Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman have exciting news! This Friday they'll be hosting a LIVE show together and in person. And on Tuesday, they'll be together in Phoenix, Arizona for another show and to celebrate the release of Jared's new book. On today's epsisode, they discuss the draconian laws being passed against gender affirming care, they analyze how Trump and DeSantis have been creating attack ads against each other, before discussing the GOP going after food stamps.
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I'm going back to where we decided to launch this podcast in the first place.
I'm going to go total Hollywood.
People will not recognize me when I leave.
I'm totally and utterly prepared to complain about sub-70 degree weather.
Oh, yeah.
Well, if you're lucky, maybe we get a little bit over 70.
I'm not sure.
I'll check right now.
But we're lucky.
But do we get to go?
Do you want to do some touristy stuff?
Because that'll be fun.
That's not a terrible idea.
I love it.
Okay, I am all in on this thing.
And to go ahead and to remind people who haven't heard us talking about what's happening, I am going to go out to California.
And I got bad news for everybody first and foremost.
There's not going to be a Weekender edition Friday morning and that is because I am getting to Nick's house on Friday and we are going to be doing our first live together edition of the MuttCraig Podcast.
There it is.
That will be sometime TBA on Friday, April 21st.
We will let everybody know as soon as possible.
If you can't make the live stream on Friday, April 21st, it's a be there or be square situation, but we will release that episode once it has been recorded.
But we hope you'll be able to make it.
Correct, Nick?
Oh yeah, I mean, me and you in the same shot will be some incredible stuff happening there.
Some would say unprecedented, others would say historic.
Also, on Saturday, April 22nd, I will be at the Los Angeles Festival of Books.
Come out, see me talk about challenges against democracy.
That's 1030 on Saturday, April 22nd.
Then Nick and I are going to drive in a car to Arizona.
We're on Tuesday, April 25th at 6 p.m.
And again, we tried to figure out the time there.
I don't know how all that stuff works.
We're going to be at the Changing Hands Bookstore in Phoenix.
We'll be in conversation.
We'll tape that.
We'll release it.
I could not be more excited, Nick.
Oh, listen, we got a huge drive together.
That'll be really fun.
And then I can't wait to be part of whatever, you know, this is the Jared Yates Sexton experience.
I'm just on the run for the ride.
I'm very excited for this.
Celebrate your book and, you know, have a conversation.
I told them that Nick Halseman was going to be in conversation.
They said, B-ball breakdown, Coach Nick?
That's what got my foot in the door.
Uh-oh.
Well, you know, I am a little bit busy this time of year.
That is true.
That is.
And that's another thing.
I don't know if people understand that.
Like, Nick Haussleman, the NBA guru, is going to have me around in his abode during the NBA playoffs.
That's incredible.
I can't even imagine what that's going to be like.
I'm ready to go.
I'm in.
All right.
All right, everybody.
We have, I about said a great show.
But that's not exactly how we talk about what we do, because we're talking about right-wing extremism and the dangers in American democracy.
We've got Trump and DeSantis throwing haymakers at each other through their super PACs.
We've got McCarthy, Speaker of the House, absolutely showing us who he is and what's going on.
We have some sober stuff that we have to talk about.
But we start, Nick, in the state of Missouri.
And for those who aren't paying attention, in Missouri, the Republicans are going for it.
This most recent happening is from the Attorney General, Andrew Bailey of Missouri, who announced in a really weird power play,
That based on fraudulent business concerns that he was going to halt in the state of Missouri transgender care to adults and minors alike effective April 27th putting in play a restriction that these things will only be available to people and again that's adults and minors.
It will only be available to them after three years of documented psychological care.
This is an amazing amount of overreach.
I think they're playing their hands, showing who they are, what they want to do.
Nick, this is really, really disturbing shit.
I mean, okay, here's the thing.
Having transgender care involves a lot of therapy, right?
Let's not make a mistake here.
But who in their right mind gets to think that the government is going to weigh in on how long and who?
Where does three years come from, Jared?
Do we have any indication where they got that number?
I assume, like all of these things, that this was cooked up in some sort of Heritage Foundation lab that shows that this is like a number that is unacceptable and is just long enough in order to either cut people out or to go ahead, and I think that this is at the heart of a lot of this stuff, make them leave the state.
I think that's a large portion of what this is getting at.
So that's fascinating.
So I guess that mindset would be that a lot of these states wanted to simply purge their citizenry of people like this, right?
This is the civil war that we're moving towards?
they're going to slowly just, you know, ring out like a wet sponge.
Well, a lot of it is balkanization.
And, you know, we've covered this, you know, in the past with California, Texas and Florida.
Those are the three most active states in this.
California is basically saying to people in so-called red states, come to California where we're not going to infringe on your liberties.
And Texas is saying, if you're tired of blue state overreach, Florida is doing the same, Go ahead and come.
We've seen in those three major states, we've seen movement in, movement out.
It's been a weird sort of a locked horn situation.
And I gotta tell you, in states like Missouri, where Democrats can get elected, and also look at Kansas, where people overwhelmingly voted for women to have bodily autonomy, We're starting to see in some of these other states these pushes with more aggressive legislation that is going to make it more and more unpalatable, but also trying to go ahead and create scenarios where people will either leave or it can further radicalize the populace.
I agree.
And it does feel very much an arbitrary number here and an arbitrarily sadistic number, right?
Somehow make it longer because, you know, it could take a long time if you needed a lot of therapy and for either mental therapy or puberty blockers and all sorts of things like that.
Or it could be shorter depending on how the mental state of mind of the patient.
