Why Trump Must Be Punished For Criminal Behavior With Danielle Moodie
Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman welcome friend of the podcast Danielle Moody on the show. Danielle is the host of #WokeAF Daily and co-host of #TheNewAbnormal and Democracyish podcasts and weighs in about the impending Trump indictment. They then pivot to the 20th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq before finishing with the NY Times bombshell that John Connally led the October Surprise to torpedo Jimmy Carter's campaign by delaying the release of the hostages in Iran in 1980.
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You're just trying to get people to not to be mad at me, I guess, right?
For the 55th degree weather here.
The only people who absolutely empathize with you are also people who live in Los Angeles.
Can we be clear about that?
Yes, that is true.
Okay, good deal.
So, on that note, listen, this is a jam-packed, they used to call the candy bars king-sized, now I don't know if people keep track of this, they call them share-sized.
This is a share-sized episode of the McCraig Podcast.
Listen, we've got the 20th anniversary of the illegal Iraq War.
We've got an absolute bombshell from 1980 that I, Nick, I don't know about you, but I've been champing at the bit to talk about this thing on this show.
The ramifications are large.
There's so much to talk about.
Also, listen, there is a real possibility that Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States of America, still gives me a shiver saying that out loud, could very well be indicted and arrested this week to digest all of this.
I have to tell you, there was only one person out there in the political landscape.
It is Danielle Moody, who of course is the host of the Woke AF Daily, co-host of the New Abnormal and Democracy-ish.
Danielle Moody, you are one of our fan favorites.
Thank you so much for being here.
Thank you for tackling this with us.
I am so excited to be here.
What a week you have just Laid out for us all, and wow, America.
That's all I can say.
Wow, America, indeed.
Like a lot of people, listen, I spend a lot of time on Truth Social.
That is just the social media of choice for me.
I love it when they truth it out.
I love when they re-truth it.
I love when they re-re-truth.
And for me, it was a banner day when Donald Trump, and by the way, I'm so sorry that I have to read this, This is one of the biggest truths on Truth Social.
This came out this weekend.
quote from Donald J. Trump.
Our nation is now third world and dying.
The American dream is dead.
The radical left anarchists have stolen our presidential election and with it, the heart of our country.
American patriots are being arrested and held in captivity like animals, while criminals and leftist thugs are allowed to roam the streets, killing and burning with no retribution.
Millions are flooding through our open borders, many from prisons and mental institutions.
Crime and inflation are destroying our very way of life, and in case you're wondering, people at home, what the point of this was, here you go.
Now, illegal leaks from a corrupt and highly political Manhattan district attorney's office, which has allowed new records to be set in violent crime and whose leader is funded by George Soros, indicate that with no crime being able to be proven and based on an old and fully debunked by numerous other prosecutors, fairy tale, the far and away leading Republican candidate and former president of the United States of America will be arrested on Tuesday of next week.
Protest.
Take our nation back.
I just want to, by the way, absolutely commend him.
Wonderful writing, sir.
Fantastic writing, sir.
Just what a truth to put out there in the world.
Danielle Moody, talk to us.
How are you feeling?
What do you think about this entire situation?
Is your mind reeling from this truth?
You know, I just, I was just outside in New York City and here it's spring.
It's not, there is no, there is no mayhem to be had other than the fact that, you know, today's high is 45 degrees.
I do not understand the Republican and Donald Trump's description Of this dystopian, dark, rageful, violent America.
All I can say is this is projection.
This is what they want for America, right?
They want people to be walking around the streets with AR-15s.
They want, you know, white racists and evangelical Christians to be able to burn whatever it is that they want.
And for every day to be January 6th.
I mean, that's all you can really deduce.
From his all-caps rage-filled tweets.
Um, I would hate to be a ketchup bottle at Mar-a-Lago right now.
You're not safe!
Um, so, you know, aside from the chef needing to lock the cabinets, somebody needs to lock these people in a rubber room.
Because the Earth-2 that they're operating on is actually really scary.
Right?
Because, right now, I will say this.
In New York, everybody has seen the tweets of the NYPD putting up barricades and battening down the hatches in a way that, you know, they should have done, folks should have done on January 5th, leading up to the day that Donald Trump once again tweeted and said, was going to be wild, right?
But they ignored that, and then we know what happened.
Jared, what makes me...
Just like in awe of the place where we are, is that Donald Trump is literally tweeting an insurrection again.
Again.
And is just allowed to do it.
If you or I or Nick opened up social media right now, any platform, and said half of the things that Donald Trump said, not only would we be on somebody's watch list, We would probably be dragged out of our homes right after we hit send.
So the fact that Donald Trump with his millions of followers is able to literally play Groundhog's Day with our safety is beyond me and we cannot continue To cloak ourselves in the lie of the First Amendment of being able to say what you want because Donald Trump continues to go into a crowded theater and shout fire.
And people die.
People are seriously injured.
Right?
People go to jail.
And yet he's still allowed to do it.
So I mean, and the fact that the Republican Party Are the violinists on the Titanic right now just refusing to quit this guy and come out on social media like jellyfish Fisher Price speaker of the house Kevin McCarthy did?
The lawlessness!
And I'm just like, you know, for all these law and order people, for all their lock her up, right?
Donald Trump was president of the United States for four years.
Where were all the cases being brought against Hillary Clinton?
There were none.
Why was that?
Because it was all one major grift.
11 hours she testified before the Senate committee turned up with nothing.
So they only believe in law and order where they're weaponizing government.
That's it.
I just want to say real fast, on that note, it's really interesting to take a look at the idea of law and order.
