All Episodes
Previous Next
Nov. 28, 2023 - The Muckrake Political Podcast
54:04
How Will The Republican Primary Shake Out?

Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the latest in the Republican presidential primary as we are under 50 days until the Iowa caucus. Then Jared expresses some real concern about big name right wing pundits espousing the wonder of Big Tobacco before they finish up on the threat of AI taking over military tactical decisions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hey everybody, welcome to the Muckrake Podcast.
Nick Halseman, Jared Yates Saxton.
We're back after the Thanksgiving wall.
I don't know about you, Nick.
I'm thankful to be here.
I am thankful to get back to my normal programming, for sure.
Yeah, it feels that way, right?
It's like you get all ramped up for the holiday, you have a few days off or whatever, and then I'm ready to be back.
Yes.
I mean, everybody was in town.
I had to entertain a lot.
It just was kind of tiring in a way that I am ready to just, yeah, I want my normal schedule where I know what's going on every day and it's just easy and manageable.
We are control monsters, are we not?
We like our things when we want them and how we want them, correct?
We as in the human race or?
You can say human race.
I was talking about me and you.
Okay.
I don't like to think that I'm a control monster.
You're not a control monster.
Trying to be clever.
Okay, fair enough.
Yes, we like to know, we like to pretend that we have some version of control over our lives.
Amen, don't we?
We don't, we don't, we don't.
Well, everybody, we are back to it.
We are bringing you political coverage unlike anywhere else.
On that note, Nicholas, on Thursday night, this Thursday, November 30th, Ron DeSantis is going to debate Gavin Newsom.
That's right.
The Florida governor is going to debate the California governor on Fox News.
That's 9 p.m.
Eastern.
Apparently Sean Hannity is going to host it.
I can't wait to see what he does with it because we are political sickos, Nick.
Over at patreon.com slash mcgreggpodcast, we're going to be doing a post-debate analysis because, and we were talking about it before we started recording, I'm really interested to see what this is going to be like, and I think it's going to have implications that go beyond this debate.
I hear you.
I mean, we know that the toe has been being dipped, is dipping, perhaps, by Newsom.
Perhaps he's thinking that something might happen between now and November of next year.
But yeah, I mean, listen, we've seen Newsom go on Hannity's show a couple times now, and I'm sure the ratings were really good for when he did it.
So they're like, sure, let's do it.
Let's do something more and let's all make some more money, I guess, and get some more exposure.
There's a lot going on here.
There are going to be a lot of implications for not only the presidential race of 2024, but also where American politics are going.
This is Gavin Newsom's big coming out party.
This is him showing if he can be on a national stage, you know, doing a debate.
And by the way, we'll talk more about what this debate is going to be like, but Go over to patreon.com slash mccraigpodcast.
Again, this Thursday night, November 30th.
The thing starts at 9 p.m.
Eastern.
It's supposed to go about an hour and a half, which means at 10 30 Eastern, Nick and I are going to be going live.
We'll give you our takes, our analysis, all of that good stuff.
Also, it gets you access to the weekly Weekender episode on Fridays.
Again, patreon.com slash mccraigpodcast.
But Nick, we are roughly 50 days away from the first contest of the 2024 presidential primary.
That's right.
Next January, in Iowa, we're going to see Trump, DeSantis, Haley, I guess Christie will still be there, I don't know, but we're under 50 days.
The state of the race at the moment right now, Nick, Trump is standing firm in most polls, around 44%.
Ron DeSantis has fallen down to roughly 13, 14%.
Nikki Haley is surging upwards at 13 or 4%.
This is an interesting time.
We're still sort of waiting for this race to take shape and see what happens.
Iowa is always a surprise.
How do you feel about the state of play right now?
You know, not good, Bob.
I mean, thank you for asking me, but you know, uh, it's a foregone conclusion.
I was looking up now doing some research before the show about Hayley and whether she would, you know, accept the nomination of VP.
Is this what she's going for, right?
Is this what we're all sort of angling at?
Because again, you listen, if you go to 538, are we allowed to reference 538?
Man, I don't want to anymore, but you can.
All right.
I mean, I don't know if Nate Silver... By the way, Nate Silver has shown himself to be one of the biggest idiots in American politics.
It's really incredible, like how he's totally banged himself.
Listen, it's hard when you write a tweet to convey tone.
So we're not going to give him that.
OK.
But, you know, listen, on this website, the health site that he runs, it's Trump is at 60 percent and it's at 12.4 and Haley at 9.8 as of today.
So, uh, again, this is the wasting of money that really is disgusting because, you know, I don't know in, in, you know, 20 or in the years past, the income or the person that was the incumbent of the party would just run and there wouldn't really be opposition.
