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June 21, 2022 - The Muckrake Political Podcast
51:01
Don't Redress With Texas

Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton discuss the new GOP Platform in the state of Texas, and how it relates to the political calculation of the Supreme Court's impending decision to strike down Roe vs Wade.  To support the show and access additional content, including the extra Weekender show every Friday and live-shows, become a patron at patreon.com/muckrakepodcast  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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If you have people that don't trust what they hear on the media or they don't trust what they hear from certain leaders, that includes Kevin McCarthy, of course that includes Donald Trump.
If you're going to stand in front of those people and lie to them and tell them Donald Trump's right, the election was stolen, because that has you give me $20 when I send you the next email, we can have no doubt that 80% of the country is going to believe what their leaders are saying.
Like, if you're not willing to tell people the truth in America, you shouldn't run for Congress.
But this should be a position where you can tell the hard truth.
And unfortunately, my party has utterly failed the American people at truth.
It makes me sad, but it's a fact.
Hey everybody, it is Nick Hauselmann here and I am a co-host of the Muckrake Podcast along with Jared Yates Sexton who is coming in to us through a phone call today, audio only, as he's driving across the country.
And today we're going to talk about the impending Roe vs. Wade decision by SCOTUS.
And also, do not forget, on Thursday, this Thursday, we are going to have a live show at 7 p.m.
Eastern on our Patreon.
And the only way to unlock that is to go to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
If you've been listening to our teasers that we have on Fridays for free on the podcast apps, well then, head on over and become a subscriber.
I guarantee you're going to love the community and it's a great show when we do them live.
So, just to make sure that Jared is with us.
Jared, are you there?
I am here.
I'm cruising America's highways and byways.
I'm seeing the majestic splendor.
Everything that this country has to offer, I tell you what.
It includes a lot of Circle Ks.
It includes a lot of closing down Taco Bells.
People who are, again, putting pictures on the back of their cars representing their families with semi-automatic weapons.
A totally healthy, not at all unhinged country.
I think it's clear from that description what part of the country you're driving through.
Let me tell you, I've gotten very familiar with the American South.
Yes.
And when you get familiar with the American South, I gotta tell you, you get very comfortable and familiar with grotesquerie.
You know what's funny about that and we talked about this before but I just kind of want to hammer this home.
You know you could obviously there's places like in Ukraine where if you were to go there now you'd be killed right it's too dangerous it's too scary.
There are places in a lot of countries in the world where you know you just couldn't go like even it's based on your appearance for instance.
I kind of feel like that there's plenty of places in America Where you you really had to be careful like if you say the wrong thing like in a gas station you know where you are you know you mentioned something about um you know Biden I don't know or something about how you like Priscilla Queen of the Desert you might be really in trouble.
Well, I'll just say, first of all, around here they call him Brandon.
There's a lot of Let's Go Brandon stickers.
You have literally no idea how much money the Let's Go Brandon people have made with their stickers and all that crap.
But no, it is this thing.
And, you know, speaking of the Supreme Court, which I gotta tell you, it feels really bad talking about what's on the docket and what's getting ready to come through right now.
Of course, and we'll talk a little bit about Roe v. Wade here in just a second, and if, as predicted, the Supreme Court knocks down Roe v. Wade, I'm sure Nick and I are gonna have to do an emergency broadcast to talk about that.
We'll talk in a minute about the ramifications of it, but one of the things that the Supreme Court is looking at, Nick, is really allowing more people to carry firearms.
including concealed carry.
And I got to tell you, there is a part of this country and, you know, the American South is part of it, of course.
And I love in California, you're imagining all of us getting in gunfights over here, like the battery world or something.
But, you know, it is the fantasy of a lot of these people.
And my God, we have to talk about Florida and Texas today.
But in all of this, there is this fantasy that everybody should be allowed to carry around guns.
And the natural implication and escalation of this is anybody who disagrees with you, and At any moment, you could be on the verge of a gunfight.
So I gotta tell you that the twisted idea of what America could be looks a lot like these pockets of America that you're talking about right now.
But what I don't understand, really, is what does the concealed carry law do to the notion of having a gunfight at any moment where you could be not concealing it and then have that gunfight, right?
Why does the concealing part have so much weight?
Well, a little bit of it has to do.
I was actually laughing about this earlier today a little bit.
Like, you know, gallows humor.
I was remembering... God, Nick, I can't remember if it was late 1980s, early 1990s.
You remember Young Guns?
You mean the movie?
Yeah.
Oh, for sure.
Charlie Sheen, maybe even?
Yeah, there is... It's Emilio Estevez as Billy the Kid is the lead in that.
He's really good, actually.
And there's this sort of American...
fetishization of the idea of walking around almost like a cowboy, right?
And a lot of what we're talking about is removing the idea, and this is of course from the perspective and point of view of who we're talking about, it's the idea of removing the protection of the state, right?
And removing the tyranny of the state.
So as a result, you are sort of the captain of your own fate.
And if that means carrying a gun, which for a lot of white patriarchal men, it exactly means carrying around a gun.
It is sort of this fantasy of being a gunslinger.
And for a lot of these people, that is most definitely like not only what they want the country to become, but like what they're working to make it.
Okay.
