Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

Nov. 15, 2022 - The Muckrake Political Podcast

56:06

Will The GOP Move On From Trump?

Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the latest in the midterms, and how it will determine governance. Plus, Josh Hawley weighs in on his feelings towards the GOP leadership, mainly Mitch McConnell, so our hosts try to calculate who is going to take over and lead. To support the show and access bonus episodes each week become a patron at http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Hey, everybody.
	Welcome to the Mud Creek Podcast.
	I'm Jerry D. Sexton.
	Nick Halseman is here with me.
	Nick, how we doing?
	We're doing really well.
	I'm exercising a lot and I feel like I can get things done all of a sudden.
	It's really interesting, by the way, how that works.
	It's really shocking how those things kind of go hand in hand.
	Everybody, we got a full show and we're going to be talking about that, actually, about the feeling that something has shifted.
	And that's like a big thing we got to talk about.
	We got to talk about Josh Hawley absolutely declaring war on Senate leadership.
	We got to talk about Whatever in the hell is going on with Donald Trump?
	And I feel like you can say that every day of the week, and it always means something different.
	We've got a lot of things to get into, but first things first, Nick.
	The Democratic Party is keeping control of the Senate?
	They are.
	Can you believe it?
	Without even having to worry about Georgia.
	We've got to talk about Georgia.
	We've got to talk about what it means, and this sort of prevailing idea that Georgia doesn't matter now, which is nuts, quite frankly.
	Legzall went down in Nevada, and you were the one who told me, by the way.
	And I went out, I was out in Nevada at UNLV giving a lecture, and a really good friend of mine had told me that she didn't have hope on this thing.
	That it was a done deal, that it was going to get lost.
	And I have to tell you, I am pretty astounded by it as well.
	This goes down, and also we gotta talk about Mark Kelly defeating Blake Masters, that'll come in a second.
	What's your initial reaction on this thing?
	There's so much happening.
	Well, I think the biggest thing we are seeing here, and it might take a little while to get perspective on this, is that I think America said no to fascism.
	This was in and even though we might not hold on to the house the fact that it didn't shift at all to the right barely at all means that a lot of people said you know what we're not going to take any of this anymore and when we get into Holly this will there will be more to talk about and specifically with this but that is sort of like this is the time I think 20 years from now when we look back We're going to say that this was the election where the American people said, we are we can't we're not taking this anymore.
	And it took a while to start to get enough of the independents, I suppose, away from the Republican side.
	But that is basically what's what happened.
	You know, I we got a lot to talk about in terms of like how the vibes have shifted.
	And it's part I think in part it's midterms.
	I think it's other stuff, too.
	And we'll get into that.
	But, Nick, I've been thinking a lot.
	We were broadcasting our live coverage on election night.
	And one of the first things we talked about, I think it was about an hour into the show, was when the polls came out, right?
	Whenever the exit polls came out.
	And we said, oh my God, 50% of everybody asked said that their biggest concern was the economy and inflation.
	And by the way, that's the wrong answer right now.
	It just is.
	That's the wrong answer.
	Democracy, the fate of the country, all that.
	But I also understand why people are worried about those things.
	And do you know what I've been thinking about a lot lately?
	I think a lot of people who answered there are like, why in the hell would I turn something as important as the economy over to these crazy assholes?
	Because here's the thing, and now it's more obvious to me than ever.
	People don't want an entire party that spends every single day online looking at conspiracy theories, talking about blood-sucking satanic pedophiles, talking about CRT, talking about kids peeing in litter boxes in schools.
	Like, if you ran into one of these people, one of these GOP freaks out in the world, would you say, hey, I like your ideas, I think maybe you deserve power?
	No!
	This was a freak show, and I think you're right.
	I think what we've seen here, and by the way, we're talking about Blake Masters, and we'll get to that more in particular in a second, but man, how do you trust that?
	And even people who aren't comfortable with the Democratic Party, even people who don't approve of Joe Biden, like they took a look at these people and they listened to them.
	And the right – and this has a lot to do with what Holly is talking about – but like the right has gotten so unbelievably online.
	Do you know what I mean?
	Like they've gotten so ingratiated in their own little bizarre freakish ecosystem that like – I have to say I think it scared the normal people.
	Do you know what I mean?
	I think it freaked them out.
	Well, there's so many things going on with all that you just said.
	A lot of it is the media needing a horse race, so they're going to push this whole thing.
	There are a lot of people though, Jer, let's not forget, a lot of people in America believe all that shit.
	And they're never going to be convinced otherwise.
	But I think that the coverage of them made us feel like there's a lot more of them.
	And that it was immovable when it turns out there are not a lot of them.
	It is a bit of a marginalized group and it always has been.
	It's just they're giving an outsized platform that makes it seem like they're everywhere.
	And that goes into the notion of the polls themselves.
	Now, exit polls are different, obviously, than the polls from beforehand.
	But I don't think we can really trust the polls anymore.
	And it's not about faking the polls or the methodology or whatever.
	We saw that young people are now equating, their numbers are getting close to what the 65 and over numbers are, which is an interesting balance here, which certainly in the midterm it never would be the same.
	So these young people, they're not going to answer any questions.
	You're not going to be able to get to them anyway.
	They're not going to answer any phone calls.
	Do you answer calls that you don't recognize?
	No!
	And so once that electorate, that section electorate, got big enough and has the same effect as the older people do, then all of a sudden the polling won't give you the accuracy.
	And obviously there's got to be another way to do the polls.
	Obviously, you know, younger people would do it probably online or some other way, but until they figure that out, Nate Silver can go... Well, I don't wish it on anybody.
	He can pound sand, first of all.
	Okay, he can pound sand.
	But man, that was not the idea in the image in my head.
	I didn't realize it until this week, but Nate Silver is a graduate of the University of Chicago, and not to throw shade at your neck of the woods, that's a very particular thing.
	You know what I mean?
	That says a lot about who Nate Silver is and what he prioritizes.
	I'll just leave it at that.
	Do the research if you want, people.
	But I also think, to go along with this, I think a lot of people were saying Rovember, right?
	Remember Roe v. Wade.
	I actually think, to be honest with you, I think that the way that this country is balkanized, I think the way that like individualism has settled in this country and we feel like our fates are sometimes more important than the fates of others.