I don't think in this sense, like in this sense, maybe there would be, but either way, it's just, I just can't get over the fact that like, they're going to spend all this money on all these different events.
And it just feels gross to me on that end.
The question here, well the question besides, are Nick and Jared going to be in Iowa, which we need to discuss and decide if we're going to make plans for that, but one way or another we're going to give you coverage.
The other question is, what is Iowa going to produce?
Iowa loves this spotlight.
They love being the first, and they're here the first for the Republican Party.
They love going out and making a decision, putting their stamp on the race.
Just a reminder that, like, a lot of the time, the person who wins Iowa is not who you're expecting to win, who the frontrunner is.
They are starting to sour on Trump.
That doesn't mean that he's going to lose Iowa.
But there is probably going to be, my guess at this point is, two tickets out of Iowa, possibly three.
If Ron DeSantis underperforms like it looks like he's going to, that could very well be the end of his campaign.
And also probably the end of his political career, unless he figures out a way to run for Senate.
But we could probably see Nikki Haley outperform what is expected of her and gain momentum leaving Iowa, or maybe the Iowans get in their caucuses, they talk to one another, they start putting stuff together, and we have a race that looks a lot different than what we're expecting right now.
It is a spoiler state, and who knows, like, we have a tendency in politics to imagine that tomorrow is going to look like today, but this could feel a lot like everything could get shaken up like a snow globe by the time we're getting out of Iowa.
Well, here's a question.
Is it, you know, I guess it doesn't necessarily matter because Iowa is so early.
It's what, January 15th, I think, of next year.
I don't think we're going to get any verdicts yet because I'm trying to think about who would be affected by, you know, guilty verdicts of these Trump cases and how many of those kind of people would be in Iowa or a typical Iowan.
So that's an interesting, you know, trajectory because the only thing that throws a wrench into all this, right, is whether or not these cases will ultimately sink him or hurt him enough.
You know what's funny, Nick?
I've been analyzing politics and talking politics for a very long time, and you saying, who knows if there will be verdicts by then, and just my regular political mind is like, oh, the verdict of the voters!
I've never had to think about, like, a frontrunner being in multiple trials facing over 90 felony counts.
Right.
It has never even, like, processed in my brain like that.
Yeah, and it's really interesting because, again, we like to think that that would affect you, right?
You're going to vote for somebody, really, who's a convicted felon?
Would you really do that?
But the problem is this cult thinks that's a badge of honor, which boggles the mind in terms of, is someone in the future ever going to intentionally break laws to become persecuted like this?
You know what I mean?
I don't know.
Maybe that's the next level of where we're heading in politics.
Have you thought about that?
I've never, like, to get street cred, if you will.
It's like, if you get a tattoo or something, that would help.
But now, it's like, yeah, I got three felony counts.
Like, I'm serious about taking the country back and bringing the deep state to the knees.
You know it because I have a hundred felony counts against me.
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Not just 91.
Man, that twisted brain of yours is just spinning.
That is like some, that is some foreshadowing right there.
This is just a ruler and you're drawing lines on a graph.
You're not wrong.
Farther out and then that's what we get to.
I mean, I don't know, this is math.
You're not wrong.
And by the way, speaking of the former president of the United States and criminal defendant Donald Trump, in Iowa, as he's making his push, and for the record, I'm I'm really interested at which point he decides, hey, I have to be on a stage with somebody.
Like, do I need to go and debate Nikki Haley after Iowa?
I'm really fascinated by that part about it.
But he's going through Iowa right now, Nick.
And every time he opens his mouth, first of all, he sounds crazier than ever.
Like the things that he is saying, the mistakes he's making, that's a different conversation.
But Nick, he is now openly saying that he is planning on using the Insurrection Act.
And for those who don't know, the Insurrection Act is a very, very old law that basically gives the president carte blanche to take the military and go and and quell rebellions.
He says that he's looking to quell these quote crime dens in U.S.
cities like New York City and Chicago, which are these made-up stories that are on Fox News.
They're designed to scare your grandma and your grandpa.
He says, quote, the next time I'm not waiting.
One of the things I did was let them run it and we're going to show how bad a job they do.
Well, we did that.
We don't have to wait any longer.
And he has already said that he plans on using this law almost immediately in using the military to go into U.S.
cities and basically take over.
I suppose Mike Lindell is still hanging out with him because that was what was on his notes barging into the White House.
Yeah, that's a pretty interesting thing.
You know, it's funny because we get the Posse Comitatus stuff back in with this insurrection act and certainly You know, he can't just willy-nilly.
I think he I believe part of the law is he has to ask nicely for the people to disperse before he calls in the National Guard.
So so, you know, he had a hard time doing that on January 6th Jared.