And if it's someone who is suicidal and someone who completely can't handle their situation and feeling comfortable in their bodies, then there is a different pace that you must take when you are applying this care.
So the bottom line is, I guess we should have figured this out.
We should have seen that this was going to happen once abortion became a thing where they felt like they could get into your private lives.
You know what, doesn't this make it even more clear?
I think before the Roe v. Wade decision, but before Dobbs, I think I thought that the privacy aspect of the decision was a little bit of a novelty, but doesn't it make it even more and more clear why the privacy thing was a compelling argument back in 71?
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
I mean, it literally comes down to this.
Can you live in this country without the government invading your life?
Right?
And now that we've reached this point at which the federal level has been weakened, we have now gotten to all these these pinch points.
And by the way, I want to point out, we haven't even mentioned this since important to this absolute monster, Andrew Bailey.
Not elected Attorney General of Missouri.
Was not elected to this position.
He was appointed to this position after Eric Schmidt left to become the Senator for Missouri.
And by the way, it's important to point out that the Schmidt character was like a white replacement theory asshole.
And then we go ahead and we get Andrew Bailey.
Andrew Bailey will be up for election in 2024.
So, when it turns into, why is this happening in Missouri?
Well, Missouri has some very, very social conservative sort of reactionary stuff.
Why is this Attorney General so willing to do this?
Because the people who go ahead and create this legislation, who make these pushes, those institutes, these think tanks, these wealthy backed donor groups, this is the type of person who is making a push to get elected in 2024.
Now, in all of this, you're exactly right.
The privacy aspect of it, it's being infringed on by the states at this point.
You're not going to be able to live a life.
You're not going to be able to, I don't know, send your kid to school where they'll get a decent education.
You're, you know, Florida, going to DeSantis before we talk about him later, just passed an abortion ban, you know, an aggressive abortion ban.
You can't live in some of these states without feeling the pressure of the state's boot on your neck.
Yeah, and that's an interesting concept.
The whole thing is interesting how this is all going to piece together like a puzzle in terms of what the state of our union is going to be.
And I find it fascinating.
I haven't really considered the fact that this is the main selling point or the main motivation for them doing this is to get the people out of their state.
I mean, it makes sense.
You would have to leave, right?
If you had a child who was in this situation and you live in Missouri, you'd have to leave.
And you know what's going to happen is that some of these lawmakers are probably going to have kids in this situation, right?
And they're going to be faced with this, just like we saw the same kind of lawmakers who were faced with having like a gay child.
Despite them being against gay marriage or any other rights LGBTQ community deserves.
But that's a special situation, Nick.
When it's their kids, when it's the people they care about, that's a different story.
We're talking about the people who don't deserve security.
We're talking about the people who don't deserve that type of health care.
That's the problem in all of this, is the hypocritical nature of it.
And by the way, this isn't just people who are currently considering these things.
There are people who are currently on hormones, who are currently scheduled to have this care, and basically what's going to happen, they're going to get cut off.
And like, again, going back to the idea of these separate states, the same people who are going to go from one state to another in order to get abortion care.
Like, there are people who are going to have to go out of state in order to get these things taken care of.
And by the way, where are they going to go, Nick?
They're going to go to where you're from, Illinois.
They're going to go over to Illinois to get that care and then they're going to have to basically live a scofflaw existence until a state like Illinois or another state when any of these people who are passing these things will then pass a law that makes it illegal to go out and get care in another state.
You know, that was my next line.
I was going to say, you know, it's not like they're going to try and pass that law that will make it illegal to cross state lines and get care.
They've already done that and they will do that without question.
You know, I'm listening to this podcast about Roe v. Wade and, you know, people turning people in, you know, rumors that somebody might have had an abortion in 1968 and now the cops come at your door and demand to know who the doctor was.
They want to arrest everybody.
That was some scary shit.
And I wasn't alive back then, but I certainly had heard about it.
And that is something that is, again, if you want to spark to find, you know, a civil war in this country, that that would certainly be a real big issue here.
The only thing they have going for them is that the the number of people who need transgender care is small enough where I suppose it doesn't spark like abortion might have, like a huge personal, you know, Connection to people that will have, you know, a huge, you know, like demonstrations and marches, I think.
But that said, what I find interesting about all this is that they rail, like, the reason why they don't want to have, let's say, you know, food for kids in schools, right?
You'll see Republicans cutting these programs.
They don't want the government involved.
The government shouldn't be part of that whole thing.
And then they turn around and then make the government completely and utterly involved in what's the most personal decisions that you should be making on your own with your doctor.
That's exactly right.
The hypocrisy just never, ever ends.
By the way, just a quick note on populations.
Illinois has literally double the amount of citizens in it than Missouri does.
But guess what?
Because we live in the United States of America, where we had a conservative, minority, control, white, elite, and afraid of democracy.
In the United States Senate, they have the exact same number of votes.
Right?
And, you know, and really when you take a look at the way that these things work, like, they are literally picking and choosing, like, how they are going to create little situations where they can either scare people out, and by the way, there's a ton of people who maybe, maybe they're not even transgender, their kids aren't transgender, and they'll basically be like, screw this!
I don't want to live, you know, where we're going to have these backward laws and all of that.
So they're going to push it and continue to keep pushing this issue and hopefully radicalize people.
