The second impeachment trial of Donald Trump begins in the Senate, but already people are looking to move on and forget the whole sordid presidency. Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the chances for conviction and the very real threat of what happens if he isn't held accountable and the Republican Party continues on its fascistic trajectory. To unlock exclusive content, including Friday's Weekender episode, become a patron at http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast
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Once politicians attempt to control what you believe, they are no longer politicians.
They are, by definition, dictators.
And if they succeed in controlling what you believe, you are no longer a citizen.
You are not a free man.
You are a slave.
Next time Republicans are in power, they could reach back and impeach a former Democratic president.
I think that would be profoundly disruptive and a big mistake.
The First Amendment may protect the right of my Democrat colleagues to slander me and to lie, but it does not give them the right to try to abuse the power of the Senate.
I'm not going to be intimidated by the liberal mob.
Hey everybody, welcome to the Mockery Podcast.
I'm Jared Yates Sexton, as always here with Nick Alseman.
We're taping this on January 25th, 2021, which is a historic day in a few sort of, huh, ways.
It is the beginning of the first time that a former president is going through a trial by the Senate for impeachment.
And the first time that a president is going through that trial for the second time, I don't know how you feel about it, Nick.
I am not under any sort of... I have false ideas that he's going to be convicted or kept from running again or anything along those lines.
But it is important that we talk about, because obviously the Republican Party is now just like, you know, we don't endorse Storming the Capitol.
Not that we can prove it was Republicans who did that or Trump supporters.
It was probably Antifa or whatever.
But a lot of them are like, why are we worrying about this?
Why is this a thing that we're even doing?
What a waste of time.
But we really need to talk about the fact that number one, you have to hold a president accountable.
Number two, this guy should never be able to run for office again.
And number three, Everything that was happening with Trump, all of the problems we were having, all of the things that led to Trump are still here and they're still worsening.
How are you feeling about this?
You know, I'm not so sure I'm concerned a lot about that as much as the over under of when we're going to see Pat Leahy fall asleep as the presiding judge of the impeachment trial itself, because that's going to be the real fireworks there as he gets to do this because it's a former president and not a sitting president.
So we don't get to see John Roberts presiding.
So, you know, my prediction is they'll get 10, 10 senators to vote to convict him.
Which is seven short or eight short, whatever the number is.
Wow, that's a, that's a muckrake prediction.
Ten?
You think it's going to be, what, seven?
What is it?
No, I would, I would put it probably around four.
Wow.
Okay.
But, but the whole point is that, uh, by the way, nobody has ever deserved a second impeachment like Donald Trump.
Let's just say that.
Of the three presidents who have been impeached.
No one has deserved it more, and for a situation that needs a stark rebuke from the government of the United States of America.
And I will say, I've been talking about this for the past week, and we went over the inauguration on last week's Weekender Show.
And by the way, that's on Fridays every week.
If you want access to it, go over to patreon.com slash muckregpodcast.
By the way, a great episode.
People really were having fun with it on the message board.
I think it was a good time.
Yeah, you're missing out if you're not Patreon.
I think so, too.
But we talked about the inauguration, and we also talked about one of the lasting frustrations that I have, particularly over the last week.
And by the way, I mean, not only that the New York Times has already started reporting on what kind of, you know, time wear the president of the United States is wearing, but also the fact that so many people are so anxious to turn the page away from the horror that was Donald Trump, that a lot of the problems that he personified and worsened Are starting to slip through the cracks.
And we are watching those things start to grow and metastasize, possibly even move beyond Donald Trump and turn into their own crises.
And this impeachment, while I think is not going to get the quote unquote ratings or attention that the last one did, and a lot of people are going to say, why are we doing this?
It seems imperative that we do it.
And it seems imperative that he is actually convicted, even though I don't think it's going to happen.
Right.
We gave all the F's to McConnell in our last week's show on Patreon, so it's, you know, I don't want to be too redundant, but, you know, he's doing this whole thing where he's trying to ride the wave in between and where he's sort of signaling that maybe he'd be open to, you know, convicting him or certainly not lobbying to get him off.
We do know that, like, they worked very closely in concert in the first impeachment, which, you know, brought up a whole bunch of ethical issues right there.
That won't happen now, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they're gonna do anything differently.
The only thing we can maybe hang our hats on is that they're gonna actually have witnesses in theory.
By the way, Chuck Schumer just needs to go.
He's like allowing McConnell to filibuster without even being in control basically. - It's incredible. - Yeah, and it's just by talking, McConnell can just sort of talk and it's getting everybody all focused on it and not getting anything else done.
It's it's ridiculous I would be more than happy to see Schumer to step down have somebody else take over Hopefully to be when the next like, you know by the midterms, but nonetheless Did I get what we're talking about?