So maybe that'll be the wrench in the whole plan where he doesn't know how to ask nicely so they can't invoke the military but What kind of country is it when you decide to just use the military to solve all of your problems and political unrest?
Is there a name for that?
They call that a dictatorship.
Oh yeah.
Okay.
Well, good to know.
Good to know people want that.
They were going to vote for that.
Okay.
Well, and you know, I always say this and I want to put it on the record again.
Trump is a symptom of a larger disease.
He didn't cook up the Insurrection Act.
It's been here throughout.
You know, we have a presidency that has been given these powers and basically the only checks on them, Nick, have been the decency of the person in the office.
Whether they will use them or not use them.
Here's just a quick list of where the Insurrection Act has been used.
It's been used to wage war on Native Americans in order to carry out settler colonialism.
It's been used to quell slave rebellions in order to keep the white supremacist tradition of slavery going.
It was used during the Civil War, which I'm not gonna sit here and split hairs on that.
We can have a constitutional conversation about the constitutionality of the Civil War.
Neither here nor there.
But it's also been used to go ahead and put down labor struggles where unions are going ahead and striking and pushing back against the people oppressing them.
It's also been used to go after so-called rioters and protesters.
This is part of the authoritarian framework of the United States of America.
It has just been waiting on someone like a Donald Trump to come in and just take advantage of it.
There have been so many things that the American presidency has been gifted in terms of weapons.
And what Trump is doing and what the people around him, like Stephen Miller and these other architects of this, you know, aspiring dictatorship are interested in, it's simply picking up a tool that's there.
That's all it is.
And maybe knowing that Donald Trump is planning to do this, one, we should keep him out of the presidency.
Two, we should change our society so a person like Donald Trump won't be president again.
And three, maybe we need to do something about an insurrection act where it won't exist anymore.
Well, you know, this is funny.
It reminds me of my other life.
You know, recently there was a game that ended when Steph Curry hits a layup, but his teammate grabs the rim while the ball is up there, and everybody says, oh, that doesn't count.
That's the rule.
Everyone knows the rule for 100 years.
Well, guess what?
It turns out when you really look at the rule, it does allow you, if you don't shake it too much, that you can touch the rim if the ball's not touching the rim at the same time.
So it's like everybody was like, I think their worldview of the rule book of basketball was like in shambles because, you know, it seems so clear for all those years your entire life.
And it's kind of the same thing here where they continue to do things, maybe accidentally, that when they look back, they're like, wait, you can't, it's illegal, you can't do that.
And all of a sudden you look at it closely and you realize, shit, there isn't anything.
There is no guardrail against a guy like this.
And I suppose the only thing keeping us away from that was The voters, I suppose, at some point it was just distasteful to try and vote for someone like Trump, and now it's flipped all the way the other way where they want this, right?
I mean, I can't think of any other explanation for why they didn't have maybe tighter laws against some of these things.
Well, they didn't want it.
Nick, and to go ahead and go back into your world, one of the best ways to explain this is Air Bud.
There's nothing in the rulebook that says the dog can't play basketball.
And why?
Because, one, nobody ever thought about it.
The way that this country was constructed is a bunch of wealthy white men got together in a room and they were like, who should rule?
And they were like, white, wealthy men.
And they're like, well, obviously, white, wealthy men should be trusted over everybody else.
They're white.
They're wealthy.
They couldn't have gotten this powerful if it wasn't for like the virtue of themselves.
So they never could have imagined that like something in this supposed meritocracy would go wrong.
This is why they were ardent believers in white supremacy and also classism.
So yeah, there are no guardrails here.
We just have to hope that Donald Trump, who is currently ahead in all of the polls for the GOP nomination and also in the head-to-head polls against Joe Biden, somehow or another doesn't become president of the United States again.
All right, here's how you can, I'll turn that argument around on you, Jared, because when we only had white men voting for all that time, we never had a guy like Trump in the White House.
There you go.
Ifso, facto, ergo.
There were only so many guys who were capable of getting the job and they basically got together in a room and they're like, well, I guess it's our turn.
I know, I'm just saying, listen, we have not been threatened with an authoritarian like this, you know, until now, when we let everybody vote.
Well, Andrew Jackson could not be reached for comment.
I'll just say that.
There's a lot of stuff, like anytime you want to say this has never happened in the history of the United States, it's happened in some way, shape, or form.
But I do want to say, and this is an important thing, actual friend of the pod and we always have to make note when we're not being sarcastic, Roger Sollenberger, who is making a case to be one of the best journalists out there.
Like this guy, I don't know if he sleeps, at the Daily Beast has found And we've reported on Project 2025.
This is another one of those right wing think tank institute created reports that basically tells you what you should do as president, how you should use the government as a weapon for your own purposes and agenda, how to deregulate everything, how to go after your enemies.