I want to also point out, because we like to give a lot of context on this show, that three years of psychological care, that is also going to go ahead and put up like a big red light to get a bunch of people in the state of Missouri, and any state that goes ahead and replicates this, to basically open the door for people who are either into conversion care,
And anybody who doesn't know that, that's about getting people in with so-called psychiatrists who will talk your kid out of being gay or queer, and in this case, to talk them out of being transgender, and also to go ahead and give people in the state of Missouri who maybe aren't comfortable with their kids, you know, being gender diverse, giving them the possibility that they can take their kids in to get that psychological care.
It is a slippery slope, but you better be damn well assured it's going to lead to political power and it's going to lead to profit.
And that's what all of this was all about, top to bottom.
Yeah, and I'll just throw out an anecdotal, you know, idea, whatever story that happened.
In the 80s, they had conversion therapy from psychiatrists who, in Chicago, like in a place that was aggressive, and in the community that I was in, that was extremely progressive.
And people really, you know, one of my neighbors, they forced him to go to a psychiatrist to try and deprogram him.
And that is, That, you know, it will happen again.
And you'll find psychiatrists who think that they can do that.
It's not how it works.
And it will drive people to, you know, even lower depths of psychological health.
And it really is, it really is frightening.
And again, if you don't want to be someone who wants to transition from one gender to the other gender or to another gender, then fine, don't.
But again, why does anybody in this country feel like they have the dominion over anyone else to tell them that?
That's what's so crazy.
And I know the answer.
The answer is because they think it's child abuse, right?
They think that children should not be allowed to make this decision anyway.
But then again, we are now moving into adults.
They're not letting have a decision either.
So this is really isn't even about, you know, a child who might be too young to have any kind of decision making yet over their lives.
But again, this is a parent, a doctor, a kid, that's their decision.
And I want to point out real fast before we move to the next segment, you know, in the research that I'm doing for my next big project and a lot of the work that I'm doing behind the scenes right now, when they say that it's child abuse to take your kid out and, you know, give them transgender care or whatever it is, what they're actually doing is they're advocating for child abuse.
They're advocating for not taking care of your children and actually making sure that your children have to fit within a certain box that you yourself had to fit into.
And that is a cycle of socialization, which unfortunately continues.
One person gets abused and they get traumatized, and then they have to abuse and traumatize kids and next generations.
So you're exactly right.
Like, it's the mindset of it, but it's how it makes it possible.
Oh, Dan, I don't want to ruin the transition, but it's the magical thinking.
They could find one person who transitioned and they're not happy.
Oh, not only can they find him, they will have the New York Times do it for him.
And I want to point out, and oh man, I'm so glad you made this point, Nick, the New York Times coverage of this, you'll notice, and this tells you who they are, New York Times will write Two to three dozen articles questioning, you know, transgender rights and transgender existence.
Then this sawed-off Attorney General does this, and what's the New York Times say about it?
They're like, some critics argue.
It's like, no!
You argued.
You made this possible.
You want to ask the questions, but you want to sort of wring your hands about the results of it.
You know what I mean?
They want to be like, the blood's not on our hands, guys.
I'm sorry.
That's, I mean, that's just the way it is.
All right.
Speaking of, Ron DeSantis is quietly putting together a presidential team.
I want to tell you, Nick, the conversations that I'm having right now with insiders around this, people are worried about Ron DeSantis and how he has performed so far.
He has recently gone to Liberty University, which is where the evangelicals hang out and basically figure out how to, you know, do what we're talking about.
He went out.
He tried to talk the talk.
Wasn't able to walk the walk.
He said, quote, Yes, the truth will set you free.
And the New York Times covers this saying, DeSantis said, invoking the words of Christ.
Quote, Because woke represents a war on truth, we must wage a war on woke.
Not great.
Not great.
And then meanwhile, Nick, Trump and DeSantis, Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, have started jousting with their super PACs.
And I want to go ahead and start, before we listen to this, because this is not a visual medium, I want to set this up.
This super PAC ad from Make America Great Again Incorporated, a Trump super PAC, it involves the rumor that Ron DeSantis ate pudding with his fingers, and the visuals in this We'll talk about them when we're done.
DeSantis has his dirty fingers all over senior entitlements.
Like cutting Medicare, slashing Social Security, even raising our retirement age.
Tell Ron DeSantis to keep his pudding fingers off our money.
Oh, and get this man a spoon.
I got thoughts on this ad.
How gross is that ad, Nick?
It's gross.
But, you know, it's funny because the rumor was not denied by DeSantis when they asked him about it.
I don't know.
I don't even know if that's going to be anything that's going to resonate with anybody.
Will it?
I gotta tell you, I think pudding fingers is a pretty good insult.
I mean, it's better than dyssanctimonious.
It's up there with Meatball Ron.
I'll go ahead and say that.
But an ad with somebody, oh, it's got an actor eating pudding with its fingers just to go ahead and put a visual on it.
It's so, so gross and so ugly.
But guess what?
Feels kind of effective in putting like a spin on this, which is that Ron DeSantis wants to come after your social safety nets, which say what you want about Donald Trump.
But for the most part, he has come out and we'll hear another.
We'll see it in an ad that's running from DeSantis and his people.
Like, he has kind of flirted with the idea of going after Social Security and Medicaid, but the consistent stance of Trump has been to say, don't mess with those things.
But here is an ad from the DeSantis never back down super PAC.
Donald Trump is being attacked by a Democrat prosecutor in New York.
So why is he spending millions attacking the Republican governor of Florida?
Trump's stealing pages from the Biden-Pelosi playbook, repeating lies about Social Security.
Here's the truth from Governor Ron DeSantis.
We're not going to mess with Social Security as Republicans.
What did Trump say?
What do you think about these two ads?
At some point they will be.
