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Jared and Nick discuss President Joe Biden's recent speech imploring the country to vote and avoid candidates who refuse to accept the election results. Yes, we've come to that point in our democracy. They then talk about the impending Trump candidacy for president, good times.
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Welcome to the Weekender Edition of Muckrake Podcast, a patron-exclusive episode.
If you want to listen to this whole thing, go over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
Listen, everybody.
I'm opening up this beer, and I'll tell you why.
It has been a long week, Nick.
I've been in the studio recording the audiobook for The Midnight Kingdom, A History of Power, Paranoia, and the Coming Crisis.
It's exhausting.
I can imagine.
It's a tiring thing to do.
I mean, were you able to get the author's voice properly?
I hope so.
I hope I was able to capture it, but first things first, I've basically been talking for about six hours a day right now, so if it sounds like my voice is a little bit weak, you're not imagining Alright.
So, my apologies, but I'm a gamer, Nick.
I play Hurt.
That's right.
Well, and don't forget, just because you mentioned the Patreon, you know, on Tuesday, election night, next Tuesday, we're having a big live show with special guests and everything to analyze in real time what's happening.
So, you gotta get over there and check that out.
So I got it.
I got to recover.
I got to recoup.
So on Tuesday, of course, Election Day, we'll be releasing our midterm election preview show, which we'll be recording on Monday.
And then Tuesday night at 8 p.m.
Eastern, Nick and I, along with Democracyish, Are going to be offering alternative election night coverage In part because we want to be together like like we've been doing and all of these big major moments in American politics But also because I'll be frank with you.
I do not trust the American media to cover this thing correctly We need to get some actual information out there some actual discussion.
I Again, I'm not excited about it But, as a political junkie and sicko, I am excited to be hanging out with my friend Nick, my friends from Democracyish, and to hang out with the Muckray community.
I'm looking forward to that.
Yeah, absolutely.
And, you know, commiserating could very well be a big part of that night, but we shall see.
You know, I'm being pulled in so many different directions right now, and what to believe, what not to believe.
I guess it hinges on young people, is what it sounds like, because it's not being factored into these polls.
Oh no!
Yeah.
Oh, no.
Oh, God.
OK.
I just had a little bit of a flutter there.
But meanwhile, as we inch up on Election Day, a lot of things have been going on.
And before we got so much to talk about, Trump is apparently going to announce his new campaign.
Social media is going to shit.
We have to discuss what that means.
But before we do, President Joe Biden gave a speech this week.
Uh, in which he sounded the alarm about democracy in crisis in the United States.
And, uh, yeah, let's hear a little something from that.
I hope you'll ask a simple question of each candidate you might vote for.
Will that person accept the legitimate will of the American people, the people voting in his district or her district?
Will that person accept the outcome of the election, win or lose?
The answer to that question is vital.
I'll say, before we get into the thick of the speech, man, the messages that I'm hearing from intelligence communities, law enforcement communities, and political insiders is that basically everybody involved in the midterms, either on the ballot or, you know, in nearby
Sort of vicinity have basically been told there's a very real possibility of violence altercations and people stepping in and trying to intimidate or keep people from voting It's a really tense situation I'm glad Biden gave this speech but Nick as we start to dive into what he said what it means and everything around it I gotta tell you, I don't feel like it was treated like a major speech.
I don't feel like his warning was heeded whatsoever, really, besides people who are attuned to this, like ourselves.
Yeah, what did you make of this?
Well, you know, the last one he did, they tried to go big and have this really, you know, dramatic background behind him.
And then he got slammed.
What's that?
Good old dark Brandon.
Yeah, dark Brandon.
And so he got slammed for that because it did, I mean, listen, it was they wanted to make a visual picture.
They did.
So instead, you know, part of it is the visuals.
They put some flags behind him, but it was very flat.
And the speech was probably a little bit flat as well.
You know, that's the only problem we have with Biden is that he doesn't really orate like that.
And so it doesn't always feel this way, but it also feels Frustrating that you have to have these discussions.
Why does a President of the United States have to go out in front of the entire country and explain to people how, you know, you should pick a candidate that will accept their results?
Or explain to people that, like, you shouldn't have leaders who are advocating for violence or making fun of violence.
Like, why are we here?
How did we get here?
You know, help me.
I completely agree.
This is one of those moments.
It makes me think of JFK Telling the nation that desegregation is being held up by white supremacists and that the federal government might have to go into the South in order to force them to desegregate.
It's one of those moments that when it happens, when a president has to come out and say this, your head should turn so fast it snaps.
You know what I mean?
We say canary in the coal mine a lot because that's where we are in this process.
This thing that we cover, we discuss, we analyze.
The fact that he came out and had to make this speech, because you have to, and it is in part, let's be honest, a midterm election speech.
It is saying that democracy is on the ballot without basically saying democracy is on the ballot, which is true.
The fact that a president of the United States of America has to say that, it's chilling, man.
It's really, really chilling.
And he's not wrong.
This is an existential societal crisis, and to hear it It's so shocking, but also not shocking.
And that I think tells us everything, you know, that this is actually where we are.
And this actually is the state of play in our political arena.
Yeah.
And when a president is forced to have to do this, we saw this with Jimmy Carter and his Malay speech.
It doesn't go well.
In fact, the irony is we did a pod about this.
