Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss Sidney Powell's conspiracy theory-laden legal adventure, the danger of the Right growing more radicalized, and what it's going to take to get this country back on track. Also, Wajahat Ali comes on the program to discuss his recent op-ed and the dangers of Trump's loyalists. To support the show and unlock exclusive content, become a patron at http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast The show's theme is "I've Seen" by Confusions: Listen On Spotify HERE
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Notably, the Dominion executives are nowhere to be found now.
They are moving their offices overnight to different places.
Their office in Toronto was shared with one of the Soros entities.
Smartmatic has been associated with the Venezuelan government led by Hugo Chavez, which is openly hostile to the United States.
There are ties of the Dominion leadership to the Clinton Foundation and to other known politicians in this country.
Unless you're stupid, you knew that a lot of people were coming over from Camden to vote.
One of the Smartmatic patent holders, Eric Coomer, I believe his name is, is on the web as being recorded in a conversation with Antifa members saying that the Biden had the election approved.
Hey everybody, welcome to the Montclair Podcast.
I'm Jared Yates-Axton, always here with Nick Halseman.
We've got a pretty great show for you today.
We have a special guest in Wajahat Ali, who is one of the best thinkers out there, one of the best writers out there.
Recent op-ed from Wajahat.
I reached out to Trump supporters.
They said I tried in the New York Times.
It's one of the best op-eds in a long time.
So I had a good conversation.
So hang out for that before we begin on tonight's show.
By the way, we got to talk about Sidney Powell and the absolute madness happening over in Trump land and what it means for the Republican Party and the right.
Before we do, a couple things of housecleaning.
First and foremost, Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!
We're here for Thanksgiving week.
We will not have an episode on Friday, but for our Patreon subscribers over at patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast, Wednesday night at 7 30 p.m.
Eastern, we will be having a live hangout to celebrate the holiday, say hello to some people.
So all you have to do is go over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
In the meantime, Nick, How about that run by Sidney Powell?
Just an all-time run in politics.
In a couple of days, she alleges that Hugo Chavez, who, dead for a while by the way, tried to steal the election.
George Soros, God knows what other shadows in the corners have been trying to steal the American election.
She went on Newsmax, which is where, it's real news for real people, Nick.
Where she claimed that Brian Kemp, one of the furthest right politicians in America, was bribed by Democratic and foreign forces to steal the election for Joe Biden.
Donald Trump basically Mariah Carey-ed her and said, I don't know her and moved away as slowly as possible.
How crazy do you have to be for Donald Trump to be like, this person is crazy?
I believe that she lasted a half a Scaramucci, perhaps.
Wow.
And yeah, it was batshit crazy.
Now, I usually like to say clown show, but I'm really loving Bozo's show that's being referenced now to go back to my youth.
Do you remember Bozo the Clown?
Who are you talking to, my man?
I used to eat my donuts and drink my milk and watch Bozo and dream about getting on the Grand Prize game.
I would have kicked ass on the Grand Prize game.
I was on the Bozo show, believe it or not.
Time!
Time the F out.
All political discussion now ends.
In 1978, I believe it was, or 79, I believe, I mean, unless I made up the whole memory, I should try and figure it out, but I'll ask my dad, but yeah, I remember, I have the memory of doing that and going on the show, and they filmed it in Chicago.
Wait, what'd you do on the Bozo Show?
I think I was tossing the beanbags into the buckets.
Stop it.
Yeah.
I mean, listen, that's my memory of it.
This was like first grade or second grade, but I was there.
So yeah.
Wait, you might be making this whole thing up.
I mean, it's not.
It's like the – I mean, listen, is Elizabeth Warren – does she have any Native American blood in her and whatever?
Like is it the same kind of story in my family?
I don't know.
But as far as I'm concerned, it happened.
Mark it down.
This is a Hall of Fame muckrig podcast moment.
Nick thinking that maybe he was on the Bozo Show and maybe played in the grand prize game, but isn't sure if he actually did.
This is an all-time great.
This is up there with like the time that you revealed that you snuck into a Kamala Harris fundraiser.
Yeah, hey, there wasn't well, I guess there was a little sneaking in for the picture part at least.
Yes, but Yeah, I am, you know, listening.
What is time?
What is memory, as we've learned?
But, yeah, anyhow, the Bozo Show is what we have here.
And it's been frightening because, you know, my dad's a lawyer, so I've been, like, trying to say, like, what are they trying to say in these briefs and in these complaints?
Because it's really... and he's a professor of law, so he comes in there saying, like, this is just the most ridiculous thing I've seen, as is most every other lawyer on the planet has been weighing in on this.
Okay, so I'll start with the conspiracy theory and then I'll try and move into the legal argument.
something like what the arguments have been because it's not easy okay so i'll start with the conspiracy theory and then i'll try and move into the legal argument and as i do this nick i'm hoping that i can keep somewhat of a grasp on my mind because it's almost like in those old hp Lovecraft stories where somebody catches a glimpse of one of the old gods and then their sanity is just gone.
That's what this is.
Trying to follow the argument here is a lot.
First and foremost, this whole thing starts, and I don't know, I spend way too much time keeping track of just batshit right-wing narratives and fever dream cesspool swamps.
This whole thing begins with a little thing called Dominion.
And Dominion, by the way, is a voting machine software.
And I have to tell you, Dominion is a really ominous sounding name.
For anything.
You know what I mean?
Like, if you hear Dominion, I get it.
I totally understand it.
But so Dominion is this voting software, and while the right is just trying to figure out some sort of explanation for what has happened in this entire situation, one of the guys, I believe his name is Jim Watkins, who is the son of the guy who owns Acoon, and basically is one of the guys who posts as QAnon.
So, by the way, this whole thing goes back to QAnon.
I know that's shocking, but it goes back to QAnon.
He gets on, I want to say it was Newsmax, it might have been OANN, they're almost indistinguishable at this point.
He gets on and he has read the manual, and in the manual it tells you how to switch votes.
And all of a sudden he's like, well, if they were going to steal the election, this is how they would steal the election.
There's absolutely nothing behind it whatsoever.
And the way that this stuff has always worked, and we followed this, you know, and by the way, while I'm on it, We just had our 100th show.
We didn't even realize it.
It was our listener Jessa who pointed it out.
We had no celebration whatsoever.
Wednesday night, baby.
We had no clue.
We can celebrate when we do our Patreon call.
Good job us on 100 shows.
But over time, we've talked about this.
These stories and narratives, particularly in the Trump era, begin in the fever dream conspiracy swamps.
