Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss how the GOP Presidential candidates must decide whether they'll publicly announce a pardon for Donald Trump if they win the presidency, and whether Trump could come up with a plea deal if he threatens to release classified material during his trial. They analyze the bullshit burger that the Republicans are serving regarding the corruption allegations against President Joe Biden before touching on the ridiculousness of JD Vance stripping key safety measures out of his train bill and finishing up connecting the dots regarding Joe Rogan's desire to hold a debate between an expert in the field of vaccinations and a conspiracy kook who happens to be running for president.
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Sitting with the depths of my soul, thinking about things, and just surviving a sun and heat hellscape.
The rumors about the American heatwave are true, Nick Halseman.
It's rough out there.
Wow.
I mean, listen, we've had the coolest, mildest weather in LA since the turn of the 2023.
So I don't even know what that's like.
I don't even know heat.
I don't know dry heat.
I don't know anything about that.
I kind of envy it, even though it sounded pretty hot.
I swear, every time you talk about the weather in California, you're just absolutely pissing people off.
It never ends!
But not in June.
No one in June is gonna be mad now, are they?
Are you kidding me?
Have you, have you, have you looked at the weather channel recently?
America is broiling.
Oh, so yeah, I'm unaware of this.
So, okay, forgive me.
Yeah, as it is, the high, uh, 71 today.
And, and I kind of overcast.
That's disgusting.
That's really upsetting.
I, uh, I gotta tell you though, I am glad to be back.
Siri is mad at me too, geez.
I'm so glad to be back.
Series glad to be back.
People, listen, we have a whole host of things today.
I was hoping, Nick, first of all, I was so glad That I went on my little silent sojourn and all hell did not break loose in Miami when Donald Trump was arraigned in this document case.
I was so glad there wasn't some sort of violence.
It seems like somebody dressed up as like a 1920s convict jumped out in front of his motorcade and got arrested.
I love, by the way, before we get into any of the actual news, Nick, I love that he went into a Cuban restaurant after being indicted and told everybody he was going to buy their food and then immediately left, which is the most Donald Trump thing imaginable.
But I was so happy that basically all hell did not break loose while I took my little silent sojourn.
I think it's revealing.
I think it's telling us something about what's going on in the country and his effect and his influence.
You know, I think there's a lot of evidence for a lot of these things having not such influence as we think that they do.
Right?
Or at least that's my positive thinking going on here.
And there certainly will be talking about some ideas that might indicate that there is a slide going on, which we had sort of predicted, I think, even a year or two ago, about the effect that Donald Trump might ultimately have or not have going forward.
But, uh, yeah, it was a dud, man.
Nothing.
Nothing to really report.
It's crazy.
Well, I mean, it was just a former president, you know, appearing in a courtroom on federal charges.
I mean, that part, for sure.
I was thinking about, like, you know, the reaction and the people on the crowd.
They had the fighting and the chains and the tridents being thrown out there.
We didn't get any of that.
I appreciate, though, that you have a member of the Republican Congress who is basically tweeting out, like, military strategy about taking bridges and streets.
I think there's a lot happening here.
And before we get into like the back and forth of the updates and the developments and all of this, and there are a lot, I just want to say, I think there's something very odd happening right now.
And we have been talking about this, Nick.
We have been sort of previewing it.
The idea that the Republican Party was ready to move on from Donald Trump, while keeping the MAGA movement home, more or less, to take their votes, and also using what Trump had created in order to push their anti-democratic agenda.
We are seeing that take place.
And I do feel like we are inching up, towing up on a moment of truth.
You know what I mean?
Like, it feels like all it takes is one human being to cock off and, like, do a really awful thing and cause a tragedy on a scale that we'll be talking about forever.
But at the same time, there are a lot of people who are looking around, I think, who are waiting on this thing to break wide open.
They're waiting to see what happens in terms of the legal sort of ramifications of it, the fallout from it.
Right before we started recording, Nick, if you want to talk about it, you even sent me a link to this thing.
It seems like the Trump camp is angling for some sort of a plea deal because of the classified nature of this thing.
I have been getting a chuckle myself, Nick.
Thinking about what it would take in order to actually try this case, you know, to make sure that a jury would understand that he was eating, like, an overcooked hamburger and waving around the attack plan on Tehran.
Like, how do you prove that to a jury?
I'm not exactly sure, but that apparently looks like it's a development now, because how can you predict anything at this point?
Well, if you analyze how the trial would have to go, the jury would need to see the documents to probably decide for them on their own end whether or not these were serious enough to charge him with these charges.
Certainly, that's what the defense would say.
Have you ever served on a jury, by the way?
What's that?
Have you ever served on a jury?
Not only have I served on a jury, I was a foreman for a jury.
You know what?
I'm glad you just said that.
You strike me as the person who would be the jury foreman.
I can see that.
As soon as you said it, I knew it to be not just truth, but capital T truth.
And I will say, if you've ever served on a jury, or if you've ever been in a jury selection process, these are not people that you want looking at national state secrets.
Okay, fair enough.
I wasn't sure that's where you're going.
But yeah, that could be part of it.
Yeah.
But remember, it's... Donald Trump is sitting there in the courtroom.
He could just start blurting it out, what was in there, right?
And it's all on the record.
People hear it.
They're reporting on it.
And that's a serious fear of the intelligence community.
They don't want any of these secrets out, which is why they freaking are indicting him.
Nick, I was thinking about this today, like a couple of hours ago.
Like, if he gets sent to prison, like, what's to stop him from saying what he has read as President of the United States of America?
What is to stop him from just, like, because I, you know what really broke my brain a little bit?
It's like one of those things when you're running and just random thoughts happen and occasionally, like, they'll mess with your step and you almost break a leg because you're so overwhelmed by it.
Remember that story, and the guy just, you know, got indicted for this too.
The National Air Guardsman who was impressing people on his Discord server with all of the classified secrets and all that, that he was doing it to like, on one hand he was a neo-Nazi, absolutely.
But on the other hand, he was doing it to impress 15-year-olds?
That's what happened with the 45th President of the United States of America.
Like, yeah, he was probably selling secrets, but he was also trying to impress people over terribly cooked hams that he had these secret documents.
