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Nov. 7, 2020 - The Muckrake Political Podcast
51:57
BIDEN WINS! WAR IS OVER!

Hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman bask in the glow of an incredible victory for Joe Biden, but also warn of the potential dark days to come as the unpredictability of Donald Trump looms over the proceedings.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Time Text
After four long, tense days, we've reached a historic moment in this election.
We can now project the winner of the presidential race.
Well, it's easier to be a parent this morning.
It's easier to be a dad.
It's easier to tell your kids character matters.
It matters.
Telling the truth matters.
Being a good person matters.
The last communication we have from the president is from about three hours ago, an all-caps message that says, I won this election by a lot, which is not true.
He didn't win this election, and he didn't win it by a lot.
That's just nuts.
Hey, everybody.
Welcome.
To the Muckrake Podcast.
I am Jared Yates, and I'm here with Nick Halsman.
Nick, we did it!
We did it!
Raise the roof!
We did it!
We all did it.
We all did it.
By the way, I don't need to introduce this, but I feel like the host mentality, I have to do it.
I don't know.
Maybe you live under a rock.
Maybe you live in the forest.
Maybe somehow or another, the only information that you gather is from the Muckrake Podcast.
And by the way, if that is what you do, hats off to you.
Well done!
I mean, you've chosen wisely.
But if you have not heard Joe Biden is the President-elect of the United States of America.
After days upon days upon days, maybe weeks, maybe years, what is time, Nick?
The networks and the decision desks finally called it.
Finally, declared Joe Biden the President-Elect after days of worrying about hurting Donald Trump's feelings and possibly setting off some sort of a constitutional slash societal crisis.
We have arrived at the moment.
For those of you who aren't aware, there are people spontaneously celebrating around the country as if it's VE Day and VJ Day and that we have won a war.
And let's be honest, Nick, we kind of won a war.
We kind of defeated fascism at the ballot box.
War is over.
That's what the headline should be for New York Times.
So we'll get into the ramifications, what to expect from this, where we're going.
I have to tell you, I'm just giddy on the level that I could probably vibrate through a physical wall.
Where are you?
Where's Nick's mind right now?
Well, first of all, having gone through food poisoning on Tuesday and having the worst week of all, as I'm sure everyone in the chat knows how bad that can be.
It was really like, I was like, I'm never going to forget this.
This is going to be the week where, man, we're going through all this turmoil.
I was like sick in bed.
I couldn't run in the bathroom.
I'm kind of wondering, A, do I call them out the restaurant I got it from?
And B, do I call them directly and tell them that they put my life in peril?
I don't know.
What do you think?
You know what I love about you, Nick, is that your priorities are in the right place.
Yeah.
Let's not celebrate defeating fascism at the ballot box.
Let's call out who gave you food poisoning.
Absolutely.
That's what I appreciate about you.
Well, you know, my gastrointestinal state is as important as a state of play in the government.
Maybe more so.
But the point is, the point is, I have now, just, okay, here's the thing.
Donald Trump was the food poisoning And today I finally overcome it and I now feel terrific because having had to go through that.
So I had to go through my own personal Trump hell food poisoning thing.
This is a real interesting metaphor.
And here I am off the other end and I feel terrific.
You just took one of the most important moments of my adult life and turned it into a metaphor for your battle with food poisoning and your gastrointestinal tract.
Thank you.
That was incredible.
That was incredible.
Yes, thank you.
I mean, listen.
Actually, I want to quote this tweet, because it was a great sentence from, I think, actually a fan of the show, if I'm not mistaken, Mike Lee Dyson, was on James Corden, and he said, you have to hear this, he's talking to Trump, as if he was talking to him directly, he goes, you, Trump, stood up every morning to excrete the feces of your moral depravity into a nation you turn into your psychic commode.
So, there's a lot of things going on there that I could really appreciate.
Wow, that is a... that's a lot.
Yeah, so the point is, it is a momentous moment, an incredible thing.
I can't wait to go bang some pots and pans out on the street, find some drive-in celebration, and just, you know, celebrate.
Now, of course, you know, I hate to be the crowd, you know, following the parade, but You know, we have to wait to see what the orange one is going to say and what he's going to do.
And then, you know, that makes it this sort of window dressing or maybe just some sort of extra just chef's kiss spice on this, because it'll be we know that the results are foregone.
So, by the way, I want to say a couple things.
First and foremost, thank you to the McCray community.
You all are the absolute best.
There is, like, not even a comparison with you and other people.
The fact that we have done this together and that we've been there for each other and supported each other is just...
Chef's kiss.
Wonderful.
Absolutely needed and necessary.
This wouldn't have happened if people hadn't found each other and taken care of each other and supported each other.
It just wouldn't have happened because that's what fascism does is it separates us and it makes us afraid and it makes us vulnerable is what it does.
But the second thing is I will say is that it is so appropriate that Donald Trump right now is out on the golf course.
That dumbass is out on a golf course.
And by the way, like, I love that... I love that Trump is probably still trying to play golf.
You know what I mean?
That he's still, like, trying to line up putts and still trying to do whatever.
And he's so upset and he just... he's just so frustrated because he's a total... By the way, Donald Trump, loser.
Loser.
Loser!
You have lost, sir.
You have lost.
And you've been rejected on a massive scale.
