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July 11, 2023 - The Muckrake Political Podcast

55:38

The GOP Is Destroying Itself From The Inside: With Danielle Moodie

Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman welcome Friend of the Muckrake Danielle Moodie of the daily pod Woke AF, co-host of The New Abnormal and co-host of Democracyish podcasts. They talk about what's happening with the GOP in Michigan as they're fighting amongst themselves and DeSantis versus Trump on a National stage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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	Hey everybody.
	Welcome to the Mutt Creek Podcast.
	I'm J.J.
	Sexton.
	I'm here at Nick's house with Nick.
	The dog days of summer have me down.
	It's so hot.
	I'm exhausted.
	I don't even know if I can do this episode.
	I think I'm too tired to make this episode work.
	Okay, well, you know, if you need to take a break, we can cover for you.
	I think there's a possibility that I could do it, and here are the circumstances, Nick.
	One, if you bring your A game, if you show up as the Nick Halseman that we all know that you can be, I can do it.
	Can you make me that promise?
	That's so much.
	Do you always put that much pressure on everybody you talk to in every conversation?
	Because that's a lot.
	Everybody.
	That's what I do in every conversation.
	I tell them they have to be their best selves.
	All right.
	Well, you know what?
	I feel better when I'm loose.
	Wait a second.
	Danielle Moody, the host of Woke AF, of the new abnormal, Democracy's Every Podcast Worth Listening To.
	Danielle, you're here to help us.
	I am here.
	You know, I was, I saw the bat signal and I said, I got to go there.
	Well, what I love, Danielle, is that you are on the show.
	And every time you're on here, it's the right time.
	But we are also, I keep trying to tell everybody, we are entering silly season of politics.
	We are on the verge of the primary season beginning in full force.
	We're about a month out from that.
	That means things are about to get weird.
	And Danielle, I want to go ahead and I want to set the scene for people.
	I don't know if they've heard about this.
	I think this is a great jumping off point.
	This past weekend in Michigan, and for people who don't understand, and I love Michigan.
	I have a lot of people that I love from Michigan.
	I love to go up to Michigan.
	Michigan is a great state, one of the great labor states in the Union.
	People do not understand how weird Michigan can get at times.
	At a Republican State Committee meeting this weekend, let's just say It hit the fan.
	These are some details, Danielle.
	This is from an article covering this from the Rolling Stone.
	Quote, Michigan Republicans have been at odds about the direction of the state party and the situation resulted in alleged physical violence.
	James Chapman, a Republican from Wayne County, told the paper he traveled to the city of Clare to join the party meeting at the Doherty Hotel.
	But the meeting was reserved for members of the state committee.
	So Chapman said that he and others gathered around the meeting location and recited the Pledge of Allegiance.
	Never changed, GOP.
	He also said that he attempted to open the door to the meeting room by jiggling the doorknob.
	Mark DeYoung, who chairs the Clare County Republican Party, said he heard Chapman's attempt to enter the room and open the door after seeing someone flip him the bird through a window.
	Quote, he kicked me in the balls as soon as I opened the door, DeYoung said of Chapman speaking to the Detroit News by phone from the emergency room.
	Quite the kick in the balls, by the way.
	DeYoung added the Chapman charged him slamming his body into a chair and said he now has broken ribs.
	There's a lot more to this, but this is another moment from the ongoing demolition derby civil war within the Republican Party.
	Michigan is a flashpoint where MAGA, Institutionalist, and the New Right are all coming together like a bunch of different weather fronts and kicking each other in the balls.
	Danielle, how are you feeling about the Republican Party moving into the primaries that are going to take us to 2024?
	I'm terrified, right?
	Like, just reading that story and thinking to myself, These are grown people.
	These are adults that want to be able to make policy decisions for that state.
	But this is indicative of what we saw during the fight for Speaker on the floor of the House.
	We saw Republicans almost come fist to cuffs there.
	So I'm like, this climate of toxicity, of just nasty rhetoric, we've seen results in violence, right, with capital buildings being stormed at, you know, in January 6th, but also state capital buildings being stormed, right, during COVID.
	And I, it makes me really worried that these people, they're trying to out-MAGA each other, And I'm like, what does that look like?
	I don't understand it.
	You're reciting the Pledge of Allegiance outside of this meeting?
	Why?
	Of all things, what are you doing?
	What's the point?
	And I guess that's the larger question for the Republican Party.
	What's the end game here?
	What's the goal?
	Because is it just to run the country like a mobster, where loyalty is everything?
	And then you just start knocking each other off.
	Like, I just, I don't understand.
	Um, you know, the only good news about this story is that this is probably one of the rare times in the GOP they're not lying in the story because I know that somebody flipped him the bird, that happened.
	I know that somebody opened the door and they kicked him in the ball.
	These are not things that are made up.
	This is the finally we're getting the truth of like a real reality of what happened here.
	Does anybody want to know exactly what the direction of the Michigan GOP party is and what the beef could very well be about?
	Because I was trying to find it.
	They don't mention it in that article, but I looked up a Google search.
	Do you want to hear it?
	Well, what's going on is that the Michigan GOP, and again, I want to point out that this was a state, this is where the so-called blue firewall fell apart in 2016, where the Democratic Party lost control to Trump taking a lot of those Midwestern states that traditionally go blue.
	But they have had a long grasp on the legislature in that state.
	They've had pretty much, you know, sort of a balanced way that they've moved through the years.
	And that's fallen apart because they have nothing to offer anybody.
	And this is a sinking ship, which is part of the problem with the Republican Party, Nick, is that there's no direction.
	And so they're all pushing in so many different directions.
	They're reflecting the larger tumult that's taking place within the Republican Party right now.
	Sure.
	Well, this really quickly like a quick look at the list in the Google search from the title top line headlines, Michigan GOP chair election underscores parties divisions.