We will take a look at the...
Trump should fight Democrats.
Not lie about Governor DeSantis.
What happened to Donald Trump?
Never Back Down Eat is responsible for the contents of this ad.
Donald Trump.
Well, okay.
What do you think about that?
What do you think about these two ads?
How do you feel about them?
Well, you know, you made a connection between the pudding and entitlements, right?
Or, I guess, right?
Is that what you're trying to make it seem like?
The idea that his pudding fingers are going to take away your Social Security.
Okay, yeah.
I mean, to me, the first ad is simply a smear on his personality.
They need to attack him there, so he can't develop the cult of personality that Trump has, right?
Because obviously Trump thinks of it in those terms, right?
He can't let DeSantis, you know, connect with those people, right?
That's a big, probably a fear of him.
Someone's going to come along, connect better with them, and that'll take away all of his followers, in theory, right?
I mean, by the way, isn't that... I wonder if that happens with cult leaders.
I mean, is that what they're so afraid of?
Is that another cult leader is going to come in and, like, kind of scorch all of their followers?
Yes, that's exactly what they're afraid of constantly.
Because if you're a cult leader, you don't want anybody else possibly, like, getting in on your territory.
That's exactly what cult leaders are afraid of.
It vaguely reminds me of a French documentary called Man Bites Dog.
Have you ever seen this one?
In the 90s?
Absolutely, I have.
So, you know, now we're not going to spoil it.
It's a fake documentary about a serial killer, but at some point he runs into another serial killer and that guy's got a filming film crew following him doing a documentary and chaos ensues.
I thought that it was hilarious.
But so I think that's where I'm getting on the first one.
And then the second one is very milquetoast is very much like, please, I promise I'm not going to touch these, you know, and that those are the kind of ads that the Santas did that everyone's like, oh, all politicians lie.
They just do this shit.
It was very much a run-of-the-mill, nothing Santa out to me on that one.
Does that resonate with you?
Absolutely.
The DeSantis ad, I think, shows what the problem has been, which is DeSantis is going down a very predictable political path.
He has, and we've talked about this ad nauseum, Trump had to go out and get a bunch of people who couldn't get hired anywhere.
You know, like nobody wanted to work for Donald Trump, except for the sleaziest people imaginable.
And he went out and got a bunch of people who were really, really crazy and dangerous.
DeSantis right now has every high-paid Republican strategist and consultant that you could think of.
Here's the problem.
They're not putting out anything that's going to really challenge much in the way of, like, Orthodox.
That is like every ad that ran during the midterms.
It's the Biden-Pelosi playbook.
I'm shocked there wasn't a picture of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in there, right?
It's the exact same thing.
Also, what is the message of that ad?
Why are you being mean to Ron DeSantis?
That's insane!
How is that possibly what you thought was a good idea for an ad in any of this?
The rhetorical question at the end, what happened to Donald Trump?
What are you talking about what happened to Donald Trump?
How are you shocked that Trump is coming after you?
It's only what he has done from the very moment that he arrived on the political scene.
And it's just so stupid.
It's really, really poor.
And I gotta tell you, the people that I have talked to, There are already Republican donors who have turned the spigot off with DeSantis.
They've already decided, we don't want to put any money here if we don't see something that's going to make us think that this thing is going to take off.
And this happens!
Like, there are starts and stops in the campaign season, even before you announce that you're going to run for the presidency.
And right now, Trump has run circles around DeSantis, and I'm as shocked as anybody to say that, because I really thought that DeSantis was going to be a much better campaigner than this.
Yeah, well, you know, I have no doubt, and this is not going to be an insightful prediction, but I have no doubt that they plotted this out and they're dipping their toe into the waters of the Trump, you know, criticizing him with a, you know, like, like if you're a showrunner on a TV show, right, you have to have a 12 episode arc, right?
Or 24 episode arc, right?
So this is the first episode.
They probably, you know, at some point around the sixth episode, they're going to then really start to turn this on.
But I would, and again, the prediction isn't insightful because, you know, there will be an ad and they might have to accelerate this one where they finally go after and probably say something like, you know, the January 6th thing was an insurrection and he led it.
You know what I mean?
Like that's what they're going to have to do something to really change the conversation.
It's not—and again, man, I hate that this is what we're doing.
It's punditry.
We have to talk about it.
Like, it's not hard.
Stop complaining about the 2020 election.
The Biden authoritarian regime is on the march.
You know?
Stop talking about paying porn stars or whatever.
Like, just— It's not hard.
It's just amazing to watch.
And this is the reason why I thought this was important to talk about this.
It's important that people still think that politics as usual can beat Donald Trump.
It can't.
You can't.
You cannot get up with this guy and think that people are just going to vote for old stuff like the game has changed.
And there's just no way possible to run that.
I mean, that could have been anybody.
You've seen that ad a hundred times.
Right?
I mean, it's literally every ad that they make, and they make a ton of money from it, but it just, it doesn't land a glove whatsoever.
Well, here's the problem that you're describing, the GOP, in the sense that, like, they're not out-of-the-box thinkers.
They're strategists.
They've never been out-of-the-box.
You know, if you look at the Democrats, at least, like, you know, a guy like Howard Dean comes along, right, and kind of, and even, like, Bernie's not even a Democrat, but Bernie, or even Barack Obama, when he first ran, there was, they were able to sort of push the boundaries of what a traditional campaign thought, you know, groupthink was like.
The Republicans don't have that, and they'll never have that, right?
And so, as a result, he is going to be stuck running the fill-in-the-blank campaign, right?
