Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the hypocrisy of President Joe Biden's visit to Saudi Arabia, and how the Saudis are trying to buy their legitimacy through sports. They also go through the Uvalde massacre report and Ted Cruz's stance on Gay marriage.
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A quick bit of housecleaning before we get started.
For our Patreon subscribers, we're going to be doing a live taping of our Bonus Weekender episode on Thursday, July 28th.
That'll be at 7 p.m.
Eastern.
If you haven't come to one of these things in the past, you absolutely should.
I would go so far, Nick, as to say they're a good time.
A very good time, for sure.
Don't sell yourself short.
I think they're a great time.
Absolutely.
I think they are.
So that is Thursday, July 28th, 7 p.m.
Eastern, and we're going to be recording our Weekender bonus episode, and all you have to do is go over to patreon.com slash schmuckrakepodcast.
Speaking of good times, I couldn't make this a good segue.
We must press on.
There was no way to go ahead and go from the joyousness of a live show to what we now have to talk about.
My apologies.
I try.
The show must go on, Jared.
The show must go on.
Unfortunately, we have to cover an event that as soon as I heard it was coming, and something that I've been looking at for the past few months, You know, as we've been having this gas crisis, there have been all kinds of reports and stories and leaks that President Joe Biden was desperately searching for some relief for gas prices, which they're all better now.
Yeah.
A lot of decline day every day for a long time now.
They've been declining for many, many days now, but it ended up Coming out that at some point we're probably looking at a Joe Biden trip to Saudi Arabia.
I just want to remind everybody that as Joe Biden was running for the nomination for President of the United States back in 2020, and I know my memory isn't the best, your memory isn't the best, maybe we could use a refresher of what his stance was on Saudi Arabia.
And I said it at the time.
Khashoggi was, in fact, murdered and dismembered.
And I believe in the order of the Crown Prince.
And I would make it very clear, we were not going to, in fact, sell more weapons to them.
We were going to, in fact, make them pay the price and make them, in fact, the pariah that they are.
There's very little social redeeming value in the present government in Saudi Arabia.
Joe Biden promised that in response to not just the murder of American journalist Jamal Khashoggi, but also the dismemberment, the conspiracy, the lies about it, that he would turn them into an international pariah, that he wouldn't be selling them weapons.
By the way, Nick, I don't know if you know this, but back in November, he sold them $650 million worth of air-to-air missiles.
Not great.
And by the way, now it looks like they might sell them even more weapons.
We'll get into that in just a second.
But I would love to hear your initial thoughts on this.
The only thing I can offer at this point, not great.
Not great.
Not great, Bob.
You know, it's funny because we talk about Jimmy Carter, and I lionize Jimmy Carter.
And he's a guy who also kind of understood that there are people you must tolerate in the effort to have global stability.
And they might have some things on the margins that you can't quite deal with or agree with that you'll have to just sort of ignore and press on.
But this is a little bit different, obviously.
And I do think that here's what's funny.
A lot of this is all around the fact that the the price of oil has gotten so high and and global market and all that whatever this stuff means but here's the thing Trump had to go to them in during his administration and tell them and they did to lower the price lower their amount of that they were piping out because the price of oil had gotten so low during the beginning of the pandemic And they figured out that, you know what, if we limit our capacity for making oil, the price goes up.
And that's really fascinating, Jared.
And why would we ever want to increase that again if the price stays high for us?
So it's a manipulated market.
I think that's what we have to say here.
Yes.
If Biden could go on to Twitter and say, you know what, people at the gas pump who are running your gas stations, you gotta lower those prices.
Then, hey, look, all of a sudden, oh my gosh, after a week or so, they start lowering their prices.
And then he goes there and then the price goes down.
It's all manipulated.
It's all at the whims of, you know, very few people in this world.
And I just think it's one of those things where you get into the White House and they just start prepping you from day one.
Okay, you're gonna go to visit Saudi Arabia and go dance with them and shake some swords.
Just put it on your calendar.
Well, shake some swords.
I hate it when I get told by my advisors I have to go to Saudi Arabia and shake some swords.
I was just thinking as you were going through that, thinking about Trump making his trip.
I have this very visceral memory.
I don't know if you have it or not.
It's been many years, and my God, we know that administration had so many images and moments that we would like to forget.
These pictures of him with his hand on a glowing orb, and I mean, just like, what a fever dream all of that was.
And before we get into the details of this Saudi Arabian situation, we're gonna get a little bit into the history and what's happening here.
We gotta talk about oil.
We got to talk about fossil fuel.
One of the reasons why people like Jimmy Carter and so-called realist and pragmatic foreign relations people and politicians are always talking about Saudi Arabia is because it's our foothold into what we would, you know, refer to as sort of a reliable source of oil and fossil fuels.
In the middle of all this, I'm sorry to do it, I apologize to our listeners.
We try not to do this.
This is also coming around the time where Senator Joe Manchin just completely single-handedly submarine any ability whatsoever for the Biden agenda to move forward and also to start, you know, going after climate change.
We have a problem in this world, which is an addiction to fossil fuel.
And it's not a coincidence that where you find fossil fuel, whether or not it's Saudi Arabia, other places in the Middle East, Russia, where you find it, you find despotism.
And you find dictators and authoritarians that you gotta go and kiss up to them and look the other way.
For instance, in the middle of all this, we have Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, MBS, who is, let me check my notes, a total piece of shit.
Not only assassinated Khashoggi, we're talking about disappearing political enemies.
We're talking about rounding up feminist protesters and then torturing them.
That's who this person is.
Meanwhile, what do you have to do when you're the president of the United States and you promise to make Saudi Arabia an international pariah?
You have to go and get pictured with him.
For days on end, I don't know if you heard this, but the people I talk to, they're like, there is no way whatsoever that Joe Biden is going to get pictured with MBS.
There's no way we're going to see a handshake.
That's not going to happen.
And what shows up on all of our feeds?
There's the POTUS giving a joyful fist bump with MBS.
It sucks.
It just sucks.
And the reasons because fossil fuels are not only killing the planet, but they also breed corruption and they breed despotism that you have to kiss the ass of.
Well, a couple of things.
I don't think he was joyful in the fifth month.
