All Episodes
Previous Next
Nov. 22, 2022 - The Muckrake Political Podcast
51:24
Trump, Twitter, Trauma

Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss Elon Musk letting Donald Trump back on twitter, the likelihood Trump gets indicted, and yet another senseless tragedy in Colorado that left 5 dead and many more wounded. 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

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hey, everybody.
Welcome to the McCraig Podcast.
I'm Jerry J. Sexton.
I'm here with Nick Halseman.
Nick, it is Thanksgiving week.
This is one of our favorite weeks around these here parts.
It is.
Is it not?
I actually, I do like Thanksgiving, so I won't say I don't, but there are probably people out there that might have other feelings about this.
Well, I mean, it's you and me.
This is our conversation.
It is.
I love Thanksgiving.
I hope you love Thanksgiving.
I actually, I do love the act of eating at Thanksgiving without question.
That is great.
It's fantastic.
I've got the folks coming in.
I'm going to see them.
I'm going to make the food.
I'm ready to do it.
Ah, very, very nice.
Yeah, well, yeah.
All those things sound terrific, and I hope everybody has a fantastic one like that on Thursday.
Yeah, I hope so, too.
Just regular cleaning house business.
We are going to tape our Weekender episode for later in the week.
We're going to tape it on Wednesday.
Nick and I made an executive decision.
We're going to open up ye olde mailbag.
So if you are a Patreon subscriber, That is patreon.com slash muckreg podcast.
We're going to send out a call for questions, which means when we talk on Wednesday, we're going to have your questions.
That way, when we come back on Friday, we're all good.
We're all stuffed.
We're going to address a bunch of different topics.
So, we'll send out the call.
You can go ahead and post about it over on the Patreon.
Awesome.
Cannot wait.
All right, Nick.
I got another great news.
I'm checking the feeds.
I'm looking at the information.
We got them.
Donald Trump, we got him.
It's done.
Don't worry about it anymore.
Put it down in the books.
Merrick Garland has appointed a special prosecutor.
Or a counsel, I guess.
We're not even calling it a prosecutor.
God, I swear this thing.
It is merging the two different investigations, both into January 6th, but also, you know Nick, the fact that the former president of the United States of America stole state secrets and kept them in his desk drawer and showed them off to people who came in to get roast beef at his club.
I got thoughts on this.
What are your initial thoughts on this?
Well, I like roast beef.
I like roast beef too.
Yeah, I had a little.
I had a prime rib a little bit on Friday.
Now, the thoughts are that the person that they were appointing, Jack Smith.
That's a name.
Jack Smith.
Listen, if your name is Jack Smith, you mean business.
Yeah, you mean business.
He's got a nice little thing going on in Europe and whatever around the Hague, so you're not coming back to the United States for a little sojourn and, you know, read a couple documents and then get on TV once and then leave.
I suspect that this kind of guy is taking this case because they know that the outcome, what the outcome will be.
It feels...
Okay, so how ... My God, Nick, because what is time?
How many years now have we been talking about whether or not Donald Trump is going to be held accountable for his crimes?
It's 2015, right?
Seven years, maybe?
I mean, we've been talking about this for forever now.
I've always said I will believe that he's being held accountable when he's held accountable because he is a powerful, white, wealthy man who, by the way, as a former president, we do not like prosecuting those people.
I keep saying I think he actually could have avoided an indictment if he would have just not run for president.
I still stand by that.
I think he has poked the bear.
I think he has rolled too many times at the craps table.
Jack Smith.
By the way, Jack Smith sounds like a guy who knows some things.
He sounds like he's a man with a few special talents.
Jack Smith is a serious person, and Merrick Garland needed to bring in a special something In order to make this look like it isn't a political attack, to make it look like it's all above board and legitimate.
I will say, I hate how this system just continually makes up things to protect powerful people.
You know what I mean?
We got an ombuds person.
We got a mediator.
You have, you know, what's it called?
Department of Justice opinions, opinion memos.
We have special masters, you know.
It's just like all of this stuff.
If you were ISIL's safe secrets, we would be in Sing Sing right now.
You know what I mean?
It'd be done.
That'd be it.
Donald Trump requires this special counsel.
I feel like this thing is trending in a direction ... I wish he would get the hint from everybody.
From the Department of Justice, from the Republican Party, Rupert Murdoch, everybody basically in the country.
I'm exhausted by him.
You're exhausted by him.
Everybody's exhausted by him.
Go and retire.
Your own kids don't want you to run for president.
Get out of the way.
Get done with it.
But I feel like this issue has been pressed to the point Well, here's the thing.
I did that Dr. Strange thing where the head moves really fast and he can look through every version of reality at once.
I think that most of those, if Trump and DeSantis go at each other in a primary, yield a victory for whomever the Democrats choose to run for president.
So in some respects, I kind of think that that is not the worst thing.
Also, you know, Entertainment, Jared.
We don't want to miss that.
Now, so here's what I'm thinking.
What I'm gleaning from what you're saying is that the timing of the announcement of this special counsel indicates to you that they simply were not going to do any of this if he not didn't declare that he's running for presidency.
OK, listen, you and I are cinematic guys.
There's a reason why we talk about movies on here.
And also they're instructive for people to understand scenarios, put in their head how this works.
I want you to picture here.
Interior.
Merrick Garland's office.
Night.
There's a TV over in the corner.