And that's where they start, like, sort of forming their body, right?
Like something out of Hellraiser.
They start putting together their components and becoming like a moving person.
Like the blob.
Like the blob.
And so eventually what ends up happening is that the Trump legal team runs with this.
And they start trying to track down where Dominion is and there are servers here and servers there.
They start concocting these fake stories about military raids on foreign bases, which aren't true at all.
And so what ends up happening and what has happened in all of these states is that they've gone into all of these states and they've filed lawsuits, which are basically like your crazy uncle and my crazy uncle copy and pasted bullshit off of Facebook, put it in a manila envelope which are basically like your crazy uncle and my crazy uncle copy and pasted bullshit off of Facebook, put And one judge after another is like, what in the hell is this?
What are we talking about here?
There's nothing to it.
And meanwhile, Sidney Powell told...
Didn't just present it to the American public.
It's now become her entire career.
She has just decided, I'm in on this.
This is who I am now.
And she now has a career as being further right than Trump and probably Giuliani and any of these people.
She now has established herself as sort of like the bumper on the bowling alley of the American right.
Oh yeah.
I mean, remember, she also represented Michael Flynn and was on her way to being where she got to now.
With voice trembling in the last press conference they allowed her to have, like, I was wondering if she was on the verge of tears because she realized that she won't ever get hired by anybody again.
I mean, I don't think, I don't know who would, based on the credibility destruction she just did to herself.
But even inside the courtroom, though, was really interesting because the judges rule they don't have standing.
Because the plaintiffs that they brought in, they brought a couple voters who were saying, I wasn't allowed to vote or whatever they were saying about that.
But they weren't suing the county where they voted.
They were trying to sue in Philadelphia.
And so there was simply no standing for them to bring this case to begin with.
And that's the thing where they can't possibly appeal that.
And so it's just really fascinating that, you know, what they're trying to simply do, oh, then the big argument was, Well, a couple people over here didn't get a chance to fix their vote when other counties allowed people to fix their vote.
So, the remedy has to be, Jared, we now need to nullify 7 million votes in total.
And that was, you know, so by the way, I don't think you're going to find a lawyer who's practiced for any amount of time that will tell you they've ever heard of a judge dismiss a case with prejudice, which is basically like, get the fuck out of my courtroom.
I will never want to see you again.
And that never happens.
It happened here.
So all these things swirling around leads to Sidney Powell getting the ghost treatment.
But it also gets worse because she really got over her skis when she started talking about the senators in Georgia.
Well, I have to tell you, Nick, we have not been kind to the governor of my state, Governor Brian Kemp here.
He stole the election of 2016, which isn't conjecture.
He legitimately stole the election for the governorship in Georgia.
Like, just straight up stole it.
But I'm not going to go on national TV and claim that Brian Kemp was bribed.
Which is what Sidney Powell did.
And by the way, in true Trumpist fashion, I mean, Brian Kemp the day after he was accused by bribery by a lawyer employed by the President of the United States, he sent out just frantic emails that were like, I stand next to President Trump and election security, and that's what I care about.
You know, and I was talking about this last night on the livestream.
He was like, he got kicked in the ribs, and he was like, I love this boot.
I love this boot so much.
I never want this boot to ever leave.
And Sidney Powell insulted him.
She insulted the senators in Georgia.
And here's the thing.
She did all this on Newsmax.
Right.
She actually went further right than Donald Trump and everybody else in Trump's orbit, which right now is almost impossible.
And we bring this up because this isn't to talk about tabloidism, it's to talk about extremism.
What she did is she talked about things that should have been talked about later.
Right?
She fast-forwarded in the movie.
She went ahead and jumped from step 2 to step 13.
And this is all stuff that Trump will eventually get to.
I mean, if Georgia doesn't go ahead and give him the election, he will go ahead and claim that Kemp is crooked and all these people.
She jumped ahead in the plot.
And the reason she jumped ahead in the plot is the thing that I keep talking about, which is Newsmax and OANN and Breitbart.
They're like Fox News, but multiplied.
They don't care.
They're willing.
I mean, they have entire segments about Q-drops.
You know what I mean?
Because that's what the people want.
And so, Sidney Powell has now established herself.
I mean, she might have a show on Newsmax tonight.
You know?
I mean, the Powell Report, or whatever in the hell they're going to call it.
You know?
Cue it on tonight.
That's where we're going.
And I want to point out, that's how accelerated these things are, is they're not just going to say, the Deep State and the Clinton crime family.
It's an orthodoxy.
It's like a religion.
There's going to be a group that says, if you split from us whatsoever, I don't care if you are one of the most far-right governors or some of the most far-right senators in the country, we will tell the world that you have been bribed and that you are corrupt to the point where maybe some violence should be visited upon you.
That's what we're looking at.
Sure.
And we had some breaking news in the last few minutes.
It looks like, yes, Michigan will certify their results, despite all of this hand-handed stuff.
And by the way, if I were a local legislator in Michigan and I got invited to the White House, I probably would go.
That's probably what was going through their mind.
I imagine it was free.
Pop those corks, baby!
Pop the champagne at Trump Tower.
Yeah, in the Trump Hotel.
They hang out in the Trump Hotel, get a free room, whatever.
Someone's paying for it, not them.
So, you know, so I thought it was funny.
I mean, I don't even know if I saw the guy when he got off the plane, the Secretary of State of Michigan or whatever, whoever it was, started to sing a hymn rather than answer questions from a reporter in the airport.
But it clearly looked that way where it was simply like, yeah, well, hey, why not?
Let's go road trip, you know, have a good time.
And then we'll just, you know that the president pulled his mafia bullshit where, you know, it'd be a real shame if, you know, some money wasn't going to flow into your, to the, To Michigan for some infrastructure, you know.
Or COVID relief.
Knowing that he's going to lose.
So at the very least, that got settled.
And I think it's all going to settle at some point.
Which leaves everybody... I guess the point being that it would have left Sidney Powell with where she is now anyway.
So while she skipped ahead in the movie, she probably knew how the movie ended anyway, right?
So might as well just kind of get there, I suppose.
Although getting in the bad graces of Trump is not a good idea because she doesn't get that Powell report or whatever thing on Newsmax if Trump's gonna talk shit about her.
Well, and by the way, I love that we're talking about the economics of this bullshit because it's so awful.
And this is really what American politics boils down to now.
A couple things from what you just said.
Number one, the sitting President of the United States who was just destroyed in a recent election and will not concede defeat.