I mean, that's... Terrible.
It's terrible.
Yeah.
You know, it's funny.
Why do movies... Why are they popular, right?
They're popular because people want to get away from their lives, right?
And they want to escape for a couple hours in a cool place and whatever, get out of the heat.
And what's weird about what you're describing is that they've transcended that and they just now want to live these stories that they see on the screen.
Well, you know, it's weird, and we're going to get more into this in terms of, again, Texas and Florida, the sort of twisted GOP state that they're looking to have.
You know, I think once you reach a certain point in this country, you know, of course, you reach a point where even if you are the most powerful group, even if you have money, even if you have wealth and influence and affluence, eventually you feel like you're being held down.
Or, you know, that you're being shadow banned on Twitter or Facebook, which, of course, is what gets Don Jr's feathers all up in a tailspin.
But there's this idea that the state has only failed.
It can only continue failing.
And as a result, you, as one of the stronger people or one of the fittest, can sort of like pilot your own sort of fate.
And, you know, I really think looking at the current state of things, whether or not it's economic, socioeconomic, you name it, This idea of sort of refiguring this country, it comes from a fantasy that a lot of white men are carrying around that is just that, it's a fantasy.
You know, like you and I can go see like a Fast and the Furious movie and we'll still drive home safely while other people watch it and the next thing you know they're going 95 and like side swiping a grandma.
And, you know, it really is this idea of trying to live out the fantasies of a bunch of white, wealthy, powerful men who, by the way, are very interested in subjecting literally everybody else, including women and their bodies and their fates, to their whims.
So that's what, unfortunately, we're looking at right now.
You know, but that's the one layer.
There's another layer where Black Lives Matter can in any moment appear from around the corner and we need our guns to be able to shoot whoever is going to be burning down the next city across this great land of ours.
As you might remember, cities were burning, Jared, in 2020.
Yeah, but that's also the fantasy, right?
Like, as people will sit there and talk about, like, you know, how awful it is or how they condemn it or whatever.
Like, having that sort of, not an uprising, but a protest movement, it literally created a scenario.
And, you know, I think Kyle Rittenhouse is one of those people.
Like, they have a fantasy.
You know, they want to pick up a gun.
They want to become a freedom fighter.
They want to become a police person or whatever.
And they want to be able to, like, kill other people and enforce law and order based on what they want.
That fantasy is now multiplying exponentially, and we're seeing it, like, again, through the Supreme Court, through legislatures, you name it.
I mean, that's going to be the theme of this show, is the fantasies of the white right wing basically becoming reality or a twisted reality of what it is that they're seeking.
And so, we have to be wary of what's going to happen when, you know, this decision is going to come out.
It always happens at the end of June.
A whole bunch of, you know, decisions will come out at the end of the month.
So, it's been... Oh, by the way, how's that leak investigation going, Jared, for the SCOTUS, you know, memos?
I tell you what, the team took the mystery machine to the local closed-down circus.
They are looking underneath every tent.
They are searching every possible lead that they can find.
I promise you by the time that they have completely eradicated a woman's right to choose and have autonomy over their body, I guarantee they will be near finding the perpetrator.
Although, joking aside, Nick, I gotta tell you, as we're sort of staring this thing in the face,
I am more certain that you were correct in saying that this very well might have been leaked by the conservative judges to prepare the population for it, to get law enforcement ready for it, to put pressure on people like Roberts, but also to go ahead and sort of soft roll it out so that outrage and anger could sort of not be spent, but sort of dissipated to a certain degree before it rolls out.
One of my concerns, and I'd be interested to see what you think about this, I am really afraid that this is going to drop this week.
And it's for some people, it's going to be a matter of life and death.
For instance, here in the American South, there are people who are going to lose complete bodily autonomy.
You know, they're going to be put into an absolute nightmarish situation.
Their lives are going to be on the line.
And meanwhile, a lot of other people, I think, are going to look at it, particularly whether it's the North or you name it, and they're going to say, oh, my God, this is awful.
Maybe I'll go to a protest, something along those lines.
But I am really afraid that this thing's going to happen and there's going to be a lot of outrage online and not much after it.
How do you see this playing out?
I mean, it does feel like we've lost the focus of this as it is.
And so it was pretty genius if it was, you know, the right, you know, Clarence Thomas or somebody, you know, probably trying to even pressure Kavanaugh or somebody else.
No, wait a second, Nick.
Clarence Thomas isn't going to do anything above and beyond.
Let's go ahead and say clear and stop.
It's good.
The idea of him having to press a button to leak something, I don't know if I believe it.
That rubber stamp is very heavy and very taxing on his arm.
Maybe Jeremy did it.
And I read something, maybe it was from a friend of the pod, Seth Abramson, somebody was talking about how the January 6th plot involved leaks earlier, like around SCOTUS, and so this was an established thing, especially with John Eastman when he was doing it.