Donald Trump is just rambling like a moron, saying he's gonna run for president.
Garland picks up a phone.
He says two words, Jack Smith.
Right, I mean that's really what this is.
It happened very, very quickly.
They couldn't do it the next day.
You know, you can't do it the next day.
You can't do it the exact next day after the announcement.
Let a little bit of time go.
And then you go ahead and you go through with this.
It keeps feeling like warning salvos.
Nobody wants to prosecute a former president.
Really.
Merrick Garland doesn't want to do it.
Merrick Garland has been forced into this.
It's not like he's willing it to happen.
It's not like he's itching for a fight.
This is something that Trump ... And we're going to talk about this in a second because, quite frankly, we're going to talk about psychology a little bit today.
Because a lot's going on.
This country is popping off in a lot of different ways.
Like, Trump just couldn't help it.
This is a person who can't help it.
He has to keep pushing and pushing and pushing, and there's no rest in him.
And it got to the point, again, we talked about this, the system cannot let this thing go forward.
You know, the idea that Trump can't stop pushing and pushing, I think part of it is he knows if he can win, he can make it all go away once and for all.
So I think that's also part of it.
And I just think that his personality simply wouldn't let him settle for what he knows creeping in that adult brain of his that he lost.
Can I ask you a quick question?
Because I was thinking about this the other day, and I put a mental pin in this to talk about it on the podcast on that note.
If he, let's say, and you're doing your Doctor Strange, you're looking through all these different realities, right?
Donald Trump, somehow or another, hook by crook, by stolen election, you name it, he becomes President of the United States of America, right?
Starting in 2025.
There's no way he only serves one term and then walks away, right?
Like, that's not who he is.
He would argue it should be two concurrent terms, and then he would argue it should be three terms.
Like, you know what I mean?
This is like, um, it's like how some dogs don't stop eating until they get sick.
Like, there's no stop.
Do you know what I mean?
Yeah, that's good.
Remind me, my adult brain, it's only eight years total, it's not concurrent.
No, it's eight years.
It's two terms.
Yeah, you're right.
He would absolutely push for that, although he'd be, you know, ridiculously old at that point.
But hey, Joe Biden just turned 80 yesterday.
Yeah, we're going to talk about that in a little bit, for sure.
So, yeah.
And, you know, the other thing about Jack Smith, at the very least, is, you know, I think we discovered a few things about Mueller personally that we didn't seem to enjoy when we saw him actually testify, having not even known what his voice sounded like, I think, before that.
But we have to acknowledge what Bill Barr did and what Rod Rosenstein did to this investigation that hamstrung Mueller anyway, of which will not happen, in theory, with this investigation.
Well, let's talk about Billy Barr, because I'll tell you what, Billy Barr has decided that he likes the media.
You know, he got on that book tour, and listen, we've all been there.
We've all had a book come out, we enjoy the interviews, we enjoy the conversation.
It's the green room.
Listen, some of them have some decent things in them.
When I went to the Los Angeles Times Book Festival and I was hanging out with Bill Bradley Jr., if you think that I can put some things in my pockets and walk out, you're wrong, my friend.
Because I did.
That was when we met!
That's when we decided to do this podcast.
But, you know, he has decided he enjoys the media.
And on top of that, like a lot of these Trump hanger-ons and people who took advantage, Bill Barr literally wanted to create a tyrannical law enforcement regime based on Christian principles when he was around Trump.
I mean, this was a guy who wanted to crack down on every BLM protester and basically use the police as a weapon, which they are, but, you know, to exacerbate that.
He is now on TV, I mean, going on PBS.
Nick, he went on PBS!
You know, PBS is like, hey, we're doing a little bit of a drive for this public commodity, and here's Bill Barr.
Bill Barr came on and said, it's looking very likely, like, not only are they going to indict Trump, but he said legitimately.
He came on and gave his own quote-unquote legal opinion to say I think that they're going to indict him and it's going to be a legitimate indictment.
Right and this is coming from a guy who on a major cable news network decided to say that you know it's a matter of logic as to understand why mail-in ballots would be fraudulent just by logic because it is you know what's your evidence it just is so here's a guy that's pretty impressive but again you know he's i think he's familiar with uh the capital t capital l the law right he's under he's familiar with those laws
So yeah, I don't think there's anybody at all reasonable on either side that can defend this.
So that's the real question of what the hell, you know, Garland's going to do.
But I think everything that he's been signaling to us indicates to me that yes, he is absolutely going, they're going to indict him.
Whether or not they're going to get the guilty verdict they need is another whole other subset of discussion.
But I think you don't need to feel as worried about it.
Well, okay, so I have something to mention about the capital T, capital L law and Bill Barr, but I want to ask you, because I went back and I watched the Trump announcement speech, because that's just who I am.
I'm sorry, I can't, I can't quit it, you know, it's just something I have to do.
Do you, you're putting your marker down right now, you think he gets indicted?
I absolutely think he gets into that.
I would put some money down.
Wow!
Okay.
0% means no, no chance.
100% no doubt.
Where are you putting it on that spectrum?
75.
75 is a healthy guess.
Well, you know, if I'm Nate Silver, I could still say, well, you know, 25 times out of 100, he won't get indicted.
Dude, I'm so sick of Nate Silver, I could scream.
I gotta tell you, he has revealed himself to be who he is and who all of us behind the scenes knew who he was.