	Okay election conspiracist to lead Michigan GOP through 2024 that happens a whole bunch of times.
	So it definitely feels like there's something going on there where there are people who want to maintain that 2020 was stolen and that they're going to continue that whole thing until 2024.
	Maybe there are some other Republicans out there that, you know, want to focus on other things that might help them actually win these local elections.
	Well, and by the way, I want to point out something real fast, and I want to get this quote in there simply because it makes me laugh.
	But it's also very telling.
	James Chapman, in this entire situation, is the guy who charged the guy who broke his ribs.
	He has this moment here, and I'm going to read this verbatim.
	Chapman also said that during the confrontation, he removed his glasses.
	Quote, when you see me taking my glasses off, I'm ready to rock.
	Now, first of all, great quote, wonderful quote, but also incredibly telling.
	It's so pathetic, and it's so sad.
	And I have to tell you, as a person who has been in his fair share of fights, and who has been around a lot of toxic white men, This is the type of shit that they say that tells on them, right?
	They say it, they're trying to sound tough, but it's actually really embarrassing.
	And it's also like indicative of something else, which is the people who are using violence have no other means of communicating.
	They have lost everything else.
	They have no other means of moving forward.
	The Republican Party has no platform.
	We've covered that extensively on this show.
	I've heard you talk about it, Danielle.
	They don't even bother to create a platform at this point.
	The only thing that they have is that they are representing an impotent yop, an impotent rage that has no other means of expressing itself for a bunch of white men and a bunch of white people who understand that they're quote-unquote losing something, but they don't want to deal with that.
	They don't want to think about what it is that they're losing.
	They don't want to think about why it is that something is changing.
	The only thing that they have left at this point is the violence that they are going to commit against one another to determine what they're going to do, and the violence that they're going to carry out against people of color, gay people, transgender people, immigrants, women, you name it.
	So at this point, what we're watching both with this, but also with the larger GOP, and Danielle, I want to hear your two cents on this.
	It's literally pathetic.
	And the patheticness is an expression of something much, much larger that the GOP itself is expressing.
	It has no ideology.
	It has no actual purpose beyond being focused like a gun by wealthy white billionaires to go ahead and carry out what they want.
	Other than that, there's nothing else that they're doing.
	There's nothing else they can do.
	They're all over the place.
	You can't even call them conservatives anymore.
	They're just this sort of fascistic expression.
	That's it.
	They, they, it is a party of grievance, of white grievance in particular, right?
	And you would think where working class whites have lost their jobs because the white billionaires sent those jobs that they were doing in factories and in places overseas so that they could get tax breaks.
	You would think that it's not, that it wouldn't just end with these people are stealing your jobs.
	It would also be This is how we're going to better your position in life, but it's like these people are just stuck on The whining, the complaining, everything that they project, everything that they say about the left is nothing more than projection.
	Oh, all the left does is whine about rights and whine about this.
	And I'm just like, we're talking about trying to make America better for everybody, but genuinely centering the people that have been most marginalized by greed, right?
	That we have seen wielded by white billionaires that have hurt you too.
	But for them, it's like you say that they have no policy.
	Their policy is just cruelty.
	I hate the same people that you do.
	So that's why you're going to vote for me.
	And my follow up with Democrats is then to say, does hate put food on your table?
	Is it going to put medicine in your medicine chest?
	Is it going to fill up your gas tank?
	Right?
	Is it going to provide for you in retirement?
	It's not.
	And so ensuring that other people don't have doesn't make you have more.
	And that's kind of this conversation that I want, that Republicans have stopped at the grievance point, but they have not created the plan for what comes after we've complained.
	What's the plan?
	Right?
	So there isn't one.
	And I would argue that though, while their ideology is hollow, white supremacy has always been hollow.
	It's for white dominance, right?
	At the expense of everybody else.
	But then you're dominating either people no longer want to come here, they no longer want to work for you.
	So I guess we force in labor, right?
	And we just need to turn over a couple of constitutional amendments for that to happen.
	But it's just like, what's the plan after it's just you white folks in America?
	Right?
	Like, I'm just I'm just curious.
	So when it's just white people that are here, because that's what you want.
	What's the plan?
	What does it look like?
	I might have the answer.
	I might have the answer that they give you.
	Because certainly if you talk to people on that end who are, you know, who espouse really horrible things, you know, if you were to tell them, listen, those are racist policies or those are racist things that you're saying, they'd be like, no, they're not.
	Absolutely.
	I love everybody.
	You're being racist.
	A, that's how they all started.
	And they'll believe it.
	But I truly believe that what's going on here is that when they put their fiscal policies in place, trickle down economics, top down, and they really make sure they benefit the richest people in the country, they are convinced that everybody else will simply Be better off too.
	All the medicine and groceries and gas, all those things they'll be able to afford magically because all the rich people will then suddenly let all that other money flow down in that way and then you'll have your choice of where to spend that money on medicine or food or schooling, right?
	Because you'll have a little bit more money in your pocket.
	I think that's what they want to do.
	They don't want to create the policies.
	They'll just let you, under this guise of having like, you know, your own liberty and control, do it with all this extra cash they'll be laying around.
	Well, I want to I want to start first of all responding that because here's a phrase that I haven't used in a while and it is now presented itself, which is neoconfederatism.
	And one of the things about like what does a white supremacist society look like?
	Go to the antebellum South, baby.
	Because if you actually want to take a look at what that was like in terms of political and economic power, it was a group of a very, very small group of wealthy planters who owned a lot of slaves and had an entire working class of white people underneath them that they kept in control by saying, hey, guess what?
	I know you don't get paid anything, you don't have anything, but you're better than the slaves.
	That's what that society looks like.
	Second of all, they can't even get behind trickle-down economics anymore.
