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Jan. 6, 2021 - The Muckrake Political Podcast
58:17
🚨EMERGENCY POD🚨 The Capitol Under Siege

Today, spurred on by Donald Trump, violent seditionists attacked the Capitol building, breaching every part of the building and disrupting the peaceful transfer of power as the electoral college verification process has been postponed. Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman provide their immediate reaction to the proceedings and how damaging this is to our democracy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hey everybody.
You know, I was thinking about how to even introduce this thing, whether or not we should just give a quick rundown.
I think everybody knows what's going on, but in case you haven't, in case you're just finding out, Trump's stump the steel, whatever bullshit they called it today, Save America March, whatever it was, Donald Trump got in front of them today.
I don't know if you got a chance to watch this, Nick.
He said that the election was stolen and we need to march down to the Capitol.
And they took him at his word, because all this time, we've been watching him radicalize and weaponize his followers, and push them to violence, and keep spinning these absolutely baseless conspiracy theories.
And the thing is, Nick, I have to tell you, and I don't know how you're feeling about it, none of this was unpredictable.
None of this was beyond even the realm of imagination.
We've been screaming about this for months, for years, and here we are.
I am equal parts stunned Angry and just livid to the point where I could lose it, Nick.
I don't know about you.
You know, I'm just so, I'm in a state of shock, I think.
Because I didn't, a lot of times I'm able to visualize these things and what it might look like, what it might feel like way ahead of time.
So it's not a complete, you know, I did let myself go there.
Obviously we knew that they were going to have a big march And I kind of let my mind sort of wander into it's going to be a few hundred, you know, sad people with some flags, you know, marching in a circle and yelling, you know, at each other.
And I didn't let myself imagine that it was going to be, you know, 10, 20, 30,000 people overwhelming the gates around the Capitol and then into the Capitol and basically breach every part of the building.
Um, I don't think I let myself even consider that, especially because what we saw with force from the police departments, uh, during the summer with Black Lives Matter, uh, marches and what they were willing to do there compared to what they didn't do here.
Uh, it's just, it's just shocking.
It is.
And I want to get something out there, uh, very, very quickly.
This is important to say this isn't just about Donald Trump.
One of the reasons it doesn't matter what Donald Trump comes out and says when he tells them to stand down, or when Ivanka Trump tweets out some sort of tone-deaf, you're all patriots and beautiful people, or whatever her insane mind has cooked up, it's important to point out, these people have been looking for a reason to do something like this for a very long time.
Donald Trump cultivated it.
He weaponized it.
He turned the temperature up on it.
And it's as if somebody handed him a gun and he pointed the gun and pulled the trigger.
The gun was there.
The gun existed.
The gun had been manufactured.
We have a fascist problem in this country.
And this is the reason I keep saying this stuff is Is not like completely out of nowhere.
It's not unpredictable.
The reason why some of us have been screaming about this is because it is readily apparent that we have a fascistic movement in this country.
And we have had for a while.
We've watched it, and we have excused it, and we have pretended like it didn't exist.
Because we don't like dealing with white supremacy.
We don't like doing that in this country.
We don't like admitting that we have a fascism problem in this country.
It's been around for a long time, and it has only been growing in recent years.
And you know what happens when you don't deal with the problem of white supremacy and growing fascism?
You have a bunch of assholes who storm the Capitol and take it over.
If we get out of this, Without more bloodshed than we've already seen.
And by the way, we haven't even talked about it yet.
There was an explosive found outside the RNC.
A possible explosive found outside the DNC.
There was another explosive found on the Capitol grounds, or maybe inside the Capitol, because who the hell even knows what's going on right now?
These people are carrying out a coordinated coup attempt.
They've paralyzed the business of the United States of America.
Exactly like they did in Michigan, by the way.
If anybody wants to sit down and pretend like none of this was predictable, we saw it.
We saw it happen.
We know that these people have been planning things like this.
They are coordinated, they are activated, and they are radicalized.
None of this was unpredictable.
All of this was obvious.
The fact that people are standing around with their jaws slack is an indictment of them, is what it is.
This was all predictable and all avoidable.
There was a long delay before they activated the D.C.
National Guard, and there's a lot of reasons.
One reason had been reported that they didn't want the optics of, you know, military people on the Capitol steps.
There's another, though, that it seemed relatively plausible, was that they were afraid that if they activated the National Guard from D.C., they are under the jurisdiction of the President directly.
And think about that for a second.
The notion then is that they don't want to give Trump control over military troops, which would then, you know, sort of the next step would be he's going to, you know, complete this coup.
But what we have to really worry about is the notion of, well, first of all, we know that Trump had stirred this up and he wants this.
He will not go out and say anything more forceful than, we love you, You know, please go home, but we love you and we respect you and think that you're doing great work here.
But he clearly could declare martial law.
And this is what you've been talking about for a long time.
The notion of declaring martial law and then saying, well, we can't have this peaceful transfer of power now.
I need to stay here in the White House until we get these things under control, which it won't be under control probably the way this is going for a week or two, the way that these people feel about it.
So that's a real concern, that any kind of delay in what would normally be pomp and circumstance today leaves a door open for changing what democracy normally would be in the hand of overpower.
I want to say something.
I take our show seriously.
I take my platform seriously.
I take all this deathly seriously.
I just want to say that before I say this.
Donald Trump should be impeached today, he should be removed from office, and his dumb ass should be arrested.
He has not only violated the oath of his office, he has committed crimes against this country.
This is seditious behavior, and we've talked about it over and over again.
A lot of it's a grift, a lot of it's a coup, it's a combination of the two things.
It's an asshole grifter.
Who has been trying to make sure that he has a golden parachute for when he gets out of office.
And what has he done?
He has cooked up one conspiracy theory after another.
And everyone laughed.
Ha, he's talking about a military coup.
Can you believe he had Flynn in there?
And he had Sidney Powell in there?
No.
The time is done.
We need to stop pretending like any of this is normal and like any of this has anything to do with how a country is supposed to fucking work.
His ass needs to be perp-walked out of the fucking White House today, before the sun sets.
That asshole needs to be taken out of the White House.
He is done.