That dude sucks.
Okay, so I went back and I re-watched, speaking of the capital T, capital L, the law, I went back and I watched this.
And you know what slipped through the cracks?
The first viewing of Trump's announcement speech?
I cannot wait.
how much of it was spent talking about executing drug dealers?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
And like really talking about like what China does and what these other sort of totalitarian states do.
And for those who aren't aware of it, Trump literally said like some of these places and he said it sort of like adoringly that they'll arrest you.
They'll try you.
And then that night they'll execute you.
And by the way, that is a fascistic, tyrannical state, right?
That is just throwing away the idea of the law.
I kind of have the feeling that if Donald Trump is indicted, and I have to tell you, I'm sitting at about, I'm still 50-50.
Man, I've seen so many people get away with so much shit, you know what I mean?
And I just, I feel like if that happens, not only is he going to keep running for president, But it's going to turn into, we have to take back the law.
And the law is out of control.
And even if he doesn't win the nomination, that is like an escalation of rhetoric that the Republican Party will not run away from.
And I'll tell you something I worry about.
You know this as well as I do.
The Democratic Party, if the Republican Party goes hard on law enforcement, the Democratic Party is like, hey, hold on, guys!
Guys, hold on!
Hold on, we're coming!
You know?
And they just go ahead and they push forward, too.
I feel like that type of a campaign could have incredibly devastating consequences.
Well, you'll attest to this better than me in terms of the history, but we have to remember it's not even that long ago that we did not have, like, federal laws in this country that kind of unified everybody in the states, right?
Like, you know, into the 1900s I kind of feel like we still had prairie towns that had a sheriff that would decide what was legal or not, right?
So the ends justify the means is a really powerful thought process for a lot of the right wing people.
Right.
And the A, because they're convinced the Democrats are doing it worse.
So we have to do whatever they're doing in the more illegally.
But, you know, if you think about, you know, the issue with killing drug dealers, you know, just just take a shot in the dark.
Jared, who do you think is going to ultimately get unfairly executed more than anybody else in that pool?
I mean there's a lot of people are going to get executed in that pool.
I've known some very darling drug dealers in my life.
I'll just say that.
They got me through college.
I'll say that.
It's probably possible that somebody wasn't really a drug dealer.
It's the same thing as when you start weaponizing psychology, right?
You start saying, oh, you have a leftist Or a worldview that goes outside of a certain idea.
And by the way, we're going to talk about this tragedy in Colorado later.
All of a sudden you start saying, and you want to talk about recent history, it wasn't that long ago when being gay was a psychological disorder, right?
And by that I mean the literal body said that it was.
So it happens very quickly.
These things start to shift.
And I want to say on the subject of psychology, I had said this to you, I wanted to have a conversation about it.
A thing that's becoming disturbingly obvious to me, and we've touched on it a little bit, but it's how much we are affected by a group of people who are really unwell.
Do you know what I mean?
Donald Trump's unwell.
We talk about not being able to stop, also how he treats people, the way that his world bends.
He's an abuser.
I mean, not just sexually assaulting people.
We know about that.
But he abuses people.
He's violent to people.
He is antisocial to people.
There's a narcissism.
But also, something occurred to me.
Did you see?
So Donald Trump got let back on Twitter, right?
It was one of those things where all of a sudden somebody like retweeted a tweet of his and it was like, it popped up on my feed and I had like this visceral reaction.
You know, I was like, oh God, that's bad.
And then I was just like, I don't have to pay attention to him.
Trump, because he's trying to do, I don't know, truth gabber, social getter.
What are we doing now?
Yeah, that's about close enough.
So he's not interested in, right now he's not interested in getting on Twitter.
Then Elon Musk posts this, did you see this?
Oh yeah, well, which is what the question is.
Well, the one I saw, I don't, it's hard to describe this, but this is a conversation we should have.
Like other people aren't having this conversation, we should have it.
It was a picture, I think of Christ, like it, I think it was like a religious figure.
And there's a, how do I say this?
It's a young woman, attempting this figure and it's got like Twitter and then it says Donald Trump on it.
It's really, wait, wait, wait, you got it.
You got to tell them where the Twitter icon was over genitalia is what it is.
First of all, that's really upsetting that that just like is tweeted out by like the lead person at Twitter, like one of the most like famous people in the world.
Like, everyone's going to see that.
Like, that's, like, offensive.
And, like, and by the way, like, insight into how he views women, and we know that.
Look at what he's done.
Look at this trail of carnage that he's caused and harassment and using of people.
And it occurred to me, not only is this disturbing and twisted, but, like, we're suffering and experiencing a very long haul sort of emotional and psychological breakdown by Elon Musk.
Do you know what I mean?
You don't act like this.
Like, you don't do this if you're well.
These people are not well.
Does this strike you accurately?
Well, you know, Elon Musk, you know, we have mental ages and we have our, what our body is age.
You know, and we know that there are psychological issues that he's had that he admitted to, like, on national TV.
Yeah.
So there's a big part of what's controlling his brain is, like, the 12-year-old or the 13-year-old little boy who's mischievous and who wants to be funny and put farts in his cars, fart noises instead of the honking in his cars.
Like, you know, this is not a serious man who should be leading any kind of company.
I mean, really think about what that image is, right?
Maybe it's Christ, maybe it's just a religious figure praying to the right of the picture.
