Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman dissect CPAC and how clear it is that the Republicans are operating from a position of no policy/anti-progressivism. And as the Big Lie continues to be spread by the entire party, they examine how intoxicating it's been, and as a result, doing something not thought possible: expanding the size of their base.
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Mr. McLaughlin just gave me numbers that nobody's ever heard of before.
More popular than anybody.
That's all of us.
It's all of us.
Those are great numbers and I want to thank you very much.
Those are incredible numbers.
I came here and he was giving me 95%, 97%, 92%.
They don't want you to be able to protect yourself.
They don't want you to have freedom of speech.
They don't want you to have freedom of religion.
In Colorado, they don't want us to have our public lands.
They are the party of no.
We are saying no.
We are saying a big hell no to all of their no's.
They're saying everybody can get immunized.
We can have herd immunity everywhere and we're going to wear masks for the next 300 years.
And by the way, not just one mask, two, three, four!
You can't have too many masks!
How much virtue do you want to signal?
Hey, everybody.
Welcome to the Montclair Podcast.
I'm Jared Yates Sexton.
It's good to be back after a week off.
I hope you all enjoyed the first episode of our audio documentary, A Certain Route to Failure.
The first episode of Crisis of Confidence.
If you haven't already, go listen to that.
I think we nailed it.
And by we, I am speaking, of course, as the best co-host that anyone has ever had, Nick Hausman.
Nick, it's good to see you.
Great to have your dulcet tones back in my ears.
I am so happy that we get to come back after an episode off.
And, you know, it's it's a rough life out there.
We've we've all been suffering under the coronavirus, this terrible, terrible tragedy, economic calamity.
Social discord, cultural wars.
I feel like the Republican Party did us a favor, not just in holding their CPAC and absolutely losing their minds, but Nick, they literally, as if they had us in mind, as if they had been listening to the Muckrag Podcast saying, oh, you think you've seen crazy shit?
Just watch this.
And then what did they do?
They carded in a literal golden idol of Donald John Trump that their people could come and worship as a golden calf, as a sacrilegious object.
I feel like that's a welcome back, President, and I, for one, say thank you.
Yes, well, you know, the whole story is a little bit crazy.
The guy that made it didn't even have like a credential, wasn't really allowed, but he kind of like, you know, my dad tells a story when he was in the army.
He would get out of doing things because he'd carry a big heavy rope around his shoulder and they'd say, hey, where are you going?
Oh, I got to bring this rope somewhere, right?
Okay, well, the kind of thing...
That's my move if I'm helping people move.
You know what I mean?
I'm always trying to move something big and trying to get that ready to go.
That's my old standby.
It's smart.
Yeah, absolutely.
So this guy was like, yeah, I got this idol here.
Of course, you know, papers, whatever.
Sure, come on in.
Whatever, wheel it in.
The reaction to it was pretty concerning.
Even the little bit of video we saw of people basically worshipping this idolatry.
But hey, that's how you get into CPAC without a ticket.
Well, I do have to say that's pretty ingenious because it's like you're going into CPAC, the home of madness, and you've got a golden statue of Donald Trump on a dolly.
Like, who's going to stop you at that point?
Like, you belong here.
Like, if you didn't pay an entry fee, if you're not supposed to be here, welcome.
You are a part of us.
For those who haven't had a chance to see it, first of all, I would just say, go look at it.
It is an absolute marvel.
But it's also, I think, a really incredible metaphor and standing representation of the Republican Party.
Just to go ahead and describe it.
It's completely gold in terms of his skin.
And then you've got on the top half of Donald Trump, you have a suit, right?
Because you could never imagine him in anything besides that and maybe a golf polo.
But then because Republicans want to believe, you know, that Trump's cool, laid back and not at all, you know, an absolute freak of a person, he's wearing red, white and blue swimming trunks.
Flip-flops, because it's in Florida, baby.
And then, in one hand, he's got the United States Constitution, and in the other hand, a magic wand.
And what a weird confluence of bullshit ideas, images, signifiers that mean nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
I was going to say, was there ever a better argument for keeping the NEA?
But now I'm realizing, you know what?
It's probably the opposite.
It's like, let's stop funding people like the artists like this.
He only wanted $100,000 for it if he preferred to sell it because he spent his entire life savings to make it.
Wait, what?
Yeah.
It's on sale for $100,000.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
Hold on.
I'm sorry.
We have to bring this podcast to a halt.
Nick, are you telling me that that statue is for sale?
That's, yeah.
Isn't that why all artists make their art?
I mean, I make it for the love of the art, but... It sounds like he is, you know, not destitute, but it sounds like he spent most of his money he had left in his make account to make this thing.
And you know what?
Someone's gonna buy it.
We need to help this artist.
We, at the Muckrake Podcast, need to get this statue.
There are so many things that we can do with this statue.
This is, this might now become a call to action.
Wow.
I'm a little flabbergasted right now.
I know.
