Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman break down all the components to why there is a small, but powerful, backlash against Kevin McCarthy's ascendancy to Speaker of the House. They also discuss Biden's job effectiveness thus far, before connecting some dots between disgraced former president of Brasil Jair Bolsanaro, exiled in Florida at the moment, and Donald Trump.
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I looked at 2022, I look at it as a period of immense change, moments of hope, a groundswell of something good.
I'm optimistic about 2023.
I'm just putting that out there.
I'm optimistic.
That I am only open for things to go well and not at all have any problems this year.
Utopian year.
Hey, sign me up and knowing that it probably won't happen that way, but if it's entertaining, then I can accept it.
I love it.
I love all of it.
This is fantastic.
Well, we are here with the very first episode of the MuttGregg Podcast in 2023.
Thank you again, everybody, for your support.
You're the absolute best.
You keep this show, again, ad-free, editorially independent, on the tracks.
Uh, all you have to do to support the show, go over to patreon.com slash my Craig podcast, support the show, get additional episodes on Fridays.
Uh, we need your help.
We, we need to keep growing.
So there's that.
Uh, we got a stack show.
We got, uh, we got Joe Biden's third year in office.
We've got, uh, bombs in Brazil with Bolsonaro taking off and staying in.
Let me check my notes.
The home of a mixed martial arts fighter, and to begin with, Nick, we are just a day away from the inauguration of the 118th Congress.
Have you caught the fever?
Are you excited?
Oh, I got to tell you, tomorrow is going to be exciting.
For the first time in like, oh, 100 years, we're going to have the real competition for some special seat that they use in Congress with a special little toy you get when you get to sit in that seat.
It's very exciting stuff.
We got to talk about the race for the Speaker of the House, which I know this is going to shock everybody, but the Republican Party, disarray in the House, Nick!
Disarray.
And it couldn't happen to a nicer fellow.
Kevin McCarthy, who I think basically has believed he was going to be Speaker of the House for the last 10 years, has done everything he could.
He has betrayed one principle after another to get to this point.
But, Nick, it's not turning out so easy.
I'll just say that.
Well, the last time he didn't make it and Paul Ryan slid in there, which it's like, I didn't slide in there.
I earned that spot.
But he, whatever he did, you know, Kevin McCarthy had a weird, like, speaking pattern issue for a while there.
Remember, there was like a, was it a Twilight Zone episode where people, like, a guy lost his vocabulary and would say, like, a totally different word from what he meant.
And anyway, that was what Kevin McCarthy used to do.
And they were like, you got to sit this one out, buddy.
But I love it.
I actually, did you, have you spent any time to figure out exactly why these Freedom Caucus people are so opposed?
And by the way, Freedom Caucus and Matt Gaetz, a nice witch's brew.
Have you figured out why they really can't stand Kevin McCarthy?
Oh, there's a lot going on there.
We got to do this because I spent some time and it ain't easy to parse all this what's going on out here.
Well, so, to go ahead and get people up to speed right now, Kevin McCarthy is, depending upon who you're talking to, is either 5 to 14 votes short of the necessary tally to become the next Speaker of the House.
There is a group of congressmen who now within the Republican ranks are starting to be called the numbskulls, which is a fantastic name.
And it's a murderer's romance.
It's Andy Biggs from Arizona who has already put forth his name to be Speaker of the House.
That's not going to happen.
He is an absolute creep.
Speaking of creeps, Matt Gaetz is absolutely in the mix and all of this.
He's the one who is pushing a lot of this.
You got South Carolina.
You got Matt Rosenthal on Montana.
You got Bob Goode.
All of these people are sitting there blocking Kevin McCarthy from becoming Speaker of the House.
We'll talk a little bit about the motivation in just a second, but McCarthy's bid is already snakebit.
He's an absolute loser.
He always has been.
Um, even if he somehow or another manages to clear this hurdle, Nick, he is going to be hamstrung from the very beginning.
We'll talk about some of the concessions he's already made.
The new rules out of the Congress are absolutely bullshit insane.
Uh, it's, it's an absolute mess.
This is still, and I think you and I and our listeners all know this, this is one of the worst jobs available in Washington DC.
Yes.
Is it third, like in line for power?
Absolutely.
But being the Republican speaker of the house is just an absolute poison pill.
Well, especially because, yeah, with this House and having the Democrats controlling the Senate, there isn't a lot you're going to be able to do if you dreamed of, you know, actually legislating and doing the job you're supposed to do when you get to Washington.
Obviously, these guys don't think that that's their job anymore, right?
They're there to just obstruct and to cause all sorts of havoc with these ridiculous investigations.
So that's going to be the real interesting question is, You know, we've seen when the investigations were on the other side that the Republicans would just ignore subpoenas.
So we get to find out whether or not Democrats are going to do the same thing and they continue this gridlock and this partisan issues.
I suppose you can argue that the Democrats are going to need to honor the subpoenas and go through the circus just to maintain some upper hand, whatever they might want to call that.
But that will be one thing I'm looking at for sure.
So McCarthy, his bid is in trouble in part because he has been one of the people to straddle the line between the old neoliberal Republican sort of base and idea, and also the MAGA world.
He's not seen as ideologically pure enough for these people.
And on top of that, I think a lot of them blame McCarthy for them not picking up more seats in the House.
One of the things that you're seeing, and my God, Nick, I do this so you don't have to and so our listeners don't have to.