They want to sort of plunge the...
Sorry, but the religious right, I'm assuming, into the Twitter sphere again, in this way that is sinful, probably.
But people are going to want to cheer that on.
I think the point of all this is he didn't think more than about 10 seconds about what he was doing.
And that kind of inability to, he has a distinct lack of impulse control.
And that's indicative of a young kid.
Right, and by the way, that's like a trauma state.
You know what I mean?
There's a lot that's happened here.
I don't think that you... And let's be real, because we go a little bit deeper on this show.
Everybody hurts other people.
You know what I mean?
It happens.
It's almost impossible to go through the world and not hurt other people.
And a lot of us, and we've talked about this before on a weekender, it's like, Things like that bother us!
You carry it around the rest of your life and you feel a tinge of shame or guilt about it.
The trail of bodies like Musk, Trump, someone like a Kanye West, the trail of hurt people and all this unexamined life, I just realized how much of our current experience as Americans is based on just really unwell people projecting their trauma and projecting their hurt and projecting their problems on the rest of us.
And the whole right wing has built a movement around that, right?
Like, you shouldn't examine yourself.
You shouldn't think about what you do.
You don't have privilege.
Other people are trying to get one over on you.
They're the snowflakes, all of this.
And it's just like, it's becoming more and more clear to me, Nick, that We have a massive psychological but also spiritual crisis in this country, and that movement
Well, listen, not only do I know what you mean, I experience this and I hope you can give me a minute here just to kind of break this down because I was out of town at an event that is generally considered to be a raucous fun thing where you might have a dinner with people from out of town the first night and then you have another big event with people dressed very nicely.
I think some people call that Yes, it was a wedding.
My best friend to a lady who is from Iowa and has a huge family.
I'm talking like 10, 15 uncles, whatever.
And they're spread all across places like Iowa and Nebraska and Texas.
And so I got into a conversation, which I would like to probably re-term research.
And you know how people go on those trips to far away places and they want to observe their subjects in the wild?
This is sort of what this was like.
And I got into a discussion about guns.
Listen, I have no idea.
It was supposed to be a fun affair.
We were having drinks, whatever.
I don't know what happened.
I don't know.
Wait, you didn't put up your hand and say, I'm from California, then gracefully exit and go check on your electric vehicle?
Well, it just so happened I had already had a little bit of a roast speech, and I think it was pretty clear where I did, because by the way, I started the roast speech bringing up the Dave Chappelle speech on Entire Life, and it went from there.
Feel free to take what you like from that.
Nonetheless, it went south very fast.
But the weirdest thing about it was, I was like, I'm going to find something that we can agree on.
I'm not going to argue with the guy.
I'm like, I'm just going to see, like, if I know we can find something that we can both say, hey, well, that's good.
So I figured I'd throw it out there saying, well, you know, how about this?
Like, when we had an assault weapons ban for 10 years, we had a lot less mass shootings.
Like, that's good, right?
And he stared at me, goes, that didn't happen.
I said, well, you know, we have a lot of statistics and research studies and it's just kind of like math.
We people didn't die as much when we had that from mass shootings.
It didn't.
That's not what happened.
I said, oh, well, you know, what what what can you tell me that would help me understand that?
Why you don't think that's because because it didn't happen.
And he would close his eyes.
By the way, I could see the searing hate behind his eyes like emanating from out of his eyelids as he's like, just getting like, you know, you can see the whole story that you've talked about a lot on this podcast about how there are like these white people who are at a certain age in this country who feel completely disenfranchised and, you know, people are coming across the border and taking jobs and they can't, and I got this terrible job, I'm not gonna be able to get out of it, I'm gonna have it until I die and I hate it and whatever.
Like, that's what you could feel.
He started attacking me about the climate.
He's like, well, you probably think climate change is real.
I'm like, well, I'll side with the 99% of scientists who have rigorous studies.
He goes, do you breathe out carbon dioxide?
I said, yeah.
He goes, then why don't you just kill yourself?
And I said, I do not understand why you want me to do that.
And he goes, blah, blah, blah, carbon dioxide, blah, blah, blah, you know, in the air, in the atmosphere, blah, blah, blah.
I'm like, I still don't understand why I would ever kill myself over that.
And like, we kind of had to stop our conversation at that point.
I had to go somewhere.
He walks by later and I just grabbed him and I said, listen, I'm not angry at that conversation.
By the way, I was a little bit worried about this guy.
So we'll be worried.
But I told him, I'm not angry.
I said, you're a fellow human being, and I love you because you are another fellow human being on this earth that we all live on.
And he says, I'm not a human being.
I'm a person.
Angry!
And I stalked away off of that.
And that was the research I had this weekend, and it was absolutely fascinating.
So here's the thing, and we kind of talked about this before I started recording.
As a professor, I got I got an opportunity to have a lot of conversations like that, you know, and to have discussions back and forth.
Like, you talk to a person in crisis.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, you talk to a person, like, even people who are socially awkward, and like, I used to suffer from social anxiety, and at the very, very least, like, You want to be a good scene partner with other people.
Even if you disagree, you're looking for common ground, you know, a complete stranger.
You're not going to have like a knock down, drag out argument and fight.
But what has happened over the past few, I would say last couple of decades, it's like this stuff has been weaponized, particularly by the right wing, right?
Is a large thing is that that frustration and on top of that unchecked mental illness, exhaustion, frustration, despair.
