Co-Hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss how this strange and incoherent Trump led coup is going through its death rattle, damaging democracy in its wake. Plus, Trump continues to embrace QAnon, and evangelicals have been primed to "witness" and "share their testimony" both with their religion, and in this ridiculous voter fraud conspiracy.
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Then we got the case in Wisconsin, and then we got the case in Nevada.
And if the Supreme Court ever takes the constitutional arguments of Pennsylvania, we have a real constitutional shot in my opinion.
And look where we are now in the world.
Look how we're viewed.
They're wondering, my Lord, these things happen in tin horn dictatorships.
This is not the United States.
So in that sense, the protocol of the transfer of power, I think, is important.
But it is totally his decision, and it's of no personal consequence to me.
But I do think it is for the country.
Hey, everybody.
Welcome to The Nutcracker Podcast.
I'm Jerry D. H. Saxton.
I'm here with Nick Halseman.
It's bad times in this city, man.
The coronavirus pandemic, despite seeing the vaccine in the future, the possibility of some light at the end of this tunnel, we're in the dark, dark days of this thing, watching 3,000 plus people die, hearing from the CDC that the number dead is probably at least 400,000.
It is rough.
On top of that, lame duck president Donald Trump has ceased Being the President of the United States in any way, shape, or form that he has ever tried to be, we have reached the point where his compatriots are talking about locking up Brian Kemp, the Republican far-right governor of Georgia.
Why not?
Why not?
Republicans are having their lives threatened and families threatened.
And meanwhile, the man that Trump just pardoned, Mike Flynn, has come out and said that we should suspend the Constitution, declare martial law, and have a new election.
Nick, we were talking before we started recording.
I'm tired.
I know you're tired.
Oh, yeah.
I'm a low energy Jeb crossed with Sleepy Joe.
Yeah, kind of tired.
I don't know.
That's across both aisles is what that is.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's good.
And I have to tell you, and I don't know, I don't know about you, man, but it's just like These new dog days of the lame duck presidency, while the coup is still going on, you can't turn around without seeing Rudy Giuliani embarrassing himself in court, some new QAnon push for the takeover of the country.
I don't know where they're digging these people up to go out and just scream incoherently about God knows what.
And then meanwhile, we're in the middle of a generational tragedy.
It is so, so tiring.
Well, can I admit that I did derive some pleasure from this last hearing that Giuliani was in?
Did you see the farting?
They caught him a couple times and I gotta tell you, I am a sucker for a good, you know, flatulent joke or two.
And they got him and Ellis turns and gives him the look.
But that's where we're at.
We're at Rudy just farting out his – it's basically the same value of what is coming out of his mouth as coming out of his rear.
And it's really – it is embarrassing.
They should be disbarred.
These lawyers, Powell, Ellis, Giuliani, should be disgraced and disbarred because this is just such frivolous nonsense.
It's so absurd.
And I've been saying this for a while.
I did not expect fascism to be this weird and this stupid.
It really is.
It's so patently absurd.
And in a way it has to be.
I mean, you couldn't script it Any better.
I mean, it's like Giuliani before all of a sudden.
And by the way, you know, it's like every meeting he now has with Trump, he's like, oh, don't worry, boss.
We've got him.
We've got him right where we want him.
Hey, by the way.
You are going to make sure to pardon me before you leave the White House, right?
We've got that pardon coming down the pike, right?
Wait, wait.
There's got to be a code name for the pardon, right?
Like, you know, ZD, right?
The Strong Bully.
It's this terrible situation.
Meanwhile, the Borat 2 thing just happened.
The hair dye thing.
Meanwhile, you have, I mean, Donald Trump and Lindsey Powell, and by the way, we were talking about this, that we're not going to cover this as a frivolous thing anymore, but they're still making themselves relevant at every single turn.
They have now held the Georgia special election, the senatorial special election in January.
They've now held it hostage.
They've now said, we're going to withhold Trump's support from any of this stuff unless you continue to help us try and carry out a coup.
And in that way, it's continuing to go on.
And meanwhile, You have the whoopee cushion police over here going crazy in these meetings.
They were in a hearing today that wasn't even a courtroom and Giuliani yelled out an objection.
Last night they had somebody up in Michigan who sounded like she was upset about the bottle service at Olive Garden.
I mean, it is truly and honestly the dumbest coup that has probably ever been attempted in the history of the world.
And somehow or another, we are all still prisoner to it.
I hate it.
I hate it, Nick.
This is like the zombie movies where if it's dark out and you make any noise or like any kind of light and then they get it, they all get attracted to it.
They come, you know, flying in like World War Z.
Like this is what it's like because these crazies come in there.
And, you know, Trump loves to stir it up because like they just they simply need volume.
Right.
They need as many people as possible to file these affidavits.
But once you open that door, you get this blonde who is like browbeating this poor, you know, local government official in Michigan about, you know, he's like, I signed and navigated.
I said I wasn't lying.
Did you?
And he's like, he's not under trial, he's not under examination.
It was insane.
