Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss revelations that Russia hacked our systems and the potential ramifications, navigate the faux-outrages that are already being used by the GOP to try and hamper the Biden Administration and political discourse, and get deep into the performative nature of modern politics. To unlock exclusive content and support the Muckrake Podcast become a patron at http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast
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Right now, the president is checked out completely.
He's either apathetic or frankly disengaged to the level where he doesn't understand what's happening around him.
But we are on our own.
This is a country that for the next 30 some days, it needs to look to its own devices and not look to this president for leadership.
Hey everybody, welcome to The Microwave Podcast.
I'm J.O.D.
Sexton here with Nick Halseman.
We're going to get to the business of the moment, including a massive hack by Russia.
Just a scandal of massive proportions.
I'm calling this Fuckersgate, just for the record.
I mean, it might grind Washington to an absolute halt.
We have to talk about the fact that the Trump administration just thought everybody should get COVID and let that be that.
But before we do a couple of things, a house cleaning, a reminder that next week, the week of Christmas, we will be holding a muckrake holiday party on December 23rd.
You didn't do it.
23rd.
What happened?
I don't know.
Fucked up.
Oh, okay.
We'll go back.
We will be holding a muckrake holiday party on December 23rd at 7 30 p.m.
Eastern to get in on the good fun.
All you have to do is go over to patreon.com slash muckrake podcast.
You'll be able to do that and unlock a bunch of exclusive content.
Including our recent run-through of It's a Wonderful Life, where we talk about the housing crisis, socialism, and the veneer and illusion of America.
But meanwhile, Nick, we have to start off today's show talking about not only the fact that Russia hacked, let me check my notes, everything.
Okay.
Everything.
Everything.
It wasn't even everything in my mind.
It was the length of time that they were in there.
From like March to June.
That's a long time to be in someone's networks.
So it looks like Russia hacked everything for forever.
And in an article that came out today from Thomas Bossert, who was Donald Trump's Homeland Security Advisor, and before that, Deputy Homeland Security Advisor to George W. Bush, saying that it's almost impossible to overstate what was done, what was accessed, and how much danger we're actually in.
Another moment in which Donald Trump and the people around him were caught with their pants down, not worried about our security whatsoever, plus also kowtowing to Russia, surprise, surprise, What do you make about this?
It's not great.
We have to throw it out there that this is done on purpose.
This is the last chance.
Because here's the thing, as Trump is getting out of there, all these actors are going to want to get in on the deal before maybe somebody more competent comes in and fixes all this stuff.
Gets people in the State Department like they're supposed to be.
Gets people in the CDC.
Now, now, Nick, I know that you are prone often to conspiracy theories.
Are you telling me that as Donald Trump's lone failed term as American president comes to an end, that it is not a coincidence that Israel is over here trying to jockey to either start a war with Iran or to immerse America into heightened tensions while Russia Just goes hog wild in all of our security systems?
Is that what you're telling me?
Because if that is what you're trying to tell me, Nick, I have to stop this podcast and say I don't want to be a part of it.
You might have to just sit down, because you might fall off your chair anyway if you don't.
Because yes, okay, let's pretend it's not necessarily an active measure by the Trump administration, but there's no question that these other guys are going to try and do whatever they can in the next month before he gets out of there.
as like the looting before the end of the riot happens.
And this is the situation that's been created by Trump.
And I certainly think that, you know, he might not be like, hey, guys, come on, here's your last chance.
But he ain't going to be looking around and say, don't stop this.
He's not going to do that.
He's given up being president.
He's not going to speak.
He's not going to do any policy.
He's not going to do anything for the rest of his term.
And this is why.
We're going to see a lot of this stuff in the next 30 days.
It's pretty scary shit.
Nick, we're about a year out from the release of Martin Scorsese's last picture, Did you get a chance to watch The Irishman last year?
I faded in and out while I could keep awake for three hours of it.
It was one of those, I actually managed to get through it.
I had to get up, take a walk around, replenish my fluids, all that stuff.
Really good movie, don't get me wrong.
Very, very long.
I will say, though, that I thought that that movie gave us a really interesting insight into mafia tactics.
And one of the ways that the mafia worked, particularly in the United States of America, is that it, for the longest time, it would sort of infiltrate, like, shipping routes and sort of the logistical chain in America.
And so what would happen is somebody would be on the take from the mafia, and they'd look the other way as, you know, some stuff disappeared and some trucks got taken here and there.
And, you know, they went about, they did their job, usually, but then other times they'd look the other way.
This is to say first and foremost that Donald Trump is not necessarily the boss of an organized crime family.
Although the Trump crime family is significant.
He's sort of like an underboss, right?
There's a lot of people over him who, I don't know, have loaned him money or helped him get to a place of power or, you know, told him what to do in every single way and sort of made it where the United States was subservient to the interest of really, really crooked, awful people. told him what to do in every single way and What we've seen here and we've heard about it.