	The wild thing here is that they're actually pushing for economic protectionism.
	They're actually, at this point, not even worried about the free market.
	They literally have said the free market has failed us.
	This is why they say woke corporations, communist corporations.
	At this point, they literally want to create a white ethnostate in which there is a small group of people that the economy takes care of.
	And by the way, I have to tell you, if there's some white supremacists who are listening to this podcast right now, They're not all talking about you!
	They are talking about getting your support by pushing this stuff forward.
	And you know, we're going to talk in a minute about this weird blossoming feud between Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump, which I think is telling us exactly where all this stuff is going to go.
	But the amazing thing is, white supremacy is a hellacious weapon that they are wielding here.
	And it goes ahead and it creates for some people, and again it's sort of horrific to think about this, they're trying to put the idea of a utopian society in these people's heads.
	They truly think that they're going to live in an antebellum society where manors are back and, you know, people are living these sort of like old agrarian fantasies.
	That's not what it is.
	They want your asses in factories working for nothing, being exposed to fumes and creating cheap products that they'll in turn use their economic protectionism for.
	But that's not what they're pushing forward.
	Make America great again is not about it.
	It is about making America, quote unquote, white again.
	But it's also about making America top heavy again with the wealthy versus the poor.
	Well, real quickly, though, the factory workers are trying to create that that doesn't that transcends race.
	They don't care what the people look like.
	I don't think.
	Right.
	No.
	And as a matter of fact, one of the things is they do want to create a permanent underclass of workers, which is what things looked like at the beginning of industrialization.
	After the South was broken, leading into the era of industrialization, you basically had this entire underclass that was made to work and toil and die.
	And they've dressed it up.
	They dressed it up in this utopian thinking or whatever.
	But to go back to what Danielle was saying, that white ethnostate, it is not exactly what they're selling to people.
	I'll just say that.
	And I want to add this real quick, which is that when we look at the top heavy economic plan that they have, this is how education factors in to this permanent underclass, right?
	This is how the war on public education is going to factor into their larger, you know, evil, Dr. Evil plan.
	Which is that if you can dumb down the population enough so that you are no longer globally competitive or basically competitive with your neighbor at all, we've erased education, we've gone back to what Ron DeSantis refers to as the basics, reading, writing, and arithmetic, right?
	And there is no critical thought, there is no innovation, there is no nothing.
	So you are then funneled into the widgets and things jobs, right?
	The things that you can do with your hands and which will eventually be, you know, removed with AI and removed with machinery.
	But nonetheless, let's not even go to that dystopian future yet.
	But the whole purpose of rewriting curriculum, of scaring teachers out of the classroom,
	of erasing history right is to narrow this pool so that you have this permanent underclass because you can't go anywhere else right you're not like who is hiring people from Florida I just want folks to think about that when you like when you have on your application to anything that I came from Florida State University or I came from or any of these places
	Where is your education level gonna be next to somebody that is coming from New York?
	Florida's public education system was already crap, right?
	DeSantis is making it worse so that these people have absolutely no option, right?
	Education is about creating options and pathways for economic mobility.
	They are creating a system where people will be permanently stuck and that is what they want.
	And by the way, I don't want to hurt ourselves patting ourselves on the back too much, but the things that we're talking about right now, the things that you talk about on your shows and in your commentary, the stuff that we're constantly hammering home, that should be the basics.
	That should be what people understand about history and how things work.
	That's base-level democracy shit.
	And what we're talking about now, it's stuff that like, it has to be independent media that even discusses it in order to let people know how things have worked and how, you know, public education was already hollowed out before these assholes came along and decided to try and carry out the coup to grow.
	And that's the problem here is to go ahead and dumb it down in order to create a manufacturing class.
	You know, there's a lot of confusing things here for me because, you know, a lot of people want public school to be free.
	Then they also seem to want to be able to have dominion over the entire process and educational process and curriculum.
	It's very, it's very interesting.
	If you pay, if you're a paying customer at a private school, great.
	You have a lot of, you know, input.
	That makes sense to me.
	But remember when we were going crazy about the 1619 Project and how that was what they were so concerned about being taught in schools, right?
	That was the whole thing.
	And we've now, you don't hear about that at all.
	All you hear about now is an attack on LGBTQ things and going on there.
	And so I'm wondering if we've morphed because it's not even necessarily for mind control or keeping these people like, you know, dumber so they work in factories.
	I kind of feel like Some of these parents, whatever, must think that if a kid hears about a gay person, that they're going to suddenly become gay.
	That's what it feels like, but that's tapping into something else that you guys need to help me coalesce, because I can't quite put that.
	I just want to say real fast, the reason that we moved on from the 1619 Project, and by the way, this is how it went, 1619 Project, Critical Race Theory, Gay and Trans Kids.
	The reason that that happened is because the American Enterprise Institute, or the Heritage Foundation, or the Claremont Institute, they did some testing, and they figured out that this worked better than that, and they scaffold it, and they ended up over here, and then they figured out the public education was more vulnerable with those buzzwords.
	And they went ahead, and it's been a consistent attack.
	This has not been left up to chance.
	It's not like this has gone into a fad.
	It's all in service of votes, I think, right?
	This is what we're trying to do.
	It's in service of taking over public education.
	In terms of, like, creating moms.
	Is it moms for liberty?
	Moms love liberty?
	Moms and liberty forever?
	What the shit is that?
	I like to refer to them as, you know, the, what is it, the clan, the clan, the Karen clanhood.
	That's what I refer to them as.
	But yes, it's moms for liberty.
	Moms for Liberty.
	Yeah, Moms for Liberty, which is a quote-unquote grassroots group, you know, that is not absolutely being funded by all of these people in order to carry out takeovers of public education.