And by the way, Trump has been caught dead to rights on this crime.
Just a reminder that what has happened here, of course, is that Alvin Bragg, the district attorney, and by the way, the moment that Michael Cohen helped out with this thing, it was done.
It was signed, sealed, delivered, say goodnight, the guy got caught committing a crime.
When it comes to law and order, it's really, really fascinating what that means to wealthy white Americans, and wealthy white people in general, because we need to understand that law and order was a construct of white supremacist patriarchal power in the first place.
It was created over basically over in Europe.
It was created in order to contain the rabble from taking any of the wealth and the property from wealthy white people in America.
It was used to patrol, you know, the slave trade make for make sure there weren't any insurrections and also Native Americans and again to protect the wealth and also the property.
If you take a look at what Trump has actually done, I don't know if you two have seen this, because again, I love me some truth social.
This is where the truth gets truthed out.
And Trump actually, in the midst of this, this is, I want to read this real fast.
Quote, can you imagine the great new New York City Police Department, correctly referred to as the New York City's finest, who for the first and only time in history endorsed his president, me, and honored me as man of the year, having to defend and protect the defunders and cop haters of the radical left that want to put their greatest champion and friend in prison for a crime that doesn't exist.
I want to make this clear.
He is literally appealing To the police of New York City to betray their commanders, to go ahead, betray their oaths, and to turn on the law and order that you're speaking of.
It's literally a revolutionary call for action.
And that's what happens every time that there's a revolution.
You try and get police and soldiers to betray basically what they're supposed to protect.
The whole point, going back to the Republican Party, and Nick, I want to hear your thoughts on this.
The entire point is that the Republican Party has come to represent that the only thing that matters isn't law and order.
It isn't some sort of objective idea that everybody should live under.
It's that the wealthy, white, and powerful should live based on different rules.
It's there to protect them, and other people are the ones who are supposed to, you know, be at the other end of the gun or the baton.
Well, part of my response to that would be to point out what DeSantis said when they asked him about this.
And he basically, first of all, he did throw in an awesome, you know, snide remark saying, I've never paid off a porn star to hide something from an election, which is awesome in a way that he could poke it without having to say it.
But he also said, I don't understand why they're spending all this time doing this when it's a crime infested, you know, rat hole of a city in New York.
And then, okay, cue the screenshot of the stats that show that crime is going down, has been going down for several months in New York.
It's not a thing where all of a sudden there's this other crime that they should be paying more attention to.
DA doesn't really deal with that kind of stuff anyway.
So that's probably part of the answer there.
It gives you some insight into what they really are thinking, what they want to use this issue for, right?
Right.
They want to use this notion of people running around rapidly or the crime.
And we need to have the silent majority back us because of that.
We'll be better for this.
And in fact, they don't give a shit.
They don't even know what the real numbers are.
I think they know.
And by the way, I'm sad you didn't bring this up, Nick.
They also are all on the exact same page saying this is a Soros funded DA, which, by the way, for anybody at home paying attention, wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
The Jews are the puppet masters.
That's what all of this has always been about.
But you're right.
They are saying that they're comparing it to this completely fake crime apocalypse that you're talking about.
God, I'm so ashamed of myself for not mentioning Soros, because that was the big red one.
But that was perfect, what you said.
And the thing about Clinton, I would just like to say about the 11 hours and testifying that she showed up and nothing ever got prosecuted because of that.
They got what they wanted.
She lost the election because of it, right?
They don't know about the emails unless they do the investigation into Benghazi.
So they don't care about that.
They just got what they wanted, which is what they're trying to set up again for Biden right now.
And with China and Ukraine, whatever they're trying to figure out that they could smear him with.
And maybe they will.
We'll find out if they can find some little nugget.
But that's their MO.
It's not even like they need a crime to prosecute.
They just want to be able to find some little I mean, why, Nick?
that they could crucify the guy over that is a lot bigger than it really is.
So that's that part of that there.
Can I just throw this out here?
I might be the only person in this pod or listening to this pod that thinks that violating campaign finance laws shouldn't force you to go to prison.
I mean, why, Nick?
Like, why don't you think people should go to prison for that?
Well, I'm just trying to put myself in like even like an average voter, maybe or certainly if you want to look at the Trump voters shoes like, OK, If I were to illegally accept too much money into my campaign, perhaps the appropriate response would then be, I gotta pay a big fine.
Right?
Like, that seems to me what would be the normal response to that.
Now, let's just look at the Cohen thing, who he went to prison for three years, and then they had changed house arrest after Kobe, whatever.
Well, there was five counts of tax evasion, one count that was campaign finance violations, of which he pleaded guilty as a plea deal to all those, which is sort of the whole reason why he did his time.
So, we're taking one piece of this that Trump would be guilty of, and I don't know, I just feel like Um, you know, it seems like, yeah, I don't know why you'd have to go serve hard time for that kind of a violation.
Well, first of all, I think he needs to be held responsible.
And I want to go ahead and cut this off at the knees.
Anybody who says, well, you know, this might lead to violence.
That is all the reason more that he should be arrested and held accountable.
And I think that anytime somebody gets to the point where you're afraid of hordes of people, particularly an authoritarian fascist group coming to protect them, you need to actually hold them accountable.
I will also go ahead and say, I really wish he'd already been held accountable by Merrick Garland.
I think the country understands January 6th.
It's a really, really unpopular thing that happened.
People watched it.
They were terrified of it.
They understood that that was a problem.
I think Merrick Garland has just basically sat around hoping some other adult would do something this entire time.