	I think even the overturning of Roe v. Wade in a vacuum might not have led to this result.
	It is the accumulation of all of it.
	And here's the thing.
	I'm sick of it.
	I know you're sick of it, right?
	But also, we're political junkies.
	We talk about this constantly.
	We live it.
	We breathe it.
	Obviously, there's something we find fascinating about it.
	The average person is so sick of this shit.
	You know what I mean?
	They're tired of Trump.
	They're tired of talking about elections being stolen.
	They want to be left alone, for God's sakes.
	They want somebody to tend to the stores so they don't have to think about this stuff.
	That has its own problems.
	You know what I mean?
	Like, do you just want to be removed from government and not think about it and just be secure in your property and your wealth and all that?
	But these Republicans, I mean, we're looking right now at the possibility of Carrie Lake getting defeated.
	And I feel like if Carrie Lake would have toned down her act, 10 to 15 percent?
	We wouldn't even be having this conversation.
	But it's so over-the-top that people are just like, just shut up and go away.
	It was Robember, I thought it was November.
	Oh, never mind, that's wrong.
	But that speaks about Carrie Lake, because Carrie Lake was talking about that.
	And that's probably why I'm feeling so good right now this month.
	But nonetheless, Carrie Lake was the same thing as Donald Trump.
	If Donald Trump would have toned down 10% of his tweets, then he'd be in the White House right now.
	Or 15%.
	Okay.
	And if he would have, probably the COVID thing would have, if he would have handled that a little bit better, he probably would have, you know, whatever.
	He would have had a much more legitimate shot, which is why we're so afraid of, like, DeSantis.
	So, yes.
	All of that is really, really important.
	And here's the thing about the average voter, though.
	Obviously, they're probably repelled by everything, right?
	This whole system sucks.
	But it's so much easier to then say, but, but at least I stand for, I don't know, democracy?
	And so at the very least I could say, well I gotta go with the Democrats because at least they want to have some semblance of free and fair elections and they want to actually maybe, you know, help us with, you know, make sure we still have social security and medicare all those things that are like the republicans are basically threatening to get rid of and threatening to with the debt ceiling going forward which seems to be completely that was what they have on their first energy the only thing on their agenda was the threat the debt ceiling so those which shuts down the government shuts down the economy
	it's a real problem so um it's easy it was easy for them to choose like you know even if they didn't like the democrats it's easier for them to choose them yeah and you know they have spent and and i want to get to blake masters these people have spent so long they don't talk to regular people You know what I mean?
	These GOP candidates don't talk to actual normal people.
	They are creatures of this very certain online bubble, right?
	And they're in there talking with people whose avatars are like old Roman ruins, you know what I mean?
	And statues with glowing eyes, and they're talking about fiat currency, and they're talking about cycles of kyclos, cycles of degeneracy and decay.
	Like, one of these things that started making the rounds over the past couple days was this Blake Masters ad, where it was just like, and by the way, exactly, this is an audio podcast, and unless you're looking on YouTube, you didn't just see Shake, or you didn't just see Nick get the shakes from that, like just a full-body shiver.
	To look at Blake Masters is to hate Blake Masters.
	Period.
	He has one of the most unlikable faces I've ever seen, and demeanors, and all that.
	He did this ad where he's out in a cornfield and he's just like, there's a genocide of babies.
	Millions of babies.
	And it's like, dude, if you go and you talk to the average voter and you're like, I really wish that there weren't as many abortions, or maybe we should have a conversation about abortion.
	Like, the average voter would at least be like, well, maybe I don't agree with you, but I understand you're being a rational person.
	If you were on a street corner and a person got in your face and said, there's a genocide of babies, you'd be like, dude, you have to get away.
	Wait a minute.
	That's what this is.
	I didn't see this ad.
	I saw the ad where he pulls up in his BMW i-series whatever thing gets out in the middle of the field.
	Do you see this one?
	No, I haven't.
	He pulls out a gun and he's really excited because it's the James Bond gun.
	I don't know why James Bond has a gun and only shot one gun but this is to him the gun that he wanted since he was a kid and he keeps saying it's made in Germany.
	And I can't figure it out.
	He says it multiple times.
	It's made in Germany, like a wink to the camera.
	Well, we know why he says it's made in Germany.
	And then he puts a silencer on it and they start shooting the silencer and saying this is so cool because you can't hear it but you can still feel the whatever.
	It is, it was so weird and so off-putting and I'm mad because Saturday Night Live took my joke but basically now that he's lost he can go back to being a serial killer because it's exactly the vibe he gives out.
	Do you know where he came from?
	Do you know what his vocation is?
	Do you know how he became a candidate?
	Are you aware of this?
	You know the Thiel thing?
	I remember but now I've forgotten because I'm so afraid.
	He was Thiel's student.
	He went to Thiel's lectures and he took them down and they published a book together.
	This is, and I say this, he's a mutant.
	Like, he is just not a normal person.
	This is a person who kissed the ass of a billionaire so much that the billionaire said, man, you're really good at kissing my ass.
	I think you should be in the Senate.
	Here are millions of dollars.
	And what does he do, Nick?
	He talks about genocide of babies.
	He talks about, literally, we've covered this, talked about taking over the modes of production, destroying liberal democracy.
	What in that, at any moment whatsoever, translates to anybody?
	And by the way, that's not to say that the Democratic Party, we've said this, the Democratic Party didn't win this election.
	It was not about the Democratic Party because they didn't give much of a different option.
	But at least they weren't wild-eyed loons.
	Right.
	And that makes a difference.
	And in this, watching these results roll in and watching the Senate just remain without Georgia, and I want to hear your thoughts on Georgia in a second and what this means, but this was a total rejection of the loony party, is what it was.
	Yeah, I mean, it's frightening to think that, yeah, Carrie Lake, of course, doubled down.
	We know why, because she wanted to be a vice presidential candidate, so she decided to embrace this.
	She's down 25,000 votes with 93% reporting.
	Like, she's lost.
	She's not going to recover that.
	So thank God for Arizona.
	Listen, who would have thought that?
	Arizona, great place.
	Let's go visit now.
	I would not have wanted to go before.
	By the way, by the way, another thing.
	These Secretary of States, these people who are going to oversee elections, here's the thing, and this is kind of You know sometimes you say things on a podcast and like as they're leaving your mouth like they sound absolutely batshit insane but you're still saying them and they're real.