That type of stuff has just like boiled and boiled and boiled, you know what I mean?
And it's just growing because I think a lot of, whether it's Republican politicians, right-wing media, you make a ton of money off this.
You can sell them guns, you can sell them all kinds of things, right?
You can sell them tokens that show that they're tougher than other people and they're not the ones with the problem everybody else is.
Those people usually do not think, oh, this person's going to go out and hurt somebody, right?
That's why when this happens, they're like, oh, wow, that's terrible.
We need to, like, get prayer in schools.
And in all of it, it just, it percolates and percolates and percolates to the point where, like, somebody like this, and we got, unfortunately, we got to talk about Colorado in a second.
Like, these things just are happening more and more.
And you're not even just having them, like, at a wedding.
Like, you have them at a store.
You have them within your family.
You have them everywhere.
And, like, the psychic temperature and the health of the country are just, like, going haywire because of everything from social media to the increasing radicalization of the Republican Party and their donors.
And, like, that type of stuff, unfortunately, it creates Hotspots.
Do you know what I mean?
It creates these mobile hotspots of people who could become very dangerous very quickly.
I think that what was striking as well was how consistent his language was with everybody else that you hear on TV and on the talking points.
In a way that he's not thinking for himself, right?
This is nothing that he is actually, and I think part of what the anger is, is when he has to say these things out loud and it kind of comes back through his other ear, he probably has a sense.
I've seen this in my own family where we're having a conversation.
I'm just sitting there and I'm calm and we're trying to talk and they get more and more riled up because I honestly truly think that they are listening to what they're saying.
They kind of have a little buzzer saying, this doesn't doesn't make sense really but I have to say it because it's what I'm told to say and you know it's the thing that he was stuck on was you know the guns don't keep it kill people people do and we they're mentally ill they're crazy people we have to stop them and I was thinking about that just even after that the next two days later where remember how we used to have like we don't have mental health you know in this country really we know Certainly, we used to have a lot more, you know, in the 70s.
And then Reagan shut down a lot of it.
But I was thinking about what Reagan did, because we can blame him for that.
But what was he really shutting down?
Basically, prisons for mentally ill people.
That's not good.
So, hey, let's shut those down.
But nothing can replace them.
So, but that's the solution.
I really kind of think that if you think that the next level of what they're saying, they just want to create another level of prisons to put people who might sound crazy a little bit there.
Well, and the thing is, they've already, that's part of what law enforcement has become, right?
I mean, one of the reasons that we have, like, mass incarceration, well, first of all, you have to do something with an African American population that is just absolutely being crushed constantly.
And, like, the consequences of what happens when you drain money out of their cities and also white supremacy, like, colors everything that you do.
But also, police are considered more or less the only type of, like, mental health responders that you can have, you know?
Like, if someone starts acting crazy, like, you send the police and they might get shot, you know?
They might end up getting shot.
That's how it goes.
And in all of this, I got to say, you know, This Colorado thing, to go ahead and bring this around, like in Colorado, Colorado Springs, this thing is awful.
And as soon as it happens, this country, but I know you know this, I know our listeners know this, every two or three days, something happens in this country that you're like, this is vile.
You know what I mean?
It's just like, you just look at it and you're just like, my God, this is vile.
And, you know, it's like Colorado Springs, in Virginia, you have these, like, these guys shoot, like, three football players, like, all of that.
So, this happens in Colorado Springs.
Five people get killed, I believe 25 get hurt, at this club where a guy walks in with a long gun and a bunch of weapons and a bunch of bullets, and he goes in and just starts opening fire.
We take a look at this guy, like all of them, and by the way, it's not like It's never just a person who is like doing great on a Monday and then on a Tuesday they go and do this.
Like, they're always...
They're always being looked at by the FBI.
They always have a history of domestic violence and domestic disturbances, right?
There have been numerous complaints filed against them.
There have been numerous opportunities that this system, which by the way, you want to talk about where all the money is in this country?
It's the systems that are supposed to take care of this shit, right?
And then they're like, well, we probably need to beef up.
No, you need to actually start caring about things like white terrorism and domestic terrorism and people who are doing all this.
Nick, this guy, you looked at the rap sheet.
It's forever, like this is the type of person that like shouldn't be out there having the ability to do stuff like this.
I mean, I don't know if I would describe it as that long, but certainly he was arrested a year ago for threatening the mother with a bomb.
And by the way, to the police's credit, to some degree, at some point, the lady where they were living with said that cops had come back months and months later to kind of check on him.
Right.
And he wasn't there.
Obviously, they didn't know where he was.
That's a dead end for their investigation or whatever, their follow up.
But yeah, like an ideal world is a kid is that's his reaching out for help thing or whatever.
And he gets really compassionate care.
And over a long period of time, this doesn't say, oh, I'm fine after a week of like there of group therapy.
So, you know, and that would probably be, you know, covered by the government, you know, so that we can avoid these things.
You know, the thing the thing that's now happening where we're moving towards and it's it's so completely awful to say is like that there's a reason why we haven't had a 9-11 attack on a plane since then.
It's because more than likely, if you try to do exactly that, the passengers will just rush you and they'll kill you and they'll you'll never be able to do what they ended up doing.
Well, this is now what's going to happen in these clubs where I imagine in Orlando, they all ran and he was able to just fire indiscriminately for a long time.