The campaign finance stuff, I think there's a conflagration of things, but also in terms of like popular response to it, I think Trump is hated so people are going to greet it, but I don't know if it's the kind of, I don't know, cinderblock into a bathtub kind of a moment that changes things around.
I don't know.
Danielle, how do you feel about this?
I mean, first, I disagree, Nick, that people should not go to jail for campaign finance.
I think that some of the most egregious crimes that happen in this country are quote-unquote white-collar crimes, right?
Those are the crimes that actually affect a large populace, not the ones that we want to pick up somebody on the corner for having done, you know, for having done a low-level burglary.
When we're talking about campaign finance, you're talking about the ability to buy an election from the American people, right?
That should be looked at as the same way of a burglar walking into a corner store and deciding that they're gonna hold up, you know, the clerk and take the money out of the register, right?
I'm sorry, I was going to say, I think it's important to point out that the entire Donald Trump operation, including his inaugural fundraising, was money laundering.
From the beginning of it to the end of it, it was money laundering and it was completely ignored for that.
All of the things that were brought up in the Mueller report, which to Nick's, to your other point, I forget if it was you, Jared, or Nick, but the fact is we are here because Merrick Garland is a spineless human being.
Robert Mueller, based on their guidelines, not actual law, laid out 10 ways in which Donald Trump obstructed the law and could be held criminally accountable, but couldn't do so while he was a sitting president.
Merrick Garland had everything.
To indict Donald Trump, not even on any of the any of the January 6th.
He had everything to indict Donald Trump on January 21st, 2021.
After Joe Biden was sworn in.
He was no longer president of the United States.
So you tell like what Merrick Garland should be telling the American people what the hell he was doing.
Right?
Like, after he became Attorney General, what are you doing with this Rigorous report that was done that found 10 ways in which this man was a criminal and could be held criminally accountable.
The work was already done, right?
Like the footwork was already done.
You just needed to take this and go to a judge and say, what do y'all think about an indictment?
And we would have never been in this place that we're in right now.
Here's a thought experiment.
It would have been legal if they had used campaign funds to pay Stormy Daniels, and they would have just reported it.
That would be legal, right?
Wait, would they have made her a consultant?
That's awesome.
I love our legal system.
Well done.
Because they could have hoped that maybe no one would notice, but obviously they wouldn't notice.
But here's the interesting thought experiment.
Let's just say he said, F you, I'm not going to pay you, go ahead and go to the inquiry or whatever.
Like, do we even think that would have even affected the election?
Would that even change the vote?
I'm curious, right?
No, not at all.
Yeah, I'm like, it was October that the Hollywood Access tapes came out, right?
So the Hollywood Access tapes with the man in his own words talking about sexual assault, casual sexual assault.
Absolutely.
enough to deter people from not voting for Hillary Clinton.
And look, to the earlier point that was made with regard to the successful quote unquote tactic, Hillary Clinton and the Clinton campaign do bear some responsibility for having not run the most aggressive, thoughtful and strategic Hillary Clinton and the Clinton campaign do bear some responsibility for Right.
I'm not saying that there were not major obstacles and optics.
Right.
But But I'm also saying, had the Hillary campaign had an Obama-type campaign, Donald Trump wouldn't have become President of the United States.
So there is like a both and there, that it isn't just Donald Trump, Putin, the Republicans and their schemes, because they've been scheming against Hillary Clinton for, what, 30 plus years.
That's right.
And by the way, I want to kind of take this beyond Trump for a second, because I think every time that you talk about Donald Trump, it's a black hole that you can completely get caught in, and you lose sort of sight of the other things that are taking place here.
I want to ask you guys, because the past couple of days, I gotta tell you, the moment that Trump put this out there in the world, I had a marked uptick in terms of harassment and threats.
I haven't seen anything like it in years.
And some of the other people that I talked to were enduring the same sort of thing.
First of all, every time that there has ever been any pressure put on Donald Trump, something happens.
Whether it's somebody, I don't know, mailing out bombs to Democrats and media members.
Or people going to the, I believe it was the IRS, and trying to shoot up an IRS building and then getting killed.
I mean, it never ever ends.
I want to ask you two, one, I think that him calling for this, I don't think we're necessarily going to have a January 6th type thing in New York.
But I have to tell you, I think the betting money is smart on having some sort of an incident or incidents around.
And also, I don't know, I think this is a perfect situation for the Republican Party.
This is what they want.
They want Donald Trump to be taken off of the game board for the 2024 election.
They're tired of him.
They want to move beyond him.
Again, based on Rupert Murdoch's own words, they want to make him a non-person.
But also it goes ahead and creates what we've talked about on this show before, Nick, it creates a situation where they can say, look at, you know, the Democrats, look how they're, you know, going after this person, look at the deep state, this Soros stuff is like incredible.
And you can go ahead and start moving beyond Trump while keeping the elements of the paranoid world.
Nick, do you do you feel similarly?
Oh, I mean, I was actually hoping to hear from Danielle first on this one, because this is a spicy take.
Danielle, do you want to jump in here real quick?
I don't think that this is a perfect situation for the Republicans.
I'm going to have to disagree.
Because here's the thing, too.
We keep wanting to let the Republicans off the hook, as if Donald Trump ain't their man.
Like, that's who they stand by, right?
If they were to write a country song, it would be, stand by your man, regardless of whether he's beating you upside the head or not.
So these are people that have had multiple opportunities.
To distance themselves and reimagine what the Republican Party would be.