We talked about this in an episode a couple of months ago where, you know, these insiders were talking about the fact that they couldn't even brief Donald Trump about Russia.
They couldn't even bring up anything that Russia had done at any given point.
And by the way, we've said this before, you don't have to put on a tinfoil hat to believe that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.
We don't have to talk about Trump meeting with Putin and doing this or doing that.
They interfered.
They interfered in our election, and they hacked a lot of stuff, and they... No collusion.
No collusion.
Any of that stuff.
You don't even have to put on your gin foil how to believe that.
That's honestly what happened.
But the United States of America could not deal with that, with Donald Trump as president, because he wouldn't hear of it.
He wouldn't protect America.
He wouldn't protect our security, our sovereignty, our infrastructure, any of that stuff.
By the way, just as a quick side note, did the same thing for white supremacists the entire time he was president of the United States.
But that's, you know, neither here nor there.
It's not like white supremacists are in touch with people in Russia and they're all sharing plans and logistics.
Not like that's happening, Nick.
But what we see here is exactly right.
It's like somebody who gets paid to guard a truck turning the other way as someone comes in and plunders the truck.
Except for they didn't actually plunder the truck.
They took the truck and they're driving it like into Fort Knox is what they're... Well, look at it from the Russian's perspective.
I could try and do my Russian accent, but I don't know if I can do it.
But, you know, if you're the Russians, you know, obviously the reason why you don't do these kind of things is for fear of what might happen if you get caught.
And we saw what Obama was willing to do, which was very hurtful in a monetary way, and that's a terrible way of saying it, economically painful, by putting sanctions from them going into Crimea.
And so clearly that was their agenda, to get rid of those sanctions, which you could argue they probably did.
Some of these guys were able to start doing business again in opposition of the Things that Obama put in.
So the point being that if I'm Russia, I'm not worried about the America, the United States doing anything to stop me from doing that.
That is really the biggest thing that we have here.
Whereas in the past, we've always seemed to had, you know, presidents who were willing to at least, you know, look in the Russians' premieres or the president's face and say, hey, you fucker, don't do that anymore.
Well, I want to start off by saying this.
That's what put sanctions on you, blah, blah, blah.
And that's – they knew that was not going to happen.
And you can fill that in for a lot of different countries across the last four years that have taken advantage of this in Turkey and things like that.
So that is really – the culture they've created is that tacit approval of what they're doing without having to say it.
Well, I want to start off by saying this.
There is no telling how much we have been compromised over the past four years by an administration – And, you know, it's funny that Bossert served under George W. Bush, who at the very, very least tried to be competent.
He was not competent.
But, you know, like, you know, a thing like 9-11 just happened to slip under his nose.
You know, it just, you know, whatever.
This is a situation where for four years we have had an incompetent president who has surrounded himself with incompetent, corrupt people.
So obviously things have slipped through the cracks.
Let's talk about why this is happening at this particular moment.
You're exactly right.
Trump isn't going to do anything to, you know, stick a finger in Russia's eye.
Well, we also have a situation too, where as Joe Biden comes into his presidency, is he going to want to start his presidency by picking a fight with Russia?
Is Is that how he wants to define the beginning of his presidency?
No!
It's the exact same thing that's going on with, again, Israel and Iran.
America has been made weak and vulnerable.
And if you don't think that every single actor around the world, from China down to Iran, You think that they haven't taken full advantage of that fact in order to push their interest and to put America in a worse position?
You're dead wrong!
And we're not going to know about most of it for a long time.
Now, I also want to point out, and this is something we haven't talked about, which are the ramifications here.
There is economic espionage involved here.
You know, including finding, you know, trade secrets, messing around with our economy or our economic systems.
By the way, for the people who aren't aware of this, just a real quick wake-up call.
Wall Street is almost completely automated at this point.
Like, it's just a bunch of firms with a bunch of computers that move numbers around.
That's what it is.
It's artificial intelligence.
Like, God knows if someone figures out a way to get in there and mess around with stuff, like, I mean, you could see a changing of reality like that.
The second part of it, though, is also security-based, and it's destabilization-based.
They're messing around with things like the power grid here.
They're messing around with shutting off the lights on the eastern seaboard or across the United States of America.
And by the way, if you think that that wouldn't somehow or another lead to simmering tensions, considering the state that we're in right now and the divided nature and polarized nature that we have, you have another thing coming.
I mean, like we're talking about large, large scale threats here.
Well, we've seen that happen.
New York went black without electricity years ago now.
And I don't think it's a stretch to surmise that perhaps it was a hack by Russia, and they were good enough to hide their tracks.
Because we don't get a straight answer from the bureaucracy anyway.
We don't know.
I mean, listen, they clearly know a lot more than we do about a lot of different things.
I mean, heck, the UFOs and Mars and the whole thing is going on.
And whether we ought to believe it or not sounds reasonable to me.
Timeout!
You cannot just say the UFOs and Mars and everything going on.