Had legislatures come into the White House so he could try and cajole them and blackmail them into undermining democracy.
He was able to do that.
That's a problem.
You know, he showed that that was something that somebody can at least try to do.
It apparently didn't work.
Knock on wood, right?
That it didn't work.
But he got away with trying it.
That's shitty.
That's terrible that he was able to do that.
And I was told about this.
I want to say it was on Friday.
The fact that we all had to sit at home and be like, God, I can't believe the President of the United States right now is trying to talk people into undermining democracy.
I guess I have to wait and find out if it works.
Well, meanwhile, everyone and their kids should be screaming about this.
Like, this is not just destroying norms.
This is overstepping laws and boundaries in just an absolutely unfathomable way.
Second of all, you're exactly right.
Right now Newsmax or OANN are trying to court Donald Trump.
He wants one of these networks either to merge with them or to make them a propaganda organ.
Let's say he chooses OANN over Newsmax.
All of a sudden Sidney Powell has her spot on Newsmax.
You know what I mean?
Because what's happening is a reorganization of the economic and political spectrum.
What we're talking about right now is economy.
We're not talking about politics.
We're not talking about getting in a place together and trying to make lives better.
We're not talking about passing legislation to curb crises or make lives any better than they are right now.
What we're talking about is the moving of money.
Which is the big, giant problem in our politics right now.
It's not at all about actual politics.
It's about money.
It's about somehow or another trying to figure out where the moneyed interests go and how power moves.
Which shows you, again, that The power of representative government is all but gone.
Government's been perverted, bought off.
Now we're simply talking about the transfer of resources.
That's a massive problem.
That's really disgusting.
And that's really the essence of the problem that we have.
Well, I mean, ignoring the whole part about people's faith in elections, which sure used to be a big important thing.
And you can also look at this a few different ways.
I'm convinced that Trump is that they're stretching this out, obviously, to raise more money, right?
Somebody was saying on Twitter that they're part of all these different email chains from the Trump thing.
And there's been like this ungodly amount of hundreds of fundraising emails out of this since this whole thing began a week and a half ago or two weeks ago.
So, I think he's going to try and keep as much of this money as possible.
I think Trump considers it his money.
Now, remember, he needs money because he's going to have to pay $450 million worth of debt he owes personally from these banks that's coming up in a couple years, which probably could be covered by a book.
And rallies where he can charge money and then actually keep the money instead of wherever the money might be going, you know, before that.
So he might, scarily enough, he might be able to cover a lot of his costs by just rallying until 2024.
And all the destruction he did with the faith of the election and how it was processed gives him this great narrative to try and sweep back into what was stolen from him in 2020.
Uh, that's a little bit scary because you have to look at the number of voters he improved upon.
He had 62 in 2016.
He's going to have, I think, what, 72, 73, 74, more.
Way more than 10 million more voters.
Can he continue to improve that one and get closer to 80?
You know, that would be a really scary thing if a guy could be coming in here with that kind of voter base into a general election.
All I can say is two things.
A, Biden better do an awesome job for four years.
And B, they better put him away.
They better fucking arrest him and put him away, make him a felon.
I have to tell you right now, so number one, Donald Trump, his entire life has been a white privileged man.
And, you know, he's faced debtors his entire life.
And the debtors have decided that he's worth more money if you allow him to pretend to be rich than he is if you take him to court and take a bunch of money from him.
So chances are he'll have whatever leverage he'll have in trying to buy or merge with one of these networks that will make his debtors believe they should let him go ahead and do what he's doing.
He'll never pay back the money that he owes.
That's just not who he is.
The second part of this is Joe Biden has been dealt a shit of a hand, man.
Like, coming into the presidency, and you know, just to draw the parallels, this is about as bad of a hand as when Obama first came in, after George W. Bush had ruined America's reputation and tanked the economy.
And again, We are in a situation where we are on the precipice of a major, major, major economic catastrophe.
I mean the stink on the White House is not literal, not just literal from like all the Big Macs in there, but it's also a literal stink on the White House.
Like he has to repair a bunch of bridges, he has to try and put things into order.
I have to imagine the first two years of his presidency We'll be taking all of the shredded documents and trying to tape them together to figure out where the corruption lies and what the truth is and what's been lied about this entire time.
It's going to be a massive, massive, massive task.
So he's been dealt a shithand, which goes back to what I keep saying, which is...
I don't know that Donald Trump is going to run again, but I have to tell you that in 2022, the Republicans are going to have a really big advantage going into midterms, particularly as Biden tries to pick up the pieces that Donald Trump left behind him.
In 2024, you're probably going to see someone who is either the equivalent of Donald Trump in terms of their politics or their appeal, Or somebody who is more capable and competent who will push fascism further.
The job is not done.
The battle is just beginning.
And what we're looking at right now is a major realignment possibly happening in the very near future.
I'm really glad you brought that up because as I was reflecting on this this weekend, I realized that, you know, we've talked a little bit about the pardons and what that means to a presidency.
But, you know, if you really, really think about it in the in the macro sense, the president is basically been put above the law.
Now, if you look at it, because A, if he has either one of the other chambers in his party, if it's the House, they simply won't impeach him.
Because remember, impeachment was supposed to be the thing that kept the president behaving as well as the election itself.
So, but if he has the House of Representatives behind him, they're not going to begin the impeachment process.
And if he has the Senate, they're not going to vote to convict.
So, any president going in there now knows they could break the law with impunity, knowing that they can simply get a pardon after they lose the next election, whichever it was, and then be exonerated for everything.
So the only question you have now is, I think we need to do something about this pardon.
I almost feel like, and by the way, he can pardon anybody he wants.
That's the big thing.
It's when you try and pardon yourself.
And I would argue that that probably needs to be eliminated.
You need to be able to say you cannot pardon the sitting president from past crimes.
Or, if you want to do that, it requires a trial.
I think that might be even a better alternative.
Okay, fine.
Do it almost like an impeachment trial where if you want to get him off, get him a pardon, he needs to be able to defend himself and evidence can be presented.
Well, first of all, the founders failed.
I know a couple of people just ran off the road hearing that.
that they are and acting as if they are completely above the law which they are basically as it is now well first of all uh the founders failed i know i know a couple of people just ran off the road hearing that but the founders failed to have any imagination about the future of politics they did not plan on parties They thought that all of the wealthiest, slave-holding white men in the country would just, they would just all be sensible, and that they would never, ever form political parties.
My God, we're all Federalists, right?