And you're right, she was probably, I don't want to cast aspersions on anybody, but she seemed like she had at least one sheet to the wind, wouldn't you say?
Well, I mean, if you're gonna go testify on a national stage, you gotta have a glass of wine or two.
I mean, like, let's just be real.
Like, that's a high-tension situation.
Well, and that's the thing about this, and I was trying to talk about this the other day.
I did a livestream about it because, you know, I love, by the way, we've now been recording for God knows how long.
We haven't even really brought up the fact, like, the number one story, the number one conversation today and around the country for the past couple of days is not the fact that a former general, a major general in the United States, a former national security advisor, who, and by the way, Michael Flynn was a finalist to be vice president of the United States with Donald Trump.
People forget that.
He's out there talking about suspending the Constitution.
And the reason that he's doing it is partly because they probably think that they should.
But the secondary thing, and this goes to show you what's going on with Trump and all these people, they're fucking grifters.
They're just Con artist.
And they all have some sort of a scam, right?
And they all have either a podcast or a Venmo or a GoFundMe.
And by the way, I think that might be one of the reasons Lindsey Powell left the Trump legal team.
So she could go out and raise money.
I don't know if you've seen this, man.
In her donation?
Sydney.
Yeah, sit with Lindsey Powell.
Sidney Powell.
Well, funny enough, she has asked for all donations to be made out to Sidney Powell.
Sure.
I mean, that's honest to God the place where we're at at this point, is we have a bunch of grifters, and it's like a feeding frenzy.
It's like there's blood in the water, and there's nothing going on.
And so you have, um, so, you know, she's trying to, Powell is trying to set herself up, to be, I don't know, Newsmax or OANN's legal correspondent.
She might have a show by the time all this is said and done.
You know, we've got Michael Flynn.
He's making money left and right off of these QAnon people.
We've got this other guy.
We didn't even talk about this, Nick.
McInerney, who is a former general, is out there talking about firefights in Germany between the United States Special Forces and the CIA over server farms.
They're saying that literally service people have died.
And they're pointing out who they are.
And it's just like Seth Rich, if you remember.
It's like when Seth Rich died and, you know, all these people are like, oh, I think he was a secret double agent.
They are saying that these people died in a war over a fake coup.
Well, no, but the difference between, like, Seth Rich is, I mean, Seth Rich actually died.
No one is fighting, the CIA and the military, not fighting in Germany over a server.
Like, that didn't even happen, right?
Like, that's the problem.
Well, wait, were you there?
Can you prove it didn't happen, Nick?
Right.
Okay, and let's get to that, because this is the whole thing.
You now need to prove that the election went fairly.
Like, that's what they want to demand.
There's no notion of, like, well, you know, it worked the way it was supposed to work.
We'll prove it.
Like, no, no, no.
You need to prove that there was fraud.
And, you know, Giuliani keeps talking about these binders she's got with these crazy affidavits in there.
Well, I'll just say, you and I, undoubtedly, both of us, have been at a public meeting at some point.
Whether or not it's like a school meeting, or a business meeting, or a sports meeting, or something along those lines.
And you've been at this meeting, and it gets so batshit crazy and out of control, that you're like, I'm outta here.
Good luck, everybody.
Let me know how this turns out, right?
And you walk away.
The unfortunate truth, Nick, is now that's the United States of America.
And you know that you walk away from those meetings and you're like, holy shit, I'm exhausted.
That's what this is, except for it's the entire stake of democracy and the United States of America on the line.
And it's just a bunch of people who have an incredible economic incentive not to make sense.
I mean, this madness makes them more money, so of course they're going to be more and more crazy.
Well, the point I want to make about that is that there is no 15 minutes of fame anymore.
If you get a brand, if Sidney Powell develops a brand out of this, she gets a show.
And if that show lasts even for like six months, then she's got enough of a brand where she can make a podcast and then monetize that, you know, and then forever.
She could have 20 years of milking this.
It's not just like, oh, you gotta be lucky to get a radio show like, um, uh, who's the guy, uh, who's the heavy guy who has his brain cancer.
Limbaugh?
Yeah, Rush Limbaugh.
It's like, you know, that's like Lucky 1 in a million 20 years ago where you could get that kind of show and do that.
Dude, Seb Gorka has a show.
Right.
Seb Gorka has a show.
And not only does Seb Gorka have a show, Seb Gorka has a show where he's making really decent money selling people vitamins, collodial silver, gold bullions.
Yeah, it's Alex Jones.
Whatever, and by the way, Fox News trailblazed this whole thing.
They sold you an apocalypse in the early evenings, and then they said, buy gold because the economy's falling apart.
Buy guns, buy safe rooms, buy all this stuff.
These people, you're exactly right.
You get the show, and if the show doesn't work, you get a podcast.
If the podcast doesn't work, all of a sudden you're selling booklets and you're doing afternoon spots on Newsmax.
I mean, I shouldn't...
I can't criticize them.
This is my business, you know?
I've created a YouTube channel.
Look, my back wall is decorated with all these free things I got that I can sell to people.
I'm not selling, you know, elixirs and whatnot, but, you know, so I don't know if I should... Hold on!