That was that ad.
Literally, that ad would have been written 25 years ago.
They just fill in the blanks.
So, that's just not going to happen.
They can't find that kind of, I think, what you're asking them to do.
They don't have candidates that could do that, and they certainly don't have consultants that can figure out how to do anything more than what we see on a very typical playbook.
Well, and the people who ran the ads that won the elections and actually gained any momentum for the GOP, they left the Republican Party and started the Lincoln Project.
I mean, and by the way, again, hats off, fellas, at the Lincoln Project for stoking racism and classism and every other ism imaginable, you know?
Like, it has completely changed.
And basically, you just have a bunch of sickos with Donald Trump who are saying around, God, that is such an ugly ad.
It's so, so disgusting.
But it's really incredible to me.
It really is.
Are people gonna get mad at me for saying what I said about the Republican strategists and the way they come up with their ads when you can look at something like the Swift vote episode as an out-of-the-box idea against John Kerry.
Like maybe, you know what, maybe I don't give him credit on that end for something so extremely heinous what they did.
But at the very least, you know, I guess they can scrounge up an idea like that.
And I suppose that's what you were saying, Ron DeSantis needs, that he needs a swift vote for Trump.
Well, I mean, listen, this is also the party that went ahead and went after a veteran amputee and, you know, basically said he was helping bin Laden.
I mean, like, it literally is, like, and again, like, it's weird to talk about this in the way that we're talking about it, but you can't go in to a nuclear war with a pea shooter.
And that, I mean, and you know, one of the things that we keep seeing, I even saw, I don't know if you saw this, there was like a Ross DuBats opinion column, and I don't know why I read it, but I did, was why Ron DeSantis must run.
The big argument at this point is, is this guy ready for it?
And if he doesn't run, like, is it going to be like the end of his political career?
There's nothing else for him to do.
And I gotta tell you, like, If you really think that you're going to run against Donald Trump, and that there's not going to be damage taken and damage needed done, I don't know what to tell you about your political instincts.
I truly, truly don't.
And meanwhile, you know, Pete Dominick talked about, he thought that, you know, oh, help me out, Pompeo.
He thought that Pompeo was going to get the nomination.
Pompeo said he's not running.
Tim Scott's got an Exploratory Committee.
Good luck, Tim Scott!
Good luck!
Nobody else is really coming into this thing, and DeSantis is just... This is weak shit, man.
Weak.
Yeah.
I mean, listen, it is a long thing.
Remember, they're also somehow targeting this notion of Trump's legal issues Being a mortal blow.
And then they'll just be standing around on the corner with their hands in their pocket going, oh, hey, you know, I'm here.
Hi.
You know, like that's kind of probably part of what they're... My name is Nikki Haley and I would love your vote.
Oh, wow.
She dropped out, right?
Oh, I don't think she dropped out.
No, last I heard she said that, or she didn't say, but her campaign had to come out and say that they basically lied about her financial haul.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
And then maybe that's what I'm thinking of.
I mean, she, that will, she will drop out.
I'm sorry.
But, but, or, you know what, I was seeing something where like, yeah, the numbers, she's not nobody.
Oh, you know what it was?
She spoke at somewhere as a video on the NRA and like couldn't even get an applause.
Oh, they booed Mike Pence out of the thing.
And by the way, I think Nikki Haley and Tim Scott are destined to both lose in South Carolina.
I think they are destined to basically compete for like Third place in South Carolina, more or less.
We'll hold up on that.
Let's not pretend.
Tim Scott serves a very specific purpose for the GOP.
A lot of specific purposes within that party.
Speaking of the party, let's go ahead and talk about the most powerful member of the Republican Party, and I'm putting air quotes around that.
Kevin McCarthy went down to Wall Street today.
He went to the New York Stock Exchange.
Which is incredible for a party of the people to go out there and basically laid out his plan for the debt ceiling negotiations.
Without exaggeration, American debt is a ticking time bomb that will detonate unless we take serious, responsible action.
How has President Biden reacted to this issue?
He has done nothing.
And basically, what ended up getting announced was everything that we have talked about, which is that they were going to use the debt ceiling negotiations and fake crisis to go ahead and go after everything from Social Security and Medicare, but also, and by the way, kids, good news, they're coming after your SNAP.
They're coming after your food resources to make sure that poor people aren't going to be able to afford to put food on their table.
What awesome stuff here to do this in front of the New York Stock Exchange.
And the message, Nick, is he's telling the market, hey, we're doing what needs to be done within the Republican Party.
We're going to make sure that the good times keep rolling for y'all.
And we're going to make sure that the other people suffer the brunt of this.
Don't worry.
We're the responsible party.
Yeah, I kind of think the guys on Wall Street, at the very least, they see through that, you know, because they realize that they can get runs no matter who's in the White House.
You know what I mean?
It goes up, it goes down, it doesn't matter.
So, but what you said about SNAP, the SNAP program, is so disgusting to me because We're the wealthiest country in the history of the globe of all time.
And we're going to have kids who go hungry every day.
And just because some people, these rich white dudes, think that if you give somebody some food, then they're just never going to work.
Right.
You know, I didn't want to necessarily even believe the whole abortion thing where they don't they want to force people to have babies so that they have to be menial workers, you know, in our in our meat grinder of a system.
But you know, when you see the snap stuff happen, then you kind of it does feel that way.
And it adds more evidence to that argument.
So the I it's really, really troubling only because you know how, how alluring that mindset can be to a very specific subset of this country and how you You're not going to change their minds, right?