I've been reading so many of the statements, so many of the white papers, all of that coming out of these just absolute toxic circles within the GOP.
The basic idea at this point is that the Republican Party, in some circles, believes that it has to change itself completely.
And so basically that is either going to be like some sort of movement more towards neoliberalism or to go ahead with the national conservatism that we've been covering now for years.
McCarthy is seen as, again, straddling the line between the two, which is therefore unacceptable.
The Freedom Caucus, the people blocking this thing, the National Conservative Wings, the absolute insane, most batshit Republicans, they see McCarthy as being a completely unacceptable pick.
They see him as being more of the same, that nothing could possibly come from that that would be any good.
And quite frankly, from a Republican standpoint, he is an awful choice for Speaker of the House.
The problem in all of this, though, is there's nobody better.
It is absolutely just a murderer's row of idiots within the GOP congressional wing.
It is such a mess.
I can't even think of a possible substitute.
That's how bad this bench is.
I mean, you know, you could probably say something like Steve Scalise, you know, could maybe be.
I don't think he wants to do that, you know.
And here's what's weird is they actually have Marjorie Taylor Greene is supporting Kevin McCarthy.
Lord knows what he promised her, but I'm sure he said you're going to have the seat on the Judiciary Committee, some of the, one of the, whatever the prestigious, most prestigious committee is out there.
I'm sure she's going to get the seat there, which is going to be ridiculous.
But to have Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene on opposite sides of something is very interesting because remember, They had a nice little two-person tour across the country last year to celebrate their unity.
So I find it fascinating that if you can have those two people on opposite sides of an issue, you really have a problem here.
And that's just going to be indicative of what's going to happen for the next two years, which in theory will just continue to hurt the GOP.
And that's, I guess, the hope out of all this.
The dysfunction within the GOP right now is palpable.
It's really something.
The Freedom Caucus, and, you know, we talked about this a while back.
These people, like, they'll go out linked arm and arm, and then immediately, like, they'll go in front of a camera and they'll be like, I saw Lauren Boebert in the forest with the devil.
You know, like, I mean, they will turn on each other very, very quickly.
There is no loyalty among these thieves.
And you're exactly right.
I have to imagine the Marjorie Taylor Greene Basically was promised any committee assignment that she wanted.
And for the record, I think for McCarthy and the Republican Party, whatever they give her is a win.
Because as we've talked about, it's not like they're there to legislate.
It's not like they're there to actually help do anything.
It's simply to step in the way of any sort of progress, any strengthening of the federal government and to poke their finger in the chest of liberals.
I mean, like one of the things that McCarthy has done in terms of trying to cement the speakership.
I don't know if you had a chance to look at this rules package that just got released.
It is Off the wall, man.
And he's already, to go ahead and talk about the inside baseball here, he already made a rule that five members of the House can call for the removal of the Speaker of the House.
It only takes five.
I don't know if everyone was paying attention a second ago.
Those are five people who are already opposing him as Speaker.
If he gets put in, it would be an almost immediate opportunity for them to remove him.
But if you go down the other list, Nick, this is really, really bad.
I'm going to read directly from the rules package.
Between the Biden administration's disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal, unacceptable online censorship of political opponents, fallout from the border crisis Democrats created and continue to ignore, spike in crime nationwide, and several other alarming failures committed by the federal government, the American people deserve answers.
To ensure effective oversight, the proposed rules will require House committees to establish oversight plans detailing how they will hold the Biden administration accountable, establish the select subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government to investigate the full extent of the Biden administration's assault on the constitutional rights of American citizens, restore the Holman rule allowing amendments to reduce the salary of specific federal employees or target a specific program.
Nick, it's literally a declaration of war against the sitting administration.
Like, it is really, really aggressive, and it has absolutely no desire whatsoever, again, to make anybody's life better.
Well, they know they're not going to get anything done legislatively, right?
So, like, any of these calls they have that demand that relate to laws specifically are just ridiculous because, A, it'll never matter, and then, B, they don't do that shit anyway when they're in power.
When they have the entire government at their hands, they won't do any legislating.
You know, the one that caught my eye in these rules, though, is the last one at the very bottom, which is, quote, ensure that nothing prevents members from using gender-specific language in committee or on the House floor.
And so this is what we're talking about here.
This is what they're going to center their two years on is like a culture war against, you know, trans people and then the notion of using pronouns.
Because again, this is such a nothing thing where they had asked for the new rules of Pelosi's last, you know, two year stint.
To use in very specific places and actually one place to use a certain language where they don't have to have the clause will define relative as a parent or a child, a sibling, a parent, sibling, just to make it a little bit more inclusive, everybody.
And that was so triggering that they now want another law, which, by the way, as far as I could tell, Kevin McCarthy is on board with all these things, right?
Yes.
No, this was McCarthy's olive branch to these holdouts.
He actually won over probably about eight members of the Republican Party to come over and support him.
And it's not just that, Nick.
It's also repealing the rule that members have to wear masks.
You know, it's also establishing this new commission called the Committee for Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party.
Like, we're literally talking about old Red Scare ideas.
That's what this is.
You brought up, like, the pronouns.
We're talking about all of this stuff which is just stunt behavior.
It's creating these, basically, these witch hunts, for lack of a better term.