Hold on!
Time out!
I'm so glad that you brought this up for this purpose.
If somebody said, Coach Nick of B-Ball Breakdown, you're hurting America.
You're putting people in danger.
If somebody came to us at the Muckrake Podcast and said, you're hurting America.
Like if you and I ever once had a conversation where we were like, should we do this for money?
Should we lie for money?
Should we hurt people for money?
I'd be out and you'd be out.
It would be like the law of rejection.
We would explode in opposite directions.
These people have honestly... I mean, people are going to die.
People are going to die.
People have already died because of these people.
And the coronavirus is out of control because of these people.
Because they see an opportunity to make money and an opportunity to find an advantage.
And by the way, the NBA season is going to start in a week.
When they had the bubble in August, look at the numbers then.
They should have been traveling and doing what they want to do now then, and then to next week start in a bubble.
Like, this is what's upside down world here, and they're going to try and actually make a season happen.
But it does reinforce the notion that maybe this doesn't really mean a lot, and this disease isn't, this pandemic isn't so serious.
Look, the NBA is playing.
The NFL is playing.
They're doing this.
What's the big deal?
We should all get in there and cheer as loud as we can and as close as we can in this community setting.
It's really, really troubling.
We kind of got away from the notion of COVID, and I'm glad we at least came back to it for a second, because it's not enough to know that there's 370,000 doses being delivered to California in a week and a half.
You know, that's going to cover such a small portion of people.
And what people don't understand is we're going to have to wait until it is down to almost zero before you can start to get rid of all the protocols and the social distancing that we have.
And my worry is that as soon as, you know, a few people start getting the vaccine, it's really going to fall off the rails and get terrible.
But Nick, I'm so glad you brought up that process.
The very people that we're talking about right now are going to see an economic incentive to convince people not to get the vaccine.
They've already pushed against even wearing masks.
They've already pushed against whether or not the disease is real.
They've already pushed against common sense advice and experts in science.
And by the way, like we're talking about the coronavirus.
We're not even talking about climate change over here.
You know what I mean?
Like they have damned Their future like descendants to just madness at this point, if not just extinction.
This thing that we're talking about here, and I'm so glad that you brought up those other things, because we're obviously a political show, but this economic incentive and political advantage thing, this is one of the larger things I want people to understand is it filters through everything.
It's not just who wins the Senate.
It's not a Biden presidency.
It's not what happens with Trump and these gaggle of assholes.
It's all of society now.
Because we're in a bad situation where we have artificial austerity, we only have so many resources, and so we're scrambling over each other like crabs in a bucket.
And it doesn't have to be this way.
We were talking a while back about this new Reagan miniseries on Showtime.
Do you have a chance to watch it by now?
Yeah, I watched the first two.
It's so good.
Oh, it's excellent.
And you know, it's really kind of amazing how much of a forebearer Reagan was of Trump.
Just a smiling TV face for all these awful things behind him that he doesn't understand whatsoever.
Starting in the 1980s, we started watching this reshuffling of our economy and our priorities, and it became an anti-human situation.
That mindset didn't just continue, it has evolved.
That's what we're looking at now is people started to realize there's so much money to be made to lie and act in bad faith.
And eventually they come to believe what they're saying.
Like I assume at this point Powell believes what she's saying.
You know what I mean?
Like it's the same way with Trump.
He lies and then all of a sudden he believes it.
And that leads us down a really bad path because you can't convince someone to act in good faith when it's in their best interest to act in bad faith.
There's no way to have a shared society at that point.
And that convergence right now is why everything is so screwed up and why this is so exhausting.
Well, the little piece of the puzzle that we're missing in this idea is, first of all, we've been talking a lot about how worried I am someone's going to look at what Trump did and just follow in his footsteps and do it a lot better, a lot easier to do a lot better than that, and really do some problems and damage.
Can I say one quick thing about that?
I want to point out, and we've been talking about that politically, about how that's happening, and people are like, I don't know, we'll see.
Look at something like Enron.
Talking about financial, Enron was like this massive financial corporate scandal.
A lot of people looked at Enron exploding and they were like, we can learn from that.
You know what I mean?
Like, we can look at it, we can reverse engineer, we can figure out where it went wrong and why it didn't work, and we can use it to our financial advantage.
That's what we're talking about here, is it's people who see the advantage of doing something that most of us, by the way, would recoil in horror from.
Right.
And you would think people would get punished and certainly Enron did have a price to pay.
I mean, don't ask Gray Davis about it because he freaking got recalled as a governor of California basically out of the Enron scandal because the prices got so screwy because they were messing with them and Gray Davis had no idea what was going on or why, not his fault, and he got recalled.
But the thing I was thinking about watching the Reagan documentary is that it's race.
That's really the root fundamental cause and what's dangerous about it is that the people that followed him and got in bed with Reagan and really got behind him don't understand that it's race.
You know what I'm saying?
That's what's so evil about it because they're manipulating it.
You can talk to Stuart Stevens and all those guys at Republican Machine who were creating all the ads and all those things.