Now, even if that reimagining is in the face of another Christofascist, which is Ron DeSantis, they have and have had the opportunity to do this.
They could have rid themselves of Donald Trump with going through with the first impeachment and been like, you know what?
We picked wrong.
Right?
And we're gonna move forward and kind of wipe the stench off of us, right?
So my feeling is that I actually think, call me crazy, I actually think that this is a really good situation for Democrats.
I actually think that the Democrats, right, just need to sit, right, and remind the American people every time that one of their colleagues Tweets and goes on the Sunday talk shows to say, to pressure and say, what about law and order?
Right?
Just as Bethany Mandel was caught out, the conservative, uh, analyst and author was caught out with a very, you know, non-gotcha question on how do you define woke, this word that you keep tossing around.
Similarly, I, if I'm a journalist that's sitting down with these repugnant Republicans, I'm saying, what happened to your, you know, defense of law and order?
You're painting this picture of America filled with criminals and if Donald Trump is in fact innocent until proven guilty, why isn't the talking point that Donald Trump is innocent until proven guilty, but we're going to move forward with this because he has nothing to hide.
What has happened to the Republican stance on law and order?
I don't think they've ever really adopted the, well we heard the Senate say innocent until proven guilty.
But they never are.
They're always sort of quick to condemn.
Like if it's a Democrat, they won't wait and be measured about that.
Right.
But they're always measured about Republicans.
Right.
So I think we kind of understand that they're never going to answer these things and look at these things fairly.
I think the fear, though, is not that the Republican like politicians who obviously know what what's going on, they know that he's guilty.
They know that we need to take these things seriously.
I just think that when they say the traditional soundbites of innocent until proven guilty, we have to wait.
It's always only for the Republicans.
That's when these people who are following them, the fans, the Trump people, that's what they hear and that's what stirs them up to show up in New York and get ready to cause mayhem.
Now that said, we saw at CPAC that not a lot of people showed up for Trump even to speak.
And a lot of people showed up for the whole thing.
And so indicating to me that like we are, it might, We might look back at this in six months when Trump has completely been discoupled from everything and realize that it was happening while we didn't realize it.
We might be realizing it right now.
And tomorrow could very well be the thing where you get like 50 people showing up to, you know, hopefully to cause a lot of problems.
And that's all.
That's it.
That's all.
That's the support he's got.
It might happen that way.
And the next thing you know, you know that this is the beginning of the end.
Well, what I'm going to be watching in the next couple of days is, first of all, like you said, I wonder how many people are going to show up in New York City, because I have to tell you, it's not like he has a stronghold base in New York City.
And by the way, Fox News and Trump himself have done a hell of a job telling people that New York City is an apocalyptic wasteland that you can't go to, or else you're going to have your tires stolen off of your car.
So it might be a thing where maybe they don't show up.
So that right there is the barometer that I'm not that concerned about.
I want to see how Fox News frames this.
I want to see if they're going ahead and talking about Trump being a victim, or if they go ahead and spread it out.
Because in my experience watching what they do, I mean, Tucker Carlson's going to be pointing out, like, crime on the rise, this is what the Democrats want versus what they're doing over here, using the law as a weapon, that type of stuff.
And I gotta tell you, DeSantis has been playing this thing the right way, right?
Like, he's watching all of it, he'll go ahead and he'll make the Soros comment, he'll talk about this, he'll talk about that.
He's tried to stay largely away from the Donald Trump sort of mess and malaise.
I want to see how they all act on this.
I want to see if they go ahead and turn him into, and by the way, this makes me feel very ill to say, but this was something that I can't remember the Republican who said it.
I want to see if they try and turn him into a Mandela, which is literally what they're trying to do, which is just a sacrilegious bastardization of the idea.
But I think the Republican Party and Fox News are going to try and spin it in some way, shape, or form.
The successfulness, I think, is the question.
No.
- Well, really quickly to piggyback on what you said about DeSantis, it seems like he's following The Apprentice, the influence where if you ever watched that show that Trump hosted for all those years. - No. - No. - I did, I used to watch it.
Yes.
I gotta admit, maybe I liked it, but what would happen is, is that they're all at the boardroom table and they're trying to explain themselves.
And one guy would just kind of get onto some weird tangent and like everyone else just needed to know to shut up and let this guy lose.
And sometimes somebody would start speaking up and whatever and you want to yell at the screen like just don't say anything.
The guy is going to give it up and he's going to lose.
He's going to say the worst stuff.
And I feel like that's what DeSantis is doing right now.
He's just simply trying to let Trump You know, with regard to DeSantis, let me phrase it this way.
He might actually be right on this one.
I'm scared to death of DeSantis.
It sounds like maybe you guys are too.
And he really does seem to have the kind of discipline and sort of just intellect to understand how to prosecute this properly.
And I think that's what's happening. - You know, with regard to DeSantis, let me phrase it this way.
I think that democracy, right, should be a part of this.
Should be afraid of a Ron DeSantis.
Am I afraid of a Ron DeSantis, the person?
No.
The man is so fragile and so very weak.
Right.
He's creating a legislative nightmare because apparently in his eyes, White people can't handle reality right like and they can't be uncomfortable because if that happens then then apparently all you know Pandora's box open.
So I don't think though that I'm not saying that he's not going to Make a power grab for the national spotlight by running for the presidency?
I don't think that DeSantis plays nationally.
And the reason why I say that is because Florida is made up of a lot of real interesting people and a lot of real interesting ideology.
It isn't You know, you can you can mess around with their education system because they're pretty much bottom of the barrel when you look at what Florida has been deploying, right?