But I love that he's out golfing right now.
And undoubtedly, they've already said, of course, that, you know, they're rejecting this.
The real legal battle starts on Monday.
And again, I would be remiss if I didn't remind everyone, we're in a moment of danger right now.
The next couple of days are a really dangerous moment, and that's something to keep in mind while we celebrate, and particularly as we're having spontaneous celebrations where we're going in the streets and all that stuff, because there are a lot of people whose realities right now are crumbling, and they are... they're very brittle.
You know, and like when their things fall apart, they go out and they hurt people.
So it's a reminder that this is a dangerous moment, but my God does this feel good.
What an amazing achievement this is.
To defeat an authoritarian who takes power is almost unheard of.
It's really incredible that we did this.
You have to celebrate this.
You have to bank it.
You have to let it re-energize you.
This is a huge historic moment.
Right.
The structures of democracy held barely, right?
No, I wouldn't go that far.
I wouldn't go that far.
I think that that is, I think that that is sort of true.
Because this system, I have to say, did you see this?
Everyone yesterday is like, the framers knew what they were doing, everyone.
This system is sound.
And it's like, no, this system is really bad.
So I agree with you.
Like, it seems like things are holding, But the borders of it are weird, if that makes sense.
Yes.
I mean, at the very least, with all these lawsuits they're filing, they're kind of getting all dismissed because, frankly, there's simply no evidence.
And these lawyers run the risk of getting dinged by the Bar Association, you know, for frivolous lawsuits.
I will parenthetically say that Jennifer Wins, she had a gallbladder emergency surgery.
So that trumps whatever happened to me this week.
So, my goodness, I hope that you're hanging in there.
This makes you feel better.
But either way, the point being that, yeah, it still feels like there was enough of the infrastructure there to kind of keep you sitting at bay.
But yeah, we're far from being over on this because you still have all the Republicans who don't seem to care what Trump is trying to do.
And like we mentioned in the podcast, the destruction of the faith in our elections is really, it's probably already done.
The question now is how long will it take for us to forget the destruction?
I think it's possible to forget it if people stop trying to destroy it, but right now with the Republican side, they're not doing anything to help protect the sanctity of the vote and how well it works.
I mean, you know, they keep trying to say, you know, you have guys like Jim Jordan going on Fox News, which, by the way, they took several minutes to acknowledge that he was president-elect.
And they had to put Brett Baer on because Cavuto wouldn't do it, I guess.
But Jim Jordan's going out there, and he's just literally just lying.
He's saying, like, you know, no one had a chance to see the counts when they had hundreds of ballot watchers all over the place.
Okay, they were 20 feet away instead of 10 feet away or 6 feet away, whatever.
Okay, so that's the one thing they got a concession for.
But that's really the kind of frustrating thing because you're right, it's going to continue to keep this insightfulness going.
And we saw it directly with these two guys from Virginia driving up to Philly to go to the convention center.
And probably this caused some serious mayhem and violence and death, perhaps, with what they were armed.
Well, and I don't know if you've read the... And by the way, maybe people haven't heard about this, because the news cycle has been so, you know, just absolutely overwhelmed with like ballot counting or whatever.
There was a car full of guys driving to Philadelphia with a cache of weapons.
And then it turns out that they were all, of course, QAnon believers.
And that they were carrying thousands of illegal ballots to try and stuff the ballot box.
And by the way, we've talked about this now over and over and over again.
These people believe that there's a conspiracy because they would be involved in a conspiracy themselves, right?
They think that everybody else is trying to do this stuff because they do this stuff.
Right?
Because they're like, of course everyone's out there doing it, because I would do it if I could do it, so there it is.
I mean, it's that old William Cooper idea, Bill Cooper idea.
That is really problematic.
Because right now, the Republican Party, and again, not to throw a bucket of water on all this, because we need to recognize a couple things.
The Republican Party and Fox News is in a crossroads moment.
They're doing the math right now.
Because Trumpists right now are, and again, these are the cultists, right?
These are the people who have their own reality.
And as reality starts to set in and take over their reality, they're growing more and more desperate and angry.
And I'll tell you who they're lashing out against.
The Republican Party.
They keep saying, why isn't the Republican Party doing something?
Where's McConnell?
Where's Rubio?
Where's Cruz?
And those guys, and Jim Jordan of course, right?
Those guys are doing the mental math.
They're doing the footsie that the Republican Party has done for decades.
Which is they understand that their electoral base involves paranoid, dangerous, fascistic people.
So they have to maintain a relationship with them while maintaining a semblance of order and decorum, right?
So right now they are allowing Trump and all of his paranoid, dangerous followers to continue to spout this nonsense without repudiating it and trying to do a little bit of a dance with them.
The problem here is the math that they're doing is they're trying to decide if their best political move is to embrace it.
Right?
Whether or not they can survive the fall of Trumpism and create something new out of it.
If it turns out that Trump's paranoid ramblings and fascistic coup... And by the way, just to let everyone know, we're still in the midst of a coup.
Like, we won this election, but we are still in the midst of an actual fascistic coup.
The question is whether or not the Republican Party will realize it's better to reject this and move away from this, or if they think that there's more of an opportunity if they embrace it.
And a lot of things depend on that.
And a lot of lives are on the line on whether or not the Republican Party decides to embrace this, like, in totality.