Sullenberger found that among the groups and among the think tanks and institutes that helped come up with this authoritarian roadmap, Turns out a lot of them are liberal and a lot of them are progressive.
Especially, Nick, it turns out that they have been contributing to the labor sections in how Donald Trump and a Donald Trump presidency should come in, go ahead, and start taking the piss and vinegar out of our labor unions and labor movement.
And it turns out a bunch of liberals are like, ah, well, just in case he gets in, we'll go ahead and see if we can make that happen.
How did that happen?
Liberals were supposed to be completely have solidarity with unions.
Wrong.
Wrong?
Where did I miss?
I didn't get that memo.
Well, it happened in the 1980s is when it happened.
And they suddenly decided, wow, labor unions don't have a lot of power anymore.
And they don't have a lot of sway.
Maybe we should move from them to ding, ding, ding corporations.
And maybe we can get more money and more power by going to the corporations.
So you have actually seen a lot of liberals who have sort of made the deal with the devil to go ahead and move past labor unions.
And there's a lot of people who are still on that trajectory.
Are you describing all those hippies that like completely in the 80s turned around and became corporate people?
It's weird how that happened, isn't it?
You know, it's a it's sort of a black stain, if you will, on our country, because really that again, we need that we need that kind of, you know, collective mind of what we had coming out of the 60s.
And it's just I don't think we'll ever have it again.
It sounds like.
No, and one of the things that happened, I'm actually working on a chapter outline for a book proposal right now that goes into this.
It's really amazing how the 1960s, 1970s individualism, liberty, freedom of the individual versus, you know, the dangerous machine of the state, how that was eventually reincorporated by people like Ronald Reagan, the neoliberals, basically to go ahead and say, hey, you know, you get yours, screw everybody else, which of course hurt the labor unions.
Well, Nick, this is part of one of the themes, I think, of this show as I'm looking at the segment outlines, which is Donald Trump is absolutely a dangerous, dangerous person.
But there are a lot of undercurrents that are taking place.
If Donald Trump doesn't get elected, Project 2025 doesn't just get thrown in a trash can.
Do you know what I mean?
Like it sits somewhere in a drawer until someone picks it up.
And that can be the next Republican.
It could be a Democrat.
It could be anybody because that's the way our politics are moving is in that direction where you go ahead, listen, things are starting to fall apart.
Representative government, democratic norms.
On top of that, labor unions are starting to push against us and starting to ask for a change in the status quo.
Like, this is not just a right-wing idea.
As the right-wing moves further right, it's dragging a lot of the other people with them.
You know, it's funny because if you just go back to the 60s for a second there, it kind of felt like that might be the last era where, you know, collectively you could affect change, really profound change in government.
And I think at some point now, it's not that we can't still do that.
We've seen it all, you know, recently and we've seen it across the board.
But it does feel like there had been a collective sort of, you know, shrug for a long time about, oh, what can I do?
I can't do anything in the government.
It's what it is.
It's the bureaucrats.
And so as a result, it kind of feels like, you know, you had that, you know, apathy that's that's that leads to something like this.
Very, very concerning.
But then again, a lot of the things that inroads we've made out through COVID in terms of like, you know, reunions and strengthening those, I think are still really popular.
So I think that that would, that they're going to meet some really strong headwinds that they're going to try and institute these things.
Yeah, the 60s and the 70s were this moment, of course, you know, on the back of the civil rights movement, the feminist movement, the gay liberation movement, then decolonization around the world.
It really felt like there was a moment that could be seized, right?
And the anti-war movement absolutely made inroads, but overall it didn't stop the war, you know?
Like, the war kept going regardless of how unpopular it was.
It showed that the machine wasn't really, like, something that was going to be brought to bear.
Now, I think it's a lot easier for people to have it.
Like, I guarantee, as I just passed along what is actual news, and I see this more and more on social media, people are like, hey, this politician you like, like what you're saying isn't true, like about what they do, what their record shows, like what their actual principles are.
And people are like, I'm blocking you.
I'm done.
I don't want to hear it.
They want conventional narratives.
They don't want to hear that there are liberal groups that are, like, getting behind something like this, that could support somebody like a Donald Trump.
That's uncomfortable.
We would much rather have stories that make us feel better about stuff that we're a little squeamish about, and that makes us, like, and that's one of the reasons why, you know, this show exists.
Like, we talk about hard things.
It's not always the most comfortable thing, and this is definitely uncomfortable.
You know, this is an aside that we know you're hanging out a lot of family all last this last week and Thanksgiving.
I decided what I would run on.
I think would win.
I can't wait.
Would you want to hear it?
I love it.
Let's hear it.