It's a couple hundred pounds, so it would probably cost, you know, thousands just to ship it anywhere, too.
So, you got that.
But here's the thing.
Somebody at CPAC is going to buy it.
They're going to do a GoFundMe, whatever it is, and I bet you it's already bought at this point.
But, you know, what's his face?
John Oliver would probably buy this thing and do something to desecrate it as well.
Yeah.
Well, I guess we missed our opportunity.
I'm going to look into this to see if that's a chance.
But I mean, what other kind of a token could you have asked for a representation of what took place?
For those who maybe are not familiar, CPAC, of course, is the Conservative Political Action Committee and Conference Committee, whatever that C wants to be.
And this has been for Decades.
It has been the conservative.
Center of American politics if you want to know how influential CPAC has been CPAC was where Ronald Reagan before he ran for president of the United States of America Unveiled the phrase the shining city on a hill which has defined the metaphorical modern history of America I mean this is this has shifted politics in this country to the right and what took place this weekend is
And I've watched a lot of CPACs.
I've paid attention to a lot of CPACs.
I actually, by the way, next year, you and I, maybe we should go to CPAC and broadcast live from CPAC.
I would love to, because by the way, what we really need to do is bring some of these people on the show.
Have honest, good faith conversations.
So maybe next year, you know, when things are possible, you and I will travel to some of these madnesses And so this year, I have to tell you, I have watched the decline of quote-unquote conservatism in America.
This was the absolute worst that I have ever seen it.
By a country mile, as my people would say.
You know, it used to be, a little bit here, a policy discussion, right?
A serious-minded, okay, I mean, horrible policies, but at least it was like... It was the scare quotes around serious-minded, big yes.
Yeah, I mean, you know, whatever.
Either way, it was like, they was organized to discuss, like, you know, ways that they thought could maybe help the country, okay, whatever.
Let's put scare quotes around help the country but you know taxes and regulations and you know figure out ways to make the wealthy and powerful more wealthy and powerful but yes granted.
But meanwhile now it's a it's a it's a no no mask fest hootenanny of just white supremacy and it you know I've been really thinking about what this all means.
White Supremacy Fest Hootenanny.
Yeah, and Hootenanny.
Those are my favorite types of Hootenanny.
And a puppet show.
Don't forget the puppet show.
Here's the thing.
I've been kind of meditating about this this morning.
The country was founded on the principles that they want.
And we've acknowledged this and the fact that the history is being taught is wrong, even on the good faith history of like, well, you know, American melting pot and everyone can come to this country land of opportunity, all that stuff.
It's the the real history is what they want to return to.
Right.
They want to return to a place where the white people had power because they think that they know better.
And that's where we are now.
Now, you know, even the notion of slavery, well, we're taking care of the slaves.
We feed them and we treat them OK.
It's a paternal relationship, Nick.
How dare you look at it in any other way?
That's what white supremacy is about.
Well, how dare you misinterpret exactly what I'm saying?
It's exactly what that is.
But that's kind of where we've gotten to now.
This is what justifies them behaving this way.
And a part of me feels in a weird, conflicted way because it's like, I get it in a way.
I understand.
Their argument is like the same argument as the southerners who want to bring back the General Lee and the flag and all that stuff.
It's because that was what the country was.
Let's go back to that.
And by the way, if you want to actually go back to the actual Confederacy, and I wrote about this in American Rule, the Confederacy literally was saying, we are the inheritors of the founding fathers, and we are trying to run the country the way that they wanted.
And they were.
Like they actually were.
They had taken the baton.
Because, I'm sorry, the Founding Fathers got together and they're like, this is a country for white, wealthy men.
That's what it's about.
And that's what the South went ahead and was going with because they felt like that their power was slipping, that they were the actual inheritors of that legacy.
Wait, let me ask you this real quick, because my wife and I were talking about this, because she had an argument about this, or a point, that at that time, and we have to kind of figure out what time we're talking about exactly, but, you know, there weren't a lot of immigrants or a lot of people of color around, so the argument could be, well, this was the country, because this is who all came here from the Mayflower, yada yada, we didn't really have it.
Now, ironically, obviously there's the Native Americans who are already here, We had the slaves who were here who weren't being treated like equal citizens anyway.
I mean I think it goes into like Italians were treated as like, you know, as minority, you know, people of color and Irish people, right?
Like I feel like that was a thing in our history as well.
But I think it's important just for clarification purposes to point out that the reason for the three-fifths compromise was because the South wanted outsized power but they also needed to count their slaves as property while trying to count them as pseudo population and, you know, three-fifths of a person.
That entire situation was put together because there were massive populations in this country that weren't being counted.
They weren't being given human dignity and the way that this country was set up was prejudiced.
And it was stacked in, again, the favor of white supremacists, wealthy white men.
And this is important because we are actually watching.
And I wrote about this on, I got this brand new Substack.
It's decent.
I like Substack.
I like being able to get more in-depth in this because social media rots your brain, unfortunately.
And it's a really terrible ecosystem.