I'm sorry that Trump has poisoned that term, but it's bringing out the idea that the House of Representatives is simply there to upset people, that it's simply there to stoke culture wars, to try and find weaknesses within the administration, to try and bring it down from at the federal level, while ensuring that the federal government literally does nothing.
I mean, I have to tell you, if you're going to sell your soul for a political position, number one, why would you want this job?
Why in the world would you want to be the cat wrangler for the Republican House of Representatives?
Two, you're not doing anything.
It's not like by the time you retire, at least Paul Ryan went to sleep at night thinking, oh my God, me and Ayn Rand, we were on the same page.
I made sure that kids weren't going to get fed at their school programs.
Like, what is it that McCarthy is doing any of this for outside of scoring political and cultural points?
That's it.
There's nothing else to it.
Yeah, I mean, unless it's money.
He's making money somewhere, or he will eventually out of this, but I don't know.
He's been doing this for a long, long time.
At some point, when do you stop and get all that money you've been, you know, billing up towards with all your connections and whatnot?
I mean, even the first thing on here is, you know, they want to require House committees to establish oversight plans.
Detailing how they'll hold the Biden administration accountable.
So it's like we will have to meet to create a study group that then will do some research into a bullet-pointed list that, you know, two years from now we'll be able to say, look what we created with all the taxpayer money.
They also want to get rid of the creation of house staff labor unions.
So, uh, but the reason isn't, you know, I mean, listen, we know they can't stay in unions, but we can imagine how much the house staff has to work and how brutal that is and how nice it is to have a union that can actually advocate for them.
And so they're not just having to work 24 hours a day, but their reasoning is to get rid of those unions so that congressional staff I don't understand how having a union that protects the amount of hours they have to work somehow makes them unaccountable to the elected officials that they serve, of which they're not even the ones who are elected directly anyway.
It's the staff that works in the House.
So this is just such propaganda of ridiculous proportions.
I don't even know what to make of it.
And the fact that he's like, sure, we'll do all these things.
Please vote for me is even worse.
No, it's awful.
It's absolutely awful.
And it is, to be honest with you, for anybody who has paid any amount of attention to Kevin McCarthy and his political career, this is shocking.
He's one of the most shameless politicians in Washington, D.C.
The only thing about it is when you compare him to someone like Mitch McConnell.
Like, Mitch McConnell, when he retires eventually, is going to have, and believe me, it's going to be one of the most destructive legacies, but one of the most consequential legacies.
You know what I mean?
He is sold out for an unbelievable amount of money and power.
I mean, Mitch McConnell's great-grandchildren will be benefiting from the wealth that he has accrued by doing the business of the wealth class.
Kevin McCarthy is just... It's like this replacement-level politician who is doing all of this to troll and to hurt.
And I gotta tell you, I'm looking at this.
I think he's going to get the job.
I think there's going to be a backroom deal.
I have to imagine that probably Biggs is screwed because he put his name up for the leadership position.
Matt Gaetz has been the person who's been moving all of the pieces around.
Gaetz has nothing else going on.
Gates is going to absolutely sell this thing out for some kind of a project or some sort of a job on a committee, you name it.
There'll be something that Gates will get out of this.
But what's it worth?
I mean, for real.
Like, really, at some point or another, you gotta look in the mirror and wonder what your soul is worth.
And look at McConnell.
McConnell did all this horrible shit for all these years, and he is going to be thrown on the heap of anonymity after he's done.
From the GOP!
They're the ones who can't stand him now.
And I have to imagine that part of that is related to his criticism of Trump, and his little ways he's been doing it, and then certainly kind of getting in the way of some of the stuff that Trump wanted to do.
McCarthy had the speech after January 6th condemning Trump and then was over at Mar-a-Lago kissing his ring a week later, whatever that was, realizing how dumb that was of him to do.
He thought, hey, maybe this is our chance to get rid of Trump.
I'll be able to get out ahead of this.
But that stance that he took right after January 6th, ultimately, is what's fueling a lot of this hatred towards him.
Because otherwise, he doesn't deserve, I got to tell you, if I was a Republican who believed and had the fundamental belief system that they have, there would be no choice.
This guy, of course, would be the speaker.
It wouldn't even be a decision to have to make.
So I have to imagine that it's such a fundamental hatred of him.
And it has to be rooted in that initial stance he had against Trump earlier on before in January 6th.
Yeah.
And the thing about McCarthy is, honestly, I would be shocked if somebody doesn't pin his gloves to his coat every day so he doesn't lose them.
I mean, it is, it's really incredible how bad his instincts have been.
He has been on every side of every issue, on every side of every rift.
He's always the, he's always, his timing is awful.
The way that he worked with MAGA the entire time, like at times he was a conspirator, at times he was a critic, and he just moved from one place to another.
I mean, he's a schmuck, is what it is, and he always has been.
But to be honest, again, the Republican Speaker of the House at this point has to be a schmuck.
Like, there's absolutely no reason to do it.
There's nothing that's going to emerge from it.
The only thing that we're going to watch is, and we've been on this for a while, the Republican House shows you where the Republican Party is heading.
They're always a couple of steps ahead of everybody else.
That's why they're so dysfunctional.
They're so crazy.
The crack-up that's going to take place there, and I gotta tell you, I think he'll probably get the speakership, and at some point or another, probably within, I would give him six months.
I would!
I can't imagine that this thing is going to hold out and keep going down the right path.