Sure.
Well, Ted Cruz has embraced this completely.
He's gone.
I've seen a couple clips of him just ranting and raving as bad as Jim Jordan or Trump.
Here's the problem with his triangulation as far as the political situation.
Texas is going to turn blue, right?
If you look at the last 10 years of how the voting has gone, it seems that would be where it's going.
And he's probably making a big mistake because he, I believe, is up in the next election cycle.
And two more years could easily be a situation where he could get defeated.
But there's a thing that's happening here, and again, I understand we've had a major victory today, but we have to talk about this.
And what we're doing here is, again, we have to celebrate our wins, but we also have to have a larger conversation about the machinations that are at work.
Donald Trump has lost this election.
There are people who are deciding whether or not they want to risk their lives and their reputations and their futures to try and support him because he might win out or this coup might work.
Then there's a second group of people, Nick.
Well, actually, there's two other groups of people.
The next group of people are the people who are trying to figure out what the profit looks like in the future.
You know what I mean?
Like, that's like Fox News.
Fox News is trying to figure out where the Republican Party is going and which side of history they need to be on in order to continue profiting.
There's a third group, though.
And the third group is the group that is trying to figure out, Donald Trump has lost.
How do I take over where Donald Trump left off?
And there are a lot of contenders right now.
And Ted Cruz is one of them.
Right?
Ted Cruz believes he has been ordained by God to become President of the United States.
That's one of the reasons why he's licked Donald Trump's boots even though he called his wife ugly and said that his dad assassinated John F. Kennedy.
Okay?
It's the price that he's had to pay.
He's had to prostrate himself in front of Donald Trump.
There's a couple of other elements, too.
This is why... By the way, have you seen Tom Cotton?
Has anybody seen Tom Cotton?
Where's Tom Cotton right now?
Has anybody gotten a call from Tom Cotton?
It's weird that he's just sort of hanging in the background.
By the way, where's Mike Pence?
Where's Mike Pence right now?
Where's Bill Barr?
Where's Bill Barr?
Oh, and here's one more person that, by the way, started last night.
He made a decision.
Tucker Carlson knows what he's doing.
Tucker Carlson understands that there is a momentum for him to become the heir apparent for Donald Trump and to gain Trumpism and the white supremacist fascistic movement, but to now code it in a sheen of competence.
And strategy.
Which, by the way, if you have a reason tonight not to go to sleep if we all don't pass out from drinking too much champagne, that's a thing to keep you from sleeping.
So right now we're watching multiple people moving.
Some people still believe Trump could win this thing.
Other people believe that there's a profit to be made in the future opposing Biden.
Which, by the way, it'll be Obama Part 2, if anybody wants an idea of what's going to happen.
And then number three, it's the people who want to take over where Donald Trump has left off.
They believe Trump is lost, they want to take up where he's lost and go.
Right, but then Trump will be looming in the background the entire time.
So he'll be having rallies, he'll be weighing in, unless they, you know, prosecute him.
So we have a couple things to talk about there, but you know, all the people we listed who are missing or MIA, are they hanging around with Mark Meadows?
Are they hanging around with Matt Gaetz and Nestor?
Because these are the guys who have just gotten COVID, and we're breathing all over each other all during Tuesday nights and stuff, so that's really interesting.
And the Meadows thing is also fascinating, because we can just sort of divert this to talking about the COVID response, because remember, we were supposed to stop talking about that.
November 4th, it was going to be over.
No more COVID, right?
And meanwhile, his chief of staff has now had it and they tried to hide it.
And I think they actually did hide it for a couple days.
The reporting, I can't quite suss out exactly when, it said earlier in the week he tested positive.
What would you think earlier in the week means if this was an article written on Friday?
Is that Wednesday, would you think?
Because if that's the case, that's two full days where they buried it and then he infected everybody else before anyone knew about it.
By the way, I have to tell you, I'm so ready to get past all this bullshit.
Like, when did you test positive for coronavirus?
Why didn't you tell anybody?
You put other people at risk.
By the way, what is coronavirus?
Is it real?
Is it a problem?
I want to say 1,200 people died of coronavirus yesterday.
And the day before that, I believe it was 1,200.
The day before that was 16.
It's a lot.
It's a lot.
And this is still a problem.
A massive, massive problem that people want to believe isn't real.
I've heard people left and right say, oh, the election's over, we don't have to worry about COVID anymore.
Because they have been told that this is an electoral hoax, right?
To try and defeat Donald Trump.
You really think that's true?
Well, you're in California and I'm in Georgia, my man.
There's a reason why this podcast works.
It's because you're living in one world and I'm living in another and we're like somehow or another meeting via Skype and Crowdcast.
Yeah, no, that's what's happening down here.
I've had multiple people tell me that.
I had to run to the store yesterday to buy some celebratory bourbon and it was just like I was the only human being within miles who had even considered wearing a mask.
So a lot of people actually do believe that this was just a political debate this entire time.
The question is whether or not Joe Biden as President of the United States can shift enough numbers that we can get to the point where people take it seriously and we can at least take a little bit of the curve off.
And I want to say this real fast.
And I think this is important and I want to say it here.
And again, I don't want to be the person who throws the bucket of water on everything.
But we are an honest podcast.
We call it like we see it.
We don't lie about this stuff.
We don't pander.
