just like what Trump does and she starts to tell you yeah They're like in a horizontal position You know which is must be it's got you know it's troubling and but all they could basically say was they you know they requested from the local police has there been any you know inquiry into these photos and They're waiting to back to here | |
| So that's all they can say, because the pictures might not be anything, but in an effort to cast the aspersion of it, they're like, they walk around it and they really try and make it sound like it was... This is so gross. | |
| Yeah, and they're making it sound like it was gross. | |
| This is so gross. | |
| Now, so... Yeah. | |
| Well, I gotta ask. | |
| You spent a few days in this. | |
| Doesn't it feel gross? | |
| I mean, doesn't it? | |
| I mean, like, because on one hand, we're talking about blatant corruption with Trump and lies that have cost hundreds of thousands of lives. | |
| You're talking about, I mean, not just tabloid stuff, but we're talking about, like, totalitarian, slandering, conspiracy theory lies, hundreds of thousands. | |
| I mean the worst of the possible worst. | |
| I mean the fact that they haven't claimed that he's like sacrificing babies yet. | |
| Which I assume somebody is somewhere. | |
| I assume that's being claimed right now. | |
| This is really disgusting stuff. | |
| Oh yeah, and I was just trying to take it in as fact. | |
| I wanted to be able to just absorb all these things to be able to tell you about it later as if I was watching it, you know, and believing all this stuff, right? | |
| So, so it didn't even like, I don't know how much it hit me versus just sort of like, God, this guy Hunter is, you know, he's just got a very strange life and he's got a lot of trouble that he needs to deal with, you know, and I don't, and again, it didn't, it didn't even hit me like how, what am I, why are we watching this? | |
| It didn't, it didn't really even make sense even from that point of view. | |
| Especially because, you know, then the texts come out. | |
| You know, this is all like being like a balloon letting all the little air out slowly. | |
| Because now there are texts in there which they seem legitimate enough as if they're from Hunter Biden saying, now I can't see so-and-so. | |
| They don't, they blur out the name because of sexually inappropriate behavior. | |
| And this is the kind of thing that would just ruin my life where I have to just end it all if it ever came out. | |
| And so clearly that must mean he's talking about his 14 year old niece who they're having some sexual relationship with. | |
| They FaceTime each other. | |
| You know, and it's like, how can they FaceTime so much? - This is terrible. | |
| - Yeah. | |
| - This is terrible. - So this is what they were, this is what OAN was up to at this point. | |
| Although it started bubbling up in the other places too when the text came out. | |
| Now, are you aware that he, he like, and this was reported like in the New Yorker like a year ago, maybe longer, but all of a sudden it's news again, breaking. | |
| He went on a seven day crack bender in LA before drying out and then hooking up with Beau Biden's wife, widow. | |
| Because that was sort of weird. | |
| And again, why are they reporting this? | |
| I don't know. | |
| I have to say, by the way, I want to go on the record. | |
| I don't give a rat's ass about Hunter Biden. | |
| I just don't. | |
| You know what I mean? | |
| It's so irrelevant. | |
| By the way, there are reasons not to vote for Joe Biden. | |
| There are things that you can say to people to not vote for Joe Biden. | |
| At this time, by the way, I don't think that a rational person who cares about the health of this country would listen to those things. | |
| But the fact that the final push by Trump and the right-wing ecosystem is this. | |
| Joe Biden will raise taxes on people. | |
| He's being manipulated by the far left. | |
| He'll get rid of fracking. | |
| He'll get rid of oil. | |
| And his son is a drug addict, possible creep, corrupt person. | |
| That's such a flimsy argument. | |
| That's so sad! | |
| It gets stronger. | |
| It gets stronger. | |
| Okay? | |
| Because the last couple of days, it just morphed into the business deals. | |
| Okay? | |
| The business deals and all the things that are coming out. | |
| Do you know about this guy, Tony Bobulinski? | |
| Yeah, they were trying to make this a thing. | |
| Yes. | |
| It seems really clear, okay, that all these things that came out, like they were doing a deal with China and the big guy, right, who they mentioned is clearly Joe Biden. | |
| It's not, though. | |