The Space Federation.
The Galactic Federation.
Galactic Federation.
Yeah, listen.
The original chief saying that we have been denied access to the Galactic Federation.
But no, you're right.
The government, the government does not level with us and particularly this government does not level with us.
We have no idea what happened here.
And the fact that Bossert got in the New York Times to talk about this, he didn't do this lightly.
You know, he didn't, he basically came in and said, I kind of failed on my watch and we all failed on my watch.
What are we going to do about it?
Yeah.
And you know, and that's why he had to do it now because Biden's coming in.
And here's the thing we have to remember.
I've said it before, is that as the transition becomes more solidified and they get to get into more documents and more memoranda, they're going to find out just how incompetent and how nefarious this Trump administration was and how on purpose they They were so incompetent, purposefully incompetent.
So we see what they did with the State Department and just destroyed it and not fill spots and keep it like a shell hull of itself.
And then we find out things like in the CDC.
I can guarantee you what we found out about how herd immunity was a big thing they were trying to push, which it's no surprise that it got to Trump and who he started to push it because they were trying to manipulate data.
They were trying to hide data in the CDC and they were trying to force these scientists to accept these ridiculous, you know, genocidal concepts of herd immunity.
I guarantee you that's going to be the tip of the iceberg.
We're going to hear some absolutely frightening things in the next month or two when they get their hands on more information.
You know, we're so deep into this pandemic situation.
Officially over 300,000 dead.
Uh, estimates that could be upwards of, you know, 450,000, 460,000, according to some people.
It's, it's really hard at this point.
I actually think this is, I think this is actually a detriment to us.
I think it's so hard to wrap your head around that that much death was unnecessary and was the result of malevolent and or incompetent behavior.
Like the scope.
of a government so mishandling something like a pandemic that it would lead to that many deaths.
It's it's it almost the brain almost stops.
Do you know what I'm talking about?
It's almost just and then you look at, you know, past things that even can be compared to that.
Everything from Holocaust to ethnic cleansings to, you know, food shortages that killed millions, you know, in Russia or China.
And it's like it's actually like It's up in that level.
You know what I mean?
Like it's a level of malevolence and incompetence combined.
And you start seeing these documents and talks about herd mentality.
I just want to point out how inhuman that is.
To actually just look at a populace and be like, yeah, I mean, you know, we're gonna lose a few hundred thousand.
I mean, you know, you can't can't make an omelet without cracking a few eggs.
That's actually the mindset of these fuckers.
It really is.
It was a perfect storm because the mindset of the political leaders was that.
And then the people in the country, a lot of them had the mindset that they have the right to risk their lives however they see fit.
That's sort of the crux of the matter.
I know we've been talking about this a lot in the last six, eight months since it came out.
since the pandemic hit.
But I kind of keep trying to distill what it is on the other side, like they don't want to wear the masks and they don't want to social distance.
They want to continue having family dinners that kill everybody in their family.
And I think it ends up being this notion of they simply feel like they have the right, just like they have the right to drive a car that might get into an accident and kill people.
They have the same right that they, you know, to not wear a mask and not social distance.
It's an interesting concept that doesn't pass muster because we have seatbelt laws.
We have speed limits.
We have rules of the road.
We have to stay on the right side.
You have to stop at stop signs.
I mean, that's the weirdest thing is they can't seem to translate all the safety rails we put in on these risky events that you think that it's part of a free society.
And a mask.
A mask is the speed limit.
You know, a mask is a seatbelt.
It's insane.
And that's what we're at.
And it's really taken hold.
I didn't know how powerful this ideology would be.
You know, we talked about how it's rooted in sort of, you know, being a... What are we calling these guys?
Oh my goodness.
My mind is so bad these days.
You know, people who don't want to... Libertarians.
You know, this libertarian mindset in a way where the government can't tell you to do anything.
But I think I'm shocked at just how powerful that's taken over people's minds.
I, you know, what is time?
I mean, I, what, how many, how many months we've been doing this?
Nine months that we've been in this pandemic situation.
Um, I, I've spent a lot of this trying to not just wrap my head around the mindset, but, but actually like moving beyond the mindset, because it's really hard to understand the individual by individual.
Level of it.
You know what I mean?
Like everybody has like one reason.
Like some people it's like insecure masculinity.
Other people, you know, they don't believe experts or whatever.
I really truly think that this has exposed something fundamentally really hard to comprehend in terms of humanity.
I think it's, I think we are so lost In illusions and ourselves and the identities that we're pushing forth.
I mean, that's like this thing, like this guy talking about like herd mentality.
Like, can you imagine again, like you or I like talking about managing a pandemic and being like, I mean, yeah, you know, a couple hundred thousand are going to die.
Yeah.
They're going to have to Skype into the families and, you know, die as they watch.
Like, no, that that's absurd.
But then you get these people in there and you get inside of like an administration that is just, Cruel to the point of absurdity.