OK, that's fair.
That adjective might have been a little bit too much.
That's fair.
But the despotism in countries that produce the most oil is an interesting phrasing, I suppose, because you know who kind of leads the world in oil production now?
We do.
The United States is up there.
If they're not leading completely, they're pretty close to the same amount as Russia does in terms of billions or millions of barrels per day.
So we're moving towards some version of despotism, right?
Do you think that that's a connection between oil production and despotism?
I think everything that we're looking at right now, and let's lay this out.
When we're talking about growing authoritarianism, when we're talking about this movement that we've been chronicling now for years, right, there are so many different reasons.
People want a silver bullet thing, and they always look at conspiracy theories, the idea of evil, right?
A bunch of people in a dark room rubbing their hands together, coming up with plans.
No, we're talking about capitalism, and we're talking about what happens with entrenched wealth, how they protect themselves, how they make sure that things continue.
In all of this, we're in a situation now where we're on the precipice of we need to do something about fossil fuels.
We need to move beyond them.
A lot of these people are trying to protect themselves.
They're trying to maintain this sort of monopoly that they have.
But also, these are the same people who don't want to see the snow globe shook up.
You know what I mean?
Like, they really like the way things are set up, and they want to continue down that path.
So it's not a coincidence that as we're looking at climate change over the horizon, when we're talking about the possibility of, I don't know, trying to move to wind or solar or even nuclear, for the love of God, we're talking about people defending their blocks.
And I think these things absolutely go hand-in-hand, whether it's with Putin, MBS, or even the assholes we're dealing with in this country.
Yeah, it's money.
It's all money, and it's entrenched money, and it's the kind of levels of money that people are willing to kill people for and not think twice about it.
So, you know, let me ask you this.
I don't want to pimp you out here, which is, you know, the improv term for asking a question that you may or may not know the answer to, but why Do you suppose the Saudis need so many arms, so much weaponry that we have to sell them every year?
Do you think that they actually really need it?
Well, there's so much going on there.
On one hand, they've got their hands in all kinds of different things.
We've seen these wars, we've seen these conflicts.
But there's also another thing, and I don't know if you ever do this.
It's something that in the past few years has started to really stick in my craw.
Like I'll be out like on a run or walking around or I don't know sitting outside enjoying a nice lunch or a dinner or something and all of a sudden a military jet just screams across the sky.
Do you know what I mean?
And you're like, oh shit.
Oh, I guess they're doing training.
There is a lot of this that has to do with the projection of power.
Right?
Like if you're going to have a country that's going to basically be an authoritarian state the way Saudi Arabia is, you need to have the authority.
You need to have the state monopolization of violence.
But also, there are guys in the area, right?
I mean, we're going to talk a little bit more about this in a second.
I mean, my God, look what happened whenever Iraq went into Kuwait.
Saudi Arabia was immediately like, America, how much money do you need to have a war?
Oh, you'll have it.
Don't worry.
So you have a confluence of things, and it's basically a big tower of dominoes that needs money.
It needs soft and hard power.
And in this case, we're more than willing to give it to them.
Sure.
I mean, part of me feels like it's just a kind of a sweetheart deal for the oil, and it's just sort of another level of that negotiation.
Okay, well, you give us more oil, we'll give you some more of these weapons, and you'll be happy.
Nick, they had Saudi Arabians who were involved in 9-11, and we don't really talk about that.
One of the seminal moments in American history, and it looks like Saudi Arabia, and I'm saying this charitably, the least you could say is maybe look the other way as this was happening.
They had a part to play in 9-11 and we're just like, don't worry guys, we'll black those documents out.
It'll be fine.
That's how much carte blanche they have because they are our guys in the Middle East and because of the oil connection.
Well, is this the point where we have to acknowledge that MBS has done, thawed, perhaps, some of their more archaic and, what's the word, not diabolical, but oppressive, cultural things they've been having for a long, long time?
Well, that's one of the arguments here, is the idea, and I gotta tell you, do you remember when he first sort of ascended?
Basically, every magazine and news show in the country, it was just like, This young crown prince and he's got like progressive ideas and maybe things are going to get better.
There's a couple of things that are happening in this case.
One is there's a large showing of quote unquote liberalization, which we'll talk about why that's happening in the first place.
But then behind the scenes, it's just like, no, I mean there was even an American reporter who was asking about the Khashoggi situation and they like got grabbed at this press conference, you know, Like there is still a, um, Oh, what is it?
It's the, the, the iron hand underneath the velvet glove type of thing.
Like there needs to be the, um, the illusion of a society that is, uh, updated and progressive and, and meanwhile have the threat of this.
And I have to say, and listen, I don't usually like to say that, uh, uh, Ben Solomon makes a good point.
But I do want to point out here, and real fast, I want the listeners to hear what Biden had to say about confronting MBS about Khashoggi.
I raised it at the top of the meeting, making it clear what I thought of it at the time and what I think of it now.
And it was exactly, I was straightforward and direct in discussing it.
I made my view crystal clear.
I said, very straightforwardly, for an American president to be silent on an issue of human rights is inconsistent with who we are and who I am.
I'll always stand up for our values.
Okay.
So, he says that he confronted him.
Meanwhile, the NBS says that he really didn't have any part in it.
Nick, is this an inaccurate statement that I'm about to say?
Are you ready?
I'm ready.
The United States, for decades, has disappeared people in other countries, has murdered people in other countries, or that the United States has possibly done things that are very, very comparable to what happened to Jamal Khashoggi.
Well, I know that that is true because Donald Trump told me this was true.
Right.
He got to see the notes.
Yeah.
So I'll take his I'll take his word for it on that one.
That and by the way, that isn't sitting here and saying what they did was right.
I think it's absolutely disgusting.
But we have to go ahead and call it like it is.
NBS supposedly said, and this was leaked by Saudi Arabian officials, That when he was confronted by Biden about Khashoggi, he said, quote unquote, you can't impose your values on us by force.
Remember Abu Ghraib?
What have you done about Shireen Abu Akhlai, who, of course, is the Palestinian American journalist who was killed by Israeli forces?
Still really nothing done about that.
He's not wrong.