But I wrote about this.
The Republican Party is not a political party.
It's a movement.
It is a reaction to progress at this point.
You know, William F. Buckley, you know, when he wasn't getting all, you know, drunkard up and yelling out racial epithets, would say that the entire purpose of conservatism was to stand to thwart history and yell, stop.
They're not yelling, stop.
They're yelling, back it up, boys.
We got to go back.
We got to keep going.
No, no, I understand.
We made it to the 60s.
We got to keep going beyond.
They are really interested in destroying the progress made toward recognizing liberal democracy.
And for those paying attention at home, those are the tenets and principles and ideology of fascism.
What we watched at CPAC was a group that has no plan whatsoever to make the country better for anybody besides white and wealthy people.
It has no platform, literally.
They do not actually have a platform.
There were not panels about taxes or really deregulation.
Not that I could find, anyway.
I mean, maybe those people were hanging out in the back of the Hyatt.
I don't know.
The conversations were about how they're not getting the likes that they want on their Instagram.
So obviously they're being shadow banned.
That you and your kids are going to be cancelled.
And by the way, cancelled can be anything that you want at this point.
Socialism is taking over the world, which by the way, have you noticed that they're fucking terrified of socialism?
It's like the one thing that they actually are worried about because people are starting to actually sort of come around to the idea that maybe our capitalist system needs reformed.
And then finally, It was ceaseless, sweaty, pathetic, and terrifying worship of Donald Trump.
I like that.
I like that.
That's a lot of good alliteration you threw down there.
Um, yes, that was probably, by the way, the one thing that was of note is, what we did bring up is, the fucking shape of the stage was in a Nazi stadium.
Okay, wait, are you gonna, okay, okay, okay.
Are we, okay, can you, time out.
Are you going to take a stance on what you think happened with the stage?
Tell the people at home about the stage at CPAC because we're political sickos.
We're watching all this shit.
This is one of the reasons we have this podcast.
We unfortunately pay attention to too much of this stuff.
So some people might not be aware.
Can you tell the good people at home about the stage at CPAC?
Yes, so it's not that there's an image that came out of the shape of the stage.
Now, you have to remember, I mean, I worked on film and commercial productions for years.
And it's not the same as doing an event, but I also worked on events too for varying things.
There is a lot of thought that goes behind how all these things are designed.
Stage, shape, the size, all those things.
So, for them to design it as exactly as an imitation or as the same design as a Nazi insignia that was used for the SS.
It wasn't the swastika, but it was like the... It's called the odal.
The odal.
There's another word before odal, right?
There's something grand odal, whatever it was, but... It's an odal rune.
An olorun, that's right.
And I block it out because I don't want to have to remember it.
But the point being that they reserved this... Listen, I don't want to know about these esoteric Nazi runes any more than anybody else.
It's just a curse that I have to carry around.
And this particular one is reserved for the real Nazis, okay?
The guys who really... Not just Nazis.
By the way, I love any statement that begins with not just all Nazis.
Okay.
who were aware of runes were the intellectual core of the Nazis.
These were the people who sat in meetings to, I don't know, talk to other intellectual leaders, almost like at a CPAC where they would have conversations about what do we stand for?
What do we believe in?
This would be a rune that like you would only learn about like if you were in the upper echelon of the Nazi party and really steeped in Nazi esoteric Uh, runes and symbols.
Yeah, okay, fair enough.
But I will say this, and I quote tweeted a guy on Twitter who's got a checkmarked account, where he said, quote, Trust me, guys.
I am intimately involved in the endless discussion and decision-making process that goes into designing a set before it's ever built.
There is literally zero chance a famous Nazi symbol gets built into a set because, quote, no one realized it, period, quote.
That's laughable.
Now, he calls it a famous Nazi symbol, which is the only out here.
It isn't a famous... You want to say it is famous?
Because I'd be willing to give him an out on that one a little bit.
So here's what I want to say about this, and this is important.
OK, and here's a lot of what's going on here.
OK, so the Odal Rune, if you were going to translate it or if you were Tom Hanks in The Da Vinci Code, which what an absurd look that was for Tom Hanks in that movie.
I kind of had that look now.
I'm really embarrassed.
You don't have that look now.
I mean, once my hair dries and I start sticking out the back.
You look so much better than Tom Hanks in Da Vinci Code.
Don't you do that, my friend.
So much better.
You look like an international man of mystery and renown.
Don't do that.
My mom always thought I looked like Tom Hanks a little bit.
That's nice.
By the way, she thought I looked like everybody.
If he was going to tell you about the Odal Rune, one of the definitions, and let's just be clear.
I'm not telling you what happened here.
I'm not putting down a marker telling you what happened.
One of the things that this rune is supposed to represent is the idea of heritage or lineage.
Almost like the idea that there are people who deserve power and profit and it should never be interrupted and have other people stand in for them.
I will say that it's important while we're having this conversation, it's not just a Nazi rune.