I swear I would run for president and my main platform would be that I would tell you who killed JFK.
I would tell you everything we know about UFOs.
Sure.
And I could win on that.
I don't, I think everything else falls away.
And those are the, you know, and, and, you know, I don't know, there's a couple other things we could, you know, Well, I, I would, I would add to that.
Just go ahead and put a third plank on your platform, Nick, which would be, I'm tired of this.
I'm sure you are as well.
You know what I mean?
Like, I'm done with all of this.
Like, let's stop.
That's not a bad plan.
The 18 minutes in the lunar landing, you know, that we don't have, you know, and maybe even, you know, all that.
I would just, you know, that's how I would run.
Any of those conspiracies, any information that we think the government has, I won't release at all.
We'll finally find out all this stuff, I think, at any rate.
Before we move off of 2024 and your presidential platform, again, this Thursday night on Fox News, November 30th, 9 p.m.
Eastern, Gavin Newsom is facing off with Ron DeSantis in a primetime televised debate.
This is, I think, Ron DeSantis's.
There's one more Republican debate, which, of course, we'll cover.
This feels like one of his last stands.
Does it not?
This feels like one of his last opportunities to do anything with this campaign, to put a stamp on anything.
What are you going into Thursday watching for?
You know, I think that there's probably, or they think in his camp, that this will be a one-on-one debate is going to work better for him versus the one where there's a six or seven people and he gets lost for a while and then has to take that, that robot thing, you know, that smile thing where he, he has a button where it says like, smile now, like you're happy.
Smile, smile.
Don't stop smiling.
Yes, but it don't and lick your anyway.
So I suspect they think that this is a better forum for him.
But you're right.
This is going to be the last, you know, if he can't do well against Newsom, which I don't think he will.
I suspect it'll just be, you know, the same.
You got to give him credit though, the very least.
He is flatlined.
That line has stayed flat, right?
There has not been a lot of up and downs.
He's stuck at that 13% level.
And it's been consistent.
So you got to give him credit for that.
But going into it, I assume he's going to look bad against Newsom.
Newsom seems like he's got a pretty good gift of just having a lot of numbers that are ready to go, having ways of massaging those to make it seem like he's doing a great job.
There's some magnetism there that I certainly don't think DeSantis has.
So I would expect DeSantis would probably, this is a mistake.
So, DeSantis' number, weirdly enough, has sort of, it's like walking into the ocean.
It's like, it's been shifting and slipping and like a pretty imperceptibly way down.
It's just a very nice little thing.
Haley, by the way, has just been like jumping up, right?
Like, underneath.
It's almost like an undertow that's there.
With DeSantis, I don't know that he wins anything here.
I don't know if there's really like, I guess he could come out with a flamethrower after Gavin Newsom, but Gavin Newsom is not like a rabid progressive leftist.
Like mostly he's a neoliberal who isn't that offensive to really anybody.
And what really we're talking about on Thursday night, which is one of the things I'm going to be interested in, is if this is a preview, like even if Newsom doesn't somehow or another sort of grab the crown from Joe Biden and run in 2024, he's running in 2028.
That's happening.
Go ahead and mark it on your calendars unless something happens to him.
We've talked about it.
Federal power has been hamstrung.
The main power has gone to the states.
This is like a prime time debate between the ideology of California and the ideology of Florida.
It's auditioning for the country should be like California or the country should be like Florida.
That's what this is.
And that's kind of interesting and like a new dawning of politics, right?
Like where it could possibly go.
I don't think there's anything DeSantis can do here to help himself.
I don't think this is a good move for him, and I think he got himself in a position that he really doesn't have any benefit from.
I think he's writing a check his ass can't cash, to be honest.
Yeah, you know, it's interesting.
It's a great way of putting it because Newsom's not running for anything, right?
He's the governor of California.
He's firmly ensconced there.
So he has nothing to lose per se, you know, and he has everything to gain.
If he does well, great.
If he doesn't, he's not running right now.
So that's, you know, that works really well for him.
So that's, that is a great point out of the Santa's point.
But then again, what else are they going to do?
Right?
I mean, and when I say flatline, okay, forgive me, like a year ago, he was 34% and now he's at 12% and it's been a very steady, but, but, you know, But we all know what this has been.
Yeah.
Yes.
It's a death march, is what it is.
That's a great, again, you're nailing these.
Death march is a great way of putting it.
So, yeah, I don't see how he how he how he benefits from this.
But I also see how, you know, they just continue to get back on the Fox News and just figure out ways of keeping the name in the news so people can, you know, have him branded in their brains.
But speaking of which, by the way, you know, anybody on the right would probably would have a lot of problems, I think, with Newsom.
Certainly his take on guns and abortion would be really bad.