No, nobody would ever form another party, and then it was immediate.
It was like, we are Democrat-Republicans, we are Federalists, and it was immediate.
This was set up because they thought the main rivalry would be between the different branches of government, which we've now seen that doesn't matter.
It's party over everything else.
That's the failing of our founders.
But the other thing that goes with this is There is a terrible, terrible momentum at the heart of the presidency.
And it goes back particularly, and by the way, cheap plug, we're taping this on Monday, November 23rd.
Episode 2 of the Vice series that I'm on, While the Rest of Us Die, Shadow Government on Vice, it's airing tonight.
So if y'all are looking for something on the holiday weekend, After World War II, the American presidency starts to expand and starts to become so much more powerful.
I mean, they have a button that they can destroy the rest of the world at any given moment.
Like, they have to prosecute one war after another.
Meanwhile, they kind of have to overthrow governments left and right.
So if they get prosecuted, that's a real problem.
You know what I mean?
Like, we have to fight communism.
Well, then, of course, post-communism, and we don't even need to talk about Iran-Contra, which, by the way, have you watched the new Reagan documentary on Showtime?
I have not.
It's excellent.
Just another tip.
The Reagans on Showtime.
We'll check it out.
It's really, really good.
You know, we have things like Iran-Contra, which, how could he ever be held responsible for that?
He's doing it for the red, white, and blue, Nick.
Like, we can't take presidents and hold them accountable, not to mention Dick Nixon and all that stuff.
In the modern era, of course, we have George W. Bush with the unitary theory that the idea that the president can do whatever they want and they should be able to.
Well, that didn't stop with Bush.
That went to Obama.
And then it went to Trump.
And unfortunately it will go to Biden because the executive branch does not hand over power.
It's like when you get in that club, you're part of that club.
So you're not going to hand back power, you're not going to step away until eventually the Congress somehow or another manages to wrestle some of it away.
It's a big, giant issue and it's one of the... I'm sorry, it's one of the most dangerous things we've got going.
I agree and you know we've been hearing how Biden has no interest in prosecuting Trump although remember it's not his decision right and in normal times it would never he would be nowhere near this decision as far as what the Department of Justice is supposed to do because they're supposed to be completely independent which would be nice if they re-establish that again and then it would be up to whoever he nominates but of course whoever he nominates I'm sure will be that will be one of the conditions which really really sucks which is why
What's going on in New York is really, really important because it would make him a felon and then he would not be able to run again.
And I think, honestly, that's the biggest fear we all should be having right now.
Now that Michigan is certifying, Pennsylvania is now done.
This election is now – oh, by the way, the madness of the court cases were that we want to lose – Why?
Well, so we can get it to the Supreme Court.
I mean, it's madness because they're not losing.
They're getting these suits dismissed with prejudice.
You're never going to get to the Supreme Court this way.
Which, by the way, to put it in your vernacular in sports terms, we're in garbage time.
Yeah.
That's a great way to say it.
The score is run up.
There's no coming back.
They're padding stats right now is what's happening.
They're just trying like hell.
Do you ever watch, back in the day, the Rockin' Jock basketball games on MTV?
I'm aware of that but probably not really.
You're a basketball expert.
MTV was not my thing really, believe it or not.
They used to have, like, a 25-point basket that they would, like, bring from the rafters.
It was, like, really, really high up.
And it feels like the only way, at this point, in this garbage time, is if they find the 25-point basket.
You know, that, like, feature.
Somehow or another, if they get to the Supreme Court, this is a different ballgame.
But this is garbage time.
They have no ability whatsoever.
They have no legal standing.
I mean, that's the reason this is a coup.
It's not legitimate at all.
Well, to expand that, it's garbage time that the team that's losing by 25 points with four minutes to go puts the football player in.
And he's just pummeling people left and right.
And the referees just want to get the hell out of there, so they don't even want to call any fouls.
And then what happens?
You get fights.
It gets violent.
And that's an even more appropriate description for what he's doing.
And it's worrisome because, again, this is the future.
What's going to happen, and you describe it perfectly,
of somebody else who doesn't tweet like he does and doesn't speak like him and isn't orange will come in there and be able to do worse without anybody really even knowing without any kind of transparency that's what's so worrying about this whole thing that like that's what that we need to somehow show her up and we certainly don't have an advocate in Joe Biden to to clean this up he certainly has not been running on we're gonna make the presidency transparent we're gonna maybe limit some of the power so this can't happen anymore I haven't heard any of that kind of stuff from him
And I don't think we ever will.
Who wants to give up that power?
But it would be really reassuring to me.
I mean, at the very least, the people he's nominating, you know, are appropriately experienced for these roles compared to what we had.
Whether you want to criticize them or not, at least we have some adults, you know, who deserve to have these, or deserve isn't the right term, but who merit the positions they're getting nominated for.
Yeah, I mean, you know, with Trump, it's one of those things where it's like the frog in the boiling water.
Like, you look back on it, and while it was crazy at the time, you look back on it and it's even crazier.
It's like, all of a sudden Trump, like, nominates some guy who complimented his tie at, like, a restaurant.
Like, all of a sudden, that guy gets nominated for Defense Secretary, and then, you know, all of a sudden, the Undersecretary is a guy who wants, like, send him an email that said, hey, you were great on IMAS yesterday, you know?
And, like, it's a bunch of people who either don't deserve to be there, or their entire ethos is to destroy the department that they're in charge of.
Right.
Now, I will say this, and this is, this speaks to, I think, what you were saying.
Joe Biden ran on the election being the healing.
Right?
It was the fight for the soul of the country, and if we win this election, the country will be better.
I mean, he said as much, multiple times.
Well, now all of a sudden we have these nominees.
And listen, they are eminently qualified people.
I mean, you have Everill Haynes, the Director of National Intelligence.
You have Janet Yellen at Treasury.
You have Anthony Blinken at Secretary of State.
These are serious people.
Now, do I agree with them?
Absolutely, I do not.
I have problems with all three of these nominees.
And matter of fact, it's almost like, you know, it's like when you're listening to a record and the record skips, and you're like, oh god, is this record gonna, do I have to like, change the record?
And then all of a sudden, all of a sudden, it gets back to normal.
And you're like, oh, OK, OK, good.
That was just a spot.
That's what's happened here.
I mean, you know, it's like Blinken and Secretary of State.
They call it the blob.
The blob is sort of the military-industrial complex that just sort of continues no matter who the president is.
Like one of the biggest critiques you can make of Barack Obama is that our foreign affairs and our military continue doing almost the exact same thing it did under George W. Bush.
