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July 26, 2022 - The Muckrake Political Podcast
01:05:50
The GOP: "Wait, I'M the Victim Here..."

Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss Senator Josh Hawley's impersonation of Forrest Gump, the guilty verdict of Steve Bannon, and the preparations Donald Trump is already making to take over the government if he wins again. To support the show and access additional content, including the LIVE SHOW this Thursday at 7PM EST, become a patron at patreon.com/muckrakepodcast    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Time Text
Hey everybody.
Welcome to the Muckrake Podcast.
I'm Jerry J. Sexton.
I am here with Nick Hauselman.
A quick little reminder, this Thursday, July 28th, 7 p.m.
Eastern, we're going to be doing a live taping of our bonus weekender show with our patrons.
All you have to do to gain access to that is go over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
Again, this Thursday, July 28th, 7 p.m.
Eastern.
Nick, these are good times.
They are.
As always, middle of the summer.
Right?
That's right!
I'm getting mid-summer vibes for the first time in a long time, I feel like.
I'm awakened.
The dog days of summer... Technically, wait.
Dog days are like a technical time, aren't they?
I don't know.
You mean like the Ides of March?
What are we talking about?
No, there's like... Everybody always refers to the dog days of summer, and I always think that it's just like, oh, it's the hot doldrums of summer, but I think it's technically a time.
I don't know if we're in the dog days.
Maybe we are, maybe we're not.
I don't know.
All I know is that we are the boys of summer.
Absolutely.
We are the boys of summer in the muckrake summer, because every summer is the muckrake summer.
And by the way, we need to start the show off just very, very quickly.
We have to acknowledge something.
Friend of the show.
Actually, I'd go so far as to say best friend of the show.
Josh Howley is going through some stuff, Nick.
He is.
You know, here's the thing with that clip, Nick, People don't understand that that is the actual audio from Josh Hawley running like a scalded dog from the protesters who only hours before he had been whipping up into a frenzy with his show of strength and force.
People don't know this.
They don't know that there are microphones attached to those security cameras way up on the wall.
Wait, can we just make sure, can we hear that one more time?
Well, you know, he had to make it around that corner, without question, down the stairs and everything is perfect.
I gotta say, you gotta admire the man's running form.
You know, and what's amazing about all this, like we can laugh about it, what this January 6th hearing has shown this video, and I don't know if you heard it, but they were like, when they played that video of him just absolutely turning tail and running, people in the room were like, It was a big hit.
It was enjoyable.
We're not laughing at Josh Hawley because he was afraid of a murderous mob.
We're laughing at Josh Hawley because he is an absolute asshole who has, for years and years, talked about this idea of masculine courage.
Let's hear Josh Hawley on that real quick.
The left wanted to define traditional masculinity as toxic.
Courage and independence and assertiveness.
Assertiveness in choosing the direction to run, if you ask me.
Well, you know, it's the guys that have to talk about it like that that you really feel must have a command of these things.
Well, Nick, okay, so like, you and I, I mean, as a couple of cis white dudes, we've been in these cultures, like, and in sports and all this stuff.
We've been in locker rooms, we've heard the talk, we've been around people.
It's always the case, and when we cover masculinity, we talk about this, it's always the case that the loudest most boisterous people are overcompensating for something, right? - Mm-hmm, absolutely. - And that's who this person is.
Howley really, really wants to make himself out to be this tough man, much like Donald Trump, much like your Alex Jones, all of these people who are constantly talking about how tough they are and how courageous they are.
Absolute embarrassing cowards.
I can't help but picture Sling Blade and Josh Holley speaking in the mirror to himself just trying to get the voice right and trying to sound right.
He's a fraud.
By the way, he has good running form.
Great running form!
Almost like he's practiced it.
Yeah, he probably could run in the marathon or two.
The lopiness.
You know, it's just not... If that's what he's selling, I ain't buying, but apparently enough people, you know, in Missouri are buying it, so I'm confused.
I would love, absolutely love, if this does something to submarine his political future.
You know, if it absolutely dismantles it.
But I have to say that the people that he's talking to, and the people who support him, same people who support Donald Trump, same people who support all of this stuff, this boisterous, overcompensating, toxic masculinity, All of these people are sort of cut from the same cloth.
They are so insecure about themselves.
They are so in conflict between who they are and who they pretend to be that when they see this, unfortunately, from Josh Hawley, they recognize it as one of their own.
Right.
So that's interesting.
So it's like the insecurity that somehow rallies the masses around them.
It's bizarre.
You would think that they'd all kind of be like, yeah, I recognize that.
I'm going to go away now and I feel bad about myself and all those things.
They don't.
It's weird.
In fact, I guess that's what that's the point is perhaps that the rallying cry around this is that we all know we're all in on this.
We know what we are and we need to just sort of band together to tamp down these feelings as deep as possible.
There it is, and you just nailed it exactly.
This is basically a self-help support group, except for in reverse, right?
It's a bunch of people who get into a church at 7pm on a Wednesday night And they all sit around the room and they're like, my name's Josh and I don't have problems.
We don't have problems.
Everybody else has the problems.
Yeah.
You know, but after a couple of cups of coffee, quote unquote, you know, then by the end of those meetings it gets probably pretty raw.
That's exactly right.
And they're not able to communicate their feelings or, you know, the way that they're operating and their communication sucks.
And as a result... Yeah, they all end in fights.
Yeah, and you basically have a bunch of dudes who are like, what do you want, bro?
Somebody hold me back.
Somebody hold me back.
And we know who these people are.
It just so happens this has become a political movement at this point.
And I feel no pleasure, I feel terrible about myself for even laughing at all of this.
I really do.
It's so ridiculous, but I have to tell you, I have watched that video a few times.
So, again, Muckrake Podcast officially says to best friend of the podcast, Josh Howley, good luck, our friend.
I know it's a tough little time.
But now we have to turn to more serious news.
Another friend of the pod, another guy going through some hard times.
We need to check in with good old Steve Bannon next.
We may have lost a battle here today, but we're not going to lose this war, okay?
I stand with Trump and the Constitution, and I will never back off that, ever.
That's right.
Steve Bannon, former Trump advisor, Trump lackey, whatever you want to call him, ideologue, fascist, white supremacist, whatever, was convicted on two counts of contempt of Congress.
Each, by the way, of these counts is punishable by a fine up to $100,000, which Good old Steve doesn't have to worry about because he's still rolling in Seinfeld money.
I don't know if people know that.
Right.
Wait, producer of Seinfeld?
Or what was he doing in Seinfeld?
No, he has syndication rights on some Seinfeld.
Oh, good for him.
I know.
Isn't that weird?
So it's punishable with fines up to $100,000 for each contempt, but also up to 12 months in prison.
Before we go forward and talk about the ramifications of this, I have to tell you, Nick, I don't expect him to serve any time in prison.