What are you going to do with him in prison?
Really?
You're going to have a walking national security, like, compromise in a federal penitentiary if this happens.
And it happens to be where the government will do a plea deal because of this.
Where they're like, we just don't want to have this out.
And they'll do an offer.
The problem is, what would the offer be?
And what would the offer be that he would take?
Obviously, the result would be that the charges would be dropped, I guess.
But there would have to be some sort of penalty.
And usually, you would imagine, we'll give you a year in prison, right?
Or whatever.
Or they could go really out of the box and say, yeah, you can't run for president ever again.
And I told you this before, I think, offline, where I was like, he'll just agree to that and then he'll run anyway a month or two later.
He'll just get back in the race.
And, you know, by the time they get their ducks in a row to re-prosecute him, he's in the White House and then he can pardon himself or whatever.
I want to point out the through line in all of this, Nick, that we're getting ready to cover, and the intractable nature of this problem.
You know what I mean?
Like, the mess that we have created with the presidency, we always assumed that a Donald Trump would never get in there.
You know what I mean?
Like, we, you always assume, and that's where the founders went wrong, that's where everybody has gone wrong, particularly creating this big, muscular presidency.
Like, we always assumed a Donald Trump wouldn't get in there, everything would be fine, a gentleman, or, they always thought a gentleman, they never thought a woman for that matter.
I correct myself, but that was the mindset of them.
We have now reached this point where this is such an intractable feeling problem that basically the entire conversation at this point is, one, Donald Trump is absolutely caught dead to rights doing this thing.
He should be convicted of it, right?
Everybody sort of understands that, save for like the MAGA cult, and we'll get into the numbers here in a second.
Two, everybody understands that this is a really messed up situation that can't really see itself out the right way.
It's like an impacted bowel.
You know what I mean?
Like something, something needs to happen.
Something needs to happen in order to make this thing work, in order to get past it so we can pretend like it's never happened.
Before we get into these stories, which are all about pardons, you'll notice we are talking about pardons left and right.
Before that, Nick, a completely unplanned segment.
I'm going to call this Way Too Early Predictions.
At this point in this process, and again, we haven't even talked about this, we haven't thought about it, we haven't discussed it.
At this point, gut feeling, Nick, what do you think happens from this?
Because as we're talking about it, I'm starting to feel like I have a little bit of way too early predictions.
Well, you know, I have so many things to talk about on this subject, then to sort of get all the way to the end of it.
What do you think happens?
Your question is, what do you think happens at the end?
Well, how does this thing play out?
Yes.
Yeah, I think that they're going to have a trial.
And I think he'll be found guilty.
And I don't think that Biden is going to pardon him.
And we have precedent for this, you know?
If only we had a way of thinking what might happen to a president that would pardon the former president or not, and what happens to him later.
When do we get to talk about that part?
We'll get into that here in a minute because I gotta tell you, if anybody at home listening to this or anybody driving around listening to this thought that either the New York Times or the Washington Post was not going to have an op-ed by now arguing that Biden should pardon Trump, we've got news for you and we're gonna cover that here pretty soon.
So what's your prediction then?
How far off am I?
Well, I gotta tell you, I...
I am starting to feel like a pardon is the only way this thing moves forward.
I am starting, like, these systems, the way that they work, the way that they don't, again, nobody wanted to bring these charges.
They desperately wanted to avoid bringing these charges.
It feels like they're not gonna want this trial.
They're not gonna want Donald Trump out there doing that and, like, doing his thing.
I have to imagine, at some point or another, a plea bargain.
Again, as I said the last time that we talked, a Spiro Agnewist type plea bargain.
You go ahead, get out of this thing.
Promise you're not going to run for it.
But you're exactly right.
I could see him taking that plea bargain and then, you know, five hours later announcing he's still running.
It feels like this thing is such a mess that maybe somewhere along the line, a pressure has to be applied and he has to be pardoned because they're not in the business of carrying things like this out.
You know what?
I mean, yeah, gosh, I don't want to give you the benefit of acknowledging that that's actually pretty compelling, but it is.
I agree.
I don't want that to be right, but you're compelling.
I don't either.
But let's quickly talk about what must be going through Biden's mind, because obviously you're talking about Biden is going to pardon him out of the blue and just say, hey, let's do a real race in November of 2024.
And that will be the decision.
That will decide it.
But we found out what happened.
You know, I went into a little bit of a deep dive about Ford pardoning Nixon in 74.
And we all remember what happened in 76, right?
He didn't win.
It was really close, though, by the way.
Carter eked it out and probably must have been one of the closest Electoral College victories we've had.
And obviously Biden would want to win in 2024.
And I think he would seal his.
I mean, I think he would he would lose.
Right.
He would lose if he gave Trump a pardon.
Well, okay, so this is like where all of a sudden we got to put on our, not three-dimensional chess, but like 18-dimensional chess hats.
You know, because everyone loves putting on a hat and playing chess.
I gotta say, the arguments for this thing are really kind of terrible.
This article, for instance, that we're going to talk about, this is by Mark A. Thiessen.
And by the way, Nick, in case you didn't notice who Mark A. Thiessen is, he is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
It is absolutely journalistic malpractice to allow a right-wing stooge like Mark A. Thiessen to publish an op-ed in the Washington Post saying Biden should pardon Trump.
You called it an article, though, man.
You can't call that an article, can you?
Even like... It sucks.
If it's wrong, it shouldn't happen.
Like, it's an absolute dumb shit thing.
His argument in all of this, and he says that the case against Trump, he says, is quote-unquote damning.
Later on, he says, you know, and this is how he sort of argues all of it.
He says it'd be one of the most divisive events in the history of our new, in our republic.
It would set a new precedent and create enormous pressure on the next Republican president to go after President Biden and other Democrats.
By the way, I got news for you.
That pressure is already there.
Doesn't matter if Biden pardons Trump, doesn't pardon Trump, never says Trump's name again.
There is going to be pressure to go ahead and go after Biden.
That is the era that we are in.
You have to wake up.
You have to recognize what's going on.
On top of that, he goes ahead and says that Biden should go ahead and pardon him.
And then this is great.
He says, quote, in pardoning Trump, Biden would be a true statesman.