Because one of the things that ended up happening was that the Nazis just brought all these different types of ancient ideas and symbols and all this stuff, and they just mashed them up and made their own ideology, right?
Their own mythology.
This is Germanic.
I'm sure it's got some Saxon background to it.
This is what allows people like, I don't know, a Steve Bannon, for instance.
Or...
People who are interested in the things that Bannon is interested in, like neo-fascism or esoteric conservatism, or the idea of great men of history can control time and rewind time and destroy liberal democracy.
So there are multiple things that could have happened here.
Either somebody was like, hey, here's a way that we can make a stage, and it just ended up being the odal rune that happens to be a neo-fascistic symbol.
Maybe somebody knows a symbol and they think that they're not being neo-fascist, but they kind of are, or it might be a coincidence.
These are all possibilities.
But it's also weird that the party that has been taken over by white supremacists has a room that has been brought together In neo-fascistic circles.
That's odd.
That's all I'm saying.
I mean, and that's the case, you know, certain, you know, if it was the, oh my gosh, what's the Israeli Anti-Defamation League, is that what it is?
I think that's what it is.
If it was them who did it, yeah, you'd be like, oh, that's a mistake, that's a whatever, that's a coincidence, whatever, right?
Because they obviously have a long track record of being obviously against Nazis.
But this one, you're right, it's hard to give them a pass at all because of what they've stood for this whole time.
I will say, while we're talking about coincidences, I will say that it is also a coincidence that neo-Nazis, neo-fascists, extreme right-wingers, people who believe in things like skull shapes telling you how smart people are, you know, how IQ is racial, and all this bullshit, right?
Like some real class acts.
Those people Are beginning to really lay the groundwork for an international coalition of, you know, white supremacy, right?
Like they've been doing it.
We've talked about it on the podcast.
They've been working with people in Europe.
They've been working with people in Russia.
They've been trying to bring this thing together.
Maybe it's just a big, giant coincidence that while they're trying to bring together that international coalition, that CPAC happens to be going to those same places and working with the same people in the same groups.
Maybe it's a big, giant coincidence.
Maybe.
That's all.
Maybe it's a coincidence.
Maybe.
Anyhow, but that was the big one.
That caught a lot of people's eyes.
They're going to do some information.
Someone's going to break the story and get to whoever designed the stage.
It's going to be some bullshit, but they'll do their due diligence and we'll find out.
I will say, I don't know if you saw it.
Did you tune in for Trump's speech for the big kahuna coming back?
I watched the highlights.
So Trump was supposed to come out at 340, right?
And at like 345, some stooge came out and was like, uh, Hey everybody, I just want to let you know that everything's going according to schedule.
Uh, I promise Donald Trump is not late and we know where he is right now.
I promise.
Like this is all according to schedule.
And he starts doing, I mean like it was madness.
And then all of a sudden he's like, Hey, uh, how do you like our stage?
Yeah, it's really triggering the libs on social media.
It's great, isn't it?
Meanwhile, if you are a decent human being and you got told that your stage is accidentally a Nazi white supremacist rune, you're not like, yeah, trigger those libs.
You're like, oh, my God, we might need to take care of this or do something about it.
Or try and just not mention it out loud.
But CPAC was all about Triggering the libs.
It was an aggrievement conference the entire time.
But Ted Cruz comes out in the worst version of 80s stand-up I've seen since the 80s and he makes a joke about going to Cancun while people died in his state while he was traipsing off to this place.
And I may be mistaken, it's not the Four Seasons, it was the Ritz-Carlton.
Forgive me, Ritz Carlton.
But nonetheless, that's where he was trying to make a joke out of the whole thing.
And he's – by the way, like would it hurt him to like go to a stand-up class or two?
Like it would really help.
You get so frustrated by their stand-up.
You get so – you take it so personally.
Well, what about all of us?
Like, hey, I studied this thing, right?
I studied stand-up comedy and improv comedy.
Like, you've got to earn your stripes before you get to go in front of an audience.
That's not fair.
They're so, so bad.
And I actually, I don't know if you got to see parts of this, but first of all, Trump's speech was terrible.
Just absolutely terrible.
He kept, whenever like things would start falling apart, he always kept going for this applause line, which was, well, I mean, it's not like Joe Biden knows what's going on.
And the CPAC audience members were like, whoa!
Yeah!
Brain damage, Joe!
It's like, that's, that's, that's, that was like the biggest hit of CPAC.
was just that, which was just him making fun of somebody else for the thing that he has a problem with.
That was the entire big, big gag of the entire time.
Yeah, I mean, that and then the big lie, the big lie.
And here's what we need to talk about, because I think before the inauguration, and we had sort of sense that this is, you know, they're gonna get him off Twitter, he's gonna have a lot less influence on these things.
Yes.
And then his influence overall might abate this way.
The problem here is that there is an insidious nature to this big lie.
It is spreading.
It is taking hold.
It is becoming much more of an accepted fact to these people.