I hope that's one of the reasons that you listen to this podcast.
It's not going to be taken and gotten completely under control.
The coronavirus pandemic.
Like Joe Biden isn't going to take the oath of office and all of a sudden it's going to disappear.
We can't engage in magical thinking.
There is a societal problem with coronavirus that has been created by Donald Trump and the Republican Party.
People are not just going to suddenly put on masks because an election happened.
They're not going to, you know, socially distance or take a thing seriously.
This thing has been so screwed up at such a massive level.
We're going to continue to suffer under this.
So here's the problem.
It's when Joe Biden becomes president, everyone's going to be like, well, why is it still going?
What's going on here?
Right?
And you'll get a confidence and you'll get an actual strategy and you'll get an actual, like, reality-based conversation about the coronavirus.
But it's not going to just vanish.
Like, and again, and I want to celebrate.
Today is a day to celebrate, re-energize ourselves, and re-devote ourselves, because we have a massive fucking fight coming.
But we cannot sit here and pretend like the battle is over.
It's not.
This battle is just starting.
And not just coronavirus, everything else.
We are ready for a giant, massive battle at this point, or we need to be.
Sure.
I mean, I think the first thing he'll do is a national mask mandate, which will finally give teeth to people who want to refuse service to people coming into their stores and not wearing masks, and then filming them because they're having a tantrum about that.
So that would probably be the first thing that he would do.
But here's the other worry about coronavirus, and yeah, we're slowly getting into like the depressing part of what this, you know, our country is going through, but it could mutate.
I don't know if you saw these reports out of Denmark, but mink are now somehow spreading a different version of this COVID, and they're trying to just sort of like, I guess, kill all of them so they don't spread it further and make it, you know, into a whole different kind of disease or whatever.
So that is also the concerning thing here.
I think we're also going to find out, remember, Once the other side takes over, it gets into all the communications and all of the correspondence between agencies.
I mean, we're going to find out so much of the corruption and incompetence of what COVID really stood for, I suspect, right?
We're going to see all the internal deliberations between the CDC and the White House and how everybody knew how bad it was.
That very well could be something that would shift the ideology of a lot of people who are denying it.
But I think the sad truth is, is that the people in Georgia and other people in those areas around the country who thought this was a hoax, they're going to have someone they know directly who has either gotten very sick or died within the next six months.
That's what it looks like it's going to happen.
You're going to know directly somebody, and that would probably do enough to shift enough people over to get a sense of how serious this is.
And by the way, we're talking about the reality of the situation, but we also need to talk about the perception of things.
So, and again, like let's celebrate what we've got.
We like to pretend that we're all, like, rugged individuals.
I mean, that is one of the defining faults of America, that Americans think that they are just, you know, they're bootstrapped people.
One of the things we have to understand is that the President of the United States really affects the reality of our lives.
Like, we, you know, we like to pretend politics doesn't affect us, or, you know, we are separated from that stuff, we are our own individuals, we're captains of our own fate, or whatever.
The President of the United States really changes the way society feels.
A lot of things are going to happen because Joe Biden will be President.
It's going to calm down.
Like there are going to be, and you've heard me say this multiple times, we're going to have homegrown terrorists.
We're going to have extremists who are going to actually get worse.
That is something we need to realize.
But we are going to look at a society where every little day isn't dominated by cultural fights.
Where it's not every single issue has to be turned up to 10 or 11 and we have a person who is sowing division and clashing us against each other.
That's going to calm down a little bit.
And that might be enough to take the edge off of something like COVID.
It might actually lead to something better there.
We're going to have lives that aren't going to be dominated by some asshole who opens up his Twitter every couple of minutes and says something inflammatory and crazy.
Now, Donald Trump's going to continue to be inflammatory and crazy.
He's not going to go away.
And by the way, that's another thing we have to remind people.
It's not like Donald Trump's going to say, congrats everybody, good luck.
You know?
Like, that's not what's going to happen.
Like, he's going to become the anti-president.
He's going to continue in this position that he started, you know, years ago when he called every politician an idiot and said he could do better than them.
But we are looking at a situation where things are going to at least get a little bit better.
And right now, a little bit better feels massive.
Massive.
And we can have fights about politics and we can have fights about administrations and what people want to do and where they want to go.
But right now, this is a moment to celebrate.
We have dodged a major, major bullet.
Now we have to make sure that Donald Trump's attempted coup doesn't work.
Because it's still going.
Well, let's continue the slivers of hope that we have that the country could go in a better direction, because Mark has a great question in the questionnaire, where he wants to know from you, as a Georgia resident, do you think the lack of GOP support for a coup might lead Trump supporters to sit out the Senate runoffs?
Now, we had spoken about this off-air, and I had said, well, listen, Lafleur's going to get all of Doug Collins' votes, and then she'll just win easily, but you didn't think that was going to happen, so elaborate more on that.
Well, I've been sitting around really thinking about, uh...
The special election runoff in Georgia.
A couple things might happen, so just to give everyone a brief glimpse of the possibilities here.
One, first and foremost, is that the Get Out the Vote organization in Georgia for the Democrats has just skyrocketed.
It's an impressive operation, and this state would not have gone blue if it wasn't for that.
And, you know, listen, first and foremost, hats off to Stacey Abrams.
But it wasn't a one-person show.
