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Aug. 22, 2023 - The Muckrake Political Podcast

01:03:50

GOP Debate Prep And Liv Agar Interview on Politics In Barbie

Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the upcoming debate- DON'T MISS our live show immediately afterwards, only available to Patreon subscribers at http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast. Jared then does an interview with Liv Agar from the QAnon Anonymous Podcast to discuss why people just love talking about politics in this modern moment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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	Hey everybody.
	Welcome to the Muckrake Podcast.
	I'm Jerry J. Sexton.
	My friend Nick Hausman.
	You are back at your home base.
	You survived a cruise.
	You survived wildfires.
	You had a hurricane in the midst of the hurricane.
	You had an earthquake.
	You look seasoned.
	You look wizened.
	I'm glad that you're alright.
	Yes, I believe there's got to be a term for having dealt with all of that in a week.
	I don't know what it would be.
	The whole enchilada, perhaps?
	It's the final destination experience, is what it is.
	But I gotta tell you, the rains in LA were like a normal rainy day, pretty much, and there was no winds.
	And the earthquake, it was a nice little, you know, cherry on top of the sundae there.
	But other than that, it was not a problem.
	You know, I think the biggest issue, I think, was in Palm Springs, which looked like, you know, a hellscape.
	But other than that, hopefully people there are okay.
	It looked tough.
	I gotta tell you, a hurricane hitting California and an earthquake hitting at the same time, if this is a simulation, it's getting a little wonky, is all I'll say.
	Yeah, and if you need more proof of climate change, I don't know what else to offer you.
	I don't know what else to offer everybody else either.
	Listen, we got a jam-packed show.
	We're going to preview the first Republican primary debate.
	I also was lucky enough to sit down with Liv Agar of the QAnon Anonymous podcast to talk about their recent article.
	That will be in a little bit.
	But a reminder, this Wednesday, August 23rd, Nick and I are going to host a live stream post-debate coverage and analysis.
	The thing starts on Fox News at 9 p.m.
	Eastern.
	It's going to be a late night.
	Nick and I are ready for it.
	I'm going to be hitting the Red Bulls.
	I'm going to be double-fisting them as we're starting the analysis.
	But we hope that you will join us.
	Go over to patreon.com slash Mike Craig Podcast.
	To join us for that post-debate analysis, which you're not going to find anywhere else, but also to gain access to our weekly Weekender show, which, Nick, they can now, as patrons, leave us voicemails, send us messages, which is a reminder to our patrons to send us voicemails, send us messages for the Weekender episode on Friday.
	Love it.
	Please do it.
	We love to get questions.
	Alright everybody, we are entering into the primary season.
	We've heard a lot of talking, we've seen a lot of finger-pointing.
	My god, I think Ron DeSantis has basically gone through an entire staff at this point and brought on a new one.
	We're going to Milwaukee for this debate.
	It is already sort of unsettling the field that is here.
	Donald Trump has come out truth social gab, gab, gabber.
	He truth socialed, quote, New CBS poll just out has me leading the field by quote legendary numbers.
	He lists all of them.
	He says the public knows who I am and what a successful presidency I had with energy independence, strong borders and military, biggest ever tax and regulation cuts, no inflation, strongest economy in history.
	So much bullshit and much more.
	I will therefore not be doing the debates.
	The big dog.
	Nick is not going to step on the stage.
	Before we get into the actual debates, what a heavy, heavy shadow that is looming over this whole thing.
	Yeah, and he's right.
	You know, whoever is advising him not to go there is giving him good advice.
	There's no reason for him to show up.
	You think so?
	So let's take Trump out of the equation, the awfulness of Donald Trump.
	Do you think it's the right move for him not to participate in these debates?
	I mean, I think it's very conventional faking, which I don't normally have, but that would be when you're this far ahead of the field, there isn't anything to gain from showing up, especially when you have an appointment to sit behind a desk in Tucker Carlson's country home and go one-on-one with him.
	I love that he's going to go on with Tucker Carlson, whose—his ratings have just absolutely plummeted.
	No one's watching Tucker whatsoever, and so Trump is going to go dame him with his appearance.
	I wonder if that's going to air at the same time.
	I wonder if it's going to come out.
	Like, you know, petty, petty stuff right there.
	I wonder if it's the right move.
	I think what we're going to see in this, and we'll preview it in a little bit with the participants, I think somebody's going to get a bump from this thing.
	I don't know that it's going to be significant, but the media loves a horse race, Nick.
	And, you know, where Donald Trump really, being shined isn't the right word, where he festered in 2016 is when he got on stage with all these people and absolutely humiliated Jeb and Little Marco and Lying Ted.
	You know, and he got on there and bullied them.
	I have to imagine at some point or another, he is going to have to get on stage and replay the greatest hits.
	And I kind of wonder if that's going to come sooner or later.
	You know, it is a good point.
	Perhaps he'll let the field thin out a little bit before he does that.
	I mean, do we know how many debates are going to end up happening?
	Too many.
	The answer is too many.
	There's going to be too many debates.
	And the list of the participants isn't really even clear, even for this one, and we're two days out, right?
	No, we still are not exactly sure who is going to participate.
	There is a core group of people who are, I'm not going to say the actual contenders, but we've got a core group of people right now who are going to participate, and then there's like a few on the sort of outskirts that possibly could get in.
	Yeah and you know I keep saying this I want to be acknowledged that I called it way early and that is that Vivek Ramaswamy is a guy who is I know the numbers are 8% or 9% at this point but he's coming from like 2% like two and a half months ago so that kind of you know especially when you have a guy like Ron DeSantis he's going to suck up all of those numbers as he is just I mean, I just watched a movie where somebody jumped out.
	Oh, I know.
	I watched Lethal Weapon.
	In the very beginning, she jumps off of the top of the hotel, whatever, and then they have a POV.
	That is, I couldn't help but think of DeSantis watching that shot on the way there.
	It's bad.
	I'll tell you, and we'll get into the individual candidates here in a second.
	Vivek is concerning.
	In a lot of different ways.
	I know that's not shocking that there's somebody in the GOP primary field who has troubling beliefs and a presentation that will hurt America.