	Who would have thought that somebody campaigning on a promise to steal elections wouldn't get elected?
	If you elect me I promise I'll steal elections and it didn't and people just said No!
	Yeah.
	We're not doing that.
	And how about this?
	How many lawsuits are there right now contesting some of these Republican losses?
	None.
	None?
	I think everyone's accepting the loss.
	Isn't that amazing?
	Like that's the other thing that's really truly amazing about perhaps the House of Cards here was it was all bluster and they were going to make the home run shot for the midterms in 2022 to make it work and if it didn't work they knew they were not going to be able to because because they lost They knew they weren't going to be able to use that as their reasoning, right?
	Because, you know, there wasn't enough of a groundswell politically to give them that support.
	So that is another one of those reasons why perhaps, like, this is where democracy has won and it's, you know, not even just a moral victory.
	It is a real, real stand.
	I hope that's correct.
	I want to believe it's correct.
	And I want to say, by the way, like, I do feel like something has shifted.
	I was talking about it last night on the Bourbon Talk.
	Like, I do feel like a window has opened.
	You know what I mean?
	Like, there are moments where things feel, I've said this before, they feel unchangeable.
	They feel unmalleable.
	And then there are other moments, they're very malleable.
	They're very changeable.
	We all know that.
	We've had those in our lives.
	It feels that way at a societal level right now.
	It feels that way on a personal level.
	And that's, I gotta tell you, it feels good to feel good.
	You know, it feels good to say no, and this is the equivalent.
	What's happening right now, this moment, this breath that we have, and we have two years to make the most of it.
	This is like January 6th, but a different January 6th, where a bunch of MAGA people showed up at the Capitol.
	All the QAnon people showed up, all the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers showed up, Nick.
	And then, shit hit the fan, and the QAnon people And the paramilitary people, they rushed the Capitol, and the MAGA people said, I'm good.
	We're all right.
	Oh, can you believe these idiots did that?
	You know what I mean?
	These are tipping points and movement points.
	And that would have been a completely different situation.
	A completely different situation.
	But that window is opening to actually take this stuff on.
	Real fast though, we gotta talk about Georgia.
	I think it's absolute absurdity to say that this election doesn't matter and that it's an afterthought.
	Hershel Walker should never ever come close to the Senate.
	I think you have to not only defeat him, but send a message.
	And on top of that, I don't know if people have ever heard these names, Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema.
	I'm just leaving it at that.
	That's true we can marginalize one of them I suppose but remember if they don't have the house it kind of doesn't matter necessarily because they're not going to get a I mean you know what's funny is maybe they maybe they could with such a narrow majority uh by the GOP in the house maybe I don't know Maybe they could have come up with a couple bills that they all could agree on because it's so married.
	And then as a result, Manchin is marginalized.
	So, yes.
	The biggest winner out of all this could very well be that they won't spend $150 million on either side to promote this next election.
	And that money will be used to feed people or something else.
	I don't know.
	You know what I mean?
	That won't happen.
	But you know what I mean?
	Maybe they just won't waste it on as much money on a campaign as they would normally.
	I will say what I'm what I'm hopeful of, because we're getting ready to talk about the GOP, which is, I'm going to use a technical term here, a total shitstorm right now.
	Like, there is a hope for me that like this whole shitstorm in the GOP and also the situation in the Senate, that even some of the people in the Republican Party say, let's not worry about this that much.
	Right?
	Like, Herschel Walker is a problem.
	We'll find a better candidate.
	Because that's the thing.
	If Herschel Walker gets elected, he's gotta run for re-election!
	You gotta do this again!
	You gotta run it back!
	And speaking of sports, there's a certain point with your team where you're like, do we keep putting this team out there?
	Or do we, like, build it up from the bottom up?
	And, like, Herschel Walker I mean, my God, he could possibly do the GOP more damage winning this election than losing.
	Well, you know, you skipped ahead to the next election cycle.
	He'll have six years to completely say the most ridiculous things and ruin it.
	How many families are we going to find?
	Yeah.
	I just don't think he's going to win.
	find seriously like six years of that.
	Like I'm praying like Tommy Tuberville has so, you know, demeaned himself as it is already.
	I'm praying, you know, that you would imagine the same thing and worse would happen with Walker.
	So, yeah, that would that would be a thing.
	I just don't think he's going to win.
	I suspect that there's demoralization happening in Georgia of the GOP side.
	They're not going to get the turnout they want.
	They're going to throw up their hands because the Democrats have the control anyway.
	So I'm going on the record right now as saying that Warnock is going to win that.
	and we have nothing, there's nothing to fear.
	Wow!
	That is whistling past the graveyard, my good friend.
	And you know, really quickly before I forgot, you know, we're talking about how we've come back from the brink here a little bit, right?
	People have rejected this.
	It's a little bit like, you know, do you ever see Boogie Nights?
	I love Boogie Nights.
	It's a great movie.
	So you remember when Dirk Diggler, toward the end of the movie, He comes home.
	He walks all the way back to Jack Horner's house, Burt Reynolds' house.
	And you never would have thought that seeing Burt Reynolds and his character in the kitchen would be the most amazing homecoming.
	Like, thank God he got back there.
	But that's sort of where we are with democracy, right?
	It kind of had gone through And listen, Dirk Diggler had seen some things.
	Seen some things.
	And done some things.
	And he got back and they gave him a hug.
	Isn't that what we feel?
	Here's what I feel, and I want to be frank about this because I want people to remember it.
	Because we have been taught, right?
	Every election is the election to save everything and everything's fine as long as you win the election.
	If the Republicans win the House, and it seems like they're going to, even if, by the way, even if the Democrats win the House by like one, Nick, you and I both know this, the next two years, not a lot is getting done.
	It's not.
	It's just not.
	There's some bills here and there.
	Obviously, the Republicans, if they get the high sign from their billionaire donors, they'll pass some sort of a relief thing for somebody or whatever.
	Like, the next two years, I'm looking at it, and here's what I'm thinking.
	It's not like authoritarianism is going to take a time off because what we're getting ready to talk about in the GOP is going to make it worse.
	It's not like, you know, exploitation is going to stop.
	It's not like the Democratic Party won this election and everything's fine.
	I think the next two years are an opportunity.
