After recording the regular Weekender episode, co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman suddenly found out that Donald Trump had been indicted in New York - so buckle up for the first segment, followed by their discussion of yet another mass shooting, this time in Tennessee before moving on to the GOP's war on Tik Tok and finishing up with a kindler, gentler Republican being pushed to run for President: none other than Glenn Youngkin.
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Nick, it appears that Charlie Brown kicked that football, finally.
As soon as we were done recording this episode of The Weekender, reports have come out that Donald John Trump, the 45th president of the United States of America, an absolute national disgrace, has been indicted in New York for felonious hush money payments uh and will be supposedly reprimanded to custody fingerprinted mug shotted and then released on his own reconnaissance uh i gotta tell you nick i
there's a lot happening here we're obviously going to be covering this going forward i'm a little surprised that this is happening well they always say that's easy to indict a ham sandwich or you can and die to ham sandwich in a grand jury. - Big ham sandwich, yeah.
So, maybe we shouldn't be surprised, but again, it's been so long, it's escaped so many times, it just felt like they would never happen.
I do feel it's interesting because if it does confirm that, like they presented evidence and remember, this is a bit of a complicated case because, first of all, it's falsifying business records, which is a misdemeanor.
But if it's in the furtherance of a federal crime, then it becomes a felony.
It's novel.
It's probably the weakest of the cases against him.
But we already heard from one of the other people in the grand jury in Georgia.
Right.
That young woman who was talking on the on the news.
And she was dropping a little bit of hints, which probably gives me some insight into maybe what the grand jury was like in New York as far as like they all are going to probably they're going to say he's guilty.
I'm sure the evidence was easy to present.
Why it took so long, I don't know.
But at the very least, this is easy evidence to present that like, yes, he had the intent to defraud the country with his campaign, with hush money.
So I don't see what, you know, the issue is going to be going forward as far as that.
But what are your first thoughts?
I, my first thoughts, man, they're scattered.
First things first, heaven help us over the next few days.
You know, I think our media obviously underestimates Trump and his followers, as we've talked about previously, and as I've written about, like, this has entered into a violent cult state in which people are going to see this.
As we talk about later on this show, they're going to see this as a religious crusade, a religious war.
I don't care how many people show up at New York, which is where obviously the media is going to be focused, whether or not they're going to show up to protest or not is different.
There are a lot of unwell acolytes roaming around the country who Have the potential to carry out violence.
I know personally and other people that I've talked to that the amount of threats and specific threats that they've gotten over the past couple of weeks have been exploding predictably.
So we're about to enter into a really really weird time period.
I want to read a quote this I just got this off of Fox News.
Jesse Waters said, quote, there's going to be a major rally around the flag feeling.
I'm starting to feel it right now.
I'm angry about it.
I don't like it.
The country is not going to stand for it.
And people better be careful.
And that's all I'll say about that.
And if you have a Fox, Host saying that to millions of people watching, you better believe there are other people around the country who feel that way, similarly.
But also, secondly, we need to not worry about the fact that this is the first president charged with crimes.
Quite frankly, it should have happened over and over and over again.
Quit worrying about the office and the fact that a morally bankrupt criminal was able to gain the presidency in the first place.
I agree.
I mean, there needs to be some amount of fear.
I kind of still feel like maybe this is going to peter out.
And so the numbers are small enough where, I mean, listen, you know what?
I want to say that.
And the question here is because he just had a huge rally, right?
There were over 10,000 people.
Maybe it was like 15 or 18,000.
18,000.
So it's like, that's big.
That's a stadium full of people that's showing up at a place in Texas in a way that That, you know, there is a fervency around his campaign.
The question is how much of those people are the ones who own the AR-15s and feel like everyone's coming for them because that's the people you have to be afraid of.
The interesting thing here is that there's layers to this.
There's probably, what happens if there's another indictment in Georgia, for instance?
Right?
And all of a sudden they start coming in from all sides, which is what he's been worried about, and which is how the only way he's been able to like even afford to defend himself in all these is because he just builds money from all these people who are supporting him.
So I wonder if it would damp, if it would tamp down a little bit of something if, you know, it's like, will someone end up saying, well, geez, how can, you know, is this really political?
Or is this like three states all having separate, you know, cases against him and they're all moving forward?
Maybe there really is something here.
Yeah, and I think what you're talking about is whether or not the rank and file of the Republican Party will go ahead and stand up for him or if they're going to start moving away and leaving again a fanatical cult status, right?
The people who are in it to win it and or willing to die with him.
I don't know.
I really don't.
Just a quick couple of particulars on all of this.
Trump has not been arrested yet.