	But yeah, I have to imagine this reminds me a lot of 2012.
	And for those who maybe weren't paying as close of attention, the 2012 GOP primary was an absolute debacle.
	And about once every week or two weeks, the spotlight shone on another contender.
	Everybody knew that Mitt Romney was probably going to end up being the Republican nominee, but the idea of having Romney as your flag bearer was just so awful.
	That they were like, I don't know, maybe Ben Carson could do it.
	Well, Newt Gingrich can do it.
	Newt, what do you have to offer?
	And Newt's like, I want bases on the moon.
	It's like, oh, okay.
	Well, you know, and there were, there was a period there where it sort of like went around and around and around.
	I feel like all of them are going to touch the football at some point.
	Everybody's going to get their hand on the football.
	Everybody's going to get to carry it for a couple of days.
	But Donald Trump at some point or another is going to, I have to assume, he's going to want the spotlight of the debate, and he's going to want to come in and just basically, you know, just come in and just clean house.
	That probably is what's going to happen, but I will go ahead and throw something out here, Nick.
	Trump looks bad right now.
	And I don't mean, like, perception-wise.
	I mean physically bad.
	And I said on an earlier episode of this show, you know, people keep asking me, they say, Jared, is there any way that Trump isn't going to win the nomination?
	Do you think he's going to go to prison?
	And I keep saying, I know that Trump, like, he's supposedly healthy as a horse.
	He's a big dude in his 70s, you know, he doesn't, that we know of, have any major illnesses.
	This stuff, like how many indictments, how many trials, how much focus is on him, I have to imagine at some point or another it takes a physical toll.
	And right now, he looks bad, he sounds bad.
	I would not be shocked if that ends up becoming part of this campaign.
	Fascinating.
	I mean, to me, I don't know if he looks any worse.
	He looks bad all the time, do not get me wrong.
	Yeah, and then sounds any worse than what we've heard in, you know, whatever.
	He's never read off of a teleprompter very well, you know, and we've seen the last one he did.
	It's just, he just seems to struggle as if he is in pain, there's no question, but I think, to me, it was always the pain of his brain needing to read and then make an awful move.
	His brain repelling in terror from the necessity of reading words.
	Yeah, exactly.
	That's true.
	That's what I pick up on, but you know what?
	There's no question that, yes, these things are going to take a toll on him.
	Maybe even financially, one day, if things go the way they're supposed to go.
	But, yeah, it's, to have to go, just the prospects of having to go through all this again for the third time is just, it's going to make me age and make me feel worse.
	I completely agree, and I'm already tired.
	I am, again, and this is sort of the, it's the two-sided nature of this.
	The reason why we're doing a political podcast, besides trying to educate and get information out there, is also we're political sickos.
	We're interested in this stuff, right?
	And to watch, like, the first debate of the Republican primary, my God, is it going to be awful.
	Like, hearing what these people have to say, I mean, we were talking about before we started recording, I mean, Hunter Biden's going to get mentioned as many times as Donald Trump in this debate, probably.
	Like, this is going to be just a brain-rotting affair.
	But, at the same time, you do want to watch this, because this is where the rubber meets the road.
	This is where you learn what the campaign's going to look like.
	You can feel things start to shift.
	You can start to see the party sort of at war with itself, what narratives are working, what issues are working.
	I'm fascinated by it in a way that it's like, you know, when somebody would say, I want you to look under this rock and you're like, Oh, I don't know if I want to look under the rock.
	Oh, okay.
	I'll look under the rock.
	And you're like, Oh God, I knew it was going to be terrible.
	That's what this is.
	Yeah, to me, it's even more like, this milk smells funny, taste it.
	Yeah, yeah, this tastes terrible, try it.
	Yeah, please, try some.
	Here's what's interesting to me, because what made me cringe, I don't know, six months ago, thinking about this, would be, you know, we know that they have to go to new depths, right?
	They have to find new ways to get back in the news and to outdo each other in the culture wars.
	Well, it's been kind of quiet with the trans stuff recently, right?
	It feels like they've kind of... I don't know if the polling has indicated that it's not really a winner, but that is... Nationally, they're not touching that stuff right now.
	They're letting that go.
	Actually, I'm glad you brought this up.
	I think the Ron DeSantis failure as a candidate has partnered with a few like major election and referendum losses to show that like there's only so far that you can take that particular type of politics nationally because it's not popular.
	They're doing it still in the states.
	And you know, there's a ton of people in states, educators, gay people, trans people, who are absolutely getting bulldozed left and right and their lives are being put on the line.
	Nationally, you can almost hear the consultants being like, well, you can hint at it, you know, like every now and then you can make like a little joke about, you know, my pronouns are attack helicopter or whatever the dumb shit they say.
	But it has gotten to the point where the Ron DeSantis failure has gotten so large that it has actually sort of rippled out across the national sort of landscape.
	It's so weird though because it's like everybody knows this is really competition for, I don't know what, second place, vice presidency, something.
	Because they're simply, it's over, right?
	We know this is over and Trump is going to get the nomination.
	I think everyone seems to agree that that's what's going to happen regardless of this you know playtime we're having with the other people.
	Possibly.
	I mean there are a lot of narratives taking place here but a lot of them are waiting and again I said this earlier I see a scenario out there where we get well you get up on the on the west coast you know and like we all get up hours earlier because you're so many hours behind and it's just like Trump ain't there anymore.
	You know what I mean?
	And it's just like, all of a sudden, wave the bloody shirt is what it becomes.
	How many constitutional scholars right now, Nick, are trying to get Trump off the ballot in November?
	Like, how many people are spending their entire lives Doing that right.
	It doesn't have to be them.
	The people who really matter for that would be the governors, and we have Gavin Newsom in my state who also wakes up with me.
	You're kind of accusing me of waking up late, I suppose.
	Gavin Newsom!
	I gotta tell you, it's like a lawyer chasing ambulances.
	Like, he is gonna get all over everything he possibly can.
	Yeah.
	And so he is now trying to make that happen where he won't be eligible to be on the ballot into California.
	I mean, it's an easy win for him because in Newsflash, Jared, he ain't winning California and he ain't getting close to winning.