	I think the next two years are an opening for us to start putting in the work.
	And I said this last night.
	It's about organizing ourselves.
	It's about finding better candidates.
	It's about really stopping just accepting what the Democratic Party hands you.
	Go out and find somebody else.
	Or you run or work on a campaign.
	Find someone we can believe in as opposed to just continuing to run these people who won't do the right thing.
	I think these next two years are an opportunity to catch our breath.
	I keep saying it was like a stay of execution.
	You know what I mean?
	It's two years to figure out who we are, what we want, and to build the organizations and groups necessary to make this better.
	Right.
	And to move away from the out-and-out negative campaigning and actually present a unified platform that people can really believe in, which is something like, you know, I'm not even sure Barack Obama was great as that, as good as certainly as like Clinton was.
	And the ability to then not have to focus because we've made the statement.
	The statement has been made about MAGA, about where it is, about Trump.
	We already know what Fox News wants to do with Trump.
	So it's almost like you don't need to beat that dead horse for the next two years as much as you need to really start to say, you know, let's understand exactly what we can get done and what will help people.
	You know, you can still point it out.
	And I think, again, I thought what Biden did to call out fascism in those two or three speeches is really important and it really helped.
	But we don't need to, you know, spend as much time on that now.
	And I think that will begin the thawing process.
	Build an alternative.
	Yeah.
	That's the answer.
	It's not just reacting to the GOP.
	It's figuring out where we want to take this thing.
	And by the way, that's part of the problem that the idea that Joe Biden is going to run again.
	Like, we need something different.
	We need a different direction.
	We need some sort of a thing.
	Speaking of different directions, in a completely opposite way, and also speaking about beaten dead horses, my God, I mean, this is grisly.
	So there's this thing that happens, and I've mentioned this a little bit in passing before, Nick.
	Campaigns and parties are brutal when there's a loss.
	Like, when a campaign understands that they're going to lose an election, or the night they lose an election, Some of these people, they grab their phone and they find everybody that they can tell to spread the news.
	Guess what?
	Not my fault.
	Guess what?
	If those assholes wouldn't listen to me, I mean, we probably would have won this thing because they're looking out for themselves.
	Josh Halle.
	Senator Josh Halle.
	He is a hyena.
	He is just a scavenger, just an absolute opportunist.
	And what has he done immediately?
	He has been sending out spicy meatballs to the media.
	I want to read a couple things, Nick, very quickly.
	It's really weird, by the way, that the best place he could find this was RealClearPolitics.
	That's a really interesting thing, which RealClearPolitics, for people who don't know, is like, It's a real wonk place, right?
	This is like Beltway wonk people.
	This is Howley signaling a couple of things.
	He says, this is from the article, he blames Washington Republicanism.
	He says, quote, Republicans just said, well, the other side sucks and Biden sucks.
	Well, no doubt, but it's pretty hard to convince folks, particularly independent minded ones who don't tend to trust the process much to vote for you if you don't have something affirmative to say and offer.
	I agree with him, by the way.
	He's not wrong.
	He then says, I lay that at the feet of the Washington establishment that set the tone for these races.
	They failed to offer that kind of vision.
	We on the same page still?
	You hate to hear it.
	You hate to hear it, my friend.
	Then he says, oh my god.
	McConnell, by the way, is like, I don't really have an agenda.
	And Howley says, that was a serious mistake.
	He said you should have went out after Obama-Trump voters.
	And by the way, is he wrong, Nick?
	Yeah, no, but like Obama Trump voters is mythical unicorn, but OK.
	Well, there are some of them.
	And then he says that he's not going to he's not going to vote for McConnell for leadership.
	He also says, quote, This does not address any of the felt concerns of voters, particularly voters who are struggling economically.
	Why is Josh Hawley telling the truth?
	Because let me tell you something.
	these systems, Social Security, Medicare.
	He says it was a mistake to come out and say that they were going after them.
	And he was right.
	He's right on all of this.
	So here's the question, Nick.
	Why is Josh Hawley telling the truth?
	Because let me tell you something.
	He's not speaking truth to power because he's interested in making things better.
	Why?
	Why is Josh Hawley speaking the truth?
	You know, he's nibbling on the edges here, but the fact that he doesn't understand why they didn't get bigger gains and why they didn't win the Senate back is He should return his Ivy League, you know, things back to whence they came.
	Because the reason why they lost is because they embraced MAGA as much as they did.
	And this is all at the feet of Donald Trump and his ridiculous people that he endorsed.
	We know, what was McConnell's biggest position during the entire Senate race during 2022 was he didn't want Hershel Walker to run.
	I don't even know if we heard him say anything else during this last six or seven months.
	He then eventually said that he would accept him.
	That happened.
	Yeah.
	But we knew where he lied.
	So now, for them to rewrite... And by the way, I have no problem with Mitch McConnell being cast off into the dustbin of infamy.
	Bye-bye.
	And by the way, supposedly, did he say he wasn't going to finish his term if he didn't get back the GOP leadership?
	I didn't hear that.
	But here's the thing, Nick.
	I don't know if you've seen this.
	This is going around, again, real political sicko circles.
	All of the main Republican conservative think tanks, organizations, leadership, like the heavy minds, the heavy lifters, they've circulated a letter today, Nick.
	And they've called because after an election like this, you have to meet and you vote for your new leadership and you figure out how to go forward.
	They're all talking about delaying.
	They all want to delay it for a little bit.
	And here's the thing.
	I'm going to read a tweet from Josh Hawley speaking of.
	Quote.
	This is a tweet.
	The old party is dead.
	Time to bury it.
	Build something new.
	Nick, this is a hostile takeover.
	Oh yeah?
	And this is exactly what you and I keep talking about.
	National conservatism.
	It's people like him.
	It's people like Josh Hawley who want to, again, we've talked about this, sort of a right-wing, bastardized Marxism.
	Him.
	J.D.
	Vance.
	He, by the way, he is so sad that Blake Masters didn't make it.
	They, right now, the reason they want to delay this is they want to create, they want to take advantage of this moment of weakness in the GOP.
	They want to take advantage of what happened in this midterm.
	They want to create their own apparatus within the party and take the party over in a moment of weakness.
	And I gotta tell you, the National Conservatives are dangerous as shit.
	Oh, absolutely.