Call it off.
And in the fact that people are still pretending like this is even something we need to discuss, Is insane.
And you know as well as I do, and I'm sorry, I'll let you talk in a second, Nick, but you know as well as I do.
If this thing ends up, if they clear out the Capitol tonight, there are going to be assholes on social media, there are going to be assholes on TV, there are going to be assholes in the Democratic and the Republican Party who are going to pretend like this isn't even a big deal.
They're gonna pretend like, oh, it was a little bit of a breach, and yeah, it looked really bad.
And they're gonna pretend like everything is fine.
Everything is not fucking fine.
This doesn't happen in a country where shit works.
That asshole needs to be trotted out.
He needs to spend the rest of his miserable, shitty life in jail.
Period.
I'll go one step further because we saw Biden come out and it'd be very presidential and, you know, say enough is enough and that we've got to, you know, and he also called upon Trump to do something more, you know, forceful than what he's done.
But, you know, he should have started the first sentence out of his mouth should have been, I call on Mike Pence and the rest of the cabinet to invoke the 25th amendment right now.
He needs that.
This is what this is for.
And I think that there's another refusal of this country to acknowledge just how influential our leaders are.
It's almost like when they poo-poo all these things and try and dismiss, oh, it's just a few people or whatever.
What they don't recognize is how powerful Trump is with these words and with this rhetoric, this stand down and stand by bullshit.
That stuff are red flag signals that get sent out, and you know better than me when you're going online into the dark web, that spreads like wildfire as a bat signal to all these people.
And we don't want to even acknowledge that.
It's certainly the right won't acknowledge that.
You know, these Dan Crenshaw assholes.
And so here we are.
Oh, now they're like, hey, we better we better calm this down.
They're all going home.
But it's like, fuck you.
You've been inciting this.
The only reason why you think that there's anything wrong with the election is because you've lied about it for the last month.
Dan Crenshaw spent God knows how much money creating a movie trailer propaganda fascistic fantasy wet dream video of him dropping into Georgia and physically assaulting liberals.
That he gets to get on social media and pretend like this doesn't have anything to do with him, and that he wasn't a part of this, and for Ted Cruz to probably sit in some cloakroom right now and brush his stupid-ass beard and pretend like he didn't cause this, and like all these people haven't been playing with matches for years?
For years they have been doing this shit.
They hold guns in their ads.
They talk about how Democrats are traitors.
They talk about how the government is taking over control.
Elections are rigged.
And they know it's not true.
They know it's not true.
And the blood is on their fucking hands.
And I'm sorry.
I did not... I tried really hard to get on here and not scream.
And I'm really sorry you have earbuds in, Nick.
But this is true.
This is absolutely true.
That these motherfuckers Have created a situation in this country where we are now, and by the way, we're talking about a situation right now.
We're talking about the U.S.
Capitol under siege right now.
People have already been critically hurt.
There have been bombs that have been found around D.C., possibly around the country.
We haven't even talked about this.
The Kansas legislature got breached by people too.
So there's a coordinated fascistic movement in this country that's dealt with.
Let's say we even clear them out tonight.
What's this going to do to America in the long run?
This sets a precedent for it to be done again.
It hurts us around the world.
It hurts our reputation.
It hurts our ability to have treaties.
It hurts our ability to go into other countries and keep this shit from happening.
This is a long-term injury that these treasonous assholes, these treasonous assholes have done to raise funds and to get elected.
I want to take us into some of the images so we can kind of viscerally feel what it would be like based on what we've seen.
We saw a guy in the chamber itself where Pelosi sits like just hanging out there sullying the office.
We saw a guy sitting at her desk or either it was her desk or her assistant's desk.
But here's the thing.
Could you imagine if Pelosi got caught in her office when they got there?
I mean, that's also a scary notion.
You've got a mob mentality, they are armed, and they see Pelosi, the one person who's been so vilified and made into some sort of monster for the last 10 years.
It was scary to me even to picture that idea.
I'm also picturing them probably desecrating the offices.
I have no doubt, because they're wandering through there, they're probably doing all sorts of horrible shit there, and people have to go back to work in these offices after that.
We have a guy hanging from inside the chamber as well, from the balcony, about to drop down in there.
We had guns drawn as they're breaking the windows, and if you didn't see, the doors to the chamber of the house was barricaded.
They literally had to move big, huge pieces of furniture in front of there.
Guns drawn, pointing six inches away from a guy's face, who's protruding through the broken glass of this door.
So this is not just like, oh, because by the way, the other part of this is it's a photo op.
Okay.
You can see as many fucking Trump flags as you see American flags.
And you see a certain amount of, um, generally and not generally, uh, whatever, uh, what's it called?
Confederate flags.
Um, but you also see them, they all got their phones out.
They're all taking selfies.
Oh, they're not just taking selfies, Nick.
They're streaming to their followers.
This is an important thing to talk about because a lot of these people are doing this, and we've talked about this over and over again, it's a multi-level marketing scheme.
This entire thing, it's not just fascism, it's capitalistic fascism.
It's late-stage capitalistic fascism.
You have Trump at the very, very top who knows he lost an election.
He's trying to get a show on Newsmax or OANN or raise profits or whatever.
Underneath him are the Republicans.
And you know as well as I do how many grifters there are feeding underneath them.
It's like the little fish that swim underneath the shark and just do whatever.
They're streaming to their followers.
They're live-action role-playing sedition while carrying out sedition.
That's how fucked up of a moment this is!
Yeah, and so part of me feels like this is, they don't even know what they're fighting for, right?
They're just sort of, they've been instructed, they've been following this mob, they're kind of going through the thing, oh this is great, this is like the movies where we get to knock down this barricade, oh well now we're on the steps, and oh my god, well let's open these damn doors.
I don't even think, I don't know the question how coordinated this ended up being.
Did all these people who got in there say early this morning, we are going to break through those doors?
Now they might have even said that it might have been like, yeah, that's a great idea.
That'd be really just visual and be great.
We'll make our point.
Did you see the video of the black cop who was facing a mob coming into the doorway and he's backing up, backing up and he's got his gun and they're not listening to him.
