Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the latest gambit by Republicans to steal the election from Joe Biden, as the state of Texas sues 4 swing states, and gets support from over 100 Republican congressman. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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| After what they have gone through in the November 3rd election to then go toward January 5th at a runoff and think that changing nothing will change the outcome, then the people of Georgia aren't half as smart as I believe them to be. | |
| So what does it say about the invincible Donald Trump if he can't win in court, he can't win with the voters, he can't get state legislatures to overturn election results, and he can't even get Republican members of Congress to do what he wants in the face of a veto threat? | |
| He starts to look not just like a loser, but somebody who is impotent. | |
| Hey everybody, welcome to the Muckrik Podcast. | |
| I'm Jared Yates Sexton, here as always with Nick Halseman. | |
| We got so much dumb shit to talk about today. | |
| I'm so glad for the opportunity to talk about this stuff, but I have to tell you it is just enraging, just infuriating stuff. | |
| As our country has 3,000 plus deaths a day, people are shoplifting to simply get food, people are getting thrown out of their houses. | |
| It is a bleak moment, and meanwhile we have to talk about the dumb shit the Republican Party is up to. | |
| But before we get to that, just a quick little heads up for everybody over on patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast. | |
| We just had a bonus episode talking about the holiday classic, It's a Wonderful Life. | |
| I believe roughly an hour and a half conversation dissecting the mythology of America and history, but also talking about how things could be better and possibly how propaganda Might be utilized to make America better and realize our potential. | |
| Right. | |
| And the fact that I got to coach basketball in the gym where they open the floor for the pool underneath it. | |
| That's such a Nick anecdote. | |
| I love that. | |
| It feels like you've been literally everywhere. | |
| But unfortunately, we have to talk about serious business today. | |
| And, you know, it just doesn't stop, man. | |
| It just doesn't quit. | |
| It has been a full month since Donald Trump lost the election of 2020. | |
| Handedly, by the way, Joe Biden won over 300 electoral votes and lost by 7 million popular votes. | |
| Which by the way, we had that. | |
| But that's Neither here nor there because these people won't stop. | |
| They continue fighting this thing tooth and nail. | |
| We now have a Supreme Court amicus brief filed by the great state of Texas that has been joined by 17 other states and as of today a hundred plus members of Congress, Republican members of Congress, | |
| That is filed against Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, the deciding states in the 2020 election, claiming that they unlawfully held their elections, and you know that you should just go ahead and give the whole election to Donald Trump. | |
| So that's where we are. | |
| You got to ask the question, what's the frequency, Kenneth Paxton, AG of Texas? | |
| What are you doing? | |
| That's how insane this really is because you have to remember states are constitutionally allowed to run their elections on how they see fit. | |
| Yeah, yeah. | |
| And elections are supposed to be held and the results are supposed to be binding. | |
| And meanwhile, we're watching the literal dismantling of our electoral system. | |
| By the way, by a party that knows Donald Trump lost. | |
| They know he lost. | |
| They're well aware. | |
| Besides, Louie Gohmert, I don't know if you saw this, was giving a press conference a couple days ago, and his tooth fell out. | |
| Oh yeah, nightmare. | |
| His tooth By the way, this is a party where their body parts are falling off mid-press conference. | |
| They can't control their flatulence. | |
| They're dripping all over podiums left and right. | |
| They know that Donald Trump lost this election. | |
| They cannot help themselves. | |
| They're trying to help themselves politically, economically, and by the way, if it all works, if somehow or another this ends up in front of the Supreme Court and it ends up with the election being overturned, which it won't, it probably won't. | |
| I don't think it'll happen. | |
| I just went from like 100% down to 65. | |
| It probably won't, but if it did, Nick, they'd be fine with it. | |
| Can we just focus on that for a second? | |
| They would be totally fine if this stole the election of 2020. | |
| I gotta take a detour. | |
| Did you just sort of reference Donald Trump? | |
| Listen, I'm the guy that likes the scatological humor on this show. | |
| You're much more highbrow than me. | |
| I said flatulence. | |
| I said flatulence. | |
| Because I am an academic. | |
| Esoterically, I think that you at least conjure the image of Trump having to leave the Oval Office with a wrestler after giving him the Medal of Honor really quickly because he most likely shit his pants. | |
| You didn't see this? | |
| Listen, I have to tell you, I have seen my fair share of videos and moments from these assholes that I thought was doctored. | |
| You know what I mean? | |
| Because it just feels so dead on bullseye, like parody wise. | |
| Yeah, I've seen all this stuff. | |
| And it just it just gets worse. | |
| And I will only take a response. | |
| I will take responsibility for making light of a situation that is pretty serious for people out there, me included. | |
| So I've been in that situation. | |
| So I feel like I am a little bit more empowered to laugh at it when it does happen. | |