	And don't forget, what he also wants to call for, he thought what the platform should have been in the midterms was being, you know, tougher tariffs on China, reshoring American jobs, opening up American energy full throttle, and putting 100,000 new cops on the street.
	That sounds very familiar.
	It sounds exactly like how Trump would say the things, especially the tariffs on China, which backfired anyway on us.
	So, he doesn't get it.
	You know, he doesn't understand, although I think maybe he mentioned that they shouldn't have put Medicare and Social Security on the table.
	I think he at least understood that.
	He's not that dense.
	Well, time out.
	I think when he says that, he's like, don't tell them we're going to do it.
	Right.
	You know what I mean?
	Like, oh yeah, we're absolutely going to destroy Social Security and Medicare.
	Don't tell them before the election.
	Don't don't send out a flyer that says, hey, I'm an idiot.
	We're going to destroy Social Security.
	Right.
	And make sure that grandma's got to cut her pills in two.
	So basically, stop saying the quiet part out loud like we've been doing since 2016.
	And to go ahead and like we've talked about.
	All these people and Donald Trump is absolutely and we got to talk about him in a minute, unfortunately.
	Donald Trump is a buffoon.
	But what he showed was something that all these people could take advantage of.
	They saw it.
	They studied it.
	They figured out how to reverse engineer it.
	They know that the solution is to run to the left of the Democrats and not mean it, and run to the right of the Republicans and mean it, and find somewhere in between once you have power.
	And again, this is what we've been warning about, which is competent MAGA.
	We're talking about real ideologues.
	We're not talking about people who stand around talking about big, beautiful boaters.
	You know what I mean?
	Or having hamburger parties with, like, college athletes.
	We're talking about a serious group of ideologues.
	A serious group.
	And Howley is absolutely one of them.
	This right here is, again, like a hyena.
	It is Howley sensing weakness and understanding that he now has a running mate, by the way, with J.D.
	Vance.
	The two of them now have their own, you know, caucus within the party.
	And they have other people who believe the exact same thing that they do.
	And they're going to have think tanks and institutes who are going to push people towards that.
	And by the way, just letting you all know, they have a candidate in Ron DeSantis.
	Like that's what is happening within the Republican Party today.
	You know, what I got from reading that little thing from him and his ideologies was that it seems to me like MAGA, we have to have a question or a discussion about whether or not, did the MAGA movement come because Trump decided to tell everybody what to think?
	And they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Or did they already think these things and they're like, we have to just mirror what these crazies were saying?
	Or it probably may be a little bit of both.
	And I think if it was a little bit of both, I think what Holly seems to be shocked by is...
	Is that there is a whole other subset of people that they relied on that was gonna vote for them in the midterms that think for themselves and do not simply accept what like somebody from a MAGA person would tell them to believe and maybe they're not they're not and they're not predetermined to sort of believe all this conspiracy shit anyway and that's the difference and again that's why the party could conceivably crash and burn and they'd be forced to come up with some other version of something that would not be the Republican Party.
	I'm so glad you brought up all of this, and listen, I want to go ahead, I want to take a second, because what we've been told about politics, by the way, is that great men of history, right?
	This is the Hegelian concept, right?
	That these great men of history They sit in a room, Nick, and they just come up with great ideas, right?
	It just all of a sudden, like, in a flash of inspiration because of their genius and possibly the divine touching their brain, right?
	That's not what happens.
	Politics and parties, they are expressions of what the moment wants or needs or pushes, right?
	So I was talking about this last night.
	The Republican Party is one expression of what capitalism wants, right?
	They want people to say, hey, I know there's a pandemic on.
	Shut your mouth and go to work.
	You know what I mean?
	Like, I'm done.
	You're going to work.
	Maybe you'll die.
	I don't know.
	But do you, Fudruckers, do you want it around or not?
	Right?
	Right.
	The Democratic Party is the expression of capitalism that's like, we really don't want to do this.
	This sucks.
	And I'm really sorry that we're doing this, but we got to do this right now.
	You know what I mean?
	That more empathic thing where you're having meetings about, like, the corporation wants you to learn about diversity, but they actually are just avoiding lawsuits, right?
	What we're talking about here is the Josh Hawley and the National Conservative Movement that we're going to be dealing with for a while and have been for a while.
	They, right now, are angling to the market and capitalism to say, hey, our system's messed up and it's reaching a terminal point that isn't going to work unless you have a strong hand, right?
	You need competent, hard-working authoritarians who can put things right and you can trust.
	There's a reason why all the donors are leaving Trump and going to DeSantis.
	Because they want the market taken care of by someone who's not going to be all touchy-feely and democratic and all of that.
	And so the National Conservatives are trying to embody it.
	But you just said something that's really important.
	And I want to go ahead and bring this around because it comes back to what we were saying.
	The National Conservatives have a window.
	A really, really small window.
	It's this crisis that we're talking about.
	That economic crisis, political crisis.
	The only way they can win is if they can stake out ground on that left.
	And say, you've been screwed.
	The system has screwed you.
	You can't afford things.
	Can't you feel it?
	Something's wrong.
	The Democrats aren't there.
	You know what I mean?
	They don't have an answer to that.
	They don't have a way of actually putting things right.
	They're right here in the middle, and they're like, yeah, things kind of suck right now, but let's protect it.
	They can be cut off.
	It's like watching a race.
	You can cut someone off and keep them from getting around you.
	If the Democratic Party or something can get to the other side and keep the National Conservatives from claiming that for themselves while pushing right-wing ideas, they have nothing.
	It's Blake Masters.
	It's an idiot with a terrible face.
	It's Josh Howard.
	You know what I mean?
	They're opportunists, but if you take away the opportunity, they're going to die on the vine.
	There's nothing else for them to do.
	So what you're saying is Blake Masters is the banana in the tailpipe.
	of the GOP race car.
	Here's the thing, you can't run Blake Masters.
	You can't.
	Right.
	Right?
	And Josh Hawley, you can't run him either.
	Well, we could probably look at Blake Masters and they say, well, he's kind of a good, I mean, he's not really good looking, but the good looking white guy, right?
	Like they probably sort of don't have any sense of You know, we know that for a lot of the GOP, you know, for them, diversity is like a four-letter word, right?
	Absolutely.
	So they don't ever see the notion of, like, how could he possibly not be attracted to everybody?