I can only imagine how triggering it was to have an African American person telling him to stop dressed like a police officer and police officer uniform.
They kind of stop when a couple other cops do finally come and sort of start to yell at them.
But you can also see them sort of say, no, I'm a citizen.
I own all this place.
This is all mine.
You know, I deserve to be wherever I want to be and do whatever I want to do because, you know, I'm an American.
And that's what all that Lee Greenwood bullshit, you know, ultimately inspires as well.
So that is what was so frustrating about this whole thing is that you can see that they don't even they don't even have a clear sense of what they want to do.
It's just it's the I'm white and I'm now losing my power in this country.
And someone saying, well, it's got to be this guy's fault.
So, OK, that's good enough for me.
That's what it is.
It's really awful.
There's not an actual ideology.
We've talked about that a lot.
The Republican Party and the right have no actual ideology.
It is simply perceived persecution.
They have a feeling that things aren't going right for them.
They have a feeling that things are rigged.
They're pissed off.
And by the way, we've talked about this a lot.
There is a reason to be pissed off in this country.
People have been taken advantage of.
Lives have been made worse.
There is an actual, real litany of problems in this country.
This is a group that is acting out and lashing out, and the only ideology that they have is, we should have something that other people shouldn't.
That's it!
And we've said this, and we haven't talked about it that much, you and I, but I assume you've seen it too.
We have watched for years in this country this idea of faux patriotism, right?
And a lot of it cooked up around the Iraq War.
And there was the thing where, you know, if you're not for the war, you're not patriotic.
If you're not wearing a flag pin, you're not patriotic.
And we've seen time and time again that people pay symbolic tip of the hat to this idea of patriotism, right?
And then meanwhile, everything they talk about is anti-American, anti-patriotic, anti-liberty, all of it.
And what we see now is a group of people who are literally breaking into the Capitol, they're desecrating the Capitol, they're flying Confederate flags, and the entire purpose is that they are lashing out and they have no actual purpose.
None whatsoever.
It's to raise and violate and become violent.
That's it.
And it's about making people submit to their will and do what they want them to do under the threat of violence and intimidation.
Well Jared, we have some questions we can answer on the bottom here people submitted and I think if somebody wants to come on and you know share a moment with us on the video audio feed I think we can welcome that too if you want to let us know in the comments to say something in all caps so we can see it.
But the first question we have here is from Virginia who wants to know who has the authority to take him out of the White House?
You know, I just parenthetically, there was a little bit of reporting about it.
It might not be that verified, but the Secret Service do have some sort of plan in case he doesn't leave.
No, that wasn't.
That was not verified.
OK, but they must they must have a plan at this point to get the fuck out of there if he doesn't leave.
But who has the authority, you know, to take him out of the White House?
I mean, right now, the only way that would happen would be the 25th Amendment, which takes a while or impeachment would take a while.
So there really isn't anything you can do.
I think, at this point, he is there until the 20th.
I just want to say again, and we have to say this basically every time that we talk about these issues, there was a failure in imagination among the founders to even imagine anything like this.
The only reason we talked about this, I want to say in the last episode we did, the only reason this situation happened today Is because Congress got together to confirm the Electoral College.
This meeting, this actual confirmation, was created so that the powerful elite in this country could negate democratic decisions by the people that they found disreputable.
This shouldn't even be taking place, first and foremost.
Second of all, this idea of a president betraying the country, they have thought about the possibility of a president committing crimes.
They would have a really hard time imagining Donald Trump doing something along these lines.
They just would.
And by the way, there's been another question here, which is, Julius says, can you address how the fuck they got in?
Number one, it was a complete failure to protect the Capitol.
It was a failure to plan.
And by the way, why would you fail to plan?
Either you want them to get through, or, well, they're white people.
They're not gonna do a lot of violence.
I mean, it's the black protesters.
It's the Antifa who would actually take care of it.
It is obvious once more, and we talk about this all the time, and by the way, I'm sorry, Nick, you've been watching the coverage of this a little bit?
Mm-hmm.
Um, have you noticed a general linking description of these people?
Have you noticed that they look like a lot of our, like, brother-in-laws and things?
Like, these are white dudes.
This is white terrorism.
White terrorism in this country is the biggest threat to this country's safety.
And we can't take it seriously.
This government can't take it seriously.
Our culture can't take it seriously.
Our media can't take it seriously.
A bunch of white motherfuckers are trying to carry out a coup right now because a bunch of people couldn't be bothered to believe it.
And by the way, we've been screaming about this for a year!
That these people, that white supremacists, white accelerationists, white assholes, are gonna go do that.
And they can't keep from calling them protesters.
They can't keep from talking about how, well, they're not actually that violent, as they run after cops and destroy windows and do God knows what in these places.
And you were exactly right when you said, what would have happened if they would have come across these people?
They would have killed them.
They would have killed them.
White terrorism is the number one threat in this country and our inability to see beyond ourselves and see beyond our own narratives and bullshit has led us to this moment.
Now, if someone doesn't do it, I'll do it, is edit a juxtaposition of all the police violence against protesters this summer compared to this, which is like, they're not letting them hang out in the steps.
They're literally just sort of like, well, maybe we'll just let it diffuse itself and they'll leave.
They just want a couple photos in the chamber, you know, whatever.
That's sort of what it feels like to me now, an hour, an hour and a half later.
You know what this feels like?
It feels like the Bundys who took over that federal land.
And the Feds were like, well, I mean, maybe they'll get tired of it eventually.
They're in the capital of the United States of America.
Right now.
And it will happen again because of this reaction.
Why wouldn't it?
Why wouldn't it?
Why wouldn't this happen again?
Because we talked about this, I think, on the last episode, man.
This is a message.
If you don't do what we want you to do, there will be violence.
It's terrorism.
That's what this is.
This is America's main problem that is playing out today.
And I'm sorry for every Chuck Todd asshole out there who's like, I don't know how we got here.
Are you kidding me?
You had a front row seat for this shit for years!