| OK, well, and they're supposed to give him 10 percent of whatever cut they're going to get. | |
| You know, the Biden name is really, they call it the Biden lift. | |
| Have you heard about this? | |
| The Biden lift? | |
| The Biden lift is what is the secret sauce when they're negotiating whenever and they can use the name and all of a sudden things just happen a lot easier when they're negotiating. | |
| Is it almost like how China hands Ivanka the trademarks that she wants? | |
| Is it almost like the Trump lift? | |
| I wish I could tell you. | |
| Or is it like how the Trump Corporation makes money, you know, selling the presidency and selling influence and access to the president? | |
| I mean, is it like that? | |
| I wish I could tell you I knew anything about that, but they would never say anything about that, so I don't know. | |
| But the interesting thing, like, so Ron Johnson keeps bubbling up, too, because he's got this whole Senate, you know, investigation where he releases a report that showed that Biden's cut some side deal that cut out Bobulinski. | |
| And Bobulinski then has a text where he's really upset about it, but within two responses he's like, "Hey, congrats on your dad getting the nomination, "and I hope it all is well." It's very strange, very Jekyll and Hyde back and forth. | |
| But the one thing I found interesting I did catch was, of all people, Huckabee, Mike Huckabee, comes out and says that this is not worth going through because it's just simply too complicated. | |
| No one's going to follow it. | |
| And I had to like really pull it apart to try and figure out what they were trying to say because again, there's two things here. | |
| Can Joe, is Joe Biden allowed to make money after he's a vice president? | |
| Is that, is he? | |
| Probably. | |
| Yeah, I, the problem in all of it is that Nothing that we're talking about here goes any further than anybody else in politics who leaves politics and then traffics and influence. | |
| I mean, You know, if you really want to get down to it, this is what all former politicians kind of do. | |
| I mean, it's not great, and I wish our system was better than this, but it's impossible for any of this Hunter Biden bullshit to stick, because look at Trump and his kids. | |
| I don't even think Republicans actually buy this stuff. | |
| I think that they know very well that they've made a deal with the devil, and there's nothing here That isn't a hundred times worse with Donald Trump. | |
| Like, this just feels so impotent and so sad. | |
| Like, they don't even have an argument for why Donald Trump should continue being president. | |
| And meanwhile, this slander just doesn't even get anywhere near any sort of actionable target. | |
| It's really pathetic. | |
| So, you know, the most pathetic thing about all this that was frustrating was, you know this guy Dan Bongino? | |
| Bongino? | |
| I don't know how to say his name. | |
| Yeah, I mean, he has blocked me on social media for some ungodly reason, but sure. | |
| He's an awful person, even trying to accept us at face value. | |
| Oh, he's terrible. | |
| But here is his big thing, and they were touting this a lot. | |
| The emails reveal that Joe Biden allegedly had knowledge of, and may have even participated in, his son's corrupt foreign business affairs. | |
| Specifically, one email shows that Biden met with a high-ranking official from Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, That didn't happen. | |
| to making his ill-advised demand that unless the country's president fired the prosecutor who was investigating the company and about to question his son, the US would withhold a billion dollars in badly needed aid. | |
| That was being pushed. | |
| Yes. - None of that happened. - Right. | |
| And so that's their big tie hearing 'cause it's like why are they mentioning Hunter, It's because they're trying their best to connect Joe Biden while he was vice president to all of this corruption and he was going along which by the way sounds awfully familiar because it's what Trump has been doing. | |
| I mean, all right, I'm going to put my other head on. | |
| Trump has even tried to get the U.S., not the U.S. | |
| Open, the whatever cup, whatever golf, big championship thing at his golf course, and he sent the fricking ambassador to the country to like negotiate that on his behalf, which is crazy. | |
| So that's what they're pushing here, and obviously I don't know if this is going to stick or not. | |
| They even found an audio tape of Biden talking to the Ukrainians before he left, where he tells them to make sure they get a loan from PrivatBank before Trump gets into office. | |