There was a massive, massive movement.
And I'm talking about organizers.
I'm talking about young people.
It was a big, giant operation.
The question now is whether or not America can disabuse itself of one of its worst notions, which is that divided government is a good thing.
A lot of other countries, if you win the leadership of the country, you win the government.
You know what I mean?
Like all of a sudden you control the government and for a while you get to do what you want to do with, you know, like a couple of fights here and there.
In America, there are a lot of voters who love a split government.
They absolutely love the idea of having a president of one party and a congress of another party.
And we've seen that over and over.
And actually people like actually kind of They curse themselves to like a log jammed government.
You know what I mean?
Like they actually curse themselves to not let anything change or things to progress or move in a different direction.
So right now, if I had to say, I would say 52% of me believes that either Ossoff or Warnock will win and the other will lose and we'll have a split Senate or that maybe both of them win.
And maybe that's 48%.
That's how I'm looking.
But I don't think both of them will lose.
I think at least one of them will become a senator.
Okay.
But wait a minute.
In order to get the 50-50, they need both of them to win.
Wait, that's right.
You're right.
You're right.
So 48% of me.
Yeah, the math on that just escaped me.
It's been a long day already.
Yeah, what is done?
I would say that 48% of me believes that they both win and the Democrats gain control and 52% of me thinks that they split it.
And I know that that's not true.
Yeah.
Okay.
Uh, I kind of, it was interesting because I, you know, I kind of was digesting what you said and felt like, um, certainly there could be a run of like 17 year olds who are going to turn 18 in the next couple of months that they're going to, you know, sign up and get them to vote Democratic.
Um, so I suppose, yeah, it'll probably be as close as it is now.
And it's just a question on the margins here of whether they can get a few extra thousand votes here or there.
I would hope that there'd be a rally around the notion of we have to finally get some things done.
You know, even if it's... I guess the only thing that the Republicans did to pollute the waters was to convince a lot of people that the Democrats are so progressive and so far left that they're going to enact all these insane policies, when I don't really feel that that would happen, necessarily.
I don't think that anything about Joe Biden or Kamala Harris indicates that.
Uh, at all.
So, uh, but it's there, it's out there, and there are enough people who think that would happen, so it'll be interesting to see.
I would hope that maybe enough GOP people, yeah, would be turned off by the whole antics and everything that's going on right now, and just stay home, and not go and vote in this election, the GOP people, and then let them both get it.
It would be, by the way, if that happened, that would be my moment of like, I would be, I would have the euphoria that I'm sort of missing right now because it's been dragged out a few days.
If we got control of the Senate too, that would be an incredible moment for our democracy.
I agree.
So, by the way, for those listening right now, because we have patrons, and if you want to become a patron and unlock these privileges and stuff, you can go over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
Because we have patrons, we do things where, like this emergency podcast, we have our muckrake community here watching live as we tape this, asking questions.
So we have a couple of questions that we want to get to very, very quickly.
First and foremost, and this is a quicker question, Nia says, is Trump and or his family going to jail?
And I'll say this first and foremost, I think a lot of people are expecting Joe Biden or Joe Biden's administration to prosecute Donald Trump or investigate Donald Trump.
That's not going to happen.
And I know that that is a little bit disappointing to hear.
The presidents do not investigate former presidents because eventually the president will become a former president.
That's a big thing, right?
Like you don't want to open yourself up because to be president of the United States of America means that you do things that are at least questionable.
Right?
At any given time, whether it's like bombing somebody or engaging in this or engaging in that.
That being said, there are multiple investigations of Donald Trump and the people around him.
So whether or not states go after Donald Trump and his family, is a completely different matter and we don't know.
I'm not going to be one of those raving mad conspiracy theorists who tries to raise money and grief people because I tell you there are secret indictments, Nick!
They're getting ready to be unveiled at any given time as the as the Freedom Eagle soars above America and as the Chief Justice Clerk of the Supreme Court Blows his bugle of freedom!
Right?
That's not what this podcast is.
But there is a real possibility that states could prosecute Donald Trump.
That is an actual possibility.
But I will say that Biden will not prosecute Donald Trump.
I'm fairly, fairly certain of that.
Let's not forget, though, that the Department of Justice is supposed to be a wholly separate entity from the White House.
So if Biden is going to honor what had been sort of, you know, honored for all those years, that he will not interfere and really kind of, I mean, there is a notion they want to set policy and emphasis, but they're not supposed to tell anybody anyway.
Like Joe Biden wouldn't be the guy who's like, you got to prosecute him.
So that's the real question is who he appoints as the head of the attorney general in theory.
In theory.
But you're right.
The next level of that conversation is the pardon.
A friend of mine didn't realize this morning that I was telling him on a text.
You can pardon, like Nixon was pardoned for any future crimes to kind of cover him for anything he might have done.
Because nothing had been brought up yet against him when he resigned.
It would have happened within a few days, but he resigned.
So that's the thing.
Trump could resign or could pardon himself and then be impervious to any of those federal crimes anyway, which is why the states would then become very big, New York being the one where SDNY has certainly plenty to accuse him of.
They're not probably the really big ticket things where they can get him for a long time.
And I suspect Trump would think that he could fight that in court and win, you know, because his adult brain.
So that's the question is, is will his ego even allow him to resign and get pardoned anyway?
