The Weekender LIVE Show: Trump Indictment, Seymour Hersh Controversy And More
This is an abbreviated version of our weekly Patreon show. To access the full-episode and support the pod, head on over to http://www.patreon.com/muckrakepodcast
Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman hosted a live show yesterday for members of their Patreon, answering tons of thought provoking and insightful questions posed by the audience. From possible Trump indictments in Georgia to the Nordstream Pipeline explosion to dealing with creeping fascism, the discussion covered a wide range of topics.
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Welcome to a live edition of The Weekender with the McCraig Podcast.
Nick, I'm excited.
Be excited.
Do I have permission to be excited?
Is that what that is?
It is.
I ordain any and all excitement.
And I'm excited.
You know what the problem is?
It makes it seem like I'm not excited.
Yeah, you need to up the excitement.
You know what it does?
As soon as you crack that... Is that a beer?
That's a beer.
And then I kind of got upset because I'm like, I didn't bring anything.
I don't have anything.
Did you bring it?
Did you bring some for the rest of us?
I guess I did.
I didn't.
I didn't.
And now all of a sudden, you're making me flashback to my elementary school years.
That's that's that's that's not a good start to a live podcast.
I'll just say that.
Well, welcome, everybody.
Here we are.
We're doing a live taping of the McCraig podcast.
We were going to do our usual thing.
We had a couple of segments that we were going to do.
Which we're still going to talk about sort of around a little bit on these topics, but I gotta tell you, the Muckrake community came through with questions, and there are so many of them, and they are so good that we're simply going to do a live question and answer episode now.
So we have got what people have sent so far.
If you want to go ahead, there's an ask a question button on the live stream.
For people who are listening to the preview of this, you could be here!
You could be hanging out with us on a Thursday night at The Weekender Taping, which I think is one of my favorite things about this podcast.
Which, you know, we need to do more of these.
It's been too long.
But if you are in the chat, you can click ask a question.
And if we have time, when we get through the plethora of questions we have, we'll try and get to those too.
But I got to tell you, I'm really excited about this.
This is your chance to lift up the excitement.
Okay, woo!
Let's do, oh wait, wait.
There we go.
That's right.
Here's my excitement.
Where is it?
There we go.
Anyway, I don't know if it called for air horns, but we'll do it.
All right, let's do it.
Let's we got it.
Well, I mean, we have so many questions.
I think we got to break into it because we got it.
We got it.
We got to get moving.
And I'm going to use this as the jumping off point.
Tucker asked us, I'm a little late to get my question in.
Well, you weren't.
You got it in.
Great.
But if you have time, here's a general topic.
Seems like Trump might actually be indicted before, say, his 77th birthday in June.
And maybe he'll go to jail before he's 80, but what's the chance at this point that it matters?
Will his indictment influence the nation?
Would it make a difference to the national conversation in the newspapers, powerful organizations, funding, activist organization?
Or is Christian nationalism, neo-Nazism, going to power along with complete indifference to Trump's fate and reputation?
Do we need to put our attention elsewhere?
So, Nick, I've got thoughts on this.
I want to hear yours, but before we get to the question, have you been following this jury foreperson in Georgia?
Have you been getting your eyes on this thing?
Because it is wild, wacky stuff.
Oh yeah, I saw a little clip of the interview and I read a little bit more of what she was talking about, so it's funny.
They had to put a disclaimer in maybe the post or one of those articles from a lawyer in Georgia saying, well, you know, she actually didn't violate anything by talking like that, but there's a lot of thought, thought, thoughts after that.
Yeah, in Georgia, you know, my adopted home there for a while, it was...
The laws aren't great when it comes to this.
Basically, you're just not allowed to talk about deliberations.
But I gotta tell you, this jury forum woman, like, she tiptoed right up to that.
I mean, she has had her moment in the sun.
She's been going from one network to another.
Also, by the way, shame on the networks.
I know they can't help themselves.