When you want to control things, when you want to project power, the United States makes everything look very shiny, very glamorous, very free, very progressive.
Meanwhile underneath there are tactics that are disgusting.
When you get in bed with people like this, as my grandmother used to say, you get fleas.
And that's what we're looking at.
It's the exact same thing.
It's the projection of that progress, but behind the scenes, it's just absolute state-sanctioned violence.
Right.
And again, he is not wrong.
And you can look at a lot of these things in a different perspective legitimately as, like, for instance, you could look at what, you know, Israel to Palestine is something similar to what Russia is doing to Ukraine right now in some respects, right?
Depending on where you happen to be born, you have a certain perspective.
And so this is the foreign policy debacle that we encounter every year, every administration.
And I suppose the best you could say is you hope that out of this, you don't get a thing like 9-11, where we had backed Osama bin Laden and he was our friend.
And if we had continued that connection, he probably wouldn't have...
You know declared war on America like he did or who knows what would happen But like this is what you have to really be worried about is that these kind of things are the seeds for future horrific You know attacks Yeah, and I mean, I'm sorry, but there's no money that we're passing back and forth between us, and the oil's the exact same way.
None of this is clean.
You know what I mean?
Like, none of it is on the up-and-up, none of it is without blame.
It's really, really awful.
And meanwhile, and as we're saying that, you know, I want to point out that all of these quote-unquote pragmatists, and I'm getting ready to read a couple of quotes from this article by friend of the pod, Max Boot.
How are we supposed to feel about Max Boot, by the way?
Max Boots sometimes is right about things and sometimes he's just an out-and-out asshole about things.
Okay, so the hat is just superfluous.
He also wears a terrible hat.
I don't understand the hat.
There are hat people, right?
You are that guy.
Or you decided in 8th grade you want to be the hat guy, I guess.
So I wear baseball hats.
I'm a fan of wearing... Do you wear baseball hats?
I've never seen you wear hats.
I don't like wearing hats.
I look really good in hats, by the way.
I will say so myself.
I believe it.
But they're uncomfortable.
I don't like wearing them.
So, I like hats.
I feel like I pull off the hats.
It's part of my culture that I've grown up in.
Baseball hats, you know what I mean?
Max Boot wears like a fedora, like a 1920s news person would wear.
He has it on in everything, constantly.
It's in his avatars, all of that.
I'm pointing it out because, number one, maybe I'm jealous because I can't pull it off.
I think you could.
I think you could pull off the hat.
I couldn't do it.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I have a straw version of that that I wear now for shade and it's better.
But like, you know, listen, I prefer, if I have to wear one, it's one of those floppy hats you'll see in the baseball with the little brim and it's round.
Anyway, I wish I could pull it off.
And so, as I get ready to level this criticism, in the back of your mind, maybe think, is Jared saying this because he's upset that he can't pull off the hat?
That's valid!
You have to be exposed.
- Listen, the Muckrake podcast is honest about our biases.
That's period.
So Max Boot, who is part of this, and it's something that we've covered before, part of this national security, foreign relations sort of blob, he'll show up in the Washington Post, he'll show up in the Atlantic, you name it.
He's getting paid.
He's on the Council of Foreign Relations right now, one of these think tanks that gets unbelievable amounts of money to launder this type of ideology.
You know, meanwhile, this conversation that we're having about this blood money, about this corruption, about dealing with dictators, it's Max Boot's job to tell us that we're being unreasonable.
You know, that we're singing Imagine, Nick.
That we're all holding hands.
We're talking about a better world.
You know, meanwhile, we need men like him on the wall.
Right.
Oh wait, are you talking about Max Boot or MBS?
All of them.
You name it.
We need all of them.
And Max Boot puts out this thing.
He literally says, and by the way, this is one of the worst headlines ever.
Cut Biden some slack, Jack.
That's basically what it says.
And meanwhile, he's going to swoop in and tell us some realism.
And he says, we don't have the luxury of completely isolating one of the world's largest oil producers.
If the United States won't support the Saudis, Russia and China will.
Which, by the way, Nick, how did that work for us in the Cold War with working with dictators?
Because we were worried that Russia wasn't going to work, or Russia would work with them if we didn't.
How'd that go?
Not great, Bob.
How many people died?
How many dictators stayed in power because we thought it's better that they work with us than that they work with Russia?
Domino Theory.
What?
No, I don't know.
Yeah, it's awful.
And again, foreign policy, we've never had foreign policy right.
Right?
I don't think there's history in this country.
No!
And again, it's this mind disease that all of these pundits and sickos have where it's just like, oh, you don't get the real story, Mac.
You know, we'll tell you how this thing works because we're the serious people.
And then he comes in with this.
In truth, MBS is a more ambivalent figure than the cartoon villain that he is so often made out to be in media coverage.
It's true that he is cruel and repressive.
Thanks, Max.
He has created a climate of fear in Saudi Arabia, imprisoned dissidents, and accumulated absolute power.
But while illiberal politically, he is liberalizing Saudi society.
And by the way, how do we know that, Nick?
How do we know it?
He's telling us this?
He's letting women drive?
I don't know.
Now I'm getting pimped.
I don't know.
For those of us who have visited Saudi Arabia in the past and found it to be one of the weirdest and most repressive places on the planet, these reforms are nothing short of revolutionary.
For goodness sake, a government-sponsored music festival in December had tens of thousands of young Saudis dancing and partying for four days!
We sure as shit hate the boss, Nick, but he brought in pizza on Friday.
That's what this is!
Yeah.
No, absolutely.
I was trying to find out who they brought in.
I don't think they brought in any major American acts yet, but that has to only be a matter of time.
Oh, we'll get into some of the people who are gladly taking the Saudi money and what is happening behind all this.
Because if you read this article by Max Boot, you're like, oh cool, they're throwing a party, how nice.
And this is how he ends things, though.
I think this is telling.
This is not very satisfying or sexy, the idea that we should keep working with them, but I don't have a better alternative.
I'm not sure anyone does.
Sometimes there simply isn't a perfect policy, and the best the president can do is try to pursue the least bad approach.
Nick, what do we find when these columnists, these pundits, when they write an article An op-ed for the New York Times, the Washington Post.
