It's Totally OK For Trump To Use Campaign Funds For Personal Legal Fees, RIGHT??
Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss a bombshell report that proves the Trump campaign isn't using the millions its raising on the campaign - rather for Trump's myriad indictments to the tune of $56 million and counting. They move over to Israel, where Benjamin Netenyahu is folliwng the Trump playbook by attempting to pass a law that would essentially castrate the Supreme Court - thereby getting him out of serious fraud and corruption cases filed against him. They finish up dissecting what country singer Jason Aldean is really saying with his new song "Try That In A Small Town."
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Yeah, as long as it's an active verb, I think we're doing we're okay.
As long as you're moving forward.
Those not busy being born or busy dying, as our good friend Robert Zimmerman once told us.
Everybody, we are here.
Listen, we got everything on this episode.
We have country music hits that talk about vigilante justice.
We have Israel just falling into the illiberal abyss.
We've got Samuel Alito saying things.
I really can't believe he's saying out loud, but there's also that.
And of course, the Donald Trump campaign rolls on.
We got to talk about all that.
But before Nick, we have an exciting new feature for our weekender episodes.
That's right.
For our Patreons.
Exclusives!
And a reminder, go over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast in order to get access to the Weekender episode on Fridays.
It'll make your Fridays better, it'll make your weekends better, it will make your life better.
We are going to roll out new features in which on these Weekender episodes, if you have questions, we're going to answer them.
Nick, and I don't know about you, I have always enjoyed answering questions on our live shows when we do the Weekender tapings.
I know that's like one of your favorite things we do too.
Absolutely.
I mean, I would, I hope that more people want to get involved and be part of the show.
That's really exciting to hear their voices and actually let them ask the questions directly.
Well, we always have these things where people are reaching out, they're sending emails, they're commenting on the episodes, all of that stuff.
This is going to streamline the process.
Here's how we're going to do it.
It's going to be twofold.
One, over at patreon.com slash muckrake podcast, we are going to post a link, which is going to allow you to record A voicemail.
These things are going to be short.
I think we're talking less than a minute, give or take, where you are going to ask your questions.
Of course, you can make some comments.
That's patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast, which means that your voice, your questions will be on the show.
Also, you can email us at muckrakepodcast at gmail.com.
If you don't want to put your voice on the show, totally fine.
You can email us there, and we'll start answering these questions on future Weekender episodes.
Right.
We might even throw one, you know, on a Tuesday pod just so people can hear what they're missing.
Listen, I gotta tell you, one of the fun things about taking questions is people sometimes ask about stuff that I've been interested in or I have an opinion on.
Some things that I haven't even thought about that I then have to react to.
That's awesome.
Because it makes us get into a bunch of different things.
I'm personally excited about this feature.
Again, if you want to do this, go over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
That's where we're going to have the the voicemail link and also muckrakepodcast at gmail.com.
In the meantime, Nick, I gotta tell you, a lot is happening with the Donald Trump 2024 campaign.
As all of the polls are coming out that make it look like he is the nominee in waiting, which is something that you and I have sort of had to wrap our heads around over the past few months, and I want to talk about more.
We're also hearing, one, that the charges with election tampering, racketeering, all kinds of fun things out of the state of Georgia, my former home, it sounds like these are imminent.
I gotta tell you, Nick, I think these are some of the most serious charges that Donald Trump actually faces for a variety of reasons.
But also it has come out, Washington Post has published an investigation that Save America, the Trump Political Action Committee, has spent in the last quarter $40 million.
That's right, $40 million on Trump's legal fees, which brings, by the way, the total up to $56 million.
Towards Trump legal fees.
I gotta tell you, both of these things make my mind real.
What are your initial reactions, Nick?
Well, should we celebrate that he's paying his lawyers now?
Well, not just paying his lawyers, but not offering to pay them with horses and, like, boxing memorabilia, which it's a step up, you know?
Yeah, so that's part of it, but I was kind of yelling and screaming reading the articles this weekend about it because it doesn't seem legal.
You shouldn't be able to raise campaign funds and then simply transfer them directly to legal bills that are unrelated to the campaign.
I suppose I should dig a little bit deeper into the FEC and figure out why those rules don't apply here, or no one has any teeth to prosecute this, but this is the epitome of what campaign finance reform is supposed to take care of.
Well, it's also incredible because, you know, I can't tell you how many, and Nick, I would love to hear your thoughts on this, even to ballpark it, how many stories have we covered with Donald Trump in the past few years in which legal experts and political experts are asked for their opinion on something that he is doing and the legality of it, and everyone just says, I don't know, because no one's ever thought to even consider that somebody would do something like that.
Doesn't that seem like a reoccurring theme at this point?
Absolutely.
And it kind of just shows you how leaky the Constitution is and our laws are.
There's too many little holes in there that, listen, sometimes businessmen are lauded for finding little, you know, areas and the cracks they can get away with stuff.