Did I just hijack it around that whole thing?
No, I I think the McConnell conversation is absolutely brilliant Like necessary, like we, and you were saying it before we started recording, we fought so hard to get Warnick and Ossoff elected and almost immediately, which by the way, I live in the blue state of Georgia.
I have two democratic senators in Georgia, and I have to tell you, I am astounded at how quickly the Democratic Party moved to neutralize any gain that they had made, any advantage they had made, and I think there's a few things that we need to talk about here.
We have to talk about the fact that Joe Manchin has already come out and said that he will not vote to end the filibuster.
For those of you who aren't familiar with how the filibuster works, this is the idea that there has to be sort of a super majority for anything to pass through the Senate.
That's not hard and fast.
That's not written down anywhere.
There's no rule in the Constitution that the Senate has to use a filibuster.
In fact, many times the filibuster has been overridden and people have moved on, and it requires a simple majority, which, check in my notes here, Nick, is how it's supposed to work.
But it's a quote unquote gentleman's agreement.
Joe Manchin has already given basic control of the Senate to Republicans who have no desire whatsoever to pass legislation and given up the game, which is there is a large amount of Democrats, and I hate to say it, Aren't interested in passing legislation.
They're not interested in using the government necessarily to do things.
There are Democrats who are interested in reform and making lives better, and then there are other ones that aren't particularly interested because they're drinking from the same trowel.
And it's important with McConnell to point out what you just said about riding that wave and trying to do whatever.
McConnell said that he would be open to removing Trump or convicting Trump because he knows that there are corporations out there and wealthy donors who can't take the PR hit to be seen as endorsing Trumpism anymore.
And those people, by the way, will come back and give their money to the Republican Party in six, seven months, as soon as the run-up to the midterms begin.
But all of this is just lip service.
It's a game, and it's been an absolute repulsive game from the very, very beginning.
But nobody plays this game better than Mitch McConnell.
Maybe, probably in the history of the Senate.
Probably one of the most destructive, obstructive members the Senate has ever seen.
I agree.
And I think that the notion, the hand-wringing that's going on about eliminating the filibuster from the Democratic side, everyone is so worried about what happens when they get back in control and then they're going to pass everything.
They would pause for a second!
Yeah.
To do it, right.
They'll get rid of it anyway, right.
So the point is, here's our chance to actually, because they're not going to get any of these things through with 60 votes.
Nothing.
So here's the chance to at least get some stuff done.
And again, my whole take has always been this way.
The clock is absolutely ticking from now until the midterms and then a little bit beyond that as far as they have to get concrete legislation done that is visible, that people can see in front of them and actually helps people's lives so they can start to change the hearts and minds.
You talk a lot about getting people who are in terrible dire straits financially relief by better jobs, better economy, all those things that they could feel.
Well, we need the infrastructure as well to be done that way too, which is what they can affect.
And that could very well change those hearts and minds and get more people to vote Democrat because they're like, oh, that Senate, they actually passed some good things.
And I've benefited from that the last couple of years.
If they don't do that, then they're going to lose control of the Senate.
They're going to lose control of the House.
It's going to be, by the way, can you picture that landscape?
Imagine Biden for two years in the White House without the House and the Senate behind him.
I can.
You can?
I can.
I can imagine that.
Because I have to tell you, and listen, we would be remiss if we didn't point this out, so far Biden has knocked it out of the park with executive orders.
I would love it if we could get rid of student debt.
Just get rid of that.
But like, I mean, you know, we have so much of Trump's absolute ruin being swept away by executive orders because the presidency of the United States of America has become all-powerful, which we have to talk about before this thing is over because the Supreme Court went ahead and said emoluments are We don't need to worry about blatant corruption in the presidency?
The point is moot.
Come on!
He's gone, guys.
Can't we move on?
Let's join hands and engage in a little bit of unity.
But what we're actually looking at, the clock isn't just ticking.
This is the fastest that the clock has ever been ticking since 2008.
Since Obama got in and the economy was getting ready to fall into the Grand Canyon.
Full of flames, right?
That clock is already moving incredibly fast.
And if something doesn't happen, so like for instance, this stimulus relief bill, they're already dragging their feet about it, man.
They're already like, I don't know, 1.9 trillion dollars.
That sounds like a lot.
And by the way, have you guys looked around?
There's a deficit.
I don't know who did this deficit.
We probably need to take care of it.
And by the way, anytime that we make that joke from now on, we have to point out deficits don't matter.
The federal government can run deficits.
That's one of the reasons why we have one.
So it can run deficits, and on top of that, it's good for the economy for them to pump money into the economy.
It is a good thing.
But don't forget that it's not just that.