| But man, just the thought of that positive. | |
| There's not a lot of other explanations for why he just was like My temperature is surprised. | |
| Temperature is thrown off. | |
| poor guy with his family in the in the oval just by himself so but yes let's I digress forgive me for that moment but I just needed to you know address that for a second to see where you're where what your temperature was my temperature is surprised temperature is thrown off but I will say that this thing man I wish we were there's so much more stuff that we could be talking about let's Like, real stuff. | |
| I mentioned this in the Patreon subscriber podcast. | |
| You know, we should be talking about the fact that the nominated Secretary of Defense has, like, crazy ties to the military-industrial complex and military contractors. | |
| We could be talking about, you know, what we might be able to do to turn this country around and actually, I don't know, stave off certain disaster, 15 different disasters. | |
| Instead, we're dealing with this brief where we just have Republican-controlled states and Republican representatives Who are playing out this this theater like it's it's not real at all but somehow or another it might end up to being real and there we are. | |
| Well wait maybe Biden appreciates this because it will hide the discussion over whether Neera Tanden should be you know the position she's got and now Susan Rice who doesn't really have you know policy experience is going to be in a role where she needs that. | |
| So maybe maybe that's good for Biden to kind of stay in his basement for a little while longer and not have to take any of the heat for these picks. | |
| I hate it. | |
| I hate it so much. | |
| And I hate that we have to talk about this, that we have to continue to be held hostage by this thing. | |
| Meanwhile, and you know, we keep trying to tell people, yeah, this probably isn't going to work, but it does damage. | |
| Right. | |
| It perpetuates the myth of a stolen election. | |
| It also leads to violence, which if you want to talk about violence, like let's let's look at what our president of the United States have said. | |
| This is retweeted for those who haven't seen it. | |
| This is a he's just watching OANN. | |
| And what I love about it is this president who can't be bothered to get off of his dumb ass to fight the pandemic. | |
| Is watching OANN with his stupid fingers and actually like typing out what he sees on OANN. | |
| That's more effort than he's put into being president of the United States and dealing with the pandemic. | |
| Three thousand plus a day. | |
| They're expecting like three, like three hundred, three and a half hundred thousand dead by next year. | |
| And meanwhile, he's over here. | |
| This is this is something from the president's Twitter. | |
| People are upset, and they have a right to be. | |
| Georgia not only supported Trump in 2016, but now. | |
| Which, by the way, we haven't talked about this. | |
| I love that so many of these people are like, Biden won states that Trump won. | |
| Obviously, that means they cheated. | |
| That's an incredible... Oh, it gets worse. | |
| No, Trump was winning at 10 o'clock on Tuesday nights. | |
| So... What proof? | |
| And by the way, if you want to talk about pathetic, He was on Twitter the other day saying, I was favored by the bookies. | |
| Hey, the Atlantic City in Trump came out. | |
| But let's finish this out from OANN, the most trusted name in news. | |
| This is the only state in the Deep South that went for Biden. | |
| Wonderful. | |
| Have they lost their minds? | |
| This is going to escalate dramatically. | |
| This is a very dangerous moment in our history. | |
| The fact that our country is being stolen. | |
| A coup is taking place in front of our eyes and the public can't take this anymore. | |
| A Trump fan at Georgia rally on OANN. | |
| And then, after the quote is done, Nick? | |
| Bad. | |
| Not sad, just bad. | |
| Bad. | |
| So here's the whole question. | |
| If the President of the United States, and I told everybody to go back to 2012 and see what happened after Romney was soundly defeated by Obama and Trump, who had no skin in the race whatsoever, got on Twitter and said, we need to march on Washington. | |
| It's obvious he doesn't care. | |
| He's totally fine with pushing this into a civil war. | |
| He's telling his supporters there's a coup, the country's being stolen, nothing new there, but this is going to escalate. | |
| Like, what does that mean? | |
| That means violence, is what it means. | |
| You know, we've been kind of signaling that for a while, and the worry about how that could happen. | |
| But, you know, we gotta admit, it's been very quiet, right? | |
| There's nothing going on, which is sort of the uncertainty around what's going on here. | |
| I suppose your point would be, once this finally does shake out on December 17th, whatever it is, and they finally are supposedly starting this, I think that is when we're going to be worried, right? | |
| That's when the Supreme Court is going to say, F you, get the hell out of our hallowed halls or whatever we're going to call that. | |
| And it's over. | |
| It's done. | |
| Like I suppose that is when they're going to start marching because the last hope is now extinguished, the legitimate hope I suppose we would call it. | |
| I think there are different strands. | |
| So there are some people who – they're institutionalists. | |
| They totally expect the Supreme Court with Kavanaugh and Barrett and that whole group. | |
| They expect them to pay Trump back for being put on the court. | |
| And somehow or another, the Supreme Court will overturn this whole thing. | |