And this is sort of where we are here, but it's with procedural stuff.
It's with, you know, Very serious governmental actions that you know require a transparency and a lack of corruption that he has exploited.
It really is frustrating.
And I think the biggest problem is that people who don't have money to give.
Give him this money, give him money that they don't probably have, that they can afford, probably thinking that it's going towards getting him re-elected and in some weird twisted way he's been able to combine like, well I need that money to protect me in the courts and that will then allow me to win, you know, sort of in a direct line and that's just, you know, there's no way to ask people who are giving their hard-earned money to him that they would approve, I don't think, of all the money that's going to lawyers.
I mean, it depends on who you ask.
I mean, some of these people, I think it would be incredible, actually, at this point, to find out how many people, if they found out that their money was going towards this, would then give more money in order to help him out legally.
And, you know, it's incredible because you're right.
Donald Trump as a, and I'm putting heavy quotes around this, businessman, right?
Because don't forget that this guy, for a period of time, lost more money than anybody else in the United States of America.
Like a really, kind of an impressive achievement, honestly, his failures.
This is a guy who has built his entire career, whether it was in, again, heavy quotes, real estate, or his name and likeness bullshit, or his political campaigns, all of it he has found a way in order to skirt and flirt around every law that he possibly can.
He has been able to, basically because he's shameless, he has been able to figure out how to find every angle that he possibly could, every hook, every crook.
And when it comes to this stuff, I mean, you know, it really is hard to keep track, Nick.
I mean, don't forget that this is a person who used his inauguration more or less as a money laundering scheme.
You know, and now we're sitting here looking at a bunch of people who are giving more or less their entire savings to this stuff.
It reminds me again of when I was a kid and like my grandparents and my relatives were sending, you know, envelopes full of cash to televangelists who were like living on top of the world and having these extravagant lifestyles.
At this point, we're literally looking at a supposed billionaire.
Very successful billionaire who is probably not going to have to end up paying much of anything on his legal bills because he has figured out how to use American politics and the Political Action Committee scam in order to funnel all of this money for his own purposes.
If it wasn't so wicked and cruel, you would almost have to be impressed by it, you know?
Yeah, and I called this years ago knowing that that was what he was going to do.
So I shouldn't be surprised at all, but it is frustrating.
Now, that said, it could ultimately hurt his campaign because it's money that he's not spending on the campaign for all sorts of things like advertising.
But that said, he didn't even do it that well the first time that he ran and won.
It was completely disorganized.
He probably feels like they don't need any of that money because he gets free publicity on the news every night by just saying the biggest bullshit he could think of.
Can I say something on that real fast?
Just a reminder, Donald Trump was gifted over $6 billion worth of free advertising by American media.
And as we've talked about here and there, and I just want to put it on the record because I want to make sure that everybody understands this, almost all media buys at this point that come from political campaigns are about either one Raising the profile of a candidate, in which case your candidate doesn't have much in the way of a possibility of winning.
But also, too, it's just continuing to feed a larger consultant class.
You know what I mean?
It's basically this go-around that has been going on for years at this point.
You can put it out on social media and advertise it there or do whatever.
A lot of these buys are pretty useless.
This This right here, and I gotta tell you, at some point or another, it's due for like a dam to break and find out how much of this money has been embezzled and also laundered around.
Like, who even knows what's happening behind the scenes of Trump campaign and PAX and all of that stuff.
Basically, you know, it's like the dark web.
You don't want to look.
You don't want to know what's actually happening.
Well, there's another reason why you don't want to know, and it kind of relates to probably Fannie Willis in Georgia, is that there's a very real fear of bringing these cases against him that you have a kind of backlash that could be in danger of your life.
So I don't blame people for maybe not even wanting to get into it, to prosecute these things, because it is a real consideration here.
Unfortunately, the kind of cult he's developed is that you can have crazies that will follow through on these threats.
It wouldn't just be, oh, they're just calling in, but whatever.
These are things that have to take very seriously.
I would imagine Fannie Willis will have incredible insecurity around her going forward if and when they announce an indictment there.
And by the way, it better be good security because I can tell you that the state of Georgia, like not a lot in the way of like taking this stuff seriously and actually like keeping people at bay who want to do other people damage.
Uh, just speaking from personal experience.
I'll also go ahead and say when it comes to Georgia, dead to rights.
He's been caught absolutely dead to rights, trying to shake down public figures, trying to get an election overturned, you know, basically stolen.
It's kind of incredible now, Nick, not just to look at the indictments that are piling up for Donald Trump, but to actually notice that all of them are clear-cut and all of them have evidence that gets him dead to rights.
He's going to go from one day going in and having evidence that's obvious that he stole state secrets, the next day he's going to be in a Fulton County courthouse and they're going to play a call Most of the time, he doesn't deny what the accusations are.