	So I can kind of understand why, like, Blake Masters, of all people, would have been the guy.
	And by the way, in the same token, Herschel Walker, because Herschel Walker's a football star, and it gives them cover for, like, for their racial issues.
	Hey, listen, I'll be honest with you since we're laying it on the line.
	I wish I had Josh Hawley's hair.
	He's got an incredible head of hair.
	You know what I mean?
	He also looks great running away from a mob that he incited.
	I was going to say, what do you like about his running mechanics?
	Listen, he's got some potential.
	It's raw.
	He needs to work on it.
	And I hope Josh Hawley spends the rest of his life working on running away from things.
	That would be wonderful.
	But I will say, these people are unlikable.
	They're terribly unlikable, which is why they needed Donald Trump.
	They needed that buffoon out front of it.
	They've tried to reverse engineer it to steal some of the Genesee quality that Trump brought to it.
	You know what I mean?
	People had a great time with Trump.
	It was a hootenanny.
	They enjoy going out laughing and bullying people.
	The question now is whether or not Howley, DeSantis, all these people, if they can push forward something that keeps that base happy.
	And we'll talk more about that in a second.
	But it's just national conservatism is a very, it has a very limited window.
	Again, going back to sports, sometimes a team has like a two-year window to win a title.
	You know what I mean?
	And they have a two-year window to win a title.
	Right now.
	And that's why we have to stop them and we have to head them off at the pass.
	Absolutely.
	And that's what they're doing.
	And so the only question now is can the wheels fall off and then they just have to get out of the race altogether and then the Democrats just, you know, pull away like, what was that horse?
	Secretariat.
	Secretariat.
	And I will say, by the way, you want to talk about windows opening and why this stuff is good?
	They right now, what Howley is doing, and what all these people are doing, the think tanks, the institutes, not only are they shrugging off Trump, they are ready to be done with Mitch McConnell.
	They're ready for the next thing, and they need to update the party, but they are right now, it's, um, you know what it's like?
	It's like, um, did you ever see X-Men Apocalypse?
	I have.
	It's a terrible movie.
	And I love Apocalypse as a character.
	There's like this, Apocalypse is like this god villain, right?
	But if you catch him when he's weak, you can destroy him.
	You know what I mean?
	And the Republican Party right now is weak.
	It's got this giant civil war that is brewing that we've been talking about forever.
	By the way, I don't know if you do this, I get so angry when I read these columns and stories and they're talking about shit that we talked about Seven, eight months ago.
	And they're like, it seems like there's a civil war brewing in the GOP.
	Well, no shit!
	But they're in that state where this existential threat can be put down.
	House of Cards time, because McConnell is hell-bent on having this GOP leader vote very quickly.
	And everybody else wants to delay it until after Walker.
	Obviously there's a political calculation going on and I'm trying to sort of figure it out.
	I want to hear your thoughts.
	I'm thinking that like if he can rush it he'll win it because there'll be less time for people to be shitting on him but they've already started shitting on him so... It's coalition building.
	Okay.
	So right now the National Conservatives are looking for partners.
	They're looking for people, because here's the thing, we've all heard this, if you come for the king, you best not miss.
	Right?
	Because if you go after Mitch McConnell, and by the way, Howley, I gotta tell you, this is bold.
	You don't do this.
	You know, you don't go ahead and say that the leader of the Republican Party, they need to go.
	And that means that Howley has been, they've probably been behind the scenes building a coalition for a while.
	Now, because this midterm shellacking happened, now Howley, the National Conservatives, and the group that they're putting together, they're calling up the other groups and they're like, do we look better today?
	And McConnell wants to push the time so they don't have room to continue coalition building.
	He's the only option on the table.
	That's where it's at right now.
	And he is playing a wild game.
	Mitch McConnell over the past few years has played a political game that is almost second to none in modern American political history.
	This right here, it's a trap that has been laid for a very, very long time and it's about to be sprung.
	So let's just pretend he doesn't win it, he doesn't get it, they don't get the vote.
	Then who does become the GOP leader in the Senate?
	That's a hell of a question because I'm telling you right now some of these quote-unquote mainstream Republicans, the McConnellites, some of them are getting calls.
	You know, and some of them are getting calls and they're like, Mitch is getting older and we just want you to know, like a conure, you know what I mean?
	And they're like, Mitch is getting older and, you know, we just think that, like, you might be the future of this party and maybe we could figure something out.
	So they wouldn't completely reject any McConnell stink on them and let them have it?
	Because I wouldn't think they'd go.
	That's the question.
	Well, I mean, politics is like that.
	We know that.
	Some of these people will just knife you in the back and smile in your face.
	I mean, it's the Republican Party.
	They are making calls and they are saying, I mean, and Holly, by the way, is just, this is nuts.
	I mean, this is this is like.
	This is like Kobe Bryant, like, facing down Michael Jordan and just being like, we're doing it tonight.
	You know what I mean?
	Like, the time has come!
	Maybe I'm young or whatever, but this... Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
	This, right now, this civil war is, um, it's a lot.
	Right.
	And so that's what's going to be kind of fun about all this.
	Like, you know, if the Republicans have a four seat majority in the House, it's just going to be fun to watch them.
	It's going to be like in, remember the movie The Thing?
	It's going to be like that, where it eats itself and the head's going to pull off itself and crawl away or whatever.
	It's going to look like that.
	Well, speaking of the thing, and this is a great metaphor, Nick, you know this and our listeners know this.
	For years and years and years, the worst job in the world was the leader of the Republicans in the House of Representatives.
	Because of all the nuts, you know?
	And, like, how do you make them stay true?
	I mean, Paul Ryan, like, basically took years off of his life trying to do it.
	John Boehner was just like, sign R, I'm going to go smoke a bunch of pot, right?
	And now there's more discipline in the Republican House than there is in the Republican Senate because that infection spread.
	And now the infection is within the Republican Senate.
	And, I mean, I think I think if they take it, McCarthy is probably the next Speaker of the House.
	I think that's probably the way this goes.
	But I couldn't tell you right now who's going to be the minority leader.
	And if you have to put money on someone, you have to put money on Mitch McConnell.
	I mean, he's been there, he's done this, whatever.
	But this This thing that is happening right now is going to determine the next couple years, but also probably the future of this country.
	Did you just try and say that the GOP Senate is crazier than the GOP House?