	He'll lose by 20 million votes.
	So it almost doesn't really matter.
	But, you know, It would be nice if that could maybe start the the ice breaking where other states where if you get you know if you're convicted of a felony we're not going to put you in the ballot and granted he could get a write-in votes I think even in that case but you know that it's a little harder to have to write it in and then submit it It's a lot.
	Okay, so let's look, let's look at the field.
	And a reminder, this Wednesday, August 23rd, once this debate is over, Nick and I are going to go live.
	I hope that you will join us.
	Again, this thing starts at 9 p.m.
	Eastern.
	My guess is it'll go an hour and a half, two hours, and then we're going to be live with the after the debate analysis.
	Again, go to patreon.com slash my great podcast so you can tune in.
	Nick, the field.
	First off, we gotta start with Ron DeSantis.
	And I gotta tell you, he has a lot to show in this debate, and in general.
	This right here, with all of the momentum moving against Ron DeSantis, because he is absolutely detestable, he has all of the charisma as a painful breakup, Like, this guy is flailing so poorly, and to put him out in front of the world and make him sit with all these people, and you better believe that they're all coming after him.
	Um, this is a Mad Max and the Thunderdome situation.
	And I don't think he has it.
	I think it's going to be a particularly rough affair for him.
	And let's just say I've seen a lot of campaigns that have ended before a single ballot has been counted.
	You know, it's funny that you have to picture DeSantis participating because, not that they ever discussed it not showing up, but this is going to be eight on one.
	And it's going to be interesting because, you know, if any, they asked him about this leaked memo, right?
	Did you hear this thing about Yeah, so people who don't know, his Super PAC, Never Back Down, published a memo on their website, which is how Super PACs communicate with their candidates.
	They can't communicate directly, but they'll put this out there, and yeah, they put this out there for all the world to see.
	Oh, I thought it was a mistake.
	No, no, no.
	They put this stuff out there hoping that nobody will notice except for the campaign.
	Interesting.
	Yeah.
	Well, either way, you know, it just sort of was like a weird rudimentary way of going about how they think he should be campaigning.
	I pray to God that his real prep is nothing like what was in this thing.
	But the main piece of advice, by the way, Nick, To go ahead, for people who haven't heard about this story, their main piece of advice for DeSantis was twofold.
	One, protect Donald Trump, which... Okay.
	And number two, attack Vivek.
	That was their main piece of advice, which is a bad strategy all the way around.
	This is not what DeSantis should be doing, and if he takes orders like he's been taking orders to be more personable and be more of a human, it could be bad.
	Right.
	He shouldn't definitely mention that he came from another planet and is an alien among us, imitating a human, because that would... Actually, you know what?
	That would be more... Maybe I'd be interested in that.
	That would almost be compelling!
	If he came out and he was like, people, I'm actually a reptilian.
	I'm still figuring this human stuff out.
	I'd be like, you know what?
	We might need to give this guy another chance.
	That makes sense.
	We go a much farther way of explaining everything than what we're left to now.
	So, absolutely, that would be something that would get a lot of ratings, for sure.
	So hopefully that happens.
	Maybe.
	But they asked him about it, and he just, sort of the look on his face in the Frozen, he just, he wasn't prepped to answer any questions.
	about that so i don't think he's going to be prepped very well for the debate itself it doesn't seem like he's got anybody behind him remember i did call they were to fire his you know newbie campaign manager and that happened a few weeks ago so um you know it's going to be it there's no end in sight to how far he's going to fall again this will be the lethal weapon leap off of the uh the balcony onto the onto the top of a car
	so this is a fox news hosted debate and fox news wants ron desantis to be the nominee in this so bad they can taste it They're gonna throw softballs to him.
	And the softballs are gonna be like, Ron, how did you know you loved your wife?
	You know, it's gonna be, it's gonna be really embarrassing.
	And here's the thing.
	Ron DeSantis is so bad at politics that that will be too much for him.
	That will be a hard question and he'll probably come out swinging.
	I don't think it'll be good.
	I think that this is a person who has the entire world on their shoulders.
	And by the way, speaking of people who are coming out swinging, this is also going to be a major debate for Chris Christie.
	And he is going to come out hard.
	And he is going to come out with a lot of anger and a lot of violence.
	This is what he didn't do, for the record, in 2016.
	He went after Marco Rubio and basically ended his campaign.
	But Chris Christie, I think, is going to come out of the corner charging like hell.
	Yeah, which I feel like that's what he did with Marco, you know, and I think the question is in these kind of debates when it's all GOP, it's not easy to make that happen because the way they ask the questions, the way they keep it, like there's not a lot of open space in there to do what Christie did.
	He was great at that.
	And, you know, he already had a great line about it when they asked him, oh, another Florida politician with canned answers, you know, coming at me.
	Like, how well did that go last time?
	So, there's no question he could be the knockout blow that gets, you know, DeSantis out of there.
	It doesn't help Christie's numbers at all, by the way.
	So, but it'll be helpful to perhaps get the field smaller.
	You know, I think a lot of people in this field are looking at Ron DeSantis.
	It's almost like Sonic the Hedgehog.
	And it's like, when he's running around and he hits an obstacle and all the coins go flying, they want those coins so bad!
	And they need to hit him hard and end it and put it out.
	Chris Christie, the only people who support Chris Christie, for the record, are people like Joe Scarborough.
	They are Republicans turned liberal collaborators.
	Those are the only people.
	And they all live in New York City.
	They all live in that corridor up there.
	Nobody's interested in voting for Chris Christie for the GOP nomination or for president.
	And I think he thinks they are, but they're just not.
	The memo did have one kind of not a bad thing where they were going to hit Christie with saying, hey, you know, none of us here should be out here auditioning for an MSNBC, you know, commentator role.
	And they're clearly me and Christie.
	So that's that's not bad.
	Like they've got to give him a little bit of credit for it.
	It's fine.
	But when it happens, Chris Christie is going to reach into Ron DeSantis's sternum and pull out his spinal cord.
	We will be prepared for that because it's the only thing that Chris Christie has.
