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Aug. 23, 2022 - The Muckrake Political Podcast

54:18

Ron DeSantis Makes The Woke Go To Sleep

Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the tragic car bombing of Alexander Dugin's daughter in Moscow before diving into how the governor of Florida got the national news media to talk about him so much. Support The Muckrake Podcast at http://www.patreon.com/muckrakepodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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	Hey everybody, welcome to the Book Rake Podcast.
	I'm Jared Yates-Hexton.
	I'm here with Nick Halseman.
	Before we get going and we have an absolutely loaded show, I just want to send out a quick shout out to the burgeoning labor movement that is picking up.
	Shout out to American University staff who's on the picket line today.
	Shout out to the United Farm Workers in Nix, California who are marching up and down the state and demanding better treatment.
	Shout out to To the Columbus, Ohio teachers who are taking action.
	Solidarity, solidarity forever.
	We are with you.
	Keep it going.
	Nick, how we doing, bud?
	We're doing.
	Things are...never shortage of things to talk about in this pod.
	I gotta tell you, we picked a good subject.
	I tell you what, keeping track of the descent of American politics, culture, and the far right is a It's business is booming, which is not always the best thing.
	I just get really, really frustrated by the rhetoric on the right about the left.
	But then again, I get it.
	We're talking about the destruction of democracy and what they're trying to do actively, and they're just saying that the left is doing it.
	And that's just frustrating to me because a lot of these policies are clearly, you know, at least in earnest, are trying to help people.
	And if you don't agree with them, OK, but you can't characterize them as like the destruction of this country into rubble.
	Like that's just frustrates me.
	Unfortunately, one of the through lines of this episode is the right blaming the left or the non-existent left for what they're doing.
	And we have to go, first of all, around the world, over to Russia, and we got to talk about some weird stuff that has taken place, particularly over this weekend.
	Daria Dugana, who is the daughter of Alexander Dugan, and if you follow this podcast or the work that I've done, you've heard of Alexander Dugan, and we'll get everybody up to speed on who he is in just a second.
	He is an absolute ideological monster and is one of the main sort of philosophers and ideologues that that works behind Vladimir Putin's authoritarian regime.
	His daughter, uh, was killed this weekend, uh, when she was driving her father's car coming back from a traditionalism festival.
	Uh, an explosive device, uh, went off.
	Uh, she died.
	And, uh, since then, Nick, there has been, um, really Bizarre circumstances that have come from this Russia's already claimed that they found the person who did it they have blamed a Ukrainian woman who apparently Snuck into the country with her two children and has she's gone Nick, but guess what?
	she just somehow or another left behind her documents proving that she was part of the Ukrainian special forces and This is undoubtedly absolutely a lie.
	We'll get into what this means, where it's going, but this is, it might seem like a small little moment to some, but this is actually a pretty important geopolitical moment.
	Well, my first reaction to this was, I mean, obviously, you know, Dugan is a friend of the Breakdown, friend of the podcast, excuse me.
	Because, I mean, certainly you've talked about him a lot.
	So I felt, like, comfortable, like, oh, I know of this person now, thanks to you.
	It sounds horrific that he happened to switch cars at the last second, did not be in the car that he was supposed to be in.
	The state-sponsored story is that Dugan, and I'll go ahead and I'll throw this out because there's actually, I'll address what some of the analysis out there is saying here in just a second.
	Immediately following the death and the explosion, these videos started coming out of Dugan looking at the site of the accident.
	Walking around distraught.
	The state-sponsored media story now is that he is in the hospital after suffering a heart attack from the grief and the shock of that.
	Maybe he did, maybe he didn't.
	I mean, you never exactly know what's going on in Russia.
	Right, fair enough.
	So, you know, my first reaction though was, you know, we've been seeing some incursions by the Ukrainians into Russia a little bit, but not like into Moscow.
	Have an attack.
	But my first impression was like, oh my goodness, they're really getting more even brazen to try and then, you know, wound the Russians into, you know, I guess giving up eventually and getting out of their country.
	It doesn't feel that way now, just looking at this, because the circumstances behind a lot of the incursions we're seeing are like drone strikes, you know, on the border-ish into Russia a little bit.
	Not certainly a car bomb that you had to have been there.
	The security cameras have been disabled for a couple weeks before this.
	which indicates some sort of maybe an inside job, inside being like a Russian job, maybe designed to frame Ukrainians.
	But either way, it's weird because the Russians wouldn't need any more grist to blame Ukrainians on something to continue what they're doing.
	Very strange.
	What is your take on who you think did this?
	Well, so on one hand, the idea that Ukrainians did this is one of the least likely possible scenarios.
	I mean, the idea that they would go after Alexander Dugan And again, Dugan is an ideologue.
	And for those who don't know it, Dugan is one of the main illiberal ideologues in the world.
	For people who don't know him, his comparison in this country is Steve Bannon, only he is probably Even more fascistic and even more of an illiberal ideologue than Steve Bannon.
	This is a person who has created their own philosophy.
	It's a mixture of old communism plus fascism.
	Basically, the idea is that the modern world is decrepit, degenerate, needs to be destroyed.
	We need to recreate not just multipolarity, but also a system in which The elite rule the world and that liberal democracy has like evened out the playing field too much.
	Dugan is a really, really, really dangerous person.
	But the idea that Ukraine somehow or another was able to carry out an operation which they were able to go in and carry out a targeted assassination.
	Dugan's not the guy.
	Right.
	That doesn't make any sense.
	This has all of the hallmarks of an inside job.
	And right now, there are a couple of potential possibilities.
	One is that Vladimir Putin and his regime carried this attack out themselves in order to create sort of a semblance of a thing.