| Otherwise, Trump is going to think he'll need to pour money into Ukraine. | |
| Now this is according to OAN. | |
| What they say is if Trump decided to give all that money to Ukraine, which is why Biden said don't get the money from somewhere else, it would mean that Trump would look into the details of financial arrangements and discover that Biden's financial interests were all over in the country and that they couldn't afford to have that. | |
| This is impenetrable nonsense. | |
| I did my best. | |
| I thought I was being clear. | |
| No, it's not your fault! | |
| What this is, this is just flooding the zone with shit. | |
| Yeah. | |
| This is, like, the stuff of Russian politics. | |
| This is the stuff of... And by the way, like, you know, it's impossible to not fight in the mud and not get dirty. | |
| Like, Donald Trump and what he represents is this. | |
| It's this wild, desperate, ad hominem, you know, whatever your problem is, go ahead and make it the other person's problem, whether or not it's corruption, enrichment, empowerment. | |
| It's so gross. | |
| So I have to ask you this. | |
| Thankfully, you get to abandon this experiment, Nick. | |
| And thankfully, you get to, I don't know, sleep tightly and not have dreams about unauthorized food being taken away after you've been reported. | |
| How do you feel about the election besides the outcome right now? | |
| How do you feel about where the right is? | |
| What's the mindset of the right? | |
| How do you feel about what it's going to be like going forward? | |
| Like, let's say, for instance, that Joe Biden wins the election. | |
| By the way, this episode's going to come out one week before the election, which gives us two episodes before we get to the actual presidential election. | |
| Give me a little bit of a taste. | |
| What is the subconscious of the American right like right now? | |
| I think it's fragile to the point where a lot of people are going to feel the need for violence. | |
| a lot of people are gonna feel the need for violence. | |
| They're gonna feel the need of, I mean all the fears are going to be unleashed. | |
| And the only hope we would have is that, like let's say three or four or five days go by after the election and like, you know the buildings aren't collapsing and the United States isn't being sucked into some weird vortex of socialism. | |
| When that doesn't happen, then maybe they'll look around and be like, "Oh, okay, we can probably go back to business as usual," and life goes on. | |
| But there's no question that that's what they are trying to stir up, is just the notion of, and we've heard this for years and years, is that literally, like my dream, you're going to have, it's like a nuclear bomb is going to hit, and these things are going to be destroyed at your feet, literally crumble at your feet, not figuratively. and these things are going to be destroyed at your And so that's the fear that they've instilled, | |
| And I don't know how long it would take of any kind of prosperity or any kind of return to normalcy before anyone might be convinced of anything else. | |
| I want to point out before I bring this thing in for a landing that everything that you just brought up has consequences. | |
| On one hand, it's something to tell Republican voters that they need to reelect the Republican president or else there will be taxes. | |
| Right? | |
| And a lot of people hear this stuff and in passing they're like, oh, Hunter Biden's corrupt or whatever bullshit nonsense they're peddling today. | |
| That's one thing. | |
| And by the way, like Amy Coney Barrett is going to be sworn in tonight by Clarence Thomas. | |
| So we're entering into a whole new era of American politics. | |
| But it's another thing to talk to people And tell them that there is this invisible war by people who are corrupt, who are possibly, you know, again, I mean, it's not a coincidence that this pedophile thing has come up in the era of QAnon and, you know, all this idea of like the, you know, deep state and all these machinations. | |
| There are people who hear this. | |
| I mean, there was a dude arrested just the other day who was planning on trying to assassinate Joe Biden. | |
| I mean, does it mean that America will collapse into sectarian asymmetrical violence? | |
| No, it doesn't, but it does mean that there's a heightened chance for it. | |
| There are people hearing this who believe they're in an invisible war and they're acting as invisible soldiers. | |
| Everything that you just said makes the potential for violence, tragedy, go up exponentially. | |
| That's really upsetting stuff. | |