So the thought process goes, look, this is what they are doing now, and so leaking this about Roe v. Wade is just another example of what the right side of the court is doing, and their methods.
and yeah there's no question what you describe is what's going to happen there's going to be outrage there's going to be some marches and then there won't be right and then we're going to have states who will do things to help get people to their state if they need an abortion and that's what will happen and that will probably invite violence that will probably invite people who will So, a lot of what you just said is the real concern here.
know that hopefully those vans are unmarked that kind of thing uh people might want to take shots at protesters who are in the streets you know making sure that their voices are heard um it's a concerning thing depending on which state you're going to be in so a lot of what you just said is the the real concern here by the way i would be remiss if i didn't bring up bring up after we taped the weekender last week um i think it was like 30 minutes after we got done recording
it came out that john eastman just casually said if you're making a pardons list go ahead and throw me on there, which that is what not guilty people do.
You know what I mean?
They seek out preemptive pardons.
But I will say with what we're getting ready to watch, there are a couple of scenarios and I think we'll know.
Pretty quickly, what trajectory this thing is going to take.
I would say within a two to three week span, at least a month, I think we're going to have a pretty good idea of how this ban is going to change our political environment.
On one hand, you know, I got to tell you the Republican Party, while they have a bunch of people who are completely incompetent and absolutely ridiculous, there are a lot of these people who are very meticulous.
And the takeover of the Supreme Court and everything in the legislatures has been done very meticulously and very methodically.
We now have a situation where, you know, we have all these laws in places that go after protesters.
We've covered this before.
They can go ahead and, you know, arrest them for basically protesting.
Cutting off state funds for everything from programs to help them to loans for college, can get them fired, can get them run over.
We've already seen the Department of Homeland Security has come out to a Roe v. Wade protest.
So if this thing does start to grow, this is going to be a situation where if it starts to escalate, one side starts to get violent and we start having these open scenes of violence, I mean, this thing could turn into an absolute powder keg.
The other idea is that tension would be again vented on social media.
There would be a lot of uproar, but not a lot of mobilization.
And I got to tell you, if this thing is going to be met with the energy that it needs to be met with, it has to be an absolute nationwide uproar.
We're talking the possibility of strikes.
We're talking marches, we're talking solidarity.
If that doesn't happen, I'm really terrified about where this whole thing is going.
Right.
And that's the problem.
On the right, you can't run for Congress unless you swear allegiance, not only to Trump, but that the 2020 election wasn't legitimate.
Well, on the other side, you probably should have every single member of Congress who's a Democrat running should pledge to introduce federal legislation that would make abortion legal, once and for all, and so it'll get away from the courts and make it part of the law.
And if that were to happen, you know, that's the other funny thing is, we'll talk about Texas in a minute too, but you know, a lot of these states already are seeming to want to secede basically, right?
They do not want to be controlled by the federal government and they're putting things in their platform to prevent that.
And so that could accelerate a different process as well.
Not, you know, I think we understood that once they did the Constitution and once that slavery was permitted, everybody then knew there was going to be a civil war, right?
Jared, you're the expert on that part of our country.
Well, they thought that they were going to avoid a civil war by allowing slavery or by institutionalizing slavery.
I mean, that's what Alexander Hamilton definitely thought.
He told everybody in the Federalist Papers, this would prevent a giant civil war and would allow us to grow as a country and make money and compete with other nations.
Of course, it just fast-tracked a civil war.
So, just like that, you know, this decision, it's, you know, it's not on the same level, unfortunately.
But I wonder if it's the beginning, if it's the lighting of the very long, you know, what's that, the fuse that goes, you know, all the way around before it blows up.
I wonder if that is the very beginning of this because obviously there's a couple other really big issues and that clearly are the majority of this country, a vast majority of this country, you know, agree with in terms of having free and safe abortions, sorry not free, safe and legal abortions across this country in every state.
That list is getting longer in terms of what the right wants to get rid of and that's where it becomes, suddenly the people on the left, you know, begin to feel hopeless and they have some of those same kind of feelings that maybe the right has started to have that is causing the violence and that's when you get into those notions where we're gonna have violence in the streets and it's gonna be, you know, I don't know, I would be hiding in my house.
I gotta state this unequivocally.
You don't just roll back a right.
That's not what happens, right?
It doesn't just happen and everyone claps and says, hooray, we got rid of this thing.
When you roll back a right, what it does, first of all, is it tells everyone, you know, like, we're in control.
It doesn't matter.
I mean, this is a wildly popular right.
We know this.
A super majority of Americans.
Believe that women should have control over their bodies.
But when this happens, the only thing that you can do is either hope, one, that the violence of the state or the violence of your political regime can hold back the protest and keep the order and make people live within it.
It also, if you're able to do that, it sets off a chain reaction.
Because what happens within political orders, like so for instance, Right now we're living in a neoliberal political order, right?
Basically everybody who is in government either is a neoliberal through and through or at least has to sort of tip their hat towards neoliberal ideas.
The reason I keep warning people that things are about to get really, really bad is because we're moving out of a neoliberal order, right?
So we've talked about Richard Nixon before and how Richard Nixon would not be welcome within the Republican Party, right?
Richard Nixon was a conservative reactionary president, but he lived within the New Deal political order, right?
That meant that the government still had to do things for the people.
They still had to have programs for the people.
They still had to take care of the environment, which, by the way, the Supreme Court is probably going to cripple any ability of the Biden administration or future administrations to try and combat climate change.
in the midst of this.
Like, as the political order starts to change, and this is why I keep saying that the left has to have a resurgence, the people have to have a resurgence, is because they are gaining momentum.