Because obviously, if she's out there talking, they're going to have her on and they're going to ask her questions.
But also, while we're on the subject, I'll also say, probably not the greatest thing that the prosecutors were having an ice cream social with the grand jury.
That's pretty screwed up.
Maybe that's something that should be looked into.
Yeah, might have endangered the indictment of Trump.
We shall see.
Do you think it's going to happen at this point?
It sounds like Georgia is trending in that direction.
Maybe this whole controversy has sort of thrown, you know, something in the spoke.
But do you think it's going to happen?
Do you think it matters?
Do you think that there's a larger sort of a deal here?
I think what she said to the press won't really affect much at all.
I think that that's after another few days.
We'll forget about it.
Whatever.
I don't I just don't think this is probably the only thing that has any kind of criminal like throw him in jail kind of repercussions.
If maybe that even happens.
Everything else that I could tell is all like financial stuff and business stuff.
He's not going to jail for any of that.
So it doesn't matter.
He'll get a fine.
Maybe his business will suffer.
He'll raise money from his followers, and then they'll just pay whatever fines he's got to pay.
So I don't think that's an issue.
I think that the Georgia thing does seem to be, you know, there are some laws here that got Lindsey O'Graham to testify in some stuff as well.
So they seem to have a lot of information.
If you want to take at face value what she said, it does appear that there will be indictments, but that doesn't mean that they're going to go to prison again.
So I just feel like, again, what you've been saying this whole time is that this is all an effort to sort of suppress his ability to run and win another election.
And that's probably from the Republican side, too.
And so I think that's sort of what's swirling around here.
And the prison stuff is just, you know, distraction and probably just, you know, it wouldn't even be worth hoping for at this point.
Yeah, and that's the unfortunate thing in all of this.
I mean, I think there's the idea that hope springs eternal, that eventually Donald Trump would be held accountable for his actions.
I mean, my God, how many things should he go to jail for at this point?
We probably could spend the rest of the show just listing the things.
I also want to point out, whenever I'm talking about how our media covers things, Look at how much time they've spent focusing on this foreperson, right?
And what she might have done, whether she might have messed up the investigation.
And a lot of it has to do with that illusion of propriety, right?
Like the idea that, like, this is all on the up-and-up, this isn't a political witch hunt, everything has to be perfect by the numbers, if anything weird gets in there you can't possibly hold Trump accountable.
That is how our media treats these things.
This is one of the reasons why I don't think Donald Trump is going to be held accountable.
Again, rich white men in this country have an incredible track record of not being held accountable.
But I will also say, if Trump were indicted, I don't think that's going to stop him from running.
I also don't think that's going to stop the Republican Party from moving on without him.
They are done with him.
They're so ready to move on beyond Donald Trump.
How many times has Donald Trump showed up on Fox News in the past week, Nick?
I cannot answer that question.
Yeah, you can't answer because it hasn't happened.
And it hasn't happened for a while now.
He is persona non grata.
Like, they are not interested in having him as nominee of this party outside of like the very, very small MAGA group, of course, that will support him, basically walk over a cliff for him.
This is one of those things, and you know, I keep saying that.
I mean, how many years have we been talking about it now?
Years.
Where I've said, do not hold your breath on Trump being held accountable and going to jail.
And this is one of the things.
You can pay attention to it, but we have to move beyond putting our hopes on it.
Because it's simply not going to be the thing that like changes things or puts things to right, because the problem is much worse than Trump.
I would recommend that it's time to move beyond following this day by day and basing your political sort of experience on it, is what I would say.
Right.
And I think you're right.
You don't take the eye off the goal or the focus of what Trump stands for and what the movement is that's taking hold of the country.
That's much more concerning, you know, versus him.
You know, again, he becomes a martyr by going to prison and that could actually make it worse in some weird way to probably what Merrick Garland is fretting and wringing his hands about all the time.
I will say they haven't responded to some of the stuff about like the ice cream social thing.