	So, for instance, if you want to carry out a false flag in order to carry out your own agenda, which Putin has done over and over again, I mean, he's killed his own people in order to give himself power and leverage.
	Dugin Would be a target that maybe he's out of fashion right now with Putin, right?
	Or maybe you killed Dugan's child and you and maybe even you sort of bring traditionalism up and you turn her into a martyr.
	That makes sense within the Putinist regime.
	That totally does.
	Another possibility that people keep pointing to is the idea that Alexander Dugan, like, intentionally sacrificed his daughter.
	And one of the reasons why people are talking about this is because he has talked about child sacrifice in his writings, you know, all this stuff.
	But if you're an esoteric writer, like he is, an illiberal esoteric writer, that shit shows up in your stuff all the time, right?
	The idea of Moloch or giving your children away or whatever.
	Personally, and the analysts that I traffic with and communicate with, we haven't seen enough data yet or enough signs that show that that's what happened.
	The other potential possibility is that this is an internal rifle.
	And we've talked about, as we've talked about Russia, that one of the things that Putin had to look out for, Nick, was the idea that by going into Ukraine, he would allow internal frictions to open themselves up.
	So somebody who wants to take his position or is afraid that his regime is coming after them, that they might start to destabilize things.
	That's a possibility.
	And you start going after Dugin, you start going after the people close to Putin, you cause them to close ranks and they create more and more mistakes.
	So there's a lot of potential in all of this, but I can tell you no matter what happens, this is undoubtedly going to lead to a ramp up of both internal crackdowns, but also external aggression in places like Ukraine.
	It's just weird to me because as far as I can tell, Dugin's whole ideology about Ukraine completely fits in line with Putin's.
	He would call the Ukrainians Nazis, he wanted to purge and let Russians take over as part of the Russian Empire reestablishment.
	So, in that respect, he's a big supporter of Putin, and I don't necessarily understand why he would feel the need to then take him out.
	You know, and this is not just like an ambush of a car where they just riddle it with bullets and whoever's in there gets killed.
	This was like, you know, the cameras are taken out, someone has to sneak in there and like, I guess, affix a bomb underneath the car.
	This is a real, you know, espionage kind of thing or, you know, a spy craft versus a blunt force, you know, taking out a murder.
	So, it's strange to me.
	There's a lot of things that don't seem to fit together for me yet until we get more information.
	Well, and I want to throw out one thing that we haven't touched on in this conversation.
	We have to do it.
	First of all, people losing lives, it's tragic.
	But let's also point out that Daria Dugina was not just a bystander.
	This isn't like a young daughter who just happened to be along for a ride or whatever.
	Daria is one of the main propagandists in Russia.
	She has completely built herself up into an influencer role, a publisher, a propagandist.
	This is a person who has called for mass genocide.
	I mean, and has enriched herself doing that.
	So it's not like she was some sort of an innocent bystander who got brought into this situation.
	If you actually look at what has happened here, there is even a possibility that there might be levels within levels.
	She might very well be part of another group that is, you know, looking for the future.
	And if you look at Vladimir Putin, and you brought it up, the idea that that Dugin and Putin are basically on the same wavelength, We always talk about how ideology is the story that supports the undermining or underlying sort of material conditions.
	Putin didn't have a Eurasian moment where he's like, Oh my God, reestablishing of whatever.
	Dugin gave him a story and Dugin gave him a philosophy.
	A lot of these people came together on this thing.
	So there's no telling how this works.
	And we've covered Trump and we've covered Putin to a certain extent.
	Those sort of strong men and authoritarians, Nick, they don't care.
	They'll kill somebody.
	They really truly don't.
	They'll cut the cord on somebody and ship them out to sea.
	They do not care.
	So it is possible that Putin did this.
	It's absolutely possible that Alexander Dugan went along with it.
	I just haven't seen the data that supports it yet.
	Other people are getting out ahead of this thing.
	That's the nature of social media and the Internet.
	The idea that this could be an internal rival, I think, seems very, very likely.
	Sure.
	We just don't know yet, but this will have ramifications.
	Sure.
	And this kind of thing is interesting because it happens in a situation in Russia where they're already well farther down the line towards fascism than we are, for instance.
	But it's interesting to find out or to try and figure out how much farther along are they when you look at what is happening here in Russia.
	And is there a parallel?
	Because we've been out front on a lot of these different things and able to trace the lines and have been pretty accurate on these things.
	So, you know, how far away are we from having situations where the rhetoric has gotten so bad or the laws have turned so horrible and the leaders have become so fascistic that, you know, we're going to see this kind of shit happening here like maybe somebody taken out.
	Well, we're seeing shades of that.
	We're already starting to.
	And I want to point out that what happens in authoritarian regimes, for instance, in Putin's Russia, is you can't trust anything.
	You literally can't trust anything at any given moment.
	Even if the government comes out and says something, maybe they're even telling the truth.
	But by design, you're like, I don't know.
	And we're starting to see shades of that.
	So for instance, we're getting ready to talk about just, and by the way, I'm so sorry that the brunt of this show is going to be about Ronnie Donnie DeSantis.
	But you start to see these situations where leaders like a DeSantis are absolutely using the rate of Mar-a-Lago.
	And they're lying about it openly.
	They don't even care what actually happened on the ground.
	It's what's useful.
	We have already descended sort of into that sort of tragedy of mirrors, you know, where you never exactly know what's happened, how it's occurred, who did what, why did they do it.
	And when you reach that point, Nick, the only thing that sort of fills the vacuum are conspiracy theories.
	Distrust for everybody, conspiracy theories that fill that vacuum, and unfortunately now we have to talk about the one and only Ron DeSantis, who, for those keeping track at home, is the choice of president of one Alex Jones.
	I've gone from liking DeSantis to loving DeSantis to my instincts have told me he's good and now he's got my full backing.