And the moment that you start getting rid of rights, like abortion, and the moment that you start, I don't know, they're probably going to move, you know, money towards private schools, they're going to move money towards Christian schools, you name it, as those things start to change, and as the power starts to move, the momentum moves, and the political order and as the power starts to move, the momentum moves, and
And once you get rid of this right, and if you can enforce it, and if you can keep order, and you can maintain that idea, even though it's extremely unpopular, all of a sudden the momentum changes, and you look at the country, and it starts going in a completely different path.
Well, the issue I've had thinking about it this past week was that they want minority rule, right?
I think that the right are okay with this notion that they're going to be outnumbered because of the white people in this country.
And they're okay with that because they feel like they know better.
And so that's why we have to have these things instituted.
And so it doesn't necessarily matter if 70% of the country wants the opposite of what we want.
Trust us, it'll work out when we get all these things going because we know a lot better.
Well, do you remember what happened in this country the last time a bunch of white guys thought they knew better and had complete control of the country?
You know, it generally is bad whenever we've had that, and certainly that was the case in the country before neoliberalism existed.
Well, and that's one of the damnedest things.
You know, on one hand, and we've got to talk about this absolute bullshit craziness in Texas here in a minute, because it is Indicative of everything that you and I have been warning about these past few years.
In all of this, it's like on one hand, the states and the people who say they are most patriotic, on one breath they're talking about how much they love America, and then the next breath they're like, we will secede.
This country is horseshit and we will leave it.
And what you're talking about is exactly right.
This is not only minority rule, and do not get me wrong, we currently live in a minority rule country right now.
It just so happens that it's hidden behind the veneer of representative government, right?
Like, we're run by political and economic elites.
Like, those are the people who pull the levers and stuff.
But at least they have to go in front of the people in order to try and get populist support.
They need to get votes.
They at least need to, you know, pay attention to things that have supermajority consent, such as Roe v. Wade.
I mean, even Ronald Reagan, at one point, someone was like, when are you getting rid of Roe v. Wade?
And he's like, what, are you crazy?
My God, we're not gonna get rid of Roe v. Wade.
In the midst of this, we are turning the page to a society where white, evangelical, wealthy men are going to assert their power because you're exactly right.
They think that they have a patriarchal and paternal right to do that.
And to go ahead and transition and talk about what's happening in Texas, look at the first thing that they pushed.
And for those who aren't aware, the Texas Republicans got together for the first time in four years.
They have proposed a party platform that is, Nick, what's the word I'm looking for?
Crazy.
And one of the first planks of it is the idea that all schools should be teaching children about how life starts at conception, which is, for those keeping track at home, the indoctrination that they're wanting that other people are carrying out.
But in this case, Nick, Based on the old idea of Christian prejudice and Christian oppression, Christians can be prejudiced and Christians can oppress because they are better, Nick.
They know better.
And as a result, they need to have paternal control, even if they're in a minority position.
And that's exactly what we're looking at here.
Well, what I find interesting is that Texas is slowly moving purple.
It's simple math over the course.
I know the Republicans have been controlled their local government since, I want to say 2002 or 2003.
And so it feels like, yes, they're dominating that landscape.
But every indication is that it's moving more and more blue.
and so you would think a rational thought would be well hey guys look where we're moving towards we probably should you know create a little bit more of a platform that's you know indicative of what where the you know the constituents are but instead it's like it's the exact opposite it's upside down it is we need to stir up more rage and more fear over the other And that will somehow consolidate our votes in a way that, like, I guess they think they're going to win.
This is not a long-term strategy, but I guess that's the point, is they don't think in any kind of long-term notion, right?
Like, they're just there to win the next one, and then they can now rig every future election once they get in one or two more times.
Well, and I think there's a couple of prongs to this strategy, because you're exactly right.
One of the pushes, particularly with the GOP, is the idea that demographically, if you actually look at the demographics, eventually they're going to not only lose elections, but possibly never win an election again.
That is what the demographics say, unless you get in power, you gerrymander, you rig, you disenfranchise people.
But there's an extra part of this too that is really ugly and disturbing, which is, The Democratic Party continually kneecaps itself because, particularly in Texas, one of the reasons why it's leaning purple is because there are a lot of immigrants who are there now.
You have a lot of Hispanic people, right, who are part of the population.
The Democratic Party in Texas has done a piss poor job of mobilizing those electorates in the same way that the National Democratic Party continues to chase white swing voters, right?
Because there's like this internal sort of prejudice.
I mean, I had my weekend absolutely ruined because I was sitting there watching this interview with Hillary Clinton coming out and saying, you know, we shouldn't be talking necessarily about trans rights because We need to go ahead and win elections.
And it's like, no, the Democrats continually kneecap themselves because they don't go ahead and press the demographic advantages and the societal political advantages they have.
I mean, I have to tell you this Roe v. Wade thing.
Nick, you've paid attention for politics for long enough.
If Roe v. Wade gets overturned, and Roe v. Wade needs to become a national, national subject, right, going into the midterms, do you have any doubt that a lot of Democrats will shy away from it because they're afraid of turning off independent voters?
Oh, absolutely they're afraid.