So they had to round up all the congressmen and senators to be safe and they probably I'm picturing remember in Homeland the first season when there's some huge threat and they're all put in this little room and he's actually got the bomb strapped on him like he's gonna kill everybody I don't know if you saw this one I just ruined the whole first season for you but nonetheless I'm picturing that they're all the lawmakers are all trapped this little tiny room and it's all the people the guns out I mean Something like that must have happened.
They had to get him somewhere safe to begin with before they got the hell out of there.
But I can only picture, like, that would have been a time for Schumer or somebody else to, like, get right in front of McConnell's face and say, look, asshole, this is all because of what you enabled.
You know, that would be the scene that we would need to have, and people need to call him out once and for all.
Because I was listening to the Senators before all this broke through.
I had to do a live show on my other thing.
I missed the beginning of this outbreak, but I had listened to Ted Cruz, listened to Mitch McConnell, and it was remarkable, by the way, to hear Mitch McConnell talk about patriotism and doing the right thing, which was, stop this nonsense, let's get on with our government.
But only the second when he had a whiff of the notion that he is not going to be a leader anymore.
So only then does he sort of say, oh, okay.
He knew it was about legacy.
He knew that was all about legacy.
That's all that was.
Right.
And I will say, for the record, and we give credit where credit is due, immediately as this started happening, Mitt Romney turned to other Republicans and said, this is what you get.
And he was right.
He was 100% right.
This is, and we cannot forget this, this is not just Trump.
Again, somebody handed Trump a gun, he pointed the gun on 5th Avenue, and he shot someone.
That's what happened today.
He stood on the street, and he shot the Capitol.
It is his gig, he said, go down there and do this, and they took him at his word, and they did it.
The Republican Party and the wealthy and the powerful in this country have created this scenario.
And they did it!
They created all these conspiracy theories, they created all this unrest, they motivated white supremacy, white paranoia, distrust in government, all of it.
They did all of it so they could lower their taxes, deregulate businesses, and dismantle government as a means of public good.
That's why we're here right now.
Today.
Let's go another question.
Jose has one which kind of touches upon all this.
Do you realize this is empowering the right wing across the world if there are no arrests or trials?
This also goes towards Trump as well, and the next person that's going to come in here.
Again, we've talked about this already, but yes, Merrick Garland, who was just picked to be the next Attorney General.
Thank God they have control over the Senate, so they get to decide who is going to run when they interview him and decide, oh my goodness, when they had the Senate hearing.
So at any rate, the confirmation hearing.
So it's all going to be on him now.
He's going to have to decide what he wants to do about all of this.
And I would certainly hope that there's going to be, I mean, I don't know.
We saw people on their bellies at gunpoint, the insurrectionists, you know, ostensibly arrested, right?
So they have people.
Obviously, they know who these people are to arrest and to prosecute.
So you can only hope that they do that.
But I mean, listen, how do they get in there in the first place?
Oh, they put up some barricades, Jared.
White people don't break through barricades, right?
The little five-footers that are metal, you know, they don't step around those or jump over them.
No, that's all we need.
We don't need a lot of police.
We don't need tear gas.
We don't need that stuff.
So, yeah, I don't know how else we can argue the point stronger that they have to prosecute all these people.
And by the way, this is the biggest argument for why Trump has to be prosecuted now.
Again, and I know this is terrible, and I wish that I give hope where I can give it.
I'm honest where I need to be honest.
This is a national shame, and we know that this country is really bad at reckoning with itself.
It really hates looking in the mirror and understanding what's wrong with it.
I would have to imagine we might see a few people arrested and we might see a few people prosecuted.
This is not going to be treated as a coup, which it is.
It is an attempted coup of the United States of America.
By the way, I'm so sorry to bring this up again.
We've been fucking screaming about this for the longest time.
And everybody, I'm so sorry, but everybody in the fucking world wanted to say, oh it's not a coup, you can't call it a coup, you can't say it's a coup, that's irresponsible to call it a coup, isn't it?
It was a coup, and then people are going to paper over it, and you're exactly right.
People around the world, and the right wing around the world, and we've talked about this too, the right wing around the world is coordinated, they communicate, they share strategies.
This is absolutely going to inspire other people to do these things.
And again, and we talk about this all the time, the worse the material conditions get, the more desperate people get, the more that this is going to grow.
Things suck.
People are going to become radicalized.
They're going to try and carry out coups, and they're going to try and wire the countries that they're in to their own advantage.
We're going to see more of this if we don't call it a coup, we don't treat it like a coup, and we don't treat these people like seditionists.
Now Kim is saying in the comments that she saw that there's this video on Twitter saying that the Capitol Police opened the gates Which could be very well possible, too.
Maybe they thought, let's just defuse this.
We'll let them kind of get a little closer.
I don't know.
Certainly a dire contrast to what we've seen and what they were willing to do to real protesters who were, you know, peaceful.
Let's grab a couple questions here.
Mia wants to know, chances of him being removed via 25th or impeachment?
Zero.
Right?
That's a quick answer.
I hate that.
I hate that that's true.
If this country, if this country was saying he wouldn't be president and he wouldn't have lasted this long, but if this country was saying the moment that they get that place cleared out, they would get in the same room and impeach his ass and remove him.
Yeah.
Period.
The 25th to me would be even quicker, right?
It's just a vote of the cabinet, and then they deliver the thing.
Yeah, but if they do the 25th Amendment, here's the problem.
Here's the issue.
If his cabinet does the 25th Amendment and removes him, that is virtually admitting that they were part of a big, giant problem.
You know what I mean?
That they stood around and let this thing happen.
They're not going to admit that they had anything to do with this.
By the way, go ahead and get yourselves prepared for how pissed off you're going to be over the next couple of weeks as Republicans are like, we cannot believe this violence, and oh, it's the moral problem of the country, and there's a decay, and we really need religion, and we need family values.
No, that's coming.
That's 100% coming.
But it's also like when the deficit, they realized the deficit was so big, it's almost the same thing.
Oh my God, look at this Trump guy.
Well, look how terrible he is.
Gosh, you know, it's hard.
I can't, you know, look what he did today, today.
Like that's what they're gonna focus on.
I mean, perhaps it will give the, you know, the other Republican powers that be, you know, some momentum to simply once and for all break off from Trump and not have to suck on the teat of his rallies the next four years while he decides he wants to run again.