And that's really dangerous because, again, their base is shrinking day by day as we're looking at the numbers and how progressiveism seems to be working.
And that aside, well, this is a two-part attack that they're doing, but the big lie is going to be something that they need to continue to hammer and that's working better than we thought it was going to work.
Yeah, you know, there's a part of me, and you've known me for a while now, and we've done this podcast for a while.
I'm an optimist by nature, but I'm not I tend to look at this thing through a realist lens, right?
That's fair.
I tend to worry a little bit more about things than other people, I think.
And, you know, it's helped out in prediction businesses.
But I also kind of thought that the Republican Party would at least try and work around the coup attempt at the Capitol.
I thought that they would at least be like, those people were problematic.
We don't want anything to do with it.
Hey, Donald Trump, why don't you kind of, you know, sit the next couple of plays out, champ.
And that's not at all what we saw.
And we were talking about this before we got on.
I'm going to read to you the straw poll at CPAC, which is basically an early sort of a sign of where the Republican Party is going in terms of national leadership.
I want to say first and foremost, the guy who did the poll was McLaughlin, who is Trump's personal pollster.
Personal pollster.
He got on stage to reveal the results of the straw poll, and he was just putting Trump over, talking about how the Republican Party is the party of Trump.
Everybody was losing their minds.
They did the main poll, but I'm going to ask you a question.
I'm going to ask for what you think.
What percentage of attendees do you think approved of Donald Trump's agenda?
Oh, of his agenda?
Of his agenda, or performance as president.
What would you say?
Okay, because if it's performance as president, it might be a little bit different than agenda.
Not much, but enough.
But okay, so his job approval, you want to know that's basically what they're doing?
Yeah.
Okay.
At CPAC only?
At CPAC.
CPAC.
This is, by the way, a blind ballot.
No one knows that you're doing this.
Maybe you're at CPAC and you really want the Republican Party to come back from the brink.
Yeah, I want to say 85, but I know it's probably higher than 85 percent.
97 fucking percent.
97 percent.
We're happy with what he did at the border with the kids separating.
They loved it.
They loved it.
So I'm going to read to you real fast the straw poll.
And by the way, they did two polls because this is how much sway Donald Trump has over the party.
They did a poll where Donald Trump didn't run for president.
Right.
And by the way, one of the front runners Of that poll, if he didn't run for president, you guessed it everybody, Donald Trump Jr.
Yeah, in there, right?
Because now all of a sudden they believe in like lineage and heritage.
I don't know, it's weird.
So this is the official CPAC straw poll.
Okay, we have the top six here and this is with Donald Trump.
Ted Cruz brings up the rear with 2%, which by the way, the fact that nobody thinks that he is like poison because of what he did in Texas is a damning indictment.
Mike Pompeo, 2%.
How about that?
How's that?
How's that?
How's that fit for you?
It makes sense.
Both him and Cruz are going to fizzle just like they did in, well, Pompeo didn't run, but when Cruz ran.
They don't have it at all, not even for that crowd.
And that's how bad it is.
I have to tell you, if in 2023, when we start going into the debates, if we have debates where Mike Pompeo and Ted Cruz are trying to out evangelical messiah each other, like, I don't know if I'm going to be able to do it.
I don't know if I'm actually going to watch that.
That would mean that Trump is not running.
Nikki Haley, 3%.
Yeah, she's dangerous.
You gotta watch out for her.
By the way, Nikki Haley will stab you in the back and then show you the blade.
I mean, she came to play, everybody.
In third place, with 4%, The governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem, who, by the way, absolutely screwed the pooch on the coronavirus there and just basically shoveled her constituents into the maw of the pandemic.
Yeah, into the grave.
She's third.
Yeah.
Third.
But she's got nice arms.
So, number two, speaking of governors who shoveled their constituents into the grave.
21% of CPAC attendees give their support to Ron DeSantis.
Yeah, that's interesting.
He's not even seriously considering it, is he?
Wow.
Ron DeSantis, second of all, and at the top of the pack with 55% Donald Trump.
Fifty-five percent.
So wait, Junior doesn't appear in that one?
No.
They just need one Trump.
Yeah, you don't need that Oedipus complex.
That's actually low.
Well, I mean, everyone else equals 100, so it's 55.
I mean, it feels a little low to me for some reason.
I don't know why.
Well, the point here is that he's far and away ahead of everybody else.
Wait, what was second place?
He's 55, what was second place?
DeSantis was 21.
He doubled DeSantis.
Alright, that makes sense.
I mean, that's, at this point, right after the Trump presidency, the big lie is not only holding That's all they talked about, man, was election security and fraudulent elections.
Every single speech was about how the Democrats were stealing elections, and if you didn't do something about it, and if you didn't disenfranchise people, the entire country is destroyed and it will never, ever come back.
That was the entire message of the conference.
Now, you know, what they don't want to point out, and we're not, the other people on the other side are not doing a good enough job pointing out, is that, you know, the biggest, this is a process argument, right, where because the laws were changed by the judge, the Supreme Court of these states, not the legislature, that, like, it should invalidate all the votes.