I mean, they're afraid of getting pasted as baby killers or whatever, but I gotta tell you, they're gonna get that label anyway.
Anyway, it doesn't matter.
So, for instance, in all of this, and this is what pissed me off about the trans thing, and by the way, Texas, of course, in this platform, is now saying that they're going to define homosexuality as an abnormal life choice, which, I mean, sit down with that linguistically for a couple of minutes.
I mean, that is an insidious construction.
They're gonna, of course, say, you know, that they can go after people who have helped people transition their gender, They're basically going to ostracize transgender people as being mentally ill, which we've talked about over and over.
In the midst of all of this, the Democratic Party, at least large swathes of it, are very terrified of taking up those banners for themselves because they don't want to be seen as radical.
Well, guess what?
I'm sorry, but you are already wearing the label radical.
And on top of that, if you want to consider that radical, then radicalism is extremely popular.
Extremely popular, and you have to press those advantages, but right now we do not have a party in this country that is necessarily interested in pressing those advantages.
Oh, but let's get back to the GOP platform, because there's some planks in there that we could take a long walk off of, or a short walk off.
They want to repeal the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Sure, why not?
Yeah.
Let's get crazy with it.
They want to get rid of federal income tax.
Sure, why not?
Why not?
You know, this is insane.
My next question is, you know, it kind of relates to how they want to, you know, teach their children about when conception or when life starts.
You know, I don't think it's that far-fetched to assume that eventually they'll basically start teaching creationism again.
Oh, absolutely!
All of these things are linked and as a result you take subjective ideas and you start teaching them as objective science, which is exactly what this new political order is going to do.
They're pushing for what they want to call, again, Christian democracy or illiberalism or you name it.
Basically, at this point, what you do is you go in and you push subjective opinion, personal faith.
You push it as objective fact.
And then meanwhile, what do you do to people who disagree with you?
You call them mentally ill.
And when someone's mentally ill, Nick, you can use the power of the state to restrain themselves or protect themselves or protect society from them.
I mean, it is, unfortunately, it's not a slippery slope.
At this point, it is just, it's a game of dominoes.
Absolutely.
And the Voting Rights Act of 65, forgive me.
Because again, they're slowly moving into... And first of all, Texas... Is Texas really part of the United States?
Well, they don't... It depends on what day you catch them.
Okay.
Because I have to tell you, somebody who spent some time in Texas, they are pretty fond of talking about themselves as a standalone republic.
They really, really want to be their own country again.
Yeah that that's what it feels like and it's like in their DNA right almost like it's like built in that they have this in don't mess with mess with Texas thing and they're like they're independent and you know their energy grid can't be bothered to be connected to anyone else's at their peril um it's just a strange uh A very strange place, especially because you know that as it is moving left, you know, or toward the center, it's just hard to fathom, if we really do have a representative republic, that this is possible.
You know, that you're going to have basically a hijacking of an entire state over a bunch of ideologues, white guys, who think that they know better.
Well, and one of the weirdest things that's happening in all of this, and we've talked a lot about how power has been moving from the federal level to the state level, and Nick, I want you to caution your California heart for a second, because I gotta inform you and your fellow Californians, you are currently in a war with Texas.
Like, like, what's literally happened in this country is that California and Texas have sort of squared off against each other because states are, of course, gaining in power and sway and affluence.
In all of this, Texas is intentionally trying to poach people from California who believe that it's become a godless, lawless place, which, by the way, the lawlessness that everybody keeps talking about is because of the inequality That it takes place in places like Silicon Valley, San Francisco, you name it.
There aren't these services.
There's such a huge gap between the people who have and the people who don't.
In the midst of all this, California keeps trying to poach people from California, or Texas tries to poach people from California with wealth.
So they're trying to bring them over.
And meanwhile, Gavin Newsom over in California is using Texas as a cudgel, as a sort of a way to attack the right, build his own stature.
And also to bring people to California from Texas.
So we're actually watching within the United States of America, we're watching these major states, particularly California and Texas, that are starting to duel with one another and they're doing it openly.
Like this is a thing that the right talks about constantly, which is trying to turn Texas into sort of a firewall, more or less, to try and turn it from purple or blue back to solidly red and to basically gerrymander it into its own sort of like conservative reactionary regime.
And we're watching it take place between the states as the federal power starts to lose, or federal government starts to lose power.
Yeah.
You know what's amazing is that we would have, Gavin Newsom would have been the president instead of Biden right now.
He wants to be president.
But he was on that track a long time ago and then had an affair.
By the way, can you imagine having an affair with your secretary being the thing that derails your career for about 10 years?
It's sort of what happened, you know, way back in the early 2000s when this, he was, I'm telling you, he was on that track to go from, you know, a California politician onto the, He would have been ready in 2016.
I'm sorry, in 2020.
It's amazing.
He clearly is now dropping the gauntlet here.
He will probably be in Iowa anytime soon.
Keep your eye on that.
You had sent over that article discussing how Gavin Newsom seems to be willing to drop the hammer a little bit.
That, to me, is the big signal here that he's finally ready to go from Governor of California Gosh, follow follow the friend of the breakdown, Ronald Reagan's path to the White House.
Yeah.
And this is something that we're starting to see more and more.