Sparing the country the ordeal of a trial will go a long way toward repairing the nation's frayed political fabric.
No, it would not!
He would display the kind of leadership that has been missing in Washington, and he would drive Trump crazy.
No, he wouldn't.
Trump would be thrilled.
With one action, Biden would eliminate the narrative of a deep state conspiracy that is helping to fuel Trump's political comeback.
No, he wouldn't!
Do these people not understand this thing?
You know what I mean?
That doesn't get rid of the deep state.
That doesn't change anything.
They'll figure out some counter-narrative, and they'll say, this is all part of the deep state.
This is part of their plan.
All of that stuff.
That will not get rid of the deep state narrative.
It will not win over the Republicans.
It will not heal the torn, frayed fabric of the nation.
It won't.
But what's more, Nick, you're exactly right.
If Biden pardons Trump, I gotta tell you the turnout in 2024 would be dismal.
Yeah.
Dismal.
It's already going to be lower anyway because without the COVID stuff, which made it a lot easier to vote, I'm assuming we're going to have a lot less votes anyway.
No one wants this.
No one wants Biden-Trump round two.
Nobody wants it.
Nobody wants Biden versus DeSantis.
Nobody wants Biden versus blank.
Nobody.
And if he pardons Trump, it's that much worse.
Now, what's interesting is that when you look through the Ford pardon of Nixon, Ford, to his death, in his wallet, carried a little piece of paper that described a Supreme Court ruling from the 20s that discussed how accepting a pardon means that you are guilty, that you are acknowledging your guilt, which Nixon did not want to have to do, but he ultimately acknowledged that.
But this doesn't even matter at this point.
Like, Trump doesn't even give a shit.
He just, as long as he can get the pardon, you know, he will then say, I'm not guilty, though.
You see, he sees that there was no evidence.
And that's why I'm exonerated now.
That's what that would be for him.
And it was really interesting.
It was really, really unpopular when it happened.
Right.
Nobody agreed with Ford or like a lot.
Most people didn't agree with Ford.
Um, over time, though, by the 2000s, when people, the people, the principals who were involved with all the Watergate stuff, uh, are interviewed, they now talk about how Ford was this elder statesman and was doing something to heal the country and all these different things.
And, uh, it's amazing how over, enough time passes, and these horrible things get softened, right?
Nixon becomes an elder statesman, too.
People forget about how horrible he was as a president.
I mean, here's how- He made so much money post-presidency.
He made so much money post-presidency.
Yeah.
Oh, and by the way, you know how Ford got embroiled?
He got in hot water with all the conservatives of his party because he said, I'll just keep doing what Nixon was doing as a moderate, which is pretty much all the democratic principles we have now.
That was the other reason.
So we, by the way, we can't completely say it was the pardon that killed him.
It was the fact that he didn't want to go way hard right in that time.
Well, no, you're absolutely right, and people kind of forget that, like, Gerald Ford pardoning Richard Nixon also—and by the way, the way that he was governing, you're exactly right—it opened the door to Ronald Reagan.
Like, that's what led to Reagan.
That's how you get to Reagan.
That's how you get—and again, like, we've covered this—that's how Reagan absolutely slaughters Absolutely slaughters Jimmy Carter.
Nick, real fast before I make my next point.
Did that pardoning of Richard Nixon repair the torn, frayed fabric of the country?
No!
Not only did it not repair the health of the country, it basically enables Trump now to do what he wanted.
Now!
It absolutely did not make anything better.
You know what it did do?
It made the people in Washington, D.C.
and the powerful and the rich feel better about themselves.
And by the way, all of the corruption, all of the abuses, all of that stuff, they just kind of went under the radar.
And the next thing you know, we're talking about Iran-Contra.
Next thing you know, we're talking about cutting the entire social safety net.
We're talking about some of the most racist, homophobic policies imaginable.
It just goes under the radar.
That's all it does because when you don't address this stuff.
And meanwhile, we're sitting here, and we have this Mark Atheism op-ed, terrible.
We also have, this is great, Nick.
This is from CBS News.
I love it when articles like this come out.
Quote, can a president pardon himself?
Love it.
Love it!
I love that we live in a country like this.
I love that we live in this system.
And we have this guy.
It's wonderful.
We have, uh, it's Jeffrey Crouch, an assistant professor of American politics at American University and an expert on executive clemency.
If anybody knows, he does.
He says, quote, the big unanswered question is whether the president might be able to pardon himself.
No president has ever tried it, so we don't know what the result would be if attempted.
What the shit?
What the shit?
That's where we live!
It's like when we were kids, Nick.
And like, you would go out with your friends in the backyard, and you would play games that you made up, and the rules just kept changing!
Except for all of us are living within it.
But I'll tell you one political fact from all of this.
If Biden pardons Trump, here's what Biden says to everybody.
Why was he elected in 2020, Nick?
Because he was the one person who could put to bed the evils and dangers of Donald Trump.
He was the one.
What has he not addressed?
He's not addressed the anti-democratic actions.
He's not addressed people having their rights taken away, including bodily autonomy, including the right to vote.
Hasn't even really done much besides say it.
Right?
Hasn't even, like, really gone after these things.
What is more important is pardoning Donald Trump, who got dead to rights, compromising national security.
Hell of a vote!
You know?
Finish the job, Joe.
That's what that is.
That's literally the message that gets sent to the populace.
And I gotta tell you, people are sick of this shit already, and if that's what happens, take care.
Take care of yourself.
But even overarching what you describe why he got elected, he also got elected because he said he could heal the country.
Yes.
And so if that's what's on his mind, then he then he's thinking, well, this will be this, this will be it.
I mean, here's the thing.
If he if he pardoned Trump and then they're going to run on the merits of like, you know, candidate versus candidate, like he's Biden's going to win.
I don't think Biden loses unless he really drops, you know, makes a lot of mistakes between now and then, which they've been doing a good job of keeping in the box.
Um, but you know what I mean?
I think as of now, if the race was held, he'd win.
He'd win, maybe not by as much as he did before, right?
But he wins.
Um, and then, you know, here we're right back where we started.
But again, like I quickly yelled it out, but I didn't quite make it.
I don't know if I drove it home.