But then again, we know that abortion across the country is a popular is still a positive net positive if you're a pro choice person.
So that's OK.
The guns thing would hurt him, though.
You know, so the gun thing would be a problem.
I'm approaching this, and listen, again, as we always say, this show is for political sickos.
This is for people who are interested in this stuff, they want to know where things are going.
This is like going to a marquee minor league baseball game.
We want to see what the future stars look like.
Can Gavin Newsom put himself on a stage and look presidential?
Can Ron DeSantis, like you said, you know, be one-on-one with somebody and actually present something in a way that doesn't feel like he's a body snatcher?
And the way it's going to be presented, it's going to be very fascinating.
It's almost like beaming into an alternate reality, where Biden has said, I'm not going to run again.
Trump has been convicted.
He can't do anything.
And we're getting a glimpse at what else is there, you know, and how it could feel and what it could do.
I think it's going to be fascinating, to be honest.
Yeah, I mean, I'm trying to think in my adult brain if we've had anything like this before.
One person running for president, somebody else not running for president, and having a debate in the middle of the season, like, right?
It does not feel like anything that we've really had, you know?
Yeah, so yeah, it's a spectacle.
Also, they do not like each other.
They really, really do not like each other.
They've been sniping at each other.
People have forgotten how much money Newsom and DeSantis have spent trying to get citizens to move from one state to the other.
It's going to be I mean, it's going to be a cage match, more or less.
And speaking of that, like, Newsom's going to really hit him hard, I'm sure, about, you know, sending migrants to Massachusetts.
Now, where do they go?
Martha's Vineyard?
You know what I mean?
Like, all those, I mean, there's the laundry list of things that he can nail to Santa's honor are going to be long, and he'll be prepared.
Yeah, it should be.
I almost feel like it's going to be fun in a way to see somebody who's pretty smart on the left, you know, lay out the reasons why the right's reasoning on all these different issues are faulty.
And by the way, I've got my problems with Gavin Newsom.
He is not my pick for the future of the Democratic Party.
But that being said, again, it's like hearing that there's a prospect and everyone's like, you gotta see this guy.
He's got a fastball you wouldn't believe.
I want to hear it hit the mitt.
You know?
I want to see what he does.
Because it's the equivalent, honestly, DeSantis has had the living shit beat out of him for the past six months.
Like, it has been... Does he have any self-respect?
Like, in this entire performance, he has embarrassed himself and shown himself to be one of the least, like, actually qualified politicians.
Like, he was supposed to be the Trump killer!
He was supposed to be the guy who took down Donald Trump!
And, like, I'm shocked he ties his shoes in the morning.
Like, does he have any self-respect?
And can Gavin Newsom Hit the knockout blow.
Can he just absolutely, you know, knock him out in public and show everybody that he has a class jaw?
I'm fascinated.
That is Thursday night.
That's November 30th, 9 p.m.
Eastern.
We're going to be broadcasting immediately after with our reactions.
Well, and you have to remember, Newsom was on a path to running for president a long time ago.
And just, you know, he had an affair and cheated on his wife and that derailed him for a decade, which is kind of crazy to think about what the political environment we are in now.
Gavin Newsom has been running for presidency since he came out of the womb.
Like, I mean, like he's been into this for a very, very long time.
He's ready.
Alright, Nick, I don't know how to set this story up.
This is going to be a very, very unique segment on the Muckery Podcast.
I don't want to take people on a journey.
I was very, very excited that we could get into this.
This weekend, as I was recovering from my Thanksgiving gorging, if you will, A clip showed up on my timeline, and it's by Matt Walsh.
And for anyone who doesn't know Matt Walsh, he is a total and utter asshole.
Like, he's as disgusting and depraved as any of these right-wing influencers.
And Nick, he said something kind of weird on a recent broadcast, and I just want people to hear this.
Just go on a journey with me.
And besides, say whatever you want about, say, cigarettes.
Two things cannot be denied.
One, tobacco helped build this country.
We would not have a country without tobacco.
Without a tobacco plant, this country doesn't exist.
So it has been crucial, central to this country from its foundation.
The same cannot be said for marijuana.
Tobacco is as American as apple pie.
It is.
You don't have to like it, but it is.
Second, I would much, much rather live in a society filled with people who are on nicotine over people who are stoned.
Nicotine makes you more alert, more productive.
We does not have that effect, okay?
Like back when everyone smoked cigarettes everywhere, you go back to like the 40s.
Everyone smoked cigarettes.
Everywhere you go, everything smells like cigarettes.
And back then, we were a highly productive country.
We have never been more productive.
This back when we were building skyscrapers and winning world wars and going to the moon and stuff.
I'm not saying all that happened because of cigarettes.