They were certainly hyper aware of how they were going to put a wedge in between It's American citizens based on race.
And then man, Reagan just exploited that to the nth degree.
But the people that jumped on the bandwagon happily with their waving their cowboy hats didn't understand that.
It made sense to them and it spoke to them, but there was no reflection of like, well, shit, we're talking about putting black people down.
Yeah, and you know, we were talking about this before, and this is actually hidden.
And that's why we're here.
And that's why there is a direct connection completely from Nixon to Reagan and right to Trump.
Yeah.
And, you know, we were talking about this before.
And this is actually hidden.
I want to say it's like 15 or 16 graphs in this article about the Georgia special election.
And I want to read it to the people who might not have seen it yet.
I want to read it to you.
And I just want to do a quick little experiment.
I just want to game it.
You know what I mean?
I just want to sit with it and let's think about what this means, right?
Because we've been following the Trump phenomenon.
We've been following the right wing and the Republican Party moving further right, why they do it.
And we've been talking about QAnon and all these conspiracy theories.
So I'm going to read two quick paragraphs from this Washington Post article.
In a White House meeting, and this is in the Washington Post, In a White House meeting about keeping the Senate, attended by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senator Todd C. Young, and other aides, a discussion about the state, Georgia, took a turn when Trump brought up House candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene's support of the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory, according to people familiar with the discussion.
And by the way, he can't even pronounce QAnon.
He said Trump mispronouncing the name of the group, telling those present that is made up of people who, quote unquote, basically believe in good government.
The room was silent again before Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, leaned forward to say he had never heard it described that way.
Trump had similarly praised QAnon.
Now, really quickly, why does Donald Trump and by the way, he came and pronounced QAnon.
Why does Donald Trump endorse QAnon, Nick?
I mean, they contribute to the chaos that he wants to foment.
And they like him.
And they like him.
That's right.
They like him, he likes them.
He might never have heard of them once and somebody said to him at a press conference, they think you're the savior of the world.
He's like, sounds like my kind of people.
Absolutely.
Let's go.
So all of a sudden you have the Republican Party who's sitting there with him.
And the Republican Party has to look at the future.
They need Trump's base.
They have to have Trump's base.
And by the way, now that Trump is all about QAnon, and by the way, Trump and QAnon have kind of merged at this point.
Like, QAnon doesn't even make drops anymore.
Like, why?
Because the narrative's already gotten in there.
The people who run QAnon are the ones who are talking about dominion.
They're the ones who are talking about, like, servers being stolen.
All of that.
Massive dumps.
Yeah, massive dumps.
And it's already merged with Trump.
So what does the Republican Party have to do, Nick?
Let me hijack this for a second because I have a hypothetical.
Let's just say we're talking about a medical practice and there's four partners and one wants to retire.
lifestyle and the QAnon reality, what's the Republican Party do if their financial incentive is to continue a partnership with Trump?
Let me hijack this for a second because I have a hypothetical.
Let's just say we're talking about a medical practice and there's four partners and one wants to retire.
Well, the notion is we got to pay them off so that we can keep all of their patients and they can continue going to us.
Well, the argument could be, why would you do that?
The patients aren't going to just leave the practice.
Maybe a few will, but they'll all stay.
Most of them will stay.
They don't want to learn to find a new office, new doctor.
So why are we so convinced that the Republicans need Trump for that base?
Now, you could argue, perhaps, that so many of the Trump base, the Trumpists, had never really voted before.
And so if they kind of marginalize Trump, then they're not going to vote again.
They're certainly not going to vote against the Republican people.
So maybe it's unfounded.
Maybe this notion of like having to go along with Trump to keep that base energized isn't necessarily a realistic thing.
But economics tells us it is cheaper to keep the customers you have than it is to go and get new customers.
It's an economic incentive every single time.
What you just said is correct.
What you just said is how you should look at that, which is, Oh my God, this shit is bonkers.
I don't want anything to do with it.
It's dangerous.
But meanwhile, and by the way, that's not how Mitch McConnell deals with things.
We've seen that Mitch McConnell, Mitch McConnell said, Oh, that tea party over there.
Oh, they're a threat to us.
Come on in tea party.
Enjoy this steely amphibian embrace is what happened.
- Purple hand, yes. - Whoa, whoa.
- Wait, wait, I do lament, we shouldn't make fun.
I know I might have made fun of him before.
You've seen the hands pictures, right? - Terrible. - He's probably sick.
Like, I don't know if you've seen him.
He's probably sick.
Yeah, he's probably been sick for a while.
But wouldn't that be the thing, though, is like, let's come to terms with what you've done.
Like, look at this thing.
And there's like, some people call it the moment of clarity, right?
Where you have been doing something that is so awful for so long that you forget what it is that is right.
And then you have a moment of clarity, like when you hit rock bottom and you're like, oh my God.
I need to do better.
I need to make amends.
I need to work on this thing.
And by the way, for most of us, enabling Donald Trump and watching him destroy democratic institutions, watching him engage in rampant corruption, and by the way, trying to steal an election.