| And by the way, I think there are people around Trump who believe that as well. | |
| Those people would be disappointed. | |
| Those people are not the ones I think that you should be scared of. | |
| I think those are the ones who will get on Twitter or they're like, I will protest this decision by moving to Parler, you know, or whatever, or whatever dumb ass, uh, social media site they've created today because Parler didn't let them, you know, post Holocaust memes, right? | |
| Um, well actually I assume Parler is totally fine with Holocaust memes, but the ones that we should be afraid of are the ones who are waiting for January 20th. | |
| Because the moment that Biden swears in as President of the United States, they're back at war with the United States of America, if that makes sense. | |
| It's being handed over to an illegitimate president. | |
| It's being handed over to an enemy. | |
| In their minds, it's being handed over to Jewish puppet masters, people of color, and internal traitors. | |
| I think the really dangerous moment for us is the 20th of January. | |
| I think the Supreme Court thing is going to ruffle the kraken heads. | |
| You know, the people who are like, Sidney Powell! | |
| Sidney Powell's got this! | |
| But it's the people on the 20th, I think, who we need to be worried about. | |
| Yeah, that actually makes a lot of sense. | |
| And you've seen the interesting thing about Trump in the Georgia stuff is that, you know, he simply won't go and, you know, give an endorsement or ringing endorsement for either of these candidates. | |
| And so as a result, you're seeing these interviews where I was expecting to see some of the Georgians really angry and really roused up, ready to go and do something. | |
| But instead, they're more like, eh, I might not vote. | |
| And a lot of times when you hear people say, oh, you gotta be careful, Trump, You know, you're going to cast aspersions on how legitimate this election is. | |
| People aren't going to show up. | |
| To me, I was like, that doesn't work. | |
| They're going to show up. | |
| But you know what? | |
| After a few of these CNN interviews you see with the people, I'm starting to think that there might be some veracity to that. | |
| Well, and you know, we talk a lot about the intersection of politics and economic interest, right? | |
| So we have all these. | |
| We have some really incredible rose galleries out there operating in America right now. | |
| So like Mike Flynn, by the way. | |
| Love Mike Flynn. | |
| What a wonderful guy Mike Flynn is. | |
| Merry Christmas to Mike Flynn. | |
| Yes. | |
| Happy Hanukkah. | |
| I assume half of that message he would welcome. | |
| But he's out there on every QAnon podcast platform. | |
| It sounds like he's starting his own group that he's calling Digital Soldiers. | |
| Which, by the way, not that that's weird or upsetting at all. | |
| And if you remember, that also comes from the QAnon Digital Soldiers oath that a bunch of people took, including, by the way, incoming Congresswoman from Georgia. | |
| And this thing where they swore the oath of the military, but they actually went ahead and just swore to QAnon. | |
| So, not that that's... Whoops. | |
| Weird. | |
| Then, meanwhile, you have one lawyer after another that Trump basically employed for two days, but got a little too wild in their conspiracy theories, who are in Georgia holding parallel rallies to Loeffler and Perdue, and they're like, I wouldn't vote in this election! | |
| This election's rigged! | |
| Show them that these elections are rigged! | |
| And then, meanwhile, you have Republicans who are coming out who are like, No, they're heretics. | |
| They're not real. | |
| They're grifters. | |
| And meanwhile, it's like, who's saying this? | |
| Oh, it's the Republican grifters. | |
| So right now, it is a, to preview a topic we're getting ready to talk about in a moment, it is a civil war on the far right right now over who's going to get paid, who's going to get money, and that's going to come into fruition with this special election. | |
| Well, I'm really glad you brought up the lawyers because there's a lot of lawyers on Twitter. | |
| By the way, quote, Lawyers. | |
| Gregory Peck was a lawyer, right? | |
| So in the same way, but man he'd be much better in what we see here because they're releasing the documents of what they're submitting to the court and it's embarrassing because some of these judges are having to respond saying like you're quoting a case that doesn't even apply to our circuit | |
| And you're trying to quote from a page, you know, page four of this previous case and whatever you're quoting doesn't even exist on that page and I'm wasting time with my clerk going through this to explain this is not, it doesn't even apply to the case you're arguing. | |
| That's how bad it is. | |
| To bring everybody in on this because I've been studying with the QAnon movement and like, you know, I'm hanging out. | |
| I'm hanging out seeing what these people are cooking up, what they're baking. | |
| So the wonderful thing about that fringe paranoid part of the country is there's nothing that Trump and his idiots could do. | |
| I assume, I haven't come across it yet, I assume there's probably a, I don't know, six hour breakdown of Rudy farting at a hearing and how that was a signal to the deep state. | |
| Morse code. | |
| There should be a better, I should have a better, you know, more, you know, something that rhymes. | |
| You know what? | |
| I bet that exists on YouTube. | |
| I guarantee that that exists. | |
| Oh, I've seen a guy, I know a guy who could fart the national anthem. | |
| And I wouldn't recommend that. | |
| So, what's happening in this episode is, this episode is getting loose real fast, I'll just say that. | |