Well, he'll appeal, and then if it gets beyond, you know, the midterms, although this is the Department of Justice versus the Congress, in theory, if you take away the body that's trying to get in, that's subpoenaing him, then perhaps the whole thing goes away.
So yeah, and then if they can get it as far as 2024 and Trump wins, then he's pardoned again.
He'll probably break the record for pardons, presidential pardons.
Oh, I don't know.
Him and Roger Stone, man.
It's like War Horse and Secretariat going for the most part.
It's the dot race at halftime.
It is the dot race, only with pardons.
Yes.
For those who aren't aware and haven't kept up with this because it's a dizzying amount of crimes and pardons, Steve Bannon, of course, used the building of the Southern Wall, or should I say the non-building of the Southern Wall, to defraud MAGA supporters out of God knows how much money, was yanked off a yacht next to,
I believe, a Chinese billionaire, and then eventually was pardoned by Donald Trump because, just a reminder, as we were talking about in the last episode, Merrick Garland said, "No one is above the law "in this country except for wealthy white men." - Well, hey, Garland was pointing his finger really forcefully when he said that, right? - He was so animated, Nick.
He wanted to let everybody know that in America, the rule of law is universal.
Right.
Good to know.
I can sleep tonight.
Now, a little bit of background on this.
A reminder for people who... And you know what?
Here's the thing.
You listen to this podcast.
We keep track of this shit so you don't necessarily have to.
You can stay informed.
You can gain understanding of what all is taking place.
He was wanted for questioning by the January 6th committee.
He was asked on because, for those who don't know, Steve Bannon has a podcast.
This podcast is called The War Room.
It is obnoxious and terrible.
Basically, he'll bring on Marjorie Taylor Greene, talk absolute nonsense, former Trump cronies, all of that.
They talk constantly, but one of the things that Bannon was not shy about doing was being very open out in public leading up to January 6th and, by the way, leading up to the election itself.
In telling everybody explicitly what the plan was.
And what Trump's going to do is just declare victory.
Right?
He's going to declare victory.
But that doesn't mean he's the winner.
He's just going to say he's the winner.
The Democrats, more of our people vote early that count.
Theirs voted in May.
And so they're going to have a natural disadvantage.
And Trump's going to take advantage of that.
That's our strategy.
He's going to declare himself a winner.
So when you wake up Wednesday morning, it's going to be a firestorm.
Also, if Trump is losing by 10 or 11 o'clock at night, it's going to be even crazier.
No, because he's going to sit right there and say they stole it.
If Biden's winning, Trump is going to do some crazy shit.
Also, I'll say this, Nick, and this goes back to something you've been saying for a while now.
The fact that these people don't even feel the need to hide any of it, that they broadcast this, that they talk about it constantly, I think says it all.
But also the fact that There are people out there.
I mean, we do this podcast.
We do this because actually we feel an ethical and moral concern for the state of the country.
There are other people out there who should be following this stuff.
He has broadcasted it for years.
These people have said all of it openly for years because they do not fear retaliation.
Wait, why aren't we amazed that Bannon predicted this so accurately?
Isn't that amazing?
Isn't that amazing?
He must have had a crystal ball, Nick.
Yeah.
Well, by the way, this is the whole crux of the matter because I think most people think that Trump will never get prosecuted because he's smart enough.
There won't be any written communication that Trump had said, hey, get everybody to the Capitol, let's cause mayhem, it'll delay the vote, whatever.
Like, that won't happen.
They're not going to find that evidence.
But, in theory, if you can Get the notion that this was all pre-planned, right?
The crowd going there and causing havoc.
And you can get up to Bannon, up to Meadows.
Like, that's the sort of the twine there.
You can kind of get closer to Trump.
But that is the whole case, I think.
Is that they knew that they were going to incite the violence from this audience, from the Ellipse, all the way to the Capitol.
And then that should be enough to get some criminal prosecutions of some of these people.
Yeah, and you know, on top of that, like one of the things that's becoming incredibly clear, like one of the through lines that we keep hearing from whether or not it's the white supremacist paramilitary groups, the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters, you name it, the Oath Keepers.
What we keep noticing is that there are these constants.
And again, we know it because none of these people can shut their mouths.
You know what I mean?
The entire thing, they've treated it as if it's like this.
And again, I say it all the time.
Was it a coup?
Was it a grift?
Both.
Absolutely both simultaneously.
Get what you can get.
Get whatever money you can get while you're trying to overthrow the government.
These people are on one program, one podcast after another, in public appearances, speeches.
And here is the through line that they all knew.
They knew that Donald Trump was going to declare victory early because of the way that votes were going to be tabulated and the way that they were going to be put together and which groups were going to be addressed which time.
He was going to declare victory.
He was going to say that the election was stolen.
And as you get to January 6th, we start seeing other through lines.
We start learning that everybody, including these paramilitary groups who are linked by Roger Stone, right, and by people like Steve Bannon, Everybody thought that there was going to be the Insurrection Act.
They thought that Antifa or the left was going to be there protesting.
There would be more violence, interpersonal violence.
And now there's a new through line that I'm not necessarily sure the January 6th Commission will get to, but it's coming up.
It's almost like, Nick, this is something we've not broached on this podcast.
Could you do magic eye posters?
Could you figure those out?
Yeah, we stare at it long enough and it turns into something else, right?
I couldn't do them.
Okay.
It was always a jumble.
You could handle it.
I could see those, yeah.
Oh my god, it pissed me off every time because I just, my eyes couldn't unfocus.
Yeah.
So the magic picture that's starting to sort of come out is that I think some of the people involved in this, and I'm talking about multiple groups, kind of wanted Mike Pence to not only be endangered, but possibly be hurt or worse Possibly, in order to go ahead and carry out the Insurrection Act.
Like, there is something that is starting to sort of take shape in all of this, and it's sort of been under the surface, but it's coming out.
And I don't know if it's going to become official, but I'm telling you, this entire situation is just as grotesque as it gets.
Well, the reason why it won't come out is because the Secret Service deleted all their emails in the migration of updating software bullshit.
Which we didn't get into in the last episode, lamentably, because it gives me a chance to talk about the Secret Service and how this is a traditional thing for them, protecting the presidency in illegal ways.
It goes back to JFK and probably before that.
But the point of that is that, well, Mike Pence knew something was up, right?
We already knew that they, ahead of time, had requested extra security or they expressed concerns about his safety on January, like, 5th.
And I would suspect that, you know, Pence was in on the plan as it was being... because they needed him.
Well, they kept trying to talk him into going along with it.
Yeah, yeah.
And then at some point when they realized he was like, you know, that's not really legal, he must have even gotten wind of this.
He's like, okay, well then we'll just make him get hurt.
Like, literally.
He knew not to leave the Capitol, right?
He was convinced that the Secret Service would whisk him away to, like, Alaska, and then he would never get back, and then they would be able to do what they wanted to do.