And Mitch McConnell's not stupid.
He knows Donald Trump lost this election.
He knows it.
He's not a moron.
He understands that Donald Trump actually lost this election.
Wouldn't that be a pretty good moment of clarity?
Like, if he was sick, if he was on his way out, if he was in, like, the later years of his career, look at what you have wrought and deal with it.
But the economic and political incentive is on, no, you got to keep riding the horse that brought you, and you got to keep going, and you got to save those people.
And they are going to embrace this shit.
They're not going to push it away.
They're not going to move away from it.
They're not going to grow from it.
We're going to be in Donald Trump and the QAnon Republican Party for the foreseeable future as long as they're able to win elections.
Right, well that is the thing that you said that's interesting is that it's cheaper to keep the people having to go out and find new customers.
Well, they need to find more customers still because it's shrinking and they're going to continue losing these elections, certainly the presidential elections.
There's no doubt in my mind it's going to be a problem going forward.
The gerrymandering of the Congress is a problem.
And I don't know if it's ever going to be solved at this point, because they were able to hold enough seats in enough states where they're going to be able to do another gerrymander for the next 10 years.
We're fucked there.
We really are.
And the Senate is the only possibility we have, and that should continue to move blue as we go forward.
But you just opened the door, which is, again, this is the problem.
You and I wouldn't go through this door.
If you and I ran a political party, and that political party wasn't electorally viable anymore, We would either recuse ourselves and let somebody else take over, we would fold the tent, or we would try and grow the party, right?
We would take a look at what we had done and try and grow the party.
No, their answer is, maybe democracy is the one that's wrong.
Maybe democratic institutions are the things that are wrong.
And that is the unfortunate truth, is that the Republican Party, it's honest to God, going back to the idea of Enron and that corporation that has rotted all the way through, Sometimes they need to go away.
Sometimes the corporation doesn't need to exist anymore.
Take it to a sports thing.
Sometimes your team or your athletic program needs to get the death penalty and it needs to go away.
And by the way, I'm saying death penalty, I need to be very careful.
I'm not talking about losing lives.
I'm saying you're done.
Goodbye.
Best of luck in your future endeavors.
You can't do this anymore.
There comes a terminal point and that's where these people are.
You know, when you mentioned even the sporting aspect of it, which we've said a lot in the past, how this has become a sporting event where people's allegiance is the same as their dedication to a sports team.
Well, you know, an interesting connection I had seen earlier this week on Twitter was that the evangelical audience is also primed in the same exact way as sports fans would be to follow this.
Because I'm talking about specifically the election fraud that they keep seeing, because you're talking about sharing, you know, this person on Twitter was saying, it's like witnessing and sharing your testimony.
All these same, you know, phrases they're using that they would use in church are now, you know, are coming out here, which is where you get these.
I mean, if you haven't seen some of the testimony, it's, it is crazy.
And it's, you know, you had mentioned how you go to those, the town hall meetings, whatever, It usually becomes a problem because they just become so personal with whatever they're trying to talk about, like if it's a cop there and next thing you know she's talking about how her next door neighbor is doing something with a fence, whatever, and we're not here to talk about that, right?
This is something private.
And you can see the moderators always making sure before they give the mic out to tell people you can't talk about this and then do it anyway.
So anyway, the point being that the evangelicals are like already primed.
The people that want these strong leaders are already primed for this sort of lack of democracy.
They want, this is how, you know, we talked about this before, this is how Germany becomes, you know, run by Hitler.
They almost have this innate desire in their fake masculinity, in the women, I guess, too, in this notion of they need this really great charismatic strong leader.
They want fascism.
It's a really interesting problem that gets Worse because you get a leader like Trump who knows how to manipulate that and that's what we've relied on in their past is that we'd have normal people who would not do that and would not abuse their power and certainly they wouldn't abuse it because the fear was you'd get either impeached or you lose your election anyway.
It's a deeper belief.
It's fake.
They think the election was fake because how could it not have been?
Right.
They're right.
Right.
You know and and they're right so how if they believe they're the majority, so how could they possibly not be in the majority?
Obviously, something went wrong.
Obviously, it was stolen.
And we use things like faith, and we think of it automatically like religion.
This is religion is what it is.
We are watching people right now.
And this is one of the things I've come to learn about apocalypticism as I've studied it now for this new project, which is apocalypticism is when a minority group, By the way, a lot of them used to be in power, but they start to lose power.
They say, you know what?
If we're not allowed to have control, things are going to get bad.
Things are going to fall apart.
You're going to watch the end of the world.
And it's this, it's this deeper held belief, and they use it through revelations, right?
An angel told me, God revealed to me, that is the deeper truth.
And for them, it's like, I've heard things.
I somebody said that that they saw a tub of ballots in Georgia Somebody said that they saw these ballots being unloaded in Nevada.
Who is it?
Well, doesn't matter who it is somebody did well What what are we doing here?
You know what I mean?
Like at some point at some point?
What what in the hell is is is this thing?
I I was looking at this earlier.
I got a reply from this person.