And then it continued under Trump and it just continued unabated and the President's there saying good job guys and they give a speech and they say hey we killed so-and-so today or whatever.
That's a problem.
But that being said, it is really reassuring to have people who are not dedicated to destroying the government and, you know, figuring out a way to sell it off for parts.
That is good, but that doesn't mean that the battle is done.
What we've seen so far with these nominations and with the talking points is it's going to be old business as usual.
I think that we need something bigger.
I think that we need to have a much more daring sort of a vision.
And I think if Trump escapes consequences, we're going to be looking back on it like Gerald Ford pardoning Richard Nixon.
I mean, and we both know that that was like one of the things that like led to the current moment of crisis.
And we need something bigger and larger and realer.
It's truly amazing that you bring up Gerald Ford and the pardon of Nixon.
It is.
Because it was exactly what I was patiently waiting to bring that up.
It's amazing that you just said that.
So, that must mean something.
100 episodes, Nick!
100, yes.
100 episodes!
All of a sudden, a rapport, my man.
Yes, a mind-meld perhaps, but here's the thing I thought was interesting I saw just recently was, you know, the traditional wisdom was that, conventional wisdom, was that Ford loses to Carter primarily because he had pardoned Nixon.
Everyone was really pissed off at him for doing that, right?
Do you realize how close 76 was?
It was not a blowout.
No, but like basically not.
Here's what somebody on Twitter was saying.
I saved it was he said that 9000 votes in Ohio and Hawaii would have changed the electoral college and he would have won instead.
That's a narrow, narrow margin of victory than what Trump did in 2016.
And we thought that was close.
So, I'm starting to realize here that, if we looked, the approval ratings probably weren't even that bad for him either.
This is something really concerning to me, even then, that we can now realize, maybe without even noticing it then, was that, you know, again, we talked about this before, you know, Nixon, there were a lot of people who thought Nixon got screwed, and who got, you know, pinched by the CIA, and they set him up.
There's a lot more people now that feel the same way about Trump.
And that's the other thing that's scary about this whole thing is that it isn't damaging enough to do the things that the founders probably thought would have been really damaging and would have ended anyone's political career.
We're so far beyond that that yes, we need to do something to radically change You know how the government works, but it's like I just you know We've gotten to the gridlock point where it just doesn't it just doesn't seem like you can get any kind of major stuff done now that said we probably would have been in 2005 if you said you know what by 2010 we're gonna have Amazing health care for everybody without pre-existing conditions.
You might have thought you were crazy if you said that that's too hard No one ever get that done and they got it done So maybe there is some hope but maybe it's not with it's not with Biden.
I think that's the answer Well, and listen, I don't like... I'm not a pessimist and I'm not a nihilist.
I actually have a lot of hope right now.
I think expecting the institution to fix itself, you'll be waiting on that for a long time.
It's on us.
That's the thing, and that's the answer that we've been talking about for so long now, and I've been pushing for so long now.
You cannot just wait for the system to fix itself, because it will not.
It'll make nods towards fixing itself.
It will fix itself a little bit, but it'll still maintain power and wealth and privilege and leverage.
It has to be grassroots.
It has to be us.
We have to apply pressure.
We have to, and I keep saying this, people need to decide what they want.
They need to decide what they want the country to look like.
Because what we're talking about here, and we talked about it with this election, it was a battle to get rid of Trump.
There's a much larger battle to shape the future that is still to come.
The problem, and I talked about this, we're going to have Wajihat Ali here in a second, The problem is that the left refuses to have a vision for the future.
The right has one.
It's neo-fascism.
You know, that's what you do.
It's like, no, we rewind the clock to the Middle Ages or, you know, to the 1930s.
No, you have to give an alternate vision.
You have to find a way forward because we're at a moment of crisis.
And in moments of crisis, you make a new direction.
You have to either make a new direction or you let other people make it for you.
And that's really what we're dealing with here.
Right, but it's a crisis of leadership as well because we don't have even the grassroots leaders to lead us.
We don't have a Martin Luther King who can lead us like that or Bobby Kennedy.
I mean, I can't picture anybody right now who could do that and be that person.
So we're waiting on Superman and I suppose we could do it as a grassroots organic method with the internet helping us do that.
It seems like it'd be a lot easier when you look back in the past when things got changed radically.
It was always with galvanized behind somebody.
So who that will be?
I don't know, but I'm still looking.
That's one of the biggest, most important questions is who's going to step up.
And somebody has to step up.
We have to stop, like you said, waiting for Superman.
We have to stop waiting for superheroes.
We just have to.
It's not going to happen.
We have to we have to get there.
All right, everyone.
I'm really pleased.
One of my favorite people out there, Wajahat Ali.
Here's the interview I had with him.
Hang out.
Wajahad Ali.
He is a contributing op-ed writer for the New York Times.
He does so many other intelligent, incredible things.
But as of right now, he's dealing with the fallout of actually a really good op-ed called "Reach Out to Trump Supporters.
They Said I Tried." Wajahad, what has your life been like in the aftermath of this op-ed?
I like the introduction.
It's actually a really good op-ed.
Hey, there are a lot of them out there that are just worthless.
We know this.
No, no.
This was, look, as I was saying, we actually had a really good conversation before you hit record.
I am overwhelmed with love as a brown man, as a son of Pakistani immigrants, as a Muslim.
Whenever you write an op-ed that gets picked up by Fox News, Or as discussed by Ben Shapiro on his podcast, or as Megan Kelly tweets snarkily about it, I'm inundated with so many beautiful references to my skin tone, my immigration status, my religion.
I get offers and or requests to have sex with only two animals.
And this is what really bothers me.
It's always about goats or camels.
And I get offended because I'm like, what about horses?
Like why not expand the pie?
Why do you have to be miserly during the holiday season?
It's always goats and it's go eff a goat, go eff a camel.
But this is, look, you have to have tough skin.
I was talking to some young journalist students today for Peter Beinart's class, and I said, you know, if you want to get into this arena and write about these issues, And take on the right-wing ecosystem and take on the modern GOP, which I think you and I agree with what I'll say.
And if I'm putting words in your mouth, please disagree with me.
It's an extremist counter-majoritarian force that is hostile to democracy.
Uh, and you're a person of color.
This is what you have to expect.
A lot of love, but how, however, with this particular piece, I got a lot of that, but three to one ratio.
So many people said, thank you for articulating my feelings and sentiments.