Which would sort of, you know, if they wanted to whisk him away, that means that they didn't necessarily want him to get hurt.
The Secret Service didn't.
So it's conflicting, right?
There's people on one side, people on the other.
It's not exactly, that was probably why it didn't work because they couldn't quite get it all organized properly.
But there's no question that yes, they were counting on somebody, some lawmaker getting hurt.
In which case they could then declare martial law.
Without question.
Now, the shooting of Ashley Babbitt probably was some way on that line where they could use that.
But again, something happened.
There was some disconnect at the very end there.
Because he could have declared martial law, right?
It was weird that it didn't happen.
I guess either we're lucky or Trump isn't as confident as we think he is or didn't really want to pull us off at the end.
What do you think?
Yeah, I think that's a large part of it.
This was more or less, and if you've ever been in a situation where someone's like, listen, there's a chance this works, there's a bigger chance it doesn't work, screw it, let's see what happens.
And in a lot of this, and let's be very, very clear, Trump and the people around him, many of them are very stupid.
They really, truly are.
Steve Bannon is not stupid.
Steve Bannon is a very intelligent person.
Trump surrounds himself with very stupid people.
I'm sorry, but any plot that involves Rudy Giuliani is naturally kind of screwed from the start, because that man is decomposing before our very eyes.
Steve Bannon, on the other hand, I have to tell you, there's probably a group within Trump world, and we'll talk more about this in a second, that is more competent.
that is more ruthless, that is more concentrated.
And I think what we saw on January 6th was, basically you have this component over here that doesn't work, or particularly with Trump, doesn't want their fingerprints on it.
A large problem with January 6th is that Donald Trump, as an organized crime leader, which we all recognize as what he is, his natural instinct is to protect himself.
That's fine.
You all go out and do that.
He won't order the hit.
Somebody else will, so it can't trace all the way back up.
Meanwhile, you have Mark Meadows as just a ready-made patsy in the middle of all of this.
Then you have all these other people who I think are playing a longer game.
Like Steve Bannon found Donald Trump and he wanted 2016 to be a referendum on, you know, neoliberalism, globalism, liberalism, you name it.
But he's a long game guy.
You know, like Steve Bannon has his eyes for the next 20, 30 years as sort of like this change in epoch era.
And it probably will be.
And unfortunately, as we're talking about this, we also have to understand that they are preparing something.
And this is something that we have to talk about.
What they're preparing, where they're going.
But let's hear real fast Steve Bannon going on Tucker Carlson.
Of course.
Talking about what happens next.
We need a commission or committee on January 6th.
It's got to be with the new Congress, with Republicans in charge.
We've got to get to the bottom of the intelligence failures, FBI involvement, DHS involvement, the intelligence services, what happened to the Pentagon and the National Guard.
All of this.
Ashley Babbitt.
All of this.
We have to get to the bottom of it.
So I want to put a couple of things out there and we'll talk about like how twisted and perverted this is.
But as is the case with Steve Bannon, and people like Steve Bannon, the reason why they're so effective is because there's a nugget of truth to what they're saying.
There are a lot of things about January 6th that we're not finding out during the January 6th Commission.
And listen, I want to be very clear about this.
There are intelligence problems in all of this.
There are law enforcement problems in this.
The FBI is in everything.
They're always in the middle of this stuff.
They're always provoking people to do that.
That doesn't make it a honeypot.
That doesn't make it a deep state coup attempt or whatever it is these, you know, harebrained idiots are cooking up.
But there is stuff about it that we don't know and that we should know.
Steve Bannon saying that we need a Republican January 6th commission, which unfortunately, if they win in the midterms, we're going to be looking at that is such a twisted perversion.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, because it probably would happen if they gain control.
Oh, I mean, it's equivalent of wanting to, like, investigate Hillary Clinton for, you know, email server versus what Trump did.
You know, that's what they'll do.
And it's you call it projection.
But when it becomes real, so it's enough to say that and stir everybody up and get them all upset and lock her up, all that stuff.
It's another thing if they get into power and then use the official levers of power to then, you know, like we had with Benghazi.
Remember, Benghazi had nothing to do with finding out the truth of what happened there.
It was simply an operation designed to pull Hillary Clinton down as in preparation for a run.
Flood the zone with shit, as Bannon likes to say.
I mean, you know, that doesn't even feel like flooding the zone with shit to me.
It was more like a we're going to need, you know, we're going to try and just Drag her name down as much as possible, and then hey, maybe we'll get lucky with a nugget there, email server, and that'll be the downfall, which it was.
So, you know, we can't pretend that this has anything to do with, you know, the scales of justice and, you know, government and democracy.
This is simply, they're going to pervert all these things to their own ends, and it's very easy to do, unfortunately.
And by the way, like part of it is going to be effective because again, there is law enforcement stuff that needs to be looked at here.
You know, it helps their narrative because the FBI, and we'll talk more about them in a second, the CIA, you name it, all of these people are involved in all of these ugly situations.
They constantly have their fingerprints all over everything.
It's going to be gross.
And as you start pulling away at that thing, particularly if the Republicans gain the advantage in the midterms, You're going to start flooding the zone with shit.
You're going to be throwing out every conspiracy theory.
And conspiracy theories always have a nugget of truth to them if they're powerful, right?
If they actually work.
So you're going to start having this whipsaw effect.
You're going to have what the January 6th Commission is doing now almost immediately if they gain power.
You're going to start having like literal witch hunts, you know, in Congress that are going after all these things, starting to tug at this, pull at that.
They have a plan.
And what's more, it's been revealed that, shocking, there's been a plan that has been growing, as we've been telling everybody, around Trump.
It's not Trump-directed, but the people around Trump who are intelligent and dedicated and focused, they've been building this thing.
Axios, Nick, released plans for what they call Schedule F.
Which is something the Trump world sort of unrolled in late October 2020, which is real late in its first term.
Thank God they only got there in October.
But this is the plan going forward.
Schedule F, basically, is this idea that is going to combat the quote-unquote deep state, which again, for the record, is an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.
It's the idea that all of these federal employees, and there's a vast amount of them, that they are going to switch upwards of 50,000 federal employees to what they call a Schedule F, which means that it takes away all of their protections, which means if Trump gets in, or I got to tell you, it's not limited to Trump.
If somebody else, a Republican gets in, particularly a DeSantis, they'll switch over very easily and they'll do this.
They'll get rid of up to 50,000 federal employees, which is a very important thing.
We're talking the CIA, the FBI, the IRS, the Department of Justice, the Defense Department.
Stay tuned.
Yeah, right.
And they have, Nick, by the way, a really insidious plan that they've already got going here.
It is as ugly as it can be.
Well, we saw with the State Department how they would just simply not fill positions.
There was so many positions because they wanted to destroy that whole America First.
We don't want to have any, you know, outside connections to any of these other countries or the countries that they, you know, that we, that are Valuable for us.