And this person, unfortunately, is just... They're as red-pilled as it gets.
You know what I mean?
Like, they are just... They really believe it.
So this is the list.
Are you ready?
This is apparently what happened during the election.
Ah.
Okay.
I'm really ready.
Dead voters.
Confirmed.
Do you know where this happened?
The only things I've heard, they've proven that they were living.
Okay.
Corrupted tabulation software.
Yeah.
Where was that?
Everywhere.
Dominion.
Well, the next one is Dominion.
Yeah.
Okay, so there's two.
Okay, cool.
Observers illegally removed.
I guess that was Michigan.
Mathematical impossibilities.
Oh, yeah.
Love that one.
That's great.
I saw them in concert, actually, in 97.
They were great.
Mathematical impossibilities.
15,000 ballots missed in Georgia. 15,000.
15,000.
I don't know what that would do.
Oh yeah, on a thumb drive maybe.
Okay, so here are the rest.
More voters than people in a county.
Fake signatures.
Whistleblowers alleging wrongdoing.
Hundreds of sworn affidavits.
Voting system processing parts from China.
Voting machines vulnerable to hacks.
I mean, none of this has been confirmed.
Not a one of them has been confirmed.
And meanwhile, that is what happened to these people for the rest of their lives.
This is what happened.
Like, obviously, this was stolen.
Obviously, this is a conspiracy.
The country is irredeemable.
I guess we might as well grab our guns.
I guess we might as well kill our fellow citizens.
That's where it's going.
Newsmax had the video footage, the surveillance footage of Michigan.
And he's like, look, there's a guy taking a box of ballots from underneath the table.
That's clearly they all left No one's in the room and they're counting ballots with nobody there and then you know, finally it comes out No, there's the over the official overseer is sitting right there watching they put the boxes underneath the table so no one would trip on them when they're moving through this little small room and You know, but with a straight face, this is what they're doing.
Now, it's not that convincing, right?
It's not going to convince everybody that's watching Newsmax that this is the smoking gun.
But it's enough to at least make life hell for a lot of people and drag this whole thing out and ruin democracy for them and their little pod of people for the rest of their lives, probably.
You know, it's a real problem.
And then you have other things going on too, like the White House is emboldened by these things, and they're also in the midst of trying to just continue fomenting chaos.
But there's a nefarious end to this.
So there's a reporting today where the liaison to the Department of Justice from the White House was walking around like she's the boss of everybody, and they had to literally bar her from the building.
which has like never happened before.
And she's, you know, this is the kind of group who's like threatening to fire anybody who's looking for another job.
You know, newsflash, you're going to need a new job pretty soon because the new administration is coming in.
They don't think so.
They don't think so.
Yeah, well, listen, the rats do.
That's why they're, you know, and they're doing it as quietly as possible.
But yeah, they're trying to make sure.
But what's concerning to me about this is that the, you know, Maddow was talking last night about how the Pentagon is being completely shaken up and being controlled by these people who have no business being in charge.
And then Ezra Cohen Watnick comes back on.
Evan Cohen?
Ezra?
Evan Cohen Watnick, whatever.
This is General Misha Flynn's, you know, right-hand man.
We have to call him Misha from now on, by the way.
This is what makes me worried.
They're clearing out all the red tape.
They're getting they're getting anybody who's in the way of them Militarily out of the way and they're consolidating the power in the Pentagon.
This is concerning to me because not only do they Are they they're acting as if they're not leaving?
But they're at they're gonna do maybe this is like they're gonna do some major Initiatives here major military actions with you know, 30 days left in there in there in the presidency so one of the Least reported things in all of this is they are going about all of their business as if they plan on being there after January.
They're putting forward budgets.
They're vetting people for jobs.
And what I think is happening there is it goes back to the fact that this is both a grift and a coup.
They do not expect to steal the election.
They do not expect to hold on to power.
But here's the damnedest thing about it.
If somehow or another the coup works, here we go.
I guess we're doing it.
I guess we stole an election.
I guess we've destroyed all of democracy.
Well, ain't that crazy shit.
Let's go forward.
That's what this is all about.
It's like they're prepared.
Like if all of a sudden they wake up one day and it's like, holy hell, this fell in their laps.
Here we go.
Let's go.
And that actually should really concern people.
They're carrying out this coup.
And by the way, I don't know if you saw this.
Trump has raised roughly $170 million in donations.
Of which he's going to keep.
Oh yeah, he's going to keep it.
He's going to keep it.
And for everybody who keeps saying, oh he's in trouble, he's got loans to pay back.
This man is one of the biggest grifters the United States of America has ever seen.
Nobody has ever been able to slip out of financial falls more than Donald Trump.
He's going to figure it out.
He will figure out a way to either pay for it or he's the kind of person, you know, it's like you see these shows and movies and stuff where it's like they go in and they're in trouble and they walk out and they're in charge of the bank.
Right.
You know what I mean?
Like they just manage like that's who he is.
Well, I mean, he has to write a book, and he'll do about 30 rallies where he can charge money for them, and that's it.