Or does he think he can win all those cases outright in court?
Well, there is a reality out there.
It is a non-zero, not unsubstantial chance that if Donald Trump understands that he is a lame duck, that he will resign almost immediately and just be like, everybody can go to hell and I don't want to be your president anymore.
And then Mike Pence becomes the 46th president of the United States of America, pardons Donald Trump, and then...
Good luck.
That's a real possibility.
That really, really is.
But I will say this because it's an optimistic day.
Trump and the people around him have crimed so much, Nick.
I mean, there is no shortage of criming that these assholes have done.
So they have given more than ample opportunity for people to find things that they have done and hold them accountable to.
The question of whether or not Biden gets in control and says, we're going after this guy, I don't see that happening.
That just doesn't compute.
So we have another question, which I think is really, really important.
It's something that we need to think about because one of the things We need to talk about here.
As I read this, I want to do it with an asterisk.
Right?
Anna asked in the chat, and Kyle's asking this, restating it.
Anna asked in the chat, we need to be compassionately curious with the 70 million people that somehow fell victim to this campaign.
I would also like to talk about that.
So first things first.
We can celebrate this thing and we deserve to celebrate this thing.
I think anybody out there who is like, don't celebrate it too hard.
There are people who are heartbroken.
Well, screw that.
We have political victories and we have to celebrate them.
And this right now is a momentous occasion in American history.
Like we literally did win a war against fascism here.
So I think we can celebrate it.
The other question is this, and I'd be interested to hear what you have to say, and I'll go ahead and give my take and I'll let you follow it up.
I think that what we need to do is not listen to what these people would tell us.
That they believe Donald Trump supporters because they have been fed so much bullshit and so much propaganda that they are lost in an alternate reality that has absolutely no relationship to the reality the rest of us are living.
That doesn't mean you go into diners and you say, excuse me sir, why did you support Donald Trump and do you still support Donald Trump?
That's the problem right now is that we go ahead and we treat this as if they mean what they're saying or any of these people are telling the truth.
We need to actually look at the socio-economic and societal circumstances that have led to Trumpism, dissect it, and go from there.
But simply going in and asking these people, hey, do you want a seat at the table?
Maybe you should have a show on CNN.
That's not the way that we do it.
We have to actually start to study how we got to this point, as opposed to Asking them outright and having them be a part of the conversation.
Because Trumpism doesn't just need to be rejected in an election.
Which, by the way, it has, Nick.
We rejected it.
In an election.
But it also needs to be treated as a pariah stance in society.
It's the same thing we've done for years when someone came out and they're like, I'm a member of the KKK.
And it's like, congratulations, you just forfeited any seat at the table.
Um, you know, there's a progression in this country that, of progress, slow but sure, and across, you know, probably too slow for most people, but like, for instance, the gay marriage issue had been, you know, a big thing for a long, long, long time.
Finally, it, like, passes.
It's really, uh, people are really upset about it for a while.
You know, we're now so far past that that I feel like, although I won't put it past them, I guess you're gonna say that might be their new abortion issue if they get rid of abortion, but The point being that it just seems like over time, if you just kind of let them be, you know, and you get competent leadership, and maybe you can see some wins, some things that actually are tangible that the government did that, you know, that helped people and were beneficial.
Over time, it might just be enough to kind of get them to be settled in a place where they're not so antithetical to everything that like the Democratic Party is trying to do or politics in general.
You know, they're obviously the people that have affected enough change, the big, you know, Martin Luther King's across our history, have always sort of demanded a lot faster timeline to make that happen.
And that's why they want to have these, you know, these sort of these Conflicts where they can kind of push the issue faster.
So I don't know I mean, I think you're what you're trying to tell me is how I'm supposed to deal with my father-in-law going forward Is that what the conversation is now?
Well, I I don't know the socio-economic Circumstances for your father-in-law, but that I mean the podcast just took quite a turn Um, I I will tell you that with the people that I know who support Donald Trump They're not going to be radicalized.
They're not going to become white supremacist.
They're not going to join QAnon.
They're not going to become Trumpist if they're not worried about whether or not they have health care.
You know what I mean?
Because when these people are, like, unable to pay for, you know, necessary treatment, or able to put quote-unquote food on the table, or keep their jobs, or get ahead, or whatever, when those things happen, all of a sudden the vacuum gets filled with conspiracy theories and radicalizing ideology.
So the question is, and this is the big, big Big giant question is can we reject artificial austerity?
This idea that as the quote-unquote richest nation in the world that we can't afford things like health care, infrastructure, education, and human projects.
If we can start to take money away from the military-industrial complex and get rid of Reaganomics, which of course is redistributing wealth from the poorest to the wealthiest, If we can get back to the point where everyone isn't suffering and just absolutely starving and wallowing in a lack of human dignity, we can fight this thing back.
And people aren't going to be radicalized.
There's all these different levers that are happening at all times.
Simply getting in their face and screaming, we won, you lost, doesn't make it happen.
And by the way, remember in 2016 what that did, it simply pissed you off and made you more motivated to fight back.
So this is one of those things where eventually if we can fight back against artificial austerity, we can start to turn the tide against radicalization.
But it is a much, much larger battle than just winning an election.
You have to radically change society and that's one of the things that we're facing.
And then, shout out to Jess K for reminding me, I always screw that up, where SDNY is also federal.