The notion that Nixon was pardoned Does the White House have any influence over the Department of Justice and who they prosecute?
to break the laws without caring.
And to sort of follow exactly in that footsteps, knowing that there isn't any consequences for him.
Now that said, remember, the only reason why he's running is because I think he wants to pardon himself or make, he doesn't have to pardon himself.
He can just make the cases that are against him go away.
Oh, which is the other interesting thing about that.
Somebody asked me on Twitter about this.
Does the White House have any influence over the Department of Justice and who they prosecute? - Technically, no. - Okay. - Technically, no.
Technically, no.
I mean, listen, this is an audio format besides the people watching on YouTube.
I'm winking.
Technically, no.
They are independent from one another.
Same branch, you know.
But I guess I'm being naive if I try and say that they've actually honored this to some degree, but I don't know.
That's the problem is this is being framed as Biden prosecuting Trump.
It's frustrating because it's not accurate.
No, it's not.
And Biden would much rather this whole thing wasn't happening.
Also, by the way, I got to tell you, what you just said, I think, in terms of like Trump either pardoning himself or the idea that if he wins, he could pardon or do this.
This was the precedent that was set during his presidency.
He literally, it basically was, he told everybody that within earshot, you commit crimes for me, I'll make sure to pardon you.
And by the way, for the most part, he really did pull that out, you know?
And people try and forget this, but, like, a quarter of the Republican Congress was lobbying him for pardons.
Like, they were just left and right asking for this thing.
Meanwhile, what are we now at?
We're now in a position, we're going into the GOP primary, We now have a thing where Trump and the people around him are really pressuring already for the number one issue in the primary to be, if you get the nomination, do you promise to pardon Donald Trump?
They're already making that the main issue.
That's already the discussion at hand.
It's not how to make the country better.
It's not how to move the country forward.
It's not, how are you going to deal with this?
How are you going to deal with China?
How are you going to deal with whatever?
The number one issue in the Republican primary right now is whether or not somebody is going to pardon Donald Trump.
It's uh it's frankly disgusting and by the way we some of these people are not willing to even say that they would right or they're kind of wishy-washy on it too and it's the same notion of they they know how razor razor thin these margins are they cannot afford to lose any of the MAGA people so they have to say they have to say that they want to win or have a shot at winning and that's the problem here um and man but again they should just say they will
If they, God forbid, won, any of these Republican candidates won the presidency, they could just say, oh, you know what, after the trial came out, I had no idea how bad it really was.
I can't pardon them now.
But, you know, they could say it today, they could say it.
And then in 2025, they could say no.
So that's all they have to do.
What's amazing about that, though, Nick?
It's the moment that you defeat Donald Trump, right, for the nomination.
Let's go ahead and, again, let's put on our way-too-early predictions.
If any of these people, from Ron DeSantis to Asa Hutchinson, which is, I'm just saying that as a joke, by the way, everybody.
Uh, if any of these people beat Donald Trump, you already lose 25% of the MAGA crowd.
Immediately.
They hate you.
Period.
They think you're awful.
If you have promised to go ahead and to pardon him, like, the remaining 75% of the MAGA crowd, like, if you don't do it immediately, like, a rumor starts up on 4chan, 8chan, whatever it is, you're a hologram, you're a deep state.
Here, by the way, is a deepfake of you with a bunch of kids.
Meanwhile, this... There's no other way to say it.
This Republican field, as it stands, is just a big, soggy bowl of cereal and water.
That's what this is.
This is bad.
This is a bad field.
They're not putting up anything against Trump.
It is just it's really a really awful field against him.
I think it's amazing, by the way.
We're not going to talk about this in full on this episode.
I think it's amazing that Ron DeSantis is so unpleasurable of a candidate that already they're just focusing on his wife.
That's never a good thing.
You know what I mean?
When when they take a person and they just focus on their spouse, that's not That doesn't bode well for how you're doing in the retail politics of things.
Meanwhile, when we go to these debates, when we cover these debates, Nick, it's going to be non-stop, are you going to deliver Donald Trump from the jaws of justice?
That's going to be it.
And these people, you're exactly right.
They're going to they're going to pander and they're going to they're going to him and haw and wring their hands.
And it's going to be an absolute disaster.
And by the way, and the debates will probably have most of the people on the stage will not want to joust with Trump again for that fear that they will now be tarred if they happen to beat him.
And now they need that his his cultists.
By the way, there will be one, there will be one who does want to, and that's Chris Christie.
It reminds me of that Seinfeld episode when George gets upset because that guy shows him up at a meeting and he spends like a week thinking of a retort, and he comes up with Jerk Store, and he comes in so amped up, he's like, I'm gonna let it out on you at the Jerk Store!
Like, that's Chris Christie in this race.
And that's gonna last for one debate.
You know, he's gonna come out and he's gonna be like, what'd you say about me?
And Trump's gonna be like, I don't know you.
I don't know who you are, you know?
And meanwhile, the rest of them, they're not gonna fight him.
They're just not.
They're gonna hem and haw over this thing.
I'm trying to find it right now, because if you remember, he lays the line really proud of himself, and the guy's got another great one right back at him.
He's ready to go.
Half at him, and that's it.
I don't know what it is.
He's ready to go.
Yeah, so, and that will, you know, that could be, again, it would just completely just destroy any kind of decorum we've ever had in these things, and it just devolves into utter chaos.
Again, is it, would it be exciting to watch that?
I suppose, but I never want it to happen.
I mean, it's kind of, well, Well, I guess I don't want to get ahead of our skis, but it's like having a scientist just, you know, debates, you know, of vaccines with a podcaster.
It's something along those lines.
I just want to say, we're really looking at a primary where one of the two major political parties is not going to talk about anything having to do with addressing any problems.
It's literally going to be about, are you going to basically create a two-tiered lawless state?
And it already is.
We already live in a two-tiered law state.
But in this case, it's going to be, is that your political platform?
Will you go ahead and help people commit crimes?
Speaking of crimes, speaking of rumors, Nick, this is an interesting thing that has popped up because of the Republican brain world that has happened.
Nick, there is a weird thing that's happened within the Republican Party over the past week.