	Next up, Vivek Ramaswamy, who has had a little bit of the spotlight simply because he's younger, he's really, really online.
	But lately, Nick, I don't know if you've been following this.
	He's been asked a lot of questions about things like 9-11.
	He's been giving some really interesting answers about how many federal employees or agents were on the flights having to do with 9-11.
	He's a weird dude.
	He's a very, very weird dude, but he's also young.
	He's also dynamic, which on this stage is going to make him stand out.
	I would not be shocked if either one of two things happens with Vivek.
	Either he has an outstanding performance and he gets his time in the limelight.
	He's polling in third in most polls right now.
	So either he has a standout performance and or everybody says, who in the hell is this person on the stage?
	And they beat the living shit out of him.
	And on the other side of it, he doesn't look like he has any viability whatsoever.
	I would be surprised if that second part happened.
	I think that the way he speaks very quickly, and a lot of times people who speak quickly, they get this reputation as being very smart.
	And I don't necessarily know if he's really that smart, but he's able to form sentences in a way that makes you feel that way.
	But when you actually parse the words out, you realize this guy is not saying anything.
	I mean like like just to throw the the chance thing back there because it reminded me of he's speaking of canned answers by the way this guy yeah got the canned answer for everything and his brain works well enough where he can keep it all compartmentalized and bring you know call it up and double click it when he needs it um but his trans stuff is like you know he he He characterizes it as people who have mental issues, mental problems, but not the sense that people who are transitioning need mental support, which is true.
	He characterizes it as they need to be reprogrammed back into how they were originally.
	That's the issue here.
	Yeah, Vivek is one of the original woke mind virus people.
	Like, he literally, that's how he gained all of this, and the reason he's doing this is the same reason why a lot of these losers are involved in the first place, is it's just about raising your profile.
	You know?
	It's just about getting out there, it's getting interviews, it's selling books, it's all of that.
	Yeah, so what do you, do you think he'll show up decently?
	It seems like that's where you're leaning here.
	Yeah, I think that DeSantis continues to crash.
	I think Vivek will end up getting a bump out of this, you know.
	I mean, the rest of the stream isn't anybody.
	Nikki Haley does not have... Nikki Haley's got nothing.
	No.
	And she would have by now if they would have, if she did.
	And so she's not... Mike Pence is, I suppose, the wild card out of here.
	Tim Scott... No!
	No one is allowed on the Muckrake podcast to refer to Mike Pence as a quote, wild card.
	Never.
	No.
	This is a bowl of melted vanilla ice cream.
	This is the man that had a fly land on his head.
	Listen, I keep saying that Mike Pence's campaign slogan should be, hang Mike Pence.
	That's the only way that he could gain any favor.
	I actually have been thinking about it, Nick.
	I think he should borrow Joe Biden's phrase, finish the job.
	Just come out and just be like, finish the job, everybody.
	But when you say, hang Mike Pence, like, it's a picture of him, like, hanging up a picture of Mike Pence.
	It's his vice presidential portrait.
	Yeah, Pence, it's going to be strange because he's going to come out on Wednesday.
	He's going to defend Donald Trump on one hand and then immediately go after him.
	He's going to, I mean, how many times is he going to call himself too honest?
	Is what he's going to do.
	An absolute loser.
	Tim Scott is a loser.
	We're not going to talk about Hutchinson.
	We're not going to spend our time doing that.
	You know who we're going to talk about, Nick?
	Who I think is going to win the debate?
	Doug Burnham.
	I'm sorry, Doug Burgum.
	So Doug Burgum, apparently, who is the governor of North Dakota, I'm told, is going to be there.
	Supposedly, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez might be there.
	Businessman Perry Johnson might be there.
	I really don't think that they will be.
	Yeah, just a big old field of losers is what this is, who are going to go out and come at each other with hatchets.
	Yeah, but it's still weird because all those people apparently have gotten 40,000 individual contributors.
	That's a lot to get, you know, from people who are completely, you know, have no cachet out there.
	You know, it goes back to what I said.
	There's like this season of American politics where every strategist and communications director gets out and finds somebody and takes them to a steakhouse and says, you know what, I think you could be president.
	And there's a small period of time when they're wasting everyone's money and everyone's time where they convince roughly 40,000 people.
	Like, yeah, you know what?
	I think Nikki Haley has what it takes to go all the way.
	But I gotta tell you, I look at this thing...
	I think the only people it looks like who could possibly have a decent night, and I'll make these predictions very quickly.
	I could see people coming out of it saying that Chris Christie had a good night because he went out and stomped Ron DeSantis.
	I could see that happening.
	And then they're going to pick some sort of What I would call middle-of-the-road candidate.
	They'll say Nikki Haley or Tim Scott seemed presidential.
	Like, they love that stuff.
	They'll say, oh, maybe they'll appeal to whoever, and maybe they'll go up in some points as Ron DeSantis, like, loses some air out of his punctured balloon.
	But I don't see anybody walking out of this thing as, like, a new-era parent.
	Do you?
	I know.
	I think that they're just all so far behind that it really is hard.
	But, you know, I don't know.
	Like, I'm trying to picture in a scenario where, like, somebody has an epic rant and really gets the crowd going and then, you know, the worst thing about all this is that every single one of them is going to declare that they won.
	Oh, of course.
	Yes.
	You know, and then it's a battle.
	That's the battle, right?
	Like, who won?
	Ron DeSantis is going to come out in front of the spin room with with dried tears on his face.
	With just a disheveled, rumpled look about him and just be like, I think we won.
	I think we made our case very, very clear.
	Florida's where what goes to die.
	And people are going to be like, that's great, Ron.
	That's excellent.
	Yeah.
	And to be fair, we've gotten beyond that where that doesn't last very long.
	And it really does become clear, I think, like who really does, who gets the extra minutes after the debate on those live hits and stuff like that.
	But yeah, it ain't gonna be Ron DeSantis.
	I'll tell you that.
	I don't see any scenario where he's gonna come back and figure out a way to, like, put a mark on this debate and, you know, raise his profile at all.
	This is an absolute glass-jawed asshole who's walking into a room where everybody's carrying socks full of quarters.
	That means Vivek.