I mean, Cliver, I don't know if you saw this in the past couple of days.
And again, it's just, we tried to preview that Biden was going to change the narrative, of course, that his administration was coming up, it was going to start asserting itself, it was going to really change the momentum, change the narrative.
People are not letting it happen.
It doesn't help, of course, when you get pictured and videotaped in public, falling off a bike, which it happens, but my God, is it an unfortunate moment for a president in an unfortunate period of his presidency.
But we've now seen Cliver, I don't know if you saw this, Cliver came out and said, you know, I'm still supporting Joe Biden unless he doesn't run and then I'm with Harris.
And it's like, oh man, like all of the signals, all the articles, all of the background chatter, it's all there out in the open trying to claim the narrative.
And so what you're seeing with Gavin Newsom is definitely trying to bring about a new generation of Democrat, and Newsom wants it.
A lot of Democratic donors want it.
I think they definitely want to take Newsom and sort of tie it to that idea of big tech and, you know, sort of a resurgent, future-looking America.
He is very much neoliberal.
There are a lot of things going on there.
We can get into Newsom in depth at another time.
But he is most certainly asserting himself.
And you can see with Newsom, with Abbott in Texas, and of course with Ronnie Donnie DeSantis down in Florida, What we're watching in all of this is the state figures who are actually able to use the transferred power from the federal government.
They're now trying to use it as their catapult into the national spotlight.
But I will say, I think Abbott has been hurt, and it's terrible to talk about politics with this, but I think you've already hurt Abbott pretty badly.
And so we're now looking at Newsom and DeSantis, and I think that we're watching them try and take advantage of this new sort of shift of power.
Right.
And the status quo in Texas on the right has to be very careful looking over their shoulder because the right-wingers are coming after them as well.
It's batshit crazy.
Yeah.
Dan Crenshaw is suddenly a globalist, Jared.
And, you know, he supported Ukraine and he, I guess he goes to the Davos Forum, whatever they were talking about, they're yelling at him.
And, listen, I have no problem with people being, you know, disrespectful to Dan Crenshaw.
You know, even, it was weird, the videos, I don't know if you saw them, did you see the videos of them yelling at him?
Yeah.
Yeah, and I'll say this, it is official Muckrake podcast policy that you can be disrespectful to Dan Crenshaw.
I mean, Dan Crenshaw is a piece of shit.
And we talked about this, I don't know if you remember this, it was whenever Crenshaw was starting to pick some former veterans in some primaries.
Remember that?
And then all of a sudden it was like Crenshaw started like taking shots after like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz.
They started taking shots at him.
Now all of a sudden you're seeing this new generation and this new vision of the Republican Party.
I mean, down in Texas, man, if you go and you look at this platform, it says, first of all, that Joe Biden is an illegitimate president.
It says, basically it's QAnon.
is what they're pushing at this point.
They're talking about possibly seceding.
They're talking about getting rid of all these amendments.
I mean, they are literally pushing extremism, and it's not even hidden anymore.
It's not even hidden behind rhetoric or any of that.
It is the insurgent, extreme right wing that has taken over the Republican Party.
And Dan Crenshaw and others like him are going to basically go to war with a lot of these people to try and determine who helms this, whether it's militant, whether it's cultural, whether it's, you know, conspiracy theory based, whether or not it is sort of jingoistic.
I I mean, it is what came out of Texas should concern everybody.
Because that is not going to be the last state that that is their state platform.
Like that is basically, it's the harbinger of a lot of change that's getting ready to come down through red America.
And I think what you're describing, we've talked about this before, like, you know, we get a lot of things right pretty early.
And this one we definitely were talking about a while ago, where you're going to have a situation where people running for the 2024 election for the Republican side are going to have to one up each other in terms of the crazy.
And so you see Ron DeSantis and they're not going to be able to stay out of the spotlight for longer than about eight or nine days, which is why you're going to see every 10 days something crazier.
Now DeSantis comes out and says that Florida, the only state in the union, is not going to offer COVID shots for younger kids.
They're not going to end up, you know, they're not going to subsidize that cost.
And it must obviously resonate with this whatever tiny little bit of the base he's trying to get in the Republic, in Florida.
But, you know, what he's also has done is he's expanded his fundraising to all across the country now.
People who were supporting Trump and his re-election campaign are now switching over all their millions over to him and his pack.
And this is what you're going to see.
You want to throw to someone, maybe we can come up with it right now, what the next crazy thing is going to be that's going to have to heighten it from there.
It's going to have to be, I mean, I don't know.
I mean, the abortion thing is going to be bad because that's going to be, obviously, Florida and Texas are going to get rid of it completely, right?
You won't be able to get one ever.
Nick, it is hard to top, vote for me, I'll kill your children.
I mean, that's really hard.
I mean, that's a high bar.
By the way, on this note, is anybody having a better time watching the January 6th hearings than Ron DeSantis?
Anybody?
Probably not, right, because he's seeing the possible erosion of Trump's support.
Absolutely.
I mean, I don't know if you saw this or if the listeners saw this, but there's 60%.
60%.
In America, there's hardly anything that enjoys 60%.
Maybe, I don't know, you shouldn't die in an inferno.
Actually, you know what, that probably doesn't have 60% in America at this point.