	I mean, you know what I find interesting, too, about Moms for Liberty?
	First of all, mainstream media did major fail when covering their conference.
	I mean, this is, you know, folks who don't know, the Southern Poverty Law Center referred to them as a hate group, right?
	Like, they are a legitimate hate group.
	And when you listen to the people who got up on stage, which I only listened to clips of, I mean, this is a group that put a quote from Hitler In their first newsletter, and thought that that was a great idea, and then the response to that was, oh, it was taken out of context, but, you know, it's still about the youth.
	What are you talking about?
	What are you talking about, right?
	Like, and I remind people, I reminded folks on one of my shows that we always talk about, in our history, the white slave master.
	Who we don't talk about is the white slave mistress.
	The white woman of the house that was just as important to the production of slavery, right?
	To the industry of the slave trade as the white male master.
	This is who these women are, right?
	They are the handmaids of white supremacy.
	And so just because they put on lipstick and bake cookies for the Klan, We have allowed what is often used as the feminization of white supremacy to allow that to be mainstream by the media referring to them as like, oh, I feel like they called them either like a protest organization or they called them something that was like euphemistic.
	And I'm like, these women are going into school districts that they don't even have fucking kids in.
	Right?
	In order to overturn, like, public thought.
	Right?
	Like, they are the thought police.
	So, like, this idea that just because they're not in artillery gear, like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, those are their husbands and their sons.
	Right?
	So, like, let us not, like, forget the role that white women have played in our history and the perpetuation of violence and oppression.
	No, because one of the things that the right loves is they want to get a female face out in front of these things.
	First of all, to go ahead and undercut any sort of misogynistic accusations.
	If people don't know this, look up Anita Bryant and the damage she did to the LGBTQ community.
	Look at Phyllis Schlafly and the damage she did to the feminist movement and equal rights.
	You're exactly right.
	They don't want people out there in paramilitary gear pushing all of this stuff.
	And if you go back, what's happening right now looks a lot like the school board and school material battles that took place in the 1960s, 1970s, which was all spearheaded by concerned mothers, right?
	And they were all funded by the exact same people because it's a bunch of sock puppets is what you can go ahead and call it, but that's exactly what this is.
	Yeah, it's all by the way.
	It's frightening to me only because you know, not to generalize women, but when you see women With this vitriol.
	It's very disarming for me.
	I don't know why.
	I just sort of maybe associate women with being, you know, loving and kind and, you know, to people.
	But when you see the Moms Liberty, that's particularly disgusting.
	And it also is clearly them trying to get more women voters, right?
	That's a big issue.
	And I'll keep turning this back on this because they got killed with suburban moms and they're trying to figure out other ways to tap into that.
	And the worst part about the school stuff, though, is that they've been able to make it where you can have one single parent ban a book.
	They can simply file the paperwork, one person, and that seems to be enough to get that book pulled.
	And by the way, I was in Utah a few weeks ago, and friends of ours we were staying with were telling us that there, they were yanking a lot of books off the shelves, you know, Toni Morrison and things like that.
	And someone on the other side was like, well, F it, the Bible needs to be taken out of the classroom.
	I want to say something real fast on all of these fronts, and it's something that we haven't talked about yet, which I think every time that we get a chance to talk about it, it's important to talk about.
	all the things that they're so afraid of. - I wanna say something real fast on all of these fronts.
	And it's something that we haven't talked about yet, which I think every time that we get a chance to talk about it, it's important to talk about.
	Nick, you brought up suburban moms.
	I wanna say something, which is, there is hardly anything more dangerous in the United States of America and liberal countries than the white liberal.
	And one of the things in all of this, I want to make this very, very abundantly clear, one of the reasons why they're going after the gay and trans people the way that they are Is because it makes a lot of white liberals uncomfortable.
	They don't know what to do with it.
	They're uncomfortable with it.
	Maybe their kids are sort of messing around with gender.
	Maybe their kid's sexuality is a little up in the air.
	Maybe they're at school and they're feeling a little bit uncomfortable with the conversations that they're suddenly having.
	And here's the thing.
	Ron DeSantis, like what, DeSantis has basically staked his entire faltering campaign on at this point because this thing is choking.
	This thing is, it's drowning and it's swallowing water by the second.
	They have pinned their entire hopes on attracting the so-called swing voter, which is, by the way, a white liberal in 2023.
	That's how things have changed.
	That's what the Republican Party has become.
	But they're trying to say, hey, you don't feel comfortable with what your kids are talking about.
	You don't feel comfortable with what's going on in your kids' lives.
	You feel a little weird about all of this stuff.
	The white liberal will look you in the face, and they will tell you what sounds good.
	And they will tell you what will earn them points in terms of like getting them brownie points.
	And then on the other side, they'll vote for Ronald Reagan.
	On the other side, they'll go ahead and be fine with a Ron DeSantis.
	And it's not every white liberal, but I have to tell you that a lot of what is up in the air right now going into 2024 is where are those moms?
	Where are those parents?
	Where are those wealthy white liberals?
	Where are they going to end up in this equation?
	You know, and I'm trying to, I wanted to find it, which is the quote from Martin Luther King in Letter from a Birmingham Jail, where he talks about, he doesn't call it, it's not the white liberal then, it was the white moderate.
	And it was saying that, like, I don't fear, right, the White Citizens Council or the KKK, right, because I know where their hearts are.
	They're telling me to my face, right?
	It is the white moderate that wants to sit on the fence of injustice and think that they are doing something by doing nothing, right?
	Like, oh, I'm a good white person because I'm not out, you know, burning crosses on somebody's lawn.
	Well, How good are you if you are then voting to remove books from the schools?
	If you are then, right?
	People say, oh, well, I'm uncomfortable with my Gen Z child talking about gender identity and gender fluidity.