He's expected to fly to New York and surrender himself, where, again, he'll be fingerprinted and mugshoted and then released, probably, if he chooses not to, if he chooses to remain in Florida.
Nick, I think you and I both know whose responsibility it would be to make sure that he was reprimanded to the state of New York, and that is none other than Ron DeSantis.
So the question is, does Donald Trump want all of the attention of going out there and pretending to be a martyr, which by the way goes along with the conversation we have later in this episode, or is he going to see this as a political game in which he needs to put Ron DeSantis on the line to go ahead and show that he is an operative of the deep state?
We still don't know.
I mean, there are so many things up in the air at this point.
How many of these indictments are going to come down?
How it's going to play out?
What it's going to look like?
What it's going to feel like?
Is safety going to continue?
Are we going to descend into some sort of chaotic moment?
No idea.
Absolutely uncharted water at this point, and it remains to be seen what the next few days are like.
Yeah, and I'm not worried about precedent either.
They're talking about no, no ex-president.
It's like, you know, no ex-president has ever been so corrupt.
And so if there's corruption, then they have to, if Joe Biden is corrupt, then he needs to be arrested when he's done, you know, all those things.
It's like, that doesn't have to mean anything.
I personally feel like it'll peter out.
I don't, I don't know if we're going to see the kind of violence like we saw on January 6th, even though everything, A reasonable person would point to that and say, why wouldn't it?
But part of me feels like this is going to peter out.
We knew we know that the rank and file, like you mentioned, desperately want Trump out of this.
Yes.
And I'm sure they're breathing a sigh of relief to the Santa's is going to be the one.
If he has to extradite him, he'll have to do that.
My hands are tied.
It's what the law says, even though he's so happy to go against the law or create a new law whenever he wants to.
He would more than happy to say, I'm sorry, I can't do anything about it.
I don't believe the charges are correct, but I gotta send him up the river.
I'm sorry.
And DeSantis will probably feel like he'll, you know, not upset the Trumpists that he's trying to woo by doing that.
But yeah, obviously Trump won't let him forget that either.
It's pure political theater.
It'll be really exciting.
What a weird-ass time.
I mean, what a weird time.
And by the way, just to put a bow on this thing, maybe we'd be in a better position if we did arrest former presidents.
I don't know.
Maybe if some of them had been held accountable.
Maybe if some of these crooks had actually been held accountable, we wouldn't have ended up with Trump and we wouldn't have ended up at this point.
I have no idea, but we needed to say something.
We needed to address this giant, giant thing that has taken place since we had finished recording.
That being said, we'll continue to cover this story like you know that we will, and the only kind of reportage that we can do.
And thank you again for all the support and sticking with us.
And yeah, here's to the show.
The Weekender, everybody.
Hey everybody, welcome to the Weekender Edition of the McCrae Podcast.
I'm JG86 and I'm here with my good pal and buddy Nick Alsman.
How we doing, man?
We're doing.
We're doing.
I don't know what we're doing, but we're doing something, and here I am.
So that's a start.
All right.
That's as good as it gets in 2023 A.D.
I tell you what.
Everybody, we got a packed show.
We got to talk about Disney getting one over on good old Ronnie Donnie DeSantis.
We got to talk about is Glenn Youngkin the answer for the Republican Party?
We got to talk about guns, guns, guns.
But if you want to listen to this whole episode, and I know that you do, Again, I said this the other day, and I meant this.
I've been getting emails from people since we've been exerting soft pressure.
Tough love, if you will.
And people are saying, why did I wait?
This is now one of the best parts of my week.
I get to hang out with you on Fridays as well as Tuesdays, patreon.com slash mcgreggpodcast.
All right, Nick, we have to talk about this absolute tragedy that took place in Nashville, Tennessee.
Of course, there was a shooting at a Christian private school.
The details are all over the place.
The story has been an absolute mess because our media, shocker of shocker, is absolutely incapable of talking about anything that involves people who are not necessarily cisgender.
with any like aplomb or maturity.
They've declared the person transgender even though we're not sure if that's true.
This person might be non-binary, but of course everybody jumped on this because we live in the heightened state in which trans people and non-cisgender people are being targeted.
We've got a couple of things, a couple of threads to pull out on this thing, but I think you'll agree this was an absolute awful tragedy and our hearts go out to all the people affected by it.
I mean, it goes without saying, and the fact that we have to continually say this and go through these stories is just outrageous.
Sandy Hook now just becomes, it doesn't even represent the tragedy, it represents the inaction.
If we couldn't get something done after Sandy Hook, then we can't get anything done.
That's sort of what that phrase means now.
So, um, well, you know, I guess it is notable that, you know, this person was, you know, assigned female at birth, which is, you know, a little bit rare.