	It's Vivek's debate to win, I'm telling you.
	Unless people see Vivek as the number three, because that's the thing.
	DeSantis is the number two.
	You gotta go after him.
	You gotta try and start peeling off some Trump voters.
	Like you basically, the argument that you have to make is that And I'm talking, and again, I hate giving strategy advice to these people, but you gotta say Donald Trump was a great leader, and there's just too much going on, and somebody needs to fight for him, and somebody needs to fight for you.
	We need to talk about the future.
	You gotta peel off some Trump voters.
	You gotta try and destroy DeSantis.
	You gotta hope that Vivek doesn't pick up anything.
	I could see Christie getting a bounce from this.
	I could see that happening, sure.
	You know, and just before we wrap this up, so Vivek, I missed this.
	Is he a 9-11 truther?
	I'm not sure.
	But I'll tell you, the more that people are talking to Vivek, his plans, if anybody hasn't looked into this stuff, because like you said, he talks so fast, he goes on so many appearances or whatever.
	Basically, his plan for the United States of America is to get rid of everything that keeps anybody alive.
	It's like on Inauguration Day, he would basically be going into hospitals unplugging people.
	I mean, he is He's a real piece of work, and I have to assume that he's going to lay that all on the line.
	And I'm sensing you don't want me to read the quote that I see now on my screen.
	Oh, go ahead.
	Give it to.
	All right.
	Here's what the Atlantic is reporting, he said, which is no reason to doubt the Atlantic.
	He goes, quote, I think it is legitimate to say how many police, how many federal agents were on the planes that hit the Twin Towers.
	Maybe the answer is zero.
	It probably is zero for all I know.
	Right.
	I have no reason to think it was anything other than zero.
	But this is the Tucker Carlson thing where we're just asking questions.
	I'm just asking questions!
	Wow.
	But, you know, again, that's the wrong question.
	If he's trying to tap into that market, and believe me, I know that pretty well, the federal agents on the plane isn't where you'd be going with that.
	And that's weird.
	So I think he got confused or something like that.
	I think he gets confused often.
	On that note, I can't wait.
	Again, to be an observer of how this stuff works, we'll get a decent idea of where this process is going, where the primary is going, what the discussions, what the narratives, what the arguments are going to be.
	That is this Wednesday.
	Go to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast in order to join us on Wednesday night immediately after the debates.
	All right, everybody, let's go to my conversation with Liv Agar.
	All right, everybody, I am here with Liv Agar, a vlogger, a streamer.
	You know them from the QAnon Anonymous podcast.
	We're here to talk about a recent article in Liv's newsletter over at Substack, the new Barbie movie and why we can't stop talking about politics.
	Liv, I hope that you are as excited as I am that we get to talk about what we talk about when we talk about talking about politics.
	Yes, no.
	I love talking about people talking about politics.
	That's my favorite pastime.
	It's a fantastic pastime.
	It's what we're here to do.
	I highly, highly recommend Liv's newsletter.
	I'm a big fan.
	This article, Liv, touched on something that I couldn't wait to talk to you about it because It's such a very, very specific topic that I feel like is hugely important.
	And you and I as podcasters, vloggers, all that stuff, obviously we're engaging and talking about politics constantly.
	Basically every week that passes by we're trying to find things to say about what is happening.
	There's an entire industry and industries around the industries of it.
	And meanwhile, what are we doing a lot of the time is just moving chairs around watching as things get worse.
	I felt like you encapsulated the idea that is really, really important here.
	Can you can you kind of distill it down a little bit and give an introduction to the listeners?
	Yeah, so I think the main background for the piece relates to something I had thought of coming out of watching the Barbie movie and looking at a lot of people's reactions to it, which is, this seems to be a growing phenomenon.
	I don't know if it's necessarily new, but why do people seem to increasingly act out and think about their politics through media consumption?
	This seemingly pointless Action of just like, I go to the movie theater and I get my enjoyment and then I leave.
	How has that turned into what seems like a central, both like a symbolic act of like, this represents my politics, but then even like the act itself of doing politics.
	Like, yep, I did that thing.
	I enjoyed it.
	Now it's time to go home.
	And it made me think about the connection and the relationship to like, you know, Anyone who is like a little bit too online will kind of see this, especially on Twitter, the desire to kind of bang your head over and over again on kind of political ideas with other people and argue with them.
	And it seemed like there was an odd connection there with those two things.
	We like to think that our political discussions are kind of raising awareness of ideas and like, well, we're changing people's minds.
	But if you reflect upon years and years of discussion, how much of that is the case and what does it mean for actual political organizing?
	It's a little bit pessimistic because there are definitely certain examples where You can convince someone and they join a local union, join a local political party and make some positive political change.
	But for the most part, it seems to be almost an act of self-harm.
	That seems oddly similar to that act of consumption of like, I did this thing, it felt like I did something good, and that is how I decide on what my main source of political action is.
	Yeah, I think it's an interesting thing, right?
	Because it's, there's so many things happening on so many levels here.
	First of all, it's going to a movie on a Friday night, getting a Slurpee, getting your popcorn, you walk out of it, the movie, I mean, Barbie is a political movie.
	It was obviously written with political purposes behind it, which I want to talk about the marketing of that later, because The market has decided it can make an incredible amount of money by playing into the aspect of talking about politics and having people feel like by consuming or streaming or whatever it is that we used to do for fun, it now somehow or another gives us sort of an added component.
	Like you're paying for the ticket to go to the movie, to have the good time, to have that escapism, but you're still coming out as if you ate your broccoli?
	As if, you know, you had a side of green vegetables with your candy and it feels almost like it both, like, gives you the experience but also the simulation of having done something wholesome or active or productive.
	Yeah, it's as I think I said, it's like talking about politics without the bad parts of it.
	Yeah.
	And I think what the central connection is probably the notion of awareness and spreading awareness as a kind of...
	Primary mechanism of doing politics, a kind of Coney 2012 attitude to politics.
	I think there's a sense in which, of course, people need to be aware of things for them to be able to act.
	But it almost seems as if the overemphasis on it is a coping mechanism for the fact that it feels, at least, like it's all we can do.
