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Co-hosts Jared Yates Sextn and Nick Hauselman discuss the ramifications of the January 6th Committee subpoenaing Donald Trump and how successful it's been overall. They then discuss the ridiculous and breathless coverage of Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman's interview with NBC before diving into what they're watching: Glengarry Glen Ross and Ocean's 11.
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Hey everybody, welcome to the Weekender edition of the Muckrake Podcast.
I'm Jared Yates Sexton.
I am in my studio.
I'm no longer doing a phoner.
I do have to tell you, Nick, I know the Weekender is sometimes a little bit lighter.
I have suffered the crumbling infrastructure and transportation network of the United States of America, and I am salty.
Why do you hate America, Jared?
Because it doesn't get you anywhere.
All these highways and byways?
Come on now.
The highways are crumbling, the byways have already fallen into the ocean.
It's absolutely ridiculous that this country doesn't... I'm sorry, we don't have high-speed rail at this point.
It's an absolute national embarrassment.
I'm ready to go today, Nick.
I'm ready to go.
Well, we can go all through the catastrophe of trying to do high-speed rail between LA and San Francisco because, listen, I have my beef trying to drive an electric car between those two cities a few weeks ago.
That was not as easy as it should have been.
I can't even imagine.
I'm fit to be tied.
A reminder, if you're listening to the preview of this, I mean, come on.
Come on.
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Plus live shows, Discord.
Plus live shows!
We gotta do a live show.
You wanna maybe do one next couple weeks?
This is how we organize the whole podcast.
Yes, let's do it.
I'm moving!
Let's do it.
Yeah, anytime soon.
I was just thinking about that.
I missed that excitement and energy we have when we're talking live.
Let's do that.
OK, so as soon as we're done on here, we're going to we're going to go and schedule that.
So keep an eye out.
I love it.
I love that they just got into one of our meetings.
That's fantastic.
Yeah, that's that's the kind of glimpse you'll get in the Patreon.
So on that note, speaking of meetings, we got to start this thing off.
The January 6th hearing committee, whatever we're calling it, had, I think, I don't know, Nick, if you've heard this, presumably their last hearing.
Once again, and we'll get into the nuts and bolts of this thing and reactions from it and sort of the larger reaction to all these hearings, presented some more audio, some more videos, some more exclusive things, you name it, and then at the end of the hearing voted to unanimously subpoena Donald Trump to come and talk to the committee.
We are obligated to seek answers directly from the man who set this all in motion.
And every American is entitled to those answers, so we can act now to protect our republic.
So apparently, Nick, we got him.
He's going to come in front of the committee.
He's going to answer every single question, undoubtedly incriminate himself, get let out in a few good men type, massive made-for-TV moment, and that'll be it.
The Republic will be solved.
He might actually do it, Jared.
By the way, the reports I love of someone close to somebody in Trump's camp were saying that he is really intrigued by the idea of bursting through the doors, marching up to the whatever chair, and then getting in front of the cameras.
I don't know.
I can't figure that out.
Maybe he would do that at this point.
I will say, OK, so there is one part of this.
So a lot of what we offer, of course, on this show is like political analysis, like actual deep analysis, you know, with a little bit of a wink and a nod.
Right.
But you're exactly right.
Like this is the type of an absolute narcissist who is reacting to the January 6th hearings as television, as theater.
And this would be, and here's the thing, Donald John Trump, if you listen to this podcast, I haven't seen you on the Patreon, but you know, maybe, maybe John Barron is a subscriber.
So if you are listening, I can only say this, it would be one of the most highly rated television shows, maybe of all time.
Maybe the MASH finale would say, you know, goodbye to not just Korea, but also its record.
Get in front of the cameras, give us a made-for-TV moment.
That's the argument.
I don't think it will happen, and even if it does...
I have to assume that this will end up getting just absolutely logged down in court.
This will be something that goes back and forth, fighting a subpoena if it'll even be fought, or going in front and taking the fifth.