We need to have people out there and helping us run the government.
But yeah, there's no question that this was all reported a while ago, but not in as much detail.
But you remember when they first took over and everybody in the Obama administration who was prepared during the transition, like they're waiting for the next group to come by and like say hello and here's the offices.
And it just didn't happen.
Like nobody showed up for the longest time.
And so it's clear, yes, that Trump's like hit himself in the head, said I could have had a V8 and been like shit.
We now need to be prepared right from the get-go which is really scary.
No one's ever explained how like how Kash Patel got appointed to like the head of the Pentagon.
You know obviously we realized all those changes after the election had happened were all directly related to the coup.
No one's really probed that but this is sort of that same parallel planning here where they are now going to be able to from day one So, in all of this, we're talking about how stupid some of these people around Trump are, and I gotta tell you, you can give the dumbest person years to prepare, and maybe they'll come up with something.
And there's no, I can't see the future beyond what, like, once that happens, how you ever get it back to democracy.
In all of this, we're talking about how stupid some of these people around Trump are.
And I got to tell you, you can give the dumbest person years to prepare.
Yeah.
And maybe they'll come up with something.
And what we're seeing here is this, man, it's so strange because it's like one of the things that we have to do as we're analyzing all of this is you have to look to the past.
but also what we're dealing with, it has echoes of the past.
It's such a new thing that is taking place because Donald Trump, of course, was such a disruptor in the political sphere.
So at this point, we have Donald Trump, who by the way, at this point, probably would rather just hang out at Mar-a-Lago, you know, here, hail to the chief.
Meanwhile, as this legal situation is growing worse and worse for him, he's actually been quoted, it's come out in Rolling Stone, that he's told people, let me get this actual quote here.
That he's probably gonna run for president because, quote-unquote, he has spoken about how when you are president of the United States, it is tough for politically motivated prosecutors to, quote-unquote, get you.
Which is something that you've been saying for a very long time.
Your feeling has been very, very much that this has been motivated by an attempt to get away from legal repercussions.
So you have Trump, who probably hated being president in the first place, didn't like actually doing the job, except for, I don't know, eating hamburgers with college athletes.
That was apparently the peak of his presidency.
He doesn't necessarily want to do it.
You have a bunch of people, and by the way, shocker, this is all being completely forwarded by think tanks who are funded by the wealthiest Republican donors and libertarian billionaires you can name.
They're populating these think tanks, these institutions who have created this plan, who don't believe in Donald Trump.
They don't think that Donald Trump is like a serious person, but they see him as an opportunity, so they kind of want to build up a core around him, and then you have wild-eyed loons Like Steve Bannon, who look at this and they're like, oh, we can usher in this new authoritarian order.
And so what you have is, it's almost like, I never liked him.
The Everlasting Gobstopper.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, no.
Not your jam?
Nope.
Yeah, not my jam either, except for the little core.
That was fun.
You basically have the most disgusting Everlasting Gobstopper that you've ever imagined.
Just this core that is built up around one another.
And it doesn't matter if Donald Trump doesn't get the nomination.
The machinery that we're getting ready to describe to you has been put in place for a Republican leader to come in and basically clean house with the government and replace basically every technocrat, every bureaucrat in the system that they can possibly want to and replace them with sycophants and more wild-eyed loons who want to carry out this law.
this larger project.
Well, that was a worry I had about when we were seeing these younger people coming in front of January 6th Commission, you know, and I forgot her name, Hutchinson.
You know, like, she started as an intern, wide-eyed, bushy-tailed, and, like, impressionable.
And so this is what they're learning.
Oh, this is not how the government's supposed to run?
If no one ever tells them that, then this is what you're going to have.
And you can have people in these positions for decades now.
Because remember, yeah, the civil servants are people who are, you know, By the way, in this day and age, I don't understand how you'd ever find anybody who's not partisan.
You know?
It's impossible.
There's no more independents.
So it's almost like, I get it.
And by the way, I understand if there's a rational take on what the conservative movement looks like, you can kind of understand there's such zealots about it that they want to do anything they can to get these things in place.
You know, we're going to keep cutting taxes on the rich, we're going to make sure that abortions cannot be had anymore.
Like, they have their things and they're righteous about those things.
But what's twisted about it is that it becomes, you know, 75% of the country is against a lot of these policies.
And that's where you have a problem here, and they don't care.
And they're convinced that once the policies are in place and are running and doing what they want to do, everyone will then all of a sudden have this awakening and realize, oh, you know what?
It was great to be forced to have this pregnancy.
Thank you!
Like, that's sort of what they assume is going to happen.
Well, and I gotta tell you, and this is the bad news, there is a possibility that that happens.
Like there is a possibility because one of the things that happens when when a consensus gets founded and created right and we're seeing that now Nick like Roe v. Wade being overturned is still like I mean people are mad about it like actual people are mad about it but basically It's just been quiet.
You know what I mean?
We're sort of just preparing to live in this post-Roe world.
If these people are able to carry out what they do, and by the way, they protect the property and the wealth of the wealthy and the powerful, they'll be welcomed.
It's the same kind of thing that happened with Reagan.
All of a sudden, it's how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb.
Wow.
Good reference.
What's the opposite of quiet then?
Well, the opposite of quiet is all hell breaking loose.
And while we're looking at this, you've got to understand that a lot of what they think is going to happen, and to bring this back around to Bannon, true believers, right?
True believers like Bannon truly do believe that if they go ahead and they break the system, And one of the things that they feed off of, by the way, is this directionlessness, right?
And we feel it in this country.
There are a lot of supporters of the Democratic Party who are like, what the hell is going on?
I'm losing all hope.
I don't even know where we're going with this.
I don't know what the party stands for, what they're doing.
Meanwhile, we've talked about over the past couple episodes, a lot of the motivation that people have anymore is simply to survive, make money, advance in their career, right?
There's a hollowness to that.
When you start talking about this, these true believers like Bannon, they're talking about a revival of spiritualism, right?
The idea that like you are being called on to work for a higher thing.
Now, Donald Trump is obviously a buffoon.
But meanwhile, you've got this ideology that's starting to build up around this, right?
Like you're going to change the world.
You're a warrior.
You're going to do this.
So they're starting to look for these people.
And this system that I'm getting ready to describe, I got to tell you, is It's impressive.
It actually is impressive what it is, and it's as impressive as it is insidious, and that is You know, when Donald Trump was running in 2016, very few people thought he was going to win.
Donald Trump didn't think he was going to win.
They win in November 2016, you have to have a government ready to go in January of 2017, right?
And we both know, like, watching them try and put together a government was like trying to watch a baby solve, you know, advanced level calculus.
And they made a mess out of it.
They've now had years for all these think tanks that we've talked about are using Trump as a battering ram.
They have created a system where they're testing people for these positions.
And what they're doing is they're testing them for loyalty to Trump, which by the way, you know, you're walking around with a MAGA hat, we basically know you're a sycophantic person ready to believe in this stuff.