It started with, as most interesting things do, it started with Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, who some of you may know from his exploits on Twitter, just absolutely tweeting some of the most brilliant things imaginable, including discourses on deer and Dairy Queen.
Incredible, incredible stuff.
Chuck Grassley took the floor of the Senate and claimed that there had been an FD-1023 document to the FBI saying that a foreign national has taped audio recordings of him talking roughly 15 with Hunter Biden, two supposedly with Joe Biden when he was vice president, talking about million-dollar bribes, going back to the Burisma scandal.
And Grassley made a huge hubbub about this, trying to make this into a giant story.
Nick, it turns out nobody has any proof that this thing exists whatsoever, and the Republican Party since then has just been in complete and utter Damage mode.
I mean, really quickly, I think I mentioned this in the last episode solo is that this.
Are we all clear what the source of this was?
Because everyone's talking around it because they can't even afford to say the guy's name.
It's fucking Rudy Giuliani.
He was around, was screwing around with, you know, Ukraine.
They already knew he was.
He's not a well man.
I would think that's clear as it is.
He's not well.
And so the FBI was like, OK, Rudy, you know, we wrote it down.
Don't worry.
We filed it like that's that's what they had to do.
Knowing that this is all complete and utter misinformation propaganda.
And by the way, I wouldn't have put it past the FBI.
They probably did look into it a little bit and realize exactly what was going on.
So this is sad.
You know, just really quickly, just to bookend what we talked about just before.
You know, you talk about Watergate and you see the Republicans.
They have Watergate.
They have Iran-Contra.
And then how do they respond?
You get, like, Monica Lewinsky, or you get the sock drawer case with Clinton coming up now, right?
Or this garbage.
This is not the same.
This is not even the C-level playing field at all.
I guess it works for them, but this is Rudy's FIFA dream that somehow they're trying to resurrect, and it's sad.
You know, it's weird, actually.
I'm glad you brought this up, because that's another one of those little Trump-era things that sort of, like, goes in the brain and then goes into some dark spot that you only remember, I don't know, moments before you die, maybe.
Like, remember when Rudy Giuliani was just running around with a bunch of, like, Eastern European gangsters, left and right, and he was being recor- like, he was calling journalists accidentally and leaving them voicemails, and he was like, We gotta get a bunch of money!
Where do we get money?
We gotta get bribes!
How do we get all this money?
And basically admitting to everybody that he was, like, on some sort of a bender slash crime spree.
And you're exactly right.
Meanwhile, he's taking his pants off with underage girls that he knew, thinking that he was gonna get some.
See, the scandals, it's like a big soup for me at this point.
I don't remember when she was underage.
That's terrible.
I thought it was a report.
It's hard to keep track.
But meanwhile, Nick, I've got to tell you the difference between the socks drawer case and the Monica Lewinsky fishing expedition.
Do you have a doubt right now that somebody out there right now is using, some provocateur, some right-wing asshole, is sitting around using artificial intelligence to try and create these audios?
Okay, it's really bizarre that you say that.
I'm gonna play something for you really quickly.
I know it's not The Weekender, but Um, you know, so you know what I do, right?
I have this whole YouTube channel thing, right?
And I'm always looking to figure out how to do things faster and better or whatever.
So there is a site now I can upload 10 seconds or 30 seconds of my own voice that I recorded and then I can send them a script of anything I've written and literally one second later it'll come back.
Do you want to hear it?
I'm gonna play it for you in my mic.
I think it'll end up sounding good enough.
This is not me.
This is not me talking right now for the next several seconds.
I hate it.
I hate it.
I don't want it.
I want to throw it out.
I want to bash it with a hammer.
Now, was that high enough?
Could you hear it well enough?
I assume people could hear that.
Yes.
Yeah.
So I played it for my dad.
He couldn't even believe that it wasn't me.
I can't tell.
One of my friends said, well, I could tell.
But like, I can't tell.
It's exactly me.
By the way, I could send a French script and it'll come back and I'll be speaking French.
It's amazing.
So, we are really in a deep shit here because, yes, if that's the worst it's going to be, it's going to get better and better over the next year, we're in trouble.
The good news is that the clown car of the Republican Party is at the helm of this thing, and here's just a little sampling of the absolute nonsense they've been peddling with this.
You can confirm they are legitimate.
I can confirm they were listed in the 1023 that the FBI redacted.
We don't know if they're legit or not.
We don't know for sure if these tapes exist.
If they do and they say what Senator Grassley has said that he thinks they're going to say, then I think that's a different animal.
We have phone calls that were secretly recorded as insurance policies, apparently.
That's what this person says, but again, take that with a grain of salt.
This could be coming from a very corrupt oligarch who could be making this stuff up.
Do you think they exist?
And if yes, how to obtain them?
We don't know.
And, you know, Senator Grassley has never said they exist.
Do we go to Senator Grassley right now?
Give me that sweet Grassley footage.
Okay.
The 1023 produced to the House committee's redacted reference that the foreign national who allegedly bribed Joe and Hunter Biden allegedly has audio recordings of his conversation with them.
17 such recordings.
According to the 1023, the Foreign National possesses 15 audio recordings of phone calls between him and Hunter Biden.
According to the 1023, the Foreign National possesses two audio recordings of phone calls between him and then Vice President Joe Biden.
These recordings were allegedly kept as a sort of insurance policy for the foreign national in case that he got into a tight spot.
The 1023.
So here's here's the thing, Nick.
Grassley going on the floor of the Senate and saying this stuff is a lot like I don't know how else to say this.
It's like somebody in your family showing up and being like, have you heard about the QAnon?
Like, it's literally, they have no idea what's going on with the internet.
Things just go around.
They've heard certain things.
Things have come across them.
Like, how quickly did the GOP run away from this thing?
And by the way, like, how bad must it be for the GOP to be like, hey, let's chill out on this for a little bit.
They don't do that.
You know, it has to be very clear that this was not actually real.
Yeah, well, the new drinking game will have to be when he says, allegedly, we drink because it happens probably six times in that speech.
It does.
But it also is a little bit like McCarthy from the 50s, where even though they can throw the allegedly isn't sort of walk it back and be a little bit wishy-washy that they're still saying the words Biden and corruption and money and Burisma.