They're saying, you know, the welfare queen is the subtext going on here.
We have to somehow incentivize people to want to work on their own and not be giving handouts.
When we're in the middle of a pandemic, people have lost their jobs.
When you're 62 years old and you lose your job, Like, there is a lot really coming back from that.
You probably relied on the fact that you'd be working for another 5, 6, 7, 8 years, whatever, and now that that's gone, it probably doesn't come back.
Like, you need help from the government.
Listen, there is the issue of, and I gotta look a little bit more carefully, but they're throwing out the word like $300,000 is below that, you get the money.
Just go!
And I would be against – if someone made that much money in a year, they don't necessarily need $1,600 or whatever they want to hand out either.
So I'm a little bit sensitive to that, the number.
But at this point, like they just got to get it out either way.
Just go.
The whole problem is that the Democratic Party constantly compromises its principles or shoots itself in the foot because – my god, Nick.
Can you imagine if the Republicans said that they were fiscally liberal?
Can you imagine if they said that?
Tax and spend liberals!
Tax and spend liberals!
And they have been so afraid of that that they have capitulated in every single debate.
Every single one of them.
And they always start out too small.
They always do because they're afraid of that number being too large.
So they go ahead and they kneecap themselves and go small.
The problem is right now, our economy, man, is so bad and it's in such trouble.
It's in such a perilous situation.
This idea of giving Americans too much money is one of the only things that might actually save things because what ends up happening is that the companies who rely on or the people who hire people aren't hiring people.
Because they are taking all of the money that they have and they're just throwing it into the stock market.
It's like a hot air balloon.
Just throw it in and then take it out.
Throw it in, take it out.
And that's one of the reasons why we have zero percent, you know, interest rates.
They just keep throwing it in.
They're not hiring anybody.
Here's the problem, Nick.
If you don't give people jobs, they can't buy your shit.
Yep.
You want to talk about rents?
Oh my god!
Yeah, it's frightening.
So either we are going to have the entire economy collapse, or the government is going to take an active role, which history tells us has to happen.
So I agree with you, like should people, 300,000 or whatever, whatever, but let's not throw the baby out of the bathwater.
Let's just go do it, get it done, and then we'll figure it out as we go.
And chances are we need more stimulus bills of like a trillion dollars.
Just go.
Just get it done.
And they are dragging their feet on it.
And this whole situation, again, going back to Mitch McConnell, he's getting everything that he wants, man.
I mean, this guy is playing.
I mean, it's like watching Queen's Gambit.
He's playing speed chess against 50 Democrats in the Senate.
And Chuck Schumer is sitting up there and he's like, well, in the interest of unity, we're going to share power.
And can you imagine?
What McConnell must have thought when he heard that, and now he's playing games with the committees?
I mean, it is a profile in capitulation right now, and I could scream about it for days.
I could lose my mind about it.
Oh, I mean, you know, the whole thing, the thinking, the thought patterns, the personality traits of the Republicans, there's a theme we talk about all the time.
And we saw Rand Paul, you know, go on and refuse to even acknowledge that the election was fair.
You know, Stephanopoulos, you know, to his credit, you know, raked him over the coals for five minutes about it, where he wouldn't even say, he wouldn't acknowledge that it was not stolen.
How sick and damn tired are you?
Of Rand Paul.
Him and Marco Rubio are just the biggest pains in my ass, man.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
Well, they're not because you got to put on Cruz and Haldi and those guys, too.
And by the way, OK, you do.
So they they piss me off in a different way, man.
So Rand Paul, Rand Paul comes out and pushes these conspiracy theories and then Just like absolutely poisons the well at every turn.
Marco Rubio's entire act is to be like, I am a respectable Republican.
And let me tell you, there are some really crazy people over here who will string you up in the middle of the night.
We should probably just go ahead and give them whatever they want.
Congratulations!
That's your entire political position.
Then you have Ted Cruz, who by the way, Nick, I was talking about this.
So most Sundays I do this bourbon talk and Nick showed up last night.
I was happy.
I was like, oh, they're my friend.
I know that guy.
And I don't know if you heard me say this, but have you noticed that Ted Cruz kind of enjoys getting humiliated in public by people?
He enjoys people just beating the living hell out of him.
He's one of those, huh?
So, there's something weird there, like watching him with Seth Rogen.
So, Ted Cruz is his own thing.
And by the way, we'd be remiss if we didn't talk about the facts.
Nick, this story comes out of Missouri, and somebody was doing some digging in Josh Howley's past.
And listen, what a great guy this Howley is.
Back in the 1990s when Timothy McVeigh, have you heard of this guy, Nick?
I have, I have.
This Timothy McVeigh guy?
It says here that he bombed a building, the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.