Nick, have you seen, how many Republicans have you seen repudiate Trump right now?
None.
Not a one.
By the way, they'll say that the people...
No, I haven't seen anybody.
There are people who are like, oh, people shouldn't be breaking into the Capitol.
Well, every one of them carries a Trump 2020 flag or wears a Make America Great Again hat or was in attendance when the president of the United fucking States said they're stealing the election.
Here are all the ways they're stealing it.
Go make them stop.
Oh, let me just quote Trump in the video that they released just before it went live.
He said, uh, this was a fraudulent election, but we can't play into the hands of these people.
Okay.
Constantly stirring up the fear of the other.
Right.
Then he goes, we love you to the, you know, these seditionists.
We are very special and you've seen the way, then he says something that's interesting.
Maybe you can help me figure this out.
It's a little bit out of context, but he goes, you've seen the way others are treated, which is so bad and so evil.
I'm assuming this is one of the things he always says about like Michael Flynn and Manafort, whatever.
So again, he can't help but vilify the left without having any notion that it's him and his side that has consistently been the people in the wrong.
So what Trump has right now is he has a problem.
Right?
Because he wants to pretend like he lost the election.
He needs to pretend like he, or I mean that he had the election stolen from him.
Right?
And there's a giant conspiracy against him.
He needs that to have the most profit that he can have after his presidency.
Right?
He'll be a president in exile and then they'll play Hail to the Chief or whatever.
He needs... Well, it's for his psyche too.
Right.
And if you think about it, it's like a gauge.
There's just enough pressure.
Like, there's a red margin.
You know what I mean?
And you know what happens in the red margin?
People break into the Capitol, and they hold it under siege.
And they kill people.
And they send bombs.
And they plant bombs.
And they take over legislatures.
Trump, who...
I want to say in the first episode of the podcast we ever recorded, I want to say, we talked about it.
People like Trump in corporate America want to push it as far as they possibly can, and push it as far as they can, and not have it go into that red.
It's in the red right now.
He wants to go, he doesn't want to clear the air, right?
It's not like he actually wants to repudiate this whole thing.
He wants to just bring the needle just out of the red.
Just where it's right on the edge of red, because that's where maximum profit is for him.
That's it.
And by the way, real fast, a question came up and I think it's a good one too.
Josh says, how are we supposed to protect the inauguration?
We're not.
That's the whole point, is we can't.
Right now, because of these people, because of Trump and the people around him, We cannot carry out the business of government.
That's what they dream of.
They want to make sure we can't have inaugurations, that we can't pass bills.
They want to bring it to a grinding halt.
I don't know how else to tell you.
I don't know any other words to put it into.
This is a revolution attempt.
They are literally trying to carry out a revolution right now.
This is what happens.
You go in, you occupy the businesses, you bring government to a halt, and you make the government coalesce around your demands.
They are killing people.
They're looking to kill people, obviously.
They're trying to take over these governments.
I mean, that is how these things happen.
It's a coup attempt.
It's an attempt at a revolution.
It's what they're doing.
It's what they're attempting to do.
Well said.
Now, Mia asks how this will all end.
And I suppose there's about two different possibilities here, right?
They have the vote.
They certify what they were going to do, which I think even Pence admitted he was going to do.
And on the 20th, Biden takes over.
Whether or not Trump is there, they'll have to vacate or not, whatever.
But the other version, which we alluded to very briefly in the beginning, is that Trump declares some sort of martial law.
And that sort of gives him some grist to say, well, we can't have it.
I had to stay in power until we get everything under control, you know, and that could be in any every day that goes beyond the 20th where it's supposed to happen.
It makes it that much easier for him to complete this thing.
So, um, that, you know, that's what we're, that's what we're headed towards.
I, you know, obviously the questions are, how the hell did this happen?
Why wasn't the National Guard called in and all these different things earlier?
Um, again, it's certainly plausible that Trump clearly wanted this to happen.
Not necessarily that he could predict they're going to break into the Capitol, but he certainly wants that red.
He wants as much chaos as possible to then be able to take control, which is what Republicans have done forever for decades and decades.
So that's hard to tell.
It's hard to tell whether or not there's some sort of attempt to do it.
I watched Trump's speech today, and it was a rambling, stupid affair.
And if you really wanted them to go and attack the Capitol, you would not make it a big, giant, rambling, stupid affair.
He was talking about Oprah Winfrey not talking to him anymore.
He was talking about social media shadow bans.
Like he was rambling.
It was his usual dumb Trump bullshit, right?
I think this is a situation, and this is the scary thing, and I gotta be honest about this.
I do not think Trump tried to create this situation.
I think he just can't help himself.
He has to create, he creates chaos, he tries to find situations for himself.
The problem again, and this is the thing that you're not going to hear on CNN or MSNBC or Fox News or anywhere tonight, we are dealing with social constructs here.
Politics is a social construct.
All of the rules are made up.
Right?
There are lines on a basketball court.
Occasionally it goes out of bounds.
You call it out of bounds.
You find a foul when you find a foul.
Sometimes fouls don't get called.
Sometimes teams cheat.
We watch the Astros do that.
You know what I mean?
Like, some people find ways and they create new ways and new avenues and when they see an opening, they take it.
Now that Trump has this opening, maybe he didn't mean to create it, but it just opens up all kinds of things.
And do you think that Mike Flynn hasn't told Trump today that he should take advantage of this?
Do you think that Mike Flynn hasn't once more brought up the possibility of martial law?
You're out of your mind!
And I've said this before, Mike Flynn is doing it as his own personal grift.
He's doing it as his own way to make money off the QAnon people.
And now, all of a sudden, I kept trying to tell people, it's wrestling, it's a grift, but eventually the grift becomes real, and you lose track of where you're play-acting and what you're trying to do, and the next thing you know, hundreds if not thousands of your followers are swarming over the Capitol, maybe trying to kill people, who the hell knows?
All of a sudden, I mean, what do we do now?
Well, I guess we're in a coup!
They worked themselves into a fucking coup!
And, you know, a woman's been shot.
Yes!
On video.
