Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman break down the 37 count indictment and some of the more damning accusations that should clearly disqualify Trump from ever getting anywhere near the White House. They discuss how the GOP is reacting to it, badly, and then focus on the death of Silvio Berlusconi, since he laid out Trump's blueprint for being a corrupt politician. They finish on the new revelations that UFO's do, indeed, exist, and the government has been collecting spaceships and alien bodies for decades.
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You know, there are certain stories that are made for the Monk Rake podcast that we are in a unique position to cover, and I think everybody listening to this episode has been waiting to hear what Nick and I have to say about the Trump indictment.
We're going to get to that in a second.
A quick little announcement.
I'm going on a bit of a silent sojourn, so Nick is going to handle The Weekender on Friday, which I'm very excited about.
Meanwhile, all hell might break loose.
Who even knows?
Cats, dogs living together.
But in the meantime, Nick, it happened.
Donald Trump was indicted with over 30 counts in relation to the federal investigation that he withheld documents, national security documents, top secret classified documents.
We'll get into those in a second.
We'll talk about all of these counts.
He is looking at, let me check my notes here.
I'm sure it's just a couple of months.
Oh, 400 years.
400 years in a federal penitentiary.
Nick, I gotta tell you, I am still picking my jaw off the floor with this one.
There's a lot, lot, lot to unpack, but the floor is yours.
What were your immediate reactions?
How do you feel about this?
My favorite part of this whole thing, I gotta tell you, is when he's describing, as written in the notes by Corker and his lawyer, how Hillary was able to get off from her having a private email server, where he basically acknowledges that the emails that she deleted were all, you know, personal emails that had nothing to do with anything, and that's what he likes.
He wants his lawyer to do the same thing for him.
Honestly, we have so much to talk about everything else, but that was the thing that was like, oh, it's so nice that he actually understood that and said it, and no one's even gonna notice.
So much like a couple of weeks back where I was on the road listening to Ron DeSantis announce his presidential campaign on my phone as I drove, Nick, when this dropped, I was on the road.
I was traveling.
And actually, so I'll tell the story very quickly.
I went into like a Circle K, which as much driving and traveling as I do, I have a hierarchy of gas stations.
You learn which ones to trust, and Circle K is way, way up on that list.
I went to the bathroom and a near and dear friend of mine texted me a picture of a bunch of... They looked like damaged, cheap document boxes in a really gaudy, sad-looking bathroom.
And I had no idea what was going on.
I didn't understand what it was in reference to.
And I was like, what is going on here?
And I assumed that it was a picture of maybe a hoarder's house that, you know, maybe like a person was living in.
I had no idea what was going on.
I had not heard the thing.
I was listening to an audio book.
And I then turned on coverage of this thing, and I gotta tell you, Nick, first of all, that was very strange.
Moving from an existence in which the rest of the world knew that Donald Trump had been indicted and the details, but as the details were coming out, like, things like that, and we're gonna dig into the Hillary Clinton part of this thing in a little bit, I literally just kept going, what in the hell is going on?
You know, I just, as the details came out, what has been put together by Jack Smith and the Feds at this point, what an incredible indictment.
The details here, as you and I have documented now for years, it is a very, very specific combination.
A rue of sorts of Donald Trumpism, which is self-dealing but also shabbiness and also treasonous, like all of these different elements.
This is a perfect encapsulation of who Donald Trump is and what he means for this country.
And each detail is more lurid and concerning and upsetting than the last.
Well, you have to remember that this case does not get brought and get as far as it has gotten without the most ironclad evidence and dead to rights, you know, legal arguments.
They don't want to do this.
Right.
They do not want to charge Donald Trump with these crimes.
Well, here's the thing.
I think when they got halfway through the evidence, they probably said, yeah, we have, we want to.
You know what I mean?
Jack Smith was like, fuck this.
We now need to do this.
This has to be our imperative.
Have you ever worked as a manager?
You've worked as a manager before, correct?
I mean, I have managed people, I suppose, yeah.
Right.
Okay, I've managed as well.
That sounds great, doesn't it?
I've managed as well.
We all manage.
We're both kind, empathic people.
I assume that when you were a manager, Nick, when somebody underneath you would act out, you didn't want to punish them.
You didn't want to write them up.
You didn't want to go after them.
And you would say to people, please don't make me do this.
Please just don't be so egregious that I have to do this.
And occasionally they would listen and occasionally they would not.
Donald Trump did not listen.
They tried and they tried and they tried.
They did not want to do this thing.
But this, what we are looking at with this indictment, there is no way you can't charge him with this stuff.
You can't.
It is so obvious and so overt that you cannot possibly hope to not charge him.
Well, here's the thing that's so ridiculous about this, is Jack Smith wouldn't even be here.
He would be at The Hague, hanging out in Europe and doing his thing, right?
He strikes me as a guy who wants to hang out at The Hague trying war criminals, by the way.
Listen, it's a wonderful area of Europe.
I'm sure, you know, he wouldn't want to leave that for anything.
But that's how hard it was to get to this point.
That's how much Donald Trump had to do to shoot himself in each toe individually and then other places in his body.
Is that like when you said they didn't want to do this, right?
Merrick Garland has been in office for a long time and hadn't done anything for this.
Until finally, after enough times, and he wouldn't return the documents, and they had to raid his compound, but they finally said, okay, we now need a special counsel.
Well, and that's the thing about this.
You know, and somebody said to me the other day, they go, well, if you're going to charge Trump with this, why not charge Biden or Pence or Hillary Clinton?
I'm like, fine, do it.
Whatever.
Why do you think?