It says he killed a couple hundred people and that he was a conspiracy theorist.
And it turns out that Josh Hawley at the time wrote, many of the people populating these movements are not radical right-wing pro-assault weapon freaks as they were originally stereotyped.
Which by the way sounds interesting right now, doesn't it?
Dismissed by the media and treated with disdain by their elected leaders, these citizens come together and form groups that often draw more media fire as anti-government hate gatherings.
Glad that guy's in the Senate, man.
Yeah, but you didn't tell us how old he was when he wrote that.
Yeah, was he just like a... You know, a high schooler.
I believe he was a high schooler writing for the paper.
High school!
He has held these beliefs since high school.
You know who else had beliefs like that in high school?
Stephen Miller.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
Because they're a bunch of sickos.
They're a bunch of fascistic sickos.
And that's what's happening in the Senate.
While everybody's patting themselves on the back and being like, we are acting like gentlemen today.
This is how you share power and we will show the world.
Like you are dealing with some really fucked up people, Nick.
Yeah, well the Hawley thing is interesting because, you know, I kind of start to think that maybe he's a Manchurian candidate.
This guy is so ambitious.
Now, ambition is supposed to be the thing that Americans have and it's supposed to be good.
But here's a guy that didn't even serve a year as Attorney General in Missouri because the Senate seat opened up and he decided he wanted to run for that instead.
After telling people he would not do that.
Right.
He floored it from the moment he was in high school writing for the paper until now.
He is 2024.
In fact, somebody said that they went to high school with him and in his yearbook, I think he signed it like President 2024.
This has been on his radar the entire time.
You know, I don't mind ambition, but you got to be careful when guys are willing to just, you know, adopt any kind of ideology to do that, which is exactly what he did.
Well, and this is what we need to talk about, which is, so, OK, we're not going to convict Trump in the Senate.
We're not going to get him on emoluments.
You know, he's just going to go.
And by the way, we talked about this before we started recording.
He opened up the office of the former president today.
So does that mean he's not going to run again?
Who the man?
I can't even wrap my head around that.
How can you have the office of the former president if you're going to be running, you know, as president again later?
I don't know.
I mean, he just needs someone to name these offices for him instead of him choosing them.
The office of the former president.
I wish it was like the office of President Emeritus.
Something along those lines.
Well, it'd be right down the hall from the Ministry of Silly Walks.
So Trump opens up that and everyone's just like, thank God we're back to normal and thank God America is back on track.
Meanwhile, let's take a quick survey of the people who, and I was getting ready to say like the torch or the baton that Trump was running with, but let's not lie, he wasn't running anywhere.
He, they handed it to him and he dropped it on the ground.
Torch is a good, is a good image.
The, the torch, as they torch a Capitol.
So we have, we have, we have Holly who has been running for president since he was in the fourth grade.
Right?
Ted Cruz, whose family has said in public that they believe he was chosen by God to save America.
Right?
That's where Ted Cruz is coming from.
Marco Rubio ruined everything that he ever did because he got thirsty.
Which is still one of the funniest moments in the history of American politics.
Just amazing.
But then, let's take a look at these incoming people who are all interested in picking up this torch that Trump has left.
We have Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is like the official Congresswoman of QAnon, who on the first day, January 21st, the first day of Joe Biden's presidency, filed articles of impeachment against him.
Congratulations Marjorie Taylor, great.
We also have Boebert, who her entire life right now is trying to get thrown out of the Capitol for carrying a gun, right?
And by the way, let's also point out how much of American politics right now, particularly on the right, is wanting to get quote-unquote cancelled so you can make money off the perception that you have been quote-unquote cancelled.
They want to be fired.
They want to be kicked out of Congress.
They want to be censored.
They love playing the victim, right?
Then you have Madison Cawthorn, who has lied about literally everything.
He started a company that, like, winked at every fascist in the world as he's going to Hitler's estates and talking about, you know, the Fuhrer.
Like, and on top of that, by the way, Sarah Huckabee Sanders today announced her candidacy to turn Arkansas into a theocratic state.
Like, these people are all not just dangerously ambitious, but they're also grifters, and they're also picking up the worst possible parts of Donald Trump's legacy to try and succeed him.
Here's what I took away from Madison Cawthorn's story, was that if a guy, especially that young, is so willing to lie about his own past, Then it just sort of leads to a clear path of him being a really corrupt politician.
And by the way, we learned that from, we didn't have to learn it from Trump, but certainly Trump has laid that out on his own.
But here's a guy that claimed that he was training for the Olympics and was on track to be on the Olympic team in Japan in 2020, whatever that year is, and they're not going to have it now because of COVID.
It's a simple phone call.
They asked some of the Olympians.
By the way, Paralympians are the most elite athletes in the world, just like the Olympians are.
