Why Are Dems So Bad At Impeachment? Weekender Preview
In this week’s installment of The Weekender, Nick Hauselman and Jared Yates Sexton discuss the opening of the impeachment trial, the release of the first episode of the “A Certain Route To Failure” documentary series, and analyze fascist propaganda as a means of warning against future attempts. To unlock this episode, and additional bonus content, become a patron at http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast
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I'm Nick Hauselmann and this is an announcement to let you know that we are going to be doing a new series called The Weekender over on Patreon that will appear every Friday.
And this is a little sneak preview so you can get a handle on what it's like and why you'd want to go over there and join the Patreon and be part of that community which has been incredible and amazing with a lot of people there and a lot of great conversations.
So Here it is, check it out, and feel free to check out the actual Patreon as well at patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
Hey everybody, welcome to the weekender edition of the Muckrake Podcast.
I'm J.D.
Sexton here with Nick Hauserman.
First and foremost, thank you for being a patron.
You are awesome.
We appreciate you.
We hope you're having a decent week.
I don't think I can say the same.
We're gonna talk about some stuff, but before we do any of that, We have to talk about this absolute sham of a bullshit impeachment trial.
And I just want to say first and foremost, just to get a couple things down, because we're going to obviously talk more about it next week, but Nick, I don't know how it's feeling for you, but a couple of weeks off from Trump and his gaggle of lying assholes and the entire drama around Trump, I I guess I got comfortable for a few minutes or a few days and hearing all the lies and seeing all the stuff from January 6th, it exhausted me.
It really re-exhausted me.
It was like it picked up right back where it was and for me it had like a massive sort of intellectual, emotional, physical effect on me.
It was awful.
We could take a cue from Nixon and how long it took the country to recover from that.
I could argue maybe that we never ever really did recover from that, certainly because it was the first time that we could see up close and personal how corrupt our government could be.
But it's gonna take years to get over this.
And you're right, it's triggering to have to hear him again.
Yesterday I was like getting on edge again hearing him talk and having to go through all these things.
I'm disgusted by so many things.
I guess we can tip it off by the fact that a huge chunk of Republican senators today didn't even bother sitting in the chamber.
How disgusting is that?
I mean, it was bad enough that Hawley's up in the gallery with his feet up playing Tetris on his phone, but now they don't even bother to show up.
And then what Lindsey Graham said yesterday about how it was disgusting and it was a display of whatever.
It's just, it is, he is disgusting.
They met with the defense.
Oh, well that was my next point.
They met with the president's defense today.
Like, the fact that, and you know, we've been talking about this, this has been a reoccurring theme in the podcast, and we've talked about how, like, it's almost refreshing, like, how, like, unscrupulous these people are.
You know, and they don't even manage to hide it.
This behavior over the past couple of days is so disgusting and so Obviously repulsive.
That to watch it, it's literal abuse being heaped upon the American public.
And it's a total disregard and a total middle finger to the rule of law and democratic institutions and the Constitution and anything even approaching political duty or oaths.
It is so nauseating.
Well, do you remember that this already happened?
Mitch McConnell was strategizing with the White House as well.
And that was worse because he was the head of the Senate at that point, that last year.
So that's not even necessarily new to hear like, oh, Ted Cruz is going to go meet with them and his superior intellect as far as law goes, which apparently it is.
I don't know.
He certainly doesn't display any of that intellect anywhere else in his duties.
But yeah, it's like I keep sort of arguing we have to change the impeachment altogether and so that these senators are not the ones who are the jury.
Give him a fucking jury of his peers.
Really do it like a trial.
I think it would probably take six months to choose a jury, which might be the one issue.
But it's a worthless exercise.
It's a worthless exercise.
And by the way, were you watching last night when Mike Lee lost it?
I did, I was listening to it, yeah.
So for those who, and by the way, our listeners, if you have not been watching this stuff, good for you.
I mean, really, good for you.
Wait, wait, wait, hang on for one second though.
The Democrats, the case they're laying out is brilliant.
It's unbelievable.
It's worth watching it for that at least, but it's brilliant, except for, we'll get into them in a minute, but keep going.
Well, the footage and the narrative that the Democrats have been laying out has actually, I mean, and I say this as somebody, listen, I hate Donald Trump.
I think he is just an absolutely repulsive, maybe the embodiment of the worst parts of America and humanity.
I truly, honestly believe that.
But I have to tell you.
The case that they have laid out is open and shut.
I say that objectively.
It is obvious that he incited a riot and a group of people to overrun the Capitol and to threaten his own vice president and the legislative branch, period.
But if you all haven't been watching this or listening to it, there was a moment last night where Mike Lee, like a maniac, Just stood up and started saying, I would like the record to be corrected about a quote attributed to me.
Why?
Because the people in the chamber were not just witnesses to this situation.
They have played roles in creating this situation.
They enabled the criminal to commit the crime.
This would never fly anywhere else.
There's nowhere else where you would have a trial like this.
It's madness.
They cited a report in a publication of what Mike Lee said about the phone call he got that was mistakenly dialed him instead of Tuberville.
Do you know who the source of this article was?
His fucking chief of staff.
OK, so first of all, the only way Mike Lee is screaming out of this is he probably didn't say exactly word for word what they had said in that reporting.
And so that gives him that little bit of a wiggle room to like have the biggest umbrage like a fucking idiot, like a bat out of hell kind of horrible thing.
But even worse than that was we get to see Pat Leahy bumble through the response and have to have it talked through him by the house manager or whoever was next to him having to walk him through it.
He is not up for this either.