He tries to sort of make them seem like they were a perfect call and there wasn't anything wrong, but they don't deny what the underlying crime is.
Interestingly enough, the new thing where they unsealed this new indictment where Carlos de Oliveira is now implicated in trying to delete the footage, the video footage of Mar-a-Lago, which constitutes obstruction of justice.
He actually is saying that he never did that.
And that struck me, actually, interestingly enough, that he decided he wanted to go public and say, I never told anybody to delete anything in the video wise.
And meanwhile, they have the video.
It sounds like they might have gone to the original servers that the company that does the security had that unerased.
But I suspect this this might even be karma for what was Nixon's secretary's name?
What was her name?
Yeah, who was supposedly, you know, stretching across two different parts of her office to somehow accidentally delete 18 minutes of the Nixon tapes.
So either way, they have it.
That's the most important thing.
But it sounds like these people are now are going to turn on him enough to give them information that they continually will be able to hammer this evidence unassailably in a court of law.
I gotta tell you also to go ahead and picket this thing because it is concerning.
Nick, the numbers are real bad over in the GOP primary.
Like, listen, I'm not going to tell you that any of these clowns could possibly win this thing and it would be great.
Like, Tim Scott would get the nomination and, you know, it doesn't make the GOP any better and it doesn't mean that they're going to do anything less dangerous.
But Donald Trump walking away with this nomination, and not just by the way, walking away from the nomination, but making the 2024 primary all about the weaponization of the government and what needs to be done in furthering the MAGA conspiracy theories.
That, with also the fact that, I don't know if you saw this, Nick, but Trump told anybody who had listened this weekend that Mitch McConnell has to go.
And we talked about this, like that this is like a changing of the guard situation.
We also are looking at the possibility of like the MAGA group in the far right, the new right, starting to take over the apparatus of government.
This thing is starting to pick up speed in a way, and listen, I know this isn't going to shock people, in a way that worries even me.
Like, I follow this stuff.
I sit there and analyze it.
I look at how all this stuff is taking place.
2024 is shaping up to just be really, really a brutal presidential election.
And the mood of this country, I gotta tell you, with all of these indictments and Donald Trump's political, legal, and life in general just on the line, I do not feel great about it.
I'll just say that.
Well, I got a question for you, and I realize what you're trying to say here as far as Mitch McConnell is, you know, one of those guys who's sort of a guardrail against Trump to some degree and maybe even if he goes away.
I'd love to use him.
I'm more than happy to use him to go ahead, and we're going to talk about the judiciary in a second and how it's been completely bastardized.
But yes, no, Mitch McConnell and the neoliberal establishment front of the Republican Party has pushed back against Trump and the new right, and they are effectively trying to take control of the party.
And by the way, Trump's idea that Mitch McConnell has to go.
I'm not arguing with that.
Like the worst person in the world made a good point.
And we need that meme to show that that is because he is right.
And problem more so, you know, not that I would ever want McConnell to to.
Well, I would like him to leave for a lot of reasons, but I don't think he's well.
And I think that that's the problem here is people are sacrificing their own health for this stuff.
And that doesn't seem to be the appropriate focus.
But I do want to ask you this.
He gets let's just pretend of all these indictments, he gets found guilty in all of them.
How many people are really going?
How many votes is he really going to lose?
I've not that many.
Right.
Not that many.
And a matter of fact, I think there will be some people who would even double, triple down on this thing.
I think that this is the bad part of this.
And I saw an actual friend of the show, Greg Sargent, wrote an article about this saying, you know, not only do they still support Trump, but they truly believe that he hasn't done anything wrong.
I think that the worldview of Trump being persecuted and the government being weaponized in the deep state, not just coming from him, but for everybody else, that is not only like a narrative that holds sway with these people.
It has become their functional worldview.
It has become how they view the world, how they go about the world, how they how they view everything.
And as a result, I don't think he's going to lose hardly any votes if he is So I think our fears were misplaced a year or two ago when we were worried that someone else would come along with the same platform and just a cleaner, you know, palette and sweep right into that slot, thinking, oh, it was never about Trump.
It was about a guy that they would simply do all their conservative stuff.
And OK, so he's, you know.
His personality is a problem.
We don't care as long as we get the judges and all that stuff in there.
That's not true anymore, right?
This has now become a thing where it is about Trump.
Otherwise someone like DeSantis would have swept in there and been a neck and neck or been leading by now.
Well, I want to say a couple things.
One, if DeSantis had, you know, a personality that was any better than a, you know, a Crypt Keeper, like, there would be the beginnings of something.
But also, as we've documented, the strategy has been so bad.
Like, DeSantis has needed to make the argument, listen, they are politically persecuting this guy.
You need somebody in there to figure this thing out.
And, by the way, doing the, like, weird, like, cuddling up to Trump while going ahead and doing this, But also, you would need Donald Trump to bow out a little bit, and he can't.
He can't do it, you know?