Free ice cream.
Yeah, free ice cream possibly, you know.
And 60% are saying that Trump should be prosecuted for January 6, which I gotta tell you, that number is both surprisingly high and depressingly low.
But to go along with that, DeSantis is absolutely just lapping this up.
It's everything that he could possibly want, and he is now being positioned as the quote-unquote reasonable Republican, as he's saying, Let's damn the kids to dying of COVID.
But that's who he is.
That's what he does.
He has basically taken himself and become an aggressive, reactionary, conservative libertarian.
The state isn't going to do anything for you.
In fact, the state very well might damn you to die.
But guess what?
The state is not going to go ahead and allow certain people that you disagree with, who are your enemies, who are your rivals, we're not going to ever let them win, even if it means your children will live longer or better.
And he has staked his claim on exactly what you're saying, which is nobody is more cruel and nobody is more shameless this side of Donald Trump than Ron DeSantis.
Absolutely.
You know, it's funny, I just really, as an aside, some of the complaints that they have are right.
You know, the school system has failed us, right?
If you think about that kind of thing, and it's the government, it's failed us.
I suppose though, Jared, if you were to trace back the origins of why the public school system has failed us, It kind of goes right back to exactly what we're talking about in terms of white patriarchal, we know better, minority rule.
Well, it is, and let's make this clear.
So in all the things that we're talking about today, so the Supreme Court, of course, is going to take away a woman's right to choose.
They're also going to go ahead and probably green light basically everybody, you know, concealed carrying around, which will lead to more gun violence, more deaths, more suffering.
They're going to go ahead and cripple any ability of the federal government to address climate change.
Those are all self-inflicted wounds.
Like, maybe they sound good politically, or maybe they, like, go along with a philosophy that helps, like, you know, white, wealthy, evangelical people, but it actually hurts the culture overall.
It's the same thing with this COVID shit.
It's the exact same thing with how we treat public education.
By going ahead and taking away science and taking away objective facts and replacing it, With subjective fact, what you're actually doing is you're giving people lesser educations.
You know what I mean?
You're actually taking away their ability to problem solve, their ability to innovate.
Like, you're actually going to hurt the economy and the future of the country.
Because this entire movement that we're talking about, this authoritarian right-wing reactionary movement, it's actually a suicidal spiral.
It's a death spiral, and it literally hurts even the people who are cheering for it the most, but it goes along with their ideology, with their worldview, because it has been seeded by a lot of really powerful, persuasive propaganda and messaging attempts.
It is literally a self-inflicted wound all the way around, except for the people who are profiting at the very, very tip-top.
Right.
And then, you know, it also addresses this notion that, as we find out, that big surprise.
Are you ready?
Are you sitting down?
You know, one of Trump's aides had said, well, you know, he admitted that he lost the election, right?
Wait a second, Nick!
I'm parading!
Keep it straight.
Get your auto drive function working.
Wait a second, you're kidding me.
Get your auto drive function working.
Wait a second.
You're kidding me.
They lied?
They lied.
Well they know, they know that it's not, it wasn't an illegitimate election.
So, but here's the thing that's weird is that the actual voters and the actual people who are, we've seen these videos, who are on the right wing, who are harassing people, they believe it.
You know, they've been primed to believe it based on probably their religious beliefs and how they've been primed from an early age at that.
So that's the Frankenstein's monster that's been created out of this, which I imagine the politicians knew because obviously they don't believe.
Yes, absolutely they do.
And I mean, Donald Trump is the absolute epitome of all of this.
Like, the people who literally want to overthrow a government to put him back in power, they were the people he hurt the most.
Like, he spouted a bunch of rhetoric about ending the American carnage and being there for the people.
Meanwhile, what happened when he was in office?
The richest 1% of America got a trillion dollars more wealthy, they all got tax cuts, and basically everybody else got screwed.
They earned less, they made less, their lives were more miserable.
It is a consistent suffering.
It's just the same thing as sitting there and harming your body and knowing deep down that it's harming your body, but continuing to do it because it feels good.
Right.
And in the way that all this works, you're exactly right.
The Republican Party, all of the media, all the people involved in this, they know that they're lying.
They've known all along.
Donald Trump knows he lost the election of 2020.
Like maybe in his most addled moments, he forgets it, or maybe he's convinced himself at some point because he is Absolutely one of the most delusional people maybe in the history of modern America.
But he knows.
He knows he lost.
The people around him know he lost.
The GOP knows he lost.
But it's advantageous to go ahead and pretend otherwise.
Exactly.
And it's advantageous because this party, the GOP, is shrinking and it's become such a desperate attempt to try and maintain power.
If you have to take the emotion out of it and you're looking at it just from a pragmatic standpoint, this is their only hope.
You know what this is like?
It's like when Doctor Strange And I was not expecting the Doctor Strange metaphor, but it works!
the endgame until they realize there's only one way where they can come out and win.
And this is pretty much it, right?
And it might work as it did in that movie.
And I was not expecting the Doctor Strange metaphor, but it works.
And part of the problem, and this goes back to exactly how we started this thing talking about Roe v. Wade.
The only way that this works is that the Republican Party, which is increasingly shrinking and shrinking and shrinking and historically unpopular.