And remember, all they changed was, you know, a few extra days to count some votes that were going to come in by mail because of the pandemic.
That was it.
And they had months before the election that they could have argued that this was completely not constitutional.
They didn't care about it until the election went the way they didn't want it to go.
That is too much, too many words to explain to people who are falling into this swan song or or a siren song of the big lie.
It sounds a lot easier to simply to say that.
They cheated.
They took our votes away.
And as a result, you're seeing 42 states across the country, you know, invoking a lot more voter restrictions going into 2022 and the 2020-24.
That's going to be the most concerning thing.
I don't know how we're supposed to combat that at all.
Let's be very clear.
What you're talking about is the result of Trumpism and the QAnon conspiracy theory absolutely running its course through the Republican Party.
That's it.
They literally believe in an alternative reality where the only way possible to ensure free and fair elections is to make sure, and this is key, that people of color and Democratic voters are not allowed to exercise the right to vote.
Jared, the Democrats did the same thing to Trump.
They argued the same thing in 2016.
Not at all.
That didn't become the animating influence of the party.
That didn't become the guiding worldview.
What has happened here with the Republican Party, they've drowned in it.
It now is part of them.
They are now part of it.
There is no difference between QAnon and the Republican Party at this point.
It may be the Republicans don't think that they want to like execute people or maybe they don't know about Frazzledrip or any of the other sort of like weirder sort of, you know, satanic worshiping type things, but they believe the same thing.
The big lie has completely won over the Republican Party.
It's not going away, which by the way we told people it wouldn't, but it's more clear than ever that QAnon and Trumpism has been completely laundered and just hugged in and absorbed into the Republican Party.
They are one in the same.
There is no daylight between them at this point.
And it's the reaction that's revelatory here.
The reaction to what this, what the perceived, you know, voting fraud would be, let's beef up our systems so that we can make sure that these votes that come in are not, you know, are not fraudulent, versus what they want to do, which is we are simply going to Eliminate votes because we don't want any of these votes to come in to then make us have to check them or whatever that is, right?
That's really the answer there.
Now, on the flip side with the Democrats, well, you know, Russia seemed like they were involved and we were upset with Trump, but, you know, we all had to sort of shrug and be like, you know, no one was calling for, you know, him to be thrown out of office really at once.
You know, we were just sort of hunkered down and had to wait until the next election.
People, okay, real fast, and this is important.
I think this is one of the defining features.
And by the way, like I, in the past week, I have had run-ins with people on the left who are hopelessly lost in conspiracy theories, completely incapable of being able to understand modern politics and or swallow or understand any actual legitimate criticism of Democratic politicians or Joe Biden as President of the United States.
We'll talk about that in a second.
But I think it's really important to point out there were some of us who we heard, we heard rumors.
We saw evidence of the possibility that voter rolls and voting machines could have been hacked in 2016.
People, people with great reputations who are very, very careful about things sounded the alarm and said, Hey, I don't want to freak everybody out.
I'm not saying that the election was completely invalid.
There were weird things.
Okay.
That's not every episode of our podcast.
That's not every speech that a Democrat gives where they're like, yeah, we should do this, by the way, remember when they stole 2016?
And as far as the Russia thing, I actually feel like the Russia thing has been so twisted by people who didn't call it the right way at this point that they act like anybody who brought up collaboration between the Trump campaign and Trump and Russia and disinformation campaigns, which took place.
That was 100% no doubt about it.
Russia has even started to brag about it.
They've twisted it into this caricature where we all pretend like Russia came in and took over the country overnight.
That's not what happened.
What happened is that Donald Trump worked with people outside the country and he continued to work with people outside the country after he was elected.
It's why he was impeached the first time for the record.
But, you know, it's not like we sit here and we're like screaming all the time like they stole an election.
They stole an election.
You can't trust anything.
Take away their right to vote.
That is one of the defining differences, I think, between these two movements.
And the biggest concern we have now.
Keep going!
is the Supreme Court because they're the ones under John Roberts who gutted the Voting Rights Act to begin with by saying that Section 4 wasn't needed anymore.
This is what was so frustrating.
This is like the- Back that truck up, baby.
Keep going.
Don't talk.
I feel remiss to say I was going beep, beep because remember, we installed the beeps when you're backing up to protect people, right?
And obviously they're not interested in protecting people.
In the future that these people imagine, there will be no beep beep.
It'll just be running people over left and right and you won't be able to sue anybody.
Maybe that's why they're happy with electric cars because they don't make any noise when they're backing up.
They can kill people now.
So, let's just explain this because Section 4 required states that had, in the past, had a lot of trouble with keeping these votes and keeping black people away from the voting rolls, whatever, using all sorts of Jim Crow era laws.
Hey, real fast, just to check on the origin of those things.
Were those to make sure that elections were free and fair, or were those remedies to try and fix inherent white supremacist Segregated policies.
