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Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman hosted a live show on Thursday evening to discuss Trump doxxing Obama, the rise of Threads to take on Twitter, and call the DEA! Cocaine was found in the White House!
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Welcome to the Weekender edition of the Muckrake Podcast.
I am Jared Yates Sexton.
I'm here with Nick Hausman, and let me tell you something.
We have the cure for your summertime, summertime sadness, and that is a live recording of The Weekender.
We are here with our patrons.
If you want to do something like this, and these are always a great time.
I always enjoy them.
I know Nick always does.
I know the people always enjoy them.
They ask us all the time, can we do more live recordings?
You need to go over to patreon.com slash McCraig Podcast.
You're going to want to listen to this show, right, Nick?
Because we got a lot of stuff to talk about.
We got to talk about cocaine.
We have to talk about machetes.
We've got questions that are good.
We've got a lot, lot going on.
Do we not, Nick?
Oh, a lot, a lot.
And that was my cue to have the Eric Clapton song play, Cocaine, but I'm not ready.
You know what?
Here's the thing, Nick.
I thought there was a 50-50 shot that you would have Eric Clapton's cocaine ready to go.
It was a coin flip for me.
Fascinating.
I mean, you know what?
It's always interesting what others think about what I may or might not do, but...
No, that sounds terrible.
So, all right, everybody, let's go ahead and get this thing going.
First things first, this is a little bit of breaking news that has been going on.
We wanted to comment on it.
It turns out That Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, she of Jewish Space Lasers, QAnon, you name it, every conspiracy theory underneath the sun, who came in in 2021 and immediately fell into lockstep with the Freedom Caucus in the House.
It turns out that she has been booted, kicked out, voted out.
Also, by the way, Nick, a little bit of breaking news that hasn't been around.
I just want to go ahead and give people an exclusive.
My sources, who are very aware of what happened within the Freedom Caucus and the vote to expel Marjorie Taylor Greene, the results were delayed as they had to find somebody to count the votes.
Oh, I was expecting like a punchline.
That's true, right?
You're saying that actually did happen.
No, that didn't happen.
They can count, I have to assume.
I have to assume the Freedom Caucus can count.
But she has been kicked out.
We have some takes on this, there's some thoughts on this, but Nick, what were your initial reactions when you heard?
Where were you when Marjorie Taylor Greene was kicked out of the Freedom Caucus?
I was in my car getting a text from you telling me all about it, so that's where I was.
I'll never forget it, where I was when I found out that NTG got kicked out of the Freedom Caucus.
As we know, it's the most conservative group of people that hang out in Congress.
Conservative is a way of putting it, sure.
Yeah, radically conservative.
And so I was trying to think, I'm like, you know, what kind of liberal things has she been doing that would get her kicked out, right?
Because it's like anything from what she wears to what she says would have done it.
So it sounds like it turns out that, you know, she called, can we use the word that she called Lauren Boebert on the show?
I think we can.
She called, for those who do not know, and maybe they've been insulated from this, on the floor of the House of Representatives, she got into a shouting match with Lauren Boebert and called her a quote, little bitch.
Yes, she did.
Awful!
Awful!
Like, what a mess this is.
What an absolute mess this group is.
Well, let's unpack that for a second because we have to understand why she called her a bitch.
Wait, did you say little bitch or just bitch?
It's little.
Little bitch.
L-I-apostrophe-L, probably.
I don't know if it was the full word or not.
Right.
And Lauren Bobert is not tall, so...
Okay, so the whole point, and by the way, Nick just jumped off of our screen real fast.
Yeah, but just to go ahead, this spat has been brewing for a while.
It came out, the volcanic eruption came from the fact that they were pissed off about dueling ideas of trying to impeach Joe Biden.
Right.
Yeah, but actually her thing wasn't about impeaching Biden, right?
That was Mayorkas.
And well, right?
Wasn't that part of it?
I was reading about it.
All right.
My mind is now flushed.
But the point is, yes, it was about impeachment.
And the idea that like Marjorie Taylor Greene claims that she had the idea to do this and she was going to use the whatever Boebert ended up using for the congressional rules to do it.
She stole her idea like as if it was I don't know, what grade are you in when you accuse people of stealing your idea?
If you are in the Freedom Caucus, you are perpetually in the second grade.
Which, I don't know about you, second grade for me was terrible.
One of the worst years of school.
Awful.
You know, that's interesting.
I think it was up and down for me.
I think I had some of my better times in second grade.
What was my worst year?
That's a very interesting question.
Think about that.
I'm going to fill the people in on a lot of what's going on here.
So Marjorie Taylor Greene's divorce with the Freedom Caucus stems from a lot of different things.
The tension here was sort of originated when she started palling around with Kevin McCarthy.
As he was beginning to move towards the speakership, she supported him.
As everybody knows who pays any attention to this stuff, there is a major rift within the House.
The Freedom Caucus, by the way, ideologically almost non-existent.