And that's all they need.
The keywords are getting out there, and the crazies are assimilating it in their minds, and it's becoming a lot more cemented now.
So there's a benefit to them politically by everything they're doing right now.
So I want to say something.
Actually, I'm glad that you brought up McCarthy, because there's actually something really interesting to learn about this.
In all of this, Hunter Biden, and I've said this on this show, this is one of the reasons why I think people listen to us, is we like to call balls and strikes.
Hunter Biden has a disturbing professional history of cashing in on his dad's name.
He just does.
Like, he's been in a lot of places where he's obviously been given a lot of money and a lot of access because his dad was a senator and then vice president of the United States of America.
I don't know if it's still going.
We have said if Hunter Biden committed crimes, he should be held accountable.
If Joe Biden committed crimes, we think he should be held accountable.
That's simply the way it should be.
The problem in all of this is that if the Republicans wanted to go after that insider sort of access stuff, first of all, they should have done it with Trump.
Right?
With the way that his family did all this stuff.
Second of all, stick with the facts!
Like, it's damning enough for a couple of people like us who think that the GOP is really dangerous to be like, yeah, there's some stuff here that isn't great.
You don't need to make up stuff.
McCarthy said there were communists in the government.
Here's newsflash.
There were communists in the government.
The New Deal coalition had some communists within it.
It had some socialists within it.
Why?
Because there was socialism within the New Deal and within all of that.
He was right about that.
He was wrong about the John Birch bullshit that, like, they were undermining American militarily or that they had betrayed the country and done this or that.
Stick with the facts.
If you want to talk about the fact that there are communists or leftists in the government, that's fine.
You don't then need to go the extra thing and wave around documents and say, I have the names of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Like, that type of bullshit isn't necessary.
Go ahead and talk about what the actual problem is.
They can't.
They just, they simply can't.
By the way, the other parallel there is that it wasn't illegal to be a communist in the United States then, and it's not illegal to make money now across the world, wherever you want to make deals and make money.
I wish it was!
Right.
Now, again, their argument's going to be, well, obviously he's been doing this so many times, there must be some results, and those results have to be connected to Joe Biden, who's getting him stuff or making things happen for these people.
But I got to tell you, you know, there's got to be evidence of that if it really happened.
And if not, then whatever.
I mean, you know, it's the same thing like Hillary and Uranium One and the Clinton Foundation, of which, you know, there was never any evidence of that either.
It's just a political cudgel they could use.
And it's it's I guess we can bang our and ash our teeth and bang our head saying it's not fair.
But that's what they're doing.
They're just doing the typical Nixon ratfuckery stuff, I guess.
That's all it is.
And by the way, Nick, we discussed this before the show started recording.
You and I text and DM each other things that we wouldn't want to bring on the air all the time.
But I do want you to share with our listeners your molten hot lava take that you had upon hearing about this story so we can discuss it.
I think there's some stuff there.
And have you noticed that I save things for texting versus maybe DMs.
There's definitely a difference.
You know what?
I honestly, I just had this moment and part of it was, you know, I don't know if you saw, you know, Gavin Newsom went on Hannity of all places.
How can you not see Gavin Newsom?
He is everywhere.
He is just the most exposed person this side of like Harry and Prince Harry.
Like, God bless him.
God bless him.
So he goes on Hannity and destroys him, right?
It was awesome.
But like, pardon me, and then you start looking at some of these things in the emails that they have, which again, they don't say anything.
The email smoking gun stuff that they had, like, last month, if you really read it, doesn't say anything that they think it does, but...
Part of me was like, you know what, I kind of just wish, let this $5 million bribe be real.
They force him out and let Gavin Newsom just take over and let him run against Trump.
I really honestly at this point would, you know, by the way, maybe Trump or Biden could just step down and let him do it.
But like, whatever it takes, I just feel like I would feel a lot better about the whole thing, honestly.
You are so far in the tank for Gavin Newsom.
It's incredible.
Like, you are just... I voted for him.
It's almost like you voted for him.
Listen, I understand because one of the things that's happening here...
It's that fantasy that we've been discussing.
Like, my God, can we really do Biden-Trump too?
You know what I mean?
Like, nobody wants it.
And even the Democratic Party is just turning itself inside out, like one poll after another.
It's like, my God, I don't want to do this again.
And I simply, I need something to change.
I need something to move.
And I got to tell you, Gavin Newsom understands it.
Like, this is a guy who understands that there is a need for this and a desire for it.
I've said it before.
I have a problem with him politically.
He is such a neoliberal.
I really think, and listen, do I think he'd be a better president than Donald Trump?
Absolutely.
But I have a problem with his politics.
I think he's a more decent person than Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis, all of that stuff.
But I think that there is a real, real desire to move beyond Joe Biden.
And what you're speaking to I think Gavin Newsom knows it very well.
I mean, he is on a just an absolute blitz.
You know, he's out there talking about a new constitutional amendment reigning in the Second Amendment.
He's out there going after Greg Abbott in Texas and DeSantis in Florida.
Like this is a he's aggressive.
He smells it.
You know what I mean?
Like he really, really smells this thing.
Well, there's parallels all over the place, because all the Republican candidates who want to go against Trump, you know, they're kind of like the guy who, like, you don't realize is in the room.
They're kind of hanging out in the back, and then you're talking crap about him, and all of a sudden, you turn around, like, there they are.
They're all just hanging in there, just trying to, like, wait.
Hopefully, Trump goes to prison, and, like, he just simply just won't work.
He can't run.
They'll just happen to be there.
They're ready to go.
And I feel like Newsom is sort of the same way, kind of like he needs to sort of hang out and just sort of be in the area, just in case.
And then at the very least or the very worst, it plays into a 2028 run, which is what you kind of, you know, you probably have to start your campaign early, which is what he's sort of doing.
So I think it's sort of a win to win for him.
But, you know, there is this notion that he could be hanging around and all of a sudden, God forbid, something really something happens that will get him into the race, because obviously he cannot do it.
He can't challenge an incumbent.
He can't just, you know, jump in like RFK Jr.
We're not allowed to talk about him, are we?
No, we're about to talk about RFK Jr., actually.