He has no ability to keep order, no ability to keep discipline whatsoever.
We are going to watch the GOP basically start to fracture within the House, underneath inept leadership, and it is going to be, it's going to be ugly.
It's going to be the ugliest show in Washington, D.C.
I think a lot of it will have to do with him getting it will be, you know, you can you can vote present.
And by voting present, it lowers the number that you need of a majority to get in to get the speakership.
So I suspect that I know a few of those of the 14 that were against him had also said clearly they will not vote present.
But he only needs a few more of those people who haven't said that explicitly to then suddenly lower the threshold of 218 a little bit lower.
And that might sneak him in because someone's like, I'm not voting for you, but I'll just do present.
And then I'll keep me, you know, somehow in my adult brain, that will be, you know, my stand against you.
And then, you know, right.
If they have their say and you get five or six of those guys in six months, they can get him out then.
And then, yeah, then here comes Biggs or somebody to save the day.
I don't know.
Or they bring Trump in and have him be the speaker.
How about that?
But the thing is, Trump doesn't want to do the job.
I mean, like literally.
I mean, Trump would probably do it if it just if he never had to show up.
I mean, the problem is like having to actually do the work of even like standing in the halls of Congress.
By the way, hats off, Kevin McCarthy, on your new rules of creating a new three fifth super majority that has to has to be there in order to raise taxes on anybody.
Good work, bud.
Well done.
Best of luck to you.
On that note, in 2023, one of the things that people are keeping an eye on is the third year of Joe Biden's term.
First term?
I don't know.
Initial term?
Whatever we want to call it.
Already, the administration is starting to go with stories that they're going with the press that this is a brand new Biden administration, Nick.
It's a brand new ballgame.
He comes into 2023 re-energized with brand new power.
Politico has this slough piece that was absolutely made to order by the PR department, communications department within the Biden administration.
They call him politically stronger, and then Nick immediately lists every challenge that he is going to have, talking about compromise with the Republicans.
I don't know, man.
Lucy has the football.
I think we're going to get to kick it this time.
Um, you know, and I get it, because they're getting a certain access.
We're going to let you have some, you know, deep cover, you know, source materials to report on.
Put that first, and then you can talk about anything else that you might not, you know, be as positive for Biden.
But, you know, he did well.
He's done well.
He's gotten some things done.
And by the way, part of the reason why the Republicans are also mad at just the general People in charge of the GOP is because some of those guys, you know, sided with the Democrats or like did a deal to get some of these bills done.
Infrastructure, the omnibus, there's some things they did and avoid the government shutdown.
Remember, most of those GOP people live to simply obstruct and never come to a deal for anything.
So he was able to do that.
It kind of actually made me think about this for a second.
You know, what if he had just run in 2012?
I'm sorry, 2012?
No, after Obama, 2016.
Sorry.
What if he had just run in 2016?
You know, I suspect there was an interesting going, and you probably know better than me at that moment, there was a decision to be made, right?
Are we going to sort of step aside and let Hillary take another shot at it?
Or, you know, the incumbent vice president can continue doing what we're doing here.
You know, a lot of things would probably be a lot different now.
Yeah, I think the general consensus is that he probably would have beat Donald Trump in 2016.
I mean, there were a couple things holding him back.
Of course, Bo had died.
The other thing that we don't like to talk about very much is that Barack Obama did not want him to run for president.
Barack Obama, like, put in his endorsement for Hillary Clinton almost immediately, as soon as the field started opening up.
Yeah, he did.
Yeah, Obama basically was just like, this is Hillary's race to win, and threw his weight behind it.
I think Biden, again, possibly could have won in 2016.
The question then, though, is how much would be different at this point?
What would a 2016-2020 Biden presidency look like?
And the question is whether or not Donald Trump would have just been an expression of where the market and where everything was going.
We got to talk about a larger story here in a second, of course, with de-globalization.
The question there is, like, could it have been more graceful?
Could we have possibly moved some money from, I don't know, grifts like a border fence?
You know, could we have possibly started to, like, maybe put Putin more in his place so we could have avoided Ukraine?
I'm not sure.
But now we're sitting here looking at 23.
Biden doesn't have a lot of room to do very much.
There are a couple of things that can be done, and we'll talk about what those might possibly be, but also this story, this politico story that is out there and the accompanying sort of like, you know, hooray from the Biden administration.
I got to tell you, Nick, this goes back to the initial inauguration of Biden.
Make small promises and over deliver.
You know what I mean?
Stop going out there and being like, it's a brand new day.
Everything's going to be great.
Like you're going into a major, major fight.
You have opportunities, but don't go out there to your own horror yet.
That's a really great point.
I do think that there is a notion that, you know, playing out the clock could be a good thing for him.
They got some stuff done.
Don't fumble it, right?
Run the clock out and feel free to just blame the Republicans for all the gridlock, which would be a legitimate, you know, blame.
And then, you know, you can ride into this into 2024.
Hopefully, you know, if inflation isn't as much of an issue then, then yeah, he wins going away.
I imagine, you know, The unemployment will continue to be low and people will have been making a little bit more money and that would be obviously the big thing for an incumbent president.
You notice though, now that the elections are over and all this stuff is going to happen, they're going to start the new Congress.
Do you hear any of the GOP people talking about the inflation or government spending?
Like really?
Or anything that they're going to do to rein that in?
I don't think I've heard anything like that.
from that.