Thank you for saying what I've been wanting to say, but did not find the words to.
And you're right.
Why should I reach out to those individuals who, after seeing four years of Trump's racism and cruelty, decided to double down and vote for a Bulgarian?
And where is our elegy?
How come no one's demanding to read our elegy?
And how come no one asked about our economic anxiety?
And how come no one's telling Trump voters to reach out to us, the majority?
So I'm glad it struck a nerve.
Well, I say, first and foremost, that I understand I think you're exactly right.
The counter-majority movement that is the Republican Party.
If you publish something right now that is even a lukewarm criticism of any of this, you should expect intimidation, harassment.
And sadly enough, I think you and I both know this, there's a barometer.
Depending upon how much harassment and intimidation you get, you start to understand whether or not it has even been read or even We found some sort of audience out there, which is a terrible, despicable type of situation, but I think it leads into what we're talking about here.
And for those of you who haven't read it, you absolutely should.
This article, and tell me if I'm wrong, I assume this was in response to, almost immediately, I think it was the Saturday after the election, almost immediately, it was, we should reach out to Trump supporters right now, this very moment, don't even pop the champagne, just right now go into the diners in Iowa and talk to these supporters.
And I assume that you and I instantaneously at the exact same moment screamed at the heavens in a groan that could be heard around the country.
Just an absolute madness in terms of bipartisanship that doesn't exist, trying to give room to people who should not have room, should not have a voice in terms of all this, and making room for not just anti-democratic movement and supporters, but to really dangerous ideas.
Well, it's all of that, and it's how whiteness operates in this country, where everything is centered around whiteness.
And we have to chase Amy and chase Chuck, this mythical white man who drinks real coffee in the real counties, in the real coffee shops, in the real country of the Rust Belt, which also have people of color who, by the way, gave Biden his victory.
Black voters in Georgia, like, you know, people of color in Milwaukee, in Detroit, Latinos, the rest of us.
But no, no, no.
Let's go and soothe The hurt feelings of the minority that lost, that went again and doubled down for Donald Trump.
In fact, 10 million more came out.
And I remember in 2016, we were told, even though Clinton won by 3 million and Donald Trump only won by 76,000 votes, America told us that we had to read the elegy of the hillbilly.
We had to empathize with white pain.
And we had to go find out about their economic anxiety.
And I did, Jared.
And the whole article is about what happened when I did.
And yet, fast forward, 80 million people came out, a record number of people came out, a multicultural, diverse coalition during a pandemic, voted for Joe Biden, flipped five states, and now it seems like he's going to win by 7 million votes.
And yet, two weeks later, still no one has asked, why don't the Trump voters and Republicans reach out to see why 80 million of their fellow countrymen decided to come out during a pandemic and reject Trumpism and make him a one-term president?
Where is our elegy?
What is their anxiety that forced them to come out in record numbers?
And so it first and foremost shows you the whiteness angle that still dominates America and allows Ian Bremmer, of all people, to tell the rest of us, go empathize with Trump voters.
And I want to tell Ian and all these people, I have.
Have you?
Have you talked to people of color?
Pete Buttigieg, who I've interviewed, comes from the Midwest.
Now it's time to reach out to Trump voters.
Have you reached out to your own voters, people of color who helped put Biden In the White House, right?
And then when you do reach out to folks, and I'll quickly just end with this, I have found out that people say the following.
I like you, Waj.
I'm not a racist.
I don't think Trump's racist at his heart, but he'll make America great again.
Or what I find out from the beautiful, lovely, non-racist comments I've gotten in the past week, go back to where you came from.
We need you to suffer in order to feel great again.
Whereas I, Jared, and I'm going to assume you, Need them to have health care, need them to have social security, need them to have a living wage, need them and their children to live in safe communities where they have clean water.
And yet fast forward four years, they still need Donald Trump as their defender, their savior, their blunt instrument to humiliate us in order just to feel great again during a pandemic where he golfs as they die.
And that's the difference.
And that's why I do not indulge in any of this nonsense of both sides narrative ever again.
In addition to what you said, about the trend towards right-wing authoritarianism that is being witnessed as we record this podcast.
Well, and I just want to read that quick paragraph because I thought that this was a pretty nice penultimate paragraph here in this essay.
I don't need Trump supporters to be humiliated to feel great again.
I want them to have health insurance, decent paying jobs, and security for their family.
You know, I keep having people who ask me, they say, well, how do we deprogram these people?
How do we remove them from the cult?
How do we talk sense to them?
And what I keep telling them is this.
You're not going to make them move away from Trump or the Republican Party by confronting them about politics.
There's just no way to do it at this point.
It's a trench warfare situation.
And on top of that, they're living in a completely alternate reality.
It has nothing to do with a shared reality that we have.
What I keep saying is this.
I think the only way to do it is that you give them those things that you just listed.
And that's like with Obamacare, affordable health care, like it turned into something that they love.
They thought it was a takeover of the country.
And you go ahead and you try and go in the back door.
I don't think there's any going into any number of diners in this country and trying to talk truth to this nonsense because they're in such an alternate reality.
And we've talked about this in the past, that the right wing media ecosystem, easy for me to say, has created and encapsulated them, and I don't think there's any way that this quote-unquote outreach has any actual effect.
Yeah, I agree with you.
I tried, and I tried to connect.
I tried to tell my story.
I didn't mince words.
I empathized.
I connected the dots.
I talked about how in the past, whites who are now considered white were once the enemy, including Irish Catholic and Germans.
I said this is a remake.
Now, tag, you're it.
It's the Muslim, the Mexican.
It was the gays.
Still is.
The blacks.
This will hurt all of us.
Trump's policies will affect you.
The trade war will fail.
Debt will go up.
Deficit will go up.
White nationalism has always failed, but many people have died along the way towards its failure.
Authoritarianism never works in the end, but a lot of people die before the authoritarian is eventually kicked out.
I am here, reaching out across the aisle in good faith, and I want to build a multicultural coalition of the willing, including—that includes you and your kids.
Still didn't work.
Because first and foremost, you're right, and I think the top three problem in America right now is disinformation.
It's climate change, it's income inequality, it's white nationalism, it's racism, but it's also disinformation.
I keep trying to harp on this again and again and again.
Putin won, I always say, the 2016 election.
He always wanted to exploit existing religious and racial fractures, and he won without firing a bullet.
He won through this disinformation.
And democracies survive when the diverse population does not agree on a simple set of facts.
It doesn't.
It weakens.