I wouldn't be surprised if she misunderstood who hosted that.
You know what I mean?
I don't know.
I have a hard time understanding how they would say, come on into our offices, we'll hear some, you know, it wasn't ice cream, it was a popsicle or something, right?
So it's like... Well, I'm glad you brought that up.
No, hold on.
I'm glad you brought that up because I was going to bring that up when I was making my point earlier.
She said that the prosecutor's office threw them an ice cream social.
First of all, I'm sorry, but that shows terrible judgment if you go to an ice cream social and come out with a popsicle.
You did something wrong.
You played yourself.
If you come out of an ice cream social with a popsicle, I'm just saying.
Second of all, it might be a thing where very much, you know, like at the courthouse, they simply were like, hey, I know you guys are working a lot of hard hours.
Come in and have one of these.
But that being said, I do not trust prosecutors.
I don't trust the criminal justice system.
When I hear that the prosecutors had an ice cream social, my ears go up.
Which, by the way, this goes back to everything that we keep saying, which is, like, I understand that, like, you want to get Trump and you want him to be held accountable.
Stop looking at these institutions to be the deliverers of justice.
Stop looking at them being the ones that are going to take care of this because those institutions are corrupted from top to bottom.
Am I wrong about the popsicle, by the way?
Yeah, not, no.
I mean, listen, I'm not even sure I've, like, been to an ice cream social.
Maybe I have, I suppose, but yes, I can understand the bad form without question.
Although, you know, there's nothing like a good Popsicle.
I like a Popsicle!
You know, Popsicles are great!
And, you know, I love a Popsicle every now and then, but if I have the choice between an ice cream and a Popsicle, it's not even a choice.
I hear you.
Well, I'm just going to jump, you know, what we're watching.
I am watching West Wing a lot these days and I'm trying to picture if someone in the prosecutor's office said, hey, maybe we should have them, we'll give them a little ice cream.
And then obviously they have a deliberation for about 10 minutes in the scene where the smartest people you'd ever know are discussing the ramifications and what would mean politically if we did that.
And then they would say, okay, we're not going to do that.
And then you realize in reality, what we live in, in our society now are filled with people who do not have that knowledge and that kind of intelligence.
And let's just say, whatever happened, happened.
It never should have.
And probably a lot of other things never should have.
And it might end up being some grist that, you know, Trump will be able to dig into and use it to leverage, again, simply his base in a political way to convince more and more people that it's a witch hunt and it's a political thing, independent of the evidence.
All they need is one thing that gives them the alternate explanation.
And they got it.
They got it here.
You want to read the next one?
Oh, sure.
Wow.
Okay.
The next one is from Jake.
Hey, guys.
Tomorrow, can you talk about Hungary somehow get a pass in the EU and the Bucharest Nine?
Biden today said these countries stand for freedom and democracy.
Hungary is not a democracy.
It is a right-wing party controlled by the minority party.
Yes, are you?
No?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Oh, just, yes, Dilly.
That wins elections even when they lose the popular vote.
Orban has captured the courts and the media system while also going after any public utility possible.
With America's decline, the principles they use to pretend to stand for are so blatantly abused that they can't pretend to hide it anymore.
I was wondering if you guys could talk about what happened to the new dealers in the Dem Party when Roosevelt passed in 1945.
Looking forward to watching the live stream.
Well, thank you for watching.
Oh, what's the second part?
You got his money's worth here.
Should I finish the whole thing?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, go ahead.
I also wanted to ask you guys, is it really bad optics for Biden, Buttigieg to not show up to East Palestine, but Trump did today?
Trump likely does not care about those people, but things like this give us a glance at how far the right are taking an unchallenged presence during this crisis.
That might even be the one we want to start with, but go ahead.
Well, I'll go ahead and start with the Hungary thing.
So, yeah, Hungary is an illiberal nation.
I mean, they don't even hide it.
I mean, what Orban says constantly is that he has constructed an illiberal state intentionally.