And they say, nobody could ever come up with a solution.
And we don't even know what the problem is.
What are they not talking about?
The money.
They're not talking about the money.
I'm trying to figure out if Max Boot got like a really nice vacation to Saudi Arabia and they put up and all that whole thing.
Or did Biden give him something?
Or both.
It's hard to tell here what angle he's taking.
I go so far as to say that there probably isn't a think tank in downtown Washington, D.C.
that isn't either awash in Saudi money or hopes to be awash in Saudi money.
Like we're more than happy to do it and we'll talk about like the corrupting influence of that.
Nick, all of these people, these people who are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to study the problem, they can never say the problem is capitalism.
The problem is hypercapitalism, neoliberalism, fossil fuels.
They can't say it!
They can never say that the alternative is that we figure out an actual alternative energy, or we get money out of politics, or that we make the system fairer or work better.
They can't possibly wrap their heads around it.
It's impossible.
Well, I think the Saudis have discovered this is really just a PR problem.
Oh, how do you take care of PR problems, Nick?
Yeah, you just pay people to write shit like this, like Matt Booth.
Maybe give him a new hat.
That might be what they did.
They gave him a couple hats.
You know what would be great about that?
Do you remember, oh man, when Paul Manafort, when he was going down and they started going through his stuff and they were like, One of the ways that he was paid off by like Russian oligarchs was like a shark skin suit.
Yeah.
And rugs.
Why not?
Listen, I just want to think about Nancy Reagan taking all those kind of gifts and then ignoring uh oh oh you know this is part of the research I'm doing for uh for our new thing is yeah she she was she just you know what her solution was because you know you're not supposed to take gifts from foreign dignitaries she just stopped reporting it.
That's a really great way.
Just ignore the actual, I think it's called the law, and then you don't have to deal with it anymore.
It's much easier.
Not a lot of paperwork.
Well, Trailblazer Nancy Reagan, good job.
Anyway, but that's the point.
It's the PR.
It's a PR thing.
Just like, you know, the PR in the Middle East.
They've mastered that probably better than we have.
And they understand how the control of narrative is a lot better for them than their evil actions.
And let's talk about what steps Saudi Arabia is taking, including throwing concerts and such.
So it just comes out also, and this is actually some decent reportage from Politico.
I know I'm shocked that I'm saying it as much as you are.
It's actually decent, but I think the reason that it's decent is because they're not looking at this as a problem.
They're just reporting on it.
It comes out that Saudi Arabia had looked into a PR firm called Edelman.
It's not their first one.
But they were going to push what they called a five year, quote unquote, search beyond campaign.
This would involve and it's a long list.
They were pushing the idea of using American celebrities, TV shows, networks, popular culture to get them to interact with Saudi Arabia.
So that the American people would change their opinion of Saudi Arabia.
Basically, spending millions upon millions of dollars to erase the very concept of Jamal Khashoggi and disappearing of political dissidents.
This campaign, by the way, is only the newest campaign.
We've been seeing this over and over and over again, and it's always really telling, Nick, who's willing to take the money.
It's not even just that they're erasing the past.
They're giving these Americans going over there a completely ridiculous version of what the present is now.
Well, it's like Kim Jong Un, right?
They drive you around North Korea.
They take Dennis Rodman, they drive him around North Korea, and like the citizens keep having to like run around to like Oh, look at all of our healthy, normally-sized people who aren't dying.
Meanwhile, there's like, um, what do you call it?
It's like fake houses that are being propped up.
I got a funny story to tell you.
Can I interrupt real quick?
I can't wait.
Way back when, when I moved to LA, I was acting, I was auditioning, all sorts of stuff.
I had gotten a gig, if you can call it that, where they were doing a Grease 50th anniversary, 20th anniversary thing.
So I was charged with me and like four others to get into a really beautiful old car from that era.
Drive up to the front of the theater, where they were broadcasting this thing.
Get out, like we were all like greasers, whatever, like the hair, whole thing.
And then once we got into the theater, we would quickly do a change.
We'd change like the jacket for a second.
Get right back in, get back in the car again, and come around the corner again, and keep doing that for like an hour straight, with like the slightest change, as if we were not the same people.
Maybe glasses once, maybe sunglasses another time not.
That reminds me of that.
Like it was such a total farce, and everybody thought it was a farce, but you know what?
I guess when you're young and you're willing to, you know.
And I was getting paid.
Nick, I can see you doing that.
Yeah.
I could see you with the slicked back hair.
That's a good look for you.
Yeah, absolutely.
No, it was the pompadour.
The pompadour.
Yeah.
I had thicker hair back then.
It really worked.
Well, so the money from Saudi Arabia, and by the way, like they've done such a good job, and it doesn't just end up back, we were talking about these articles about MBS, like those things don't just pop up because people think, wow, he might be a reformer.
That's Saudi Arabia reaching out, you know, and maybe there's some money going there.
There's a publicist taking care of this, a PR firm taking care of this.
Recently, they've been doing all kinds of shit to try and do this.
They've been paying money, millions, tens of millions of dollars to the World Wrestling Entertainment, I guess you can't call it Federation, the WWE, to come over and have annual pay-per-views.
And real fast, if you think that this isn't a PR trick, listen to this real fast.
This October, we return to a place That brings out the best for all the world to see.
It's the place that shows the world the best.
Meanwhile, all of the women who wrestle in Saudi Arabia, Nick, they have to wrestle in, like, t-shirts and, like, full coverage whatever or else they risk being taken out and, I don't know, thrown in a prison and tortured.
But those tens of millions of dollars for each event, the WWE is happy to take them.
Meanwhile, Vince McMahon, there's a lot of breaking stuff if people aren't following that.
They're more than happy to take it and be propaganda for the country itself.
I mean, this has been happening consistently for years now, and now it's happening with a new golf tour, which is trying to overtake the PGA, and you have a lot of people who are getting paid millions of dollars, golfers, who are switching over.
They have no explanation for why they're switching over, Nick.
They say they're troubled by Jamal Khashoggi being murdered and dismembered as well, but they can't turn down the money.
It's mercenary shit, and this is the level of corruption that happens when you have hypercapitalism the way that we do.