They have it on video.
She gets shot, and it goes right into shock, and you're watching the whole thing right there on video, on Twitter, they have it on TV.
I mean, I guess I feel like we should be fortunate only one person's been shot so far, and none of those improvised explosive devices went off before they were found.
By the way, that's a Republican argument, right?
Well, at least only one person got shot.
Could have been much worse.
But meanwhile, the whole point of this is that the bigger picture here is that it's been done.
They were successful.
Hey, Angus, remember how easy it was?
We broke into the Capitol last year?
Well, we're going to go back and do that again.
That was a really bad Southern accent.
I gotta practice.
Nonetheless, they're not all Southerners, right?
It's the Michigan people and stuff.
So, nonetheless, we had some more questions real quickly.
Let's see.
We have one from here that says, from Dee, she wants to know, what happens to the Electoral College confirmation process?
Do they do it by Zoom?
Is it delayed for weeks?
I did see a headline on MSNBC while I'm watching in the background that says that they were still going to maybe try and do it remotely, but I don't know.
What do you think, Jared?
No, this is a situation, it's not going to take weeks, but undoubtedly what they've already decided is that they'll resume as soon as normal order is brought about.
But I have to tell you, short of them going in and killing people, and I mean that, short of them going in willing to kill these people, I don't know how you clear this place out and suddenly have people home for dinner.
You know what I mean?
I don't know how you do it.
You mean?
Yeah, I don't know how you do it.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, let's do it tomorrow.
I don't know if it's tomorrow.
Right when I have on the ground telling you this thing I and in my gut tells me this is that this thing might be protracted and it might go for awhile.
And I the certification they gotta figure out a way to do it.
But the big problem right now is even while there's an attempted coup being carried out in the United States of America, people are still.
Pretending like this is just a blip, like this is just a hiccup that's going to be taken care of.
It's not.
It's just not.
Yeah, I mean, look at the costumes that some people are wearing while they're there.
I mean, the guy's got like the Viking horns.
That's the shaman of the QAnon people.
Oh, he is?
Yeah, he's a big QAnon celebrity.
Again, everybody's grifting the whole way through.
Yeah, you know, face paint.
It's such a cosplay thing, but mixed with the reality of it being very dangerous.
It's too many things to kind of mix.
I shared something last night with a guy who's got a Captain America shield with a Magneto helmet.
It's just so confusing.
It must be more confusing than that, man.
That's post-modernism.
That's what it is.
We're at a moment where we have just so much cultural and political flotsam that is just coming together.
And by the way, we talk about this.
It is mental illness.
Do you know what I mean?
So for instance, I'm assuming you've seen this.
Where I was growing up, there was this one guy who'd lost his mind.
And he was obviously going through something.
And he would paint these things up on this abandoned gas station.
And it'd be like, Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston tell me the truth of God, and there are eagles who visit me.
And all of a sudden, it's all this flotsam.
Do you know what I mean?
It's like, we'll pick this, we'll pick that, and we'll just combine them and see what happens and makes new meaning.
That's what's happening around the country right now.
That's actually what we're dealing with.
You and I are having a conversation in something that at least resembles objective reality.
These people are in an incredibly combustible Weaponized, uh, radicalized mental health issue.
There's a problem in this country that goes deeper than politics.
This country is sick.
This country's really, honest to God, sick.
Like, we haven't taken care of our problems.
We haven't looked in the mirror.
We haven't understood who we are and what we're doing.
This is the end result of that.
This is where you come to when you don't take care of this shit.
Well, Julia asks us, any thoughts on which, if any, of the Republicans in office will genuinely, will genuinely, capital G, condemn Trump?
By the way, did you see the videos of Mitt Romney in the airport yesterday?
Yeah, getting harassed.
And then do you see him on the plane getting harassed?
Yep.
I mean, if anybody would say anything about this on the Republican side, it would be Mitt Romney.
It would be, you know, I was telling you this, I want to say it was a couple days ago.
I think, I think, I think he'll leave the Republican Party after this.
Wait, wait, didn't I say that in texting?
No, I said that.
All right, I've got somebody, uh, and then, oh, you said that and I said that.
I think Romney's going to leave the Republican Party.
I thought I also said that too.
I thought maybe somebody else had said you were, that's crazy.
He would never do that.
I think, I think Romney will leave the Republican Party after this.
I could be wrong.
That's just a shot in the dark.
But, and by the way, if you don't leave the Republican Party after this, congratulations carrying that around for the rest of your life.
Because this is yours.
This is yours for the rest of your existence.
And not just the rest of your existence, by the way.
The rest of history.
When history books get written, those people are in the book.
Here's a question for you.
Of the 75 million Trump voters, who gets peeled off from that in reaction to this today?
Uh, there are some.
There are some.
You know how I've told you before at Trump rallies, there's like two levels.
There's the group right in front of the stage, the scrum.
That's who's in the Capitol right now.
The people I've been telling everyone about for years.
That's who's in the Capitol.
The guys who would get in front of the stage and would attack people and harass people.
Everyone else on the outer rings, those are the people who will like work your county fair and give you a voter registration with a corn dog.
Some of those people tonight are like, Trump needs to go.
Some of them are, but that doesn't mean that we're getting rid of the fascistic problem we have in this country.
We have a massive problem in this country.
No, I didn't realize corn dogs are so funny.
Thank you.
Corn dogs are great.
Yeah.
Jessa wants to know, can we get this back from the ledge?
Can we retake it from the red?
I can jump in there.
I guess, you know, the only, here's the thing, the clock is now ticking on January 20th until November, whatever, 2022.
And if they don't affect any kind of tangible, you know, infrastructure week every other week, and really we can see, look, the sidewalks are repaired and our roads are getting the bridges.
Like, I know it's got to be out front in front of them.
They can feel it.
They can see it.
Real, you know, things going on around them that the government has provided.
They're going to be in trouble because let's not forget every time the White House shifts parties, that midterm right after that generally is a bloodbath for that party.
And so if we hope to keep the control of it, they have to get some real tangible things done right away.
So here is the truth of the matter.
I always talk about the idea of a precipice.
That's where we are right here.