Everybody knows I'm a fan of the show Succession, and one of the reasons is because it shows something real, which is people like Trump can't step away.
They can't.
They're going to die doing what they're doing, and those sort of forces came together.
And at this point, no, it's a fait accompli.
There's really not much in the way of anything anybody can do, save for if something completely unprecedented and unexpected happens.
This thing seems, it seems cooked at this point, unfortunately.
Unless some states are going to be able to garner enough support to say that a guy who's a convicted, multiplely convicted felon can't appear on a ballot.
But I don't see that happening necessarily either, but that would be the only fail-safe here, because again, otherwise he'd be a write-in candidate anyway.
It truly is remarkable what he's been able to do and how he's stuck his finger in the socket that I don't think we realized was electrified.
I wish he'd stick his finger in the socket.
All right, speaking of just remarkable, Nick, I gotta tell you again, I say this often, sometimes an article will get published and I will read it and I just become so overwhelmed.
I feel very emotional about these things.
And Nick, I want to read a little bit from a truly Truly remarkable article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal.
This was as a result of a four hour interview that the Wall Street Journal did with Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.
And by the way, Nick, how would you like spend four hours with Samuel Alito?
Oh, I mean, as much as I'd like to be stuck in an elevator playing Muzak the whole time.
Oh, I would take it 10 times out of 10.
This is the beginning of this article before we get to some really, truly incredible stuff.
Quote, the Supreme Court usually makes news by making decisions, and it's done plenty of that lately.
In its first two terms with a 6-3 conservative majority, the justices have revisited old precedents and established new ones on abortion, gun rights, racial discrimination, freedom of speech, and religion.
By the way, that's a really, really kind way of putting what the Supreme Court has done, but I move forward.
That's wonderful to go ahead and put this out there.
Decades or so, the court has frequently declined to defer to elite political opinion.
And as a result, it has made news in other ways.
That's wonderful to go ahead and put this out there.
They talk about Samuel Alito, and they say that he has come out to, quote, defend himself with a candor that is refreshing and can be startling.
They talk about ProPublica.
And Nick, you might remember that ProPublica was the outlet that found that Supreme Court justices on the right were basically riding ponies on a carousel that a billionaire just kept pumping change into.
As expected.
while they were buying up their families' houses.
They call them a, quote, self-styled independent nonprofit newsroom.
So how do you feel about the bias in this article so far?
This is great.
As expected.
I mean, we're not surprised, but it's thick.
Oh, it's wonderful.
Well, let's jump forward to the real, real meat of this article.
Quote, Justice Alito says he voluntarily follows disclosure statutes that apply to lower court judges and executive branch officials.
So do the other judges.
Just want to go ahead and put an asterisk on there and say, remember when he said that he was taking this trip with a billionaire because the seat would have been empty otherwise.
But he notes that, quote, Congress did not create the Supreme Court.
The Constitution did.
Quote, I know this is a controversial view, but I'm willing to say it, he says.
No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court.
Period.
This, by the way, is Samuel Alito getting out in public and just getting wild with it.
He's literally saying, Congress can't do anything about us.
They should go ahead and stop dreaming that they possibly can.
This is some beating on the chest, is it not?
Oh, I know, but it's also wrong.
It's also wrong.
Yes, because there is a provision in the Constitution that maybe provides Congress with some latitude.
And the quote would be, one portion of the Constitution says, quote, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction both as to law and fact with such exceptions and under such regulations as the Congress shall make.
So they gave them a little bit of an opportunity to create some oversight there.
And let me ask you this, Jared.
Why would anybody associated with such a highbrow thing like the Supreme Court, why would anybody like that be so concerned about having regulations about ethics?
Why would that have to be a thing that they would want to push back against?
Does that make you think about anything?
It's really interesting.
It's basically this thing where they're just like, you know, even if there was some unethical behavior, and there's not, you couldn't do anything about it.
It's some incredible mind games being played.
And if I were ethical, and I really took my job seriously, I would welcome.
I'd say, please, I follow these things anyway.
I would like more stringent guidelines, because it's a little bit fuzzy right now.
So I didn't report the plane ride I took because there was an extra seat, because I didn't think I needed to.
Those things definitely should have some more oversight.
And you should welcome that.
I mean, that's the whole thing about this, is we need to have faith in the institution.
Alito can't do that because he is, and this is a very specific term, I don't mean to put, you know, some jargon out there, specialized knowledge, because he's a pompous asshole.
And he always has been.
It would be one thing, and John Roberts does this the quote-unquote right way.
Right?
Like, he engages in all this stuff.
He goes ahead.
He pushes his agenda, which was the reason why the Supreme Court was stolen in the first place.
And he's gasping, Nick.
He's looking for the closest fainting couch, right?
He's like, how could you possibly start to question who we are?
We're the Supreme Court.
Look at our robes!
Have you seen our robes lately?
Like, we're a priest class.
You can't possibly question who we are.