And calling it public education.
So I'm not concerned necessarily with Ron DeSantis coming to because I think that much in the same way that Donald Trump, his criminal behavior and the fact that he ran the United States and Like a drug crime organization.
I think that Ron DeSantis will be an absolute rallying cry for everyone who is not white, who is not Christian, who is not straight, and who isn't a fascist.
Right?
I think that Ron DeSantis, all you have to do as a Democratic candidate, if you're Joe Biden, is saying, Do you want what is happening in Florida to be nationalized?
And whether or not you love Joe Biden, the answer to that question, by 75% of the population, is going to be a resounding hell-effing no.
Right?
So, like, sure, is he politically savvy?
Yes.
Is he younger?
Absolutely.
Does what he's doing in Florida play out nationally?
I don't think so.
By the way, I'm really glad that we have some Democratic consultants and strategists that listen to the show because you've been killing it today in terms of messaging and it's not that hard.
It's just not that hard.
We gotta switch gears really quickly.
I gotta tell you, and Nick, we texted a little bit about this back and forth.
Over the weekend, just an absolute bombshell that, you know, weirdly enough because America doesn't care that much about history or context or what actually occurs, this thing kind of flew under the radar a little bit.
But to be fair, this is a momentous thing with massive ramifications.
We've talked about it on the show, Nick, before, about one of the biggest open secrets in American history.
And by the way, let's go ahead and point out that Richard Nixon basically prolonged the Vietnam War in order to win his election in 1968, which, check on my notes, is treason.
Another treasonous, disgusting act that everybody knew took place.
Everybody was well aware it did.
It is now in the black and white of the Grey Lady at the New York Times.
This article came out this weekend and it should basically be on every corner, on every wall.
Peter Baker came out.
He had talked to Ben Barnes, who came out and said that back before the election of 1980, that him and the former governor of Texas, who by the way, I think Nick is going to have something to say about this.
John Connolly had gone over to the Middle East ...and repeatedly met with Middle Eastern leaders to tell them to get a message to Iran to hold on to 52 American hostages until after the 1980 election between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.
This article is very, very thorough.
It's been backed up.
Also, it seems that the Reagan campaign knew full and well what was happening, which, again, let me check my notes, amounts to treason.
Now, before we go around talking about this, I want to go ahead and say, I think even if this wouldn't have happened, that Reagan probably would have beat Jimmy Carter.
I think that that was going to happen in 1980, but we'll never know!
We have literally no idea how that would have played out.
This is absolutely maddening.
Danielle, how did you feel reading this?
Did you feel like you'd been taking crazy pills?
All I can think to myself is, like, is this what Republicans mean when they refer to, we need to go back to the Reagan years?
Oh, shit!
Like, is this it?
Because, so, foundationally, as a value point, they have always been putting party ahead of country, right?
So, you go to Nixon, And you're saying you prolonged the Vietnam War.
Do you know how many Americans died in the Vietnam War?
You go now to this 1980 bombshell and learn that, again, to score political points, they were willing to hold the lives of 52 Americans for just a little bit of time.
To buy an election.
I just, you know, it's amazing that we think to ourselves that the party over country is something new when it is as old as time itself for Republicans.
But yet we have allowed them to seed and control words like patriotism.
They're the flag-waving party.
And they don't know a goddamn thing about anything that the flag actually stands for.
So, you know, you say, Jared, as you're laying it out, like it's a bombshell and we'll have repercussions.
Well, check my time machine.
We're like 40 years past this.
No one was ever held accountable.
Nobody will be held accountable.
Right?
Reagan will still be there.
They're not going to change the airport name.
Right.
In Washington, D.C., he'll still be, you know, held up as a hero and as a and as the Republican.
When he's the same lying ass just like George W. Bush, just like Nixon, just like Donald Trump, that will do anything to win an election.
And to your point, yes, I think he would have won anyway!
Right?
So, facts don't matter.
It's amazing to me that they're going to the lengths that they're going to now to erase history.
Where, to your point, no one gives a shit about history.
Right?
Because we're not going backwards.
And I know we're going to talk about Iraq soon, too.
We're not going backwards to actually hold people accountable for their treason and lies and destruction of entire countries.
We're not doing that.
By the way, Nick, I'm going to give it to you in just a second, but I've been waiting to hear what you have to say about this for a couple of days.
I know a lot of what's getting ready to happen, but before we do, I want to point out part of the reason why that has happened is because Fox News, the Republican Party, the media that has been bought and sold, most of the people We'll never hear about this.
They will never ever encounter it.
It's not going to be talked about on Fox News.
Ronald Reagan has become a mythical figure.
They don't even deal with who he actually was and what he actually passed.
They have no idea who he is.
They have no idea that he gave amnesty to immigrants.
They have no idea that he ran up deficits left and right.
It's a completely mythical, fake version of him.
And so this will never even come on the radar.
Now, my good friend Nick Haussleman, give it to me and give it to me good.
I cannot wait.
All right.
So you have to forgive me if I'm a little bit all over the place because this is a near and dear to my heart a subject to it.
Very quickly, I want to mention that, you know, Schwarzenegger in 2004 used Richard Nixon as an applause line.
And that signaled to me that, okay, all bets are off.
These people are going to be rehabbed and nothing that they did that was bad will ever be considered bad.
And then the myth just keeps growing.
And then it's not surprising that, of course, Reagan, of all people, By the way, the reaction when you try and point out anything that Reagan might have done wrong to people who were like Reagan, it is like an affront to their entire family.
It's really kind of frightening how belligerent they can get.