I gotta tell you, if they offered me $50,000 to go run a basketball clinic in Saudi Arabia, I don't think I would turn it down.
I don't know.
And I shouldn't do it, and maybe I wouldn't do it, I don't know.
But like, that equivalent for them, they have so much money in Saudi Arabia.
They could throw $20, $30 million at these big-name golfers.
By the way, some of these guys who, you know, they lose their eligibility for the Ryder Cup, which is, you know, somewhat prestigious, or it is very prestigious, but like, the thing is, some of these guys weren't gonna make it anyway.
So that they can pretend, you know, well, people are not treating me so well on the tour anymore.
I want to go over there.
But we all know that it's all, it's a huge amount of money and it really gives you pause because it's the kind of thing that could, you know, that could change lives.
I mean, you know, really, really make an effect.
That's the thing is the leverage that it provides.
And we've reached this point now where Saudi Arabia is not only like going after golfers.
They're like buying soccer teams.
They're like looking into doing this or doing that and buying this or buying that.
There comes a point where that concentrated wealth creates the potential to basically overwhelm anybody by throwing money at them.
Now this mindset and let's get back to Donald Trump very quickly because he's a perfect Rosetta Stone for all of this.
He basically is the final Pokemon evolution of where all of this is taking us, which means it is a selfish, self-concerned, narcissistic, absolutely poisonous individual who has no concept of... You even saying I would have to think about it, right?
Like, that man doesn't think about it.
This LIV tour, which of course is trying to overtake the PGA, is going to hold events at Trump golf courses.
Surprise, surprise.
Shocking.
You know, it's not like his son-in-law got millions, but that's neither here nor there.
Trump put out this weekend, all of those golfers that remain loyal to the very disloyal PGA in all of its different forms will pay a big price when the inevitable merger with LIV comes and you get nothing but a big thank you from PGA officials who are making millions of dollars.
A year.
If you don't take the money now, you will get nothing after the merger takes place and only say how smart the original signees were.
Good luck to all.
That mindset, Nick, is so poisonous and ridiculous.
And it doesn't even miss a beat.
You know what I mean?
I mean, I don't know.
This reminds me of the ABA in the 60s as a start-up league against the NBA, except that the owners of NLIV are just murderous fascists.
Yeah, the ABA had not been like disappearing dissidents.
Right.
They were just like, you know, Haberdasher people or whatever.
They were like, we want a different ball.
We like an up-tempo kind of a game.
Here, we're literally taking a bone saw to a journalist.
Yeah.
Now, by the way, I miss the reports of the notion of a merger, but I guess you're right.
Eventually, if it becomes successful enough, yeah, the PGA is like, great.
Let's all combine all these tournaments.
We'll all make money, and this will be great.
That would not be out of the realm of possibility, because again, this is capitalism, man.
I don't know what else you're supposed to ignore everything in the pursuit of money.
That's exactly right, which is how this is all trending.
This stuff with Saudi Arabia is just a case study in how it corrupts things and how it's literally corroding not just the institutions, but like it's literally getting down into the foundation and preparing us for some really gnarly shit.
You don't have a price?
I don't think so, but maybe.
That's the thing.
Who even knows when that offer comes over?
You know what I mean?
Like, if all of a sudden it's like, Jared, we've enjoyed your work at the Muckrake Podcast.
Now, you have a chance to be the host of the MBS Hour.
What's that number look like?
You know what I mean?
I don't think I could take it.
I couldn't possibly do that.
Sorry.
Wait, how much?
Let me put Mr. Yates on the phone.
I gotta tell you though, Nick.
I'm so sorry.
I don't think they would want you.
I know.
Well, you know what?
Let's not ignore the fact that Israelis and Saudis are not enemies.
No, but, you know, they're not enemies.
Wink, wink, you know?
Right, well, you know, it's just like, you know, in Caddyshack when, you know, when Ronnie Didgerfield tells his buddy Wang not to tell him he's Jewish in the restricted club.
Anyhow, yeah, I think there's probably a price.
I would have to imagine everybody wants another flat screen TV and a pool in their backyard.
Like, you know, I wonder.
Gosh, I feel dirty now.
I'm gonna have to go take a shower after the show because... That's how this works.
And by the way, speaking of feeling dirty, we gotta cover a couple of stories before we finish this episode off.
I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that the Uvalde report came out.
Nick, have you had a chance to look at this thing?
I did go through actually a really good thread that had pulled it apart in details.
It's awful in a lot of ways, right?
And I think primarily because it's a real big cover your ass for the cops.
Yes.
Right.
And I mean, now, listen, do they do they acknowledge that the cops didn't respond properly?
Yes.
Is it kind of buried in the middle?
Yes.
Do they lead off with blaming teachers?
Oh, yeah, they do.
That part of the thing is awful.
Are we going to find out that they ended up shooting kids themselves when they stormed in there?
Like, probably we won't find that out, even if it did happen, just because they're really going, you know, on and on about how they're there just seems to be a lack of information, despite what seems to be a report that has a lot of information in it.
So the main findings of the report, and this was a 77 page thing, which I unfortunately read and got pissed about multiple times.
Basically, it turns out that we had roughly 400 law enforcement officials, including border security, surrounding police, showed up at this school, and through hook by crook, just basically the majority of them, and we called this, by the way, we said there was undoubtedly going to be an argument between all of these people about who had the authority, and nobody anymore wants to take responsibility.
Everybody else, it's somebody else who fucked up, and it wasn't me.
Don't lay this on me.
It's always moving around.
I mean, this was one of the biggest games of hot potatoes I've seen in forever, and rightfully so, because this was a terrible situation.
400 law enforcement officers, all of them with weapons, all of them with training, the vast majority of them sat there on their asses while people died.
It ended up saying, I thought this was incredible, This report ends up saying, you know, it probably wouldn't have mattered if they would have went in, but it is plausible that a couple of lives might have been saved.
Well, crack, top-notch work there.
But it turns out that only a small group of law enforcement officers, working against the vast majority of them, decided to go into the school, which is one of the most damning things to come out of this.