It's the district attorneys in New York that have the cases that will be impervious to a federal pardon, so thank you for correcting me on that one.
I keep forgetting to do that, but everything you say is perfect, absolutely.
It's a question of can they do things, because in my mind, the movie version is that they get swayed when they finally see some tangible evidence of the government working.
But it's not going to work if McConnell is in charge of the Senate, right?
I feel like we're... That's a big thing.
He already had come out and said he's not going to let him pick who he wants for the cabinet.
I mean, or he was going to make it seem like it's centrist, even though I don't even know.
There's no reason why anybody in the Senate should have any influence over who the president wants in his freaking cabinet.
It's like outrageous to hear, you know, he still thinks he exists in a world where he can, McConnell could control this bullshit.
So that's why it's so imperative right now to get those two in Georgia.
By the way, Al Gross, what's going on in there?
How does a guy keep thinking he's going to win?
He's got doubled up right now, 50% of the vote.
Is there really a possibility he can win that seat in Alaska on the mail-in ballots?
I have no idea what's happening up there.
It feels like a totally different society and reality up there.
But no, you're exactly right.
I think that if Mainstream Republicans and McConnell Republicans have learned anything over the past four years.
It's that they don't have to engage in good faith politics.
They win if they engage in bad faith politics.
They've learned all of the wrong lessons.
And that's one of the reasons why the Democrats have to take over the presidency and the Senate.
This is of massive importance.
Because I, you know, they've already started, I don't know if you've seen it, but Man, they're already talking about deficits, Nick.
They're already... and we joked about it the other day and it's like... it's like...
Who got us in this hole?
Well, let's not find out who got us in this hole, because, you know, let's not look backwards.
Let's look forward, because we really have to worry about our children and our grandchildren.
Yeah, holy shit!
Have you seen the deficit right now?
Oh my god!
Oh my god!
No, no, no, everybody, don't look at who actually raises deficits in their presidencies.
It's surely not Republicans.
We are fiscal conservatives.
Fiscal conservatives.
That is what defines our movement.
Small government, too.
Small government, Nick.
We do not want a tyrannical president running roughshod over the American political system.
Meanwhile, they fired three heads of other departments in the last couple days.
Did you see that?
Gosh, what is my mind?
Anyway, in a very strange way, why are you getting rid of heads of departments now?
Unless you're planning on doing something really destructive in the next couple months, which is certainly on the table as well.
I guess that's the thing.
You know, can they do a lot of damage in a couple months?
I think we've said that in the past, and yes, they certainly can.
Will they be allowed to do that?
I don't know.
But I think that's what's tempering some of the excitement and the joy here, right?
It's because we just don't know what the hell is going to happen.
I just want to remind everybody, and listen, I'm sorry to put on my history hat, but I have to do it for a second.
The last time that we had a situation like this, I would argue, is probably back in the election of 1800, which is where John Adams lost to Thomas Jefferson.
It's where the Federalists lost control of the apparatus of power to the Democratic Republicans.
And, you know, they consider this like a populist revolution in our history.
And it was almost immediate.
And by the way, John Adams was such an asshole.
Trump's got a lot of John Adams in him.
I'm just saying.
And I understand that we all enjoyed the HBO miniseries with Paul Giamatti.
But the history of John Adams is...
Gross.
I mean, he was, like, deporting, you know, people who criticized him and trying to disenfranchise people left and right.
There's a lot of John Adams in Trump.
But when they realized that Jefferson had beaten him, they tried every dirty trick in the book.
They limited the judiciary.
Also, that's when the Supreme Court just decided to give itself the power of declaring laws constitutional or unconstitutional.
Which isn't anywhere in the Constitution.
It just manifested it.
It was completely made up.
And part of it is because Jefferson's cousin was on the Supreme Court and they hated each other.
So this is a moment where we need to look back in history and understand that if you were pissed off and you want to engage in bad faith politics, you can do a lot of damage.
As a lame duck.
And by the way, real fast, Kyle says, can we do a cheers break and then get back to this intellectual discussion?
That's what we're here for.
First and foremost, cheers everyone.
We beat back fascism at the ballot box.
Let's have a quick discussion.
I don't want to throw too much water on it, and this will be the final topic of the day because it wouldn't be the Muckrake Podcast if we didn't talk about that, which is what is the remaining danger right now with Donald Trump?
What could come to pass?
What are the chances that he could possibly somehow or another subvert democracy?
Where are we?
Where are we going?
What do we need to be looking out for as we celebrate?
What do you think, Nick?
Well, I suppose we already mentioned it as far as, is he going to resign and get a pardon?
Is he just going to go down to Mar-a-Lago and just live there and just pretend nothing happened?
Is he going to have rallies?
I think he's going to have rallies.
I think he's going to... He could have a rally tonight or tomorrow!
Yeah.
I think he's going to have a rally because that's what he likes to do.
And I think, you know, it's, we described it in the Wolf of Wall Street, where he's supposed to be, you know, give away, you know, go to get, turn himself in, the whole thing.
And in the middle of the speech, he's like, F this, we're going to keep going.
We're not going to give up.
And that could, the rallies could do that to him, could convince him that there's just simply people out there that want him to be president.
How can you say no to those people?
Um, but I think ultimately he's going to leave the White House.