I mean, literally, that would be hundreds of millions of dollars, probably, by the time he's done with that, and that's all he'd need.
Yeah, he's ready to go, and he's totally fine, and this is a total grift.
But if somehow, and the grift is, The election was stolen and we're going to steal it back.
That's the grift.
We're going to put on a hell of a show and, you know, it's like, like you said before, it's like the producers.
It's like, ah, this is good.
And then all of a sudden it's a smash hit.
And all of a sudden you have like the biggest hit in all of Broadway and you never expected it to work.
But in this case, you happen to steal the election and you completely subvert democracy.
And you probably break the democratic institutions of the United States of America irrevocably.
I think that's what's happening here is that they're prepared for all of this stuff to actually work out.
And they're working themselves into this thing being real.
Well, here's the interesting thing that came out today on Twitter as well.
A guy was doing a local hit on a local news station in front of a restaurant, I think, and the guy who owns the restaurant comes flying out there, interrupts it, and says the right thing.
He was correct by saying all the government had to do was pay all of our restaurant owners for two or three months to shut down.
Just pay us to do that so we can get through all this and get rid of the COVID crisis once and for all and for all the businesses.
And they had plenty of money to do that.
And he was exactly right.
But then in reaction to that, that being ignored and being screwed by the government and his perception, which is right.
He's like, so I'm not going to listen to the government now when they tell me I have to shut down for COVID.
You're not going to help me out and pay me to do this.
I am just going to open my doors and let people come in and we're going to end up spreading it more.
So he's never more right in the beginning of his creed and then never more wrong on the other side of that.
But what I worry about is if they are successful with what you're saying, I mean, there's just no way.
But if they figure out how to stay in the White House, we would have a civil war.
But I can't picture what that would be like because I don't think we're going to have fighting in the streets.
I can't picture how that would look, but what we might have, we might just all do civil disobedience.
We might all decide en masse to say we are not going to obey whatever laws we can figure out that maybe don't kill people directly, but you can have mass chaos from that.
Yes.
So I've been thinking about this a lot lately, like what would happen if somehow or another, you know, they're, they're dicking around and they managed to steal the election.
You know what I mean?
Like what would that even look like?
Here's the good news.
The good news is the military doesn't have time for Donald Trump shit.
They hate Donald Trump, which is actually kind of amazing.
If you look at the results from the military, like they're very right wing and they're very pro-Republican.
They did not turn out for Donald Trump the way people might expect.
Why?
Because that dude tells everyone who will listen that they're losers and that they died for nothing.
And on top of that, I don't know if people have read about this, but it's like, Trump treats the higher-ups in the military like shit.
He talks down to them.
He doesn't like experts.
He wants to be the alpha male in every room.
He bullies them.
He's disrespectful to them.
He's lost the military.
This goes back during the Black Lives Matter movement, whenever you start seeing all these memos and announcements being passed around by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, there's like, do not forget that you have an oath to the Constitution.
Not to the President of the United States, to the Constitution.
And when those two things run across each other, your duty is to the Constitution.
So the good news is, and by the way, if it was simply a more competent, pro-military, intelligent, not obviously buffoonish president, We'd be fucked.
Yeah, we'd be fucked.
But the whole point here is the military would not help out Trump.
Not or at least not all of them.
We would not have the full mind of the military.
And by the way, you would have tens of millions of people, if not 100 million people in the streets.
That doesn't mean it would be bloodless.
It doesn't mean that it would be great.
And on top of that, it would hurt America, it would hurt our standing in the world, and it would do permanent damage to our democratic institutions.
So it could get really, really bad.
But I don't think there's a situation where this is going to work out that way.
But that being said, it does not help that all of this is happening, or that we have to talk about this.
Can you believe we have to talk about this shit?
Can you believe we have to talk about this?
Yes, and well because the thing we have to talk about as well is first of all pardons for his kids and himself and everybody else.
Which remember is a tacit admission of a crime that you committed.
That's when you accept a pardon that's an admission of guilt.
The thing we all need to watch out for, write this down, stick a pen in it, do whatever you have to do on the mirror in the morning in the bathroom, Bill Barr.
You have to watch... I don't want Bill Barr on my mirror.
How dare you?
Well, listen, that is an interesting thing because he's on the outs, right?
And you would say, well, who the hell cares?
You're only going to be in office for another 40 days.
Like, you know, whatever.
But here's the thing.
Yeah.
Do you know what we failed to do?
What?
We failed to say.
Put on a list.
We failed to say.
Welcome to the resistance, Attorney General Bill Barr.
Yeah, right.
Welcome.
The resistance fighter Bill Barr.
Who, by the way... We've been waiting for you.
For those who aren't aware, Bill Barr and the DOJ said that they found no irregularities in the election.
And the right wing, the Trump ecosystem, lost their minds.
And it was almost immediate.
And by the way, let me tell you something, just to let everyone know, just because these people moved over to Parler doesn't mean that I'm not paying attention to them.
I'm just letting you know that.
Yeah, but how did you get in without giving them, you didn't give them your social security number, I hope.
Oh boy.
I got ways to get into places.