But Nick, he is such a unique narcissist.
You're exactly right.
This very well could be the trap that he can't avoid.
Have I told you my last MASH episode story?
I haven't?
Okay, maybe we'll save it for the end as one of those stories.
That's a really good Nick Hollywood story, but remind me.
But nonetheless, I mean, here's the thing.
What would he do if he actually decided to testify?
They would say, well, did you have a hand in planning the insurrection of the Capitol?
He goes, I don't know anything about that, but what we really have to talk about is how the election was stolen.
And then he'll just throw out all the lies he can.
It's just going to be a microphone for him turning into a circus and him to just sort of Probably make up even more ridiculousness about what happened around that day and before.
So that's the reason why you probably can't have him on.
It's the reason why Liz Cheney wouldn't let Jim Jordan on the committee itself.
So that would be an interesting thing.
Obviously, what would happen?
What if he said, yeah, I'll do it?
Obviously, they're going to let him, right?
They can't just decide not to do it, even though they know what's going to happen, right?
Well, so this brings us, I think, and we'll get to the retrospective of the committee in totality here in just a second.
This sort of brings us to this weird surreal moment, Nick, because let's be honest, this is all political theater.
It has been since the very beginning like the only sort of moments that like obviously we're getting things revealed we're getting information that that you know has come from these investigations but really there's nothing to really stop this man from getting up in front of everybody and just completely derailing everything and by the way for Donald Trump Whose political star is fading, right?
I mean, we've talked about it over and over.
We've said, you know, obviously he has all this attention on him, these investigations.
We've now seen the Supreme Court say, we want nothing to do with your legal troubles.
Thanks for appointing us.
Thank you.
We're ready to move on, everybody.
We're ready to bring in the next person.
Again, the system doesn't want Trump around anymore.
This is a perfect opportunity for him to take the stage.
It really, truly is.
And you're exactly right.
If he says anything besides the fifth, it's going to be a long, rambling, self-serving monologue that can only, I don't know, maybe hammer?
You know?
Maybe they can put down the gavel and make him stop?
I don't think that that's going to work very well.
You know, this is supposed to seem like it's some sort of a legal hearing, but it is political theater, and you are now inviting one of the masters of political theater into a political theater to see what happens.
So you're exactly right.
It could be a type of situation where you might even regret trying to make this happen in the first place.
Well, the other thing is, he could detail everything he did that was illegal and everything, and the people on his side wouldn't even care.
They'd be like, oh, look at how terrible they're treating him, you know, in the middle of this thing.
They're gaveling him and whatever.
Well, not just his supporters.
You also have to expect, what's Merrick Garland gonna do?
Merrick Garland has basically been chewing off his fingernails every single day, just hoping that this will pass so he doesn't have to do something.
You're exactly right.
Like, this is a type of situation that I have to imagine the people involved with this are just kind of hoping that it just sort of this is a fine into the whole thing and it just sort of dissipates.
Well at least it would be exciting versus like the you know the snooze fest that we had yesterday in terms of a recap I was I gotta tell you I was getting really mellow about an hour and a half into watching it so Can we talk about that, by the way?
Because before we get into the actual sort of effect of this thing, and we've been on it from the beginning, I do have to say, and I'm going to strain my shoulder patting myself on the back here, I told everybody, they're never getting into donors.
Ever.
They're not going to do it.
They're not going to talk about who financed it, who organized it, who was behind it.
Everyone said, oh, just wait until the end of it.
I waited until the end of it.
We've seen it.
They had no desire whatsoever to take on the actual problem.
They pinned it all on Donald Trump.
By the time that it's done, Nick, it is television theater.
It lasted too long.
It had these bombshell-like clips that were ready-made for online distribution.
They did that, right?
The whole point that happened after this was, guess what?
Donald Trump was destructive, but guess who had the wheel?
Nancy Pelosi had the wheel.