They're not going to suddenly wake up the next day and say, you know what, shit, we should be a little bit nicer to poor kids and help them get more food at school so they can do better in school and go to college, you know?
I don't think that's a bridge too far, I think.
Well, I mean, I know this is going to shock everybody, but poverty begets more poverty.
And it's not because the people are unworthy.
It's because you put them in conditions where they cannot succeed.
That's the straight up true nature of that.
What upsets me besides the fact that these cretins and these cruel assholes are going to continue making life worse and worse and worse for people who have already been victimized by this system is that, Nick, this This felt to me like what is going to end up on the table whenever they come up with this debt ceiling grand bargain.
And, you know, as Joe Biden announces he's running for re-election, in the great tradition of Democratic presidents is going to move towards the center and the right, right, as if he was left of center already.
There's going to be some sort of a bargain that takes place here.
Democrats love going out and saying, hey, we reformed unemployment, we reformed entitlements, we did all of this.
Also, by the way, probably gonna throw a chunk of money at both the military and law enforcement.
The problem in that Is that that's no way to win back the house, first of all.
Like, literally, you go out and you say, hey, have you noticed that when Republicans are in power, all they do is tax cuts and they go ahead and take away the programs that help you?
Like, that's the way you win back the house.
That's, by the way, the way you win super majorities.
We've seen it happen.
But that also is the way that you go ahead and reinforce their power and you make sure the next time there's a debt ceiling, quote unquote, crisis, they'll do it again.
And why wouldn't they?
And it will go ahead and move down this way.
Because it's what the market wants.
That's what these people want.
It is so repulsive.
And every time I see, whether it's him going in front of the stock exchange, which by the way, is just a special level of a middle finger.
You know what I mean?
Like, it is just rubbing salt in that wound.
It grows more and more repugnant with every passing day.
Well, you know, I'm trying to picture the scene where there's a family and they're around the dinner table and the father is, you know, lecturing to the kids or, you know, just talking about government, the government's role in things and how, you know, that guy's father did it to him when he was growing up and so on for generations, where it would, first of all, it explains why people would vote against their own interests a lot of the time, because government can't, isn't there to help people.
And yet, It was helping you and you were helped and you are out of a terrible situation because of government programs.
But then it's such an interesting, it's very easy to sort of develop hatred for other people out of that, right?
So what sounds good in a way where, oh, you know, I want to work on my own and be my own person and we have to reject any kind of the help that anybody might help us, ends up really in an insidious way breeding more of the hatred And the division that we're trying to erase.
And that's where it has to be starting because otherwise, you know, why else?
It seems, you know, of course, we're the ones who are brainwashed, Jared, right?
We're the ones who are getting all the, you know, the misinformation.
But from a rational standpoint, it has to start there when you're young and hear that.
And then, you know, to be able to overcome that and understand a better Have a more rational understanding of what the situation could be where the government could actually help people and make lives better.
You know, again, that we're missing that sentence or two from a lot of different families.
Well, and I want to talk about that cycle.
But before I do, I want to point out what we're dealing with right now in our current cycle that you're talking about and you're laying out.
It is not brand new.
It's not unprecedented.
Like, generations are constantly rubbing against each other, sort of looking at, you know, whether or not they made it up and they're going to go ahead and close the trap door behind them, or whether or not they didn't have it and as a result they don't want other people to have it.
There's always this sort of tension, right, that's constantly going, even though in America The illusion of a meritocracy, the illusion of an American dream, the illusion of the long American century, those ideas.
As those have faltered, what has happened is that we really, as a society, have stopped wishing for people to have better lives.
Like, we literally have stopped wishing that other people could possibly have an opportunity to go ahead and even pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
It has gone from, well, you know, maybe I don't want to spend as much money on these programs because I think, you know, we shouldn't, like you were saying, give them an idea that handouts are out there or whatever.
It's now moved towards, I don't want to give anybody anything because you're going to take something away from me.
Right?
That focus has really, really taken over as that so-called American Dream has just basically moved into the rearview mirror.
And as conditions get worse, they have moved towards this gleeful cruelty that people like McCarthy, and by the way, he's just a pawn in all of this, I mean, Trump is the person who particularly made this the position of the Republican Party.
In the past, of course, it was compassionate conservatism, which was sticking a knife in somebody's back but smiling while you did it.
Now it is, no, we are going to hurt people.
And that's why you send us to Washington, D.C.
These people over here, they're getting what they're taking from you.
They're getting it too easy.
All of that.
Don't worry.
We're going to make their lives worse.
That's how you get elected.
And as long as you continue to play that game, you're not going to change anything.
And you have to completely change the conversation and you have to reorder this thing or else this type of gleeful cruelty is just going to keep getting worse and worse.
Yeah, I mean, I'm just reminded of, like, even just the base reaction of someone like AOC, for instance, is, you know, there's another level to what you're describing.
And it's almost, it's not just, okay, I don't want anyone else to get something because I won't benefit then.
You know, there's a misogynistic bent to this, the racism aspect to this as well.
And, you know, the Democratic Party, Whatever, which is so inclusive, you know, becomes this polarizing thing just by the on the face of what the candidates look like, you know, and that's and then we discussed this way too often, unfortunately, and to understand why we're on this this path, it sort of reminds me of like, okay, you know, when the Constitution was signed, they guaranteed a civil war, right?
This was a question of when.
And so the civil war ending kind of guarantees Something else, right?
That we're probably moving towards.
It was supposed to.
What's that?
It was supposed to.
Supposed to what?
It was supposed to promise something else.