Right.
Section 4 was trying to get rid of all those policies that had been implemented after the Civil War, right?
I don't want to speak into your realm as much, but you know, obviously they were like, by the way, it's the same thing.
This is what we're going through now is exactly what happened right after the Civil War because they're like, shit, we can't let all these former slaves vote.
We would never win an election again.
Sounds familiar, right?
Matter of fact, they lost some elections.
It's really important to point out that when Reconstruction was like beginning, like African Americans and freed slaves were incredible at organizing.
Really, really good at organizing.
And they started winning elections left and right because there were a lot of them and they were really talented.
They controlled legislative bodies.
I mean, they became governors.
I mean, it was so instantaneous and immediately the South was like, oh shit.
We're done unless, I don't know, we put on a hood and fire up a torch and go and scare some people and beat some people in public.
It is not that far off.
It's not that far off.
Or institute polls, or taxes for this, or institute tests that you have to pass before you vote, like all those things.
By the way, I'm in Georgia.
It's not like I know anything about this and it's not like our legislature right now is trying to, like, Back that truck up!
Hey, we were so happy with Raffensperger in the beginning.
He sounded like a really reasonable guy, but guess what?
He's right back to it.
No!
Here's the thing.
I'm going to put my foot down here.
We have to stop pretending that any Republican who isn't the worst person on the face of the earth is suddenly a hero and a messiah.
Like, we have to quit.
Mitt Romney is not your friend.
Alright Raffensperger is not your friend just because Brian Kemp got attacked by Donald Trump and Donald Trump hates him does not make him your friend We have to change the the Lincoln Project not your friend like we have to we have to get rid of them Well, let's not forget Raffensperger like he was threatened his life was threatened so he had a you know a motivation to to try and tap that down and somehow because I That'll, getting your life threatened will change the way you feel about politics in a real hurry.
I mean like, let's be real, and nobody deserves to get their life threatened, but that's what happened there.
Yeah, and so, but here's the thing about the white people of a certain age in this country who have things, you know what, we've progressed, this is it, we've gone, we don't have any more racism anymore, it's all good and everyone's fine and equal.
Reagan told us everybody's judged on their merits.
Ready, set, go, everybody.
He told the white people to go first and then they went.
That's what Reaganism was.
Reaganism came around and he said, you don't have to worry about racism anymore.
They're lying about it.
The civil rights took care of everything.
I mean, Martin Luther King gave a speech.
Everything's cool.
Right, yeah.
And boy, you want to see people like that get triggered.
Just try and have a discussion about the reality on the ground with what racism still is in this country, like we've seen.
Now, so Article, Section 4 was to protect, to make, the federal government had to approve any voting changes that these specific states were doing, would do, you know, for all these years after they put the Voting Rights Act in.
And then, so in 2013, Roberts gets to decide, oh you know what, we don't need that anymore because they've done so well and we've had free and fair elections and they're not doing the shenanigans anymore.
Jared, you want to guess what happened the day after they got rid of this section in the Voting Rights Act?
I am guessing that people of all races joyously were on a mountaintop and enjoying the dream of American exceptionalism.
And then the day after that was when they started enacting all manner of laws again to do exactly what they had done after Reconstruction.
And it's hard to fathom because normal white people in America probably would have a hard time fathoming.
Well, I've seen roots.
It's not like that anymore.
We're not like that, you know, whatever.
And OK, there might have been some progress.
People are not being lynched anymore, you know, on trees.
No, they're just being killed by police on the streets, but sure.
Yeah.
Oh, and by the way, there were some lynchings.
I don't know if you ever heard back from whatever happened.
There was like three or four in a row that, anyway, I don't want to get into that.
You know, it's not like they're burning down their churches and or hunting them down or that law enforcement has been turned into a weaponized force to break into their houses and put them in mass incarceration because that scene is more civilized than the alternative.
Oh, and meanwhile, and then, but the reaction to, uh, you know, an NFL player kneeling Oh my God.
But I want to point out that what you just talked about, what that let loose, these abilities to disenfranchise and discriminate against voters, that was the only policy discussion at CPAC.
They're not even worried about talking to these people about taxes.
You know why?
There's people up in the penthouse who are having that conversation.
Because if you really think about how politics works, particularly the Republican Party, the Republican Party is, it's a puppet on a hand.
It's just up here and it's like, Oh, white people are the people who are discriminated against.
Yay.
And then meanwhile, the puppeteer is just like, Get rid of regulation.
Get rid of taxes.
Don't pay attention to the man behind the curtain.
Meanwhile, they're having conversations about taxes and deregulation.
Meanwhile, the people on CPAC are preparing their people out at the conference for mass disenfranchisement.
for mass voting discrimination.
That's what's coming.
They can't win elections.
They're not interested in growing their base.
They are incredibly unpopular.
It is not a 50-50 country anymore.
More of us are against this.