And, of course, we've covered this.
He comes to America.
He's trying to teach the Republican Party how to create their own illiberal state.
Right, they're a theocratic, you know, anti-democratic state.
So what is happening with all of this is that when it comes to NATO and when it comes to Hungary's sort of membership in it, there's a dance.
And Viktor Orban is, you know, the kind of leader who understands this dance.
They absolutely rely on money coming from NATO, and as a result, what he does is, he'll go out, he'll meet with Putin, right?
He'll strategize with Putin, and then, you know, out the other side of his mouth, he'll go ahead and criticize Ukraine, or he'll, you know, call for NATO to basically be overthrown.
But meanwhile, he never strays so far that those bucks start coming in.
And as a result, you can always sort of say, oh, look at our coalition.
It involves Hungary.
So a lot of it is lip service.
When it comes to East Palestine, yes, absolutely.
It is a mistake for them not to have gone to East Palestine.
I will go ahead and say, and I want to hear what you have to say.
Pete Buttigieg has been an absolute disaster as Secretary of Transportation.
Absolute disaster.
You know, there have been some statements that have been released.
People want to say there's nothing he can do.
That's his job.
That is his charge in that position, and our transportation infrastructure in this country has fallen apart.
What happened in East Palestine, Ohio, has been an absolute tragedy.
And by the way, since we covered it, Nick, I mean, my God, how many other trains have derailed?
I mean, we're having this happening all over the place because these railroad companies are doing what we've been covering for forever now.
But yeah, it's a black eye.
It's a really bad situation, and the people there deserve better.
Yeah, for sure.
You know, Buttigieg is in the country, could go there and it would be a wonderful op for him, photo op, just to be there as well because the photo op for Trump is, it was terrible.
He's like smiling and like really happy, like thumbs up to be there when he's going to McDonald's.
It's like, it should have been a disaster of a photo op for him.
I was thinking, you know, because Biden is overseas and visiting Ukraine and things, which we didn't even really talk about, you know, he's obviously going to go, I imagine.
And so I'm thinking that there might be some political computation here that thinks that, OK, he goes yesterday.
We're going to go after that.
We don't want to have we don't want to go before Trump.
We'll go after that and we'll be able to put our stamp on it and people will kind of push it through.
And they might also just say it doesn't matter because whatever that photo op is for, you know, that Trump, you know, the people that are cheering Trump on and feeling that way, that doesn't necessarily have any effect on them if Biden then goes anyway, right?
Like, it almost doesn't matter.
But you're right that these are the opportunities, politically, we're supposed to get a lot of capital from when you go visit and you show empathy and you're interested in care and you announce a big, you know, initiative, a lot of money to be sent there to take care of people.
And by the way, Trump going to Ohio is actually the first thing he's done campaign-wise, strategy-wise.
I mean, like, really, that's it.
That's the one thing that he's done.
And it's very weird that he did it.
I would be very interested to see, like, a rundown of how that happened.
You know, like, who suggested it and who got him out of Mar-a-Lago to get him out there to make that decision.
Oh, they probably just told him, listen, we can sell a whole lot of Trump water.
Well, you're probably not wrong on that front.
I mean, there obviously was some sort of a money aspect to it.
But yeah, I think that this was a missed opportunity in every possible way.
On one way, we can talk about the political optics of it, but also those people have just absolutely, they've been let down, as have God knows how many Americans at this point.
And meanwhile, that old brain, he's trying to like take credit for like getting Ohio State and college football back during COVID in 2020.
That's what he's talking about.
And again, people kind of started to laugh at him because he, as he brings it up, because it is so serious what's going on there.
But it really, it's truly, if we have to, we're going to go through this all over again, Jared.
It's really frustrating to me that we're gonna have to hear the most The lack of any kind of reading of the room, knowing what you're supposed to do and the decorum.
We have to go through it all over again.
It's going to be painful.
Yeah, it absolutely is, and it's just gonna roll on and on and on.
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