You know, I keep laughing about this.
It's like, you'll go out and you'll get your, you'll fill up your car.
Right.
And you'll go out and like, you'll, you'll go up to one of these gas tanks.
And it's got that Biden.
I did that sticker pointing to the fuel price.
And it's like two 60 a gallon.
And you're like, Oh wait, Biden made, you know, low gas prices.
Oh, Okay, great.
No, I mean, inflation is still a thing that was never a thing.
It was corporate greed from the very, very beginning.
It was the only thing the Republicans really offered outside of culture war issue bullshit.
And now it's just like, They basically are all settling in for almost like, uh, uh, you know, just sort of a, a, a thaw a little bit.
You know what I mean?
It's all just going to be like, ah, we're just going to sit around in 2023 and see what happens.
And, you know, almost like trench warfare.
And meanwhile, I mean, I want to talk about what is possible during this this year for Biden.
He's already had a big win.
I mean, some of the numbers that are coming out right now for the investment in chips, semiconductor chips in the United States, everybody needs to remember he got $11 billion for basically reindustrialization within the United States to start making semiconductor chips That would have been made in China.
The numbers coming out on this thing are incredible.
Nick, 35 companies have pledged over $200 billion in investment in manufacturing these chips.
We're talking about all kinds of places.
We're talking about places that have been hit hard in deindustrialization, a lot of Rust Belt cities, possibly 90,000 new employees.
That's a lot of people.
I mean, it doesn't matter, you know, what party you're a part of.
They're not talking about this.
Biden isn't talking about this.
The Democratic Party's not talking about this.
This, along with going after green energy, if the Democratic Party wasn't so terrified to say green energy, like to start actually investing in this in the United States, would be a game changer.
And they're just absolutely terrified to have discussions about it.
Right.
And if you have, like, deep discussions with the GOP, deep down, if you get into, you know, past the initial wall, they'll actually acknowledge as well that there's a lot of money to be made in green energy.
Like, a whole economy could be created that way.
What's interesting about the gas prices is a couple things.
One, you know, Biden has released, I think, more of our national reserves than Trump ever did.
To combat the price of gas, but here's the thing people forget is you don't release, you know, the strategic oil reserves on like a Monday and then by like by Wednesday, the prices go down.
That's not how that whole supply chain works of gas.
So in theory, a lot of what they did now will actually drive the prices down, you know, in the next six months or seven months.
So 2023 ultimately might benefit from what he had been doing this year in terms of the gas prices.
But I think the issue with especially with inflation is that Everybody's got a credit card debt now.
You just give a credit card and you don't even maybe necessarily notice like what the expenses you just say, okay, I will pay for it later.
The I looked it up just now, you know, most Americans have some version of credit card debt and the average across the years for us families is over six thousand dollars.
So if you have to spend another, you know, $15 when you're filling up your tank, it doesn't really gonna affect you that much because you realize you already have thousands upon thousands of dollars of debt as it is.
And then you look at how the country itself is run that way on a huge debt.
So a lot of the screaming, yelling, banging on the table by the GOP over the debt and the spending, I think at this point in 2023, it's just noise that people ignore.
Yeah, it is, and I'll tell you, I think there's even room there to start chipping away at some of these people.
I think if you wanted to, and the Democratic Party, I keep telling them that this is the route that they have to go on, start investing in places like, you're starting to get places in Ohio.
Well, Ohio was a lost state, you know?
Like, go in there and actually talk about this stuff.
Give money, you know, somebody like a J.D.
Vance, unfortunately with national conservatism, he wants reindustrialization.
And reindustrialization is both the direction of where the left wants to go, or what remains of the left, and also where the right wants to go.
The arguments can be had about what happens when you invest and where it goes.
But go ahead and throw it in there.
Go into places that are considered Republican strongholds, red states, whatever.
You could start getting some votes, particularly in the Senate, that will go along with you because you're investing in those places.
There's also another problem with this, Nick, which is the problem in manufacturing in the United States, these semiconductor chips, you need a lot of people with specialized knowledge and specialized training.
So all of a sudden, then we can start having discussions about, oh, we need to start pumping some money into education.
We need to go ahead and start working some cultural issues, some educational issues, some investment issues.
You can start to turn this thing around.
I think that a lot of what we're looking at right now and a lot of what we've been covering, I've talked about the rolling back of globalization.
Right.
The idea that you can no longer depend on these old supply chains and these old, old, old places.
You know, I was reading these reports that are talking about moving production from China to Mexico.
It's this new phenomenon, Nick, that they're calling nearshoring, which, you know, anybody who's alive in the 1990s is really aware of what it's like to move your industry to Mexico.
Yeah, exactly.
And one of the things, I wanted to share this.
This is a quote that was making the circles that has made me laugh, Nick.
This is from this guy named Michael Burns, who is a partner at Murray Hill Group, which is like one of these shadowy firms that, you know, everybody makes a billion dollars.
You have no idea who they are or what they do.
He's talking about this moving back of globalization, like this de-globalization.
He says, it's not de-globalization.
It's the next stage of globalization that is focused on regional networks, which made me think a lot about one of my favorite little quotes from Spinal Tap.
You mean the popularity of the group is waning?
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
No, no, not at all.
I just think that their appeal is becoming more selective.
Yeah, the appeal is becoming more selective.