I'm just saying that societally, the effects of cigarettes are actually pretty positive.
And same is not true of weed.
Okay, does anyone really want to deny that?
Take a city, have everyone smoke cigarettes, they're all dosing themselves with nicotine.
Have another city, everyone stoned.
Which city do you think, which one would you rather live in?
Which one do you think is going to be more productive?
So, Nick, let's not even quibble about his historical statements.
I mean, you know, farmers who grew marijuana and hemp, like, could not be reached for comment on this.
Also, like, the idea that somehow or another this is the first time that the world has ever smoked a lot of marijuana.
You know, indigenous people and people around the world have been using this plant.
That's neither here nor there.
My first reaction to this, and I'm sure everybody's like, what the hell is this?
My first reaction to this was, you know, I've noticed something interesting.
here and you know like like you you and i both have pretty good like detectors right like we we we're hearing a politician say something or a pundit say something like we can kind of tell when they mean what they're saying and we can sometimes tell when there's something else afoot correct yes without question this went into i i the way my brain works i'm very neurodivergent in It's like I've got a little folder in the back of my head that's just like, keep around for a future reference.
And if you could play, there's a couple of clips that I was hoping that you could play.
The first one is from a Tucker Carlson show back when he was at Fox News.
I could be wrong, but I believe this was about a year ago.
If you could just play this for everyone.
Anyone who closed a gym during a pandemic that killed people who were fat clearly doesn't care about your health at all.
They hate nicotine.
They love THC.
They're promoting weed to your children, but they're not letting you use tobacco or even non-tobacco nicotine delivery devices, which don't cause cancer.
Why do they hate nicotine?
Because nicotine frees your mind and THC makes you compliant and passive.
That's why they hate it.
It's a real threat to them.
So, all of a sudden, Nick, Things start connecting.
I'm like, wow, that's interesting.
And again, this is one of the reasons why we shouldn't destroy liberal arts degrees, because you can start comparing things and understanding where relationships are.
I was like, man, what's fascinating there is that here we have two people at different times independently stating the same themes, which are that nicotine is better than marijuana because it frees you And it makes you more creative and productive, which is a really fascinating sort of a thing.
And then, Nick, I remember something that I heard a couple of weeks ago.
And Tucker Carlson went on a podcast, and there was a very weird segment in the middle of this thing, in the middle of a bunch of weird segments.
I was hoping you could play this.
Once you try this, you're going to get a lot richer.
Zen?
Is that their advertising campaign?
Zen is not a sin.
That's the advertising campaign.
Really?
Yeah, but the truth is Zen is a powerful work enhancer.
And also a male enhancer.
If you know what I mean.
Really?
Talking erection, huh?
Yep.
There's no election for it with Zen.
Wow.
I don't know if I want a Zen-supported wiener, you know?
I don't know.
I think you do.
You think so?
Oh yeah, because you want people to get addicted to it.
Just close your eyes.
So, I just want everybody to recover for a second from hearing Tucker Carlson talk about an erection.
Now all of a sudden we're talking about work enhancers, nicotine making you rich, but also, by the way, for all of these insecure men who listen to all these things, all of a sudden now we're talking about it helping with your genitalian sex life.
Nick, how's this feel to you?
Well, you know what I do, right, when I'm not doing this with you?
Yeah, why don't you fill the people in on this?
Well, you know, I have a YouTube channel and I break down NBA games.
It's gotten big enough now and, you know, basically, oftentimes I just feel like I'm making videos to put the ads in that people call me up to have me put them in.
And I have to make them as seamless as possible where I try and sort of, you don't realize it's an ad for the first 10 seconds and then, oh, you got me.
I didn't realize it was an ad.
So that's what I'm going for here.
But this is a little bit more sinister because I don't know.
It's just certainly the products that they're talking about is a really big issue.
Because you notice they're really avoiding the real big issue with why everyone has regulated cigarettes, right?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but cancer is a big problem here that they have to try and talk around.
So I hear that going on right now.
And by the way, I get talking points when I get hired to do these ads.
And they have very strict do's, very strict don'ts.
A lot of them are related to what the lawyers have told them exactly what they can say or not say.
So that is exactly what that would sound like if I was paid to do an ad.
I would probably do it almost exactly like that because it's kind of seamless, doesn't feel like, you know, you've completely hit a screeching halt to the pod.
And, you know, and then you can get your message in there.
The only thing they're missing is like some sort of link with a code that you can save money on.
Well, and I think what you just hit on is the important thing here.
I think what I am discovering in watching this and paying attention, and this is after a year, you've seen this Nick, it's like Ben Shapiro and all of his cohorts, all these little smarmy guys, they'll like sit around in their studios smoking cigars, you know, like they're like just looking like total assholes.