Nick, I've been doing this for years, man.
I slither.
I move.
I move in the cracks.
I find the vacuums.
I find my spot, Nick.
I find my spot.
And let me tell you something.
They are not pleased with Mr. William Barr.
And Barr is getting paid by Soros.
Him and Obama are grabbing brunch at Guantanamo Bay.
Like, he is persona non grata.
But yes, go on.
We gotta look at Bill Barr when we get up in the morning.
Well, I think that what happens with him, if they fire him, remember that guy Matt Whitaker?
They're gonna bring somebody worse than that in and because here's the thing there are this whole notion of consolidating power and doing things and moving around people in the Pentagon, moving people around the Department of Justice, it makes me worry that that's going to be some leverage point where they can figure out a way with this election you know and maybe Barr is you know he's been kind of quiet and he hasn't really been in you know they disappeared after his Supposed COVID, you know, scare, whatever he had.
That's a worry that they're gonna, because somebody nefarious behind the scenes who's smart, who really is smart, comes up with ideas about, you know, let's dismantle the post office.
Like, that would have been way out of my purview.
I would never have thought about that.
So they might be coming up with some interesting things legally that the Department of Justice would need to be able to sign off on, that they might bring somebody in knowing that, oh, he'll just do it because we're only going to be here for 30 days, whatever.
And maybe it works.
That is an interesting fear.
So if he does get fired, that would be a real concerning moment for me, even though they're firing everybody and whatever.
I would keep my eye on that one.
I will say just for the record, if there is if there is a Christmas miracle out there, it's the possibility that Donald Trump will fire and humiliate Bill Barr, which is one of my favorite things, which is when people which is one of my favorite things, which is when people lick Donald Trump's boots and he just destroys them and bullies
Like watching, you know, it's like watching Godzilla and Mechagodzilla fighting off in the distance and you want both of them to lose, you know, and you're just like, no, keep fighting, fellas.
That's wonderful.
Watching him just absolutely just destroy John Bolton That was a joyful day.
And listen, I'm not a petty person, but I allowed myself some pettiness that day.
Watching Trump go after Bill Barr for a day or two would be incredible.
But that being said...
You're exactly right.
That somebody would come up behind him who would be more than willing to go even further than Bill Barr to start rounding people up, throwing them into prison, and God knows what.
Oh, I'm talking about Electoral College stuff.
Oh, Electoral College stuff, for sure.
Why not?
You know, that's a concern.
I mean, that's the last, you know, thing, the last hope they have, right?
Is to somehow convince the Electoral College to not vote for the will of the people.
It's not going to happen.
It can't happen.
It's all these things.
But that makes me worried because, again, there's no sense in firing... Okay, the only sense in firing Bill Barr is to humiliate him, which is what Trump loves to do.
So that would be the one thing you could say is, okay, that's why he did it.
I have to say, I just want to get up tomorrow.
And I don't follow Donald Trump, but of course, like his tweets, you know, they go at the speed of sound.
I would just love to get up tomorrow and it's like...
Best of luck to Billy No Neck Bar.
And that would be wonderful.
That would be fun.
But then, yeah, the hairs on the back of my neck would stand up.
Well, the end of that sentence is going to be who he replaced him with.
And it's going to be like, what?
And that's the fear.
So yeah, keep your eye on that one.
But again, by the way, I had an interesting theory that was working for a little while, which would be, could Trump run again if he accepts a pardon?
Because you could argue that, well, he's now admitted he committed the felony.
But it turns out, believe it or not, Jared, if you're a convicted felon, you can run for president.
You know what?
I just want to do it.
Our founders, man.
Our founders killed it.
We're sitting here talking about the Electoral College.
We're talking about felons.
We're talking about parties and factionalism.
Hey, what a group of guys.
We don't want to take their statues down.
These guys were inspired by God to make a perfect document, am I right?
Good God.
I do have to say, on behalf of all of us, I hope we can get some rest this weekend.
I hope we don't have to sit here and worry about democratic institutions crumbling, worse attorney generals being appointed, pardons As always, we always say, let's hope we don't have to do an emergency podcast.
But you know, it was like the other day I got up and we were talking earlier about whether or not we're sleeping well and what it feels like right now.
I woke up the other day and I was like, oh man, I'm so glad that we live in a better world where Trump lost the election.
It's like, oh, Mike Flynn is advocating the suspension of the Constitution.
Oh, Genova wants, you know, Krebs shot.
Murder, whatever, firing line.
It's incredible.
It just never ever stops.
So here's hoping y'all get some good rest this weekend.
Let's try and be safe.
Let's try and not let fascism take over.
We'll be back next week.
Hopefully this thing will take a turn.
Hopefully people will take COVID seriously and maybe fascism will start to retreat.
Maybe we'll find some sanity again.
I know this isn't a popular thing.
I'm guessing it won't.
I hate to say it, but I don't think those things will happen.
I think we're okay for now.
Today.
Okay.
Today?
Well, I mean, it's almost midnight, so we'll see what happens in the next couple hours.
If you need me until then, you can find me at J.Y.