	Is make other people aware of things.
	And I think in the context of talking about politics, especially when it's a more aggressive conversation, that ends up just being kind of an outlet for powerlessness that is relatively useless.
	So you can say, well, I'm so frustrated because of my powerlessness that I'm going to spend that psychic energy in a way that's productive.
	But in reality, it's not particularly productive.
	You end up just banging your head against someone else and then the dust settles and then you walk away and you're both like, oh, I was doing my politics.
	You have a quote here that I wanted to get.
	It's, quote, when class domination has become ubiquitous, the only room for conflict is that of an interpersonal nature.
	And the idea of the powerlessness, this is something, unfortunately, we try.
	Maybe it's not the best idea as a podcast promotion to talk about powerlessness in the current market-dominated world all that much, but you kind of have to.
	And we have gotten to the point where, you know, for I don't know about you, it's like whenever people talk about the left is gaining too much power, it's like the left is non-existent.
	It's not real.
	It's a loose conglomeration of things and a fantasy of fear from the center and the right.
	But the idea here is largely that we're talking about this stuff.
	We're expressing the desires that we supposedly have, what we want the world to look like and feel like, without much of the actual force of getting things done.
	Because going to see Barbie, I mean, you can go with your friends to see Barbie.
	Maybe you're posting online with your friends, and maybe you're having a decent time on there, but you're not creating political movements, you're not really engaging in all that much solidarity, if any, and you're just kind of, you're participating in a simulation of something that, as you say in this article, maybe it might feel good, but it's not necessarily building and or going anywhere.
	Yeah, it's exercising a range of freedom that's conferred to you by market choices.
	In capitalism, you have this freedom to take your money to market however you choose.
	Also, you have the freedom to sign up for whatever labor contract you should get into.
	A lot of political discussions, and this is maybe another thing we can talk about, is the nature of a lot of How people talk about politics seems to kind of tacitly admit that, well, this is the only thing I can really affect is people's individual market decisions.
	It's problematic if you look at this film, people who ex-author are not good or whatever.
	Or even the example I thought of, or I was thinking of and used in the piece was, is it bourgeois to pay someone to clean your house?
	Right?
	Because you could maybe argue, especially if you're being shitty to your housekeeping and paying them a lower amount, that you're a pretty shitty human being and you're using the power of capital to push someone into doing something they don't want to.
	But it doesn't say much necessarily about Your relationship to class in the Marxist sense.
	The articulation there is more like someone is using the market in a shitty way to push people around, not related to the production of profit.
	And I don't like it and they should stop doing it.
	There's this admittance that all the freedom we can really have in these discussions relates to you should bring your money to market in a less problematic way.
	I can't remember the original thought I started this on.
	Well, I think that's really important because when you look at all of this, it's really incredible.
	And I was saying this, I was talking to a group a couple of days ago about this.
	I said, you know, if it wasn't so insidious, you would have to almost tip your cap for how ingenious it is.
	That American capitalism has created a system of powerlessness.
	We're in the face of almost intractable crises and issues.
	Things are obviously falling apart.
	We feel further away from power.
	Representative government has been almost completely corrupted.
	And meanwhile, what products you now buy, that you would buy anyway, You know, it's so funny now to be out and about and see someone order a Bud Light at a bar and look around to see who notices, you know, and whether or not there's some sort of a problem there, when what you're doing is you're buying a product that is from a major corporation, right?
	It's not actually a political act, but it is expressing something that the market has now commodified.
	I keep finding it incredible.
	That they, you know, people keep talking about woke corporations and it's like, no, they have no ideology whatsoever.
	They recognize that they can brand themselves on one side of the political spectrum or another and as a result they will segment demographics.
	They'll find certain people who will go ahead and pay money for the privilege of having that product that they probably would have bought anyway in order to express a political ideology that they may or may not actually hold.
	But they want to express, or at least to make obvious through conspicuous consumption.
	Yeah, it's interesting.
	I've seen a lot of discussion.
	You can definitely see this within culture that we no longer have a kind of unified culture.
	Canada, America, basically, same society.
	It seems like much of cultural relations are now split in a kind of partisan way, in a way that for a long time they kind of weren't.
	That's definitely true, I think, but it seems to be an articulation of a broader, almost like an increased unity behind capital.
	The fact that our culture, how we participate in politics, how we relate to each other, how we see which group of people are more deserving of our friendship, our interpersonal affection, is determined increasingly by how you bring your money to market.
	And so it feels like it's increasingly disunified, but in reality you're kind of almost leading up to an even broader and even more kind of constricting totality of science.
	And I noticed those parallel economies that grew out.
	Like for a while, you know, I'm being way too online.
	I mean, one of the biggest subjects constantly was, is there a cancel culture or is there not a cancel culture?
	And then as that was developing, a parallel economy developed for the so-called cancelled.
	And suddenly those people, many of whom, whether they were actors, comics, personalities, streamers, you name it, they suddenly became more successful than they had ever become simply because they had moved into this parallel economy.
	And so as a result, you can kind of live in whatever market that you want that expresses whatever it is that you believe that you are or your worldviews are.
	And meanwhile, we're still in the same The system, it just so happens that it's whatever fantasy we kind of want to live in at the moment.
	Yeah.
	And there's another, obviously, really important and interesting question of how this comes about.
	How autonomous is this?
	Is this just a product of an increasing class domination that's a reaction to neoliberalism?
	Or is this like CEOs who are much more kind of intentive, like we want to create A market of people who respond better to this political stuff, so let's continue to convince them that this is how they do their politics.
	In the piece, a lot of the underlying philosophy is through Theodor Adorno, who is a seminal member of the Frankfurt School, who is a philosopher that I've been reading a lot of lately and I'm very fond of, regardless of how he's quite pessimistic about the future, regardless of the fact that he's a Marxist.
	And his general conclusion, and I think this might be like with a lot of Adorno, it might be a bit hyperbolic, but his general conclusion is that large capitalist firms essentially are beginning to develop, and at this point really have fully developed, a monopoly on culture.