Now, you're going to have people who are just going to have to go and be the absolute amazing hero that they are and stop these guys before it happens.
And that's horrible.
That's horrible to think about.
You have to kind of rehearse that in your head.
I'm a bouncer.
I'm going to have to go and run at a guy who's got a long rifle.
It's an AR-15.
I'm sure we're going to find out one of those like that.
I'm sure we're going to find out he bought it legally, right?
I'm sure all those things are going to check boxes.
They have a red flag law in Colorado.
I'm sure that that got bypassed in some way just like his His arrest got expunged and sealed.
I'm sorry, he didn't get expunged, he got sealed.
We can't see any of the details.
How is that happening?
But there's a lot more to the story.
Well, and on top of that, like this is one of those things that, you know, you look at it and it starts to form a picture and then it starts to tell you what happened.
He's like the grandson of like a MAGA Republican official, like a state level official.
And this is a person who obviously supported January 6th.
I'm sorry, but it's like, this stuff, to go ahead from Trump, from Musk, all of it, it sort of flows.
You know what I mean?
Downhill.
And my family, I love my family.
And the family I'm gonna hang out with is not necessarily the family I'm talking about here.
Like, my family, if you go to a therapist, like, Something's wrong with you.
You know what I mean?
And I don't mean like something like mental health-wise.
I mean like you're weak, you know?
And like it's a mistake that you're doing that.
This type of stuff, like MAGAism, Trumpism, what Musk represents, it is pure, unchecked unhealthiness.
And it's the type of unhealthiness that we've all seen.
Like it's abusive behavior from people who are not well, right?
And that philosophy flows throughout a family and also a community, and it traumatizes other people.
It keeps them from being able to seek help if they need it or deal with problems.
Do you think that Donald Trump and his kids, like, actually communicate like human beings?
No!
No, they don't do that.
There's no possibility.
You can see it in their faces and the way they interact with the world.
This type of a situation, like, I'm sorry but it got to the point where he threatened his mother with a bomb.
You know what I mean?
And by the way, I'm glad you brought up that the law enforcement checked in on him.
Why are cops the ones who are checking in on them?
They don't have anything to offer.
They're people who have learned how to shoot a gun and possibly de-escalate a possible situation.
They're not people who understand the mental state of people.
No, but I'm sure they had five minutes of training about it, or like a day.
I'm sure they did.
I'm sure they did.
While, by the way, they were probably dreaming in their heads about getting in War on Terror level tanks.
Yeah.
You know, like that's it's a completely messed up sideways system.
And it starts and going back to the topic of guns, we know this.
The problem is the gun that allows the people who run well to cause larger damage.
Right.
So you got to take care of the guns.
But you also we have to renew investment in this stuff and we have to start spiritually changing the country.
And that doesn't mean making people read their bibles in school.
That means like starting to talk about mental health.
That means starting to talk about seeking help and treatment and therapy is not weakness.
And that it's okay to not be a big strong patriarch all the time or whatever.
Masculinity plays a huge role into it.
Like this stuff is not going to stop until we start actually addressing some of the cultural rot here.
It's just going to get worse and weirder and more tragic.
I'm a little upset at maybe both of us because we've talked about this for about five minutes.
We haven't even mentioned the fact that this is an LGBTQ bar.
Can we talk about why people in the LGBT community and why trans people and why they're getting attacked?
It was a poor brunch, whatever it was that night and that next day.
Like, let's not ignore that absent that, he's probably not going there and doing this.
Well, and can we talk about why people in, like, the LGBT community and why trans people and, like, why they're getting attacked?
It's because assholes like this are so unhappy about their lives.
You know what I mean?
And, like, we know this.
Where does, like, homophobia come from?
Where does, like, misogyny and sexism and all that come from?
It's people who are unhappy with themselves, and they see something in other people that threatens them.
You know what I mean?
And, by the way, like, LGBTQ people, it's like people who are being themselves.
That's what they hate.
It's not that they think that they're grooming children, Or that they're doing whatever.
They get fed those conspiracy theories, right?
It's deep down on a level that I don't even think these people are comfortable with, that those people over there are not so inhibited, and they're not so unhappy, and they're not so trapped in these awful, awful chains of things, that they have to punish them.
You know what I mean?
They have to go after them.
And that is, I think, part of the right-wing conservative philosophy, is punishing people almost out of a jealousy of the fact that they can live Well, I was thinking, like, what is the ideal?
What is the future 100 years from now, 200 years from now?
Like, you know, the sci-fi version is there are no sexes.
Everyone is sort of omni-sex, whatever that word is.
But like, even on a shorter term here, like, You know, Dan Savage, I think, had a great thread about this on Twitter talking about how these bars are like their churches.
The only place they're supposed to be able to feel safe.
They can go because nobody wants to see them.
You can't be seen.
You already told us that you don't want us out and about in the society.
So we have, this is where our place is.
And now they're destroying that, you know, one by one, year by year.
And the ideal, though, in theory, would be like we would have a bar for everybody, right?
And every walk of life would be there, having a drink, interacting, enjoying the music, whatever it is, right?
Now, picture that description for the huge subset that we're talking about of people in America.
Picture that.
Tell them, it's a beautiful bar, it's got a great wood paneling and all these cool drinks in the back, and really great music that you're going to love, and you're going to have lesbians and gay people and trans people just sitting at different tables with straight people and whatever, and black people and every other race.