It actually did go well in the very beginning.
It was received well and then somehow cratered his popularity and then, you know, helped him, you know, lose a landslide to Reagan in the 80s.
So you have to worry about that kind of stuff.
And, you know, I'm listening to another podcast.
Can we admit that we do that?
Let's do that.
I'm listening to Kornacki's podcast on Newt Gingrich.
Which is really good, really interesting, and one thing you learned is that Kornacki was, geez, he was like a junkie from out of the womb, this kid.
Were you wearing the khakis as he slid into the world?
Probably, yes, khakis and the button-down, for sure, and the glasses.
But he described something that was interesting to me, which was, you know, Congress was held by the Democrats for 40 years straight.
And the Republicans were reduced to just sort of sitting on their hands the whole time because they knew they could never get anything passed.
And then Gingrich comes in in 94 and obviously it took him a while to get his revolution going, but here's what I'm wondering.
Because back then, back in the 70s, you were not allowed to be a leader who would advocate violence.
You were not really allowed to have negative campaigning.
Do you remember?
I'm old enough to remember that.
You really weren't supposed to go negative.
That was the thing.
The Gentleman's Club or whatever.
So I'm wondering if we had the 40 years of a Democratic rule in the House and a certain decorum, and then it takes, this is the time in between where it starts to go all the other way, where we could conceivably go 40 years straight of Republican rule, and I'm wondering if that's what we're looking at here as some sort of organic, you know, living, breathing, you know, body, and that's what the inevitable outcome is going to be.
I'll go ahead and I'll draw the history out a little bit more, Nick.
I am becoming really concerned that what we're looking at right now is something akin to the lead up to the Civil War.
This weird moment in Congress where the Democrats, which were absolutely controlled by Southern white supremacists, they ran roughshod over the Whigs.
The Whigs had no, like, absolute no taste whatsoever to do combat with them about their power or about the institution of slavery.
And why?
Because the Democratic Party back then was absolutely ruthless.
You know, if you got up on, if you got up on, like, the platform and you started talking about criticizing slavery and even talking about the problems with it, they would, they would basically, like, show you knives.
They would, you know, they would beat you.
They would find you and they would assault you and intimidate you and beat you.
The Whigs had no desire whatsoever to actually take care of this.
It took the founding of the Republican Party, you know, irony of ironies, it took the founding of the Republican Party to stand up to that Democratic Party, which of course led us into really, really, you know, ugly places.
What we're looking at right now, I have to tell you, Biden is saying what he should say.
I don't know if there's any other way to put it.
This is a speech that a president should give, or at least, Nick, this is a speech that we think a president should give because we've lived in the current political moment, right?
We think he should be acknowledging the problem.
We think that he should still be having, he should still have some decorum about the office.
But as that's happening, It still feels so woefully inadequate to what's actually occurring.
And we need to talk about what's sort of festering and what's fomenting out into the distance.
But this speech, again, like the dark Brandon speech that we just referenced, it feels like too little too late.
It feels like something has been allowed to take over here and grow larger that we have to deal with.
There's an alarming rise in the number of our people.
In this country, condoning political violence, or simply remaining silent, because silence is complicity.
The disturbing rise of voter intimidation, the pernicious tendency to excuse political violence, or at least, at least, trying to explain it away.
We can't allow this sentiment to grow.
We must confront it head on, now.
It has to stop now.
I believe the voices excusing or calling for violence and intimidation are distinct minority in America, but they're loud and they are determined.
Nick, I have to say, because I've been spending all these days like reading the Midnight Kingdom out loud and like studying the structure of it.
And you know this, you're a writer as well.
You know how things happen and you can't help but put them into order and writing?
Because that's how you make sense of the world.
I keep thinking about how the break-in at the Pelosi house, the attempted assassination, the beating of Paul Pelosi, It is almost the perfect paragraph start of a section about the descendants into political violence and sectarianism.
You know what I mean?
Like it really now looking at it and putting it into context of living history, like it's becoming more and more apparent that that's not going to be the end result.
That's not going to be the end of the story.
That's where it takes off.
And what we're hearing right now from Biden, what we're hearing right now from all these institutions that understand that this is a problem, It feels like it's getting ready to almost take off off of the runway.
Well, did you hear what our friend of the pod, not really, but Marjorie Taylor Greene said about Paul Pelosi?
Because I think we could share it if you want to hear it.
I don't know.
Do you want to cover your ears?
I luckily have been, again, cut off from the world in a studio.
So I can't wait to hear this.
This is wonderful.
Here's Marjorie Taylor Greene today at a rally at a Hootenanny.
Where Americans are robbed, stabbed, raped, kidnapped, carjacked, and murdered.
But the only crime victim you hear about from Democrats in the media is Paul Pelosi.
Paul Pelosi was brutally attacked by a drugged out illegal alien that should have been deported.
And Paul Pelosi should have been a gun owner and shot his attacker.
That's where we're at.
I, um, can I say something real fast?
I, I'm, I'm stunned first of all by this and I, and I have to say I'm stunned because it's not even as bad as it could be.
You know what I mean?
The fact that she admitted that he was brutally attacked, she still took it in a different direction.
The fact that she didn't call him a gay prostitute or a gay lover or whatever, and things went sideways.
The fact that she still did that... Nick, this is just... Man, things have turned putrid.
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