Schumer had the wheel.
Don't worry, leadership had control in some semblance, in some shape or form.
But meanwhile, you're exactly right.
It literally just it got to the point where we have been so inundated with not just January 6th exclusive footage and reveals.
Nick, the whole thing of Donald Trump is we've gotten to the point where It doesn't matter what's revealed.
It doesn't matter what new reveals there are.
It has reached the point of diminishing returns.
Yeah, that's a really, really great point.
And then, you know, we all know what's going to happen.
This had the air of, like, you know, the end of, like, summer camp, when you, like, get together for the last time, and you, like, kind of get in this circle, whatever.
Like, this is sort of what it felt like, because guess what?
This is going to be disbanded, right?
We know it doesn't look like the Democrats are going to hold on to Congress.
And so, You know, these guys are going to come in here, and by the way, they're going to create their own January 6th.
They're going to create their January 6th, January 6th Hearing Committee.
Yeah, very well said.
By the way, that was not a glitch in the audio, that was exactly how it was supposed to be said.
That's right, it's the January 6th, January 6th Hearing Committee.
Exactly.
So, you know, that's the other thing, it was almost like a little sad, like, you know, they're not going to see each other again for a while, or ever, you know, and they had a great time while they were together.
Had us a blast!
Yeah, that's exactly right.
I mean, that's exactly what it felt like.
It felt like, and it's not...
It's not an accident, Nick.
We know this.
We're television heads.
We know this.
You have summer shows and they end right before the good shows start coming back.
This is ending right before the good shows come back.
They took advantage of this summer slot.
It was TV executives all the way from top to bottom.
And I gotta tell you, it ended and it had its season finale.
It had its cliffhanger.
That's how they did this.
They treated it like a television show.
And I have to say, and you and I haven't talked about this extensively, Donald Trump is a dangerous person.
January 6th was an attempted coup that we absolutely need to get to the bottom of.
The only way you get to the bottom of it is you move beyond Donald Trump.
That's it.
Donald Trump was an avatar of all of it, and his personal peccadillo has made it possible.
But I'm so tired of talking about his dumb ass.
I am so tired of having conversations about his crimes, because they are numerous and they never get punished, and all it does is expose the hypocrisy on everybody's side.
And in this case, you're right.
This was the end of a show that had sort of exhausted its energy, its kinetic push.
I wish that there were serious repercussions, but they have shown me that there's nothing that's going to happen there.
Do you get the same reaction I do when you hear his voice now, because we don't hear it hardly at all?
It literally is the nails on the chalkboard, you know, and we're planning, I don't know how this sounds, but we're planning a party for the day that Trump is no longer with us.
I swear to God, we want to have a celebration when he's no longer, and you can define him no longer with us any way you like, but again, the point of that, though, is interesting, and that's what seemed to be the motivating factor, at least for yesterday's hearing, was that Without the punishment, then someone's going to take all these pieces, which they've laid out really nicely, and then do it better, right?
There's not going to be any way this way.
Now, then again, Trump could go to prison for the rest of his life.
He could be executed as a spy, you know, and it wouldn't stop somebody else from doing it anyway.
That's the thing, because they're going to think, oh, he was just dumb.
He did these things.
I'm not going to make those same mistakes.
And they might be right, and they will get away with it.
That's the problem is, you know, you can, I think I said this before, but like, you know, authoritarianism, It takes over a country democratically.
People vote for it.
That's a part of it, yep.
And that's what happens anyway.
So it's like, I don't know how you're ever going to dissuade this completely other than just have enough people and have enough clean votes and campaigns that will just keep them as a minority.
It's really sad to me.
I've been on this case now for six years.
I keep expecting people to learn.
I keep expecting people to get better.
That's the thing.
Most of America was really tuned out politically until 2016 when Donald Trump came around and they got terrified and things got weird.
Well, six years is enough time to start noticing cycles and trends and trajectories, but you're exactly right on something.