Samuel Alito has spent every moment of his waking life since the Supreme Court was stolen getting in people's faces, like, angrily saying, you can't say that about us.
And on top of that, you can't do anything about it.
He is a massive poking finger in the chest.
He cannot stop himself.
And then he wonders why people are questioning the integrity of the court.
But that's the biggest self-own of all time because he doesn't seem to have any notion or self-reflection to understand why this stance and his asshole-ness is causing so many people to think that this is a compromised court.
I want to point something out too, by the way, because you went ahead, as you are wont to do, you went ahead and went to the actual Constitution.
Like, that's one of the reasons why we do this show.
You know, as Alito says that the Constitution doesn't give Congress control over the Supreme Court, I want to say a couple things and then I want to get to the last quote here from Alito.
One, the Constitution also did not make the Supreme Court as it stands.
For people who don't remember this, the Supreme Court gave itself the power that it has.
Why?
Because they didn't like Thomas Jefferson, and they didn't like how things were working, so they went ahead and just gave themselves a ton of powers, which has now created a conservative backstop for the powerful and the wealthy to go ahead and basically control legislation.
But with that aside, Nick, I want to point out something because he said something really interesting near the end of this interview after he's thumping his chest talking about Congress can't do this.
This is from the article.
Justice Alito wonders if outright defiance may be in the offing for the first time since the aftermath of Brown v. Board education.
"If we're viewed as illegitimate, then disregard of our decisions becomes more acceptable and more popular, so you can have a revival of the massive resistance that occurred in the South after Brown." Now, I want to point out this is a favorite of conservatives.
They love going ahead and using something like Brown v. Board Education, right?
Which, by the way, the South went against because the white supremacist apartheid South did not want to change itself.
They love using something like that as the precursor to saying that our ruling should be treated the same as that justified ruling.
But he also gives the game away here, Nick.
The reason that they don't want their legitimacy question is because they're illegitimate and because they can't enforce their rulings.
And if they're illegitimate, they can't enforce the rulings.
Then at some point or another, they can't do much about it.
And that's where the Supreme Court is left at this moment, like balancing itself on the edge of a razor blade.
I don't think Congress is going to take his dare here because they're not interested in that fight.
They don't want to mess around with the institutions.
But I do have to say it's pretty incredible that he thought it was okay to say this to the Wall Street Journal and for this thing to get around because he is right.
There is the possibility that they will lose their authority and that their rulings will become the bullshit that they are.
Well, based on who reads the Wall Street Journal, it sounds like he's signaling, right?
He's got to let all the rich people who sent them on these amazing trips, let them know that if we don't stand up to this and make sure that, you know, if I can't be able to hide all what you're doing with me, then I won't be able to protect you and scratch your back.
Basically, I guess, is what he's trying to say out of that publicly.
And it's disgusting.
I mean, there's no question there should be very stringent rules over this.
I don't give a shit if it's a lifetime appointment.
Supposedly, that's going to give them freedom of corruption.
They should welcome it.
They should know how important it is to not have even the appearance of corruption.
And yet, here they are taking photos.
You know what I mean?
Like at the very least, if you took that seriously, you wouldn't let anyone take a picture of you holding up the fish that you had just gotten on this ridiculous trip or whatever with your polo shirts.
Yeah, they're also having paintings made.
They're not afraid of this.
So real fast to transition from a court that desperately needs reformed to a court that is getting reformed.
Some could say unnecessarily.
Over in the state of Israel, Nick, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has continued to push for what is being called court reform by some, a judicial coup by others.
A reminder, by the way, that Netanyahu is facing his own slew of corruption charges, which might play into the reason why he's trying to limit the power of the courts.
But it has passed another hurdle.
It seems like it's going to happen.
Over 200,000 plus Israelis went to the streets in order to protest.
We've had massive strikes against this.
But Netanyahu's regime continues to push this stuff and to bring shame to the state.
This is, what's the word I'm looking for?
A mess.
It's a mess that could lead to the destruction of Israel, basically, or the dissolution of it, because if people don't quite understand how this works, with the Knesset, which is a parliamentary system, you have to be able to form coalitions.
This guy, Netanyahu, was able to form a coalition, because you might be surprised that he's still a prime minister, because he had gotten voted out, but came back because he was able to get the most thinnest of razor margins, whatever that phrase is, by getting all the crazies.
There's about 10% of Israel, of the Knesset, is like the insane, right-wing, ultra-Orthodox people who are, like, saying the most ridiculous things they would never get.
They wouldn't even get airtime in America like that, but in Israel they do, and they were able to cobble that together just enough To be able to get this thing through by only a couple of votes.
This is not a mandate.
There is nothing popular about this and the uprising that we're seeing in the streets has gone on for like six months straight.
Almost every day in Israel.
That's how unpopular this is and they know that when he paused it earlier this year to like pretend like as if he was gonna, you know, maybe not do it or talk to more people.