	Well, the question that they are posing with their openness is, why did we all fall for the binary bullshit in the first place?
	Right?
	Like, why have we all fallen for the rope-a-dope when there is so much more expansiveness to life?
	Right?
	And so what they don't want are the questions.
	And it is a white moderate that wants to sit there and say, oh, I'll put up a little black square that says I'm for Black Lives Matter, but I'm going to call the cops on the kids down the street who are selling lemonade because there's four black kids and it's making me uncomfortable.
	Right?
	So it's like until White people can reckon with, right, the lies that they have been filled with, the lies of American exceptionalism, the lies of their own exceptionalism, and that they can possibly do no wrong.
	So we must erase any wrongdoing from the reality of our curriculums, right, and from our kids' minds until there is a reckoning and a mirror held up, right?
	White liberals will be the worst offenders because there are more of them, to be honest, Then there are of the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, and the KKK.
	Wait, Danielle, I just want to seek a clarification.
	I want to make sure we're all on the same page.
	Are you telling me that we shouldn't be worried about the kids wearing their hair long listening to The Beatles or blasting Public Enemy out of their car?
	Is that what you're telling me?
	It's weird.
	It's weird.
	What's old is new again.
	It's very, very strange.
	Well, here's a question.
	What's worse?
	The white liberals who you're describing, which That kind of sounds like me, but not really, but hopefully not.
	Or the conservative whites that are represented by people like John Roberts who are convinced that there is no more racism left in this country.
	But Nick, that's the amazing thing about this, is that the white, liberals or conservatives, whatever you want to call them, they're part of a generational story.
	John Roberts represents a lot of people who think that because they marched in the 60s and 70s, they solved it!
	They're the heroes of the American story.
	There's no more need to go after that stuff.
	It also doesn't hurt that they have a lot of money and power that they don't want to give up.
	But you're exactly right.
	John Roberts represents a group of people.
	We solved the problem, everybody.
	Let's throw a party.
	Let's get some pizza and some ice cream.
	I mean, it's just, it is, it's so insulting of our vision, right?
	Of our brains.
	For John Roberts to even utter the fact that in his decision to gut the Civil Rights Act and to disallow preclearance for the most racist states in this country, that we don't need it anymore because America had moved on from race.
	And I'm just like, what fucking America do you live in?
	And also, name for me 10 black friends.
	Not one, right?
	Not two, but 10.
	10 black people that know what the inside of your fucking house looks like and know, like, your kids' names that you go on vacation with that, like, you have attended their church.
	Talk to me about it.
	Wait, are you counting, like, waitstaff?
	Are you counting, like, servants in the house?
	Nope.
	Right, because they would know what the inside of the house looks like.
	Right, because they would know what the inside of the house looks like.
	And it is just, it's like, you look at the killings of our non-black people, you look at the racial wealth gap, you look at the education gap, like you look at these things and you say to yourself, oh no, job done?
	Like, I'm confused.
	You had one black president in a line, right?
	In a line of 46.
	One black one.
	And we've solved every fucking problem?
	Are you kidding me?
	It's just, it's so insulting, is what it is.
	I find Roberts and that entire court just so disgustingly insulting.
	Like, they are laughing at the rest of us while flying on their billionaires' jets.
	By the way, like, and then they'll throw like statistics in your face too.
	They'll try and make it seem like, well, you know, uh, the majority of, uh, of, uh, cops being shot are from black people.
	So naturally they now need to be shooting back first, whatever the, it's the most ridiculous, you know, uh, manipulation of any kind of numbers, but in their mind, that's science.
	Versus, like, trying to have science about anything like COVID.
	We talk about this all the time, Jared, about the torque that must exist in these people's brains.
	Because nothing will make sense if you really try and pull it apart, but it does make them feel better.
	I think this is all what it's about, making these people feel better about something.
	Yeah, it is.
	It's about telling people what they want to hear, is what it is.
	Which is the entire point of what has happened with the Republican Party and the right.
	And we live in this really weird time.
	Where we have a lot of things that need dealt with.
	It's obvious that this political order has fallen apart.
	It does not work.
	It did not produce good results.
	It's obvious that white supremacy and dynastic economics, and by the way, the trillions upon trillions of dollars that they redistributed from the middle and the working class all the way up to the wealthy, it didn't work out.
	It did not help our economy.
	It didn't help our politics.
	It has led us to a dead end.
	On top of that, I don't know if people are aware, and I don't want to scare everybody, we have about eight or nine separate crises that are existential in nature and can either lead to the end of the human race and the end of democracy as we know it, or we can take care of them.
	The amazing thing, though, is that they have figured out you can make a lot of money and you can win elections and you can gain a lot of power telling people whatever in the hell it is they want to hear.
	And that is really appealing to people at this point.
	And there are a lot of people in this country who don't want to look in the face of the fact that the money they have, the power that they have, the lives that they have, have been built on white supremacy.
	That from the very beginning, capital, liberalism, whatever we want to call it, was built on white supremacy.
	Everything that everybody has at this point is built on layers upon layers, almost like an ice sheet of white patriarchal supremacy and oppression and genocide.
	And it has reached a point where people don't want to listen to that.
	They want to be told what they want to believe, and they'll vote for people who do it.
	I mean, Donald Trump could not be reached for comment.
	Oh, can I bring that up for a second?
	Because what does it say about a party where the leading candidate for the presidential nominee is only doing it to stay out of prison, and the guy in second place is basically the only chance he has is if that first guy goes to prison on a felony charge, right?
	This is what they're doing.
	This is what they're running for.
	That's what I can't even wrap my head around.
	They don't talk about policy.
	They don't talk about anything other than this stuff.
	Danielle, I wanted to ask you, actually, I'm glad we have this chance.
	So we're a month away from the first debate of this wretched, wretched primary within the party.