You're not just going to say, I'm going to walk on the team and be part of the Paralympics.
This is a really serious thing that he was simply not even close to being part of.
Um, you know, and I kind of get it from like a young point of view, like, oh, I got to embellish and, you know, people always make up stuff on their resumes.
And that's basically what he's kind of probably doing.
But it just sets the precedent right now that he has no sense of honor and dignity and honesty.
And clearly he's just being propped up.
Oh, hey, here's a good-looking guy who's in a wheelchair.
This is gonna be great.
We're gonna be able to like really milk this.
This is what it felt like certainly in the National Convention, the Republican Convention.
It was like, let's try him up there.
Oh, yeah, he's gonna stand up at the end of his speech, too.
I stand up for America.
Yeah, it's really frightening because he's the kind of guy that could be manipulated to whatever end these guys want.
- Well, the whole point of it is that there is, there's a sickness in the culture right now.
There is a problem.
And, you know, I was talking with people the other day and I was like, I have bad news for you.
Like if we're gonna make this country better, some of the people listening to this podcast, watching live streams, whatever, some of you are gonna have to get involved in politics.
You know, like maybe you're gonna run for a school board or maybe you're gonna run for, you know, a PTA council or a city council, or maybe you're gonna have to like go volunteer Like, we have to take back politics towards representation, right?
Because it has been completely captured by spectacle.
And all of these sickos that we just talked about, Cruz, Howley, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Boebert, Cawthorn, Huckabee Sanders.
All of these people are live-action role-playing to build up their egos, make a bunch of money, and like be stars.
You have kids.
Who's the the YouTube guy that was going to like Suicide Forest?
Oh, yeah.
Jake?
Jake Paul?
Yeah.
There's a Jake and a Logan.
I don't care enough.
It's one of them.
Jake Paul was a guy boxing Nate Robinson the other night.
Very, very embarrassing.
Yeah, he laid Nate Robinson out.
But yeah, one of the Pauls, I want to say it's Jake Paul, and like, you know, became like a YouTube celebrity and got so caught up in the celebrity-ness of it, the spectacle of it, the money of it, the power of it, the focus of it, that he was just like, I'll do whatever you want.
Yeah, it's Logan, by the way, just so you know.
Logan is the... Suicide Forest guy.
This is the oldest I've felt in a very long time.
Well, we don't want you to get sued like Giuliani's getting sued by... For a billion dollars by Dominion, which all these people who have pushed these conspiracy theories need to be sued.
Period.
But the whole point is that we've gotten to such point, it's like, it's like Boebert.
Boebert has spent her entire adult life quote-unquote triggering libs.
She built a business about it.
She made a restaurant where everybody carries in guns so liberals would get pissed off about it and Republicans would come in and carry their biggest guns that they possibly could.
They are play-acting fascistic, anti-democratic politicians, and if it works for them, they're not going to stop.
They're not going to suddenly one day be like, I think this was a bad idea and I need to move away from it.
Which Trump has shown us.
Trump was play-acting being a demagogue and he turned into an actual demagogue.
Like, that's what happens.
I think the thing is, you know, the complacency that sets in because a guy like Biden comes in and we know he's not going to abuse the Emoluments Clause.
He's not going to be blatantly corrupt because he doesn't have golf courses to go visit and whatever.
You know, and we could get back to thinking, oh, OK, we don't have to do anything about this because, you know, look, he he's not abusing the issue.
And we never had that problem before, really.
But I can't help but think that, like especially the emoluments clause being thrown out basically because he's not in power anymore, Trump.
You know, I can remember the emoluments clause was like a little cute little storyline on the West Wing when Judd Bartlett accepted a gift from, I think it was Hong Kong, And, you know, he was actually sticking the eye in China for not recognizing, whatever it was.
And now, it's like, it is a really serious thing.
Obviously, he used his hotel to get curry favor and make money off of all these other, you know, international, all these other countries.
So the point being that the fear is going to be that we're going to just get complacent very quickly, gloss over all these things and not actually refine the laws that are in place and add to them to really make sure that doesn't happen because we now know it's clear that the Republicans have no problem with this.
They will not denounce him for the embelluments.
They will not denounce him for corruption or going to play golf as much as he did or any of those things.
They're looking to do it.
In fact, his cabinet was the most corrupt cabinet we've ever had.
They were grifting.
I probably think that Trump told them to do this.
Go ahead and go buy all that silverware for your office that costs $30.
You know what I mean?
That necessarily wasn't like... I don't know if they were freelancing.
So the bottom line is that's what we need to watch out for because the next people, and certainly the entire Republican Party, is looking to get in on this a lot more now that they realize that there's nobody blocking the doors.