I mean ultimately I think when they finally did it was somebody who had to just disobey orders and say F you I'm gonna go in there this is ridiculous what you're doing and and some of the reasons like well we didn't hear anybody screaming so we figured no one was shot or was alive at that point I mean it is it is damning I don't want to make it seem like this report doesn't point out a lot of issues with the cops by the way there was a really weird tidbit where the
I think it was the second news conference they had with one of the police officers and it was really weird and like the guy didn't seem prepared.
It turns out it was because the guy that was going to speak passed out just right before he went on in front of the cameras.
You know there's just all sorts of incompetence going on in this thing and it's It's just really, really sad to have to try and fathom, because I don't know about you, but I tend to imagine what that might have been like to be in those classrooms, and to be basically bleeding out, and they could have been saved if they would have gone in immediately.
You couldn't make the movie version of this because no one would believe it.
Well, and by the way, on that note, the guy passing out, they totally blamed him for one of the bigger questions that has sort of been in the background, which is, How did the asshole governor, Greg Abbott, go in front of the cameras and have completely falsified information?
They basically were like, ah, guy passed out, and chain of command sort of fell apart.
That's bullshit.
Like, they covered the governor's ass in this situation.
He went out, he did the whole rigmarole, he went after, you know, the liberal media or whatever.
Nobody really talked about this.
I'll tell you one of the most damning parts about this, Nick.
I don't know if you noticed the construction of it.
When they were laying out how this happened, the first thing that they talked about was not how the law enforcement reacted.
It was the school.
They talked about a culture of non-compliance.
I mean, it's really kind of incredible if you look at this thing.
There was a regrettable culture of non-compliance by school personnel who frequently propped doors open and deliberately circumvented locks.
Yeah, you know why, Nick?
Because they weren't working in a fucking prison.
district policy tacitly condone this behavior as they were aware of these unsafe practices and did not treat them as serious infractions requiring immediate corrections.
Yeah, you know why, Nick?
Because they weren't working in a fucking prison.
They were at a school.
And sometimes those things happen, and it is a chicken shit thing to go ahead and list that before you get into law enforcement, People who were trained to deal with this stuff.
Most of them, by the way, are absolutely drooling over the possibility of exchanging gunfire and living in a fantasy of going in and saving children in a situation.
Cowards.
It was cowardice.
That is what we're looking at here, and it's going to take me a long time to really wrap my head around what a tragedy this thing was.
Right.
Especially because what they're trying to insinuate is that, oh, doors are locked, no one can get in.
AR-15, doesn't matter, you know?
And it's like, how fast, you've shot, you know, guns.
How fast would it take for him to, how many bullets do you think it would take just to shoot a door open that was locked?
I mean, not long.
Right.
Not long.
Or you go to another one, or you find your way in.
I mean, if you've decided that you're going to go in and massacre a school, like, you're probably going to figure your way in.
I mean, listen, and so again, did they not lock the doors all the time?
Like, yes, fine.
But this doesn't necessarily matter when you have, within three minutes, a whole bunch of cops ready to show up and supposedly protect them, and then up to eventually 400 of them.
That's what really, That should be the leading page and it should be the last page should be everything in the middle and and the fact that you're right the way they structured this was to immediately turn everybody against what the the teachers were doing and the administrators like like they finally released the teacher who survived and the whole town showed up to give him a hug of course what you might not notice I didn't see any police officers giving him a hug in that line it's like I watched a whole lot of that tape but um
My worry was that, like, he's gonna become vilified because he didn't lock his door like he was supposed to while he was teaching.
And you know, at that point, it would not have mattered.
I can guarantee you, however long it takes to shoot an exterior door in to get in, it's probably a lot less time to shoot a door that's an interior door of a classroom in and be in there anyway.
And that dude had hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
Yeah, let's not have any ifs, ands, or buts here.
Like, school administrators and teachers absolutely have a responsibility for safety.
When I go in and I teach, I have my door closed.
I have my door locked.
That's just standard operating procedure.
And in all of these cases, I do have to say that there's hardly a day that I teach and have the door locked that I don't think, you know what?
Screw the fact that our culture has reached this point where we have guns everywhere, where we're not taking care of people mentally, where we don't have programs that make things safer.
Why is it that open society has devolved to this point?
Why is alienation, radicalization?
Why have all these things taken over to go ahead and level the blame first and foremost, especially as you're putting this together?
And that's not an accident.
We've put together reports.
We've put together videos, podcasts.
Like, you make a choice.
They went ahead and they made the choice that first and foremost, this wouldn't have happened if the school and the teachers would have taken their safety seriously, which is absolute horseshit.
And we're talking a lot about PR with the Saudis.
It's the same thing with the police and what you mentioned with Governor Abbott.
That's just PR.
Immediately they go into that mode where they're going to portray these guys as heroes.
Let's pretend they didn't have all the information.
Maybe they're not lying per se, but they are completely mischaracterizing exactly what happened with knowing that.
They must have known enough at that point.
When they had that press conference that they were completely bullshit what they were saying.
Most of these cops, you know, like everything I've read and you know it's I know it's you know like on a Twitter frame of mind but you know a lot of times when you get these cops who are when they're candid will probably tell you that like that the culture is much more of save your own ass and you're not out there to like to risk your life or anybody else you just need to get home and safely.
And that is that is most definitely a prevailing sort of a philosophy that's happening here I don't want to point out like listen You know this whole concept.
That's been like just absolutely Disseminated for years now the idea that every cop is like some sort of elevated hero that every troop is some sort of an elevated hero They're human beings you know what I mean like they some of them make good choices other ones don't I mean that happens all the time and
In this case, we do have a situation, though, where the prevalent opinion over the past few years, and we've seen it, we've covered it, we've dissected it, it's the idea that police officers are different from everybody else, right?
They are not only elevated heroes, they're the only thing standing between society and absolute chaos.
And as a result, they look around, they think everybody else is either out to get them, or criminals, or suspicious, and they're not, you know, maybe they could be possibly traitors.
In all of that, why would you put your life on the line?
Yeah.
I'm not making that much money.
I'm not going to do that.
I mean, by the way, Secret Service, we're willing to do that, right?
Well, we're going to have to talk more about the Secret Service here soon, because there's a lot going on with the Secret Service story.