We either pretend like this was just a blip and it wasn't really, you know, an indictment of a larger problem.
It wasn't, you know, a symptom of a larger issue and it gets worse.
And by the way, if we do that, Nick, this is going to seem like a picnic.
This will seem like a picnic, because let me tell you, I've searched these guys.
I've studied these guys.
I've researched their movements.
Do you know what they want?
They want to take people like you and me, and the people who are listening to this, and they want to drag us out of our homes.
And I'm sorry, I know that this isn't pleasant, but people need to know the circumstances and the stakes here.
They want to drag us out of our homes, and they want to hang us from light posts and trees.
They call it the Day of the Rope.
That's not just something on the fringes.
It's what they actually want.
They want to murder people.
They want a white ethnostate.
They want a new civil war where they have total control of everything.
That's where we go if we pretend like this is an aberration or a blip.
The other thing is, finally people look in the mirror and they say, oh my god, I can't believe this has been happening.
This is real.
Here are the reasons it's happened.
And they actually sit there and talk about the circumstances.
If they talk about the circumstances and they talk about the actual problem, we could possibly back away from the cliff.
But if we just continue acting like this is some sort of a blip, we're done.
That's it.
Done.
Yeah.
I'd be a double whammy, by the way, for them.
But yeah, I think the other thing that we could glean out of this, it's not a positive thing, necessarily, but I think it's exposed what has been in America this whole time.
Yep.
And I think that maybe the success of democracy is simply the tamping down enough of these kind of people that we're not aware of them so much, and they're in the hiding, they're in the shadows, and we don't have to think about them, and we kind of pretend they don't really exist.
So perhaps that's really what democracy is, because it is as much as we choose to believe it is, right?
Well, that's a problem, though.
We can't pretend they don't exist, because that's how we get to this.
Okay, fair enough.
We have to understand that they exist.
Even in good times, we have to understand that they exist and we have to keep an eye on them.
That's the problem.
We spent decades pretending like these assholes didn't exist.
Yeah.
And if we needed a better example of what it means to like, what law and order means, if enough people decide they're not going to follow laws, this is what happens.
You know, they get overwhelmed.
There aren't enough police in the country to police everybody.
If we all decided en masse to say, you know what, I'm not going to follow any of the laws anymore.
So that's always, and that's like, you know, it goes for democracy itself.
You know, it only exists in as much as we choose to believe in.
And guess what?
That goes back to my original point about leadership and how important that influence is.
And that's what people don't always want to accept, especially when it's a bad leader like Trump.
They don't want to accept that he has any consequences to these people's actions and that it's only a few.
You know, it's, oh, it's just a thing where they're just, you know, First Amendment rights.
It is it's it really is frightening when we're in that situation.
Maybe this is the good thing out of all this is eventually we will have that reckoning.
We've had it before, but this seems like it's gonna require a lot more a lot more work than we've ever had to do in the past.
Yeah, and I have to tell you, I mean, we talked about it just for a second, but Biden came out and made a statement.
He said all of the things that you're supposed to say were beyond that point, were beyond saying all the things we're supposed to say.
We have to stop with that.
We have to stop being like, don't forget about eagles and flags and fireworks.
Like, we're dealing with a coup attempt in the United States of America.
We can't pretend like America is fundamentally good.
We can't pretend like America is exceptional.
We can't pretend like it can't happen anymore here.
Right.
Wait, so- That's done.
That's done.
We have to quit.
And that is what- I'm so sorry.
That is what I keep screaming about on this.
I understand it's so much easier to go to bed at night and sleep when you think that everything is fundamentally good.
And that everything will be fine because Abraham Lincoln once freed the slaves.
Or whatever in the hell people tell themselves before they go to sleep.
I don't know what they do.
It needs taken care of.
It needs dealt with.
We need, and we've been talking about this because we've been putting together this Carter documentary, we need adult conversations.
There's a problem.
You know what happens when you have a problem in your life and there's some sort of a major crisis?
When somebody's dealing with addiction, when someone's self-destructive, when they're going down a dangerous road, you have adult conversations.
You call the problem what it is and you decide how to fix it.
You don't sit around and talk about days past and the, you know, Iwo Jima or D-Day or whatever symbolic American moment you want.
We have to stop it.
We have to actually talk about this and talk about what has actually happened.
Is there any more clear example of life in general than to have won the Senate, the Democrats win the Senate, right?
In an emotional moment of like, oh my God, Ossoff's going to win too.
And then this.
Less than 12 hours later, right?
It's like there just can't seem to be any good for any amount of time before we have to deal with this again in fits and starts.
It's life, right?
That's what life is, is a series of these moments, but it really is just, it stands in stark contrast to have to go through what we did.
Now, I'm just going to throw this out there to bend the conversation in a different direction for a minute, just because I feel like It's just about over it, but I know I was bothering you last night in the midst of the election, was the notion that the, you know, just because they won the two Senate races last night, it is not even in the Senate.
All of that, all that's done.
All those chess games are done for right now.
All right.
Oh, by the way, so I'll just throw it out there because you have to imagine that McConnell might have wanted to try and change the rules to say, well, the only person who could be the leader of the Senate is if your party has the most members in the Senate, which doesn't sound that unreasonable.
You could hear, I could picture Ted Cruz, you know, arguing that to the nth degree.
I suppose the only thing that's wrong with that is that Angus King and Bernie Sanders would immediately just join the Democratic Party.
Here's the thing, and again, I say this soberly.
I'm thinking about it.
The conversation, you know how like after 9-11, on 9-12, like everything that happened on 9-10 was kind of wiped away and you had the business of dealing with 9-11?
We now have to start having conversations about what you do with traders, Nick.
Like, who gets seated, who's the majority leader in the Senate, who's the Speaker of the House, all that stuff.
And again, I understand that this is not fun.
We have started having conversations about traitors, Meg.
Like, what do you do?
What do you do?
What do you do when God knows how many people who were spurred on by the President of the United States of America betrayed the country?
and tried to interrupt the democratic process.
What do you do?
Are you referring to anybody in particular?
Yeah, yeah, I am.