| But they have taken all of these mistaken filings. | |
| So it's not just like, It's not just their citing, like, cases that don't apply. | |
| They're, like, turning in blank documents. | |
| They're misspelling one word after another. | |
| The typos are everywhere. | |
| And meanwhile, while everybody is, like, dunking on them on Twitter because these are idiot filings, the people in QAnon are like, well, if you take The misspelled C and you move the blank page and all of a sudden it's like it's a signal because there's no way that these people are that incompetent. | |
| There's no way that this isn't going to work. | |
| There is a plan, obviously, and it's that faith that we talked about on the last episode. | |
| It's a religious belief that Trump and the people around him are going to be ultimately successful. | |
| The question is the people who have that faith, when their faith is not rewarded, Are they going to continue? | |
| Are they going to be like the cult members who are like, well, the world was supposed to end on Tuesday, but now the leader saying it ends next Tuesday, or are they the ones who all of a sudden become nihilistic and violent? | |
| And that's sort of the question that we're sitting on right now. | |
| Yeah, you know what makes me a little bit nervous is obviously these cases it's like 50 to 1 right that they're the record now against they got thrown out in these court court cases but you know and we've even seen the Supreme Court do the right thing unanimously say we're not gonna hear this one case because it was complete nothing burger but I'm not gonna give credit to the Supreme Court for doing the right thing there has been a | |
| In this Supreme Court, there has been a decision with the conservative wing that they're not going to waste their legitimacy on bullshit. | |
| They're more than fine throwing out laws. | |
| They're more than fine oppressing people. | |
| But you can tell by what you just mentioned, that the Supreme Court threw out this thing and would not hear on it. | |
| If Trump would have been closer, if this thing would have been a blanket thing to deal with, they would have went ahead and taken care of it. | |
| They would have handed him the election, no problem. | |
| The problem is they have to maintain a semblance of legitimacy for other projects. | |
| The right and the Republicans know that Trump lost this and that they're not going to probably win the thing. | |
| Otherwise, they would be full bore in on it, which, by the way, should terrify everybody. | |
| But that's my fear is that because they've got, you know, this Texas lawsuit, they've got over 100 congressmen who are signing in the amicus brief. | |
| They've got a whole bunch of other states that want to join as plaintiffs in this case. | |
| That's what scares me. | |
| Like that one's going to be the one to sneak in there. | |
| And now you're like, well, of course they're never going to rule in favor of Texas. | |
| It's impossible to get to the Constitution. | |
| But once you get them in the door, that gets me a little bit nervous. | |
| And by the way, fine, it doesn't work this time. | |
| Well, the next time, there's a little bit more precedent. | |
| There's a little bit more precedent. | |
| Next thing you know, we went from 2000 to now to the next one. | |
| And that's what's so scary about all of this because the norms are so shattered, the faith in our system is so shattered, on both sides, right? | |
| We were, you know, we were yelling to high heaven about Stacey Abrams and how it was manipulated that way on a different level. | |
| It was legitimately stolen! | |
| Okay, fine. | |
| That was a legitimately stolen election. | |
| Right. | |
| And with different methods, which are more provable and easily, you know, whatever. | |
| But again, the faith in the electoral process is destroyed to some degree, even though because Biden won by so much, I still feel like, hey, it held up. | |
| We're OK. | |
| But there's way too many people in this country who do not believe in that. | |
| And if you get that far where you're ready to have violence or ready to get into a lot of huge heated arguments about it, it's too late. | |
| You're never going to change them. | |
| And we're at an impasse. | |
| And I don't know how we ever Change that. | |
| If you and our audience would indulge me, I'm going to share a little, some uplifting content from a Freedom Award winning member of our media. | |
| Yes, that's right. | |
| I'm talking about one Rush Limbaugh of Cape Girardeau, Missouri. | |
| On today's program he had by the way, he had a caller call in and just that caller got wild I love it when they call him and they get I have to tell you Nick that one of my favorite things on Russia's show right Rush Limbaugh by the way has been active now for decades destroying and Um, you know, I was gonna go small, but I'll go big. | |
| Destroying civilization. | |
| I mean, just wreaking havoc on shared society. | |
| And, you know, he's done it in order to sell iced teas, cigars, and books that no one reads, you know. | |
| He's a total villain and a menace. | |
| And you'll get these callers and they'll be like, I just, I think that you were, you were a hero and I just, I'm so proud of you for fighting for America. | |
| And you know, Rush is sitting there with like his microphone and he's just like, Oh my God, this person's a moron, you know? | |
| So one of these people calls in today and they're all choked up because they're talking to Rush Limbaugh, Nick. | |
| I mean, just Rush Limbaugh. | |
| And they're like, you know, what can we do? | |
| How do we fight this thing? | |
| Rush Limbaugh knows Donald Trump lost this election. | |
| He's not a moron. | |
