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Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss how the Durham report is being intentionally misinterpreted to keep the right's anger simmering over nonexistent crimes. In Florida and Texas, their respective governors try to drive moderates out of their states with draconian laws attacking the transgender and LGBTQ+ communities. And they finish by examining some new statistics that show an all time high in depression in America.
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I gotta tell you, it is my newest beverage obsession.
As a neurodivergent person, I get obsessed with snacks and beverages.
That is not a beer.
That is a La Croix La Cola.
It's a La Croix that tastes like cola.
Really?
Is there, like, caffeine in it?
There's no caffeine in it.
I must get some now.
It's delicious.
I don't want to do a sponsored read for La Croix, but I'm taking these things down like I've got stock in the company.
I can't stop.
I'm pulling back the curtain.
Is your interest peaked now?
Oh, I'm actually wondering if I can sneak out and go get some.
Can you GAMP for a few minutes?
Listen, I'll take a couple of these things down.
I'm more than happy to do it.
Hey, everybody.
It's the Weekender Edition of the McCraig Podcast.
I'm Jared Dean Sexton.
I'm with Nick Hausman.
Both big boys who love seltzer and cola, and we're bonding over that.
My God, we got a lot to talk about.
Ron DeSantis is taking it just to a whole nother level.
Fox is rolling out what they're calling their boldest lineup yet, which I think is going to have implications for Republican politics for a while.
Also, surprise, surprise, Americans are more depressed than ever, and we have to get into why.
If you want to hear all of those topics and more, All you gotta do is go over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
It's what keeps this show editorially independent and ad-free as soon as we figure out how to turn off automatic ads.
We're so pissed off about that stuff.
Anyway, everybody, we have to start.
Nick, the world has changed.
It's been moved off its axes.
Axes?
Axes?
What's correct?
Axes?
Axis?
Axis?
It's been moved right off of its damn axis.
The Durham report has dropped.
That's right.
Special Counsel John Durham has released his report on the investigation into Donald Trump and Russian collusion.
Guess what, Nick?
He didn't find any collusion.
We were all just absolutely paranoid, out of our minds.
I think we owe everybody a big, giant, sloppy apology.
Right.
No collusion, no... What was the other one?
The two things they said.
No collusion, no conspiracy.
Whatever it was.
Yeah, I mean, you know, it's not like Mueller had a whole bunch of indictments and was able to prove a lot of things, you know, legally, that went wrong.
But yeah, it's actually... This is worse than Watergate, what Durham found.
And they demand reparations.
They demand people, you know, need to go to prison.
But here's the thing.
It's such a performance at this point that the people that we won't name, they're not going to remember this in another few weeks.
You know, they already did an Inspector General report, which is basically the same thing that Durham did as a rehash.
This is almost like, I'm sure you know, like when you had students who would, how would they do this?
They would somehow find someone else's paper from the semester before.
Right?
And then they kind of just change a word or two?
Isn't that sort of what the students do these days?
Well, no.
They were... Well, now... Actually, I'm glad you brought that up.
Now they're using ChatGPT.
In the past, what they did is that they bought papers online.
They paid for pre-written papers, or they got them from their sorority and fraternity brothers.
This... Listen.
This thing, apparently, is bigger than Watergate.
Milli Vanilli just rolled up in one.
Who shot JR at it on top as a frosting?
I mean, it's absolutely insane.
I gotta tell you, it's incredible to me, first of all, that John Durham got paid to do this.
Do you know what I mean?
Like this got put together.
It's also just like it's gone over like a fart on Sunday service.
It's just done nothing.
Like I'm sure Jim Jordan is going to be hosting people in and taking off his coat and just going to town.
Um, what a dumb, dumb thing.
And to really get back to the meat of this thing, the fact that one of the worst things that has happened in a very, very long time, a presidential candidate worked hand in hand with Russia and an authoritarian and Vladimir Putin and an entire operation.
And the fact that I don't know, the liberal news media, a lot of politicians and a lot of other people sort of turned up their nose at the whole thing.
The word collusion, I hope I never hear the word collusion again.
That term has just absolutely done so much work in hiding what actually happened in the 2016 campaign and what has happened afterwards that the entire plot has been lost.
I don't know how you feel about it.
This thing is lame, lame, lame, and on top of that, all it does is add to a bigger cocktail of bullshit that has obscured what has actually happened and what is actually happening in the political world.
No collusion, no obstruction.
I forgot that was the other one.
Obstruction, because never, there's nine counts of that laid out that they never dealt with.
But here's what's frustrating, because it might sound familiar as far as an M.O.
goes.
If you wanted to figure out, like, and then, you know, by the way, I'm, well, I guess I'll break it now, but I'm watching The Plumbers, right?
And it's just talking all about the rat fucking that they did with Nixon.
And it goes back to there, but this allows them to bring up the Steele dossier again.
And you have to remember, because it's hard to remember, a lot of facts have gone on, a lot of time has gone by, but what they're trying to now argue is that the whole thing was predicated on the Steele dossier when they're obscuring it purposefully, is that that dossier comes much later in the process.
They had already started the investigation.
So they're allowed to say that, and this is what Germans kind of focuses on, they never, the beginning of the investigation was rushed and hurried and not organized and not done properly.
And then because the Steele dossier, and that's completely false.
And when he says that nothing was ever corroborated in the Steele dossier, that also ruins some credibility right there, because there are certain things that did come true and were predicted properly.
You know, from what Manafort was doing, the deal they were trying to seek in Moscow.