They are an expression of anger and rejection and, and, and impeding any sort of progress or movement.
Marjorie Taylor Greene buddied up to Kevin McCarthy and has become a mainstream Republican at this point.
And again, this is like one of the most conspiratorially minded Republicans.
And she made the decision.
She made the calculation that she was going to go with Kevin McCarthy, which I wrote about today on my sub stack.
This was a real line in the sand.
The Freedom Caucus, no ideology whatsoever besides grifting and being rageful.
Marjorie Taylor Greene has moved into the institutional camp of the Republican Party.
Oh, and by the way, the thing that's in the background of all this, I think, and I think it's a bad calculation by Marjorie Taylor Greene, I think she's angling to be the vice presidential candidate alongside Trump, right?
I don't disagree, actually.
You know, so I think her calculation was she wants to cozy up to like that side of it, you know, maybe change her look a little bit and be a little bit more mainstream.
All those things indicate to me that that's what she's gunning for and probably had been since the beginning when she got elected the first time before January 6th happened.
And so I think that's what's all sort of swirling around here.
And again, we talk about this all the time, how if you go, if you're out of the news for more than like 10, 11, 12 days, and they need to do something to get back into the news.
Now, her getting kicked out isn't necessarily her doing, but her freaking out on Bovert was certainly a part of that.
And then she was publicly acknowledging that, yes, I did say that, and we don't like each other, whatever, because normally they just try and lie and smooth all that out to the press.
I would go ahead and say, and this is something I think most people can relate with, whether they're in politics or not.
You know how, like, you'll have a fight with somebody that you care about, and, like, it's never about what you're actually fighting about, right?
It's brimming up about something else, and it's just like, why didn't you take the trash out?
Right?
That is such a cliche, old-school, like, sitcom thing.
That's so stupid.
But, like, that fight isn't actually about what you're fighting about.
Wait, let me ask you this.
What is she really saying when she's yelling at you about the trash?
Because I'm asking for a friend.
You're not considerate is what it is.
You're not showing enough consideration and care and intentionality.
Just go ahead and write that down.
I'm giving out some free advice.
It's okay.
But when you are watching Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Bovert getting into this clash, it's not about these maneuvers.
What's actually happening is that Marjorie Taylor Greene is saying to Lauren Bovert, quit screwing up my spot.
Like, Green has to make well with this group, with the Kevin McCarthy group, the institutionalists, the mainstream Republicans.
That's why she voted for the debt ceiling.
That's why she stuck with him when he was going for the speakership.
Basically, it was like, stop embarrassing me in front of my new friends.
And that's where this has reached.
Like, we literally have seen the movement and the transition of Marjorie Taylor Greene at this point.
And I just want people to know, that's really screwed up.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, that's really screwed up to think.
Two years after she entered Congress, one of the most absolutely unprofessional, harebrained members of Congress we've ever seen has now been welcomed into the inner circle of the Republican Party, which tells us a lot about the Freedom Caucus, but it also tells us a whole hell of a lot about the Republican Party.
Well, I was funny because I thought you were going to mention that she had been stripped of all committee assignments for a while from that mainstream part of the party as well for her awful stuff.
So, it's a pretty interesting turnaround here.
And again, she kind of, she didn't save McCarthy, right, during his vote to get... No, she helped him.
Yeah, she certainly helped, among other things.
We never got that list, by the way, of all the things he had to capitulate to, to get that extra votes.
I suppose we can reverse engineer based on what he's been doing recently.
But again, I suppose it was also the taint of McCarthy doing the deal with Biden for the budget taints everybody in the Republican Party who's not in the Freedom Caucus.
Well, if you remember, the Freedom Caucus was pushing the idea of going over the fiscal cliff.
Like, the idea was absolutely nothing will happen.
Well, everybody understood, basically, it was, you know, an apocalyptic scenario for not just the American economy, but probably the global economy.
Which, again, they didn't have a plan.
They didn't have an idea.
They just wanted to say no.
They get elected by voicing the frustration and the rage of white Americans in their districts, and they have nothing else to go on.
They have nothing else to build.
And Green, I think, wants to actually build something and move towards something, as frightening as that is.
But that caucus, it's just simply an expression of just blind, face-biting rage.
That's it.
I mean, I don't think I'm out of turn to say that, like, whatever the Freedom Caucus's lack of platform or of plans to do anything with the government, it sort of impedes across the entire Republican Party, and that's what's so frustrating when you hear people say, oh, they're all corrupt, or all politicians are terrible, whatever, and it's like,
Well, if you want to look at this, you know, objectively, at the very least, the Democrats do put proposals on the table, and they do form committees to then, you know, explore ways that they can maybe help.
Yes, they do engage in legislating.
Yes, right?
And it's like that, they do that.
And like, I mean, I don't, it's funny, because anybody on the right would say, would scoff at that.
When it's just, it's just math, right?
It's just reality.
Like, you can continually see how at least the Democrats are trying to do policies that will, that might help.
They're not perfect, of course.