You know what I mean?
Like they are intentionally cruel.
Like they have cultivated a cruel culture.
And on top of that, just a going back to this whole thing about allowing some like a Russian hacking attack or not suppressing white supremacists, right?
They do it for power and profit, but they also do it because that's who they are.
That's who they express to the world.
That's how they behave.
And I actually think this pandemic I think this pandemic is going to go down as the moment that, like, all of these major problems of American culture, including being lost in illusions, you know, like one lie and illusion after another.
I think this is going to be the thing that makes it very clear.
And the more that I research history, the more that I find that these pandemics that come in and, you know, wipe out a portion of the culture, they really change the way people consider culture and who they are and what lives are.
And I think that's what we're watching here.
Well, a concept I haven't quite fully formed in my head yet, but I want to throw it out there for you, is after the Spanish flu ran through and ripped through the country and the world in 1918 or 100 years ago, it kind of led to the Roaring Twenties, if you think about it, right?
The celebration of, well, we're finally out of that, and then You know, it was pretty wild and crazy.
And then, of course, we know how the 20s ended.
But I wonder if we're going to sort of experience a similar kind of thing.
You know, like in my family, my daughter, she's 16.
Her entire 16th year on the earth has been almost no social interaction with other kids.
So what's going to happen once this thing is done in a few months?
You know, now thankfully she's not, you know, 21, 22, 23, but I can't imagine what all those people are doing, because I see them on Twitter talking about stuff, and it's going to be an explosion of debauchery.
I don't know if that's the right word, and I don't know what would come out of that, if anything, but, and hey, it could be the most fun time of anybody's going to have in the next hundred years.
I don't know.
Well, I think there's a couple things happening there, so I'll start with this.
You know as well as I do, because we pay attention to movies and that whole thing.
You know that, like, I think it was Warner Brothers came out and said, we're not going to release any movie or we're going to release all of our movies on streaming next year.
And, you know, maybe we'll release them in theaters.
And then immediately everyone in the world was like, this is the end of movie theaters.
It's like, no, it's not the end of movie theaters.
I don't believe that at all because I have to tell you, me, like if I get a vaccine or, you know, whenever culture gets back to quote unquote normal, I'm going to the movies.
I'm not just going to the movies.
I'm going to a lot of movies.
I'm going out to eat a lot.
I'm going to go hang out with friends and people I love and people I care about.
I do think that it's going to lead to something like that, but I think there's another part to it as well.
It's important to note that the 1920s led up, of course, to the Great Depression, right?
The fall of the banks.
One of the reasons why there was such a debauchery was because people had lost faith in the possibility of things getting any better.
There was so much money among the rich and the powerful that it was like, well, what are we going to do?
Are you going to fix society?
No, we're going to party and pretend like there's nothing to do.
And then after the flu, all of a sudden you're like, I might die tomorrow.
I might as well live like I'm going to die tomorrow.
You know, we might have, we might have the YOLO of the 21st century.
And I think what we might be looking at is the possibility of people moving into a euphoric phase where all of a sudden it's more about experiencing life.
And I have to tell you, and this is something for people to be aware of, and this is actually kind of worrisome and people need to look out for it.
With Joe Biden becoming president, people are going to be like, well, I don't have to pay attention to politics anymore.
Thank God.
You know what I mean?
It's just like, well, no, thank God there's someone competent in office.
It's not, you know, a former reality TV star fascist.
Like, you know, I can just not worry about this thing anymore.
Well, that's not how politics work.
That's actually how you get to Donald Trump is you take your eye off the ball and then things fall apart.
We have a lot of problems in this country, and I think we are going to have a euphoric moment.
I think that that is accurate, but we're also, I hate to tell you this, man, and I want, and this is why I wanted to talk about this.
Sure.
Yeah, so the quote was, this is her speaking, in the primary people would mock him like, you think you can work with Republicans?
O'Malley Dillon told Glamour.
I'm not saying they're not a bunch of fuckers.
Mitch McConnell is terrible.
But this sense that you couldn't wish for that, you couldn't wish for this bipartisan ideal, he rejected that.
So, and I thought that was hilarious because nobody calls anybody fuckers.
It's like if you just learn the word fucker like you're in third grade.
It feels so good though.
I will say that.
And by the way, just for the record, it's Jen O'Malley Dillon.
That's correct.
I mispronounced her name.
But I will, so this is, I wanted to talk about this today.
Because this is an absolute Nothing story.
Nothing.
This is nothing.
And I have to tell you that it dominated almost all conversation today.
Everyone wanted to talk about, is it a bad thing to call Republicans fuckers?
Isn't that going to hurt unity?
And Republicans, Nick, I have to tell you, they're so culturally conservative and so religiously conservative.
They could never, oh, can you imagine if they would hear the word fuckers?
Can you imagine?
If someone in the halls of power would curse.
Can you imagine if there was a guy who referred to shithole countries?