Schumer has to come over and hold his hand.
They have to like recess for five minutes or whatever to figure out what's going on.
Now, the response was was fun.
You're like, who gives a shit what you said?
It's not germane.
I mean, it's germane, but it's not like crucial to our case.
Whatever you want to do, Mike, whatever.
We don't give a shit.
But like, just, you know, take a loot or something like that was all I had to say because he the guy was insane.
You know what I mean?
Like, we don't have lewds.
Although I am reminded of, you know, lewds in Wolf of Wall Street.
So maybe there are still a few left somewhere in the world.
I guess they're called gummies these days, right, Jerry?
I have to tell you, Nick, one of the best parts about having you as a co-host is sometimes you will just say shit that I never would have ever imagined that you were going to say.
I never thought that during the taping of this podcast you would say, take a lewd.
That's incredible.
Mike Lee just, and part of it, and folks, I don't mean this jokingly, like Mike Lee is an idiot.
Like he's not a competent, capable, talented politician.
This whole thing was just a man stomping and yelling and just making an absolute ass out of himself.
And you're right about Leahy.
I mean, it was it was really rough to watch.
And I have to tell you that one of the problems, and this goes back to our episode that came out on Tuesday, the Democrats, some of them, the House managers in particular, are killing it.
Absolutely killing it.
And it doesn't hurt, by the way, that we're comparing them to Trump's defense, who have been laughably bad.
Laughably bad.
But, the Senate Democrats and the Democratic leadership is just like, you know what, we're fighting a symbolic battle here, and let's go through it, let's have the Republicans vote to acquit him, and then we'll move on with our lives.
Which, I don't know about you, but watching this trial, It is more obvious to me than ever.
He has to be convicted.
He has to be convicted.
Donald Trump is not only guilty, but if he is acquitted, it is going to have far-reaching and serious consequences.
I was listening to Fox News for a few minutes, and it's a lot of yelling on that side.
A lot of outrage.
Of course we don't like the fringe of our party.
You know, the insurrectionists were the fringe and they wanted to denounce them.
But, you know, nothing happened to the BLM people over the summer, so then why should anything happen to these people?
You know what I mean?
And the other criticism was, and believe me, when they lay out their case and they can show the timeline, and also go back into December, how, you know, Eve Dershowitz comes out and goes, he wasn't an insider, he was an inviter.
I mean, I almost broke my TV.
Did he say that?
He did!
Dershowitz said that a couple days ago.
Now, here's the thing.
He's right.
He was both.
He did invite them all to come down.
Now, the legal standard for a thing like this would be the but-for argument.
But for Trump, would they have even been there and, you know, storming the Capitol?
No!
Only because Trump invited them, only because he incited them, were they there to do those things.
But not only do they want to attack the fact that it shouldn't be constitutional, they kind of put that away.
They've now shifted towards, well there's just no proof that Trump made them do it.
But how much proof do you need besides these assholes in the Capitol screaming, Trump!
This is for Trump!
Trump told us to do this!
I was there because Trump told me to be there and I didn't think it was going to be illegal!
That's all they have on the I completely agree.
I completely agree.
here's where the democrats have failed this is where they subpoena these assholes sit them down in the fucking chair and cross-examine them and they say that in person to all those people that is what's more compelling than what they're doing which is compelling but that's what's driving me insane they've rested their case they're not going to call uh you know witnesses uh i got more to say but i want to hear from you i completely agree i completely agree i
i think that this is this is a moment defining thing like like this we we had the president of the united states he invited all these people to washington dc he got a lot of people around him who were completely trumpeting the exact same conspiracy theory that he had created for
for months he had set up for at least a year and he had been using to not only enrich himself but to try and steal an election and then he got up in front of those people he told them the election had been stolen that their country was going to be ruined that his vice president Mike Pence had a choice to make and he made the wrong decision And then he told everyone, you have to be strong and basically you have to fight to the death or you're going to lose the country.
And he said, we're going to march to the Capitol and we're going to fight like hell.
And then they did it.
I don't know what else you really need, right?
Unless you're afraid to take the yell, unless you don't have any sort of a conscience, which is what's happening with the Republican Party.
Call the Department of Defense.
Call people in the police department.
Find out why the delay was so long in getting extra help there.
Find out why they didn't have any cops to begin with.
Call Trump's staff.
Yeah.
All the people around him.
What was Trump doing during this?
Because we've already heard that Trump was actually really happy about it for a minute or two and that he was actually really motivated by the whole thing.
Like talk about the fact that he did not want to say be peaceful.
Like he legitimately kept from saying being he had to be like argued into saying be peaceful. - He didn't want to do it.
Well, they have the subpoena.
There was three versions of that video he did, and the third one they released was the third one.
That was the best one with the shrug.
I want to know what the first two said.
Like, you know, if they still have those.
Sheldon Whitehouse comes out, who's Senator of Vermont or Rhode Island.
Where's he from?
Rhode Island, maybe?
One of those New England states saying that the calls from Rudy Giuliani and Trump that erroneously went to instead of Tuberville they went to Mike Lee.
I mean it's a stretch to some degree but he was thinking that they were doing that to continue to stall the process to give these insurrectionists more time to get into the chambers and really cause havoc.
Otherwise if that's not the case how can they have been so Disconnected that they had no idea what was going on because it sounded like Tuberville had to tell Trump Oh, they've already whisked the white the vice president away How would Trump have not known that by that point?
He's got Secret Service.
He's got the everything in his fingertips for terms of intelligence It's either none of these things add up and the only thing they point to is that he certainly That might be true, maybe.
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