| He gets it. | |
| He's in on this thing. | |
| He's in on the grift. | |
| So after he gets off the call with this guy, he starts addressing the guy's questions. | |
| And he says, he says, I thought you were asking me something else when you said, can we win? | |
| I thought you meant, can we win the culture? | |
| Can we dominate the culture? | |
| I actually think, and I've referenced this, I've alluded to this a couple of times because I've seen others allude to this. | |
| I actually think we're trending toward secession. | |
| I see more and more people asking, what in the world do we have in common with the people who live in, say, New York? | |
| What is there that makes us believe that there is enough of us to even have a chance at winning New York, especially if you're talking about votes? | |
| Now, real fast, before we talk about the ramifications of that, I just want to point out what a massive piece of bullshit this is. | |
| How many times a year when there's not a pandemic do you think Rush Limbaugh goes to New York City? | |
| How often do you think he hangs out in New York City? | |
| How much of his life do you think has been spent in New York City in upscale, you know, cigar clubs and fine restaurants and meetings? | |
| Like the idea that he's just a common man, Nick. | |
| Oh, I see, yes. | |
| Yeah, him and Hamdi. | |
| Yeah, they're just a couple of Midwestern dudes who, you know, they're unfrozen caveman lawyers. | |
| They're very, you know, scared of removing airplanes. | |
| And it's like he's been playing this us versus them thing for the longest time. | |
| And meanwhile, he's talking about breaking up the country. | |
| He's literally talking about dissolving the Union. | |
| That's all. | |
| Is he wrong? | |
| I don't know. | |
| I don't know if he's wrong. | |
| At this point, I'm happy I live in my own country of California. | |
| Let's combine the Dakotas. | |
| Give us two more of the Senators and call it a day. | |
| Okay, time out. | |
| First things first, before we have this conversation, because I think this is an important conversation that we should have, let's just point- let's not give the people out there who dislike us our enemies, Nick. | |
| Let's not give them ammunition, which is Nick Haussmann in California saying, DISSOLVE THE UNION! | |
| I'm living in California, don't worry about it. | |
| So let's not give that away. | |
| But I want to talk about why that's even something that's being talked about, why that's something bandied about, why that's something that somebody could even bring up in public, which is what we've been talking about, which is a loss of faith, not just in the election, but in one another. | |
| Let's talk about that. | |
| But, hey, build a wall. | |
| Let's get all the people who agree with us in those, you know... By the way, here's the interesting question is, like, what is the geographical makeup of, like, what would a two-party system or a two-country system look like here? | |
| And where would you draw that line? | |
| You know what it looks like! | |
| It's this, what, Mason-Dixon line? | |
| No, I mean, that's the predecessor. | |
| Of what we're talking about. | |
| We're talking about two coasts and the middle of the country. | |
| That's what we're talking about. | |
| That's legitimately what we're talking about. | |
| Which, by the way, the fact that that is what it is, I think gives us our solution to the problem. | |
| Like a big bridge. | |
| A big bridge going from the middle of the country. | |
| Just like a big, giant, eco-friendly bridge. | |
| It's like the ones that you see sometimes where it's like they let the wolves walk over the highway. | |
| Yeah, exactly. | |
| Or underground even. | |
| Maybe make it like a bullet train. | |
| Right, but we need to talk about the fact that this is symptomatic of a large problem. | |
| Also, by the way, I live in Georgia. | |
| The blue state of Georgia. | |
| And if you think there's a secession movement, if you think that just because my state went blue this year that I'm not going to be included in it. | |
| Also, I can tell you there are a lot of good progressive people. | |
| There's a lot of good people in general in a state like Georgia. | |
| Well, we have a lot of revenue. | |
| We'll move everybody over here. | |
| Come, we'll accept you. | |
| We'll transplant you. | |
| Nick, have you been on Twitter lately? | |
| Sure. | |
| Okay, okay. | |
| So right now, the people that would be paying to move the vulnerable poor into this new country are the ones who can't get behind student debt relief. | |
| Yeah, well, you know, there's a piccadillo. | |
| Minor, minor little, you know, character flaws. | |
| Do you think they would let us leave? | |
| Oh, that's interesting, because of your revenue. | |
| Do you think that the borders would be, I don't know, violence-free? | |
| No. | |
| If this country broke in two, there would be a civil war in days. | |
| Days. | |
| Well, it'd also be mass chaos, people trying to get out or get in or whatever, right? | |
| So that would just be gridlock of proportions. | |
| This fantasy of secession. | |
| By the way, they're not fucking around with it, man. | |
| Like, when they talk about secession, they're talking about forming their own country, getting their own resources, and then fighting. | |
| Because the moment you break up the union, you have a reason to go to war with people, and you're not bound by things like, I don't know, laws and decorum, right? | |
| Wait, you don't think they just want to be left alone? | |
| No! | |
| Have you ever met these people? | |
| I'm sorry, these are the ones who are still in Iraq. | |
| I looked it up today. | |
| We're in 150 countries around the world. | |