That was just a way to placate people for a minute hoping they would die down and it has not.
They know what he's doing.
They see through that grift.
And it is it is a severe thing if the if the Supreme Court doesn't it has no teeth anymore.
Yeah, and I want to go ahead, I want to compare and contrast where we possibly can.
On one hand, what is happening with Netanyahu, who Netanyahu is a bully and always has been.
He's used his position in just some really incredibly troubling ways.
Netanyahu as a figure, as a personality, has been able to stand out in front of this stuff.
But much like a Donald Trump, he has also been used as a battering ram.
For anybody who isn't aware of this, a lot of this is the project of the Israeli Justice Minister, Yariv Levin.
And Yariv Levin has been trying to get this stuff over the finish line for over 14 years.
And Levin is part of this larger caucus, of course, that is, you know, against Arabs, it's against Palestinians, and has been trying to push this thing.
And that is one of the defining problems within Israel.
Is like, what do you do about the fact that you have this group of Palestinians?
How do you treat them?
How do you interact with them?
Do you create an apartheid state or do you interact and treat them humanely and find some sort of a solution for this problem?
They have used this tension for God knows how many years now, Nick, to go ahead and push a right-wing, aggressive, authoritarian, illiberal agenda.
Which is what has been happening forever.
And this has been used to go ahead and push stuff like this so-called justice reform, right?
To go ahead and create these coalitions to appeal to people's worst instincts and their brutality, things like that.
And instead of like having something that's actually going to, I don't know, help anybody besides a ruling corrupt elite, what we have is another situation, much like what has happened with Trump and the MAGA movement, in which these far-right individuals and groups are using these issues to go ahead and create division and to go ahead and push the agenda that they've been dreaming about for forever.
This is, this looks a lot like what not just happened, it didn't just happen in Hungary with fear over immigrants, It's what's also happening in the United States right now with all of this weaponized fear that we're constantly covering.
Right.
This is a double-edged sword here because it's serving two purposes for him.
One, he can't afford to lose the crazy ultra right-wing factions because if they leave him, he loses his coalition and he loses his power.
Now, the reason why he needs the power, this might sound very familiar, is that, yeah, because of these investigations in him and these suits that are corruption and fraud, he thinks that if he can get rid of the Supreme Court, then they can simply, sorry, not get rid of the Supreme Court, but they won't have to follow what the Supreme Court says, then any but they won't have to follow what the Supreme Court says, then any kind of guilty verdict that comes down upon him, he That is extremely dangerous.
And obviously, it's dangerous enough that you have military, vast swashes of the military in Israel refusing to serve if it's going to turn into a totalitarian state.
Because that's basically what that would be.
Now the weird thing about the Constitution of Israel, there isn't the Constitution.
They don't really have a whole sort of binding set of rules that allow the Supreme Court to have Very distinct power.
They sort of developed it over the years, and they've used this notion of reasonableness to strike down certain laws that might have been passed, and no one has ever had a problem with that for decades and decades and decades.
And all of a sudden, out of this, and now that Nahoo is now threatened with being found guilty of serious crimes, now he's saying they won't be able to enforce any of their decisions.
It is exactly what you mentioned in other countries.
And it really is sad when you look at what Israel, how they were founded, what they stood for, what their aspirations were in their Bill of Rights.
This is so wholly against everything that the fabric of the country, that this is why you're seeing the kind of uprising they haven't had in a long, long time.
It's really incredible, too, to go ahead and bring this back to the states.
You and I both know, as people who have observed politics and media for forever, this was the third rail to criticize Israel for almost anything, you know what I mean?
Like, because you need to support the state of Israel, you need to stand behind this project, while also there's been unbelievable amounts of atrocities and things that needed to be discussed.
Meanwhile, Nick, I gotta tell you, I've looked around in the past, like, week, week and a half or so, not just with some of these practices with the Palestinians, but what's happening with this so-called judicial reform.
We're starting to see some really hardline Israel-supporting people come out of the woodwork and say, hey, something's wrong here, and we need to reconsider everything from our partnership to how much aid we send them.
I don't know about you, if you went back in time and told me that somebody was going to say that in the national media and not be drummed off the stage, I wouldn't believe it.
I want to point out also, this is actually a really interesting thing, but of course because I'm me I have to point this out.
Max Boot over at the Washington Post had an opinion piece on this.
The title is, I don't recognize the intolerant and liberal country Israel is becoming, to which I say, ask a Palestinian, but that's neither here nor there.
He says, you know, I thought about living there.
I thought about living there.
And then near the end or near the end of the beginning, he says, quote, Yet while I retain affection for Israel, I often feel as if I do not recognize what it has become.
This is a familiar feeling for me since I am similarly befuddled by modern America.
How did we turn into a land of book banners and COVID deniers?
Both Israel and the United States have been disfigured by the rise of populist rabble-rousers who have tapped into ugly and unsavory prejudices.