And it's always, it comes along partisan lines, right?
It's the idea that I just want Trump to be charged because I don't like Trump.
Partially true.
But also, not true.
Like, yeah, these people should be treating our national secrets with more respect and care.
I mean, we haven't even gotten into the specifics of that yet.
But literally, like, the records, the feds, they kept saying, just give it back to us.
Just, just, just give it.
It's almost like when you keep getting letters from like a collection firm that's like, hey, eventually we're going to get this money.
Just please, just, just let's do something here.
They had no desire, but then Jack Smith gets in there.
I can just see that face.
He gets in there and he's like, oh, they moved them.
Oh, he had his, he had Walt Mahouda move things?
Oh, they flooded the surveillance?
Oh, we have notes that he said, whatever, what do you want me to do?
400 years.
Let's see what happens.
I mean, it literally had to happen because there was no other way around it.
Well, and you keep saying that this wouldn't have happened had he not decided to run again.
No, it wouldn't have happened.
But I don't know if anyone remembers explicitly that the Department of Justice said that.
It said that the reason why they appointed Jack Smith was particularly because he just announced his candidate for President of the United States.
So this is sort of like he was telling us out in the open, maybe we didn't even kind of wrap our heads around this, just because can you have a guy in the White House who is this cavalier with, you know, sensitive documents like that?
That's the whole thing.
This is an intelligence matter.
We all remember how all of these assets were getting burned or killed, all their spies around the country, around the world, all of a sudden, after Trump takes over, you have to imagine, and by the way, we saw in the indictment how many of the different intelligence communities signed off on this indictment that they intended to prosecute, because all of them had hands in different documents.
Nick, tell me if I'm wrong, because I was trying to remember this, and the entire Trump administration is such a haze.
Yeah.
Was it on his first day or like in his first two or three days in which it came out that he was like handing over classified information to like Russia about like spying?
Like that he was at least talking openly about state secrets?
I want to say that it had to do with Israel.
And that's how crazy it is.
It happened almost immediately within the Trump presidency.
Because that idiot got in the room.
And I want to point out, in all of this, to put yourself in Donald Trump's mindset, it's like the worst game of Twister that you've ever played.
Like, you're not putting your hand on red.
You're putting your hand into psychosexual trauma.
You're putting your left foot into, like, narcissistic self-hatred, right?
You can't have this person look at state secrets because Part of it is it's evidence of his self-worth, right?
I'm a man who gets in the room, I can see the things, right?
It's the narcissism of it.
Somehow or another, it shows who he is and how powerful and important he is.
But also, you can't have someone that craven doing it.
Whether or not there was ever a piss tape, whether or not he was ever in talk to the Russians, which by the way he was in Saudi Arabia and you name it, which he is and was.
You cannot trust him to not be like, much like Ron Blagojevich, I'm not going to give this thing away for free.
This is a golden ticket.
He recognized immediately when he stepped in the White House how much he could leverage That power in that position to self-deal.
And he's exactly right.
He's been able to use it in like the worst, most shoddy possible way.
You cannot have this person around this stuff.
Right.
And just in case you're wondering, it was in early May of 2017 after he got, you know, remember he only got into office a couple months.
And the report was that it was code word clearance information, you know, stuff that was really that burned the Israeli government.
And you have to remember, like, this is what's happened in the past, too.
This is why the whitewashing of Nixon was so damning.
Or not damning.
It was so problematic is not even quite the word.
Because when you ignore and forget how bad it was with what Nixon did, then it kind of makes it seem like it's okay.
And this is the problem here, where he could do that.
And remember, the reason why Nixon ended up having to resign was because the intelligence community, namely Mark Felt, the FBI, decided to leave.
Right?
He was the backstop to democracy.
And he should be allowed as a hero, even though what he did was illegal, and he probably would have gone to prison for a long time, but they found out.
But that's what the intelligence committee can sometimes do.
And it's probably what's happening here.
So that screams of deep state and all the MAGA people going crazy about it.
I will be the person to go ahead and say again, as I always do, the reason why the deep state conspiracy theory holds any weight is because there is a deep state.
And there has been since the CIA was founded, since the FBI, you know, took over.
Like, there has been that backstop that you're talking about.
And you're not wrong.
I mean, one of the things that we always do, it's like one of those magic eye tests at the mall, right?
Like, you know, when we talk about Richard Nixon and Watergate, what we're doing is we're always saying, oh, Richard Nixon was the problem.
Right?
Richard Nixon was this just awful human being who got into the presidency and then that's how everything went to shit.
No, Richard Nixon doesn't become president at that moment if there isn't a cultural movement towards it, right?
If there isn't a self-dealing sort of reaction to the 1960s, early 1970s.
And in all of this, what ends up happening is you get to the point where these highfalutin notions of what the presidency is supposed to be, hail to the chief, Right?
Like this world defining the leader of the free world who stands up for everything it's supposed to be.
You don't get to Donald Trump unless there is a cultural degeneracy.
You know?
Unless there is a cultural political decay.
The same way you don't get to Nixon unless that happens.
And in all of this, The secrets, and I want to point out, this isn't just like, and I love now that Jim Jordan's doing this, he's saying that this is just like, you know, over classified stuff.
That's what the Republicans are saying, and we'll get into that a little bit more in a second.
Like, we're talking about nuclear state secrets that Donald Trump would pull up and flap around like a dinner napkin As his guests ate overcooked ribs that they probably paid $50 a plate for, and it tasted like shit.
And he did that, and in all of these contingency plans, war plans, secret intelligence, like, he did all of that and poked these people in the eye, whether it's the CIA, the FBI, the Feds, you name it.