Yeah.
I can't think of a story right now of a regular police officer.
I mean, I know they're out there, but that had sacrificed his life or put himself in complete harm's way to save somebody else and made it.
Those are far and few between.
Well, and they happen.
They absolutely happen, but either they're not being reported and or it's a situation where it doesn't really conform to this narrative we're talking about.
And, you know, as all of this is coming together, I'm sorry, but this Uvalde thing is one of the most damning instances of police failure that we have seen in recent history, except for the last couple of things that we've seen.
The evidence is mounting that stuff is wrong to the degree where these things are falling apart.
Oh yeah.
I mean listen, I was a high school teacher for four years in a big inner-city high school.
I mean, the idea that they'd be able to properly police, like conforming to the standards of like, we didn't have active shooter drills then.
This is like late 90s.
It wasn't even fathomable that you'd do this.
But like, the administration could barely get a standardized math test to their proper Classrooms on time much less expect them to have some sort of oversight that we're properly following every single You know protocol to prevent a shooter like that.
That's that that's just ludicrous is in itself as well.
So Yeah, it's uh, the solution is clear And it's the fucking Second Amendment, I guess.
We talked about this before, though, because it gives... The Second Amendment is what is the end-all be-all argument for everybody who wants to have guns, who doesn't want to have gun control.
But I have a feeling, like, even without the Second Amendment, like, that feeling or that, you know, that rationale would still be there of people who would not accept, you know, having any kind of gun control.
Yeah, I agree.
And by the way, speaking of the Second Amendment, now we have to talk about a guy who once made an internet video of himself cooking bacon on the end of an assault rifle.
How's that for a segue, by the way?
How do you like that one?
You know, we've had some good ones today.
So before we wrap this show up, we have to talk.
And I'm about to say, are you ready for one of the worst lead-in sentences imaginable?
And like running it around in my head, there's no way to make this palatable.
Are you ready?
I can't look.
So, on a recent episode of Ted Cruz's podcast... Last time on Ted Cruz's podcast.
Speaking of prices, how much money would it cost you to listen to Ted Cruz's podcast?
Oh, I thought you asked me how much to go on it, but to listen to it... Oh, both.
How much?
- How much? - Probably like a hundred, I would take $50,000 to listen to it. - 50,000?
I would listen to it for like 50 bucks.
Oh really?
Okay.
Yeah, it's a dinner.
Alright, 50 bucks?
Wow.
That's a good bottle of bourbon.
Yeah, 50 bucks.
Alright, maybe you have to pay me a thousand.
I listened to, I'll say this, in preparation for this story and this segment, I listened to this podcast for way longer than I needed to.
Okay, wow.
And also on that note, Nick, who do you think, and I want you to wrap your mind around this, Who do you think sponsors Ted Cruz's podcast?
The NRA?
No, the NRA does not.
They don't have a lot of money right now.
Well, I know it's not Planned Parenthood.
Let's see.
Oh, the Federalist Society.
I don't know.
No, Gold Peddlers.
What's that?
So it's people who are trying to sell you.
Oh, general gold peddlers.
OK.
And it's not people who want to sell you gold because they appreciate gold.
They like looking at gold.
This is the long right wing grift, which is you tell everybody that society is falling apart.
And the government's coming to get you.
And guess what?
You should invest in gold.
Which is the secret, and it's always been the secret, whether or not it's Ted Cruz, Alex Jones, Fox News.
Oh man, I was picturing a guy who's wearing the cowboy hat with the flipped up brim in the front, you know, and like they're sifting, and there's, you know, maybe the guy's name is Cookie.
Okay, but either way, I hear ya.
That makes a lot of sense.
Boom howdy!
Ted Cruz!
Yeah, you can do that.
So, what did he say?
So, Ted Cruz was really feeling himself the other day.
He was being interviewed for his podcast, which is a weird thing.
It's a very narcissistic project.
And let's hear what good old Teddy had to say.
So look, Obergefell, like Roe versus Wade, ignored two centuries of our nation's history.
Marriage was always an issue that was left to the states.
We saw states before Obergefell that were moving.
Some states were moving to allow gay marriage.
Other states were moving to allow civil partnerships.
There were different standards that the states were adopting.
And had the court not ruled in Obergefell, the democratic process would have continued to operate.
That if you believed gay marriage was a good idea, the way the Constitution set up for you to advance that position is convince your fellow citizens.
And if you succeeded in convincing your fellow citizens, then your state would change the laws to reflect those views.
In Obergefell, the court said, no, we know better than you guys do and now every state must sanction and permit gay marriage.
I think that decision was clearly wrong when it was decided.
It was the court overreaching.
That's right, everybody.
Ted Cruz is coming out in the open and saying that the case of Obergefell, which of course legalized gay marriage around the country, was wrongly decided that it was a case of court overreach and is basically advocating for its overthrow at this point.
Yeah, but he'll argue that it just needs to go back to the states.
We're not saying that you shouldn't have gay marriage.
Just let the states decide as if, you know, they're the final arbiters of rational thinking and treatment of their constituents properly.
Nick, if we, I don't know, if we allowed every political and societal instance of people being mistreated, discriminated against, oppressed, To go to the states.
What would be some wonderful aspects of America we'd still be dealing with?
Jared, we just got the Mississippi audience back.
You want me to torture it again?
I guess so.
Thanks for listening, Jim.
Keep the faith down there.
Listen, our history of our country is rife with instances of states... I mean, let's just start with lynching.
Lynching laws?
We can start there.
We can start with disenfranchisement of people of color.
We can start with any kind of civil rights violation you can imagine.
How about segregated schools?
It's not a good list, Jared.
It's the worst list, is what I would say.
And people like Ted Cruz always, always, always hide behind that old chestnut, including Ronald Reagan, by the way.
He loved talking about states' rights and states being able to decide their futures.
And in all of this, I think it's very important to point out that Ted Cruz, I wrote about this this weekend, Ted Cruz is a really interesting figure in all of this.
Like, a reminder, Ted Cruz is a constitutional scholar.
I mean, he is a twice-educated Ivy League constitutional scholar.
He will go ahead and he'll say, like, some dumb shit.