Plus also, quote unquote, animus against the system.
Which means they're going out and they're finding warriors to go ahead and come into this place.
It's a very, very sophisticated thing.
They're figuring out the psychological profile.
Meanwhile, these same think tanks, Nick, for the past couple of years have taken the people who were in Trump's government, who showed themselves to be loyal.
We're talking here about, again, Mark Meadows, Stephen Miller, you name it.
They've basically been schooling them for a couple of years.
Teaching them how to carry this out and basically carrying on a shadow government that is ready to be put into place the moment that anybody, you know, Trump or Trump-like comes into power.
Again, it's impressive.
It's insidious.
But it's actually impressive with what they're doing.
Yeah, we talked about this I think even before the election in 2020 where, you know, if Trump lost, when we talked about it back then, he could then do what he's doing.
He could criticize and he could be like, you know, ruling the country without having any of the, you know, Responsibilities.
Armchair quarterbacking.
Yeah, right?
And it makes you look so much better.
You can second-guess everything you want, and you can sound as smart or whatever, and you can rile everybody up as much as you like.
I mean, we're doing it too!
I mean, really, without the consequences, you know, you can do a lot.
You know, what's interesting is that, is there any solace in the fact that if this happens, and they take over, and they do these things, like, we probably won't get in any wars.
Right?
Because we're going to be so cozy with Russia and all these other fascistic countries that we won't have to send any troops there to protect the innocent people anymore.
You know what I mean?
We're going to be America first.
So the isolationism of it, and unfortunately we've got to talk about Viktor Orban here in a few minutes, the isolationism of it is isolationism to a point.
Do you know what I mean?
There is this There is this idea that sounds good, which is let's get out of all these wars, we'll stop sending our boys into war, we'll stop spending the money on the war.
Meanwhile, there is a militaristic drive in all of this.
You know, like nationalism always involves those components.
I mean, we're talking about the possibility of you'd have Russia, Hungary, America, you know, possibly Brazil.
We're talking about like this whole sort of movement that's been taking place for years.
You know, as resources shrink, we're not going to stay out of wars.
Like, that's going to happen if these people, you know, like invading Mexico.
I mean, go ahead and put that down, you know, in the record book.
We're going in there to solve the crisis, whatever, you know.
It unfortunately has a death drive to it, and that's the frightening thing.
But you're right, we probably wouldn't have it at the very beginning because we'd be retreating into ourselves.
But I gotta tell you, the shit they're talking about with China, obviously with Mexico and all the dwindling resource situations, it would be almost inevitable at some point.
And it's funny because we haven't talked about this in a long time, but we know that the Republicans and the Conservatives tend to speak about the Democrats in the same exact way as the Democrats speak about them.
And so in their minds, when you see these political ads and you're seeing these interviews with people at these rallies, it's the left that is intentionally creating crime in cities and intentionally doing these things to bring about the Civil War, right?
That's how they view this.
This is what's so frightening about it because it's so extreme and so insane.
That there isn't a real easy way for me to picture a way where we could actually ever have a common ground on anything at this point.
If they want to accuse the people on the left of literally like, well you want homelessness, you want poverty and crime, just so you can take over the country and declare martial law.
Everything that we're saying we're worried about with Trump.
It's the upside down.
I don't know how we ever overcome that.
Well, the problem here is that that space has been ceded to these people.
You know what I mean?
Like, we have a ton of... I won't get into particulars right now, but I've been working on something that has given me a lot of insight into how, you know, these groups work and how, you know, all of these ties and organizations sort of come together and what they do behind the scenes.
And what I've noticed is that you have a lot of different, like we would call them, you know, liberal organizations.
Right.
And they're out there.
They're doing stuff.
Obviously, they're working on legislation.
They're working on organizing.
Meanwhile, this right here, what we're talking about.
And by the way, like to go ahead and flesh this out, it just came out.
The FEC just came out and told everybody.
And we've been following the fact that Trump's star has been declining with the January 6th hearings.
and the Republican Party wants to move on beyond him.
The Save America PAC, which has been his main political action committee, the FEC came out and said that that political action committee right now has more money than the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee combined.
Take that in for a second.
One Trump PAC has more money than the RNC and the DNC combined right now.
And a large reason is not just the donor base that Trump has created, but also the fact that these high-priced donors are still throwing money at him because he's an incredible destructive force.
In all of that, I want to point out, they, these Trump groups, these think tanks, these institutions that these dark money wielders and donors are putting together, they have a long-term plan.
And we've already seen what the Republican Party can do long term.
They can take over the Supreme Court.
They can take over local, regional politics.
They can, you know, basically destroy anything that they want because the left or liberals don't necessarily have the overarching ideas.
So much of it, unfortunately, as we talk about a lot, is reacting to what they're doing.
It's trying to save and play defense, but there's not really a larger plan for systemic change in the long term.
Well, I think it's also when you're trying to do things that are, that would appeal, that would seem to you to be very just rational things to do that would, you know, that makes sense and would help people.
It's like hard to, you know, prepare for when you have this rage.
and fear campaigns at you, coming at you.
'Cause it's like, of course, who wouldn't want a center that would help kids after school learn about, you know, you know, the politics or whatever, learn about our country.
That kind of thing.
It's like, of course it sounds great, let's do that.
And then of course, you are indoctrinating our kids and they are gonna learn to be gay and whatever.
It's like, it's difficult.
In that phase, it's so irrational.
And if you're trying to be rational, it's very... This is the problem here.
They used to rely on the fact that we had so many more people who were rational that that movement couldn't take over.
But, you know, we can't overlook what's happening on the local Political scene as far as gerrymandering, which has been a decades-long Republican-only focus, and they have the receipts on that, that they've been able to control these local governments.
You know, someone just said recently, all they need is to control 34 of the 50 states on the local side.
They control 30.
It's very close to where they could, if they had enough control locally across municipalities of 34, like only four more states, they could really just cripple the entire country into whatever they want to do.
Well, and we're going to talk more about this here soon, but I also want to point out that as they're doing this, you know, when you think about the electoral map, when you think about like how all the states work and we're so fond of calling them, you know, red, blue, purple states, toss up states, whatever.
A telling thing that's happening right now is that you're starting to see so-called purple states or blue-leaning states, right?
You're starting to see movement right now.
We were talking about this before we started recording.
The governor candidates for the Republican Party in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and just recently in Virginia, where Youngkin ended up winning, you're watching a movement right in these places.
And that really moves separate from what you think should happen, right?
You think that these purple states or battleground states are going to remain pretty centralized and they're never going to move back and forth.
But what the Republican Party has figured out, or at least the Trumpites, the MAGA people, what they figured out is Trump was able to tap into something, which is people actually are tired of the way things work.
They actually are.
And they want something to change.
In this case, the Democratic Party has become the guardians of institutions, right?