He continually pushed against the people who said, we at least have to have a modicum of decorum.
And it reached the point where you can't do anything.
Because I gotta tell you, Nick, if he didn't run for president again, we would still be reading stories about the archives trying to get that stuff back.
We would still be hearing stories about it going back and forth.
This whole thing wouldn't have cracked open.
It just so happens that they had no choice here.
I mean, the other thing, though, is the dicking around of the Department of Justice.
The dicking around.
You know, where he was just like, so again, was he selling secrets?
Did he want to benefit monetarily?
Like, like, it just seems almost like that would be too competent for a guy like Trump.
But again, he's got this thing where he simply if you tell him he has to do something, he just can't won't he has to go against that.
So there's all these interesting quotes when it was like they're talking when he's talking to the lawyers and saying, I don't want anybody looking.
I don't want anybody looking through my boxes.
I really don't.
Well what if we what happens if we just don't respond at all or don't play ball with them?
Wouldn't it be better if we just told them we don't have anything here?
Well look isn't it better if there are no documents?
This is the kind of thing where he's like a child who got caught and now they're gonna try and like bury the evidence or hide it so nobody finds it but they're gonna hide it like under the bed.
You know?
Or someone in the park comes in and just like, okay, here's your stash.
You know what I mean?
That's how stupid this is.
I had a cousin, um... Man, I hope he doesn't listen to this podcast, but if he does, hey, how's it going?
I had this cousin who once stole some stuff, and he was little, and he wanted to hide it.
He didn't want, like, his parents to find out that he had stolen it, so he punched a hole in the wall and put the stuff in the hole in the wall.
I don't know what to tell you, it doesn't go away, and now people are asking what's in the hole in the wall.
And like, this whole thing, it's kind of amazing to watch the way this works.
And I'm so glad you brought up the child part about it, because what actually happens when Donald Trump gets in any bit of trouble whatsoever, there is a very observable, predictable cycle that takes place.
Right?
He stands up against it.
He puffs out his chest.
He gets all defiant.
The next thing you know, when things get worse, he attacks the people who are doing it.
And then all of a sudden, what happens, Nick?
All of a sudden, Walt Nauda, his body man, is moving things around and lying to the Feds.
Which by the way, we've said this before, it doesn't pay to be loyal to Donald Trump.
It doesn't.
He will absolutely steamroll you and leave your bones and broken body in his wake and he will not think about it.
To go back to the Hillary Clinton thing, and that's what's rich about all of this, is his first instinct.
Right?
And what did he build his entire presidential run on, Nick?
He built it on Hillary Clinton is a criminal, she's done this thing, the feds haven't gone after her in the right way, I'm gonna make sure that they lock her up.
What does he do immediately when he feels the heat?
He references it!
Explicitly, we need to do what she did because in Trump's mind, you know, the good for the goose, good for the gander, it's about him.
The laws don't matter.
The nation doesn't matter.
State secrets don't matter.
It's about him.
He says to M. Evan Corcoran, which by the way, I have to, I can't even imagine what Trump felt when he found out that they had Corcoran's notes.
You know what I mean?
Like the moment that they realized that Corcoran's notes were going to be used for the Fed's prosecution.
That, by the way, is when it was signed, sealed, and delivered.
That's when it was done.
He hates those, and I don't think he kept them in front of him.
So he was probably completely just flabbergasted and shocked when he heard that they were even existed.
Completely.
And by the way, he says this in reference to Hillary Clinton from Corcoran's notes.
Quote, she didn't get in any trouble because he said, her lawyer, that he was the one who deleted them.
And what Trump has done, and has tried to do in every way, shape, or form in this, Nick, is to say, well, maybe if you do it, you'll be fine, and that way, like, I'm not implicated, right?
And he keeps saying, maybe you tear them up, maybe they disappear, you know, he never says the words explicitly.
It is about that self-protection at all costs, including hurting literally anybody.
He would have done this to his kids.
I'm shocked Eric wasn't down at Mar-a-Lago eating these things with A1.
You know what I mean?
I'm absolutely surprised that he didn't get his kids in on this cover-up.
It probably had more to do with logistics and planning and timing than anything else.
And also, in case we were wondering whether he was disconnected from the whole thing, they literally have the texts that show that he was bringing box upon box over days and days and days and going through them all to basically take out the documents that he intended to keep and not give back to the Department of Justice.
Like, there's your obstruction right there.
And again, we have these laws.
It's like the people that argue in favor of not having any more gun regulation, because that's what the Second Amendment says by letter of law.
Well, then they also don't want the letter of law to be enacted for, like, obstruction, you know?
They want it to be very selective in how these laws apply to different people.
Obviously, Hillary is another example where they needed to have her be locked up, but not Trump.
And it all just shows the hypocrisy of the whole thing.
And as a result, when you find people who are, you know, real Americans, and that's not the right word, but real serious people who uphold the law, you know, these are the people you need to have, you know, and who are brave enough to stand up to.
I mean, their fantasies are coming true.
in jackson's shoes right now because we're so i'm so worried and i know you're worried more than i am about what's going to happen today when everyone listens to this i have no doubt that's you know as you record this on the monday afternoon that you know it sounds like people are being are preparing right now for some violence yeah no they absolutely are i mean their fantasies are coming true the the weird sick thing in all of this is that this is what they want You know what I mean?
Like, it literally has been millions of Americans who support Trump wanted this to happen.
They want their fantasies of the deep state conspiracy, the pedophile satanic cabal conspiracy, they want all that to be true because it's now so ingrained in them.