| Before we wrap up, I have a couple of bullet points I just want to throw out there to make sure, because I don't know if you've heard of these other things. | |
| Okay, you ready? | |
| So, okay, the most common refrain, by the way, overall is, it's clearly, it's simply, the media refuses to cover what they're covering. | |
| That's the big, you know, thing that they're complaining about, all of it. | |
| Now, they're all in it together, is what they say. | |
| Mainstream media and all the Democrats are all colluding to bury the Biden email story, right? | |
| Like, that'll prove that Biden has had business deals, you know, basically what Trump has been doing, he's been doing too. | |
| And it's censorship. | |
| Twitter is blocking the New York Post story from getting out, because they had all this, you know, stuff, whatever. | |
| Like, that was what they're grinding their teeth over ad nauseum. | |
| But even a couple other things... It's perceived persecution, by the way. | |
| Yes. | |
| It's the idea that the entire world is turned against them, and that they actually have the majority, but they're being held down. | |
| Perfect. | |
| Now, there's video of Orthodox Jews in a house in New York, you know, being visited by cops. | |
| And this was tyranny, because the cops had had a report that there was a lot of noise. | |
| They go in, there's way more than 10 people that are gathering in this house, which is violating No. | |
| whatever de Blasio's put in. | |
| And it was tyranny. | |
| And the Orthodox Jews were trying to slam the door in the cop's face. | |
| They're not wearing masks. | |
| And the cop was, I mean, he's very reasonable the whole time. | |
| There was nothing in this thing that was tyrannical at all. | |
| But they were like holding us up. | |
| How about this? | |
| Mark Kelly, who was running for Senate in Arizona, dressed like Hitler in 1986. | |
| Did you hear about this? | |
| No. | |
| Did that not come out? | |
| No. | |
| They have a picture of some random person wearing a Hitler outfit at a Halloween costume party in 1986. | |
| And they insist that it's Mark Kelly. | |
| I believe they allowed Mark Kelly at the very bottom to say that, oh, it's not him. | |
| But everyone has completely jumped to that conclusion already that it is him and that he should just be completely canceled now. | |
| That was bubbling up a while until the Hunter Biden sex tape stuff started coming out. | |
| And then something happens in Pennsylvania and no one can really even on my side setting it can say well exactly what but Sean Parnell I guess he's running for Congress or something something about the voting and the ballots and even Trump was trying to say that it's all rigged and that they they went to court for something but no one could really be specific about what that was | |
| But again, more of this laying the groundwork for the something wrong, this fault, you know, this sort of like, you know, this ethereal, you know, boogeyman out there who's going to like, you know, steal votes from military people and throw them into some sort of body of water somewhere not to be found again. | |
| I just want to point out that this is the party and the movement that currently controls the White House. | |
| The Senate, by the way, and by proxy of the Senate, keeps Congress from being a checks and balance over the presidency. | |
| And as of this evening, will now control the Supreme Court after stealing a vacancy on the Supreme Court. | |
| This perceived persecution. | |
| And I want to point out that one of the things that the right does, which is, it's laughable on one side, but it's very telling. | |
| The stories of so-called persecution that they find are so small and they're so pathetic because the persecution is not real. | |
| They're not actually, like, they're not in danger. | |
| They have a ton of power. | |
| They have the wealth. | |
| They have the political power. | |
| All of these stories are all based on making their viewers who are white and control power and control wealth. | |
| Feel like the entire world is against them and that they are going to lose everything if they don't win this election when in fact they have all the power and that they have created this circumstance. | |
| It's really disturbing stuff, man. | |
| Last two things to make your day. | |
| So, you know, Biden, they're really hitting on Biden's got dementia. | |
| He's completely, you know, not all there. | |
| And then, you know, they really pushing hard. | |
| You know, there is a tape, a clip of him saying that he's put together the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics. | |
| And it's like, you know, it's not a deep fake. | |