But you ever notice that, by the way, that Republicans only demand perfection if it's the Democratic, you know, solutions to things.
Well, they used to demand something, you know, that like something would get passed, you know, outside of just like tax cuts for the rich, basically, and rolling back these things.
By the way, speaking of where a lot of this started, of course, it involves Donald Trump.
This is a fun story, and I'm so glad that we have to talk about this, and I'm so glad that this hasn't really been touched on in our mainstream media because we've become so desensitized to what's happening in this country and the dangers of radicalization.
On June 29th, A man named Taylor Taranto, I believe it's Taranto, Taranto, I don't care, this guy sucks, was arrested in Barack Obama's neighborhood in Washington, D.C.
Mr. Taranto was arrested with a moving van full of guns and hundreds of rounds of ammo, also a machete.
He had reposted a Trump truth post.
Post truth?
Truth social?
Truth social.
That's what it is.
Always, man, with the thread stuff, it's hard to remember sometimes.
Trump had posted and doxed Barack Obama's address.
Taranto had basically said, see you in hell.
about Barack Obama.
He began to live stream going into this neighborhood, claimed he was going to go into the sewers and get access to Barack Obama's house.
God knows what else was going to happen.
He also, by the way, this guy's fun.
He also threatened to blow up the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which is an incredible threat.
He also- - We can talk about that if you want to get into why that's a thing, but go ahead.
I would love to hear what you have to say because I've been scratching my head all day with that little factoid.
He threatened speaker Kevin McCarthy.
He also entered an elementary school near the home of Maryland representative Raskin and threatened Raskin.
This person Well, here's the question.
So off the rails, allegedly, I guess we should probably say legally, but obviously was sent over the edge by Trump.
Also a January 6th defendant.
Like, obviously, this is a person who is is so radicalized and in their own reality, literally went to seemingly assassinate former President Barack Obama based on a post by Donald Trump.
Well, here's the question.
The elephant in the room.
Is this guy doing this if Trump doesn't dox Obama? - What?
Oh, Nick went away.
Nick's back.
He's gonna do something, right?
I mean, he's, I mean... By the way, real fast, can you drop some knowledge on me?
Why the Institute of Standards and Technology?
What's going on?
I don't want to talk out of turn, but... I can't wait!
But NIST comes up in a very provocative way when you're talking about the 9-11.
conspiracies because they have an explanation for you know how the steel beams melted and all those different probably doesn't align with someone like this guy who probably wants to believe that it was you know they were fake planes that went into the you know in the building whatever I mean, this has to be a person, and I want to point out that this guy is basically a representation of a very particular population in the United States of America, right?
And it's different gradients.
I had over July 4th, you know what we forgot to talk about?
That makes sense.
I mean, this has to be a person.
And I want to point out that this guy is basically a representation of a very particular population in the United States of America.
Right.
And it's different gradients.
I had over July 4th.
You know what we forgot to talk about?
Bomb pops.
I had a bomb pop.
You know what I'm talking about?
The red, white, and blue.
Popsicle?
Popsicle.
They're delicious.
There are different grades on like a bomb pop.
You know what I mean?
There's like the blue, there's the white, and then there's the red, right?
In America, there are different levels of these people.
There are people who, you know, just like Watch Fox News or follow what Tucker Carlson says, right?
There are people that you might be out to dinner with because maybe they're your family, maybe they're your parents, and they'll say, you know, something that you're like, wait.
Why are we talking about Hunter Biden's laptop here?
What's happening in this conversation?
Wait, you're throwing a bunch of names out that don't really mean anything to me.
Then there's another group that are like, I don't know, maybe they were at January 6th, maybe they didn't go into the Capitol.
But Nick, then there's a group of people Who are just, they're stewing in this.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, they're every moment of their lives, they're really, really unwell.
I've had people like this show up at my house.
I've had people drive across the country to come to my house because they've created some very unwell narrative in their head based on media, social media, speeches, you name it, videos.
This guy is representative of a very, very dangerous group of people in the United States of America who are just waiting on what you just said, which is Trump posting this thing.
That's why you end up at Barack Obama's residence, right?
Planning with a machete and hundreds of rounds of ammo to go through the sewer and end up in his house.
That's the type of guy we're talking about.
Right, and by the way, I guess what I'm kind of getting at is, you know, how much do we blame Trump or any of these other, you know, right-wing leaders of these communities that incite these things?
And I think that's obviously going to be a main part of Trump's, I'm assuming, lawsuit, indictment against him for January 6th, if Jack Smith ever files charges for that one, because that's the whole connection.
Does the words and the posts that he is releasing, are those what is opening the gates?
You know, and are they with where they'd simply just be stewing the whole time and not doing anything otherwise, or would they just be cruising?
You know, by the way, it was fascinating.
They were trying to find this guy.
He was threatening way before this and they he wasn't he was living out of his van, right?
It turns out if you live out of a van, it's the authorities will have a hard time finding it.
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