And I want to go ahead and say, as we're talking about that, first of all, to anybody listening who is a pundit or a reporter or a politician, I know there are a lot of them who listen to this show, once more, I need to say explicitly, they're not going to leave Donald Trump.
This indictment, which we'll hear from Bill Barr, who says, like, that is not going to work on them.
They are in it.
That is their identity.
It is their worldview.
They literally are in such a cult mindset at this point that none of this is going to change.
Stop talking about it.
Stop hoping for it.
Look beyond that mindset.
They want this.
And there are many, many people right now, Nick, who are very excited because they've been able, through social media and local organizing efforts, they've been able to use the radicalization of the Republican Party to bring people into their fold.
There are a lot of white supremacists and separatists and violent paramilitary groups who have used this.
They've recognized it as their own and as their window opening.
And Trump getting indicted by the federal government, which is much worse, by the way, than the state of New York.
The state of New York feels like, oh, it's a local matter, blah, blah, blah.
The federal government going after Donald Trump feels like if the powder keg hasn't been set on fire so far, you know, it feels like the match is over by it.
And you could not be more right.
There is a high potential for violence over the next couple of days.
And part of what's fueling that is the reaction by the Republican politicians.
It is certifiably disgusting how they've all, or a lot of them, have reacted to protect him, to defend him, saying, but Hillary, and it's like, it's a seven-year-old argument when you have somebody who's found, you know, has an indictment of evidence, to like, the only way you have to defend that is to say, well, somebody else da da da da.
I got a quick taste of it, Nick.
Let me go through these real fast, and before I do, I want to say something, and I'm sure you'll agree.
Not only is it dangerous that the Republican candidates for president are going ahead and weighing in on this thing and defending Donald Trump, like that it creates a problem, Nick, it's also bad politics.
Do they want to defeat Donald Trump?
Are they interested in defeating Donald Trump?
Do they want to wrest the nomination away from him?
Ron DeSantis says it's a different standard.
There's the weaponizing of the power of the state.
Mike Pence calls on Merrick Garland to stop hiding behind- Man, I can't believe Mike Pence is running for president.
It's incredible.
Running for president.
It's wild.
He's going after Garland.
Nikki Haley is out there saying that this is prosecutorial overreach.
Then of course, yeah, you got Jim Jordan.
Let's play Jim Jordan real fast.
This is great.
I'm sure you've seen the photos from the indictment.
I'm sure you've seen the photos from the indictment.
There are classified documents in the bathroom.
In a ballroom stage and classified information that we're talking about information that the United States shares with its allies, critical information strewn on the floor.
Does that look secure to you?
Again, Dana, the standard is the standard.
The President of the United States, he can classify and he can control access to national security information however he wants.
That's the standard.
That's the Constitution.
That's what the court said in Navy v. Egan, a 1988 case.
I don't know how many more times I can say it.
If he wants to store material in a box in a bathroom, if he wants to store it in a box on a stage, he can do that.
That is just what the law and the standard is.
Again, I think this just underscores how political this whole thing is.
Jack Smith, you know how political it is when they selected Jack Smith as a special counsel?
There's nothing to do there!
I mean, literally, there's nothing to do there.
If you're going to go down that route, if you're going to follow this man all the way, there's nothing to do.
There's no convincing these people.
Period.
I agree.
And it was even worse where he's basically saying, she's like, he already admitted that he didn't declassify these things.
He goes, well, he declassified it when he was president.
She goes, no, he admitted he didn't.
He goes, well, he, who believes that?
I only believe what he said when, you know, before that, when he said he had done it before, even though that was to the public and that's what he's lying about.
And that when he's actually, uh, you know, just in private talking to some people, that's the, what you're going to get the real information from.
He won't even, he just ignores it.
These are not serious people.
No, they're not.
And real fast, because this is not actually a partisan show, Nick, I want to go ahead and I want to call out something, which is, I listen to the coverage at MSNBC, and I gotta tell you, like, we're, listen, we're a couple of dudes who get on here and we talk about stuff, we analyze stuff, we give historical context, we give our opinions on stuff.
Like, we can sit here and laugh at some of this stuff.
You really should not be on a cable news network laughing about this thing and talking about how clear-cut it is that Donald Trump did this.
I'm sorry.
Like, you can cover it and you can give the facts, but when your hosts are on the air, like, hooting and hollering about this thing, I understand there's a catharsis to it, but the need to go after Trump Is real.
I get it.
I understand the psychological, personal aspects of it.
Listen, I'll lay my cards on the table.
I love that he's been caught dead to rights.
I think it's fantastic that this criminal, dangerous person has been caught dead to rights.
But I do not feel like I have a societal reputation to carry out.
You know what I mean?
I don't think it's great that MSNBC has our wall-to-wall coverage with people laughing about this and basically saying he's guilty before he's even been tried.
Yeah, and we'd seen the snarkiness during his presidency as well, that alienated.
It's not like the people who are backing Trump are watching this stuff, but you're right.
We owe it to the principles of journalism to cover this properly and in a sober way, because you're right, it's not funny.
This is really horrible, serious stuff.
It's going to get repackaged.
You know what I mean?
Like literally, it's not like people at Fox News or Tucker Carlson or any of the number of right-wing ideologues who radicalize people and sort of create those echo chambers.
It's not like they're not watching.
It's not like they're not going to take these things.
But anyway, that was my little thing.
Let's hear from turtle authoritarian man, Bill Maher.
Bill Barr, not Bill Maher, my God.
What's the difference?
Thank you.
What about this chief argument that comes up for the president's allies and his legal team that this should have been handled under the Presidential Records Act, not this Espionage Act charge and other federal statutes that were used here?