It's almost like... You know when the lady got shot in the Capitol?
There's this moment when the fucking cops just leave now They were gonna they're waiting for the riot cops with a gear to come and come in But like in that 30 seconds where they just like oh, we're gone because these guys in the helmets are coming in That's when they broke all the glass.
That's when she goes through the thing.
It was like hey nobody is here to guard this we're gonna take advantage of this because we can and by the way just to go ahead and piggyback off of that is We've talked about it.
So many people were in the Capitol filming themselves committing federal crimes because the President of the United States of America was a reality TV star celebrity.
And all you try and do is find an angle.
You're just trying to find a way to strike it rich.
If I break into the Capitol, if I try to If I try and quote-unquote stop the steal or hashtag stop the steal, maybe somebody will send me Bitcoin, or they'll tip me, or they'll buy my t-shirts, or they'll subscribe to it.
It goes back to what we talked about with Jennifer Taub the other day.
It all has consequences.
And so people are going to tell you, and by the way, even on the left people are like, yeah, we should convict him in the Senate, but I'm not really worried about that.
You should be worried about this!
This is actually real deal political stuff.
Because not only should Trump not be able to run for office again, but if he is not punished, everything you just brought up, why not do it?
I mean the presidency is almost absolutely infinitely powerful and beyond the reproach of the legal system at this point.
Why not do it?
Why wouldn't you accept help from a Russia or whoever in the hell else was helping them get elected?
Well, Jared, if we do this and we impeach a president who's not in office anymore, well, then the Republicans are going to go and impeach a Democrat who was in office.
I'm like, great.
Let's go impeach Jimmy Carter.
Let's do that.
Let's find something he might have done or something like that.
What are they going to do?
Clinton already got impeached, so they took care of that already.
What are they going to do?
Trying to impeach Obama for, I don't know, what?
Drone strikes in the Middle East?
I don't know.
What would he possibly do?
I mean, yeah, it would be the tan suit.
I mean, obviously.
Or saluting without the coffee.
Oh, he saluted with the coffee.
That's right.
And this is such an absurd thing.
The idea that it's just going to turn into a race war of, you know, like reciprocal violence between the parties.
No, this is one of the ways you break the fever.
That's unity.
you say, no, there, there are lines that you cannot cross.
And by the way, you hit the pedal to the metal and you make sure that the Republican party has to go on record accepting this.
That's unity.
That's the unity that they're all talking about.
They're the ones who fucked up They're the ones who supported all this, or silently agreed to go along with this whole thing.
They're the ones who need... It's not the Democrats that need to say, oh, we'll come together and we'll make some capitulations.
No, it's the Republicans need to acknowledge in a very public and perhaps humiliating way that they were wrong.
That's the problem here, and we're never going to get anywhere.
We know they're not going to do that, and we're never going to get anywhere from that.
I mean, that's the problem.
And here is part of what's going on.
And I assume that our listeners, as they should be, are already frustrated by how the media is treating this entire situation.
And they should be.
Because the media wants to turn the page.
And you saw this with the inauguration.
You've seen it in the past couple of days.
It's the media saying, oh God, the Trump years.
Four years.
Can you believe that we had that bullshit?
Thank God we're back to normal.
And now we can have conversations about, is Joe Biden wearing the Rolex of his dead son?
Right?
Did Biden do the right thing?
Is he reaching across the aisle the right way?
Are the Democrats going to reach across the aisle?
Heaven forbid they go beyond the filibuster.
And meanwhile, Mitch McConnell's over here sharpening his knives.
Democrats have been completely entrapped by these media narratives and the ideas that they will be radicals or liberals or leftists or whatever.
It has gotten so bad that it has more or less paralyzed the party.
I mean, I can't even add to that.
That's perfect.
And it's just, it's deflating.
That's the problem.
Because, you know, we've been talking around this for a long time about how we can't seem to, you know, we're never going to come together on any of these things.
In fact, you know, whatever we're arguing about and yelling about with like what Trump was doing, they were always turning around and saying the same exact thing about the Democrats, you know.
So, it's one of those moments where, I mean, I suppose one thing we can hang our hats on is that the trends and the elections as they go forward in all these states, it seems to be trending towards blue.
Right?
Texas will probably be blue sooner than later.
As long as there are elections.
As long as electoral norms hold.
As long as Republicans will say, oh, you bested me this time.
Good luck.
Which, by the way, is part of the problem here.
If the Trumps showed them, you can deny you lost the election, make a shit ton of money, get a bunch of movement behind you, a bunch of support.
The people we just mentioned, Nick, Taylor Greene, Boebert, Cawthorn, And Howley and Cruz.
These are people that right now are existing and pushing fascistic, anti-democratic ideas.