But here's the thing.
We've known about this October surprise forever.
The evidence has been very compelling.
Probably, I mean, I even think that Carter mentions it in his biography.
or autobiography that I read, where he had already negotiated the entire release of the hostages.
Everything was all set into place.
Don't forget, they got released on the day of the inauguration.
It's not like Reagan came in there within an hour and somehow negotiated the whole thing.
So we knew this.
It was very compelling on both sides, Iranians and Americans, and the little bits that we had gotten from there.
The only surprise we got was that it was John Connolly, of all people, who was a Democrat, right?
We have to remember he was a Democrat or supposedly a Democrat, registered, whatever.
He was the governor of Texas.
And so this is what makes it so amazing to me.
And that, you know, again, you know how in the Star Wars canon, it's like two families that control the entire universe, right?
It's insane.
Well, it's the same thing here because here we have a guy and Jared, am I allowed to indulge everybody for a minute on the whole thing?
Listen, I've been waiting for this.
Here's the thing.
Before you messaged me to tell me what you told me, when I got to the second graph of this article and John Connolly's name came up, I was like, oh, let's go.
Let's absolutely do it.
All right, so we have to go back a little ways here because, again, it's just remarkable that he comes up again.
So just like there was compelling evidence about the October surprise in 1980, there is a similar amount of compelling evidence, in my opinion, that John Connolly freaks out on a phone call when they were going to change the route that JFK was going to take, of which he was in the car with him, because they didn't like that really severe left turn onto Elm Street.
Now, I've seen a lot of the evidence.
It looks, it's compelling enough, just like there was, I'm telling you, for like the October surprise.
So if my whole crazy conspiracy theory about JFK was that Nixon was the kind of guy was involved and they used his plumbers to take JFK out.
And I also say that LBJ was involved because LBJ was going to kick off the ticket.
So basically, the short version of this was that LBJ said, I won't run in 68 if you help me with this JFK thing that I need to get taken care of.
Now, Connolly, in my mind, was involved in this with the whole route, because cut to 1972, in one of the most contentious eras between Democrats and Republicans until now, Nixon appoints John Connolly as his secretary of finance, not finance, help me, whatever that word is.
Treasury, yeah.
Treasury, Treasury Secretary, thank you, in the cabinet.
That shouldn't have happened.
What Republican president would ever appointed a Democrat, you know, unless in my addled mind, admittedly, this was some sort of payment for Connolly helping him with the thing.
Now Connolly gets shot, right?
He didn't sign up for that and stuff.
So, you know, it's a little bit of a thing.
But the fact that he comes up again and then to help A Republican, again, win an election like that, by very nefarious means, I think maybe even bolsters my argument now.
He ran against Reagan!
He ran against Reagan for the nomination!
Like, whether he had anything to do with the JFK situation, which I just wanted to hear you do it, because it's like hearing the Beatles.
It's really good.
It's incredible to hear Nick.
We don't even need to be here.
So, whether he had any involvement in that whatsoever, one of the things that Connolly did, and this story highlights, is that he had proven himself, like in a secret society, that he was more than capable and willing to cut some throats and absolutely throw people overboard.
And that's what we have to learn from this story.
These people literally, and it's twofold, One, they see politics, and again, like you said, Danielle, they see party over country.
Because they believe, secondly, that only they are the ones who should have power.
And anything that they could possibly do, it doesn't matter who they hurt, and by the way, it's not just 52 people.
It's their families, it's their loved ones, it's the entire country.
God knows what could have happened in those months between those meetings and their eventual release.
They were constantly in danger of being executed.
That, by the way, could have set off a war.
I mean, it is a massive, massive situation.
And the fact that Connolly was willing to do this, and the fact that the Reagan campaign was obviously fine with this, I mean, it's treasonous.
It really, truly is.
Which goes ahead and gives us more fuel for the fire to understand what is actually happening with our politics with these people, and what it is that they've been carrying on, now we know, for, you know, going on 40 years.
I just, you know, it is really shocking.
The little that we really do understand about our history, because when you both are laying out these stories that are not that long ago, right?
Like we also have really no grasp of time in the context of talking about our history either.
But, you know, as a former educator, all I think about is the propaganda that we are given to consume.
Right?
That America is the beacon on the hill.
America, if we do anything, it's in service of humanity.
It's in service of democracy.
It's not!
Right?
Like, that story, you think about it, and I think about those families of the hostages, and I think about the country collectively holding its breath.
I think about the way, you know, and mind you, right?
This is how we used to care about American hostages.
When it came to Brittany Griner, that was not the collective reaction to her being taken hostage by Russia, who is now the Republican's best friend.
But when you think about the trauma that the Republican Party is willing to wield on the American public, it's like, goddammit, Democrats, take up the microphone and tell the friggin' story, right, of who these people are and who they have always been!
They don't give a damn about you, right?
You are used, abused, and if you end up being broken, We sweep you to the side and we get in a new set of suckers, right?
And I just wish that it's not a difficult story to tell, but you're right to the point that you're hearing about this in the New York Times and a majority of this country barely has a sixth grade literacy, right?
And they're definitely not reading the quote unquote elitist New York Times.
And according to the 65 million people that watch Fox News, this doesn't exist anyway.
I'm so glad you made that point.
I wanted to make this one as well as the fact that they would have been willing to delay these hostages and having them be tortured longer than they needed to be just to score a couple political points in a race that they pretty much had won anyway.
No, he lost to Reagan!
Like we know that Nixon was extremely paranoid and like, you know, remember he, they break into the water gate in an effort to make sure that they can win when he wins in the biggest landslide they've ever seen.