Like, and then, of course, you have like forces come in that make sure that it's not going to reorder the racial caste.
It's not really going to change the economic situation.
We should have had basically a second American.
The Civil War shouldn't have just been a civil war.
It should have basically been a second revolution is what it should have been.
And it wasn't allowed to bloom like that.
Yeah.
Oh, now that's an interesting concept as well.
And so the connection I'm trying to make now is that the short-sightedness of how the Civil War ended, and then I guess you have to get into Jim Crow and the Reconstruction and how that failed too, you know, guarantees This, right?
Where we are now.
I mean, I always talk about how you want to mix capitalism and democracy.
That's the other layer to this.
But we are heading somewhere, right?
And it ain't good.
We're not progressing in this American experiment to where I think that the forefather, the founding fathers had envisioned.
And that's the real problem.
We have too many people who want to read the Constitution as if it was written, you know, in the time it was written as an originalist.
And they want to continue to go back to that.
And that's, I don't know, it's such a strange, I can't even wrap my head around how you would live your life that way, right?
And there are a lot of people do, and it's just a weird thing where how do we ever get together and figure things out in a rational way when you can't even, I can't put myself in their shoes and understand how that thought process works.
Well, I would go ahead and start and I would say that it was the narrow, the nearsightedness of the founders, and they believed that the white and the wealthy and the affluent were the best of society and that would just always continue to be the case.
It turns out that's not how that works and it's not how it's ever worked and I actually think that What they thought would happen is that eventually it would just continue to perfect itself and eventually, you know, the the rabble, so to speak, would lift themselves up at some point and join them.
Turns out, though, that that wealth and self-interest kind of sours and poisons everything, right?
You would rather knock people down than to go ahead and make society better.
Last thing, Nick, we need to address this, and I think this is important.
We have talked on this show many times about what's happening with the far right, what's happening with the Republican Party, and whenever we talk about the cultish devotion to Donald Trump and other Republican politicians, we have always said that we aim to be fair brokers.
Fair.
We always try.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
And we want to call strikes and balls where they are.
We want to be honest about this.
There is a story that has been floating around.
For those who don't know, Dianne Feinstein is not going to run for re-election, has disappeared, basically holding the judicial selection process hostage.
It's been a total mess.
Absolute mess.
Fine signs.
Condition has not been great.
A lot of Democrats are running to replace her, including Adam Schiff and also Katie Porter.
One of the things that has happened in the past few weeks is some old, whispered allegations have come out.
And basically, Katie Porter's ex-husband, based on their divorce and what happened afterward, has accused Katie Porter of abuse within their marriage.
For the record, Katie Porter has accused her ex-husband of abuse as well.
These allegations include physical violence, intimidation, in one case the dumping of boiling potatoes onto the person, constant verbal and emotional harassment.
We don't know what has happened here.
Obviously we don't, right?
We can't weigh in on this.
What I do want to say though...
Is that this has been largely absent from liberal media.
It has not been talked about.
It has not shown up because who knows if they can verify it.
But I do want to point out that this is a very disturbing thing.
It's not great.
It has been whispered about for a while.
God knows if this is coming out simply because she's running for the Senate.
But I will say that there is a tendency sometimes when there is a Democrat involved That same way that Fox News won't talk about a Republican, you know, being accused of certain things, there has been a tendency for some liberal media outlets to not talk about this thing.
And I thought that we should probably touch on it very, very briefly, simply to say this is disturbing stuff and it probably should be considered.
I hear you.
You know, the liberal media could hide behind the journalistic standards of we can't verify, we don't know, we can't report on anything until you know, yada yada, which is fine.
It's good.
You know, listen, Katie Porter, you know, was on track to be a rock star.
So are we talking about Katie Porter or are we just talking about the media here?
Because I don't know if you want to get into her.
Well, I, you know, here's the thing, and I want to lay my cards on the table.
I think that Katie Porter, you're exactly right, probably one of the most talented modern politicians in terms of understanding how to use social media and social media attention in order to bolster their profile.
And the whiteboard.
I mean, listen, I know that a lot of people have enjoyed the memes and the dunking on sort of moments that Katie Porter has provided.
I don't get wrapped up in those things as much.
You know what I mean?
I think they're a lot of theater.
I don't hold a lot of stock in them.
But I understand that Katie Porter, I think, is a lot of people's favorite politician because she participates in that.
Well, you know, as I've gotten older and, you know, just experienced more and more relationships, I kind of tend to think, you know, I, or maybe in my mind, I do calculations about personalities and trying to figure out, you know, what, what bucket people fall into.
And it just helps me to figure out how to communicate.
Right.
And with Katie Porter, you know, again, I don't have any direct, you know, interactions with her, but like, You know, there is there is something about what you can glean from the way she does do those things.
And then, you know, out and about that, you know, she does seem there might be something to this story.
Right.
You know, but but again, it will get worse.
I'll tell you that right now.
Worse stories will come out about her.
And whether they're lies or not, I have a feeling that, you know, as you when you run for Senate, like you mentioned, this is really, yeah, she's going to run for a bigger office, of course, more scrutiny.
You know, these stories tend to get worse and more and more little things leak out.
Again, they might be completely false.
It might be an opponent trying to conjure up something to, you know, put them down.
And so I mean, by the way, it's a little bit like with the Clarence Thomas story, right?
What started out as, oh, he's getting some trips, whatever.
Now we're finding out every other day, more and more, and it looks worse and worse.
And so, you know, can we do a quick update on that?
By the way, for people who aren't aware, it turns out that Harlan Crowe also bought the home that Clarence Thomas's mom lived in.