Meanwhile, the media is pretending that everything is fine.
We have to start calling this stuff out and say everything is not fine.
We are still in a crisis and treat it as such.
And that's how you break the fever.
Otherwise, I don't know how you feel about it, but like, this road is not a good one.
This road doesn't go anywhere good.
So you want Schumer to start, you know, calling people out?
I want Schumer to, like, move away from the podium.
Right.
You know what I mean?
And I understand that he, well, he's not the majority leader.
What are they calling them now?
The co-leaders?
You know, I don't even know.
I missed that, and that's really horrible.
I assume there's some...
No, you have to point this stuff out.
Every time you go in the Senate and you look across the aisle and you see Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, you're like, I can't do this!
These are traitors!
In light of how this is going, as far as this whole Coe thing that they're doing, remember when I was really concerned about how the Democrats really don't have 50 Senators in the Senate?
They have 48.
And these other two.
So I was always very worried that McConnell was going to pull some sort of shenanigan that's indicated that the only way to have the majority of the House or the control of the majority of the House is if you have the most senators.
Now, of course, that would maybe trigger the two guys to go to become Democrats, I suppose.
But still, I'm worried.
I feel like there's some stuff going to happen here that they're going to end up being able to control the agenda again.
Well, I'll tell you this.
Joe Manchin, as Joe Manchin does, is enjoying himself right now.
If you think Joe Manchin has picked up a restaurant tab or a bar tab in the past couple of months, you're out of your mind.
I mean, he is being winded now.
Like, if you got up tomorrow and you heard that Joe Manchin had become an independent, would you be shocked, Nick?
Would you?
Would you be shocked at all, really?
No.
I mean, he's kind of a Republican, isn't he?
Yeah, in West Virginia.
I mean, that's the whole point.
There has to be so much weirdness going on because things are so malleable right now.
And the 50-50 Senate is especially weird.
And the fact is, even the talk over the stimulus package.
It's, it's, man, it makes me twitch.
It's so frustrating.
I mean, I don't think we're going to be crazy by talking about the Democrats in a way that they are actually trying to act in good faith.
Sure.
I don't want, I mean, cynical people would say, oh, they're all horrible and they all do these things.
But like, look at the past.
I sort of want to, you know, frame this in the notion of, so like, you know, why do we have, you know, Obamacare, for instance, like when, when he said you wouldn't, you're not going to lose your doctor.
And then that turned out to be not true.
Like that meant they had to destroy Obamacare.
For that one thing that ended up not being the right way he hoped it was going to be, right?
Why do they have 12 Benghazi investigations?
By the way, I didn't make that point clear about Obama.
They wanted to defeat him in 2012, right?
That was their whole goal.
Why do they have all these Benghazi investigations?
Because they knew Hillary was going to run.
And by the way, it worked.
This is how they found the emails.
So, you would argue that, like, okay, the Democrats are doing this so that, like, they can hurt Trump so he can't run again, right?
They're not doing that, right?
This is really... No.
It seems like it was an affront on our Constitution.
Yes.
And it was a seditious act.
But... The President of the United States of America whipped up a crowd of his slavish followers and sicked them on the legislative branch and his own vice president.
with the help of, you know, Holly and everybody and Cruz.
So the question there is that maybe they took that frame of mind where like, no, we need to like make this more like sinister where we're going to, you know, only use it to our advantage to make sure that he gets, you know, he can't run again.
And by the way, if they did that, then this impeachment would probably be opened up to a lot more things.
They just keep throwing shit and presenting evidence of all these different things, hoping that one of these things is going to stick.
One of these investigations is going to find another extra thing they can do to stick them against the wall.
Like that's what they need to do.
And as a result, they're going to play the game like the proper way and they're going to keep it really focused and myopic.
And as a result, you know, it's not going to be damaging enough to Trump where he'll be able to run again or all these guys are going to be able to continue running again on that same platform.
Well, and by the way, like the elephant in the room, the diseased, terminally ill elephant in the room is that a big chunk of this is about disproving the big lie.
Like if you know what you're doing on the Democratic side, or if you're a Republican who believes in the rule of law and doesn't want your party to continue to descend into fascistic madness, You should use the impeachment proceedings, the trial, to dismantle the idea of the big lie that the election of 2020 was stolen from Donald Trump.
You should use it to show, no, he did this on purpose, he knew that he lost, or he employed people to try and overturn democracy and carry out a coup.
Because actually, that's what happened.
That's actually what happened.
It's not a story, it's not a narrative, it's not stagecraft.
That's actually what happened.
If you do that the right way, there's a possibility that you might be able to move a part of the party away from it.
But if you, I don't know if you've turned on Fox News in the past week, Nick, but it's just like, it's like somebody down in the bowels of the Fox News building was like sitting there looking at a giant lever and the lever said, Republican in charge, Democrat in charge.