Like that wasn't necessary, but they did it.
Same thing in 1980.
Jared, you kind of threw me for a loop though, because I had forgotten that Connelly did run and then lose the primary to Carter.
So I suppose he was mad, right?
So he's going to.
No, he lost to Reagan.
He switched parties.
That's the thing is Connelly deserved it.
Yeah.
Maybe not a well-known fact was that Connolly was supposed to take Ford's place.
He was supposed to be the vice president and then Nixon intended that Connolly run instead of Ford again in after Nixon stepped down.
So there was this weird Connolly.
I got to now do a really big deep dive into Connolly to figure out exactly what like was he just a plant the whole time by the Republicans in the Democratic Party?
I don't know.
But that is that is very very strange.
By the way, the last part of this puzzle, though, which is why it was really clear that the Reagan administration did, you know, this deal, the October surprises, because after he's inaugurated and after they got the consulates back, they give them arms through Israel and then they release a whole lot of frozen money in their banks that they had frozen from the Iranians, which echoes what happened that Obama did more recently.
I gotta tell you, by the way, that missing from that entire article was even really a mention that you can trace all of this to Iran-Contra.
And this is another situation, and by the way, there's a developing theme in this show as we talk about it, which is Republican corruption, but also the fact that when you don't hold people accountable, shit goes bad.
And like, when you take a look at this, like, That was a situation where that was just sort of papered over.
Everyone's like, ah, it's America, don't worry about it.
And on that note... Wait, wait, now you're yelling at me for my take on why Trump shouldn't be arrested for the campaign of violence.
No, I think you're wrong.
I think you're wrong on that.
But I appreciate, here's the thing that I appreciate here is I think that it's coming from a place where you don't want it to seem like a partisan want.
Right?
Which I don't either!
I don't want, I don't want to, man, I don't want to be in a convention center going, lock him up, lock him up.
Like, I don't want that, you know?
It's also, really quickly, the notion of, if I'm running a campaign and there's a thousand people working for me, and like a couple people accepted money that I didn't know about, and then I'm going to go to prison for that, that's sort of what I want.
But But that said, they can prove that Trump was the guy behind the whole thing.
So that throws it out.
I'm wrong.
You're right.
I'm wrong.
And you are right.
And we absolutely don't hold our people accountable.
And this is why we're in this mess.
And Nick, that mea culpa that you just had, this country would be better.
How's this for a transition?
This country would be better if the people who got us into Iraq would face the music much like that and admit that they were wrong.
We are recording this on Monday, March 20th, the 20th anniversary of one of the worst decisions, one of the most consequential decisions, I always say, that we are living in the consequences of the war on terror for a variety of reasons.
The decline of American soft power, trillions of dollars being spent to basically spread neoliberalism around the world, hundreds of thousands, if not a million people dead, thousands of Americans and coalition troops, And it has led to the decline of American empire and American power.
I have a lot of thoughts on this.
But Danielle, I got to say you were talking about people being not being held accountable, not not really talking about it.
I've been sickened over the past couple of years how George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, that entire cadre of people... I can't believe that David Frum had the... I can't believe he published an article about this in The Atlantic.
What are your feelings about this?
How do you feel looking back at this war?
I feel like I could set a fire for my anger.
I mean, let's just, you want to talk about people being able to rehab themselves in public.
George W. Bush has been able to turn himself from a war hawk who lied about weapons of mass destruction to enter into a country to avenge his father and to make billions of dollars for his daddy's cronies and Dick Cheney's cronies.
To painting watercolors and trading candy with Michelle Obama.
Right?
Like, we have allowed for George W. Bush to become that nice, oh gosh, uncle, right?
That sits at the table that might've said some bad things, but he's not as bad as the other guy, right?
Pointing at Donald Trump.
And so, you know, Eamon Mohaddin, Who has the show Amen on MSNBC.
On his Instagram, did a brilliant, brilliant four minute takedown of the Republican Party and American like reimagining of the Iraq War.
And the fact is, again, this is a situation where it's like America's oops, if it really was an oops in the first place, cost almost a million lives, disrupted an entire country and created a vacuum for terrorism in the Middle East, right?
Like, This is the time when you realize that the reason why Americans don't care about what happens on the globe is because we're never educated to care about what happens around the globe.
Because if you care about what happens around the globe and America's effect on other countries and other regions, then you'll begin to ask questions that they don't actually have the answers to.
Right?
So ignorance truly is bliss.
If you're a warmongerer and a hawk in the Pentagon, Or a Republican.
And here's the thing, Democrats allowed this to happen.
With gusto.
Yes.
Right?
And so I always say when you look at instances of American aggression, which is what this was, American aggression, in the Middle East and in Iraq, follow the money.
Yep.
Who profited off of this?
Who always profits off of war?
Right?
And these are people that once again are willing to send American troops, mostly young people, into harm's way because they are expendable.
They're not coming from their economic class.
Right?
That's not who is getting killed.
And then when these same people return home that we were putting ribbons on trees for and doing the most, they get nothing from this government.
So follow the money.
And no, once again, we're never, we don't hold rich, white, powerful men accountable in this country.
That's not what we do.
Yeah, Danielle, I'm so glad that you brought it up in that way, because I want to point out three out of the four last presidential nominees for the Democratic Party voted for this war.
Absolutely support that.
That includes the current sitting president of the United States of America.
Barack Obama was the one outlier in that.
This was not only bipartisan in terms of the halls of power, it was bipartisan in the media, it was bipartisan in the culture.