Well, it started out under the Presidential Records Act and the archives trying to retrieve documents that Trump had no right to have.
But it quickly became clear that what the government was really worried about were these classified and very sensitive documents.
I was shocked by the degree of sensitivity of these documents and how many there were, frankly.
And so the government's agenda was to get those, protect those documents and get them out.
And I think it was perfectly appropriate to do that.
It was the right thing to do.
And I think the counts under the Espionage Act that he Willfully retain those documents are solid counts.
Now, I do think we have to wait and see what the defense says and what proves to be true.
But I do think that even half what Andy McCarthy said, which is if even half of it is true, then he's toast.
I mean, it's a it's a pretty it's a very detailed indictment and it's very, very damning.
That was on Fox News Sunday.
Can you imagine what it was like being a producer on that show, listening to Bill Barr say that?
That's incredible.
Well, yeah, but then again, Fox wants him gone too.
I mean, you know, let me go back to what you said earlier about this because it's such a razor thin margins for the GOP to win any race.
They can't afford to lose the Trump voters who, if If they say enough negative things about Trump, those voters won't vote, right?
It's not like they're going to switch their vote or whatever else.
If it's not Trump, they're simply going to sit this one out or sit the rest of their lives out probably, right?
So they need to make sure that they somehow keep those people engaged and willing to vote for them if Trump – Oh, hey, Trump got indicted.
What can I say?
He's in prison.
Sorry, I didn't really want it to happen, but vote for me.
You know, they need those votes if they have a hope to win, and that's why we're here.
Barr can't benefit anymore, right?
He's no longer the Attorney General.
There's nothing grifting he can do, so he's free to now speak like the asshole that he is.
Well, Barr can make money off of this.
Bar is interested in laundering his reputation.
He's also one of those guys who is very, very interested in the story about himself later.
You know, this is like one of those things where it's like, oh, I was in the Trump administration.
Now I'm on Dancing with the Stars.
Now, you know, I'm on CNN being like, oh, he is totally irresponsible.
I thought that the entire time.
I was a white hat on the inside, right?
Meanwhile, Bill Barr was literally, and I never want people to forget this, was literally making the argument that we needed a Christian foundation for this country and also of law enforcement.
And if you questioned his will and law enforcement, maybe law enforcement shouldn't help you, which is just as authoritarian as it gets.
So what goes along with what's going on in the field?
I want to say first of all, they cannot lose the MAGA vote.
I think there is the hope at this point that this will take care of things and that Trump will be able to effectively run for president.
And as a result, the MAGA crew will have to fall in behind somebody else who will claim I'll lead the fight against This overreach, the deep state, you name it.
Of course, Ron DeSantis is the person there.
But one of the things that's going to happen within this primary season is it's going to be a lot of targeting of that, this pushing of the conspiracy theory and basically seeing what happens.
But Nick, I got to tell you, the numbers are in.
Post indictment, Trump's numbers have gone up.
Trump's numbers in the GOP primary right now sit at a solid 61%.
That is commanding and jaw-dropping.
This isn't going to change how people feel about him.
In fact, it's going to solidify how they feel about him in a very, very large way.
Real fast, before we move forward and talk about some other relevant issues, there is some weird stuff going on in terms of the judge in this case.
Nick, do you want to talk a little bit about Eileen Cannon, who has drawn the responsibility here?
I mean, you know, she's someone who's been castigated already for her pro-Trump stance in the last time she had to deal with this.
I have a buddy who is... It's bad.
What's that?
It's bad, is what it is.
I have a buddy who's a criminal lawyer in Miami and who, you know, asked around a little bit.
The consensus down there was that DOJ screwed this up.
He was saying that there were judges who were all on vacation right now When they filed the indictment, and so Cannon, who wasn't part of the West Palm Beach area of judges, gets it because the other guys weren't around.
I don't know if this is even true or not, but I take his word on it to some degree.
That said, perhaps that they knew it was so damning that they wanted her to do it because it would eliminate a little bit of that political accusation.
You know what I mean?
I, first of all, that doesn't surprise me.
I also think that there's something else that happens with this.
I think, and not to say Jack Smith is a Democrat, but I think there's sort of a democratic brain thing that happens when you are doing something like this that is like really controversial.
Like, you kind of go a little bit nuts trying to prove that you're not biased.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, it was time to bring charges and they were like, well, maybe we shouldn't bring charges right now because of the judge situation.
And they were like, they were going to see it right down the line and we're going to... It just feels like one of those situations because it feels like an unforced error.
But I also want to go ahead and say something because I think this is important.
And before I say this, Trump's having a hard time getting representation.
His lawyers basically left him like the stinky piece of cheese that he is.
They just went and left.
Trump is having trouble getting representation.
He deserves representation.
And what's more, I think this is what separates us, Nick.
We have to remember in all of this, I want Donald Trump to have his day in court.
I want Donald Trump to go and be put on trial for this stuff.
I guess he'll bring up some counter evidence.
I don't know.
Apparently there will be a defense.
Maybe they'll just, I don't know, print off a bunch of Breitbart.
You know, stuff.
Or YouTube videos.
Maybe they'll bring in Dinesh D'Souza's, you know, election interference documentary.
I don't know.
I don't know what they're going to do here.
But I want him to have his day in court.
I do not want this to be rigged.
I do not want this to be, you know, a monkey trial.
I want it to be real.
So for me, yeah, does it suck that there is a Trump crony who's going to be presiding over it?
Absolutely.
I think that sucks.
But I also think that you do have to carry out justice.
I do not think that we need to live in a society in which people aren't being tried fairly.