	Where we're at right now, how do you see this thing playing out?
	I have my thoughts, I have my concerns, but this thing is, before we've even gotten into the arena, this thing is really, really bad.
	So one, I don't think that Donald Trump is going to show up, right?
	So he's not going to do it.
	So then I believe that then that gives permission to Ron DeSantis, who will just look dumb regardless, because he can't actually articulate his thoughts in any type of way without it being a controlled environment by his staff.
	So even if he is asked a question, You know, and Nikki Haley throws something at him, he will combust, right?
	Like the man is so goddamn fragile, like he makes a snowflake look like a nail head.
	So I think that it is careening off the tracks before the train engine even starts, right?
	Like if you have the top two, the quote-unquote top two people, opt out of that debate, then it's just like, I guess maybe then whoever is left is debating for the second position, right?
	Which is what these people are doing.
	All of this is an audition for Donald Trump, right?
	And Ron DeSantis, right now, Ron DeSantis, when he entered the race, he was 20 points behind.
	Now he's 30.
	And Donald Trump added another indictment.
	So I'm like, dude, you're supposed to be the alternative and your own people don't even want you, right?
	Like, and so for him, none of them offer any type of policy.
	So again, I don't know what they're going to be answering questions about.
	And I think that Donald Trump stays out of it.
	Um, because he doesn't- because he doesn't need it, right?
	He can just tear them down on his broke-ass Twitter that- on the night that they're going to be debating, right?
	Like, he'll just- he'll live truth it or whatever the fuck he does, like, and- and that will be where all of the media attention goes.
	It won't be to whatever is said on that stage.
	So, for Donald Trump, that's gonna be one of his- it's gonna be a chess move, right?
	And Ron DeSantis, because he has no thought, is gonna be following suit.
	First of all, I want to say Ron DeSantis has the worst glass jaw I've ever seen in politics.
	It's unbelievable.
	And like this is a person who in every debate he's ever done, he looks terrible.
	He can't handle a hard question.
	He just turns in.
	He basically wets himself and whines the moment that he is challenged.
	I think you're right about Trump probably not going to the first debate.
	God knows if he'll go to any of the debates.
	And if he does, there is a very real chance.
	And Nick, you and I have discussed this a little bit.
	There's a real chance Ron DeSantis cries.
	On stage.
	The moment that Trump actually goes after him.
	I would literally pay to see that.
	I would pay for that.
	But I have to tell you, the way this is coming together, it feels very strange because if Trump is away from this thing, like, it feels like the primary going forward might look a lot like what 2012's GOP primary looked like, where you basically had the monster of the week.
	I don't think people remember this, but Newt Gingrich, for a moment, everyone thought might be the GOP nominee going into this thing.
	But we're going to start to see with this pathetic field, because none of them are, they're not winners.
	None of them.
	And there's already talk of trying to draft Brian damn Kim into this race.
	And for people who don't know, I lived in Georgia for a decade.
	Brian Kemp is pathetic and terrible.
	The only thing he offers is the appearance of MAGA out in front of people, including, by the way, pulling guns on teenagers, and then on the other side is able to be the pro-business Republican.
	He's not going to be able to do this thing.
	Junkin's not going to be able to do this thing.
	Nobody's going to get drafted into this.
	And unless, and Nick, I would love to hear what you're feeling about it at this moment, like at this sort of distance.
	I mean, unless Trump gets thrown into a prison, and unless we don't have a Eugene V. Debs type situation, the exact opposite of that, I don't know how this field really coalesces at this point.
	But it's a strange little situation so far.
	Well, you know, what got Trump the nomination in the first place was too many people in the race, right?
	And they were segmenting all that.
	And then they all thought, oh, he's just a funny guy, whatever.
	And then little did we know that here he is.
	So but on this one, it's really interesting because, again, if it's a felony, then he won't be able to run.
	And that's I think that's the calculation.
	A lot of guys just want to want to hang around and all of a sudden, hey, I'm still here.
	You can vote for me now because he can't be on the ballot.
	But I would imagine that.
	well not camp um uh the sanders will probably be like the rubio who has all the canned answers right they trained him and remember when chris krisky called them out that was awesome right that was a great moment of uh debate i would imagine the same thing's going to happen there and then hopefully the other people will be ready for that because i don't he'll be that robot who can't you know it doesn't he's a robot without ai so he won't be able to recreate a new answer based on on the fly uh We'll probably get one of those really scary laughs from him at least once or twice.
	And so, yeah, I think that'll probably be a real problem for him.
	I would say that there are a lot of times candidates come out of nowhere at this point of the race and then get back into it.
	But this must feel different to you guys, right?
	As far as DeSantis goes, right?
	Like this 20, 30 point deficit is just feels different than like even like member Biden was dead on arrival until South Carolina.
	Right.
	I don't know, there's just something about Ron DeSantis.
	He does not, he has the cruelty of the Trump administration without the charisma to get people to go along with your cruelty.
	Right?
	And all people have to do is look at the state of Florida and say, is that what we want for the rest of the country?
	I think that if DeSantis becomes the nominee, I think that the only thing that he would have going for him is looking younger, way younger, right, than Joe Biden.
	But he literally has no charisma.
	He's not going to take questions from reporters.
	There's not going to be debate energy.
	Like, even watching his fake debates?
	What?
	Horrible!
	Right?
	So it's, like, this matchup between Trump and DeSantis, um, and then everybody else in single digits at this point, I just don't, their bench is so weak, right?
	Like, I don't know who they pull out.
	Youngkin, Kemp, like, these are people that under the spotlight will fizzle.
	Will absolutely fizzle.
	And DeSantis was the one with the most chance And, I mean, he's stumbling, like, it's like he can't catch the ball.
	Like, at all.