Can you imagine if that happened?
On top of that, I want to point out, they're already starting this thing where it's like, you know, we were looking through the facts and figures.
There's a big deficit right now.
I don't know where, let's not worry about where this deficit came from.
I'm really concerned about this deficit.
I want people to understand this.
The patterns that we have watched for decades are repeating themselves.
Because what happens when Republicans fall out of power, or at least somewhat out of power?
They start having culture wars, right?
Oh, this is a culture of profanity and sex!
And all these satanic ideas.
And then meanwhile, Donald Trump's over here, you know, grabbing women by whatever and calling places shithole countries.
And we need to tighten the purse strings and government needs to get smaller.
Congress has a place and a role to play in government.
And it's just like total bullshit.
Meanwhile, I'm sorry, but Twitter and social media falls for it every time, man.
Every time.
Every time.
It's the Dr. Jillgate.
You know, we gotta have a conversation about this.
We gotta fight the wars.
They're figuring out the things that keep us from talking about politics and power and actually constructing things that work.
And what you're talking about, that euphoric moment post-pandemic, That might be the moment where everyone's like, I'm not going to be worried about anything important anymore.
You know what I mean?
I'm not going to have my eye on the ball.
I'm going to party.
I was shut up for 9, 10, 11 months, a year.
You know, hundreds of thousands died.
And all of a sudden it's like, I just need escapism.
And all of those things work together in the exact same way that we've seen over and over and over again that led to Donald Trump.
And I'm really concerned about that.
Jared, I salute you with a latte in my hand and a tan suit on my body.
Yes, I mean, I didn't even want to talk about this because it is so stupid, I think.
But the point, the bigger point he made inside of all that was, and I had come up with this idea earlier today, was that like the gridlock that we see by Republicans is not because they want to just be assholes and obstruct the Democrats.
They're running for a future election.
And so that is what they're doing.
It's not like out of spite, although those are the fruits of that are out of spite and then people get suffered.
You're 100% right.
May I ask you really quickly, do you think Democrats are doing that?
Because they are not.
They are not.
Right.
They're not fighting for the next election.
They're not fighting for long-term projects.
What Democrats fight over, and remember this, this will make it a lot easier to understand the next four years.
Probably the next two years, but then the next four years.
Democrats are not fighting for long-term power.
They're fighting for power within the party.
Who is in the control of the party?
Who determines what happens with the party?
I don't know if you've been paying attention to this.
Every single day it's Is AOC on the outs?
How are progressives feeling about this?
Oh, the center-left has done this, the center has done that.
Democrats aren't interested in exactly what you're talking about, which is building long-term projects, like, I don't know, taking over the judiciary, or, you know, the Supreme Court, or, I don't know, shrinking the government to the point where they can drown it in a bathtub.
I mean, like, you're exactly right.
They are fighting for the next election.
It's not about doing anything for anybody.
Right.
And then they have these moments of clarity.
Oh, shit.
What happened to the deficit, man?
Wow.
It's like, you know, every time.
And we fall for that, too.
But listen, how many bills have been sent to the Senate from the Democratic Congress?
You know, hundreds, right, that just sit there because McConnell won't do anything because he doesn't want... OK, again, You could argue that it's simply party politics where we can't look like we're, you know, working with them or whatever, but no, he can't show any, they can't afford to have anything actually work, which is another reason why this is so crucial.
What's going to happen with Biden's administration, because he's got the, the clock is ticking from the second he gets inaugurated.
And if he can't show enough things that are good for the people that are tangible, then he could easily lose to Trump in 2024.
Obviously, that is why Mitch McConnell and these people need to stay in power because they need to stop that.
And I think in the past it was – in my mind I felt like it was just because they're racist and they don't like Obama.
And that probably could have been a lot of it too.
That didn't hurt.
That didn't hurt.
Yeah, right.
It's a little – it's a perk.
But this one in particular, knowing that Trump is going to run a shadow presidency for four years and basically be able to run without having any kind of accountability because he's not actually in power, this is why it's really important that he needs to be able to show stuff.
And I guarantee you this malarkey about working across the aisle is bullshit.
They're not going to work with him.
He can say it all he likes, and it can sound good in a soundbite, and then four years from now, he'll lose.
Because he's like, oh, I try.
I try to be nice to them, and that's where we're at.
That's why we have to win the Senate.
Well, and this is important to point out.
Like, to give everyone, this is like one of the most sort of underreported stories, I actually think, of the 1990s in modern America.
So, real fast, going back to Ronald Reagan, and by the way, just to give everybody an update, our first audio documentary episode of our new short term, limited term, limited time, limited series?
What?
Limited series?
Yeah, that works.
I mean, what do they call them on TV?
Yeah, it's a limited series.
So, our short limited series, the first episode, we're planning on having it out the week after Christmas.
Really, really excited about this, and it'll put a lot of things into perspective.
But, you know, Ronald Reagan is sort of a specter looming over the entire process.