Nick, it's literally a situation where even the people who are making billions of dollars of this don't want to admit what's going on.
The Democratic Party doesn't want to admit what's going on.
The Republicans are the only people who are actually talking about deglobalization.
Like, jump on the train!
Have some wins!
Put some W's up on the board!
Get some old counties!
Get some old states back in your column!
Like, make, you know, stomp your feet a little bit on this stuff.
Well, you know, it's funny when I hear that, all I think about now is Americans working in chip factories, becoming abused and being overworked.
And guess what?
They need to form a union, right?
So I almost feel like we're going to go through that whole industrial revolution again.
And, you know, without having learned what we learned from the first time and how workers dying and being treated like, you know, slaves is not optimal and shouldn't be the way things are run.
So I worry about that kind of thing because one of the reasons why I worry is because we know that the chip makers in China, for instance, are doing that and the people are working under heinous conditions across a variety of different industries there.
And so that's not going to fly in America and it shouldn't fly in America.
And there is a way to run these companies profitably.
While you also take care of the workers, and that's the issue we've been seeing now out of the pandemic, why we can't hire Americans to do even more jobs now in the service industries, but particularly because of that.
So I wonder how those two worlds are going to collide and ultimately benefit everybody.
Well, it needs to be a thing where you go out and you say, do you want to talk about Hunter Biden's laptop or do you want jobs in your community?
Which the GOP house is a perfect foil for this.
Pick out like the lead.
You got your McCarthy's, you know, you've got your dumb ass Matt Gaetz, whatever.
And it's just like Try and give their constituents jobs and investment and say, hey, you want to talk about like kitty litter in elementary schools or do you want to go to work?
Do you want a decent paying job?
And like I always say, if you give people a reason to believe in things like climate change and the need for alternative energy, if you give them a job, they'll believe in it.
They will absolutely get on board, but you can't sit back and play defense against these guys.
Because they will make you explain everything in your life.
Every committee, including the Select Committee on Competition with the Communist Party of China, including the Committee to Investigate the Weaponization of the Federal Government.
These are all time and money-wasting witch hunts, which are just for political purposes, that the only people who are going to care are Fox News viewers, who, by the way, probably aren't working.
They're all probably past the age of working anyway.
They're just getting all amped up about where the world is going.
It needs to be an aggressive shifting of things, and I gotta tell you, I don't care what Michael Burns says about it's not deglobalization.
It's deglobalization!
There's actually a window opening here to actually start changing some things, but you have to start taking that opportunity.
We have to take a left turn here for a second because I don't know if you noticed on Twitter earlier, a couple days ago, a guy was releasing predictions from 1923 of what 2023 would be like.
I don't know if you saw this, but the first thing that they said was that in 2023, 100 years in the past, they thought there would only be the workday would be four hours long.
And I found that fascinating because back then the average workday was probably like 12, 14, 16 hours long.
And the kids would be working 12 hours a day back then.
Right.
And the conditions were absolutely brutal.
So, you know, it's funny, though, because, like, again, the advocation of bringing back jobs and bringing back a whole industry to American shores is important and, you know, in an anti-globalist way, however you want to say it, although, again, Mexico, United States, probably at one point will just be one land, one thing, you know what I mean?
Like, we'll all just sort of be the same thing, you know?
It's, you know, I'm talking about like a hundred years from now, 200 years from now, you never know.
Nonetheless, that's how brutal we haven't really even adjusted.
There's some really fascinating things in those predictions that actually come true, but that one just really jumps out at me because they knew how hard it was, and they were not that What is it, nine-hour workdays?
They were halfway there, but still, the idea that how hard people had to work.
And then out of that thread, you can see a lot of other people in that analyzing how really wealthy people back then didn't work at all.
They would just go into the meadow and write poetry and whatever and watch horses run by.
And, you know, just simply assume that all the other people who were poor just would work for them, right?
And that they needed to work and they should work.
And we can't let them have any days off because then they would get some taste of this.
So that mindset is still around.
So, wait, when you picture the Gilded Age, you're just picturing people sitting around writing poetry while horses run by?
Yeah, that's basically what I'm thinking.
You know, I think that's pretty accurate.
I think you can put that in a history book because it really is the division of labor, or I guess it would be the division of labor and non-labor.
It is a legitimate idea that there is a natural hierarchy, a natural elite that don't, they shouldn't work.
Like labor is below them and everybody else should labor in order to keep them in luxuries and in comfort.
And in all of this, I gotta tell you, you either start to push back against that and you start spreading a little bit of wealth and a little bit of security around, or things are gonna get a whole lot worse.
And they're gonna make people go into the factories, but they're not gonna get paid for it.
You know what I mean?
They're either gonna shove like an underclass in there at the butt of a rifle, or they're going to go ahead and create a fascistic movement that is going to sanctify the suffering of going into those factories.
And they're working on all of that.
The problem here, and this is the thing, I keep talking to Democratic operatives.
I keep talking to Democratic strategists.
And Nick, we do a podcast.
We've been doing this podcast now for a few years.
This is something we do as a means of trying to get information out there.
It's our jobs.
But it's also not like our main job, right?
Like, it's partly my main job, but these people, these are the people who should be paying attention to the currents of this.
They should know what's happening in those circles, what's happening with that ideology.
They don't have it.
They don't know it.
They literally have been sort of bought off by the system to believe, like this Michael Burns guy, oh, things aren't changing!