	And they're essentially able to impress a certain sentiment, sensibility onto people wherein they want to continually consume more forms of culture that are easily reproducible, like as if kind of culture becomes this factory that can continue to produce again and again and again consistently.
	And I think like, If you were thinking of how would you manage or produce a culture like this, if you're a large capitalist firm, going off of what is the easiest and most flashy and immediately appealing thing for people, regardless of how rational it is, I think that the answer would probably be something around convincing people or making people feel good about their enjoyment through politics.
	I think that another point he makes is that capitalists are able to do this with the underlying background of increased class oppression and domination.
	He has this comment about how television is psychoanalysis in reverse because it makes you feel good about your neuroses.
	You see someone who is neurotic like you and you're like, hey, they're like me and they're cool and I'll feel good about my neuroses.
	You know, they're being shitty in a way that I'm shitty.
	That's funny.
	And I like them now.
	And so I'll be more shitty.
	And so you come back to the, you know, the television screen, the big screen, other parts of pop culture, and you feel increasingly Emboldened for this kind of very simplistic form of cultural content provided to you that kind of takes advantage of a very surprisingly kind of infantile urge.
	And, you know, I think what's interesting about Adorno, because, you know, it's Adorno has a comment about Freud that like, the things that are most true are the exaggerations.
	I think it's also true of Adorno, even if they are exaggerations.
	One of the important parts of his analysis is that like, The culture that you exist in really is a totality in terms of how you take in sensory experience, how you comprehend your suffering and make it legible.
	And that's for kind of everyone.
	I kind of wanted to make this Maybe more clear in the piece, but it isn't like a holier-than-thou thing.
	This is a thing that we kind of always do.
	I end the piece by saying that I rate the film four angry Adorno aphorisms out of five, and that I quite enjoyed it, especially the Ryan Gosling homoerotic dance number, because I did enjoy Barbie.
	Like, I like the film.
	Yeah, I think that's the general backdrop of how I'm thinking about the issue because it's clear that some knowledge about it and the phenomena that's going on is quite useful in terms of how do we break out of this.
	situation.
	How do we come to understand that these seemingly powerful political acts that feel good are actually oftentimes relatively unproductive and we're only telling ourselves that they're political because it seems like actual politics actually having an effect and exerting power in the world in relation to our domination is so difficult.
	Um, but I, that is the problem is I don't, you know, unfortunately don't really have an answer for that.
	Well, except for, yeah.
	It's hard to have an answer.
	I think a lot about Adorno now, particularly with these streaming networks.
	And, you know, with the way that, you know, if you think about cable, cable itself was like a segmentation.
	Like, instead of having like three or four networks, you had a bunch of different networks that all, like, oh, this is the channel that deals with a 30 to 40 year old bin, you know?
	And it's like, this is the specialty.
	And now that it's coming together, We now have these streaming networks, and I have these moments, and it seems like maybe you do as well, where, like, I'll watch something, whether it's a movie like Barbie.
	We talked about it on the show last week, and, you know, my co-host Nick, he asked, like, did I like Oppenheimer or Barbie better?
	And I said, you know, Barbie was actually a hell of a good time at a movie theater, as long as I could stop Noticing how I was being manipulated politically.
	Right.
	And that's a problem now is like most of the movies and TV shows that you watch, like the corporate manipulation of politics, ideology and reality.
	It slaps you in the face.
	It's too much.
	You know, you I always say this.
	I can feel the rooms full of lawyers and brand experts and synergy advisors like telling how to do this and how to do that.
	And if you look on these streaming networks now, what you just said about like reflecting back pathologies, like they are trying to be their own cable universes where it's like, oh, you like this.
	We have this.
	We have this.
	We have that.
	And meanwhile, these corporations.
	are starting to control versions of reality much, much stronger, you know, like with a more iron fist.
	And what I worry about, and I would love to hear what you have to say about this, because I think we've gotten to the point where we both say we don't necessarily have solutions, but I think we're recognizing some of the problems.
	I see that labor and class domination have gotten to the point where historically people start pushing back.
	They start organizing.
	There are populist, small d democratic movements.
	Now, there are a lot of treats.
	And there are a lot of things to watch.
	There are a lot of things to go ahead and consume that will reflect your political ideology back to you that might keep you from being in the street.
	Or, you know, as you said, there was a quote here in the article, quote, political struggle isn't supposed to feel good.
	It is uncomfortable and often violent.
	And we talk about on this show, like if you're talking about actually changing things, you're talking about being in the streets where rubber bullets are being fired.
	You're talking about, I mean, I'm not exaggerating, you're talking about robot dogs at this point.
	You're talking about, you're talking about unparalleled power of the state.
	And it feels like maybe a better alternative is to get cozy on the couch and watch something that reflects your politics back, as opposed to putting your body on the line.
	That's one of my concerns when it comes to class struggle and what should happen.
	I'm worried a little bit about that control of reality, plus also the better alternative of simply being entertained.
	Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about streaming and the notion of parasociality and this kind of psychoanalysis and reverse phenomena because it does seem like a lot of streamers are like, and you could argue whether this is them playing it up or whether they notice they get more views when they do this.
	They're remarkably infantile in terms of interpersonal conflict and have a desire and instinct to, whenever this interpersonal conflict, especially with another streamer, happens, they put the spotlight on it completely.
	It's all that they're talking about and they continue to get more and more.
	The tension increases in a completely pointless way.
	The way that a lot of people react to that is I think intensified, if you can directly interact with someone.
	I mean, Adorno says that a lot of this happens through the notion of identification.
	It's a Freudian phenomenon, but basically just like, you identify with someone, you kind of want to become like them in this very like, oftentimes childish way of like, That's fairly irrational and can oftentimes be aggressive as well.
	And it's much easier if you can literally talk to someone.
	I mean, there was one story I heard of someone who showed up at a streamer's house because they were chatting with them.
	They found out their address and they assumed that the streamer would just hang out with them.
	They're like, hey, I'm this chatter.
	That type of emotional attachment It facilitates a level of connection that's much more unhealthy than people's attachment to whatever television character that they like a lot.
	And the thing about streaming is that it's a lot easier to produce than a television show.
	There's a lot more streamers.
	There's a lot more people for you to go to and exert your emotional energy onto.