Right, well, I mean, but the Democratic brain tends to think, well, they're going to accuse us of these terrible things, so we better do this.
Newsflash, they're going to accuse you of it anyway, no matter what you do, so why not?
But here's the thing that's interesting because I think one way, the only way they would have to argue this, at least in the beginning, Trump lawyers would be, they would have requested dismissal for select prosecution, which basically selected prosecution, which means like, well, you didn't, you didn't prosecute Biden.
You didn't prosecute Hillary Clinton for the same crime.
So you need to dismiss this case because of this, because this is the selected political bias.
Here's where Eileen Cannon comes in.
You know, it doesn't seem possible that she would just dismiss the case on that, but like, I don't know.
Let's find that out.
I would not be, like, it can't happen.
I know it can't happen, but in my fevered brain, I'm already picturing something crazy like that happening, or her at least accepting the argument and like thinking about it for a day or two and delaying.
Who knows what, but that is one of the ways they're going to argue this, and God knows she might say, you know what, you're right.
I have my MAGA hat in the back of my car that you saw me pictured with last month, and I really believe this, guys.
It's selective prosecution.
Man, I'm ready for everything to go wrong.
I gotta tell you, even as I'm inching up on the silent retreat, Nick, I'm just ready for all hell to break loose.
And again, I don't know.
By the way, Trump's lawyer, trustee, good name, by the way, he actually sounded very confident.
He was going on all the shows last week before the indictment comes out, right?
And I'm like, OK, here's the guy that you were mentioning in terms of he deserves representation.
That's confident.
This guy seemed pretty reasonable, seemed pretty smart.
As soon as the indictment comes out, they fire him, pretending like, oh, it's happening in Florida, so we can't, as if there's no planes that will get them down to Florida or they can't represent them anywhere.
They're fine.
It was so ridiculous, their excuse for this.
But I think that they realized what he said about, with Corcoran describing in his notes, that when he had all these documents in there, he signals, like you mentioned, he signals to pluck out the ones that were going to be really damning and probably burn them or something, right?
And as soon as his lawyers realized that these guys, that that's what he would do to them and they would be in legal jeopardy, They're like, I mean, not that they didn't know that already, but they're like, we have to get the hell out of here.
This is not, we can't defend this guy.
Also, by the way, word has gotten out, Donald Trump doesn't want to pay people.
Like, it's not only the fact that he stiffs people left and right.
If you get an offer from Donald Trump to actually get paid for your services, it's stuff where he's like, oh, here's an old Trump casino chip.
It's a one-of-a-kind, and I'll go ahead and sign it.
It'll even be worth more.
Like, this is a fraudster.
Period.
There is no reason to go ahead and put your name on this man's, you know, with him and sully yourself.
I mean, it's the equivalent of, is there a John Adams out there, you know, who's gonna defend, you know, the Boston Massacre?
Like, is there somebody who's going to go and, like, go ahead and say, yes, I'll stand up and do this for them?
Like, there's no reason to do it.
You don't have a clue if you're gonna get paid.
And what's more, like, You know, you're going to look up and all of a sudden your invitations are going to dry up.
Alright, on a similar note, a couple of weird things have happened with this.
I want to point out that Donald Trump is easily the avatar for this age of corruption and self-dealing.
But history and time has a weird way, Nick, of doing strange little things where it winks at you.
You know what I mean?
Where the universe is just like, hey everybody, I see you down there.
I know you feel little.
Here's a wink.
We've had two stories that have come out as Donald Trump is becoming the first former president to face federal charges.
One, Boris Johnson has resigned from Parliament as investigation into his corruption and misconduct during the COVID pandemic is coming to light.
That's weird.
But Silvio Berlusconi died at the age of 86.
This, of course, is the three-time Prime Minister of Italy who was convicted of corruption, self-dealing, I mean, probably should have been in prison for a very, very long time, and was, in many ways, the proto-Donald Trump.
Like, I don't think you get to Donald Trump being president without Berlusconi sort of, you know, he corrupted so that Donald Trump could run.
Right.
I mean, it is a weird little thing to look at this era of con men and grifters and self-dealers and realize that something has gone really, really wrong.
You know, Berlusconi is lucky, I guess, he was in Europe at the time where promiscuity was a lot more, you know, a cultural thing that doesn't bother as many people, right?
Couldn't get away with what he did here as long as he did.
But I mean, yeah, there's no question there is a playbook.
That, you know, it's funny, really quickly, I remember when I first started doing my basketball stuff, eBall Breakdown, you know, as a high school coach, and people treated me as if I didn't know anything because I was a high school coach, as if when you get to the NBA, all of a sudden they give you a special box of basketball knowledge that only they can have, and you don't, right?
And it's kind of like the same thing here, there's like the special box of like how to do the, how to grift as a leader of the country, and they kind of pass it around, maybe, you know, by the way, this is actually probably how it works, honestly, like I feel You know, Nick, what happens, hold on, what you're missing here is that you have, you think that they're giving this box around willingly.
That's not how this works.
Again, they've got a golden ticket.
They're not going to do it for free.
This takes place at a conference room in a La Quinta Inn.
And the first person who comes in is like somebody who like got a cup of coffee in the, in the major leagues, you know?
And it's like, that's when I realized you could Hit a home run with the authoritarian grifter playbook.
And it was like $9.99 asterisk infinite amount of money.
Like that's where that takes place.
You get a Danish, but it tastes like shit.
Okay, fair enough, but either way, I like the notion of that, where at the very least, it's not like, I mean, it's out in the open, so Trump could be watching Berlusconi all these years, and just say, yeah, that's what we're going to do, and it would work.