	Wow.
	He's the real deal.
	He's better than Trump.
	I'm not trying to pick favorites here.
	I want Trump to get jealous and become more like DeSantis.
	We all need to be more like DeSantis.
	He's a gentleman.
	He's smart.
	He's a family man.
	He's a patriot.
	He's a veteran.
	He is our leader.
	I mean, if you gotta know about who's leading the fight against the New World Order, it's Tucker Carlson and it's DeSantis.
	I gotta say, if Alex Jones comes out and just gives you a full-throated endorsement, Nick, I don't know what you'd do.
	I think at that point you'd just hurl yourself off the side of a mountain, right?
	If you get the endorsement, Alex Jones endorses you.
	If anybody gets an endorsement of Alex Jones, and if you have even a shred of integrity, I think you just go to the nearest mountain and hurl yourself immediately.
	I mean, if you want to throw that shred of integrity clause in that sentence, okay.
	Other than that, you're probably completely stoked, and this is amazing.
	This is the huge endorsement that will get you catapulted toward the top of the presidential run in 2024.
	It's absolutely incredible how, and again, speaking of things that we called, and I hate it when we have to do this, but we've talked about how all of the parts of the Republican Party are going to come together and coalesce behind Ron DeSantis, whether it's the conspiratorial lunatic fringe or it's the establishment, which is like, he's better than Donald Trump.
	We're watching it happen.
	And now we have to go and talk about how Ron DeSantis is now making the rounds.
	Nick, I think dopey Ron DeSantis paid attention to our Weekender episode last week.
	And said, you know what?
	I think the Republican candidates around the country are in some trouble.
	They need reinforcements.
	So what we're watching at this point is Ron DeSantis making the rounds, going from state to state in all these battlegrounds and weighing in.
	Most recently, it was Arizona where he campaigned with Blake Masters and also Kerry Lake, Nick, who, for those who didn't hear the Weekender episode, is just Every time she opens her mouth now, all she can talk about is how Ron DeSantis has quote-unquote big dick energy.
	Just stand idly by while woke ideology ravages every institution in our society.
	We must fight the woke in our schools.
	We must fight the woke in our businesses.
	We must fight the woke in government agencies.
	We can never ever surrender to woke ideology.
	And I'll tell you this, the state of Florida is where woke goes to die.
	Did that sound familiar to you a little bit?
	I mean, it sounds like a rally from Nuremberg or something like that before the World War II.
	Or how about Winston Churchill?
	Oh, okay, that too.
	Yeah, that's the we will fight them speech.
	Oh yes, forgive me.
	He turned into Jeremiah against wokeism.
	How about that?
	First they came for the woken.
	He can't even say it right.
	I can't say it.
	I don't know.
	Listen, Jared, I just wanted to be full disclosure.
	I am woke.
	Wow!
	You're officially declaring.
	I'm based.
	I'm woke.
	What else can I be?
	Whatever it is, sign me up.
	Put me on that list.
	You're just gonna put down your LinkedIn profile is what you're gonna do.
	Well, I gotta tell you, before we go further, how do you feel about that slogan that he's trying out?
	Florida is where woke goes to die.
	I don't feel good about it, Jared.
	You know, it feels so fascistic.
	It feels like, I mean, again, we don't even know what woke is supposed to really even mean, obviously, in their eyes, right?
	It's just this, like, again, I talk about this all the time.
	They've got a gun that's unloaded, and they're firing, you know, they're pulling the trigger, pulling the trigger, and they're just looking for bullets to shove in there, in between clicks, to see what will go off.
	You know, and by the way, the context with Florida is, you know, he's already taken on Disney.
	They're already trying to ban books in schools.
	The list keeps going on.
	You know, he already suspended an attorney general for just talking about violating the law.
	You know, it's performative, right?
	This doesn't really mean anything, necessarily.
	What do you, okay, I think you brought up an interesting point here, which is this sort of throwing around and banding about of the term woke.
	What do you think that when a Republican hears the word woke, what do you think that they hear?
	They think, you know, really just really leftist, you know, way too progressive, you know, abortion rights, right?
	They're thinking about, I mean, it probably goes to even like supporting, you know, the Reagan shit, like the welfare queen stuff, all that thing.
	I mean, I think it's just the most radical of radical left ideas they can imagine.
	Yeah, I think that that's right.
	I think when they hear the term woke, I think going through the filter of the Republican sort of prism of reality, I think on one hand, and this is something that DeSantis and we'll hear a little bit of this in a bit.
	And as a catch all, basically, it allows the audience or supporters to basically fill in any sort of a gap that they possibly want.
	Right.
	Like the Republican psychology on one hand.
	Okay, so Nick, first, it's the idea that the left is like absurd and silly and irrational.
	They're, you know, they're all, on one hand, they're all over here singing Kumbaya.
	On the other hand, there's a bunch of, like, really, really evil operators.
	And insert whoever you want.
	Your boss, the president, you name it.
	They're over here using those idiots.
	Right, and using the sentimental irrationality to basically steal money, carry out, you know, nefarious schemes.
	For some of them, it's rituals, sexual child abuse.
	For others, it's stealing this or destroying the country.
	And basically, it comes out to, basically, you're able to run it through whatever processes and whatever imagination you want, and you can sort of play Mad Libs with it.
	I think that's perfect.
	It's the boogeyman of all the things.
	I like what you said about living in a fantasy world.
	You're just in a dream world of this liberal world that doesn't exist and never can.
	But what's worse about that is Let's just pretend it could.
	Let's just say all these fantasy ideas we have about how people can live together in peace and harmony.
	Why would that really be a bad thing?
	I understand that you don't believe it could happen, but to ridicule it and to sort of make it seem like it is this horrible ideal is what's so troubling to me and soul-killing.