I don't know, picture that.
I have a feeling that would be so triggering, too, in the way that people are being raised in this country.
That ideal will never exist if we can't do something radical.
No, I completely agree.
And that is, it's the damnedest thing, you know.
Before I sort of figured out who I was, before I got comfortable with myself and started working on myself, I was so mad at anybody that seemed like they were happier than me.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, anything that sort of made me uncomfortable, it made me uncomfortable because, like, it made me remember, like, I didn't have what I wanted or what I needed.
You know what I mean?
And then it was like, you're exactly right.
Like, you go into these places, and for anybody who isn't part of these communities or who is, like, you go into these places and they're so joyful.
They're just, you know, they're just Having a great time, and just sort of like, they have a community that like a lot of us don't have, right?
Because they have to.
Because they're pushed to the margins of society, and they have to rely on each other, even when some of their families aren't there for them.
It's terribly, terribly tragic, and unfortunately we're going to see more violence against them as the right-wing movement sort of grows.
Also, real fast, before we finish this show, we gotta talk about this.
Joe Biden turned 80.
The President of the United States is 80 years old.
80 is the new 70.
No, is that right?
Yeah, I mean, you could say whatever you want there, I think.
Or is it 70 is the new 80?
I don't know.
One of those phrases.
It's bringing forth a lot of questions about Joe Biden, what we're going to do going forward.
We're going to talk about this New York Times article for just a second here in a minute.
I'm troubled by it.
Are you?
I'm a little troubled by it.
I mean, listen, my dad's 85, plays tennis three times a week, he's sharper than I am.
You know, he remembers things that I've mentioned, like, weeks before that are, you know, like, due on my calendar.
He knows them.
So, I don't know, but I hear ya.
I mean, you know, at some point.
Listen, I know some 80-year-olds who could whip my ass.
I'll be honest, like, 80 is like the new 50 in a lot of ways, really.
It's not even just about, like, cognitive ability or something like that.
I kind of, for me, and we've touched on this a little bit, I just want a bridge to the future.
Yeah.
I just want something that gives me some sort of a direction forward.
And I do think, going back to the idea that there's a psychological, spiritual crisis in this country, a lot of these people, they're having a really hard time because they don't see a way forward.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, there's no sort of, like, future.
Like, history has ended with neoliberalism.
They don't necessarily have an idea where things are going.
I don't know.
Does that check out with you?
I mean, absolutely.
You know, they're obviously going to fall back, especially that generation.
They're going to fall back on things that are comfortable to them and what they remember in the past that they want to try and recreate.
And listen, my dad is the most wonderful man.
He is as liberal as you can find for an 85-year-old.
But I got to tell you, the struggle is real.
To not say things and not sort of have a thought process that borderlines on things that are unacceptable.
And it loves to be, we can help him, he'll quickly adjust, but there's a baseline there for a lot of people that age that struggle to have that progressive, and it's like little P progressive, ideology or inclusiveness in a way that, that's why you want people who are younger, who are better in touch with that, who can bridge more generations better.
I hear you.
Plus, you know, my dad's not the president, right?
That's a whole different thing.
It's playing tennis three times a week versus having to go to the White House every day.
And, you know, that ages you.
How do you ever compare Barack Obama from the first year even to like the fourth year?
The dude aged like 20 years in four years.
So that's the other issue there, so yeah.
What was it even saying?
Tell me, are they any good candidates for us to choose from?
Well, so the New York Times, I'm always fascinated by these, and we're always going to touch on them a little bit because it reveals so much about who the New York Times actually is, who they represent, and by the way, they ask their readers who are their presidents, you know, who can they possibly run.
You know, there's some interesting stuff in this.
I want to go ahead and point out, before we get into some of the answers, Nick, What we always see when they open up to, you know, they test people, they do these test groups, focus groups, or whatever, you always notice that people don't always know a lot about politics.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, they have, like, beginnings of an idea.
Like, they have these different categories.
This is one person, and I want to take this and I want to jump off of it.
This is a guy named Colin, who's in Missouri.
I'm a third-party voter, but have held my nose and voted with the Democrats since Trump's presidency.
But to be successful in the long term, they need to stop taking the non-white vote for granted and make further inroads in rural, non-metropolitan areas.
I agree with this.
Colin thinks Gretchen Whitmer.
And I got to tell you, I've been like keeping my ear to the ground lately.
Gretchen Whitmer, after winning re-election, is starting to emerge as, and again, I think Biden's going to run.
I do.
But I think Whitmer is beginning to be a little bit of a dark horse candidate and gaining like this is around the time you want to start gaining momentum going into a presidential election.
Not that there's going to be an opening.
Right.
And Gretchen Whitmer is not going to run against Joe Biden.
But it seems like a lot of the Democratic Party and a lot of voters are starting to coalesce around her.
Well, we might have to have something we've never before seen, which is a grassroots movement that gained steam that Biden can't overlook or can't ignore.
Because if that happens, and they do politically understand what is happening with their polls and stuff, what happens if they start doing the internal polling ahead of time and they start realizing that, shit, she's going to be polling a lot higher?
Obviously, what they should do is, hey, why don't you be my vice president instead of Kamala?
You know, there might be another train of thought which says maybe, maybe this is it.
They need to write, here's the train we've been looking for.
And I agree.