| No, these people do not just want to be left alone. | |
| They're evangelical. | |
| They're like all about taking over the world and all the resources. | |
| They want to break up the country so they can take over the country. | |
| So, it's not like saying goodbye, sayonara, we're now divorced, we'll, you know, we'll share the kids on the weekend. | |
| That's not what this is. | |
| Like, they're talking about that and meanwhile liberals are like, yeah, I don't want to deal with those jack-offs anymore. | |
| Like, this is a really dangerous sort of an imagination that's starting to get bandied around simply because we've allowed these people to act in such bad faith it's hurt our political process. | |
| OK, I mean, I guess it's reasonable. | |
| To me, my envisioning was, because again, you know, anybody who is an adult at this point, who has gotten as far as believing that this election was stolen, like, how are we ever going to find any kind of common ground? | |
| And it's not even that, you almost could say, OK, you know, let them go back underground. | |
| Because, by the way, the violent people that are around and who are really upset now because of the Biden administration, they were around in 2008, right? | |
| And yet they didn't really cause mass havoc. | |
| I would, right? | |
| I think it's fair to say. | |
| Now, granted, we were in the middle of a, you know, the worst housing, you know, recession, whatever we want to call it. | |
| So that could have been a part of it as well. | |
| But I want to point out, where were that? | |
| What was happening then when, you know, a black man got elected to the White House? | |
| That was even more enraging. | |
| I would not be doing myself or the other Hoosier members of the Muckrake community any service if I didn't point out that in 2008 the Hoosier State of Indiana went blue for Barack Hussein Obama II. | |
| Okay. | |
| And one of the reasons why it went blue for Obama is because Obama worked his way through the Midwest talking about resurrecting the Midwest and bringing industry back to the Midwest. | |
| That was his entire message. | |
| I agree with you that there is no way to reach across the aisle in the way that people are talking about. | |
| I don't know if you saw this, but Biden is now saying that he's putting together a commission to reach across the aisle. | |
| Yeah, that's cute. | |
| It's ceremonial. | |
| It's completely ineffective. | |
| And if anybody involved in it spends more than five minutes of their time and energy on it, they have wasted a part of their lives. | |
| We have to stop talking to them. | |
| We have to stop hearing their propaganda. | |
| We have to stop hearing them because they are lost in another reality. | |
| We have to deal with the underlying circumstances that have radicalized them. | |
| That's it. | |
| I keep saying this, it's like the people back in Indiana, they don't believe in climate change, they'll believe in climate change if they're building solar panels. | |
| Right. | |
| I think that there's a backdoor that you can get into this thing. | |
| I don't think that we should simply say, and I have to, I have bad news. | |
| We're not going to tweet them out of racism. | |
| We're not going to tweet them out of fascistic authoritarian tendencies. | |
| We're not going to tweet them out of misogyny. | |
| But we can deradicalize them and get them on board and possibly start To make a difference going forward, and we can deal with education, we can deal, we can, you know, take care of all these propaganda things that are happening on the right, we can deal with some of the tribal things, but we're not going to simply just make them change, and also we're not going to say goodbye, good luck, fuck you, take care. | |
| Well, I've got it. | |
| It's a two-part solution. | |
| Are you ready? | |
| The first part is, you gotta do that thing... What is it called when, like, these people we elect, they all get together in the chamber and... Yeah, right, they legislate. | |
| Okay, they gotta do some legislation. | |
| That's the thing I do. | |
| And the second part is... I've heard rumors of the olden times. | |
| Yes, back like, you know, in the Dark Crystals. | |
| They would spread the sand around and hum. | |
| Now, so they have to do that. | |
| That's one thing. | |
| And another thing would be is all that legislation thing that they'd be doing has to actually work and actually have some positive effect on people's lives. | |
| And after maybe like two or three years of that, yeah, maybe, right? | |
| They get on board a little bit. | |
| I mean, certainly, you know, things like Medicare that's been around for long enough, people get on board, even though to describe it before it happens is socialism and socialist medicine and all that stuff. | |
| We can't have it. | |
| So, yes, maybe that's the solution, is they just gotta frickin' roll their sleeves up and actually do what they're supposed to do, and the movie version is the music fades up, and the camera, you know, lifts up on the crane, and, you know, we have a sunset in the background, and everyone's like, gosh, it is great that I got health insurance! | |
| Man, is that nice that the police were retrained not to shoot so many darn people! | |
| I don't know, like, maybe you're right, that would be great. | |
| It would, I mean, that's... | |
| That's not a bad four years. | |
| You know, and I have to, I have to tell you, and I'm going to be honest with you because we've made this promise. | |
| We're not going to sugarcoat things going forward. | |
| Biden is going to be sworn in on January 20th. | |
| We're not going to handle it with kids' gloves. | |
| We're still going to talk about what's wrong with politics, and we're still going to cover this Republican fascistic movement. | |