	You know what I mean?
	Well, actually, it's funny you bring that up to go ahead and give a preview.
	The Weekender episode, and if you want access to this, and I gotta tell you people, it's gonna be a humdinger this week.
	We've got planned for this week, it's gonna be really, really big.
	And by the way, go over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast to listen to that.
	Listen, people.
	It's gonna be worth it.
	I think that idea That a utopia, not even a utopia, but a better world.
	You know what I mean?
	And a fairer world?
	They dismiss it so far out of hand.
	So far, because when they hear it, like when you and I are talking about it, I think in our minds we're thinking, oh, people will be able to not have to live on the streets.
	People will be able to afford food, right?
	They'll be able to live jobs that are rewarding, or at least isn't destroying them.
	In their mind, they think, no, this is a trick.
	It's all bullshit.
	They're obviously trying to get one over on you and cloaking it in something.
	Which, by the way, is, I want to listen to a little bit of what DeSantis says, what his definition of woke is.
	And he defines it as a new religion, and we have to talk about what he thinks that actually entails.
	The left wants to do that because their goal is not to make our country great.
	It's to marginalize the conservative half of the country.
	They want us to be powerless.
	They want us to be voiceless.
	They want us to be second-class citizens.
	And what are these ideological aims?
	The woke is the new religion of the left, and this is what they have in mind.
	That's why they want CRT, because they want to divide the country.
	That's why they removed statues of Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt.
	Take George Washington's name off schools, because they want to erase that history.
	They want to delegitimize our founding institutions, and they want to replace that with their left-wing ideology as the foundational principles of our modern-day society.
	Wokeism is a form of cultural Marxism.
	Okay, so real fast before we dive deeper into that Nick, how obnoxious is he?
	Correct me if I'm wrong, when's the last time someone wanted to take George Washington off of the name of a school?
	Nobody's actually really talked about that.
	All they've said is basically, let's point out the fact that George Washington was a slave owner.
	That's about it.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, it's just... I get it.
	It's such red meat.
	This is like throwing blood into the water and letting the sharks come and whatever.
	Oh, they love it.
	Don't mess with America's daddy.
	But real fast, Ron DeSantis' voice.
	Do you hear it?
	How bad it is?
	Man, he talks so fast and he's so unpleasant.
	It's kind of shocking how off-putting his actual retail politics are.
	Yeah, I mean, I kind of was looking at the appearance.
	I've got caught up in that too, which I don't need to get into too much, but like that too is a problem for me.
	Dopey DeSantis, man.
	He is a dopey looking person.
	Okay.
	I mean, that's, you know, you can get into even like, you know, the other stuff like, you know.
	But I will say the cultural Marxism thing to get people up to speed again, cultural Marxism is, has roots in Nazism by the way.
	It is the idea.
	And whenever they say cultural Marxism, what they're actually saying is that, Jews who control culture are using that culture to hurt the nation-state and undermine it and to manipulate people within it to attack the institutions of the state.
	Every time you hear that instantaneously, you need to search, find, and replace.
	cultural Marxism with protocols of the elders of Zion.
	That's exactly what this is.
	It's the idea that wokeism isn't real.
	It's actually a weapon that's being used in order to destroy the country. - I think you could sprinkle a little bit of like self-reflection threat in there as well.
	Like, they want you to think about who you are and how you fit into society and how maybe you can make it better for the society.
	We can't have that.
	We can't have you thinking about those sort of things.
	You need to be focused on, you know, just, you know, your job and, you know, whatever.
	They kind of just want it to be a distraction so you don't actually ever get to that point where you're like, you know, maybe we should...
	refer to people how they want to be referred to.
	Maybe we should allow whoever wants to get married to be married.
	I think if you took the time to really think about it rationally, a lot more people would get to that point.
	But you can't.
	You cannot allow yourself to think that way or even tiptoe into that area because, yes, it's almost like the invasion of the body snatchers.
	You're going to wake up as a commie the next day.
	Yeah, you're going to wake up married to a dog.
	Oh, right.
	I mean that's really where all this, it's so absurd and laughable because it is absurd and laughable.
	The things that DeSantis is peddling, and by the way, I'm glad we have the Alex Jones clip simply because the things that Jones put out there are qualifiers.
	You know, DeSantis is serious.
	He's a veteran, right?
	These are like, he's a serious man who's taking Trumpism and giving it the, you know, the veneer or a new coat of paint of respectability, which is the entire reason this project is going to roll on.
	And what is DeSantis going to do with all of this, Nick?
	It's going to go ahead and create a new politics of brutality.
	And I want to take a look at what he's saying here.
	Florida is where wokeism goes to die.
	And I want you to think about that.
	That's a slogan, Nick, with the word die in it.
	You know what I mean?
	I was writing about this.
	There was this state rep in Indiana who, whenever they were talking about the abortion ban, he was asked, what would you say to a child whose mother was going to be forced to Carry a dead fetus to term?
	And the guy responded, uh, we have to accept death as a necessary consequence of life.
	And I started thinking about it and I, I, I know deep on this and my subs technique in the past, you didn't want to say shit like that, right?
	Politics was never about sort of getting into that sort of ugliness, but now the Republican party and Ron DeSantis is very good at this.
	They've started to use more terminal terms.
	Death, war, killing, destroying, whatever.
	American carnage, right, with Trump.
	It literally is a movement that is now obsessed with brutality and cruelty, and it's shifting into a completely new gear, and part of it has to do with this idea, they're coming for your children, they're coming for your family, they're coming for your guns, they're coming from your home, You have to accept whatever we are feeding you in order to try and mount some sort of a defense.
	It's a literal life and death struggle.
	Right, but it's like we're feeding you freedom, right?
	Even though it's not.