So, Ronald Reagan gets into office, and Nick, I know that Fox News probably right now is just standing at attention talking about The fiscally conservative Ronald Reagan.
Remind me, Nick, under Ronald Wilson Reagan, did our deficit, did it disappear?
Nope.
Wait, why?
Why wouldn't it disappear?
He was all about limited government and fiscal conservatism.
Oh, because he wanted the thing called Star Wars.
He wanted toys to play with that blow up.
And so instead of actually having a smaller government and, you know, reining in the budgets, which is all he talked about, what he actually did is he ballooned and exploded the budget of the United States of America and ran up incredible record deficits because he wanted the project of American hegemony over the rest of the world.
Well, George H.W.
Bush comes in and he's like, that sounds pretty good to me.
Absolutely.
Let's try and take over the world through our military and, you know, let's throw a war in there while we're at it.
What do you say?
So when Bill Clinton gets elected and he comes into office, he comes in and the first person who really wants to have a conversation with him is Alan Greenspan.
And Alan Greenspan meets with Bill Clinton.
And he says, congratulations, Governor.
I think you're going to be a wonderful president of the United States.
I'm really, really excited.
I caught some of your speeches.
Very inspiring.
It sounded a lot like Reagan, but that's neither here nor there.
You know, you talked a lot about helping people and social programs that would make a difference.
I got bad news for you.
You have to make a choice.
Are you going to have all of those programs that actually help people and be a one-term president?
Or are you going to balance the budget and get two terms?
And Bill Clinton, who's a pragmatist, went with the latter.
That was the decision he made.
It's important really fast, before we move on, to point out why Alan Greenspan had that conversation with Bill Clinton.
And that is because if you have a Democratic president, if you have a quote-unquote left president, big business and money is more worried about them changing the system.
So they will automatically, you know, they're not going to go to Ronald Reagan and be like, rein in deficit spending.
They're not going to go to H.W.
Bush.
I mean, these are company men.
You know what I mean?
Like, they're not going to change the economic structure.
They're going to further it.
When you get a quote-unquote left-leaning president, big money has to come in and be like, you know, deficits aren't great.
Even though deficits don't matter.
Deficits don't matter at all.
It's all made up.
It's not real.
Governments are allowed to spend beyond.
That's why they're a government.
So what's going to happen is that sort of a conversation.
We need to recognize that from the very beginning, Biden is going to be facing pressure, not only from the Republican Party, but big business.
They're making money hand over foot.
They are having crazy record profits because of the pandemic, because of human suffering.
And if that dips at all, that's bad in his favor, right?
That actually hurts him if there's any sort of a dip in what serves Wall Street or economic interest.
It's a giant, giant trap.
Do you remember all that talk about going into a severe recession about maybe a year ago, nine months ago, before the pandemic?
Do you remember all that, the drumming up of the fear of that?
I think a lot of times presidents get way more credit than they deserve for the economy, and they get way more blame than they deserve for the economy as well.
Well, here's the thing, you know, as this cyclical thing continues to happen, the other huge fear that Biden has to be just so panicked over is that the natural ebb and flow of the market could end up crashing on his watch.
And I mean, it kind of feels like it would.
It's got record highs right now.
We've got a lot of issues we've got to deal with.
And let's just say that happens.
And then we're looking at a Jimmy Carter situation again, too, because as we are going to note in our documentary, a lot of those things were out of his control and he had no way of ameliorating as far as the economy was going with the gas shortages and inflation.
And so that sunk him a lot.
I don't know if it was the absolute last thing that broke the camel's back, but it certainly really put him in a situation where an incumbent, you know, who rarely loses, lost.
So that's the other kind of thing here that's really kind of concerning to me, I suppose, as Biden begins his terms, is that he might end up having some sort of recession that's not his fault.
Well we have, I mean, you're absolutely right on all fronts there.
I've been trying to warn people of this.
Our economy, our markets, all of it, they just crash.
Happens all the time.
It's like the turning of the seasons.
You can almost, you know, boil an egg with it.
And what happens is, These people can't help themselves, Nick.
They can't stop.
It's like somebody who's had like that part of the brain taken out that stops like, you know, I should stop eating, I'm full.
And they just eat and eat and eat and eat until there's no food left and, you know, they'll kill themselves eating and acquiring wealth and power.
It is a naturally unstable environment.
And right now, what we're watching, we talk about this all the time, our economy is divorced from the welfare of the American people.
It actually works completely in contrast.
The worse it is for the American people, the better the economy.
I mean, because that's all about, you know, extraction of labor and capital and resources.
We have a system that is going to drive itself into the ground.
That happens all the time because they took the brakes off.
They took the brakes off in the 1980s and got rid of any of the old FDR type regulatory stuff that made sure that we weren't going to have this happen again.
Took it off in the 1980s and it's always occasionally gotten really close to crashing or it's crashed like in 2008.