They're the ones that are like, we're the party to trust to let things keep running because things were okay before Trump came along.
That doesn't resonate with people because people know it was all shit.
And to give them an alternative, which is we're going to change things this way.
I'm going to read something to you, Nick, and I want to go, I want to read it and then I want to go one by one on these things.
These are slogans that have been floated by there's this new main political action committee with Trump.
Another one which is just going to rake in millions upon millions of dollars.
It's almost like.
Are you familiar with Taco Bell cantinas?
No.
You don't know about this?
Uh, I mean, I know about Taco Bells.
Okay, so Taco Bells are Taco Bells.
We all know them.
We go eat there.
We get sick.
It is what it is.
So, Taco Bell Cantinas are a new branch off of Taco Bell that has, like, Taco Bell food, but you can also get, like, margaritas and stuff.
Oh.
Like, it's, like, in urban areas or whatever.
Tell me more.
Yeah, it's almost like how there are Walmarts, super Walmarts, but also I think they call them Walmart Community Center, small, I don't know the technical term.
Do you know what I'm talking about?
No.
There's no Walmarts around here.
This is a red state America situation that I'm talking to you about right now.
But basically, you get so large as an institution and there's so much money there and so much opportunity that you just open up another version of yourself.
And so now, you have another Trump PAC, because there's so much donor need, there's so much donor base, supporter base, donors, all of them, they're so ready to give money.
We now have the American First Policy Institute, which is for all of the wild-eyed, true-believing loons to go in and create these things.
So here are the slogans that they're testing out going forward, and I want to go through these real fast, Nick, and I want to talk about why these are dangerous, but also why they work.
These are the slogans that they're tinkering around with.
Quote, make America the greatest economy in the world, work for all Americans.
Give parents more control over their children's education.
Finish the wall, end human trafficking, and defeat the drug cartels.
Make it easy to vote and hard to cheat.
Provide safe and secure communities so all Americans could live their lives in peace.
Fight government corruption by draining the swamp.
Now on the surface... Yeah, I'm in.
You're in.
Right.
All reasonable.
They're all reasonable.
And they're all addressing like and in some cases, of course, illegal immigration, it's a different thing altogether.
They're all addressing issues that actually need addressed.
Right.
So when you start actually looking at this, it's like, oh, my God, what they're doing is they are literally monopolizing the block and saying, we're the only people who have solutions for problems.
And people hear that.
You know what I mean?
Like, as opposed to, we need to protect our institutions.
They were working before Trump.
People know that's bullshit.
Here are solutions to problems.
It's, it unfortunately works.
It's really insidious.
Yeah, I'm trying to think if it's resonating with me.
Protecting our institutions is what the liberals are saying or the left is saying, really, because I think obviously they have... I think that the common bond we can all have is that this shit wasn't working, right?
And there needs to be better ways to do what we're doing.
And I think that that's where we wildly converge.
So I'm not sure if...
For me, I feel like that's what the general message is.
Although at this point, they are reacting and playing defense so much.
Yes, we now just need to pass laws to shore up what the Constitution said about voting.
That's insane that we're in the process of having to do that.
Why are we wasting time having to deal with things that are already settled law and we know what they are?
But there's no question that it's the dog whistling to some degree.
The true believers don't hear that.
They simply hear, you know, patriotism and we can't go against our country.
We can't go against this party that clearly to them, you know, means what America means.
But all I hear is a sort of white nationalism kind of stuff.
That's exactly right.
Well, it's because we studied this stuff.
You know what I mean?
And it's like anybody who isn't deep down in the ideology, and you and I are because we spend a significant amount of time on this.
Our listeners understand the ideology and the dog whistles because they listen to the show and they investigate this stuff.
The problem is That Americans, they hear this, and I mean, we even see the numbers.
It's actually incredible because what's actually happening as the Republican Party and this authoritarian movement rolls back progress, you actually find one group that says rolling back progress is actually progress, right?
Like, we're moving forward beyond these old ideas.
Meanwhile, the other group, it's really kind of strange because not only playing defense, you're actually saying we need to work hard to get to where we were.
Yeah, absolutely.
And that's hard to wrap your head around.
Like, what do you mean to get back to where we are?
We have to move forward.
So it's a linguistic wrestling match that the Democratic Party just absolutely does not understand at this point.
The other thing is, the things that you listed in that list was, they sound like policies.
Yes!
But watch what happens when the GOP is in control.
They don't have any policies.
They enact nothing.
And yet when you hear people on the right talk about it, it's like they've done so many great things.
Okay, Trump's an asshole.
We don't like his personality.
But man, he did so many great things.
What did they do?
All you're doing is listening to somebody on a specific channel telling you that, and you want to cheer for your team, so you're just going to adopt that.
But it's like, you know, if you try to explain to even like a moderate Republican math, you know, about like deficit spending under Democratic administrations versus Republican, which has always been Republicans just destroying the deficits, they don't believe you.
They won't listen to you, even when you're trying to say these are just numbers.
You know, unassailable numbers on a page.
They won't believe you, just like they won't believe it sounds like they're for all these policies.
You know, and by the way, even though the governor's thing you mentioned before, you know, even in states that have like Wisconsin and Kentucky that have Democratic governors, they've neutered them.
The Republican infrastructure below them has now passed laws that will effectively end any ability for them to do anything.
So, this is what's so dangerous about that because it got bottom line is you might Want the policies that the GOP supposedly stands for but you can't steal it.
You're right You can't just go against the will the people like that and yet here we are and they don't care because again They're so convinced that their way of life the white way of life, right?
They're gonna call it is is so much better for everybody.
They knew you you you know You're just an idiot for not seeing it now Yeah, and speaking of seeing it now before we finish this up.
I want to take a glance basically for the last few years Looking at Hungary has been looking at America's future.
Because everything you just brought up is exactly what happened in Hungary under Viktor Orban, who of course is our favorite authoritarian strongman who looks like Dwight Schrute had an allergic reaction.
Orban has completely taken over the apparatuses of power within Hungary.
He fixed the elections exactly as you just described, has completely gone after all the groups the GOP has scapegoated at this point.
I mean they built the wall, gave everyone the idea of what a Trumpian movement should look like.
So we need to glance into the future because they're a little bit ahead of us on this stuff.
So let's see how this goes because let me tell you folks, Viktor Orban, he had himself a week.
And he got out in front of his political movement, and he said some stuff, Nick.
And just when we thought there was no more mask to slip off, we lost another one.
We lost another mask.
And let me tell you, what happened was, Viktor Orban went in front of the European Union, in which he is an antagonistic member.
They probably want to lop him off, you know?
so much gangrenious flesh at this point.
It got in front of the European Union and, first of all, told them that there was no way that Ukraine was going to win in its war against Russia.