	It's the opposite of freedom, right?
	In this twisted way, you know, it's more like you just don't worry about anything.
	Just stay in your own lane, keep your blinders on, and we will take care of everything and everyone will be fine.
	What it really means is we'll just be rich and you'll just have your same lives, which won't aspire to much beyond, you know, what you're trying to do right now.
	It kind of is exactly opposed to what this country is supposed to be about.
	And I suppose maybe that's the fundamental difference.
	We need to decide what this country is supposed to be about, right, in some respects.
	I mean, there is the language that we all, I would think, would agree aspires to what we're trying, like the left is trying to move towards.
	But it can be so completely misinterpreted by these originalists to the point where it becomes an oppressive, fascist state.
	It's truly amazing.
	And perhaps, again, maybe there's no other way this could have gone.
	A setup like the one we have will always lead to something like where we're at now.
	Well, the setup, and we're going to get into a little bit of this history and education part of it here in a second.
	It's the original contradiction of America, which is it was created in order to serve the interest of a white wealth class, basically to change the economy and to create a government for their favor.
	But it had to be dressed up in things like the Declaration of Independence, you know, freedom and liberty and human dignity, you name it.
	And I want to point out, and DeSantis is part of this as well, You know, down here in Florida, and we've covered this, there's the Don't Say Gay Bill, which basically now is trying to protect your children from being turned into transgender, indoctrinated people.
	And, you know, we have this situation now where DeSantis has even started to push these programs.
	And we got to talk about this national teacher shortage in a second, which, Nick, I'm checking my notes, I believe we had that.
	On this pod, we're going to talk about like these programs that he's pushing, including this new civics training.
	And in this civics training, DeSantis has now linked bonuses for Florida teachers who now have to go through this training.
	We're going to be investing another $500,000 into the Florida Civics and Debate Initiative to expand access to the program into every school district in the 2022-2023 school year.
	And this is in addition to the $106 million investment in civics education that I announced earlier this summer, which will provide Teacher bonuses for any teacher earning the Florida civics seal of excellence and I think there's going to be a lot of teachers that are going to want to do that and we think it's going to be a very powerful program.
	Yeah, I think it is.
	I think there are going to be a lot of teachers who want to take the civics program and get their bonuses and the seal of excellence.
	Nick, would you like to hear what's included in the Florida Civics Training Program?
	I sure would, Jared!
	Yeah, how about this idea?
	And these are actually taken from it.
	How about the idea that the division of church and state was not intentional, nor was it meant to be permanent?
	I meet you with silence.
	I assume, by the way, that they're talking about the Muslim influence within the United States.
	Oh, absolutely, for sure.
	How about the idea that the founders actually opposed slavery, and they really wanted to get rid of it at the beginning, but they weren't able to make it happen?
	You probably could find one founder that felt that way.
	You might!
	You might very well find that.
	Nick, here's the thing, and I gotta tell you, as a teacher, I would have gone and taken that training, and I would have collected my bonus.
	And it wouldn't have indoctrinated me, but it would have also sent a message.
	And that message is this.
	This is what the state of Florida expects from you.
	And if you veer off that course, there are consequences.
	So it's not necessarily telling teachers, like, this is actually what happened.
	It's actually warning to teachers.
	These are the lanes that you have to stay within, and if you veer from them, there are going to be consequences.
	Oh, I mean, without question, you know, they could easily say, okay, fine, you didn't get your bonus, but you're gonna lose your job now because we've already established these are the guidelines you need to teach to anyway.
	I'm having been a teacher in the high school and public schools in LA like I've always been very wary of that kind of top-down you know they want local control schools you hear that a lot and you're right but then well they'll start handing down this shit as well from the top from the governor's office and I would, I'm fascinated.
	They must be sitting around a conference room every day just trying to figure out how much farther they could push this thing, and at what level.
	They must have, Mondays must be the schools, Tuesdays are like social programs.
	Like, literally, how can we destruct this, cause more destruction?
	It's truly, you know, and again, it's like, and how much more can we get the soundbite we need out of these things?
	Because who knows how, I doubt these programs are even that effective, or will even really work the way they want them to work.
	But it's a great soundbite that he can now release to get the right, you know, this is a national, that's, I think that's, I'm sorry I'm all over the place, but he's, he's running a national campaign right now.
	Yes.
	That's what this is.
	And here's the reason why the system has gone ahead and selected him and why he's being promoted up to this level.
	Nick, you're exactly right.
	There are these boardrooms where these things are happening.
	It's not happening in Florida.
	It's happening in Washington D.C.
	Which is where all of these right-wing think tanks, and by the way, this is something we're gonna have to talk about in the next couple of weeks.
	I don't know if you saw this, but Leonard Leo, who we had talked about, was like the architect behind the overtaking of the Supreme Court in the fall of Roe v. Wade.
	His new venture, Nick, just was given 1.6 billion dollars!
	By one person!
	By one person!
	Weird how that happens.
	These think tanks go ahead and create all these plans, all these scenarios, and if it helps, think about it this way.
	It's like the pharmaceutical companies, right?
	They go ahead and they create the pill, and they start looking around, and they're like, who's going to sell this to the doctors?
	You know what I mean?
	Who are the pill reps who are really gonna get the opioids out there?
	And all of a sudden, it's like, hey, we just got word that there's a really good pill rep down in Florida.
	It's like, really?
	Oh, let's see if we can give him some more business because every time we keep sending him new product, he's selling it to everybody.
	There's hardly any problem whatsoever.
	That's who Ron DeSantis is.
	Ron DeSantis is a really incredible pill salesman for the people of Florida and the Republican Party nationwide.
	And he has been recognized and he hasn't pushed back on anything, Nick.