First of all, Nick, this is kind of crazy hearing from Max Boot.
This is a person who you don't usually hear criticism of Israel.
But number two, how did they change the country?
That's what the countries have!
That's what they are!
Like, these are baby ideas of what nations are like.
All these mythologies these people believe.
America isn't, it hasn't been turned into a nation of book burners.
It's that it has always had book burners in it.
And it has this long history that you actually have to grapple with, and I feel like, my God, I'm taking crazy pills.
At some point, we have to have an adult perspective on what has actually happened in these countries and get rid of these mythologies that are just absolutely bullshit, top to bottom.
Well, you know, there was a notion after Israel was founded that the Arabs and Israelis, Jewish Israelis, could get along and form a functioning country for a decade or two or a few.
By the 80s it did change and kind of like Reagan gave birth to the situation that they're in now.
What I find interesting is you have to imagine there's a lot of right-wing people in America who are very closely watching this.
Because what Netanyahu proposes is that instead of having a committee that was kind of bipartisan with a huge swath of the Bar Association, like really respected scholars, on a committee that would pick the judges.
Instead of that, Netanyahu wants to have the controlling party pick the judges at any one time.
It would be the equivalent of, you know, no... I mean, by the way, it's sort of what we do here, right?
You know, whoever's in control gets to pick the judges, and here we are with the Supreme Court.
So it's almost like Netanyahu's trying to kind of imitate what they have here with McConnell, what he did, but make it completely legal and binding and easier than what McConnell had to do.
That is concerning, because that could be a thing that people here would want to try and do as well, and eliminate any kind of red tape they would have to get these justices in there and never let them leave.
It is another, again, on the road towards authoritarianism, and it's obvious.
We've seen this so many times in the past that you can't even say it could happen, that this is what happens when this is allowed.
It's what happens.
Because there's an undercurrent at all times of authoritarian energies in every country.
It doesn't matter if it's the United States.
It doesn't matter if it's Canada.
It doesn't matter if it's Switzerland.
It doesn't matter if it's Israel.
Human beings, there is a divide within us.
There are some people who are more authoritarian in nature and there are others who are not.
And they can be stoked into it.
Like, if there is a political movement that stokes it the same way that Netanyahu stokes it, the same way that Donald Trump stokes it, the same way that the wealthy and the powerful... By the way, if you haven't bought The Midnight Kingdom, A History of Power, Paranoia, and the Coming Crisis, go ahead and go buy that.
This is what keeps happening, but these dumb stories that any person or any group is beyond the capability of doing this stuff, it only makes it more likely that it will happen.
Yeah, and the polling is so against this in the country.
That is the other problem is that nobody wants this.
There is no political capital to do this at all.
And let's not forget the ultra right wing, what Netanyahu was able to do by bringing them in, he promised them, oh sure, we'll be able to continue building settlements, which just displaces more and more Arabs out of their land they own.
and pushes them out and inflames the situation to the nth degree.
They also, the ultra-Orthodox don't want to go serve in the army.
They, they, like, try to hide behind this guise of, well, we need to be studying the Torah.
We can't be, you know, go off and fighting.
The Supreme Court has denied that and said, you know, that's not really a good reason.
If you're an Israeli and you, you are part of this, this, this country, you need to serve.
It's what everybody does.
And so they're trying to get some sweetheart deals out of that, where they won't have to serve in the military.
It's, it's, These things are also severely right-wing stuff that would also hurt the security of Israel as a country itself.
So all those things.
There's so many different factions here that are putting pressure on Netanyahu who doesn't have enough of a mandate to say no to anybody.
I hope we pay attention and I hope and I pray that the people who listen to the show are paying attention to it as well.
I think you are.
Pay attention to what France has been doing.
Pay attention to what's happening in Israel.
bill of rights and they'd be like yeah we don't listen to you anymore poof there you go i i hope we pay attention and i i hope and i pray that the people who listen to the show are paying attention to it as well i think you are pay attention to what france has been doing pay attention to what's happening in israel like we are going to have to get ready to be in the streets like this by the way natural transition here not even a hard segue nick you know to go from troubles in israel with so-called judicial reform to country music uh
Nick, the number two song in the United States right now, Number two overall is a little ditty by a guy named Jason Aldean.
And for those who don't know, Jason Aldean is one of those country music guys who wears his hat and, you know, has a designer pick out these skin-tight, like, snap-up shirts.
He looks like an idiot.
Jason Aldean has this song called, quote, Try That in a Small Town.
Now, critics have said that Try That in a Small Town is more or less a song that is a Simulated lynching.
But Nick, I'm going to read the lyrics to this real fast.
Let's just take a look.
Let's let's make up our minds for ourselves.
Sucker punch somebody on the sidewalk.
Carjack an old lady at a red light.
Pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store.
You think it's cool.
Well, act a fool if you like.
Cuss out a cop.