And continues to live in and doesn't charge her rent.
Like, I mean, my God.
Oh, did you see the other one yesterday?
You know, I mean, by the way, this one could very well be an innocent accounting mistake.
But, you know, the company that he was, you know, making between $1,500,000 a year from the wife's doesn't exist, but, you know, they changed the name and they refile some things.
So that could very well be all it is, because I looked at that a little bit.
But again, Just it's just more information, more little tidbits come out.
And so don't be surprised when you hear more stuff about Katie Porter.
And at some point, if that's the case, it will be reported on and you'll see it.
You know, it will it will bubble up.
I have I'm willing to predict that that will happen the closer we get to this race anyway.
But but I hear you right.
There is this notion that these things get tamped down early.
I mean, listen, there's some there's some Joe Biden stuff out there, you know, that that that really hasn't bubbled up either.
And I you and I both probably privately said, you know, It is a little weird.
I don't have any idea.
Like, I don't know.
And I guess what I wanted to say about this, I have no idea who did what.
You know what I mean?
Like, it's one of those things where this type of stuff, I think the problem I have is that there is a tendency in modern politics, and it's always been there, but in the age of social media, it's especially there, which is We want to make politicians into heroes.
We want them to be on our team.
We don't want our team to be hurt.
I think the Donald Trump phenomenon is so far and away, you know, the most extreme version of this that we've seen in our lifetimes.
But I also want to point out, you can't do this with politics.
You can't.
You can't create icons out of this.
And I think you have to keep an open mind when you look at it.
And I just want to say, personally, as a survivor of domestic abuse, this is disturbing stuff, man.
This is not cool.
This is not great.
And you need to take it at least seriously to consider it in the public arena.
You know what I mean?
I don't know what the story is.
I don't know how this whole thing took place, but I do find it very strange that this hasn't at least been addressed.
You know what I mean?
Like, it's very strange that it at least hasn't... I have to imagine, Nick, that most of the people listening to this podcast hadn't heard about this.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, that's how, sort of, like, in order to even discuss it, like, we had to go... I had to send you, I think, like, probably a Fox News or a New York Post article.
Like, that's how strange this arena and this environment is, where we can't even have conversations just because somebody has a letter next to their name.
I think that's really disturbing.
I agree.
And I do feel, though, that as it gets closer, it will cease to be... it'll be known.
It will get out.
Primarily because these things tend to be driven by the opponent.
And they're not going to let go.
They're going to figure out ways, because that's their only, you know, that's their way of winning.
You can't just sort of win on the merits.
You know, the heroes you're talking about for politics now, Trump has so thoroughly destroyed that concept that the heroes are just ordinary people, Jared.
Heroes are the people who, like, don't cheat on their spouses or don't beat their spouses, you know what I mean?
That's the hero now, the heroism.
It's simply normal, normalcy.
And some vague notion of ethics, you know what I mean?
Like, maybe, for lucky.
That's what the heroism is now, and that's kind of sad, too.
It sucks.
These people, and again, just to restate, these people are supposed to be public servants, you know?
They're not supposed to be your heroes, they're not supposed to be your role models.
You should regard every politician of the modern era with just, you know, a cocked eye.
You know what I mean?
Like in order to get into this business at this current moment, and I think even people who want to make a difference, people who are, you know, as clean as the driven snow, like if you get into this, like you should welcome scrutiny, right?
It should make you better.
It should be an open process.
But we have to reject the idea that we can't discuss these things or that somebody's off limits because, well, we don't want to lose an election, right?
Like, oh, quit asking questions.
We can't chance this election.
That's Trumpism.
You know, that's what that actually is, the idea that you can't ask questions of people from a party or a group or a specific focus that you support.
Yeah.
And by the way, having a conversation with a politician now is probably a lot like what we're seeing in Succession, which we're not going to ruin anything.
But, you know, there's conversations in the last night's episode where they they're acting as if they're being recorded by a secret bug.
And so they can't say this stuff, but you can you know what they really mean and what really is going on underneath the surface.
And so It is very, very troubling, and I don't know, in this climate, how you're supposed to, you know, inject moral people into this situation, who'd be willing to do it.
That's the problem.
Well, I hope it's not true.
I hope it's not true.
I mean, just for the sake of I wish that any situation like this, it isn't true that it didn't exist in the world.
I just hope it's not true.
Also, the Democratic Party needs to move past Dianne Feinstein yesterday, should have done it when she won reelection.
It is it's an absolute shame that this is continued down the road, that it is like we need we need we need different people in there.
All right, everybody, that's gonna bring us to the end of the podcast.
Again, we're not gonna have a weekend or available Friday morning because Friday evening, Nick and I are going to be doing our first together live show for the Muckrake podcast.
Keep an eye over at Patreon, patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast for us to announce when that's going to take place.
We hope some of you will be able to join us.
If you can't, we will release it as soon as it's recorded, put it out on the interwebs, all that good stuff.
And again, I'm going to be at the Los Angeles Times Book Festival.
That is Saturday, April 22nd at 10.30am, talking about threats on democracy.
And then Tuesday, April 25th, 6pm at Changing Hands Bookstore at Phoenix, Arizona.
Nick and I!
Doing our first out-in-the-world joint appearance together, having a conversation.
We're going to tape that.
Will we stream it?
I don't know.
Who has any idea how this stuff works?
We will release that in due time.
Thank you again, everybody, for your support.
You are the absolute best.
We will see you somewhere down the road.
If you need us before then, you can find Nick at Can You Hear Me?