It was time to stop supporting them financially and with weapons and start pushing for a negotiated treaty, which, I mean, I think that probably comes as a surprise to some people, the idea that Ukraine can't win the war, considering the last time a lot of people in America the idea that Ukraine can't win the war, considering the last time a lot of people in America heard about the war, Ukraine was putting up But as we talked about on the podcast, Nick, it's not so simple.
No, and it's funny because, you know, there's an inevitability to this where, yeah, Russia will win and take over, but why don't you ask Afghanistan how they feel about that?
Because they were and did the same exact thing as what Ukrainians are doing now, and Russia had to leave.
And that's a little closer to Russia than Afghanistan was, but still not that much farther.
And there's no reason to believe that they couldn't get to a stalemate eventually, but at what price?
But anyway, you have to be very leery about Hungarians talking about these things, especially if you don't need to look that far back into their past with the Nazis and their alignment with them to realize what's happening here.
I don't know if I've expressed enough outrage at when we brought him up before with Tucker Carlson and normalizing Orban, but it is as disgusting as it could possibly be, and it's really concerning that they've embraced them.
We haven't even talked about, by the way, this lovely white nationalist hootenanny going on down in Turning Point, you know, Turning Point, USA, whatever the hell they call it.
We'll get to that in a second, but yes, Orban, he is, they're on their way back to just where they were when they were aligned with the Nazis.
And by the way, Orban, speaking of, you know, to put this into a context that people can understand, this is a lot like a 1930s Europe where Mussolini would give a speech and he's like, leave Adolf Hitler and the Germans alone, right?
Or we need to really take, like, this is, this is stagecraft, the type of which that Orban is constantly involved in.
He's very, very close to Vladimir Putin.
He's trying to undermine the European Union every step along the way.
He's trying to create this new sort of, for lack of a better term, a new axis, in order for all these countries, this authoritarian illiberal movement to sort of come together.
When he talks about what's happening in Ukraine, he is using unfortunate truths against other people.
And that is the fact that, as we talked about in this podcast, as we predicted, when the camera is turned off from Ukraine, things were going to continue to grind on, be absolutely awful.
And And by the way, the powers that be and entrenched wealth in the world was basically maybe they would have a coalition to go after Putin, but his money coursed through the veins of the world economy so much so and corrupted everybody that it wasn't going to absolutely cripple Russia.
That wasn't going to happen.
It hasn't happened.
We now see, of course, that there's a lot of repercussions right now that are waiting in the wings on this.
Germany at this point is absolutely terrified that they're going to lose their energy because they depend on Russia.
Again, this is what global interdependence leads to.
But also, we're looking at possible famines because Ukraine provides so much food for the world.
We're also looking at fertilizer problems because Russia provides so much of that.
We're looking at a lot of different interlocking problems, which is what happens when you have a global financial capitalistic system the way that we do.
There is a problem happening in terms of how do we move forward in this situation.
Orban doesn't give a shit about that.
He's not worried about Ukrainians.
He is supporting Vladimir Putin from inside the European Union.
Nick, the call is coming from inside the house.
And he's not wrong about sanctions.
Sanctions don't work.
They only serve to punish the people that actually are in these countries.
To foment unrest.
Yeah.
And unrest at what?
Has Cuba risen up and finally overthrown the Communist government?
Like, no.
So, you know, all that's done is created a impossible living conditions for everyday normal Cubans, while the people at the top have no effect from that.
Same in Russia as well with Putin.
So he's right in that sense.
But then again, we don't have the other instruments to deal with aggression like we're seeing right now.
Well, and that's the problem is because we built this whole house of cards on that interdependence.
And relying on Vladimir Putin, particularly coming out of communist Russia, What we ended up doing is we saw the rise of Putin and these oligarchical figures, They had more wealth than anybody could ever keep track of.
On top of that, their supplying of fossil fuels played a huge role into this.
Their money courses throughout the entire system to the point where you can't necessarily eliminate all of it unless you start actually, again, chopping off limbs.
And that would take, unfortunately, a much, much larger movement, right?
That would take a massive sea change.
And I keep hearing these people, and it's so frustrating.
They're like, I don't see them welcoming Vladimir Putin back into the G8 conferences.
And it's like, the hell they won't.
They absolutely will.
This is what they do.
They say this is awful, and then they're working hand in hand, and they're pretending like this thing didn't happen.
Unfortunately, that's on the path we're on, and he's fighting this fight on behalf of Putin.
Meanwhile, Nick, let's talk about this mask sliding.
As he's making these comments and as he's promoting illiberalism, which is, you know, a direct sibling to the authoritarian movement that's happening in America and France, England, you name it, He starts talking about how one of his goals is to make sure that Hungary doesn't have a quote-unquote mixed race population.
He is making it part of his ideological platform to ensure that there is a quote-unquote unmixed Hungarian race.
Tell me, Nick, historically, How does it turn out when authoritarian strongmen start talking about the strength of the race and needing to make sure that it isn't diluted?
Not great, Bob.
Not great, Bob.
In fact, the worst of things.
Absolutely.
Here's what's scary about it.
There's probably a lot of people in America who hear that and are like, yeah, absolutely.
We've got to stop this mixed race stuff that's happening.
That's what's so concerning about it.
It's so out in the open, and we keep talking about this ad nauseum.
They consider the opposite of what Orban is saying is woke.
Yes.
Right?
And so they can't be woke, so the alternative is, well, we have to have segregation, basically, in that take.
And all the things that have to do with woke.
That's where we're at.
It's like, if anybody has been out hiking before, It's like getting up to like the crest of a hill or maybe a small mountain and you look down at the path and you can see where the path is going.
You know what I mean?
So right now and this goes ahead and it has foreshadowed what happened in Hungary.
They start saying we have to we have to reform our institutions.
There's too much corruption.
They've been stolen by, you know, George Soros and puppet masters and these conspiracies.
So they start taking over the institutions and they say, we're doing this for the good of the country.
We're protecting the country, you know, for its own good.
Liberal democracy is a weakness.
It's been used against us.
We'll go ahead and do this.
They're not going out in public and saying white race, white race, although some of them are ahead of that, right?
And those are the ones who used to be shown the door and now they're being tolerated.
What happens down the road?
Is you go ahead and you put your fence up, which Hungary has already fortified their border the same way that Trump and all these people were talking about doing.
They very fortified it.
They've already created their own little reactionary authoritarian land.
The next thing you do, Nick, is you start talking about the problem within.
And when you start talking about the problem within, you can't say that our system is corrupted anymore.
You say that the body is corrupted and that you have to start focusing on purifying the body because what's great about America or what's great about Hungary is America or Hungary and you start defining who is American or who is Hungarian.
And then all of a sudden when you're not facing repercussions anymore you're talking about blood.
You're talking about race.
You're talking about all of this absolute insane bullshit.
But at that point you're so far down the path That there's no one there anymore to say, my God, what are we talking about here?
And you don't have to wear that mask anymore.
And Hungary is there.