| We're going to call it like we see it. | |
| I don't like what's happening right now with a lot of these picks. | |
| I don't like this idea. | |
| And I'll tell you the things I just mentioned, the commission to reach across the aisle, which is just utter bullshit. | |
| Meanwhile, while getting a secretary of defense who, I'm sorry, but when you are on boards that work with the military industrial complex and contractors, every situation and every step forward is interlaced with buying more weapons. | |
| And by the way, if you buy weapons, Nick, You've got to use those damn weapons because you've got to make room for more weapons. | |
| And that's one of the reasons, one of the main reasons why we're in a state of austerity and why people are radicalized. | |
| It's honest to God the truth. | |
| You have a situation where the middle of the country is – they used to call it the brain drain is what happened. | |
| Like you go off to college and then you go off to the coast and you like seek work and then in the middle of the country you have a bunch of dying communities and people who are unhappy. | |
| You have opioid addiction. | |
| You have educational problems. | |
| You have health care problems. | |
| You have food deserts. | |
| You have health care deserts. | |
| I don't like those two decisions in conjunction with each other. | |
| We need to take money away from the military-industrial complex, and we need to not deal with the delusions of these people. | |
| And those things in tandem would make a big difference, and then the programs that would actually come in the back door and de-radicalize and change the country. | |
| But we need to get serious about this thing. | |
| I mean, we didn't talk about having to recall Dianne Feinstein. | |
| I mean, here's someone who is really struggling at this point and I don't know what's going to happen, but don't be surprised if by the middle of next year they pick somebody else to take her position because I don't think she's doing well at all. | |
| Well, you know, and here's the other thing. | |
| I don't know that everyone listening to the podcast even knows about this because I have to tell you, because I keep I keep track of the way social media talks about this stuff and I look at silos. | |
| Like I kind of, I have like different settings and different lists that I keep track of and different accounts that I look at things through. | |
| And I have to tell you that in democratic circles, that Feinstein article was not shared. | |
| That made the rounds in politicos, people who follow politics very, very closely and talk about what goes on behind the scenes. | |
| And also leftist circles because they're very unhappy, of course, with Dianne Feinstein. | |
| For those who are not aware, an article came out, Washington Post, I believe it was. | |
| New Yorker. | |
| Was it the New Yorker? | |
| Oh, yeah, it was Jane Mayer. | |
| That's right. | |
| An article came out that over the past couple of years, Dianne Feinstein has been having problems, cognitive issues as she's gotten older and older. | |
| And it's gotten to the point where there are all these missteps and it's actually sort of reached a point where Democrats are very worried about her capability of serving. | |
| Well, one of the problems we have, of course, Is we have a generation divide within the Democratic Party. | |
| We have a lot of older representatives who hold the reins of power and we have a lot of younger people, a lot of younger insurgents, so to speak, and we've talked about that. | |
| The next couple of years in the Democratic Party is going to be its own demolition derby as people try and grasp into power and that older generation, they're not getting younger and they're not They're not going to hold over the conversation. | |
| I do think that Biden is going to get pushed left to a certain degree. | |
| The question is, what does that amount to? | |
| Because I don't think we're going to get a Green New Deal. | |
| I hate to tell you, but it's become a politically toxic slogan. | |
| And by the way, I live in Georgia, which by the way, might be the future. | |
| I don't even know what they're going to call Trumplandia, right? | |
| Down here in Georgia, every commercial against Warnick and Ossoff, who are both trending upwards in the polls, by the way, I just want to put that out there. | |
| Every commercial mentions the Green New Deal. | |
| Every single one of them. | |
| And it's become such a toxic football that it will end up being something between nothing and the Green New Deal, which maybe will be a push forward. | |
| But if he gets pushed left a little bit, and if, by the way, grassroots, the voters, the people who are listening here, work, we could push this thing leftward. | |
| But it's pushing a boulder up a hill. | |
| I agree. | |
| I mean, we'll probably see something like we saw with Obama. | |
| Just, you know, some measures to help people get some more solar and we'll go back to doing a lot more rebates at the state level as well. | |
| I mean, there was a moment there in 2010 where it almost cost me nothing to put solar panels on my house. | |
| They would end up getting rebated back to me completely. | |
| So, and then those have all kind of gone away under Trump. | |
| So I would imagine we're going to do some of the sprinkling on, you know, on top. | |
| We'll do a little here, a little there. | |
| Try and get back in that lane that we were in at least, which is probably not the worst idea for at least a couple of years. | |
| Get everyone settled, get everyone comfortable. | |
| And then AOC will run and get more of these things passed. | |
| But it's probably be too late by that point. | |