Generally, we see a very specific type of person who can, who commits these atrocities.
White men.
White cisgender men.
Yes.
Right.
It disaffected, you know, a lot of the kind of things that you wouldn't necessarily pop up on any kind of, you know, mental instability issues either, which is always what the right wants to point to.
It's not the guns.
It's the crazy people.
But the bottom line is a lot of these people, when you hear the interviews and you hear what's their backgrounds, Wouldn't necessarily have raised enough red flags to have got them either on that list if it exists in their state, or any way to prevent them, because of that background, from getting guns.
You know, this one's more the same.
Seven guns.
I can't even afford to fix my fucking toilet right now.
Here's this person who's 28 out there buying seven guns at a time.
Guns are fucking expensive, aren't they, Jared?
Aren't they like thousands of dollars each?
Guns can get expensive.
Yes, they absolutely can.
All of these, by the way, gotten legally.
By the way, the family had expressed that they did not want this person to have these guns.
Tennessee, shocker of shockers, does not have a red flag law that could have prevented this in terms of like reporting it.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
This is a thing that we're not going to deal with.
We're going to just continue barreling down this road.
We're going to watch children get killed left and right.
We're, you know, basically just surrendering to a problem that could be dealt with if we had the political will, the societal will.
And of course, and this is something that we have to talk about, Nick, the hypocrisy on this.
That every single time that there is a mass shooting, and like 98% of the time it's going to be a white guy, And by the way, they will leave behind manifestos that tell you why they do it.
It's always right-wing ideas and conspiracy theories.
You know, they're like, well, we don't need to talk about this.
We don't need to, you know, get into any of this.
Immediately, what does this turn into?
Look at these people who have these mental issues who need to be dealt with because the entire political agenda behind this thing, you and I and our listeners know this, is to go ahead and take gay and trans people and to just say that they are mentally ill in order to use the power of the state against them.
And this thing, I have to tell you, when it happened, when the story started coming out about this, I knew that it was going to be bad.
Right.
Well, I think we all knew that, like we all felt immediately like this thing was going to be bad.
Nick, I sent you this article, our good friends at The Federalist, one of the best publications out there.
I mean, how can you how can you start your day without reading The Federalist?
And this is from just a reliably great reporter named Joy Pullman.
The title of this is, The six Christians martyred in Nashville are a call to repentance to all who will hear it.
Now, what we're getting ready to go through, I want to point out, is completely nuts.
This, again, is from Joy Pullman.
Quote, If you weren't aware that the West's culture war is also a spiritual battle, let the martyrdom of Christ's six precious saints in Nashville, Tennessee this week open your eyes.
We, quote, wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness and high places.
It should be no surprise that worshippers of demons rage against those bought and sealed with Christ's holy blood.
Nick, this literally, and The Federalist is one of the more influential publications on the right, this is literally being said that transgender people or gay people are worshippers of demons and are carrying out a spiritual war against Christians.
Which, by the way, means you have to defend yourself and possibly violence and attacks against democracy are necessary.
Isn't this nuts?
I mean, this is so far from any kind of background that I might have had, you know, even just growing up that, you know, but again, I've seen and I've read and I'm familiar with this kind of talk, but I don't understand why, you know, great if they want to see that they want to mention like the rulers of the darkness of this world and then, you know, spiritual wickedness in high places.
Why isn't that the Republican Party as a whole who refuses to enact gun laws?
Why isn't that what the spiritual wickedness is in high places?
You know, and it's always been that sort of hypocrisy that has never been able to get squared when you're talking about religious fervor or this type.
Yeah, and I'll tell you, one of the things that's happening here, and I've been watching this with a...
With a real revulsion, because of course I have to keep track of this stuff and research this stuff.
Basically what has happened in the, and I'm putting really heavy quotes around this, the intellectual wing of the far right, right?
One of the things that they're doing to go ahead and attack trans people is they have developed this idea that the trans agenda, Right?
Is the idea that it is a satanic rejection of God.
That basically what's happening is you are rejecting what God has given you or assigned you, and that you are immersing yourself in a secular, satanic ritual.
Which, by the way, goes along, and I can hear people saying it along with me, It merges with the QAnon idea that you're sacrificing children, you're hurting children, you're grooming children, and you're creating a society of satanic energies and ideas.
This right here is literally leaking into that, this new forming ideology that these, again, heavy air quotes, intellectuals on the far right are pushing.
This literally is going ahead and bringing together all the disparate threads and creating a holy war type situation.
Which, by the way, means that you have to use the power of the state against these people.
Otherwise, they're coming for your children, they're coming for you, they're going to destroy the country, and they're going to take your soul.
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