And how can a democracy survive right now and thrive during a pandemic where a quarter of this population, if not more, thinks it's a fluke, a hoax, a virus?
And so when truth itself is attacked, and authoritarians and strongmen, as you know, attack truth, Uh, and there is no truth.
You feel your facts.
And you decide your truth based upon whoever makes you feel good.
And this is where authoritarians thrive.
Because they say, I am your redeemer.
I am your savior.
I am the person you can trust.
Don't trust the fake news, the language of fascists.
Don't trust the press, the enemy of the people, the language of fascists.
Trust me and only me.
And so you're in Georgia, you talk to these folks.
You can't have a rational conversation with people who literally believe that you and me, Jared, are paid by George Soros to steal their children and eat them.
That's the QAnon deep state theory, which now is mainstream.
Or at least harvest their adrenochrome.
Yeah, at least.
And I haven't met my quota this week.
I don't know about you, but I failed my quota.
So Soros is going to get upset.
So this is why, you know, reaching out to them doesn't work.
What we have to instead do is a massive de-radicalization program.
We need to find a way to crack down on Murdoch and Zuckerberg.
And then what we have to do, exactly what you said, is we have to bum-rush a progressive agenda that will eventually Drag them kicking and screaming into the future where they'll resent us, but they will have health care.
The final thing I say is go back to 1954, 1955.
Look at the images of when there were forced desegregation of schools.
You'll see angry white faces of men, women, and children surrounding young black kids.
Those white folks weren't devils.
They went to church.
They eat meatloaf.
They were kind to their neighbors.
They mowed their lawn.
They raised their kids.
But, they were radicalized.
After the Civil Rights Act, many of them never saw blacks as their equals.
Some of them changed, and some of them barely changed.
And that's what you and me, Jared, have to make peace with, is that moving on in our lives, there's about a third of this country that we have lost, and we have to inoculate the majority.
And I hope I'm proven wrong.
Well, I think one of the bigger problems is that Trumpism has taught us that we need to conquer our enemies.
There's no such thing as conquering, because eventually that always leads to having to wipe out your enemies, having to use the law against them or power against them to make them shut up and accept your reality.
I think what you're saying is exactly right.
It's about de-radicalization.
It's about dropping the temperature however we can.
I keep telling people, I come from the Midwest.
I come from a family of factory workers and laborers.
They'll believe in climate change if they have factories that are taking on climate change.
If they have an economic incentive to believe in these things, they will turn around on them.
That's a lot different from imposing on them a reality that they're not going to believe otherwise.
This is a disinformation war.
That's the biggest problem here.
Yeah, it's absolutely right.
It's a disinformation war.
And unless we can confront the Murdochs, Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, and unless we can find a way for Zuckerberg and Jack to do the right thing, those are two arenas.
First and foremost, I used to work with Facebook.
I didn't work for them.
I worked with them.
And I could tell you, just like GM today, according to the breaking news, they bend according to who's in power.
So we were literally working with them to do these hackathons to come up with solutions to deal with hate caused by social media.
As soon as Trump was elected, they're like, Trump administration isn't into this.
So we're not into it.
Boom.
Gone.
Now that Biden's in it, I'm telling you, if he unleashes the war, number one, we can have social media companies do something.
That, I think, will save some people.
Then you have to find a way to crack the right-wing ecosystem bubble, especially dominated by Fox News.
Democrats, I begged them, I said, don't exist on Twitter, you've got to attack Facebook.
Facebook is still king.
And they suck at Facebook.
Who dominates Facebook, Jared?
Right-wing.
Talk Radio dominates.
Right-wing cranks.
Right-wing cranks, right?
And so you have a disinformation bubble, and I want to go, just what you said on the economic message, Dems don't have an economic message.
They were forced to develop a healthcare message because the right-wing was so insane that they wanted to repeal and replace Obamacare with nothing, which was an easy win.
But if you are literally terrified of being called progressive, if you're terrified of your own shadow, if you're terrified of your own policies, and if you're terrified of Republican messaging, and they're able to attack you by calling you a socialist, that's a failure on you, Democrats.
And you need to come out and tell Chuck, what is your economic message?
And you can win over some Chucks.
That's my fate.
People might not like hearing that in the Democratic Party.
You can't take your voters for granted.
And if you don't have an identity and a message, and if you're not able to brand what progressive means, Republicans will do it for you.
And right now, to them, it means socialist and defund the police and they'll win.
Yeah, and they've been calling Market Solution Democrat Socialist for decades now.
I mean, the problem right now is there's no definition.
Yeah, I mean, there's no definition right now for a future.
And so the vacuum is being filled by neo-fascists.
Those are the only people who have any definition of a future.
So liberals and progressives need to figure out what the future should look like, which I think you and I both understand.
It has to be de-radicalization.
It has to be facing off a climate catastrophe and making a more equal country.
Because if you don't, the end result of all those things is the death of a country and more death and more destruction.
That's it.
And more extremism.
Polarization, extremism, and white nationalists are organized.
They're playing for all the marbles.
I always tell people this.
I says never, you know, demographic destiny.
Doesn't work.
It didn't work this time.
Barely worked.
I'll always take a highly organized, committed, passionate minority over a flabby, moderate majority.
White nationalists in the GOP right now are playing for all the marbles.
And I think slowly but surely it's gone so extreme that Democrats are finally figuring it out.
But I could tell you as a person in the media, as a person with a foot in politics, the foot in the think tanks, just the way they think is a both sides mindset.
They just think that way.
They're just kind of like trained, like academics.
They're trained to think both sides.
And I keep telling them there is no both sides here.
I mean, Jared right now are knocking the Democrats, but still Democrats believe in climate change.
Republicans think it's a hoax.
Democrats acknowledge white nationalism, think it's bad.
Republicans have made a martyr of Kyle Rittenhouse, a murderer, right?
Margie Taylor Greene is now in the House, a QAnon supporter.
Right now, as we speak, they're taking a sledgehammer to democracy to placate the temper tantrum of Donald Trump, right?
There's no both sides.
And so there is a balance here for Biden where I agree with you, he has to lower the temperature.
He has to be the president of all Americans.
He has to reach out even to those people who don't like him.
He has to bum rush policies that will help them even though in the short term they resent him.
And then what Democrats have to do, and Biden has to do this, is what does it mean to be a Democrat?
What does it mean to be a progressive?
What are our big tent values that incorporates AOC and Spanberger and, uh, who's the guy?
Manchin.
And if you don't communicate that, It's on you.
It's your loss.
This is a huge opportunity, man.