| But have a great weekend anyway. | |
| I just love that you are just steering into all the California stereotypes right now. | |
| It's my favorite thing sometimes. | |
| It's fantastic. | |
| Go ahead and ship off Red America while I put my solar panels up on my roof. | |
| I was trying to think of like, I moved out here for Hollywood because I was writing screenplays and all that stuff, but it's like, would I have moved out here for the politics? | |
| It's interesting. | |
| Probably not necessarily from Chicago, but I wonder if people actually feel that way where they, you know, they're willing to move based on the political landscape of geographically. | |
| But that's the whole point is, and that goes back to the secession thing, we don't have choices anymore. | |
| Like, I'm a liberal arts professor, man. | |
| I've got tenure. | |
| Do you know how many tenure jobs there are in the country now in my field? | |
| Because I could name them for you, right? | |
| And it wouldn't even extend this podcast very, very much past the point of no return. | |
| Like, a lot of us, particularly in the generation that I comprise, We don't have any mobility. | |
| We take what we can get and we end up in a state that ends up suppressing us and oppressing us and making sure that we're not taken care of. | |
| It would be a lot better, and I would say it's the only way forward, is to actually go ahead and lift up everybody. | |
| We have to get past this idea. | |
| We talked about this before. | |
| Politics has turned into a thing where it's like, yeah, America's shitty. | |
| Who's it going to be shittier for? | |
| You know, and every election is like a decision over which part of the country is going to feel worse, and the other side still, you know, still sucks. | |
| But, you know, then it's like, who's going to feel worse the next four years? | |
| And that's what Trump was. | |
| Trump was not an actual politician. | |
| He didn't do anything besides dismantle government, you know, and line his own pockets. | |
| Um, you know, it was just a symbolic vote. | |
| It was like, we're going to put it to, you know, the left and people of color and, and anybody who cares about basic human decency. | |
| It's just like, you know, flipping them off as you walk out the door. | |
| And we gotta, we gotta move beyond that at some point. | |
| Right. | |
| It's the, uh, Mr. Potter version of, uh, of the government, uh, from It's a Wonderful Life, uh, versus the socialist, uh, tendencies of, um, George Bailey. | |
| That's right. | |
| And for everybody who hasn't checked it out yet, I thought it was a good episode. | |
| We really got into it, and I think we really got some really interesting takes on a movie that people might have just personally watched in the past and never really maybe absorbed or seen. | |
| But it's also a movie that people watch a lot, so they might enjoy the notion that they can look at it in a totally new way now that they'll see it again this Christmas season. | |
| So real fast, if you want to hear that episode, we're going to put up a teaser this weekend so you can hear a little bit of it. | |
| All you have to do is go over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast, become a patron. | |
| You'll unlock that and other benefits. | |
| But and also, by the way, for anyone interested, December 23rd, right before the Christmas Eve Eve at 730 p.m. | |
| Eastern, we're going to host a muckrake holiday party. | |
| So for anybody who wants to be a part of that, go to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast. | |
| Is it black tie? | |
| Listen, by the time that's over, I'm going to have the lampshade on the head, so we're going to be fine. | |
| But I will say my only regret, Nick, is that we talked about It's a Wonderful Life, talked about pouring yourself a little Christmas cheer, talking about communities and neighbors. | |
| I had a friend of mine drop off the best eggnog I've ever tasted in my entire life today, and I'm upset that we couldn't record It's a Wonderful Life while I was having a little bourbon in my eggnog. | |
| Is eggnog, like, is it egg-based? | |
| Because I guess I've never really had eggnog, but I just, I know I hate it. | |
| Eggnog is wonderful! | |
| I don't know, I just, I don't like, I can't drink eggs, so is it egg-based? | |
| Yeah, there are eggs in it. | |
| Because it could be like, you know, hamburger, there's no ham in a hamburger, right? | |
| So is there eggs in an eggnog? | |
| I guess there is. | |
| I don't know. | |
| I can't mess with that. | |
| I'm sorry. | |
| I could be wrong and I'm just speaking out of my ass here. | |
| I think hamburger is called hamburger because of Hamburg, Germany, right? | |
| Sure. | |
| Or they're the Count of Hamburger or whatever, right? | |
| Lord Hamburger. | |
| You know what? | |
| There's so much conjecture happening right now, but I will say this. | |
| It is a solid fact. | |
| Eggnog is a fantastic holiday drink. | |
| And if you are a lover of eggnog and want to come to the Muckrake Holiday Party, December 23rd, 7.30pm Eastern, go over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast. | |
| I hope like hell that over the weekend we're not going to have any more challenges for the election. | |
| But I'm not naive, Nick. | |
| I know that we will. | |
| I know that Rudy, apparently, Rudy Giuliani, like all the rich assholes around Trump, has apparently made a recovery from COVID because they're given top of the line experimental drugs. | |
| I assume he'll be out spreading COVID and causing more havoc. | |
| We'll talk more about this when we have our new episode on Tuesday. | |
| In the meantime, you can find Nick over at Can You Hear Me? | |
| SMH. | |
| You can find me at J.Y. | |
| Saxton. |