We're nearing up on something very, very large.
And I've heard people talk.
I've heard people on the right.
I've heard think tankers.
I've had conversations with people.
There are people within the Republican Party who believe it's actually advantageous to have Joe Biden as president right now because there's, it's, it's, it's the, um, oh, what is it?
It's musical chairs, right?
There, you know, there's about to have someone fall on their ass.
It'd be a whole lot better if it's a Democrat holding the bag when it happens.
That's, that's actually a major part of thought on the right right now.
You know, I'm kind of surprised that Republicans wouldn't want to balance the budget more, because when Bill Clinton did, and we had a surplus, and W ran, he basically said, I will pay you $200 to vote for me.
Right?
He's like, this is your money.
And so I'm a little bit surprised.
What happened to that surplus, by the way?
What happened to that surplus that was built up under Clinton with George W. Bush, fiscal conservative?
He handed out some of it to people to vote for him.
That's all he did.
And then he went over and started Unnecessary Wars and put us in like a hundred countries and spent I don't know how many trillions.
Right.
Yeah.
So that too.
So it's like it's weird to me like they wouldn't look at that and think oh you know that's not a bad idea we could try that again.
Because by the way it didn't matter who got the surplus, right?
I mean it happened to be at the end of a two-term so he was gonna be up anyway.
But they don't want government to have money.
That's the problem.
They don't want the government to have money because it gives them the illusion of austerity.
Well, I'd love to help people out, but we're just... What's that?
You want an aircraft carrier?
Do you need it?
You're getting it anyway.
Absolutely.
I'm so sorry about food stamps and Medicare.
It's awful.
We're fresh out.
You know, I was back in the stock room checking it out, and we are just out of health care.
I'm so sorry.
Right.
You want to go check?
You can go.
I'll show you.
You can go over there.
Yeah, it's exactly all those things.
It's disgusting.
I mean, by the way, it's like, you know, I keep trying to...
Wrap my head around the notion of, you know, whatever we argue about and point towards, like, the right, they just flick right back on us and try and accuse the left of doing the same kind of thing.
And you realize, though, you know, when you really study the details of, like, what the policies are and what the Democrats, for instance, are trying to do, and, you know, I know you're no Democrat, per se, and I am, you know, I'm willing to support them because I believe in, you know, whatever.
I caucus with the Democrats.
That's my official line.
I'll caucus with the Democrats.
But, man, they need to right their ship as well.
Yeah, you'll do the body shots with them at the party?
By the way, I do not want to get off the air until I came up with what I think is the perfect metaphor for the moment.
And it plays into exactly what you're talking about.
Well, lay it on us.
I think the perfect metaphor for this moment with the parties and with the political system that we have, it's like the Titanic, but with cell phones.
And it's like we're on this big ship.
It's very hard to steer.
It's almost impossible to steer, right?
And meanwhile, like all of us are down in the belly with Leonardo DiCaprio doing Irish dances, you know, and falling in love with, you know, people who shouldn't be dancing with us.
And meanwhile, there's like a fascist uprising on the ship because they know, like the pilot knows there's icebergs out there.
You know what I mean?
Like they know that the icebergs are out there, but they need to get the ship where it's going.
And that's the left.
That's the Democratic Party.
They need to make sure that the corporate ship gets where it needs to go.
And they want to do it safely, if at all possible, right?
But then you have these fascists who are like, we need to hit the iceberg.
I want to hit the iceberg.
Or we'll get what we want by trying to steer towards the iceberg and making people, you know, work with us.
And meanwhile... I almost feel like, no, there's too many people on this ship right now.
There's not.
There's actually too few.
It's very limited.
And so as we're like trying to get on our cell phones to be like, there are crazy people on this ship, the Democrats are like, I understand, but we don't want to bespirch the good name of the company.
You know?
Don't... Don't talk about that.
Like, we don't need to call them fascist.
That's...
Just hold on.
Just have faith.
Our pilot's going to get us where we need to go.
You don't need to say the F word and don't worry about that.
And then we hit the damn iceberg every damn time.
And then everyone's like, where are all the life jackets?
There are no life jackets.
They don't have enough life jackets because the company didn't want to give us life jackets.
That's what America is right now.
It's a lot of things going on in that.
I'll have to pull it apart in my mind.
If I had my whiteboard in the background here, it would just kill.
It would kill, Nick.
Yes, you need your KD board or whiteboard.
OK, I can go with that.
I mean, listen.
Yeah, I mean, I think the overall point tends to be that the Democratic Party tries to enact legislation that would help people, and the Republicans simply try to gridlock.
It's like a, you know, it's almost a sick joke at this point because you'd think that there would be, you know, people with different ideologies across the aisles.
But we really don't anymore.
They've kind of ferreted it all out.
Certainly the Republicans, right?
Remember, you know, I got into an argument with my wife about this because, you know, there was a time when all the Republicans were on the strict talking points.