We got to the point where I want to say it was two thirds of the American population came to believe, and this was not unintentional, that Saddam Hussein played a role in the attacks of 9/11.
Like this was an indictment of our political and media structure.
And I want to point out very, very quickly, most of the people who wanted this and most of the people who championed it are still in politics.
They're still in the media.
They're still in the culture.
And nothing has happened to any of them.
And why?
Because this is a culture and a political culture that rewards that.
It rewards the good soldiers who go ahead and put their heads down and they do what the market wants, which is the entire reason why this happened in the first place.
Yeah.
was to go ahead and go out and find new markets and new resources and damn everybody else.
This is one of the reasons why we can't have health care.
We can't have better education.
This is one of the reasons why we have an authoritarian fascist movement taking place in this country.
We still haven't gotten over the shock of it, the fact that we lost this thing, the fact that we shouldn't have been there in the first place.
It is one of the most consequential and damning things that we have ever seen.
And there isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about it.
And then I don't think about how much of an indictment it is to the people who are still in power and still have influence.
Well, you know, you said that nobody paid the price.
Let's pour one out for Judy Miller, shall we, who didn't have her career extinguished, it sounds like, from her reporting, at least.
But here's the thing.
Friend of the Pod, Richard Haass, got onto Twitter.
I don't know if you saw this yesterday, probably in anticipation of the reunion, the anniversary of the Iraq War.
But he says in this tweet, I quote, The U.S.
government and my boss at the time, Colin Powell, did not lie about WMD.
The word lie involves intent.
There was no intent.
We got it wrong.
We misinterpreted intelligence and assumed Saddam was hiding WMD when he was hiding his lack of WMD.
No more, no less.
Whatever helps you sleep at night, man.
Whatever gets you to bed at night.
Because Colin Powell goes in front of the U.N.
with evidence saying he had evidence.
This is not they got it wrong.
This was them telling us that they had evidence that it was there.
And if you say that and you go in and you do not find the evidence, you are lying.
That's what that was.
And I cannot believe that this guy with a straight face tries to tweet that out, and with the link to another article I won't even dare click on to read.
But that is what we're up against.
I mean, I gotta tell you, the evidence that they used, with the sourcing that they used, makes the Steele dossier look like the fucking encyclopedia, man.
Like, that's how horrible, when we found out what it was they were basing it on, and I cannot believe that we're still here, and these guys didn't serve one day in prison.
I want to say something real fast before we finish this thing.
First of all, Dick Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, the whole host of them, they should be in the Hague.
That's the truth.
They should be behind bars as war criminals.
I can't even tell you if George W. Bush should because I look at this guy and he was a true believer.
They were dragging him around and basically, like you said, Danielle, you know, pumping him up about his dad.
So, like, the rest of them should be in jail.
We shouldn't be applauding them because they, you know, decry Donald Trump.
On another note with all of this, like, I just want to say we have not even begun to wrestle with ramifications of this war.
We haven't even, like, tried to— And the fact that, like, David Frum is publishing articles, we're allowing people like that— Nick, I hadn't even read that, and I just felt my blood pressure go through the roof.
These people have been allowed consistently to change the narrative and to change history.
We don't talk about the fact that the United States military used phosphorus over there.
We don't talk about the fact that they went after the infrastructure of everyday citizens, you know?
Like, it's an awful, awful thing.
And it was not a mistake.
It was a crime.
In the entirety of how this was operated, it was a crime.
Danielle, I'll give you the last word on this topic.
I could rant about this for hours.
You know, I just think about so many of the terms, right?
Axis of evil, right?
The villainizing of an entire religion.
Why do you think that they were able to attack infrastructure and use dangerous chemical weapons?
Because we had demonized successfully an entire religion and region of people, right?
So when you're able to sit back and dehumanize entire communities and entire regions, then they get what they deserve.
You have fucking John McCain singing, bomb, bomb, bomb Iraq, right?
To rockets applause.
Do you remember that?
Like, there's a reason why Americans don't go to The Hague, right?
Because we're the most powerful, and we're the ones that write history, right?
For the rest of the world to then rebut with what microphone, with what platform, with what money, and what stage.
So I do.
I think that it is.
I think it's disgusting.
I think it's repugnant.
And I think that in order to understand America, you have to understand every dark corner, every skeleton, every issue that has been swept under the rug or ignored or just reimagined.
So that we could always be the center and the hero of the story.
When in a lot of cases, in terms of our foreign policy, we are the villains.
That's exactly right, Danielle Moody.
Couldn't put it better myself.
Tell the good people where to find you.
Folks, you can still find me on Twitter at D2Cents, D-E-T-W-O-C-E-N-T-S.
You can find me every day, Monday through Friday, on Woke AF Daily, my daily podcast.
You can find me Tuesdays, Friday, and Sunday on The New Abnormal with The Daily Beast.
And then you can find me on Thursday mornings with Democracy-ish with Wajahat Ali.
All right, fantastic.
I'm sure everybody's going to be so happy that you came back on the show.
You're the absolute best.
Everybody, we are going to come back on Friday on the Weekender episode.
A reminder, if you want to listen to that, go over to patreon.com slash schmuckreggpodcast.
It keeps this show ad-free, editorially independent, which is one of the reasons why we're the only people who talk about this stuff and talk about the fact that, like, it... And Danielle is part of this crew as well.
Like, there are people who are going to carry this.
I'm mad.
I am mad, Nick.
I'm still pissed off about all this.
All right, everybody.
If you need us before then, you can find Nick at Can You Hear Me?