	He, at every step along the way, He has shown not just an eagerness but like a really disturbing eagerness to take whatever that establishment that is being funded by these right-wing billionaires to take it Think about this.
	into gold and just sell it to every Republican around the country.
	And as a result, they see him as the future of this party because why wouldn't they?
	He's an incredible salesman.
	I mean, like, think about this.
	Like, we're talking about, like, who the fuck would care about a governor of a state talking about a civics program that they want to institute in, like, the lower schools, in the middle schools?
	This is ridiculous.
	And yet, this is the genius of this.
	He's been able to insert himself into the national debate and it's completely transparent what he's trying to do.
	The worst part about this is that he's going to take the mantle from Trump and run in 2024.
	So in some respects we could get rid of Trump and we should be cheering for that.
	But, you know, but we get something entirely more dangerous in him, in DeSantis, and it is so... And look at what he's doing!
	Look at this shit that he's getting off the ground and piloting.
	Of course, you were talking about going after, like, an attorney general who didn't want to work with him.
	We've also got an election police force, which is already out there investigating people.
	On top of that, We told everybody, God, Nick, I have to say, it had to have been a year ago at this point, we said the treatment of teachers.
	And I'm not just talking about low pay, but I'm talking about culture wars around teachers, saying that they're groomers, saying that they're indoctrinating, making them unsafe.
	It was going to lead to a teacher shortage.
	Guess what, Nick?
	Almost every state in the nation now has thousands Of open positions.
	They're having to double classes.
	There are places around the country that are only having classes like three or four times a week at this point.
	They can't fill it with actual teachers because they're terrified they're not being respected and on top of that like it's just too stressful.
	What's DeSantis doing?
	He got one of those specials from the think tanks.
	We're gonna go ahead and hire veterans.
	Oh, yes, retired veterans, obviously, right?
	Waving the flag.
	These people are wonderful.
	Like, that has nothing to do with teaching.
	And all it does is it takes militarism and nativism and all of these chauvinistic ideas the Republican Party has, and it just throws fire on them.
	And what's that going to lead to?
	It's going to lead to curriculums that are going to be designed, as we talked about last week, by places like Hillsdale College.
	And it's just going to continue this entire process.
	And DeSantis, he doesn't say no to any of this.
	He takes all of it and moves it on.
	He's going to have a program that's going to call it DeSantis Youth.
	Absolutely!
	You're not wrong, man.
	And that will be the next iteration, and then they'll have control over our kids, which is scary.
	You know, as a real aside, the teacher shortage is very real.
	A, they're driving them out.
	B, they're firing them for saying the wrong thing.
	It's the same thing as even referees and umpires.
	And I know this is tangential to what we're talking about but like I'm worried that we're not gonna have any kind of Little League or any kind of youth sports going forward without organized because who would want to subject themselves to what you see out there which is getting worse and worse by the minute with the way parents treat the referees I see it at the basketball side and certainly the baseball we're seeing terrible things and it's that culture as well that they're tapping into that desire to want to go to these school boards and scream this bloody murder horrible you
	You know, violent stuff.
	There's a direct correlation between that and what they're doing at these games.
	And so, that's another level of, like, sort of destroying what the development of kids get in terms of teamwork, and working together, and sacrifice, and all the things that I think even the left would really want kids to learn.
	That will disappear if they can't have the games to play.
	So, it's troubling.
	And I want you to think about this.
	To be a teacher in this country, let's think about a young teacher.
	You've gotten out.
	You've probably gone and got a master's degree at this point.
	Chances are you've probably amassed a certain amount of debt.
	I mean, this is a very much a class sort of situation.
	So, you have a ton of debt.
	All of a sudden, you find a job, right?
	And you go into this job, and maybe you know that this doesn't match your principles, and maybe you know that this is bullshit.
	But you go in, and on one hand, you go to this civics training because you could use the extra couple hundred dollars, and you're like, man, this is bullshit.
	But also, in the back of your mind, the lines have now been set.
	If I go outside of this line, I'm in trouble.
	On top of that, I have social media.
	I can't necessarily say anything on there.
	And Nick, what happens if you don't follow that?
	The next thing you know, you're being like Spotlit on Ben Shapiro's show or Tucker Carlson.
	You're being called a groomer.
	You're being called, you know, a sexual criminal.
	Something along those lines.
	You have to think about your safety, the safety of your people, plus also we're living in a country, I'm sorry, where everybody is on the edge of precarity.
	Everybody is looking at losing their job and losing their health insurance and everything falling apart and that's by design.
	So what does it do?
	It takes people who even have principles and people who know better and it makes them stand in line.
	It's an incredible Incredible operation that these people have going.
	It couldn't be more tragic.
	I also want to mention that the extra money they might get from the civics training would be to cover supplies that they're forced to buy.
	They're forced to buy.
	You know, it's anecdotal, but I'll see these tweets all the time from people who had, you know, $120,000 in debt when they finished their schooling, and they've been paying it as much as they can for 10 years, and they owe more now.
	because of the rates so it's so untenable how they've done this and it's completely goes against what the college system was invented for in the first place that you know it again it kind of feels inevitable when you mix capitalism with all these these different principles it seems like there's no other way you're gonna have to have losers in these equations
	I gotta say, by the way, before I move on to the next part of the show, a giant muckrake podcast fuck you to Matt Iglesias and Larry Summers and every one of these ghouls, Nick, who's taking to social media and they're like, oh, if you're going to forget student debt, shut up.
	We all know that this has been a fraud and a crime perpetrated on an entire generation.
	An entire generation.
	The idea that you shouldn't do this or shouldn't do that.
	These people have been taking advantage of every loophole.
	Larry Summers.
	And unfortunately, I hate that we've had to talk about him so much over the past couple of weeks, but these ghouls basically run everything.