It was like, you know, early 2000s and you'd see them on Fox.
And they must have handed them out that day.
They did.
They did.
Roger Ailes would hand down the talking points to not just Fox News, but the Republican Party.
Absolutely.
It was actually impressive how it was rigid following of these talking points.
And the Democrats would never, ever have that.
But the point being that is anybody in the Republican Party who didn't want to do those talking points, they'd just primary them.
They'd be gone.
And over those years, over the last 10, 15 years, they've pretty much ferreted all those people out.
So we now don't have any kind of a varied opinion or whatever, at least in the Republican Party.
And that's the real issue here is I don't know how we ever get beyond that.
Short of, again, like we said, Biden won.
They have to win the Senate, and they actually have to do something that works.
I'm not even saying, hey, that was a good try, and I get we were trying with that or like a good idea, but just kind of fail.
Let's fix it later.
No, this can't even be like an Obamacare thing where, you know, it works but there's things to be fixed.
They got to nail a bunch of things early and get them through and make them work and people can see them tangibly.
I think what is happening right now, and so I think what you said is right.
I think the Democratic Party tries to help people, but they don't want to try too much.
You know what I mean?
It's like a little bit.
They want to like just incremental sort of changes, and hopefully it'll make people's lives a little bit better.
And then every time they try and do that, the Republican Party is like, this is a fascistic takeover of the country.
Right now, Mao Zedong is Mao Zedong has endorsed this, everyone.
Mao Zedong is a zombie, communist, democratic supporter.
Well, I mean, I'm joking, but Hugo Chávez tried to steal the election.
Well, I know, but the fascistic behavior they accuse, it's like, we're just trying to get people healthcare, man.
Well that's, but that's the whole point is the Democratic Party has continually played within the battlefield of the Republican Party.
I don't know if you've ever heard of this, but the closest thing that I can think about it like as a sports analogy is like back in the day in the Meadowlands, whenever like the opposing visiting team would get ready to kick like a field goal, they would open up a door and like a gust of wind would come through and mess with everything.
They're playing in a battlefield that is under the control of the Republican Party.
And no matter what the debate is, And they're going to be accused of a major takeover, right?
As long as they're pushing the stuff.
You can't fight that fight anymore.
You have to do something larger.
You have to change the game.
You have to say, you know what?
Things aren't right.
And I have to tell you, there are people out there and I'll go rounds with people in this because I grew up with these people.
I know these people.
I've been around these people my whole life.
These are people who were FDR Democrats, they supported Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, they were with Bill Clinton until NAFTA passed, and they voted for Barack Obama, and then they voted for Donald Trump.
And why?
Because these were people who came out and said, you know what?
Things aren't right.
You know, they were like, things aren't working right now, we need to change something.
They want somebody to change things.
It doesn't mean that they have a cohesive political ideology.
And by the way, I can hear someone in my ear right now saying, well, they're racist and they're fascist.
Yeah, a lot of them are.
A lot of them are racist and fascist.
And misogynist.
Absolutely they are.
But you can have a larger coalition that tries to work on this stuff.
Or we can continue to try and do incremental things while they yell fascist and socialist and communist.
I would prefer the former.
I would prefer to go big and try and make something better happen because we've seen fascism is here.
It's actually here.
And if things don't get better, it's only going to get worse.
Right.
I like it in the basketball world where it's like, for coaches who are too conservative with playing style, I'm like, you're going to get fired anyway.
You might as well get fired, like, really coaching the way you want to coach and what you really believe in.
And I think it applies to the Democrats as well.
And I'm kind of bummed that you ruined what I had always envisioned the Meadowlands opening the doors.
I thought they were opening the doors to let the ghost of Jimmy Hoffa buried in the concrete come flying out and then make the ball miss.
And it turns out that's not true, because if you can make it through the Irishman, you find out that he is not buried in the Meadowlands.
I just want to point out, very, very quickly, for the people who are listening at home, who enjoy a little bit of inside baseball, who like to know how the sausage is made, there's more that we could talk about, but we're now going to end the podcast, because my co-host and my good friend Nick Halseman just brought that thing full circle.
That, that is, it's like when you watch Tom Cruise and Top Gun land on the aircraft carrier that they didn't need to buy, that, you know, we didn't get health care for.
You, you nailed that landing so well that we have no other choice.
I called the ball.
We got it.
We got to bring this podcast to a close.
As always, we are so, so thankful for all of you.
You are the absolute best.
I hope you're having a wonderful holiday season so far.
If you are so inclined, we would love to have you at the McCrake Holiday Bash blowout.
I don't know what we should call it.
There you go.
So that is going to be next Wednesday, December 23rd at 7.30 p.m.
Eastern.
All you have to do is go to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast to be a part of that.
In the meantime, everyone, do not forget to like, subscribe, share this podcast, tell people about it.
People need to know.
People need to know what's going on.
Anyway, until next time, everyone, you can find Nick at Can You Hear Me?