It occurred to me the other day, what is the perfect metaphor for what has happened?
It's this.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
How do you feel about that movie, by the way?
You like that one?
I love it.
Love it.
Great movie.
Great movie.
There's a moment, not to spoil everything, where Indiana Jones is going after the cup, right?
And he's in the thing, and there's this hidden bridge And, like, he realizes that this leap of faith is actually sort of like a camouflaged optical illusion bridge.
And what does he do?
He walks across it and he scatters some rocks, right, so that people can see where it is.
Donald Trump is the idiot who walked out on the bridge and just, everybody saw it and they were like, oh, oh, oh, oh, I guess you can just walk across that bridge.
Okay.
And now they're done with him.
They're just done with him.
And they can do everything that they want beyond Donald Trump.
He is the idiot who showed that there were no guardrails, that there were no consequences, and now it's time for the idiot to step aside and for somebody else to take over.
It is all structured television-wise, which is, we've reached the end of that arc.
Guess what?
There's a new baddie on the horizon, and that baddie has to, by conventional standards, has to be more competent and more dangerous.
It just so happens that that guy took a long walk before him.
I gotta extend this a little bit longer because I think the more apt metaphor would be that Trump was the guy that would have chosen the very ostentatious cup, thinking that was the cup of Jesus.
And as we all know what happened to that person in the movie, he chose unwisely.
Unwisely?
Explain why he looks the way he does.
Yes, although for some reason the guy just keeps ticking, he keeps living, he eats all these burgers and Diet Cokes that have no effect.
By the way, you did say something interesting to me when you said most of America wasn't involved in politics until 2015 and then figured he would never be able to win.
Well, the flip side of that works as well because a lot of the people who were never involved in politics suddenly got involved to back Trump.
You know, and got really excited about it.
And this is what's made the Republican Party, you know, is it the last gasp heave of a death rattle?
Because they found a vein of voters that they had no idea were going to be, you know, engaged in the process.
And then here we are, because you see, I mean, this is the QAnon people.
This is where they were activated.
But here's the thing, and this is something that I didn't begin to understand until, like, I wrote the new book, The Midnight Kingdom.
You and I are exactly right, and were exactly right, that the Republican Party was dwindling in terms of support.
And by the way, like, I'm talking about people who were, like, not just wearing Make America Great Again hats, but you know what I mean?
Who were, like, going to Trump rallies and, like, you know, putting up their hands in worship or, like, turning their cornfields into Trump 2020-24, right?
Sort of things.
The problem is that those are the loud and the proud Trump supporters and the loud and the proud Republicans.
The issue that's at stake here is the rest of the country, a lot of people who said, oh, Trump is disgusting.
I would never vote for him.
I'll never vote for the Republicans.
They are now entering into a new period where some of them are going to hold their noses to vote for the Republicans.
Some of them are going to say, you know what?
And I've heard this.
I have had So many disturbing conversations over the past few months with people who, and these are professed liberals, Nick.
These are people who are loud and proud anti-Trumpers who talk about somebody like a Ron DeSantis.
And we predicted this, that they're just like, you know, I don't think there's anything really bad with him.
You know, like I understand like his methods aren't great and he does this.
You know, he gets things done.
And, you know, during the pandemic, like maybe we did overreact to things and maybe somebody like a Ron DeSantis showed us the way to actually do it.
So I think what's actually going to take place economically, politically, socially, is a lot of the people that we never expected to vote for the Republican Party.
They're going to go ahead and do that to try and protect themselves financially.
It's nothing that I didn't.
It's nothing I expected until the last couple of years doing the research I've done.
Okay.
I mean, I suppose the people you mean are rich people already, right, who have this wealth to protect.
They are middle class.
That's the entire point, is the middle class will protect itself at all costs.
And I will say, you seem dubious.
I think some people will go ahead and profess the principles that they want to profess, but I don't think that they're necessarily true.
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