I want this to be a FDR moment, a new New Deal opportunity for the Democrats, and my fear is that they won't take it.
And if you seriously think, and a part of you, I'll give a comic analogy and I'll stop.
You need to be the X-Men, a multicultural coalition, but the X-Men also need the X-Force.
And if you guys don't know what the X-Force is, the X-Force... There's about 10 of us right now who are into this.
Yes.
X-Force is like the Wetworks, where Professor Xavier, who's the big tent guy, says, I know I'm dealing with hardcore threats.
People in the gutter who want to kill us.
I need to create an X-Force, kind of an elite unit, that goes and does the attack on disinformation on the right wing.
And I don't know if they have an X-Force right now.
Yeah, I think that the playing of hardball, I think, is something that has not been there before.
And I completely agree with you.
I think the best case scenario of all of this is an FDR-like moment because I think people forget that fascism was on the rise right before World War II.
And the New Deal just took the temperature down a little bit.
It didn't necessarily even save the economy.
It just took a bunch of young men who might have become fascist and got them out there, got them jobs, and got them involved in the community and kind of took the temperature down.
Well, you've been generous with your time, so I'm going to let you go.
But before we do, we're in the middle of a coup.
I don't know if you've been watching the news on this.
The worst possible, plus also most dangerous coup imaginable is happening right now.
Just real quick, what's your take on what's going on?
Where do you see this thing going?
I think someone coined it the coup klutz clan, which I thought was hilarious.
But I'm glad you call it a coup because some people are saying, oh, it's fraud.
No, it's a coup.
Look, Pete, he wants to get away with this.
And he's trying to, that's what people need to realize.
Just take a step back.
Let's laugh at Four Seasons Total Landscaping.
Let's laugh at Sidney Powell.
Let's laugh at Rudy Giuliani.
What a run she had, by the way.
A week, a stunning week.
And she was so crazy that they're like, we got to reel in the crazy.
Because she was now attacking Kemp in Georgia.
And they realized it was internecine warfare.
And I was applauding.
I'm like, yes, divide and conquer.
Yes, finally, the colonialists are like getting a taste of their own medicine, right?
But just to show you that she's so nutty that she had to be reined in.
But I just want people to realize They are doing this because they want to get away with it.
They can't get away with it because they're so incompetent, because the margin of victory was so high, because there's still some checks and balances, because there's still some Republicans who realize if we ignore the will of 80 million, there is going to be a mass revolution and they're going to kill us.
And I think some people right there and right now are like, OK, OK, OK, let's let's be some rails and brakes here for our democracy to survive.
And Carl Bernstein yesterday tweeted, tweeted out names.
He says, I'm going to name 21 Republican senators on the deal who are horrified by what's happening right now, horrified by what Trump is doing, and they realize it's a dangerous democracy.
But none of them have spoken up.
None of them.
So this is what we have to look forward to, is that The modern GOP is an extremist, counter-majoritarian party.
People like Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz on the deal know that it's becoming nutty, but the base has become radicalized and they have to feed the base.
And unless and until we confront that, acknowledge it, realize it, we're not gonna properly assess the threat and deal with solutions to remedy it.
If you still think it's both sides, you're not literally seeing the problem staring you in front of the face.
And this is why I hope, I hope, I hope Democrats Finally, acknowledge that the GOP is a counter-majoritarian extremist party that is hostile to the majority.
And as I have said, and you know this, I believe the GOP will further radicalize and weaponize.
They're going further.
Yeah, I'll give you three examples.
Kyle Rittenhouse, the McCloskeys, and Marjorie Taylor Greene.
And I'll put four on there, Newsmax and OANN.
They are siphoning off so many of the Fox News viewers.
I mean, Fox News has lost control of the right-wing narrative at this point.
That's a problem.
It's gone.
They're powerful enough and wealthy enough that they can reign them in, but it becomes a business decision.
And so now, and if you read Brian Stelter's hoax, even the people who work at Fox, they know it.
And so now they're like, am I going to be complicit in the radicalization of America?
The answer is yes.
Am I going to be complicit in mainstreaming conspiracy theories and white nationalism?
The answer is yes.
Now, it's like, am I going to go all the way in because I'm losing viewers to OANN, Newsmax, and maybe even Donald Trump's network?
And that remains to be seen.
Terrifying thoughts.
Wajahat Ali, op-ed contributor to The New York Times and the author of Reach Out to Trump Supporters.
They said, I tried.
One of the best op-eds of the year.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you.
I'll take it.
And read everyone's book.
Oh, you're so kind.
You are the best.
Where can people find you, Wash?
At Wajahat Ali on Twitter.
I write for New York Times.
I'm also writing for the Daily Beast.
Sometimes you'll see me on Peacock.
I'm very easy to reach with your thoughts, concerns, suggestions, and recommendations of what country I should go back to.
All right, man.
Take care of yourself.
Take care.
Thank you, sir.
All right, everyone, that was Wajahat Ali.
We're so lucky to have him on.
I hope it's not the last time.
Really, really good stuff.
A reminder, again, this week we're not going to have a Friday episode, but we will for our patrons.
And all you have to do is go over to patreon.com slash munkerickpodcast.
Wednesday night at 730 p.m.
Eastern, we're going to have a pre-Thanksgiving celebration.
A celebration of 100 episodes, we have decided.
Yes, let's make it that.
Why not?
Let's make it that.
What do you say for a hundred more?
Are you up for it?
Hey, yeah, I'm up for at least a hundred more.
Let's hopefully that we're talking about competency and science.
Let's just make it about the next hundred about that, can we?
I'll tell you, if I had to say right now what I would love for this show in the next 100 episodes, I would love to have conversations about competent people making decisions that, if I disagree with them, it's that I don't think that they go far enough and I hope that they'll listen.
That would be wonderful.
That would be a great four years.
And then to watch, like you were saying, someone rise up and become a leader who can galvanize people and maybe do the work that maybe even government can't do.
That would be awesome.
That'd be great.
I'm in.
All right.
All right, everybody.
I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving.
Be safe.
Just don't take any chances.
Remember, there are other people out there.
A lot of really, really vulnerable people.
Before we go, I have to tell you, I am thankful for you.
And I'm thankful for Nick.
I am very, very thankful that we're able to do this and have these conversations.
But I'm very, very thankful about this community that we are building.
You give me hope on a constant basis.
So thank you to you and yours.
Happy Thanksgiving.
If you need us until after Thanksgiving, you can find Nick over at Can You Hear Me?