And somebody yelled, Hey Tom, And they pulled the lever and all of a sudden they're like...
Caravans.
What's going on with TV shows?
You know, and they're like, have you watched a show lately?
There's a lot of cleavage, you know, with LGBTQ people.
And what is this deficit?
What does a deficit mean?
Are you going to pass debt on to your grandchildren?
And it just it has completely moved.
But this big lie is now baked into the cake unless they actually go after it.
Well, yeah, but no, but let's not forget that they also have this big thing about the caravan coming up from, you know, South America.
Oh, my God, Nick.
I didn't know there was a caravan coming.
Yeah, it's really serious.
It's something you have to be really scared about now.
You weren't scared about it two weeks ago or a month ago, but now you got to be really scared about it.
Nick, what if they come to my town?
What if they come to take my job?
The caravan, you say?
Yeah, yeah.
You know, and all the terrorists from the Middle East who are sneaking into the country with the caravan.
Ugh.
True.
you know, alongside the MS-13.
It's really a problem.
So, yeah, that is going to be interesting, too, because they're obviously, Fox News wants to return to some normal, you know, anti-Obama state.
But on their flank is they've got Newsmax and OANN, which I do feel like they're going to probably still remain in obscurity.
They just don't simply have the distribution that Fox has.
Well, and by the way, it's important to point out, because you joked about Rudy Giuliani being sued for over a billion dollars, Which, by the way, throw another billion on there.
What are we doing?
Go home!
Yeah, come on!
Three!
Go three billion or go home!
Like, OANN and Newsmax have actually been effectively checked by Dominion, this voting technology company, being like, we are not going to put up with your bullshit, slander, and libel.
You are now going to be libel for this.
Which, by the way, Hats off to him, because that's the right thing you need to do.
You don't cower in a corner and be like, don't call me a socialist, please.
I'll just, oh, tax cuts for the wealthy, whatever, that's fine.
Oh, don't talk bad about me on Tucker tonight.
Like, quit.
Like, you have to actually play hardball with these people.
You have to actually take this thing seriously and cut it off at the root.
Or else, I'm sorry, dude, I don't want to live in a country where Madison fucking Cawthorn is my fucking president.
You know, and Boebert's his VP.
I don't want that country.
Get me out.
Pull me out of the simulation.
Done.
Yeah, unplug from the Matrix.
I hear you.
Yeah, I would think Hawley is the guy that's going to be, you know, first in line for that list.
And that's another one I really dread.
But again, Manchurian candidate.
I don't know, man, because some of these guys have been corrupted.
We know, like, listen, Rand Paul's got the stink of Russia on him as well.
Ron Johnson, some of these guys.
You know, listen, I know I'm at the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, which I sort of am.
You know, there's something there that, you know, the motivations are concerning.
Now, maybe, are we ever going to find out, like, are we ever going to get Trump's taxes?
Do we ever get to see that now that he's done?
No.
You know, they have them, I thought, you know, in New York.
So, you know.
Well, we might.
Man, that'd be a weird day, wouldn't it, for that just to drop?
I'm pinning all of my hopes in New York on those trials, or those cases right now.
That's all I do.
Just like I pin all my hope on Mueller.
So, well, real fast, just to go ahead and put a pin in this thing, because this is something we're going to talk about.
It's not a conspiracy theorist idea to believe that the Republican Party would be more than happy to partner with anti-democratic movements around the world.
They already have.
The reason why the Republican Party got so cozy with Russia isn't necessarily because there were a bunch of videotapes lying around of prostitutes.
The reason is because they both believe in white identity evangelicalism being a useful tool to keep minority and vulnerable populations in check.
They have the same idea!
It just so happens that in Russia, it is the rule of the land, and the Republicans here are like, that looks pretty good.
I kind of like that.
How do we get there?
And if you think that one of these assholes that we've been talking about wouldn't be fine with that, like, you're out of your mind!
If they're willing to go ahead and threaten the democratic, shared society that we live in, in order for profit and fame and power, absolutely.
They're more than happy to go that route.
And that's as happy of an ending as we're going to get today.
I have to tell you.
There's not a whole lot coming back from that.
We will have, again, an extra show on Friday, our Weekender Edition.
If you're interested in that, go over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
A more casual broadcast.
We talk about what we're watching.
We go through the thing.
We pull the curtain back a little bit.
We'll talk about what we're working on when things are coming out.
We'll have an announcement about our audio documentary on Friday.
I'm talking about my juice cleanse.
Listen, the people want to hear all about your juice cleanse.
So all you have to do is go over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
Until next time, you can find Nick over at Can You Hear Me?