	Larry Summers sat at the table as the United States government bailed out one financial institution after another in 2008.
	And you're gonna sit there and pretend like this is awful or you shouldn't bail people out?
	Fuck you, man.
	You know, remember the point of a student loan is to enable someone to get a higher education and then get into the workforce and contribute to society and there's no reason that they should be penalized and it's and also there's no there's no reason in my mind why that business of the loans itself should ever be run for profit and that's disgusting that's what yeah it's and again regulation we can't have more regulation but it's like that it goes so completely against
	What the original intent of it was, which is exactly what happens when the Republicans get a hold of all these different things.
	They just want to try and squeeze that rag for as many pennies as they can get out of it.
	They don't want to make people's lives better.
	I think that's what it is.
	They want you to make your own life better, but they have no desire to see if they can't help anybody else make their lives better.
	And that's a fundamental difference between the two parties, if we had to pick one.
	So, real fast before we bring this show to an end, Nick, I sent this to you the second that I saw it.
	This is how this show works sometimes.
	And listen, this is an op-ed we've got to go over that was in the Washington Post.
	It was written by Jason Willick.
	I don't know Jason Willick.
	I don't have a clue.
	I've never heard this name before.
	I have to assume this is a person who's, I don't know, nice to dogs and, you know, helps people across the street.
	I don't know Jason.
	If you're listening, I hope you're well, Jason.
	But I'm going to read the title of this op-ed, Nick, and I just want you to just tell me, you've known me for a while, after I read the title of this op-ed, you tell me how angry just reading the title of this op-ed made me.
	Are you ready?
	I'm ready.
	This is an op-ed in the Washington Post, because of course it is.
	Jason Willick, what Biden could gain from pardoning Trump.
	I think that even though you wish him well, you want to give him a good muck rake, fuck you.
	Right back to you.
	It's so upsetting.
	And of course this is in these gatekeeper media apparatuses.
	And I'm sorry, but this is going to be something that if Trump does get charged, or if things keep getting worse, We're going to see this from a lot of these publications.
	You know that, right?
	There's going to be a growth of this.
	This just happens to be up in front of the pack.
	He's just the messenger, Jared.
	He's just throwing it out there as a scenario that might happen that he can know.
	Alright, so Jason Willey.
	It's anyone's guess how the federal investigations around Donald Trump will intersect with the former president's political ambitions.
	It's possible no indictment will be filed and Trump won't run again.
	Maybe.
	It's also possible he will be indicted on charges related to the 2020 election.
	The handling of government documents or both.
	That he will mount a third presidential campaign.
	The America's 2024 election will be clouded by the incumbent administration's novel prosecution of a rival candidate of a major party.
	There's an endgame that would avert that destabilizing prospect.
	By the way, Nick, that destabilizing prospect, we gotta make sure that we're naming it.
	Can I just throw this out there?
	You have to remember, one of the big reasons why he ran in 2020 was to avoid being prosecuted, right?
	That was his biggest motivation.
	And it's the same reason why he feels like he's gonna need to run in 2024 so he can pardon himself.
	At least to raise money!
	Yeah, so let's not forget.
	We gotta get into more of that, but keep going.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	If Attorney General Merrick Garland's Justice Department indicts Trump, President Biden could intervene with the exercise of his pardon power.
	Are you kidding me?
	First of all, before we go any deeper, it isn't clear that pardoning Trump would hurt Biden politically?
	interest to reduce polarization or strengthen norms.
	But it isn't clear that pardoning Trump would hurt Biden politically.
	Are you kidding me?
	First of all, before we go any deeper, it isn't clear that pardoning Trump would hurt Biden politically?
	Well, it's not like there's been precedent for this, Jared.
	How'd that go for Ford?
	Not great, Bob.
	Not great.
	It didn't go great.
	If Joe Biden, oh my God, if he pardons Donald Trump, do you really think that our environment would take that?
	Really?
	He'd have a hard time making it out of the White House.
	Oh my God.
	On the contrary, making such a startling move, good point, startling.
	Could put the weary president back in the center of the political universe, scramble political alignments, and make his former rival, if he accepts a humbling offer, appear small and weak.
	What is this paragraph?
	Who is, what universe is this person living in?
	This is like a 10th grade, you know, project that somebody assigned somebody, it feels like.
	Oh my god!
	Biden could would express his concern as the ultimate custodian of America's national interest.
	By the way, the president hasn't actually been the custodian of America's national interest in decades.
	The president of the United States is largely a mascot, Nick.
	I mean, like, you know, it's like Ronald McDonald with a little bit more policy experience.
	He could set by an election year prosecution that rests in part on untested legal theories about obstruction or document classification by a sitting president.
	Trump's acceptance of the pardon would enable Biden's allies to make political hay of the dubious claim that this amounts to a recognition of guilt.
	Nothing's going to happen from that that is good for Biden or the Democratic Party and I want to stress this the United States of America.
	Nothing.
	No.
	It's all bad.
	It's not great.
	I mean, really, but it's certainly, you know, much, much worse what he's describing.
	Oh, God, listen to this shit.
	This is the universe.
	Derived from medieval English kings.
	I'm sorry, Nick, but if you're writing about a presidential power and you begin with the opening, derived from medieval English kings, you're off on the wrong path.
	Okay.
	The president's vast constitutional power to pardon is one of the most monarchial that he exercises.
	I want to argue and I don't know how you feel about it.
	I would love to hear it.
	I don't think the president should be pardoning.
	I'll just say that.
	I wouldn't argue with it.
	It definitely does feel like such a throwback to a monarchy that I don't understand why they kept that in there in the first place.
	Of course, the regal roots of the pardon power mean it sits uneasily alongside the small d democratic rarity that no one is above the law.
	Certainly does.
	Absolutely does.