Everything's fine!
Nothing could possibly ever change!
If you're talking about things actually changing, you just don't understand what's going on.
But they are not up to date on this.
And if you're not up to date on what's happening across the aisle or what's happening with these ideologues, you are going to miss everything.
There's a reason why, if you're a sports team, You scout what the other team does.
You want to know what you're up against.
You want to know where the opportunities are going to be.
It just so happens that these people who are particularly within these circles, they're so inundated in their circles and they're so focused on Yeah, I hear you.
playing this consistent game that they're not really paying attention to the fact that the other side is changing and the other side is serious now.
They're not just playing the same games.
They're actually focusing on changing the world in a very specific way.
Yeah, I hear you.
And it's always been the downfall of a lot of different, you know, political entities in theory.
And by the way, this reminds me of when you were talking about what happens if Biden or what would have happened to Biden had run instead of Hillary, you know, it looked like it was the death of the GOP anyway.
Right.
They had been faltering for a few years.
It would have been, you know, another Democratic president in the White House for four more years, probably eight more years.
It really felt like that was going to be the death of the of the party.
Now, what?
We're probably still looking at that, right?
The zombie version has, you know, had a couple more breaths in it before it's going to completely topple over.
This next two years could very well be that whole, that thing, and it's all rooted in what you just described.
Yeah, and we also, real fast to end this episode, we have to go somewhere where, speaking of the end of political projects, Jair Bolsonaro, he bolted out of Brazil, everybody!
He did not stick around for the inauguration of Luiz Inácio da Silva, or Lula.
I know that's shocking, isn't it crazy, the idea that a president who lost an election would just leave the country?
Uh, he's fled to Orlando, Florida, which is where I would go if I was a dispatch dictatorial president from Brazil.
Uh, he's hanging out in the house of an MMA fighter, which is fantastic.
Um, but we do have to talk about a little bit about what's been going on in Brazil, because again, it is a weird mirror and also vision of, of where we've been and where we're going, but real, real fast, Nick, I gotta tell you, I've been thinking about this a lot.
A deposed president leaving the country in exile?
That is like some real dictator stuff, isn't it?
I mean, that is... I didn't expect that.
Really?
Yeah, I'm trying to remember now.
There's been a history of that happening across the world here, where the guy had to get... Well, we saw it in Ukraine, where the guy who got kicked out and had to run to Russia because he was not welcome and would have been, you know, killed.
Yes, it's like the sports analogy is, where are you going to go now after you win the championship?
You go to Disney World, right?
So it's close.
But you know it's not going to be long until he makes his way a little farther east over to Mar-a-Lago.
I'm sure we're going to have the picture of him and Trump having dinner on the patio over chocolate cake.
So that's the next thing there.
So, you know, it isn't surprising.
I thought it was kind of weird to see him walking around in this community of Brazilians.
I guess a lot of Brazilians do live in Orlando, which is another reason why he was there.
And by the way, we shouldn't ignore that there is a huge faction of people in the country now who are waiting for him to come back, who have been convinced that they're going to overturn this election any day now.
Yeah.
And I got to tell you, uh, speaking of Trump, like I, I, I would not be shocked at this point.
If at some point we, we record an episode, which is talking about Trump having left the United States of America, you know, having fled legal and political repercussions.
I would not be shocked.
I think we're about to enter a very strange period of time where things like this are going to become more and more common.
And I think Bolsonaro is like a really good, uh, uh, indicator.
Of how that might possibly look.
But you're right.
His supporters, and this has not been reported on very much because a large part of our reporting and the media sort of narrative, is that, oh, he lost and everything's fine.
There was no coup.
Well, my God, there have been many near coups in Brazil since this election went down.
Bolsonaro supporters have engaged in mass violence.
They've attacked Lula supporters left and right.
We've had multiple reports of armed forces plus also security and law enforcement forces that have either planned plots to try and take over the country, also paramilitary groups, including one member who tried to blow up a gas tanker.
And Nick, here's the thing, and I know this is gonna break new ground, I know this is gonna be shocking.
He's linked to a paramilitary group that is being funded by shadowy, dark donors!
Can you believe that?
Who have also helped organize and radicalize people for the potential of overthrowing the government and disrupting the inauguration of Lula!
I know this is all surprising, I know that this is all weird stuff that we've never heard about before, but it's almost like, Nick, that they have a playbook Well, I mean, you know, there's just no way to make money when you're trying to incite chaos and violence, right?
There's just no way to monetize that at all.
So I don't see why anybody would ever want to do that, Jared, especially here.
I mean, my God, it's incredible.
I was, you know, messaging with you about this.
These bombs outside of airports, outside of government buildings, these plots to kill a ton of people using weapons, coups, all of that.
Like, the amount of things that could have gone a different way, but instead, they have either been discovered or, I don't know, maybe bombs put outside of the DNC and the RNC in Washington, D.C., that didn't go off.
And also, by the way, we've never heard anything about who planted those.
We have no idea who it was who planted bombs outside the two major parties in Washington, D.C.
We have gotten so lucky.
I don't know if there's any other way to put it.
The amount of luck that we have had in avoiding coups and overthrows and, like, worsening conditions.
I mean, really, like, we should buy a lottery ticket as a human civilization at this point.
Well, it's also the notion like we talked about with the crime, like we're living in an open society.
Yeah, you're at the risk of any moment at any time.