	That is an interesting question for political streamers.
	I don't stream as much anymore, but for a while I was doing that quite frequently.
	It relates to talking about politics and interacting with people.
	And, you know, giving my opinion on an ex-political issue is like, how do you turn that energy outside of just someone being like, I just kind of think they're neat and I like doing politics by going and enjoying them and giving them money or whatever.
	How do you turn that into some form of awareness that's like, you know, more useful?
	It's a weird and blurry line of how much good you're doing compared to either just not doing much, being neutral, or even maybe being harmful, although I'm not quite sure.
	Well, I was just going to say that that's something I've had conversations about this, usually not while it's being recorded for an audience, but one of the things about it is There's now, speaking of like these parallel economies and side economies and all that, like, you and I are, you know, this is our livelihood.
	This is what we do.
	You know, we're talking about talking about politics.
	And, you know, in a lot of ways, it's trying, personally, and I would love to hear what you have to say about it, like, it's a thing because when you're in social media, when you're in all these sites, there is a I think there's a profit incentive to not only be sensational and go out and have rivalry.
	I mean, that's professional wrestling, is what that means.
	Absolutely.
	And people have benefited from it, left and right.
	I mean, everything from Twitter to Facebook has prioritized that.
	That's one of the quickest ways to get ahead, is to get eyes on you as you're having a schoolyard fight.
	But I have found, personally and existentially, I've had to sit down and be like, why am I doing what I'm doing?
	Why am I talking about this?
	And if I can talk to myself and say, I'm doing this because I would like to educate and I would like to mobilize or at least elucidate on terms that maybe I would have looked for in the past.
	You know, I hope that somebody out there listens to this interview is like, maybe I should check out Adorno.
	Absolutely.
	Please do.
	You know, and maybe start somebody else on their journey or at least start to build communities.
	But I would love to hear what you have to say about it because we are in an economy of talking about politics, which you're exactly right in your article and what we're talking about, which is it can oftentimes be a hollow or a simulacrum of action What do you do personally as you're talking about it on podcast, as you're writing about stuff, what is it that you do to reckon with that fact?
	One thing I've noticed that's interesting is I think that, especially with Gen Z, is the notion of selling out kind of doesn't exist anymore.
	Before it was like, oh, you're commodifying the thing you love.
	It's kind of lesser, you have to bend to... And I think that that's much less the case now.
	And I think the reason for that is because it's harder to pay rent, probably.
	There's a complicated tension there of what is the consequence of doing this in a way that is in some way charged, that helps you pay your rent, that you profit off of?
	And the desire to pay rent and then the desire to produce some sort of political content, I guess, although content's kind of a vulgar word, that actually increases people's political understanding, gives them some knowledge or tools that better equips them to understand their world and potentially mobilize in a productive way.
	And the answer is always difficult.
	It's a very kind of It's something that's hard to know completely, but I do think that producing ideas and talking about things when you're creating something with a kind of politically-minded intention, specifically with reference to, I think, making people aware of
	The source, I guess, of their suffering, where it comes from, and this is a vague answer, of course, but a better understanding of maybe where to combat that.
	I think a lot of my intention is more just about giving people the tools to understand the source of their suffering in a more coherent way.
	Because, you know, the thing with Barbie, people go to it and they understand their suffering through like, oh, you know, because the central notion in the film in terms of feminist politics is just like, you have to be aware that it's unfair to be a woman.
	And the more people, the more women who are unfair about it, that's doing politics.
	It doesn't seem all that productive, which, yeah, I mean, it's a hard question to answer because the thing I said before was like, oh, well, you should make people aware of the source of their suffering.
	So, yeah, I have a much less coherent answer to the question because it is something I think about a lot and I'm potentially troubled with.
	Although I do think that these conversations are an important aspect of that, especially equipping people to have a knowledge or an understanding that a lot of the parasocial fights that happen on their favorite social media website between different leftist figures are often completely or almost fully contentless.
	You have to think of like, well, what's the content?
	Going on here.
	How does it relate to my political situation?
	And if it's just like a slap fight, then the answer is, well, you should probably ignore it.
	All right, Liv Agar, this has been a real tweet.
	That's a terrible slip.
	I've been a big fan of your work over at the QAnon Anonymous podcast.
	Your newsletter at Substack, I think, is a must-read.
	I thought the article about the Barbie movie and talking about politics was an absolutely fantastic article.
	Where else can good people find you?
	Yeah, as you said, you can check me out on the QAnon Anonymous podcast.
	I author an episode of that every couple weeks or so.
	You can also check me out on my sub stack, which is now just levagar.com.
	I made it my domain, so it redirects.
	I also host them on my Patreon, patreon.com slash levagar.
	Some of them are free, some of them are paid.
	I also have a Twitch that I stream on occasionally, twitch.tv slash levagar.
	And yeah, that's basically it.
	Thanks for having me on.
	Fantastic.
	Thank you so much.
	All right.
	That was Liv Agar, an incredible writer, podcaster, streamer, all that good stuff.
	Check them out on QAnon Anonymous, the podcast, and at Liv's newsletter on Substack.
	I don't know, Nick, I'm getting a little... it feels...
	Like, we're stepping into the season.
	This is where the Muckrake podcast really, really shines, as not only are we talking about what's happening behind the scenes and then the foundational stuff, but we're getting into, like, the silly season of the primary and the presidential race.
	I'm excited.
	It's hard to believe.
	It's a seasonal thing that we go through every year now.
	It's the tradition.
	We've been around long enough to really feel it and know that it's coming around again.
	And I hope you know, the people who have been with us for long enough, you know that we're going to give you analysis that you're not going to find anywhere else.
	We'll basically tell you what's going to happen in the next couple of weeks and the next couple of months.
	If you pay close enough attention, head on over to patreon.com slash mccraigpodcast.
	Come out, hang out with us.
	I think we're going to release it the next day as a bonus podcast for anybody who can't come and hang out.
	We really, really hope you come out and join us.
	This is where the show really, really shines.
	In the meantime, you can find Nick at Can You Hear Me?
	SMH.
	You can find me at J.Y.
	Sexton.

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