She's, she's, she's really, I don't know, survive's not the right word because that's whatever, but she's been able to, you know, navigate this very treacherous road in Michigan of all places to maintain her governorship.
So, yeah, I don't know.
I think it's interesting because remember when they're, somebody is choosing the order Right?
Of how they're publishing these opinions or these ideas, right, from different readers.
Well, and I want to go to the Republican section of these answers, because there's interesting stuff happening in this section.
I'll just go ahead and say this.
So, in a reminder, these are Republicans who read the New York Times, right?
This is a very specific group of people, okay?
And one of these answers is really, really interesting.
One person says Charlie Baker of Massachusetts.
That would never possibly happen.
Another person says Liz Cheney.
I'm going to read Thomas Larrison from Tampa, Florida.
I line with the Republican Party.
I'm happy with their openness to solving problems through the free market rather than through government programs.
Which, by the way, is not what the Republican Party is about, but good luck to you, Thomas.
And I would like to see them assert America's leadership role on the world stage rather than embracing increasingly isolationist policies.
Now, here's the thing.
I'm going to finish this paragraph.
Everybody listening to this podcast, I just want you to take a second.
Just maybe take a breath, maybe clear out your lungs for a second.
I want you to imagine who good old Thomas here is going to say, as a Republican, he wants to run.
Hillary Clinton is clear-eyed about her economic policies, experienced on the world stage, and is in the best position to capitalize on the social issues that are important to many voters.
Do you know what I say to that, Nick?
That's actually a classic Republican answer.
Hillary Clinton would absolutely be the presidential candidate of the classical Republican Party as compared to this party.
Well, what's also notable is how old this person is and compared to how old he sounds, right?
I know.
He's 28.
So that definitely has something to do with what he's talking about as well, I have to imagine.
I gotta say, that is like a really nuanced, actual answer.
You know what I mean?
And we've sort of touched on this in the past.
The best case scenario for the United States of America at this moment is Hillary Clinton running for president on the Republican platform.
That's the best case scenario!
Wow.
Yeah.
And make no mistake about it, she was the most qualified candidate ever to run for presidency.
You can make that argument.
And then, real fast, Rick Peterson over on the Republican side.
Are you ready for this?
I'm a registered Republican, but I'm really more of an independent or libertarian, which is incredible.
I want smaller, less obtrusive government.
We'll get back to that in a second, which is something neither major party will ever deliver.
I want someone younger than Trump or Biden and a good selection of people to choose from who will focus on crime, immigration, and the economy.
Now, here's the thing.
This is going to get bumpy, so be ready.
I would like to hear from a variety of candidates.
Among the Republicans, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Mike Pompeo, or Mike Pence.
First of all, losers.
Losers.
Mike Pompeo and Mike Pence won't even sniff the presidency.
Also, you're all for small government, and you think Ron used the state of Florida as a weapon to Santas?
Is that the first person on your list?
This is a person who doesn't understand anything, correct?
Yeah, but the guy's really young, right?
He's not, he's 64, and here are his Democrats, Nick.
Among the Democrats, Gretchen Whitmer, Gavin Newsom, and Amy Klobuchar.
Nick, this person is open to voting for Ron DeSantis or Gavin Newsom.
I think maybe he just wanted his name in the paper.
I don't know.
What the shit is happening here?
Like, where are you?
How are you getting your news?
Like, you're reading the New York Times, right?
But not closely?
Like, how do you create this worldview?
Do you have any thoughts on this?
I mean, there are people that pride themselves on watching, like, you know, Fox News and MSNBC or New York Times.
There's not a lot of it, but I've heard from people who say that.
So, you know, but I'm telling you, I think it's my first reason.
I mean, I'm just absolutely stunned.
Rick, if you're out there, call in.
You know what?
That's an open invitation.
Rick can come on the show.
Speaking of going out in the wild and seeing people in their natural habitat, I need information, Rick.
I need to understand what you're reading or not reading.
Imagine in your head.
DeSantis and Newsom are at war with each other.
Yeah.
You could put them in a cage match and put it on pay-per-view.
No thanks.
You like that stuff, right?
You like the fights and the, right?
I don't know.
The fights and the things.
The wrestling and whatever.
These things are always so incredible that it's like The amount of sheer ignorance that is shown.
And it's every time.
It's every test group.
It's every polling or something like that.
But I'll tell you where we're not going to get that, Nick.
We're not going to get that from our listeners, because our listeners know what they're talking about.
They pay attention, all that stuff, which is why we're again inviting you to send in your questions for this week's Weekender edition, the Thanksgiving edition.
of the McCraig Podcast.
We will send out the call over on the Patreon.
We'll send out the messages, all that.
If you're not signed up for the Patreon already, what are you, what are they doing, Nick?
They're not doing it right.
You're doing it wrong.
That's all I can say.
There's a good way to do it, a right way to do it, and you're doing it not that.
Exactly.
So come on over, patreon.com slash mccraigpodcast.
You'll get the Weekender Edition.
You'll get to hang out with the community who are some of the best people on the face of this earth.
Meanwhile, everybody, we hope you have a fantastic Thanksgiving.
Enjoy yourselves.
Tell us your stories.
What are you eating?
What are you doing?
Yeah, have a good time.
If you need us before then, you can find Nick at Can You Hear Me?
SMH.
You can find me, J.Y.
Sexton.
Stay safe, everyone.
▲
Export Selection