| He said it, and he didn't mean to say it, and he was, you know, very frustrating. | |
| Then he goes on, he tried to describe Trump, and twice he says the word George before he gets around to saying Trump. | |
| Listen, I'm watching that thinking, and then you also compare the enthusiasm of these rallies versus nobody showed up at a Jon Bon Jovi concert for Biden in Pennsylvania, right? | |
| Like 10 people showed up. | |
| There's a pandemic! | |
| Well I gotta tell you that you start mixing all these things together and it really feels like there's absolutely no enthusiasm for Biden and everyone knows that Biden is really in trouble like mentally and that you know Trump is doing these things that are going on and he's speaking 80 minutes straight off the cuff you know and totally with it so it definitely that's a dichotomy that they're really hitting as well and it feels it feels valid when you when you see these kind of clips together you know | |
| Oh, now the last part was, since I had all these hours to drive by myself, I listened to the movie, I can't call it a documentary, it's a movie called The Plot Against Trump, or Plot Against the President, excuse me. | |
| They made it out of a book, right? | |
| Devin Nunes' story. | |
| And it's why Devin Nunes had to run breathlessly across the campus at night to deliver this intelligence to the White House. | |
| But here's the thing, guess how long it took From 0-0-0 time code, how long did it take for Benghazi to be mentioned for the first time in this movie? | |
| It might have been the first word. | |
| It took about, I think, like 17 minutes. | |
| That's longer than I expected. | |
| But do you know, this is how crazy this thing is, and then what we can get you done. | |
| But it all starts with Flynn, right? | |
| It goes from Flynn to Comey to Carter Page. | |
| This is the holy trinity of the deep state, whatever. | |
| But did you know that Flynn was aware of illegal arms being distributed out of the compound in Benghazi? | |
| And since because he knew about it, they had to get him out because he was going to expose that. | |
| And it was, by the way, it was a bipartisan plot to supply arms out of the Benghazi consulate, wherever it was. | |
| And that's why they had to take him out. | |
| I did not know this. | |
| This must be what the 30,000 emails were all about that Hillary deleted. | |
| I thought he was founding ISIS. | |
| That's what they were saying a couple of years ago, that she was actually forming ISIS as a political weapon. | |
| But that's interesting. | |
| Okay. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Cool. | |
| Whatever it is today. | |
| Sure. | |
| So that's how it starts and it goes down from there. | |
| And they got everybody in it. | |
| All the players are in it too. | |
| It looks good. | |
| They filmed it nicely. | |
| Nick, I have to tell you first of all, thank you on behalf of the Muckrake community for taking one for the team. | |
| lie down in a dark room for a while, uh, decompress, deprogram. | |
| This is absolute madness. | |
| And I gotta tell you, I'm really glad that we got this glimpse because we have one week until the presidential election and, uh, there, the stakes couldn't be higher first and foremost. | |
| I, uh, I still believe that we're going to see not just violence and intimidation, but we're going to see a definitive election of our generation. | |
| I truly and honestly believe that. | |
| I'm so glad that you are back, and again, on behalf of the community, we have missed you terribly, and we're just thrilled that you're here. | |
| Well, somebody owes me something for having to watch that tape. | |
| I'll tell you that. | |
| I don't know how. | |
| I need some karmic retribution or something because that was not easy. | |
| That is not great. | |
| But if you do want to support our efforts and make Nick watch Right Wing Media to tell us about the absolute horseshit alternate reality they're living in right now, | |
| You can go over to patreon.com slash mcrick podcast a reminder that will unlock exclusive content including including election night viewing with us where we're going to react in real time with you to the results coming in and basically be ready to go in the streets if we need to because this whole thing is really really rough. | |
| That is patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast. | |
| We're going to be back later in the week. | |
| We're going to preview this election. | |
| We're going to talk about Amy Coney Barrett swearing in all of this madness. | |
| In the meantime, you can find Nick over at Can You Hear Me, SMH. | |
| You can find me at J.Y. | |
| Sexton. |