	Like, put a pizza in front of him and I don't, like, it is, the way he eats, the way he talks, like, what is good about this guy, I don't fucking know.
	I mean, literally, he has all the charm of a jag who served at Guantanamo Bay and made sure that prisoners were tortured.
	Because he is a jag who served at Guantanamo Bay and made sure prisoners were tortured.
	I wanted to talk about this really quickly before we get off here.
	I would be remiss if I didn't bring up this New York Times editorial.
	And what was said in this thing?
	This was from the editorial board from the New York Times.
	And by the way, I'm a person who's appeared in the New York Times.
	I've tried to tell people what the New York Times is.
	Everybody's like, oh, the leftist rag, the New York Times.
	They do not understand what purpose it serves, what signals it sends, what it communicates.
	This deserves a little bit of focus.
	This is from a recent editorial called America is Living on Borrowed Money.
	And I don't know about the rest of you, I saw that and I was like, I'm going to get a drink.
	I'm going to go get a drink.
	I'm going to sit down.
	I'm going to really let this wash over me.
	I'm just going to go over a couple of highlights here, guys.
	In this, they call debt, which a reminder that debt is imaginary and that nations are there to accrue debt in order to carry out things.
	This is one of the reasons why there are nation states.
	They say that our debt is, quote, increasingly unsustainable.
	Quick little point of order.
	It's unsustainable because the Republicans created a chaos situation with the debt ceiling, which has never been that in the past.
	But they said that it is, quote, imperative for the nation's leaders to chart a new course.
	And I think everybody who's listening to this hasn't read the editorial.
	I think they know where this thing's going.
	They say, of course, that Republicans lower taxes for the wealthy and all of that, but then they get to the heart of this.
	Why this article exists?
	Because it is sending a signal to Democratic leadership, and it is saying something very loud and very clear, and a reminder that the New York Times speaks for the market and well-off aging white liberals.
	Quote, Democrats must recognize the changes to Social Security and Medicare, the major drivers of expected federal spending growth.
	Ding, ding, ding!
	That is wrong and false.
	It's the military, but we'll move forward.
	That those changes should be on the table.
	Anything less will prove fiscally unsustainable.
	They think it's time for, quote, painful choices.
	Danielle, are you ready?
	Are you ready to make some cuts to Social Security and Medicare?
	You know, I just wish that the painful choices that this country, that the New York Times was talking about, maybe would come at the expense of billionaires who don't pay their fair share.
	Maybe come at the expense of the military that has a ballooned fucking budget.
	Maybe come at the expense of things that we actually don't see any benefit from.
	But isn't it funny that the things that they want to cut are the things that Americans actually see back a little bit in their pockets from the amount of fucking taxes that the average person pays in this country.
	So it's like, oh, let us not touch.
	Like, imagine!
	Imagine what it would look like if Elon Musk actually paid what he should in taxes.
	Do you think that Elon Musk would be worth $122 billion?
	I sure as hell don't think so, right?
	I don't think that we would have the number of billionaires that we do that we saw come out of COVID if these people were paying their fair share in taxes.
	So that's number one.
	Why is it always that the response of the New York Times and other elite quote-unquote Is that it is the working class and the shrinking non-existent invisible middle class that must then pay the price for America's ballooning deficit that happened into a balloon because of Republicans bullshit and cuts for the rich.
	Right?
	But let us not focus on reality.
	Let us focus on the aging and say that America would look so much better if we had what?
	More homeless senior citizens?
	Right?
	Like more people that were living hand to mouth?
	That would be better because we sure as fuck are not going to put the tax dollars into creating shelters.
	We already have a homeless problem in this in this country.
	What will it look like when we no longer have social security?
	You know, it's interesting to me because, you know, the people that are driving this are the, you know, the conservatives in their 40s, 50s, 60s, whatever.
	They were in school, you know, back in the day.
	I'm just trying to figure out where you learn these concepts of like, you can't, the government can't help anybody.
	It's basically what they believe in, right?
	It's not there to help anybody.
	Someone was yelling at me on Twitter the other day about it, where it was like, you know, there's so much that they could do to alleviate suffering.
	And at this point, all I want the government to do is not kill us.
	That's really all I want.
	That sucks, but it's not untrue.
	Right.
	And it's like, but even that is like, well, you know how much money it would cost to like have regulations and all this stuff that gets in the way of, uh, you know, what would stop us from, you know, the government for killing people.
	But it's like, what, how do you get there?
	I don't think like if you were taking history class or a government class or civics or any of those things, when we were growing up, they would probably be able to, you'd learn a little bit about how the government works and how it can help people.
	So somewhere in there, right.
	They get changed, they get turned.
	Derek, this is your You know, your dominion, where they, and it's like, and it becomes so solidified, like concrete, that you can't ever, you know, jackhammer that idea out of their head.
	You know, what's amazing here, Nick, is I would bet dollars to donuts.
	They believe that once upon a time.
	And guess what happened?
	They wanted the government to help people when it was helping them, when it was making sure that they had money and they had opportunities and they were enjoying the fruits of the American empire.
	They got theirs.
	The people who are sitting there talking about going after Social Security, one, they're not worried about Social Security for their retirement.
	Two, a lot of them are already to the point where they're collecting Social Security.
	They don't have to worry about Medicare because they're wealthy.
	Guess what?
	Everybody who contributed to this op-ed makes millions of dollars a year.
	Millions of dollars a year.
	But guess what?
	Now it's time for some sensible liberals to come in and say this.
	And this is the point.
	The Republican Party has moved so far to the right and has become a white supremacist fascist party that the Democratic Party built a real big tent that went everywhere from center-left all the way to Bill freaking Crystal.
	And so what has happened now is that the Democratic Party has to become the Conservative Party.
	And they are now saying, guess what?
	We don't have all that money that we need to do.