I'm talking about Donald J. Trump, and I'm talking about all the people who broke into the Capitol and live action role played being traitors.
And then turned in they were actually traitors.
So we have to start having a conversation about what you do with those people.
Right.
That's true.
I mean, I thought Oh, by the way, we haven't even talked about this.
Fox News should just put up a test pattern screen right now and say, we're sorry.
We recognize what we've done.
Do you know what I mean?
Yeah, but there would be like a swastika somewhere in that test pattern, you know.
There would have to be.
There would have to be.
Yeah.
No, I, I, I, you know, we were talking about this last night, like what could possibly happen with, uh, with the Senate.
I think that's done.
I think that, I think that, I think that cake is baked.
But only but imagine you say that because you'd say, oh, well, McConnell wouldn't do that.
But come on.
I mean, the guy's done everything and pulled every string and lever because don't forget, I know they are as desperate as they can be.
You said it before.
They're not going to win a presidential election again.
Fucking Georgia is blue.
Texas is going to be blue pretty soon.
That's it.
Like they can't win Texas.
They're not winning any.
I don't think I don't think the Republican Party is suddenly going to have a come to Jesus moment.
They're gone.
They're a terminally ill party.
That's what I'm thinking.
It's not coming to you.
It's like, what's the complete nuclear option we can pull here to maintain any power?
I don't know.
Maybe I'm being naive, but I don't think they're going to pull that off in the next couple of days.
That being said, it wouldn't shock me at this point.
You know what I mean?
I just, I don't know, man.
I think we're going to remember today for the rest of our lives.
Oh yeah, this is 9-11-ish to me.
This is a new 9-11 moment.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's what it felt like exactly.
By the way, here's the thing.
I know it's because I was in the middle of doing another show offline, but on my phone, I got like a hundred texts from people saying, are you watching this?
Are you watching this?
And I couldn't even imagine that I finally got off and got caught up in half an hour.
But yeah, it's, and you know what?
It's another it's a Republican thing.
It's like it could have been really, really much worse.
I mean, those explosive devices could have gone off, they could have destroyed parts of the of the of the Capitol.
I mean, there could have been bloodshed all over the place.
But then again, what's gonna happen tomorrow, right?
They're gonna come back, right?
Yep.
You know, there'll probably be more people.
They're going to probably be like, hey, I want to be on TV.
I want to get a picture of myself in the.
Well, that's that's that man.
I ain't even thought about the possibility that some more people might be coming into DC.
I don't know.
I don't know what's going to happen.
I do have to say, as always, thank you for supporting us.
Thank you for listening.
We've been yelling and screaming about this.
And there's only so many times you can get called an alarmist or a crazy person before you start worrying.
Do you know what I mean?
And like we saw this coming, we knew this was coming and at least that the possibility was there.
And now that it's here, I don't know about you, I'm stunned and I'm pissed off, man.
I'm just stunned and pissed off.
This was so predictable and so avoidable. - But I'm also hoping that something good can come out of all this.
I would love it if something good came out of this.
Now, Josie in the comments of the questions asks, do you think this event maybe increases the chances of Trump being prosecuted once he leaves?
I don't know.
I mean, the chances are probably already baked in and locked in, right?
I would like to think that they're going to do that, certainly locally in New York.
But what do you think?
I mean, I think this probably does something to shake someone's stupor.
I don't, I don't think that, and again this is sad but true, I don't think that anybody wants to prosecute presidents for normal or, you know, quote-unquote normal presidential behaviors.
Like this is, this is above and beyond.
There is, I, listen, if we, if we have to go back on the air later tonight and talk about the fact that the President of the United States of America was impeached tonight, I wouldn't be shocked at this point.
I really wouldn't.
And at this point, if he gets arrested for this whole stunt, I wouldn't be shocked by that either.
I would a little bit in the way that he gets away with things and doesn't deal with consequences.
But yeah, I don't know.
They'd have to nail the language better than the first impeachment, which was, you know, abuse of power.
It was easily mocked.
And so this one would have to be inciting sedition, right?
Which is basically, it's pretty serious sounding.
That works for me.
But again, the time frame is too short, but that's why we said both, I think we both agree.
File the paperwork at least.
Just do it.
And maybe I'll tie him up enough so he can shut up.
It's the right thing to do.
And this is what we always come back to.
It's the right thing to do.
Impeach him.
And by the way, make the Republicans go on the record and say that they think he's innocent.
Make them do it.
Make them do it because those assholes need to be held accountable.
Ted Cruz shouldn't ever be in an office again.
Marco Rubio, who is just a profiling cowardice, should never be in an office again.
Mitch McConnell, never in office again.
McCarthy, Gohmert.
Come on.
Keep it going.
Nestor's partner.
Gates.
Gates should be gone.
All of them.
Exactly.
Devin Nunez, gone.
Hey, wait.
He got the middle of freedom, man. - But did he? - Just gone.
We didn't see it, but yes, we assume he got the Medal of Freedom.
Yeah, well, yeah, I think he's going to get awarded.
They need to go.
They need to go.
Howley.
Howley, absolutely.
Absolutely.
These people, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
These people deserve today to be the first line in their obituaries.
for the rest of their lives.
What has happened today?
Yeah, Jim Jordan, you know, Tom Cotton.
Oh my God, this is a it's a murderer's row.
It's 1927 Yankees is what it is.
But all right, everybody, we will keep our eye on this thing.
We will be back.
I was gonna say if necessary, but I didn't, I wouldn't, I didn't call this.
This was not on my bingo card.
Uh, you know, seditious attack of the, uh, I knew there was a possibility that something might happen today.
Uh, the form that it is taken, I do not think I was prepared for.
Right.
Um, Hey, seriously, thank you guys for everything.
Uh, I say it all the time when we sign off, I say, uh, be safe.
Um, Be safe.
There are a lot of really dangerous people in this country who are constantly looking for opportunities to accelerate things in order to gain power, and this is a perfect situation for some violence and malevolence.
So, seriously, keep your eyes out.
I don't know what's going to happen.
I don't know where this thing is going to go.
I promise we are going to handle this maturely and with respect to the situation.
We thank you very much, but yeah, be safe, okay?
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