And I got to tell you, Again, the gnashing of the teeth, the chewing of the nails over Biden running for re-election, it runs so deep.
You know, RFK Jr., I want to say he's polling at like 16%, 20%, something like that.
Which, by the way, I got to tell you, the amount of people who are unsatisfied with Joe Biden within the Democratic Party, it's a lot higher than that.
You know, and does he have name recognition?
Absolutely.
He's Robert Kennedy's son.
Absolutely.
He's a Kennedy.
He has name recognition, which is going to inflate the number, particularly in a primary where it's him and Joe Biden.
I mean, Mary and Willie Williamson, but she's not, you know, in it.
Meanwhile, Nick, we're seeing these articles that are coming out, including Axios, who runs this ridiculous one titled, Biden could lose first to 24 contest to RFK Jr.
No, he can't.
That's not going to happen.
I'm sorry, if it does Ollie Crowe on our live coverage of those primaries, that's fine.
It's not going to happen, ok?
Meanwhile, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
is going on Joe Rogan And what's he doing on Joe Rogan?
He's going on there talking about how Wi-Fi is dangerous.
And I love, by the way, that Joe Rogan is taken as a serious person by people.
And he has RFK Jr.
stop by for like an hour and he's like, we gotta rip out the Wi-Fi, man!
We just can't!
I don't know.
I think we need to live underground now.
And he's going on there.
He's talking about his anti-vax nonsense.
And then what ends up happening is that this Dr. Peter Hotez, a scientist, doctor, vaccinologist guy, he basically says this is all bullshit.
Joe Rogan ends up spotlighting him, challenging him to a debate with RFK Jr.
on his show for $100,000.
Uh, Elon Musk gets involved, promises his whole thing.
Nick, a right-wing provocateur showed up at this dude's house today.
Showed up at his house and was like, WEREN'T YOU GOING TO BE IN ORDER OF DATURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURURUR Well, it's clear why you don't have a debate like this because you don't legitimize someone.
Now, RFK isn't doing the whole anti-vax thing as a running for president maneuver.
He has been doing this for decades now as an anti-vaxxer for autism and the vaccines.
He's not only the president.
He's also a client.
Yeah, exactly.
Right.
He's also a member.
And it's really just dangerous.
Hotez makes a great point about how 200,000 people died that didn't need to, simply because they didn't believe in the vaccine.
And it's because of guys like R.K.
Jr.
and Joe Rogan, who wants to still talk about ivermectin, as if that's a thing that they need to be able to treat COVID with.
You know it's it's really really frustrating uh in a way that uh and then I have to bring up your friend in mind Tom Nichols who's the you know on the on the death of expertise he makes the point which is right where you can never do a kind of camp uh debate because again there's no way to win that debate no You can present your evidence, you can present these peer-reviewed studies that the scientists have done, and one dude's going to say, this guy got it, and the next day he died.
Boom.
Mic drop.
And that wins the debate.
People cheer.
That's what happens.
It's horrible.
No, there's absolutely nothing to do.
There is nothing to be gained from going on the Joe Rogan podcast and getting in a fight with RFK Jr.
Nothing.
Why?
Because, first of all, anybody listening to it is already predisposed to think that RFK Jr.
is a great alternative to Joe Biden.
I have to tell you, if he gets on a stage with Biden, if they have a debate, which, my God, I can't even wrap my head around, like, what that would be.
You know what I mean?
Like, a sitting president of the United States of America having to sit there with a person who's like, oh, this is going on.
Like, that's awful.
Much less this HOTAS guy.
He doesn't need to go talk to these people.
And hats off to him!
Like, most people would love to go on Joe Rogan and at least get the spotlight and have everybody talking about it.
This is actually a guy who gets it.
This is actually a guy with scruples and, like, a decent, you know, foundation to himself.
Like, this is exactly what you're supposed to do with this stuff, because this is nonsense.
And plus, what the guy who showed up at his house was praying for was some altercation where he gets really upset.
And this guy, Dr. Hodges, is so used to dealing with this kind of thing.
He was perfect.
He was nice and very cordial.
And then he just turned and walked away and did not give him any amount of what would have been a viral video for this asshole.
And so he gets it too but it's he's I'm sure he's also just extremely it's like it's soul killing I'm sure he's sitting there just it's just baffling that it's everybody who's in that field who understands the value of this you know and and listen do I am I up late and am I going through these threads and and reading what these other people are saying about vaccines yeah you know and it's it's do you even stop for a second to think well shit like you know what maybe they have a point or not and it's like
You know, it's horrible to then get into that headspace to the point where you're willing to travel to someone's house and harass them for that because you believe it.
Well, there's a profit incentive.
There's a profit incentive.
So actually, you know, what's funny about it is, like, I wrote down the guy's name.
The name of the right-wing, quote-unquote, independent journalist who showed up at Hotez's house and harassed him.
I decided, you know, as I was saying this, I wasn't going to say this guy's name, it's an incredible profit incentive because the video of that could propel that guy.
You know what I mean?
It's not just trying to, like, provoke a harassment.
You're trying to get a viral video.
And immediately, what's the mindset?
This is how this entire ecosystem works.
His thought is, Joe Rogan will retweet this, Elon Musk will retweet this, I will go ahead, I will gain whatever, anything that I'm doing here has an absolute profit incentive behind it, and that goes ahead and incentivizes people to act like this, which goes back to what we have said.
We have emerged into this society where people like Hotez were doctors, teachers, politicians, you name it, people who would even stand at a polling place.
They now have to understand that when they do this stuff, it comes with the possibilities of violence and harassment.
And what happens in all of this is that Rogan and Elon Musk turn that spigot up, they turn the dial up, and now we've reached this point where this guy, every time he leaves the house, kind of has to look over his shoulder.
And I've been there.
It sucks.
It's an awful, awful way to live, and yet here we are.
Yeah.
Ask Fauci.
Same thing.
It's just mind-boggling.
We've gotten to the point now where scientists, like I told you, remember that interaction I had with a guy at that wedding last year?
You know, we quickly got from the gun argument, which was ridiculous, to, you know, what is science, was his retort to me when we were talking about it.
And it's just like, you have to walk away.
You have to walk away and just let them stew and be in their own thing.