It'd be very easy to see the kind of violence you see like in the streets of Israel, for instance, or, you know, places like that, where you see, you know, people, you know, blowing up buses, you know, we would never be able to stop that.
Somehow you get these great heroic stories of like in Times Square around New Year's Eve and the cops stumbled across a car and like yeah and they disarmed it before it went off.
Really really lucky stuff.
The whole thing around the inauguration in 2020 with those bombs that was gonna be near Kamala Harris and then you know DNC.
Very very very strange stuff.
But we can't say we've been immune to that stuff.
I mean you know JFK was probably a coup.
If you want to look at it that way, you know, Reagan was, there was a soft coup, as you want to say, that, you know, H.W.
had to run the country for a couple of years at the end there.
I don't know how that works, but nonetheless, you're right.
I mean, certainly there's been a lot of things that would directly affect the American people that, thank God, you know, it's, it's, the only conclusion I came up with is that it's, it's, it's hard to plan these things, and it's hard to capably make these horrible things, and thank God that it's harder than, than we think.
Well, a few things, by the way.
I'm glad you brought up Israel.
Benjamin Netanyahu, who now has this extreme right-wing government, which more or less is already starting to align with Putinist Russia, it's really bad.
I mean, and we're talking like some really tough language, some really tough agendas.
I mean, the idea that with de-globalization we're starting to see the lines drawn and different camps and allies, I don't know, axes starting to come together, it's a lot.
But you're right.
We have seen so many instances of really bad behavior.
I love, by the way, that there were a bunch of JFK files dropped a couple of weeks ago that showed that the CIA had actively worked with Lee Harvey Oswald, and everybody's just like, eh, we're not really interested in that right now.
That's not really where our interest is, which is fascinating.
But in all of this, I mean, the Brazilian thing is like a mini January 6, Washington, D.C., United States of America type situation.
It's the exact same people working with a different group of shadowy millionaires and billionaires who were interested in Jair Bolsonaro, not because he was a competent leader, but because he was an incompetent leader who handed the country over to the wealthiest people.
It was the exact same situation that happened with Donald Trump, including the exact same infrastructure, the exact same actors, who are basically now franchising Trumpist situations around the world.
They are making a mint when they're not being thrown in jail and then being pardoned, going around the world and ceding anti-democratic movements and going after legitimately elected officials.
I mean, it's what is happening in Brazil and what could potentially happen because the military and law enforcement are still interested in overthrowing Lula.
And especially when he starts rolling out his agenda, Nick, it'll be really interesting to see what happens there because always whenever a leftist or a supposed leftist leader tries economic reform, the attacks are almost instant.
And it's not only going to come from these people, it'll come from things like the World Economic Forum, the World Bank, you name it, right?
Those people will be right there to throw in sanctions and mess with their bank loans and all that stuff.
And then you'll see the right wing start to react.
So who knows where this thing is going, but this is something to keep our eye on and I think it tells us a lot about ourselves and where we're potentially going.
Yeah, I mean there's actually a funny Eddie Murphy bit about this when he was imagining if Jesse Jackson had won the presidency and I mean it's funny because it's actually tragic where he's trying to deliver a speech but he's, you know, ducking so no one can shoot him, you know, the guy can't get a aim on him and that's, yeah, that could very well be how imperiled Lulu might feel at any time with, especially with the military out there.
Not knowing who they serve.
It is a problem.
And you only have to hope that, you know, we know there's a lot more people out there that are sort of in the progressive side who want to have people get treated fairly, more fairly across the board.
And ultimately, if there's enough of those people or enough more of those people, then that's when those things, these things fizzle out.
The dictatorships.
Uh, but in the meantime, there's a collateral damage of untold degrees that's, uh, that, you know, is so unfortunate.
And then hopefully we can continue at least going away from that in this country.
But again, there's people here who I'm sure are excited to see Balsamero.
I think that he's a rock star, you know, and excited about it.
He stood up the cultural wars as much as Trump did too, by the way.
And that's the other thing that's really been frustrating about this is that, you know, Yeah, and Bolsonaro is so much like Trump.
I mean, everything from just the incompetence to the corruption to the fact that he basically was able to capitalize off of radicalizing media.
I mean, just absolute awful stuff.
Best of luck.
I can't wait till he shows up at the next Trump rally.
I see that coming.
That's coming.
Oh yeah.
And Trump, you know, the weirdest thing about those things is when he brings somebody else to speak and he won't move away, right?
He just kind of takes half a step over and just will stand there over the guy's shoulder.
And that's going to be a great photo op for everybody.
And again, this will all serve to destroy the GOP.
Ultimately, these are the things that are going to, you know, this next two years, in my opinion, should lead to the destruction of the GOP as we know it.
And we'll have to have to resurrect some other version of it.
Your words to the ears of the universe, my friend.
We, of course, are going to be following these stories and so many more going into 2023.
We're not going to stop this hard work, and we thank you so much for your support.
A reminder, go over to patreon.com slash mccraigpodcast to gain access to the Weekender edition, which will come out this Friday.
Hopefully, Nick, by then I will have the congestion gone.
From your lips to your sinuses.
Be gone, vile spirit!
Get out!
I need to see COVID in my rearview mirror.
I'll just say that.
I'm sure you will.
All right, everybody.
We will be back then.
If you need us before then, you can find Nick at Can You Hear Me?