	No, I'm not saying that.
	Because I got some cards I can play for you, Jared.
	I got some discipline.
	That's why I'm saying discipline-wise and ideologically, because the House is just batshit nuts.
	But what's happening in the Senate, this power grab, it's very telling.
	I'll just say that.
	So, the most logical outcome of these next two years, though, will be, you know, in some respects, fun.
	It'll be fun to watch what's going to happen.
	It's going to be fascinating.
	I don't know if fun's the word.
	It's going to be... Entertaining.
	Entertaining, perhaps.
	Like, right?
	I think... Well, can I just say, okay, because I'm really glad you brought this up.
	Like, okay, we do find this interesting.
	Otherwise, we wouldn't be doing this.
	In my head, the National Conservatives are one of the most dangerous things that America has produced in a very long time.
	But when Josh Hawley tweets, the old party is dead, time to bury it, build something new, I'm just like, oh, excellent!
	Oh, let's see what happens here, right?
	Because it's what we've been Anticipating.
	It's what we've seen.
	It's what we've analyzed.
	It's what we've predicted.
	And it became very obvious.
	And now that you're watching it come to fruition, you're exactly right.
	It's not fun.
	It's just, it's fascinating.
	Well, here's the scary thing.
	Because obviously, in my mind, they're just going to implode.
	It's going to be a nightmare.
	They're going to end up eating each other in the aisles of the Senate.
	Or they have this 2010 reckoning, which did, for all of its evilness, did lead to gains by the Republicans and the Freedom Caucus, the birth of that.
	So that's what you have to worry about.
	It's kind of like how the Democrats played with fire by trying to push these radical candidates in their primaries, the GOP primaries.
	And then it kind of worked out for the most part.
	But man, that was some dangerous, you know, stuff that they were doing there that could have really backfired.
	So say they could happen here.
	At the very least, I'm just thinking of, you know, it'll be really easy to pin a lot of the gridlock and a lot of the issues that people hate about government on the GOP, I think, in the next two years.
	And that'll be worthwhile.
	So, on that note, by the way, and Nick, I don't know if you caught this, because listen, I don't watch the Sunday shows anymore, but I keep an eye on them to see.
	Senator Bill Cassidy was on Meet the Press.
	And this is the thing, by the way, they spent their entire weekend just absolutely pushing away from Donald Trump.
	It is very delightful.
	Can you play the people a quick little clip of Senator Bill Cassidy?
	If this is the result of these elections, but the Republican Party still has sort of the same leadership at RNC, Ronna McDaniel, Kevin McCarthy of House Republicans, Mitch McConnell of Senate Republicans, and of course Donald Trump is sort of the leader out there.
	If there's no change there, do you think that's a problem for Republicans going forward?
	First, we're not a cult.
	Press pause.
	We're not.
	Press pause.
	I want to say before we move forward, because I, oh man.
	Nick, going back to the idea that like if a random Republican politician came on the street, he's like, the kids are in litter boxes.
	You'd be like, okay, guy.
	All right.
	If somebody came up to you and the first thing they said was, we're not a cult, the hell you're not a cult.
	If you have to say out loud, we're not a cult, you're a cult.
	I mean, it was the first thing he said.
	He led with that.
	The first thing he said, we're not a cult.
	Maybe like bury that somewhere in the third paragraph, but man.
	Leave it.
	That's rough.
	You want to hear the rest of this?
	I do.
	I just... Nick, sometimes, sometimes this shit is so funny.
	This first thing.
	Yeah.
	You didn't apologize for having Chuck Todd on the show, though, by the way.
	We did have to bring Chuck Todd on in order to give a background.
	We should have said apologies.
	Alright, here we go.
	Okay, there's one person who leads our party.
	If we have a sitting president, she or he will be the leader of our party.
	But we should be a party of ideas and principles.
	And that's what should lead us.
	And I will go back.
	What we've been lacking, perhaps, is that fulsome discussion followed up with the policy initiatives that we work to pass that will define who we are.
	Good luck with your principles, my man, because you threw those overboard a long time ago.
	How did that policy writing go in 2020?
	Right?
	You know, they even asked him, Trump, yeah, like, yeah, we'll just copy and paste it from 2016.
	I mean, like, they don't even want to write it, so this is ridiculous.
	It's incredible from a party that didn't have a platform the last presidential election.
	And on top of that, have just spent every single day spitting in the face of every principle that they supposedly had.
	Who, by the way, there's one election left to run.
	There's a runoff in December, and it involves Herschel Walker, who is a walking, talking contradiction of every espoused principle of the Republican Party.
	And they said it, Nick, out loud.
	We heard them.
	We played it on the podcast.
	They said we don't care about our principles.
	We only care about power.
	It's the exact same thing as saying we're not a cult.
	Like, they don't have principles.
	If you want principles, you're gonna have to, like, completely change yourselves and have, like, some sort of a come-to-Jesus moment, but you're not gonna do it.
	And quite frankly, watching them run from Trump... I gotta tell you.
	It's delicious.
	It's a delicious thing.
	I wanted to say that was wrong about the notion that people don't care who the candidates are.
	They just simply want a rubber stamp because of the results.
	Look, a lot of these terrible candidates are losing.
	But then I realized that's not really the case.
	In the general election, yes, there's a lot of people who are not part of the GOP.
	But as far as the GOP goes, they're the ones that nominated these people in the primaries.
	Don't seem to care that much.
	The Hershel Walker thing is probably the litmus test here to find out if they really care about who the person is and if they have a little bit of a wherewithal to actually do the job versus just having a rubber stamp and it looks like, you know, that it'll be smoking again.
	That they don't all want it, which is another victory.
	That's exactly right.
	And I got to tell you, by the way, I'm going to charge you with something.
	You're better at this stuff than I am.
	I want you to find a sound effect.
	That is, every time that we talk about Trump-DeSantis, because this thing ain't stopping.
	This thing ain't stopping, and I gotta tell you, we're only a couple days past the midterms, this thing's already spicy.
	You know what I mean?
	Like, this is, this is going to be, it's Kong and Godzilla, but also you want both of them to lose so badly.
	That's a possibility!
	That's a possibility.
	I need something.
	I want to sound by someone saying something.
	So I want to say, by the way, as Donald Trump, it looks like the possibility of him being indicted becomes more and more likely.