	By the way, we've got a Cold War we've got to start, guys!
	We've got to have hypersonic missiles!
	We've got to have a Space Force, because we have to have a new Cold War.
	We have to start cutting some things.
	And guess what?
	We don't like it any more than you, but we're going to have to go after Social Security and Medicare.
	And here's the difference between these two parties at this point, besides the fact the Republicans are over here practicing coups.
	The Democratic Party will sit there and say, we're so sorry that we have to do this.
	We wish that we didn't have to do it.
	My God, I wish that this wasn't the case.
	But I'm telling you right now, the moderates of the Democratic Party, well, they used to be moderates.
	Now they're Republicans.
	Joe Manchin is a Republican with a D next to his name.
	Joe Manchin, he read this op-ed and he's like, oh, thank God they're coming.
	There's census over there at the leftist New York Times.
	It's an opening.
	And you're going to see some of these assholes start to tout this thing.
	That's how this stuff starts, is you start putting it into the water and you say, guess what?
	We have to do something about it.
	But Nick, they used to believe the government could do something, and now they don't believe it after they got what they wanted.
	Yeah, and like your Joe Scarborough, his op-ed We need to just stop complaining about America altogether.
	Like, what is wrong with you people?
	Wave your flag and shut your fucking mouth!
	It's essentially what we should have been entitled to.
	So for anybody who hasn't seen this, by the way, Joe Scarborough has the most infuriating, I'm putting quotes around article, it's one of the worst written things I've read in years.
	Joe Scarborough has this article that basically says, and I love it whenever they vomit this stuff up, it basically says, America's fine, why are you complaining?
	It's a Matt Iglesias special.
	Real fast, Danielle, I looked this up because I wanted to know it.
	I'm going to ask Nick this as well.
	We're going to have a quick little trivia thing.
	Are you ready for this?
	How much do you think Joe Scarborough makes a year for Morning Joe?
	Ooh, okay, good.
	Good question.
	I'm gonna go based on what his face was making on the Today Show before he was fired, which was around $25 million a year.
	So I'm gonna say $28 million.
	That's high.
	I'll go ahead and say that's high.
	Really?
	Yeah, my first thing was like maybe like $5 million.
	We'll split the difference.
	Him and Mika, a reminder that they are married, both make $10-12 million a year.
	Each?
	Combined.
	Oh, combined.
	And, by the way, these people, by the way, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, go on TV every single day and tell people, basically with their hands over their hearts, singing the national anthem, that everything's better than you think it is and the left needs to shut up.
	They are worth close to a quarter of a billion dollars.
	And so guess what?
	If you want to sit there and say that things in America are better than what people say that they are, it helps to have nearly a quarter of a billion dollars.
	I'll just say that.
	Yeah.
	I would be friends with him if he would send me out on some trips on some private planes and stuff like that.
	I would, you know.
	Yeah, I would think America was awesome if I had a quarter of a billion dollars.
	I think America was fucked.
	You know what, as a matter of fact, I would chisel that in fucking marble if I had a quarter of a billion dollars.
	What a country.
	What a country.
	We love it.
	We love it, folks.
	I mean, listen, it probably is better, and I just want to say, and we didn't get a chance to go over that article today, I love that he went ahead and said that America needs an Atticus Finch to defend it, and just completely lost any sense of who Atticus Finch was and what was happening in that novel.
	Never, ever change, Joe Scarborough.
	Keep going.
	Good morning, Joe.
	Well, we are familiar with, did you ever see the article about Atticus Finch and how the legal analysis of his argument in court?
	No.
	It's kind of like she had it, she asked for it, was basically, you know, in a sort of, you know, postmodern view of what he did.
	And, you know, so Atticus Finch might have been troublesome later on in life.
	Nick, it turns out that if you basically look at any American literature before like 1989, You know what I mean?
	Like, things get a little hazy.
	Well, Danielle Moody, it has been an absolute pleasure.
	You are one of our favorites and one of our listeners' favorites, and we're so glad you had a chance to come on.
	Can you tell the people, just listen, you're on 18 podcasts, all of them are fantastic, all of them tell blistering truth.
	Where can the good people find you?
	One, I love coming on to your podcast, guys.
	It is such a joy to feel like there are good white people out there.
	Who you can trust won't sell you out.
	No, but all kidding aside, folks, you can find me on my three shows.
	I have Woke AF, which is a daily podcast on iHeart Media, but you can get it wherever you listen to your podcasts.
	I have The New Abnormal, Which is three days a week that is affiliated with the Daily Beast, and then Democracy-ish that I do once a week with my friend and columnist at the Daily Beast, Wajahat Ali.
	We gotta get Waj back on here, but he's making too many Lego sculptures.
	No, did you see, like, the huge ship he made?
	That's how he deals with his stress.
	So every time you see, like, a Lego situation, you're like, wow!
	Of course, I hope things are okay.
	Well, everybody, we're going to be back with our Weekender edition on Friday.
	Hey, listen, y'all are listening to the preview.
	We see the numbers.
	We know that literally everybody who doesn't subscribe to our Patreon in order to get the Weekender listens to the preview.
	When it cuts off, do you not feel sad?
	Do you not feel lonely?
	Do you not want to hang out with us on a Friday?
	The weekend is a great time.
	Also, it supports the show.
	It keeps us editorially independent.
	It keeps us growing.
	Go to patreon.com slash mccraigpodcast.
	Nick, is there any reason to not do it?
	I don't know how to answer that affirmatively.
	No, there's no reason to not do it.
	No, no reason.
	No!
	Do it!
	Patreon.com slash my great podcast.
	All right, we'll be back with The Weekender.
	You can find Nick at Kenny Romanovich.
	You can find me, SMH.
	I said that wrong.
	You can find me, J. West Hexton.

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