The only way this works is if they take over the government, they take over the operations of power, and the Democratic Party just sort of seeds more and more ground to them as they've been doing.
So basically what has to happen is the Democratic Party, which now, as we've talked about ad nauseum, It covers a massive span from the center-left all the way to never-Trumpers that used to be Republicans, like Bill Kristol, right?
They are a huge party at this point that doesn't want to act like it's a huge majority party, and as a result, they might be like, you know what, I think it's really regretful that Roe v. Wade ended, but we're going to continue to fight without really making inroads towards it.
The only way that the Republican plan can actually be carried out is, one, they do it, and they use violence to the point where they make themselves a one-party system, which, I mean, that's kind of what they want, or two, they do it through these duplicitous means, and they're not challenged.
And they're allowed to do it, and suddenly they move the Overton window into this fascist right, and the Democratic Party just continues to go further and further, trying to go after that Completely illusory, non-existent swing voters.
As the resident apologist for the Democratic Party, Jared, on this podcast, I will give you one insight into maybe why they're so ineffectual.
And I'll do another, you know, metaphor here or connection.
You know how drone strikes end up Creating more and more enemies of the United States, right?
The Obama administration said, you gotta keep mowing the grass.
If you ever stop mowing the grass, the grass comes back.
Absolutely.
So, you know, you accidentally, or whatever, you murder innocent people in this notion of the war on terror, well you're going to end up having a lot more people who join because their uncle was killed, or their brother, or their mother, or their father.
Well, I suspect that prosecuting Trump, for instance, is probably viewed the same way the Democrats, where if they were to do that, that would heighten the fervor that Trump supporters already have and probably gain new ones in this notion of political persecution.
What they will describe the Democrats doing is exactly what the Republicans want to do, turning into a fascist state where political opponents are, you know, prosecuted and persecuted like that.
And that's, that is a, you know, I'm sure Merrick Garland, you know, we need a ringing hands sound effect because I'm sure it would be really loud if we were in the room he was in right now.
I gotta tell you, Nick, I bet it would upset them so much that they would carry an AR-15 out into public and shoot three people at a protest.
Yep.
Exactly.
I bet they would.
Man alive.
Can you imagine America where that happened?
And I bet the person who did it would be celebrated and turned into a right wing celebrity.
No, I agree.
And I got to tell you, like to go ahead and put this into perspective, prosecuting Trump for January 6th isn't the end game in any of this.
That is the bare minimum.
You know what I mean?
Like, that doesn't even take care of the problem.
It takes care of a part of the symptom, or starts to.
I mean, this is a situation, and I do hope, I hope like hell that Roe v. Wade doesn't get overturned by some hook or by some crook.
I think it's probably a foregone conclusion, but I hope like hell it doesn't get overturned.
If it does, we are living in a completely different political environment.
Right.
And again, that's starting to go down that hill to start looking at a new political order or a new regime.
I got to tell you, the Democrats, that is the time where it's like, man, you really have to start playing a different game.
Yeah.
And it has to change at that point.
No ifs, ands, or buts about it.
Well, you know, at some point I might have thought to myself that, you know, prosecuting those guys would then be a good preventative measure for the future.
But I can tell you right now, Ron DeSantis would not stop, would not even think of a second that if Trump went to prison about not playing the exact same Trump playbook, but just doing it better with more discipline.
Because what he knows is that he could very well win especially if Trump was out of the picture because he was prosecuted and any laws that he feels he might want to break as president or on the way up to getting there he would just he would pardon himself right?
Well and I'll tell you this and I want to go ahead and put this chip down so everybody can remember it when it unfortunately happens.
Ron DeSantis is a sly enough and a talented enough politician That if Donald Trump were to be prosecuted for January 6th, which by the way would be the best thing that could ever happen for Ron DeSantis, right?
Because that would go ahead and propel him into that spot that is waiting for him.
He would go ahead and use the prosecution of Donald Trump as his own political bully pulpit.
Look what they did to that man!
I'm gonna stand up for him and for you while he takes advantage of the vacuum it creates.
I mean, that's literally how dangerous of a person this is, and how dangerous this movement is.
But I gotta tell you, we're not playing checkers anymore.
You know what I mean?
Like, this is full-blown chess with, like, explosives on the board.
I mean, this is a new day, and if that decision comes down, it's a new era that we're living in.
I'll just say that.
And on that note, everybody, a reminder, we are going to have a live taping of The Weekender Show this Thursday, 7 p.m.
Eastern.
If that decision goes down, and again, I hope like hell it doesn't, I think it'll be good for the community to get together to vent and just be furious together.
That is this Thursday at 7 p.m.
Eastern.
If it happens, Nick and I are going to have to record some sort of emergency podcast to deal with it.
I don't know.
I just want to say good luck to everybody and a reminder that as scary as this thing gets and as worrisome as it gets, the only way that we can get out of this thing is to stay together and fight like hell.
Someday we're going to figure this out.
Someday we're going to get out of this crisis.
But again, that's this Thursday, 7 p.m.
Eastern.
If you need us before then, you can find Nick at Can You Hear Me?
SMH.
You can find me at J.Y.
Sexton.
I'm going to go and drive and find something cold.
It's hot out there.
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