Johnson's interesting, another interesting case, because this really kind of centers on the COVID parties, right?
Like, that he just wasn't locking down.
That doesn't seem like it would be enough to certainly get him out of there unwillingly, yet he was willing to step down in protest of that.
Does it make this make sense to me?
Well, I'll tell you what I think.
First of all, I think Johnson is the type of guy, I think he understands that if you get caught up in a scandal, you just go away for a while, and then come back, you know?
It's like, people are like, hey, it's Boris Johnson!
I think he's also the type, and you know, when he resigned, I don't know if you remember this, Nick, when he actually resigned as Prime Minister, he used this speech as being one of the most powerful people in the world.
I mean, the UK is in decline, obviously, but he actually said, them's the brakes.
Like, this is a person who never took any of this very seriously.
I think him, Donald Trump, Berlusconi, I think, was a little bit more, how do I put this?
Competence, not the word, but capable is maybe the other word.
You know, he was more serious.
Johnson and Trump never have cared about any of this.
What has happened is basically almost in hobo code.
If anybody ever watched Mad Men, you could scratch something on a fence and you knew that you could get a meal at this house.
There was a hobo code that got put up in front of Western democracies that said, hey, the grift is hot.
Get in here and you can make money and do whatever you want.
You can do a song and a dance.
You don't have to work that hard.
Boris Johnson didn't work hard.
Donald Trump doesn't work hard.
They recognized, though, that there was an opportunity to profit.
Berlusconi basically went ahead and laid the foundation for, here's how you take your billions of dollars and your industries and what you do and intertwine it with state power.
You basically take it over as a parasite.
And Donald Trump totally understood how that worked.
It just so happens that all of these sort of Venn diagrams, I think, are intersecting, particularly as neoliberalism enters this, like, late crisis stage.
Yeah, and it might sound familiar because Berlusconi also utilized the media.
He owned the TV stations, he owned the networks, and that was what, you know, built up his political power in the beginning anyway, much the same way as Trump, you know, utilized The Apprentice for this.
It's the same kind of needs.
That said, Berlusconi might have actually been a good businessman.
He might have actually been a guy who could build a company up and run it properly.
I mean, it kind of feels that way looking at, like, you know, the evidence I've seen versus Trump, for instance.
I have no idea.
All I know is that Berlusconi was an absolute disgrace who should have done jail time.
And now all of a sudden Donald Trump looks like he could very well do jail time.
It's interesting.
Alright everybody, we are going to get to this last segment here and it is a doozy.
We have talked in the past about how weird this current moment is where all of a sudden we're talking about UFOs.
By the way, Nick, I don't know if I've put my marker down on this.
I will not call them UAPs.
Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon.
I think that's part of the deep state conspiracy.
I'm not doing it.
They're UFOs.
We have heard in the past now that, like, maybe there were ships that got caught.
Maybe, maybe we've even retrieved remains.
A whistleblower.
Named David Grush, who has a long history as a veteran, but also spent 14 years in intelligence, particularly studying this phenomenon.
He has served in the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force.
He has been involved in a lot of this stuff.
He has had a remarkable career, is now blowing the whistle, saying that not only does the United States have crashed aircraft that are alien in origin, but also the bodies of aliens who piloted these crafts.
He has said that this evidence has been withheld from the government and representatives, and is trying to say, listen, we need to take a look at this.
A quick note on this, and we'll get into the actual story of it in some of the details that have been coming out around it.
He says that he has not seen them.
That he does not have direct evidence, but he seems compelled and convinced that this is true.
And now this is resonating.
I have a lot of thoughts on this, but Nick, are you ready to welcome our interstellar travelers?
Oh, I am.
I mean, listen, I'm convinced that they're out there.
I mean, obviously the biggest worry you'd have is that if they have enough technology to get here from somewhere, it's going to be really far away, then it's over.
We will have nothing to offer, you know, any resistance.
And so in that case, thank, thank goodness that maybe they're not, you know, murderous aliens who want to kill everybody.
Well, maybe they are.
They call it the Dark Forest Theory.
The idea is if there is another race of beings that can make their way to us, then we need to be very wary because they would be more technological than us, and they would be able to dominate us and destroy us.
Yeah.
Now, the best part about Star Wars, I would think, is you know how the Millennium Falcon kept breaking down?
And you know normally before that or even now you'd see these sci-fi things where the spaceships are pristine and they're like... I'm so glad you brought this up.
One of the best things about Star Wars is how dingy it is.
Yeah.
You know it's like it's this world where you have like all this technology but most of it sucks.
Right.
That's a cool thing that goes unappreciated.
The first read in the trilogy also became digital and it just didn't look or feel anything like that.
So it makes sense.
okay, they finally get all the way over here, but whatever their ship had to go through was probably a lot and it breaks down and they crash.
And then people, that makes sense to me, and who knows, maybe they aren't as sort of smart, they made some mistakes and then poof, they hit something they didn't want to.
So all of that could resonate.
I mean, listen, my dad tells me stories remembering of what happened in Roswell and hearing reports of that.
And the reports that were then were very, very compelling until they were able to shut it down.
So I'm a believer.
I think that there's stuff out there.
There's a lot of things that are unexplainable that we've seen, even the evidence with the video footage from the F-16s or the fighters.
You know, some very compelling things.
I would hope that, you know, that we get more evidence and it would come out sooner than later because, you know, we've already been in the dark for since the 50s, basically.
And it's frustrating because I'd like to know.
There's a lot that I want to unpack here, but I want to say first of all, I don't know if David Grush is right.