Yeah.
And we're heading there.
Right now.
Right.
And it doesn't have to even be there's no one left to say anything against it.
It could very well just be that people are too afraid to say anything against it.
Or they're too exhausted to say anything against it.
Or they are saying things and it's just not getting anywhere.
Or they've been neutralized.
Yeah.
Yes.
Yeah.
You don't have to necessarily throw people in prison for speaking out against the government as much as marginalize it, make sure the other side is louder, and then you rig the elections.
So you don't need to deal with that.
I will say in the mythology when we talk about, or conventional history when we talk about fascism and Nazism, One of the things that we get wrong, and we get plenty wrong, Nick, is the idea that the entire population is locked down.
You know what I mean?
That people are busting into your door almost every night, like there's a constant drumbeat of people coming after you.
All you have to do is you have to pick a certain part of the population.
You know, whether it's gay people, trans people, which by the way is shocking, Orban went after in all of this.
You go after them, you scapegoat them, you go ahead and you make an example out of them, and meanwhile you tell the wealthy and the powerful, we'll protect what you have.
Don't worry, you're still going to have a very, very healthy life.
And by the way, if you don't speak up, you'll be fine too, technically, right?
Later on you won't be fine.
But you don't have to go and lock everybody up in the cages.
It's always been this mindset.
They're gonna throw us all in camps.
They're gonna throw us all in camps.
Well, they throw some people in camps.
They take some people from the population.
They take some dissidents and then they lock them up.
In all of this, we are looking at, and I hate to say it because it's almost become a cliche, Nick, it's the frog in the boiling pot of water.
You change the temperature as it moves, and it moves, and it moves, and unfortunately that's the direction this is going in.
And then, you know, the spark ends up being a faked attack on some institution that then allows them to move in and say, well, we have to really start taking over and crack down.
Not that this rises to that level necessarily, but we had, you know, Lee Zeldin, who's a GOP representative of the Congress, Get quote-unquote attacked on stage at a gathering that was probably what like there's probably like maybe 50 people there and With the helicopter and the tank in the background as he's talking and you know They make it seem like he was attacked by a knife and this crazy Democratic, you know, they treated it like Gabby Giffords.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, you remind everybody who that is and why?
Who was you know shot at a campaign event?
I think it was the representative who was shot at a campaign event.
I mean like it is – do you feel – and this is the thing that drives me nuts, Nick.
I feel like members of the media and the political class, they understand that there is a showdown happening between the left and the right, whatever we want to call it.
But they're so worried of being seen as partisan or being part of that battle that every time something ever happens, they have to treat it as if it's like the Hindenburg going down.
Absolutely.
Yeah, and a lot of hand-wringing on the left.
Yeah, I don't want politicians being attacked.
I don't want somebody coming on stage.
And we talked about this.
I think the guy was trying to get the mic.
Everybody should go and watch the video because it's like slow motion.
I don't see a real threat.
I'm sorry, I was in high school.
You ever go to a dinner party where they have a murder mystery?
Sure.
Someone in the party is the killer, right?
I never got to be the killer!
Well, I gotta tell you, in high school, we did that in a big high school thing in our gym, and guess who got picked to be the killer, right?
So they pulled me aside, they gave me the fake gun, they're like, okay, and they kind of talked me through it.
Nick the Marksman.
Yeah, yeah.
And I got to pretend I had no idea what was going on, or what, or who, or whatever.
And at the very end, when he, like, everyone's, you know, slowly getting rid of everybody, whatever, I'm like, one of the last guys left.
I, like, pull the gun out, and I do this, you know, whatever, and they take the rest of me, whatever.
It was fun.
It was great.
That's exactly what this looked like to me, and I would not be surprised if Zeldin even... I have to see what the poll numbers are, but this is the kind of thing that juices your poll numbers.
Oh, he got attacked.
It looks like a setup to me, because, also, the guy got let off.
The prosecutor, who is part of Zeldin's campaign, It's awful.
him go, doesn't prosecute, and then allows Zeldin to then criticize the liberals, you know, and their laws for letting a guy like that out, even though it was part of his campaign that did.
It just reeks.
It's awful.
And again, to be very clear, we don't think any politician should be attacked.
But also, it's stupid to sit here and pretend that, you know, Brett Kavanaugh, having protesters outside of a restaurant where he can't see them, never interacts with them, gets to eat his entire dinner and walks out safely.
Like, that that somehow or another is on the level of, like, an attack.
- Right. - Like when this thing happens, when we're having this back and forth, this clash of ideologies, it's incredible how quickly these people just, they'll take anything that they possibly can to make themselves the victims of the situation and as we cover constantly say, you're making us do this. - Did you see Officer Fanon being harassed outside of the January 6th committee?
I did.
And then one of the crazies gets bumped into and takes a dive and starts screaming like he was stabbed in the heart.
Like a Premier League midfielder goes down as if he has just been shot by a bazooka.
Yeah, so I hate to even bring that up, but that reminds me exactly what that's like too, where it's like they goad you into doing it so that they can then have an outburst that makes it look like that.
All, you know, as an imitation of what they, in their minds, are what the left is.
You know what, and here's the thing, Nick, I didn't realize it before we started doing this, but we've just come upon the main theme of the podcast episode today, which is people who are trying to oppress others and who are trying to take power for themselves and they're trying to, you know, go after people and hurt people, they look constantly for the excuse To say, I'm the victim.
Yeah.
Right?
I'm only doing this to protect myself.
I'm only, you know, Josh Halvey, like they're coming after men.
That's why we have to be hyper-masculine.
Donald Trump, it's a witch hunt.
That's why I have to take over the government and basically throw people out.
Steve Bannon, who is a millionaire person, or millionaire person, a millionaire who has these like crazy ideological goals, anti-democratic goals, who says we're under attack.
Victoria Bond, the exact same messaging.
What we're seeing over and over again is people who are trying to hurt others looking for the excuse by creating their own victimhood.
All right, everybody, we'll talk more about this and a lot more this Thursday, July 28th at 7 p.m.
Eastern.
A reminder, if you want to be a part of that live recording, and I have to tell you, being around the community, getting to chat with each other, interacting with each other, it is a hell of a lot of fun.
You want to do this.
Go over to patreon.com slash mccraigpodcast.
Again, that is Thursday, July 28th, 7 p.m.
Eastern.
I'll be wearing a hat or two.
You're wearing a hat!
Or maybe two different hats.
At once.
Getting ready.
Two hats at once?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, Sherlock Holmes style?
Let's do it.
No, I'll tell you what.
I'll wear a hat as well.
We'll make it a hat party.
Awesome.
Looking forward to it.
Again, Thursday, July 28th, 7 p.m.
Eastern.
We are so looking forward to hanging out with you all.
Thank you again for all of your support.
If you need us before then, you can find me at J.Y.
Sexton.
You can find Nick at Can You Hear Me?
SMH.
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