Spit in his face.
Stomp on the flag and light it up.
Yeah, you think you're tough.
Well, try that in a small town.
See how far you make it down the road.
Around here, we take care of our own.
You cross that line.
It won't take long for you to find out.
I recommend you don't try that in a small town.
One last verse.
Got a gun that my granddad gave me.
They say one day they're going to round up.
Well, that shit might fly in the city.
Good luck.
Try that in a small town.
How about that?
That's just a good old slice of Americana, isn't it?
I mean, he knows what he's doing.
He knows what he's doing.
Yeah, he is evoking all sorts of, you know, pre-civil rights movement southern towns, where you couldn't be out at night if you were, you know, if you knew what was good for you.
It really is disgusting, and you know what?
They did shout him down, and I think, you know, it was heard to some degree that there was a little backlash to that, but yeah, it's just intolerance, really, you know?
I think what he's trying to sell here and tap into And to make it worse, it's like it's commercialized where he's going to benefit monetarily from the song.
Man, I got a lot to say on this.
First of all, it sucks.
It's bad music.
I just want to put that out there.
Second of all, I was raised on country music, and I gotta tell you, watching it become this cultural, right-wing, white, patriarchal signifier has been a real upsetting thing, particularly as somebody who was raised up on Willie and Kris Kristofferson and the like.
You know, there's always been Merle Haggards and stuff like that, but he was just, like, a grouchy old asshole.
For the most part, like, a lot of this stuff, like, this is an absolute aberration of the art form.
But I will go ahead and say another thing here.
I come from a small town.
Like, the type of stuff that these people who buy these jacked-up giant trucks, that most of them are middle class, most of them are suburban, they want to believe that they're from a small town.
Uh, the idea that you take care of your own in a small town, uh, that's not true.
You, you, you kind of let everybody starve on their own and you, you maybe occasionally will help somebody every now and then.
The idea that these, these, uh, it's a fantasy.
Do you remember, Nick, during the BLM protest, there were all these towns that got word that the BLM rioters were coming their town and they were ready for them.
They were, you know, they had their guns ready.
They were ready for him to come through town.
And then, Nick, what happened?
Nobody showed up and what was happening is they were living in their fantasies.
They have been so amped up by Fox and Trump and right-wing media and podcasts and music.
They have a fantasy that people are going to show up and they're going to have to deal with them.
Much like that couple outside of St.
Louis who showed up with their guns because they thought they were going to have to protect their house.
People live in these fantasies, and what has happened in country music and this parallel economy that I've talked about, this right-wing, red-state America economy, it's about selling this stuff back to people so they can live in their own fantasy.
It used to be about driving your Ford F-150 with a bottle of Patron out to the middle of nowhere, dancing with your best girl.
Now it has been changed to doing all of that, but maybe shooting somebody.
Maybe going ahead and cocking off and beating somebody until they die.
It is a fantasy that prepares people for violence.
And again, it's just bad music in general.
Yeah, we all saw First Blood.
That was a good example of that there.
But Kyle Rittenhouse is probably the poster child for this.
Yes!
Think about what that was.
So BLM protests were going on in Milwaukee.
And so, you know, you're supposed to rely on the police.
The police are trained in these things and they know how to... Oh, they know how to hurt protesters.
I mean, at least there's the sheen of that.
But think about what all those people did across the country when they were bringing their AR-15s and they were going to march the streets as if they were some sheriff posse.
And then what happens?
He ends up shooting two people.
This is what leads to that.
He never should have been on the streets.
He never should have had that gun anyway and marching around.
But he was convinced, based on things like this, that he was ordained to be able to keep the peace.
And that's a real problem.
By the way, I can't believe that I'm somehow advocating for, like, the police, you know, as the real good guys.
But I don't know.
Every once in a while, they'll do some good stuff, or they do keep the peace.
But nonetheless, they're the ones legally empowered to do that, not these assholes who want to, you know, grab their play, you know, toys and lethal guns and start shooting at people.
Well, insecure dudes.
That's what they want.
They want to do this.
They want to play cowboy.
They want to play working class.
It's all a fantasy.
It all is.
It's a power fantasy to make up for how they feel insecure about themselves and they feel like that they've lost something or whatever.
And as a result, there is no end to the amount of money that will be made from this stuff.
It is a money making machine.
And what does it do?
It creates fantasies like what Kyle Rittenhouse had.
That's exactly what it does.
All right.
On that note, everybody, we're going to be back on Friday with the weekender edition of the Milk Crate Podcast.
A reminder, Patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
Not only to get the full episode, but to now go ahead and participate in our question and answer segments that are going to be part of our weekender episodes going forward.
That's patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
I'm going to post the links of that right after this show.
Also, you can email us at muckrakepodcast at gmail.com.
I'm looking forward to that.
Looking forward to hearing from you all.
If you need us before then, you can find Nick at Can You Hear Me?