He seems to believe it.
Like, I gotta tell you, being a whistleblower is an act of courage.
And, like, to go ahead and do this and go ahead and put your, like, personal reputation and possibly even freedom on the line, that's important.
It seems like he believes it.
I will also go ahead and say, because I am fascinated by a lot of this, there are a couple of claims that have sprouted up around it, right?
Grush has said, this is what I have been aware of, this is what has been said, this is what people have made me privy to.
There are other things that are coming out of it, including arguments that there has been a A quiet, invisible Cold War going on, in which several nations have been trying to reverse-engineer crafts and technology that they have found.
That is an interesting idea, particularly as we reach into, I don't know, a new Cold War, and we're looking at these things, zooming around and doing all kinds of things that technically, you know, physically shouldn't be possible.
I think that's interesting.
I also think, and this is just from a sort of a sci-fi aspect, Nick, there are reports that these things like distort time and space and that like investigators have gone inside of a craft that is about the size of a Buick and they go in and it's actually the size of a football stadium.
And that's incredible, like that makes me think about things.
That is like a really cool detail that I've come across in all of this.
But I want to point something out.
I don't think it's a coincidence that as the first Cold War was starting, was when we had the first UFO craze.
Where we started talking about flying saucers, we started talking about abductions, we started talking about Roswell, like those things were absolutely parallel to one another.
Now we're heading into a new Cold War in which the United States might actually have to go into some sort of a defensive mode or some sort of even offensive mode.
These stories are mythological in nature whether or not they're mythology.
You know, if they're real, they're still mythological.
What we're being told is there's someone above us on the food chain.
And not just as humans, that's important, but as Americans.
You know what I mean?
And before wars, and before Cold Wars, you start to see a lot of this stuff go in.
If you want to believe that this stuff is possible, and maybe that China's out there messing around with this, or maybe, you know, someone like Russia might even possibly have it, we're actually talking now about needing to beef up our military-industrial complex.
Maybe we should be spending a lot more money on research and development.
It is also a narrative being told to us.
Hey, I know you're worried about what's going on in politics.
I know you feel like things are destabilized and they're not really going anywhere, but maybe we have some technology that...
We're real close to cracking.
You know what I mean?
Maybe the best days are yet to come.
There are so many different signals and messages that happen with this stuff, and you can't just simply roll your eyes and dismiss it.
I mean, for all I know, this is real.
But I do know that there are cultural, political, societal messages that come out with this, and things that we need to pay attention to, and things we need to think about.
I mean, technologically, you know, who knows?
Like, the LED light, was there like a missing somehow?
We got to that without knowing how we did it because we reverse engineered something from a spacecraft?
I don't know.
But here's the thing that's interesting is, you know, the Red Scare is related to, you know, all the UFOs in the 50s because they wanted to keep us, you know, under control, scared of communism.
With Sputnik!
Sputnik flying over our heads and making a beep!
Yeah, you know, but then when you talk about like communism, it talks about like nuclear family and it talks, you know, people like, like gay people were so thrust out of the society as it was then, they didn't even have to say it out loud.
Whereas I'm kind of thinking now there's such a huge push against like the trans community.
And I start to wonder how this folds into, like, all the UFO stuff.
Because, again, there's a hysteria and a fear, and we're seeing that same kind of reaction to trans people.
Which, by the way, is they're trying to cleave off the LGB community from the trans.
You know, well, we can accept gay people, we just can't accept trans people anymore.
And I know this is a total You know, left turn on this one, but you know, there does seem to be a bit of a parallel certainly back in the day when we were afraid of UFOs and how they kept society in control where we are now.
But that's not untrue because what is actually happening with all of it, and you'll notice that every new development, Nick, nothing offers clarity.
Right.
You know what I mean?
Like, nothing offers, oh, here is a concrete thing that is happening.
Here's something that, like, could possibly get us out of this mess.
In times of societal crisis, that's when this stuff is bread.
Like, if you actually talk to somebody, and I had a conversation not too long ago about, like, what are you actually worried about with, like, Uh, you know, gay and trans kids.
What are you worried about with schools, with books and all that?
Like, what is the worst thing that's going to happen?
You know what I mean?
Like, what is it?
Like, can you... I said this to someone the other day.
I said, can you distill it down for me and tell me what could happen?
And they're like, well, I just think that they have a plan.
You know, the they.
There's a they.
And depending on where you go on the internet, who you listen to, what you read, what website you frequent, there's a satanic plan, right, to drive us away from God.
Or there's a transhumanism that's going to lead us into a future in which our souls are destroyed and we're in control.
All of this is part of trying to divide us and keep us from thinking about what's going on.
Thinking about what is actually occurring and where we're actually going and coming up with concrete plans.
Being afraid that there is, I don't know, a little gray alien over here that is somehow or another going to come in and obliterate society.
Like, is that an interesting thing?
Yes, it is.
Would I like to know if that's true?
Absolutely, I would.
But there are still concrete things that we know are problems.
That we know need to be addressed.
And meanwhile, that, whether it's the little gray alien, or gay and trans people, or the deep state, or any of these things, all it does is keep us from actually discussing what we know to be true and what we know to be pressing.
And that is how all of this stuff manifests.
And it's not a surprise.
All right, everybody, that's going to do it.
I'm going to go shut up for a while, which is going to feel so good.
In the meantime, Nick is going to take control of the mothership.
I think we've got some plans for the Friday episode.
Again, I hope things don't just absolutely break out into chaos.
That would be fantastic.
Nick will be back on Friday with The Weekender.
If you need us before then, you can find Nick at CanYouHearMeSMH.