I would say if you actually put together Democrats and independents and like never Trumpers, that ends up being like 60 to 70 percent of the population.
They can't win elections unless they do this.
They know it and that's why they're embracing the fascistic tactics that we're watching right now.
Right.
And it's the normalization of this behavior that we had, you know, predicted from the beginning of Trump's reign that was really the most concerning thing because now you can just lie with impunity and there isn't anything that will, A, there's no ramifications, but then these people already have a predilection for cementing hard ideas in their heads the moment the information from someone they like gets in there and you can't really change it.
That's this cult thing that we've seen.
Now again, so that makes me worried because up until now it felt like that 40% of these people, again they won't win elections, it's going to shrink going forward, but there's something about this with the big lie that feels to me like this could grow.
This could help them actually grow their base.
Well, and I want to point something out.
So like, for instance, Brian Kemp, my absolute dickhead governor, right, who Trump has now made him his sworn mortal enemy because he didn't give him Georgia in 2020.
Kemp has worked his ass off to disenfranchise people.
I mean, that's how he won the governorship over Stacey Abrams in the first place.
He has done everything in his power, both as the Secretary of State and as the governor of Georgia, to continually disenfranchise black voters in Georgia.
When he runs for re-election, hopefully, knock on wood, against Stacey Abrams, Trump has made it his focus to unseat Kemp with a challenger.
I want people to think about this, and I'm not saying this to scare people.
I'm not saying this to cast a dark cloud over the conversation.
I'm saying this because this is what's going on in this country with that growing that you're talking about.
Brian Kemp is working his ass off to disenfranchise black voters to help the Republican Party.
Whoever challenges him That's going to be one of their main platforms.
And they're going to say, you can't trust Brian Kemp.
He's not he's not making elections safe.
And that person is going to be even more extreme than Brian Kemp in how he goes after, quote unquote, voter fraud.
This is what happens over time.
This next generation of Republicans, when we get to the midterms in 2022, They're going to be worse than what you have now.
They're going to be worse than Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Cawthorn, Crenshaw, Cruz, all those people.
It just perpetuates.
This thing doesn't get better.
It just gets worse and worse and worse.
Do you hear why Marco Rubio did not, or cancelled his speech at CPAC the last second?
Did you ever get any information from Europe?
He was thirsty.
Yeah, right.
Couldn't find a good glass of water for him.
Okay.
It's no problem!
Nick, it's just right off the screen, and you know that you shouldn't get it, and you're so thirsty, and it's going to mean your political career, but... Okay, got it.
He had to do it.
Had to do it.
Couldn't happen to a nicer person.
But it's a little curious to me, you know, when you're talking about all this stuff and who's getting out in front of all these different elections as they're coming up, that Marco Rubio wouldn't take advantage of speaking there.
Fascinating, you know, to miss there.
And I don't know why.
I think there are decisions within the Republican Party about who goes where and who does what.
I mean, Mitch McConnell didn't go.
I mean, Mitch McConnell would have been more or less harassed out of CPAC.
I mean, I don't know if you remember this a few years ago, Mitt Romney couldn't go because His safety couldn't be guaranteed by the conference.
I mean, this is, honest to God, a really batshit crazy group of people.
Right.
Which I think indicates that the straw polls that they did of the people there.
I mean, remember, if they're going to be willing to... I mean, whatever.
Most Republicans seem to be willing to not wear masks and travel and all that stuff.
But these guys willing to travel and do all these things and risk COVID, they're crazy already, right?
They're already... Well, that or they've already had it three or four times.
By the way, that's the new answer.
When you say, oh, how come you're not wearing a mask?
I already had it.
That's what they say now.
That's the default answer, which you can't really... What are you supposed to say to that?
You can't really do anything about that.
That sucks.
That sucks so bad.
Oh, man, this current moment is so frustrating.
By the way, you know, you can get it twice.
Oh, yeah, for sure.
I mean, there's probably like mutant strains of the coronavirus going around because Republicans just keep gathering so they can go down a lazy river or, you know, eat it, eat it, Fuddruckers or P.F.
Changs.
We'll have to call it the Republican strain and they will come up with one of those.
Yeah.
Oh, well, I think you just found the title of this episode, so that's nice.
It's good to debrief over this.
At least we can go through This stupid shit together.
We thank you so much for your listening and support.
A reminder that the first episode of our audio documentary series, Certain Route to Failure, came out last week.
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Which, by the way, I don't know about you, I thought our last Weekender Edition from last week, one of our best episodes.
For sure.
I mean, it was really great to be able to talk about a documentary that was steeped in conspiracy theory, but then sort of coalesce how that affects the Trump conspiracy and stuff.
I wasn't anticipating that, and I think that really was powerful.
Yeah, I was anticipating.
I was ready for it.
I was pumped.
But yeah, the last Weekender edition, we talked about the documentary Room 237, which is of course about people who are obsessed with the movie The Shining, and conspiracy theories and how we all sort of have predilections for that, but how some of them are dangerous.
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