There isn't any going back from that when you get to the point where you don't even believe double-blind, peer-reviewed studies about the data.
But by the way, to criticize Pfizer or the big pharma, it's a very alluring thing to do.
It feels like, yeah, we can criticize big companies.
We do it all the time.
And they're just out for profits.
They kill people, yada, yada.
It's kind of bad a bad business model if you create a vaccine that's really not effective and it's killing people.
I think, right?
That's not a good idea for if you want to make actually make that money you're thinking they're making.
You know, so every once in a while these companies actually do things that will save a lot of lives.
It turns out.
And real fast, before we end this show, I got two rapid-fire segments that I wanted to do, one of which I didn't talk to Nick about, but I realized we have to talk about.
First of all, J.D.
Vance, Ohio Senator, just a man of the people.
just the just the worst worst person one of my mortal enemies uh it has come out that as uh as a senator of ohio which uh for those who have forgotten in east palestine did we did we agree is palestine or palestine is palestine palestine east palestine where we had that 38 car derailment from norfolk southern which basically nuked an entire ecosystem uh jdv
Vance is the representative from Ohio, helped put together the Railway Safety Act, and quietly, just under the cover of darkness, absolutely gutted it on behalf of the railway world and the petrochemical world.
So congratulations, J.D.
Vance!
Huge piece of shit.
All they needed to do was have a regulation that when they're carrying the hazardous material that the container needs to be a little bit stronger than they used to be all those decades ago.
That's all.
And it costs them a little extra money and they don't want to pay the extra money.
So they'll pay that money to J.D.
Vance to make him take it out of his own bill.
I don't know.
Like I said, remember how over enough time, even someone like Hitler doesn't have the same fear, or what's the word I'm looking for?
People don't view him as the monster that he was, right?
And after enough time, things change.
And it's like, after enough time with these fucking politicians on both sides of the aisle just being paid off, basically, like this, it doesn't have the same effect anymore.
And there's no outrage.
Well, I mean, like, they just become more and more grotesque.
I mean, that's the thing, right, is it becomes a normalized thing.
Like, with the, you know, it's not like we just lost our distaste for Hitler.
It was an active, active campaign for years from the authoritarian, neo-fascist, fascistic movements to just, like, very quietly, again, the Nick Fuenteses of the world to be like, I don't know, did the Holocaust happen the way that we say that it did?
Right?
I mean, it's just, it's the way that they push this thing forward, and then you have J.D.
Vance, who is just a walking piece of shit, who just, you know, is able to do this and carry water.
I hope him and Kirsten Sinema and Joe Manchin and all of their corporate bot people, I hope they're, I hope they're living great lives.
Real fast on- I like their railroad tracks.
I feel like they don't.
I doubt it.
I doubt it.
On good news, real fast forward in this episode, Nick, a story that we should have covered already, and I gotta tell you, we're gonna cover more.
Which is, off of Europe, there is a pack of killer orca whales who are just absolutely going after boats and fishing people.
They're following the lead of a rogue orca named White Gladys, who apparently was injured by a motor and is not taking this shit anymore.
They are not just taking ships down, Nick.
They are teaching each other how to take ships down.
And I'm going to go ahead and say, and I'm going to let you follow up, but I want to go ahead and put my marker on the table.
The Muckrake Podcast supports the orcas.
The Muckrake Podcast supports White Gladys.
We wish you luck.
We don't want people to drown, you know?
But this orca uprising, I think the spirit is rising.
I think we're going in the right direction.
I love the movie.
So, you know, absolutely.
Now, remind me, as far as I remember, orcas are not, they don't eat people, right?
My understanding is that they haven't, but maybe they're, I don't know, maybe they do, maybe they're getting a taste.
I don't know.
It's incredible though, I will say, for all of the monkey brain stuff that we do, Nick, where we think that we are just far and above everybody else, the animals are so smart.
I mean, they really are.
And we have to convince ourselves that we should mistreat them.
That's what the way we sort of square that circle.
My God, you look at like octopus eye.
Octopus eye?
Is that the way you say it?
Sure.
Octopuses.
Octopus eye.
Ravens.
Ravens are incredibly smart.
These orcas are smart.
Whales are smart.
Like, the things that are happening here, it's incredible.
And I gotta tell you, every day I wake up, I drink my coffee, I look at the breaking news, and I check out what these orcas are up to.
We salute you.
Sure.
I mean, I spend most of my time on Instagram watching footage of interspecies interacting with each other, right?
I can't get enough of that.
So when the dog takes the kittens and decides to, you know, raise them as his own.
But you've seen the footage, I'm sure.
In the forest, they'll build these fire tunnels for the animals to get through in case there's all this fire everywhere.
There's footage, I swear to God, of the foxes sort of standing outside and, like, waiting and, like, gesturing and getting the other animals to, like, go through it and to safety.
And they're all watching out for each other.
It literally is what you see in those Disney movies.
What's the one with the Bambi?
Bambi movie, right?
It's like that.
It's insane.
So I have no doubt that they are much more conscious than we probably give them a lot of credit for.
And yeah, at some point we have to be very careful about certainly the ones that are really big and dangerous.
I gotta tell you, the next interspecies video I want to see is me with the orcas, taking down a boat.
I'm not a good swimmer.
I'm not a great swimmer, but I want to learn.
I want to learn how to speak to them.
I want to say in a very easy way, I am your ally, and we'll take down that ship.
Let's do it.
Wow.
All right.
I will film that for you then.
The Muckrake Podcast supports Strikers, Unions, and Orcas.
Let's just make that very clear.
The Summer of the Muckrake involves absolutely supporting— Solidarity forever.
Solidarity forever.
All right, everybody.
That's going to do it for us.
We will be back for the Weekender edition on Friday.
Hey, you want to listen to that, go over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
Subscribe to the show.
Support the show.
What are you doing?
Why don't you want to listen to this on Fridays as well?
You're going to work on Fridays, I assume.
You're living your life on Fridays.
Maybe you're going for a run.
I don't know.
Maybe you should subscribe.
Patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
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Keeps us going.
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Patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
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Good God.
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If you need us before that weekend, or you can find Nick at CanYouHearMeSFH, you can find me at J.Y.