	And everybody says, and here's another thing we've talked about.
	Nick, everybody's coming out and saying, psst, if you don't run, you probably won't get indicted.
	And he's like, if I run, I won't get indicted?
	No!
	No!
	Don't run!
	You probably... I should run?
	Okay, great!
	As that's coming together... Nick, I love this thing where Donald Trump cannot contain his emotions.
	As people are paying attention to Ron DeSantis, he gets on, I don't know, truth, social, gab, parlor-getter, gut-getter-gotter, whatever it is.
	Nick, and he says, this is wonderful, He says, this Ron DeSantis, he wouldn't be in office if I didn't send the FBI to fix the election.
	He seems to admit a federal crime.
	He seems to admit, like, not only an impeachable crime by president, but like a high crime.
	And then everybody says, I don't know if you've seen this, everybody involved goes, that never happened.
	Right.
	They say it never happened.
	He admitted to a made-up crime because he wanted to go after Ron DeSantis.
	Oh, well, he got Scott involved, too.
	He was a senator, you know, in Florida at the time, too, to get him, you know, saying, well, he was part of it, too.
	Like, it's kind of like, you know, when you're guilty and you want to drag other people into your scheme to make it seem like... Me and Scotty were talking about it, weren't we, Scotty?
	I think it was on the 5th.
	Yeah.
	So, I have no doubt he decreed that they should do something and stop the count voting and all that stuff, but I'm sure they said, yeah, we're not going to do that, as they said that every other day in the White House based on something Trump told them to do.
	Isn't that incredible?
	He just comes out and admits this crime.
	It's unbelievable.
	But then there was a reporting where they found like two more top secret documents in his desk, or maybe they were already always there, that were dated after he was president.
	I can't quite figure out how the timing works, but the point of that is, Can I read that, by the way?
	I got this quote.
	This is from the report.
	Are you ready?
	This is one of the most Donald Trump things I've ever heard.
	I wanted this for posterity.
	This will never leave my phone.
	Quote.
	The former U.S.
	President kept in the desk drawer of his office at the Mar-a-Lago property.
	In a desk drawer, by the way.
	In a desk drawer.
	Where else do you put your top secret documents?
	Mar-a-Lago property, one document marked secret.
	And one marked confidential, because of course, alongside three communications from a book author, a religious leader, and, are you ready folks?
	A pollster!
	It's the most Donald Trump thing I've ever heard in my life.
	He violated state secrets and just kept them in there.
	People are now saying he did it just for, I guess, to impress people.
	I think he's made money off of it, let's be real.
	But that's incredible.
	That's open and shut.
	But I think the point is, or the timing was that, like, here's a way to poke holes in his defense that he declassified everything before he left.
	Because you can't declassify, even if you want to wave your hand, if you are not officially president, Then you can't waive that hand and declassify them anyway.
	And so they've got at least a couple of those documents that that's all you need.
	You just need one.
	And yeah, I've averred.
	Can I use that word, aver?
	I aver that, you know, I've been averring.
	That he's going to get indicted.
	There's no way you can not indict on this specific thing.
	I don't care the taxes and the whatever, but this, this is the doozy that you couldn't ignore.
	But again, here we are, well now it's almost a week after the elections, we're waiting.
	Remember we said there might be a cool-off period here before they actually do it.
	But when do we, when is it too late where we don't think they're going to do it?
	I don't know, but I will tell you this.
	If he didn't run, I don't think he would get indicted.
	I really, truly don't.
	The system is just so sick of this shit, they don't want him around.
	So he announces tonight, when this podcast is released, and then Wednesday they indict him.
	That's a little on the nose, you know what I mean?
	That's like picking up the paper and it's like, Mafia Don attends the christening of his godson.
	And then it's like, 15 murders down the side.
	But I will say, they are begging him not to do this.
	They've begged him not to do it in the run-up to the runoff in Georgia.
	That's probably stopped at this point.
	They just kind of want him to stop.
	Herschel Walker has sort of moved away from Donald Trump, which is incredible.
	I do want to tell you real fast, though.
	I wanted to weigh in on this at the end of this podcast because there's some developments I want to let people know.
	I've been following these right-wing trends and watching what these communities are doing.
	A lot of them are going ahead and embracing Ron DeSantis.
	A lot of them are going ahead and saying Ron DeSantis is the one who will build off Trump's legacy and they'll remember the two of them as sort of twin leaders of the moment.
	But Nick, I got a little bit of breaking news.
	I gotta tell everybody.
	I got bad news everybody.
	Ron DeSantis I'm hearing things over in the QAnon corners that he might be a satanic-like pedophile.
	Oh, really?
	It turns out Ronnie Donnie DeSantis might very well be a globalist.
	And there is a lot of talk in QAnon circles that he might be a secret deep state operative trying to destroy the White Hats and to help take over the country.
	Wow.
	I mean, that's some next level stuff there, Jared.
	That is next.
	Well, that's not as, I have to say, that's not as good as everybody saying that Joe Biden was actually a good guy who was pretending to be a bad guy but was helping Donald Trump.
	That was one of my personal favorites.
	This is almost predictable.
	You know what I mean?
	The idea that Ron DeSantis is going to be painted this way.
	Well, is the Venn Diagram of globalists and pedophiles, is that a circle?
	I'm so glad you brought this up.
	We should just do a show on that Venn Diagram.
	My understanding is that it's almost total that if you are a globalist you are in there.
	There's a couple people who don't know, Nick, and maybe they're on the inside helping us.
	Well, if only that could become true, that would be terrific.
	If only it could, but we're gonna, I'll tell you what, I'm feeling good, I'm feeling hopeful, I'm hopeful that we're gonna track down the right sound effect for the Trump-DeSantis fight.
	We're gonna figure it out.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, we're gonna figure it out.
	So, I promise, we'll be back on that thing.
	We will be back for Friday's episode.
	A reminder everybody, go over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
	Become a patron, support the show, become part of the muckrake community.
	We depend on it.
	We are an independent media venture.
	We want to remain editorially independent.
	It's like the only podcast that talks about most of this shit.
	And we don't want to do ads, so go over to patreon.com slash mudpigpodcast.
	If you need us before Friday, you can find Nick at CanYouHearMesmh.
	You can find me at jysexta.

▲