I mean, it's all, you can go and verify that pretty easily.
So, but it doesn't matter.
They can obscure this.
I got people yelling at me on Twitter about it saying, you know, nothing in the SEAL dossier was right.
But here's the thing that really becomes frustrating and nefarious.
Are you ready?
The connection they're now making is that Hillary Clinton was behind all of this.
And that is the sweet song and the juicy fruit.
Love it!
But that bothers me more than anything else.
Maybe you can help me understand why, because I'm not even sure why that bothered me so much.
For the Republican Party, first of all, hearing that Hillary Clinton is somehow another involved in chicanery, it's like hearing the sweet, sweet song that you heard, you know, the night of Senior Prom.
It just, like, stirs something up in you.
Exactly.
It's just, it's like playing the old hits.
It makes you feel comfortable.
It takes you back to a time of safety and warmth and hope.
In all of this, I got to tell you, like, I want to set the record straight on what actually happened in all of this.
The whole point of collusion was, and it always comes around that term, everyone always says, well, did Donald Trump work hand-in-hand with Vladimir Putin in order to steal the 2016 election?
That's not how anything works!
They weren't getting on the phone with one another.
They weren't, like, going over their steps.
Paul Manafort, who, by the way, worked on behalf of Russian influences in Ukraine, and who was basically dug up as a completely irrelevant dinosaur in American politics, came over here and did what he did in order to pay back You know, these Russian oligarchs and forces.
He absolutely worked with Russian operatives in trying to give them information on the campaign.
On top of that, the Trump campaign continually tried to work with the Russians, including Donald Trump Jr.
And by the way, I'm Mr. I tweeted it out.
You know?
Like, that's what happened there.
They have completely parallel interests.
Just because there was no actual piss tape that was being held over Donald Trump's head doesn't mean that everything else is false.
It doesn't mean that Donald Trump traffics in the same circles as these crime syndicates and as these authoritarians.
The reason why this has gotten where it's at is because the online left wants to pretend like none of this is real because they want to say that it's a scapegoat to say that Hillary Clinton didn't actually lose 2016 for a variety of reasons.
She did.
There are a variety of reasons why Donald Trump won in 2016.
By the way, Russian influence is among the reasons why it happened.
But meanwhile, they have to sneer at it, they have to seem cooler than the other kids that want to talk about this stuff.
They don't want to talk about what is actually happening.
And so all of this has been obscured, and history has been warped, and it has completely pulled the shade on the fact that there is an international authoritarian movement that has been involved in basically every election in Western democracy for years now.
Like, that's what happened.
It's not the collusion that some people are trying to, like, take in their minds.
And this report, it just, it's, again, it's more bullshit on top of other bullshit that's just going to obscure the bullshit that has taken place.
Right.
And here's the thing.
The context is, They should have been investigated.
They had a meeting with a Russian spy to get dirt on their opponent, which is illegal.
That alone is worth the investigation, amongst all the other things about Paul Manafort that just suddenly he appears, doesn't want to get paid, is sharing poll data with Kalivnik.
So that's what's so enraging in a way, because you have to be able to acknowledge that Whatever, okay, the predicate was to do the investigation, which, by the way, had already been exonerated.
They'd already said through a bipartisan panel that that was a perfectly acceptable way to start an investigation.
And there's some issues, and they're going to change some FISA rules, or they already did, and implement those things to make sure that, you know, Carter Page doesn't get spied on again like he did.
Wait, if I ever hear the name Carter Page again for the rest of my life, I'll be unhappy.
I can go the rest of my life without ever hearing Carter Page's name.
Any of these people, Strzok, you name it, I'm so sick of all of these names and all this shit.
Aren't you?
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, this guy is a fascinating footnote to no one will ever remember, but he'll be like, I'll be like an old man and I'll be regaling these younger kids with like, this guy went on MSNBC in the middle of an investigation and was like the dumbest person you've ever heard in your life.
We're going to be laying on our deathbeds.
If we're going to go down, it's going to be like Adams and Jefferson.
We're going to die in different parts of the country on the same day within moments of each other.
And as the DMT hits, we're just going to go, Carter Page!
Carter Page!
George Santos!
I'm so tired of it!
It's so stupid, and it's such a farce!
Like, what a dangerous thing that we're going through, and the fact that it's just been obscured by all this shit, it drives me insane!
Right.
And this is Barr's MO.
This is what Barr would always do to obscure and sort of misrepresent what the truth is so that there's no longer any truth.
And he's acknowledged that.
He said, you know, the victors get to write history, and that's all he was trying to do with this.
And get some nice wine and have some cheese over in Italy with his buddy Durham.
Like, you know, that's the thing that they should never have been paid for, of all things.
But to put a bow on this, though, The accusation that somehow Hillary Clinton would have sat down with her advisors and said, okay, we're going to pay this company that has already been hired by the Republicans to dig up dirt on Trump, to then dig up more dirt, but we're actually going to lie about all that dirt and just write whatever we want that's really bad about Trump.
And then we're not going to release it to anybody.
And then, somehow, that's what we do, and that's the nefarious part of it.
Like, Steele couldn't get anyone to listen to him.
He was the one who ended up going and, like, releasing this stuff breathlessly.
And finally, Isikoff was the guy who published it, but nobody like Hillary Clinton camp ever touched the Apple Research or released or talked about it.
That was so ridiculous.
And yet, their whole mindset is that she masterminded the whole thing to somehow get an investigation on him.
It's just preposterous.
And I believe in the JFK conspiracy, and I think it's preposterous.
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