I think ultimately it'll be a whimper.
It'll be a sad, you know, stain on our, uh, on our democracy, but he'll go.
Um, so I still feel like he'll ultimately just put his tail between his legs sooner than later and just sort of just, just disconnect.
I mean, we need to have a psychiatrist on who could talk about the, the narcissist, uh, you know, what happens when they are finally faced with this kind of a thing, the reality of like a, of a loss.
Uh, I suspect it is that they take their ball and they go home.
I hope that's right.
I hope that that is right.
And he becomes the anti-president and broadcasts from a facsimile of the Oval Office for the rest of his life.
I will say this.
This is what I'm afraid will happen and this is what I'm afraid is going to occur over the next couple of days.
I think there's a real possibility that Some lone wolf, MAGA, true believer, QAnon, Adderant, carries out some sort of attack.
I mean, they've already tried, you know.
The question is whether or not maybe someone succeeds.
I think at that moment there is a real It's a real turning point type situation, if that were to happen.
Which is, what will the right wing do?
This kid over in Kenosha, who obviously killed two people and shot a third person, we watched Trump and everyone around him embrace that in vigilante, you know, fascistic justice.
The question is whether or not those people will go ahead and embrace something like that.
You know what I mean?
Whether or not they're like, well, these are patriots who are worried about the situation.
Or the next level under that is, well, I understand why people are frustrated right now.
And I understand why people feel like they have to take it in their own hands.
Then all of a sudden we reach like a critical mass type situation where people see that and they suddenly start thinking, I'm going to be the person who saves democracy, quote unquote.
I'm the person who's going to help Trump do this thing.
I'm a patriot.
I'm an invisible soldier in an invisible war.
It could get really weird.
It could get really bad.
We might dodge that bullet and Donald Trump might slink away and never actually admit defeat and spend the rest of his life saying he had the election stolen and he'll be a loser who didn't lose.
That's the question.
But we're not out of the woods.
I think that this is going to work out.
I am optimistic.
I think that And that's one of the reasons I was so jubilant today is because we needed the election.
You know what I mean?
We needed the election results on our side to know that there was more of us and that we had legitimately won the election.
If it was in question, that would be a bigger problem and it would lead to the other situation becoming more possible and more potent.
But now that we have the election on our side, it makes that situation less likely and less potent.
But that doesn't mean that it's completely taken off the table.
We are in a moment of real danger.
But again, I just want to reiterate, I was talking to people about this on a live stream earlier.
Today is a day to celebrate.
We did the damn thing.
And we fought off fascism at the ballot box.
It is a historic occasion.
But that doesn't mean we're out of the woods yet.
I can take no, nothing made me more excited to watch everybody dance in Philadelphia.
To take back this song, Which, by the way, is the most ironic.
Short of, fortunate son, this is the one.
It's so stupid.
It's so stupid that Trump chose YMCA for whatever reason.
I have a secret conspiracy theory that it's the only song he could dance to.
I think that's the reason why.
They made a decision that Trump needed to dance out in public, and that's why he chose YMCA.
Right.
But again, this is a moment to celebrate.
And I think we'd be remiss.
I don't know.
I know you feel the same way about it.
I'd be remiss if I didn't say thank you to everybody.
Like, this has been hard.
This has been exhausting.
I feel like I've got a few miles on my odometer.
I don't know how you're feeling.
Oh, yeah.
It'll hit me eventually in the next couple days, whatever.
Although, again, we gotta see what happens with what Trump says.
But I haven't quite felt that release yet.
I'm waiting for it.
It's gonna hit me at some point.
I mean, yeah.
I wept like a child, Nick.
Did you really?
In my beard.
Oh, God.
Tears.
Like rain that leaves.
No, I didn't post it.
I went and I did a live cast, and I made sure that I stopped crying until I got to it.
It was rough.
All right.
Well, listen, I'm glad that one of us is more in touch with themselves than others, but I don't know.
I think, yeah, it's time to celebrate.
I'm going to go out, get some champagne.
We're going to try and maybe drive around a little bit, honk the horn, and just embrace the moment.
Well, much, much love to the Muckrake community.
You are the absolute best.
Again, there's a deeper, deeper, deeper battle to come.
Defeating Donald Trump at the ballot box was only one stage on a much larger battle.
I keep telling everyone, figure out what you want the future to look like because that's what we have to fight for.
Now that he's out of the way, we can start to heal and then we can figure out a way forward.
This right now is a massive, massive battle to come.
But the way that we fight those battles, the way that we make this thing work is by celebrating the wins and embracing one another when we manage the victories that we manage.
Awesome.
Well, I think that takes care of it.
Don't you think Jared?
I think so.
I'm hesitant to bring this podcast in for a landing because I just want to celebrate with you and the Muckray community.
But we're going to go.
We're going to buy our champagne.
We're going to do our things.
And yeah, you all are wonderful.
You won this thing, you fought this thing, you kick ass.
Absolutely more.
Hopefully, we can have a couple of days where we can calm down, where we can find solace in this thing, we can re-energize and be ready for the next fight, and hopefully this orange asshole can get it through his thick, stupid head that he's been rejected and humiliated on the international stage.
You need us until next time.
You can find Nick at Can You Hear Me?
SMH.
You can find me at J.Y.
Sexton.
Holy shit, everyone!
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