	And you're advocating for a person who broke the law to be pardoned simply to, I don't know, make the institution strong.
	But it speaks to the fact that even in a representative government, political judgment and statementship are necessary to sustaining the law's operation.
	Bullshit!
	Bullshit top to bottom.
	Yeah, I would think truth and honesty and integrity are the things that sustain the law's operation.
	No matter what Garland decides, close to half of the country might have its faith in the Justice Department shaken by the Trump probe, either because it ends in prosecution or because it does not.
	A Biden reprieve of Trump, once Garland's investigation is finished, would pull the Justice Department out of this political vice, helping to sustain its reputation.
	I don't know how else to say this.
	The mountain or the plane has crashed into the goddamn mountain.
	You can't bring back the Department of Justice reputation because it doesn't have a reputation.
	Anyone who pays attention to this knows that it has been a political institution since it was created.
	But hey, no, this one specific prosecution by Garland might, just might shake their faith in the Justice Department, Jared.
	I mean, you're right, the only thing that's going to restore, which it's already been crashing to the mountain, is decades of integrity displays by, right?
	We're going to need decades before people really feel better about it, if ever, and certainly we can't have any more of these things happening because we can't afford to elect any more of these assholes.
	You know what's needed?
	And we've never talked about this, I don't think.
	Maybe we have in one of our live shows.
	You know what one of my favorite ad campaigns is, Nick?
	It's whenever a company releases a bunch of ads, it's like, hey, our product is terrible.
	It's been terrible for a while.
	Our pizza's awful.
	Our service is terrible.
	We've heard you.
	We know it.
	We're going to do better.
	The only way that you actually reinforce any of these institutions Is you basically say, hey, I know the FBI and the CIA have been tools of white supremacy and they've been used to suppress, you know, leftist and individual thought and movements.
	But, you know, maybe we can do better.
	You can't just say these things are sacred and these institutions are strong and real and then hope that everybody believes it.
	We all know that this is bullshit.
	Absolutely and so you need definitive proof over a long time that it's not that way or the very least for the CIA they just need to get better at covering it up I suppose we don't ever hear about it like which is what they did for a long time but still as far as the DOJ goes yeah there's a lot of work to be done here the irony is that it's like this is as above board as we've seen them be in a while to what they're doing with Trump it feels that way to me at least in a rational way and and yet yeah people are gonna are there shaking
	No, it wouldn't.
	Depending on the charges and context, a pardon could also diminish Trump in a primary.
	No, it wouldn't.
	It would do none of that.
	Deflating his grievances, nope.
	Not even for a second.
	Trump wouldn't stop.
	He wouldn't quit saying what he says and making him appear in debt to the magnanimity of his successor.
	No, it wouldn't.
	Nobody gives a shit.
	Jared, I think he did this on purpose.
	I literally think he said, they said to him, um, you know, sir, they're going to come in here and raid for these, raid these documents if you don't give them back.
	He's like, wait, wait, wait.
	Say that again?
	Yeah, what?
	Yeah, like we're going to have a raid?
	I'm telling you.
	If that came up, there's no doubt in my mind he would have thought that would have probably been a good idea.
	Oh, absolutely.
	He's fundraising off of it around the clock.
	He knows it's good.
	Be careful how you describe fundraising, Jared, as well, because that implies it goes somewhere that's supposed to go.
	That's exactly right.
	That's exactly right.
	At the very least, thank God this thing is over, this thought experiment, by the way, this thought experiment should have stayed a thought experiment.
	Maybe you should have kept it to yourself, my friend.
	Should underscore that if Trump is indicted, the line separating the nation's legal and political institutions will crumble.
	There is no line.
	There never has been a line.
	It's never been real.
	It's always been fake, but whatever.
	Thought experiment continues.
	as head of the executive branch Biden sits at the nexus of the two he could have a unique opportunity to exploit that position to the country's advantage and his own what a lame lame lame article Nick that has absolutely nothing to do with anything and And if Trump is indicted, and I still have my doubts, I don't think he probably will be, it's all about protecting power.
	And that's where these institutions are going to go.
	This is not going to be the first time we hear a call for Biden to pardon Trump if anything comes down.
	It's almost like this guy Jason Willick wrote for the Wall Street Journal before this.
	Wait a minute.
	He did.
	Weird!
	Isn't it weird how these things work, Nick?
	Oh, I know.
	Yeah, he's playing chess, man.
	Or he's playing checkers.
	I don't know what he's doing, but there is absolutely, you know, if anybody were to come to you and said, you know, let's say a doctor comes to you and says, we're going to just take your heart out of your body, but we think you're going to live much better, a much better life after that.
	Like, you wouldn't go to that doctor.
	Anybody who's going to try and even pretend that Biden would benefit politically from pardoning Trump You know, shouldn't be writing op-eds in a newspaper.
	Except for it is vocalizing and communicating what is going to be an institutional idea.
	If he gets charged, you're going to see a lot of this.
	You're going to see it in the New York Times, you're going to see it again in the Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, you name it.
	Because again, this is something we've talked about.
	They don't want to disrupt power.
	There is a difference in who is above the law and who isn't.
	We all know it, and to keep pretending like that isn't the case, it's just insulting.
	You know what I mean?
	I'm sure he's really worried about a civil war, Jared.
	I'm sure he's really wringing his hands about it.
	All right, everybody.
	So we're gonna be back later this week.
	I'm telling you right now, you're gonna want to hear this weekender.
	I'm very pumped for what we're talking about.
	We'll be back on Friday.
	Go over to patreon.com slash monkreg podcast, support the show, gain access to that and the community, all that good stuff.
	If you need us before then, you can find Nick at Can You Hear Me?
	SMH.
	You can find me at J.Y.
	Saxton.

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