He'll go out and he'll say some, you know, radicalizing things every now and then, particularly if Fox News is mad at him.
He is not usually one of these people who comes out and says this kind of stuff.
Which I think should tell us the Republican Party is really starting to rally behind this.
This isn't Ted Cruz is not going to step out on an ice shelf.
You know what I mean?
He's not going to take a long walk down a short pier like this is coalescing.
And of course Clarence Thomas showed us in his concurrence.
Uh, like this is what the Republican Party is gearing up to do.
I don't think there's any argument about that at this point.
Yeah.
And it's also him, you know, probably announcing he's going to run again for president.
And remember, we talked about this before with 2020 that it's going to be a competition.
for who can be crazier.
Yeah, for sure.
And Ron DeSantis has already kind of cornered the market, and we've seen them.
They're really pushing him hard, Fox News and whatnot, into the point where the only way Ted's going to get back in the conversation, and God damn, this is Guy Glutton.
He must like being in pain.
I'll leave it at that, Jared.
We have seen things from Ted Cruz that make you question what Ted Cruz enjoys in life. - Yes, absolutely.
I don't enjoy that.
I don't enjoy what we're talking about.
No, he is very, very likely a masochist and is ready for all this.
By the way, I know in recent weeks we've been talking about this Trump-DeSantis thing.
I sent you over a Fox News segment that basically was three minutes of them talking to Trump voters who are ready to go to DeSantis.
It feels like it's on, man.
It really does.
Yeah, you know, listen, I watched that back to back with Emmanuel, the emu, choosing violence over the camera.
So I'm in a glass case of emotion right now.
I don't know how to feel.
Well, I just wanted to point this thing out with Cruz because it feels a lot like in a forest fire when it jumps the firewall.
You know what I mean?
And we talk all the time.
And just to get people on the same page, because, you know, maybe we have new listeners who haven't heard this, This shit starts in the extreme parts, in the fringe parts of the right.
You're Alex Jones, you're Akun, you name it.
Like it starts with all these people.
It starts building up and then eventually the Republican Party looks at the testing of it and they're like, yeah, absolutely.
Let's go for it.
Let's get rid of gay marriage.
And a lot of this has to do, and of course Obergefell was settled in 2015.
This was around the time that a lot of, not just evangelicals, but national conservatives, we call them now, these Trumpists, they basically looked around, they thought this was one of the worst things that had ever happened in American history.
They've been champing at the bit to get rid of this.
And you have to feel like the days are numbered here.
And again, it wasn't just Roe v. Wade.
And my God, are you following these stories that are coming out of women who are being forced to like give birth to other people?
It's awful.
It's just grotesque.
Not only that, they're forced to get to near death before they treat them.
That is, you know, and again, I know that Biden came out to try and say you have to treat women in an emergency, but it's enough vagueness in the laws in certain states where people, these doctors are literally like, Waiting until they're on death's door to actually treat them when they should have been treated days before and they would never want to come to that.
Here's the thing that's interesting about all this is because, and they have to know this, they have to know that the states' rights thing, which is a real big dog whistle, not even necessarily for racism per se, but it's more like a dog whistle for civil war, because we already are sensing in my mind that certain states are going to bristle at neighboring states letting abortions happen.
We're seeing it.
We are going to see them bristle at allowing gay marriage to happen when gay marriage is now brought back to the states or outlawed or whatever.
That's going to happen to that.
So you just continue to create a divide which will ultimately lead to, you know, in my mind it's the right who will be aggressive in attacking other states.
versus us who are just gonna move away from those states and then create these big huge progressive enclaves that are you know spread out across the country in different areas but I it doesn't seem to be a stretch to think that like a lot of those people are gonna continue to get angrier and angrier when they know that that that stuff we don't like is going on over there in Illinois or whatever and you're gonna see you can see domestic terrorism happen which basically is a civil war
Yeah, and again, we cover this not because we have some sort of a perverse obsession with it, not because we're masochists like, you know, Raphael Cruz, but it is, you know, this is something that we need to take seriously.
Like, it's not going to stop with Roe v. Wade.
And on top of that, these people who are like, ah, Democrats need to quote unquote moderate, which is just code for, you know, screw gay and trans people.
Just let it go, you know, just give them what they want.
Maybe they'll stop.
They're not going to stop.
They're not going to stop.
And the yawning response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade has not only emboldened them, it's more or less just set them loose to do whatever they want.
Like, there's no consequence now for doing what Ted Cruz is doing and what he's saying.
And this is, it's a weather van.
It's where we're going.
Yeah, and you don't need to stop there.
You can look at how they're treating the people in their own party.
You know, Manchin and Sinema are getting off scot-free as well by being Republicans, basically.
Yeah, there's absolutely nothing happening there.
And then meanwhile, you got your max boots of the world who are like, hey, I know you're mad at Joe Manchin, but really, like, you can't afford to make him mad.
And it's like, my God, they're running roughshod.
They're getting away with everything that they want to do.
They're making money hand over fist in this thing, and nobody's standing up to them.
It's a recipe for disaster.
We have to understand what's going on.
We have to understand the threat.
We have to understand where it's going.
And you have to understand that the Republicans' argument is always like, well, it's not that bad, right?
Or it could be so much more, so much worse, you know?
You might make us elect a fascist, you know?
Right, right.
MBS is like, you know, gosh, think how much worse that guy can be, and that's why it's okay that we're dealing with him.
And Manchin, too, it's, that's what's going on.
Rock concerts, Nick!
They've got rock concerts!
Yes, and women can drive on their own.
Well, maybe.
Okay.
Maybe.
All right, everybody.
That's going to do it for us today.
We're going to be back on Friday with our Weekender episode.
A reminder, if you're interested in getting that, if you're interested in supporting the show, keeping us ad-free so we're not getting checks from the Saudi Arabian government.
Okay.
I want that TV, Jared.
I need a new TV, man.
Go over to patreon.com slash monkrakepodcast.
That is where you can support the show, get the additional content, including the upcoming live show Thursday, July 28th at 7 p.m.
Eastern.
Again, that's patreon.com slash monkrakepodcast.
In the meantime, everybody, until then, you can find Nick at Can You Hear Me?