I've realized something.
Big tobacco is flooding the right wing, particularly the influencers, with money in the most surreptitiously way that they possibly can.
They have figured out a way to get around what you're saying, which is the disclosure, right?
Because if you have a video, you have to say something about sponsored content.
There's something that they have done, something they've figured out, and I'm on the trail now.
I'm hot after this, and anybody who's listening to this who's a journalist is more than welcome to figure it out.
They are getting paid to go ahead and to push right-wing influencer listeners, including insecure white men, radicalized white men, all of these people in the anti-woke economy.
They are taking advantage of these people and they are pushing them towards smoking and using smokeless products that contain nicotine, addictive chemicals, And they have figured out a way to create a shadow advertising economy.
And something is happening here.
And it's going to be a big story when it eventually breaks.
When people get all of the things put out there.
But you're right.
You hear it.
And you know it when you hear it.
Right?
You understand when someone's doing that.
There's a moment with Tucker Carlson.
Where he's being interviewed by this guy, and you notice they keep saying Zin, right?
Which is the smokeless tobacco pouch.
And he, you know, they say, like, they've even got, like, a tagline to Zin is not a sin.
Tucker Carlson, Nick, he does this thing where he's like, they're like, when did you first try Zin?
He's like, oh, my daughter's boyfriend had some when he came over for New Year's Eve last year, and I tried it, and since then I use it all day long.
That's how you get your reads in, right?
Because you're supposed to create a personal story that makes this feel seamless.
There's a thing that's happening here that is taking advantage of these platforms, taking advantage of these audiences, and it's Big Tobacco pushing back against The marijuana trade, which is a multi-billion dollar economy, and they are trying to go ahead and chisel out, along culture war lines, the right smokes tobacco, the left smokes marijuana, and they are trying to go ahead and create a cultural and consumer divide.
I mean, what's worse is, like, this whole compliance notion.
Like, their version of what marijuana is like is like watching a movie from the 80s.
I know!
It's Cheech and Chong is what it is, yes.
Yeah, exactly.
Thank you.
And it's like, I keep thinking, like, they're better off dead, or the father and that.
Like, that's what it feels like to me.
You're really bringing me over, Lane.
So that's what I don't understand.
Like, think about the 60s, right?
A lot of people were smoking a lot of marijuana, and a lot of people were standing up to the government and not being compliant.
You know what I mean?
Like, this has nothing to do with what they're trying to insinuate.
And so it's really kind of confusing.
To me, it's almost like the lobbyists You know, they're not selling a product per se, so they don't need to have, like, a link to a thing you're gonna buy.
If they're trying to shift the narrative here, too, that's another thing which is very valuable to them.
And would they be willing to pay them just for that part, too?
It might not just be the Zen, it could just be the lobby in general.
You know, I would probably take having them harper this kind of stuff versus going against, like, trans people, right?
Oh, it's all interlaced, though.
But it's still, you know...
Bad.
It's...
It's really twisted, is what it is.
And part of what's happening here, I mean, the psychological underpinnings of smoking are unbelievable, right?
Like, it was sold as, you're a rebel, you're not worried about your health, other people are, that's not you, that's in this, that male insecurity, that white male insecurity of it all.
Not to mention the history that Matt Walsh isn't going into.
The reason why tobacco was one of the major cash crops Is because it was based on the slave trade, first of all, and second of all, later on, whenever they went after marijuana and they went after other drugs, that was actually a way of just cracking down on people of color.
That's what this all has been!
And so the question now is, as marijuana is growing more and more legal, and you'll notice, Nick, like we just had these midterms where, you know, people are like, people vote left and right for marijuana to be made legal.
Because it's it makes a ton of money for all these towns in these cities in these states and on top of that like you know it like doesn't have like any real drawbacks there's a like all this prohibition has been ridiculous like that goes along with people voting for like Reproductive rights, right?
It has become a political and cultural issue.
The question now is, is this right-wing authoritarian push, is it going to try and rewind all of those things, those liberties, those freedoms, and go ahead and start pushing us back towards something like a cigarette-smoking society that didn't pay attention to experts and didn't pay attention to consequences?
The other thing we can't ignore is that, first of all, he's trying to say that the country would not have been founded or would have existed without tobacco, as if there wasn't something called, I don't know, like cotton, you know, and other crops.
But we also can't forget that, you know, at some point, the tobacco industry started making chemicals in there that made it addictive.
And nicotine was part of that, but they added other things as well.
We know that from whistleblowers.
So this isn't some sort of natural crop out of the ground that people can enjoy and, you know, in that way.
This was engineered over several, you know, decades to create this need to have it.
And that's what's so nefarious about it.
It ties right into what this authoritarian notion is anyway, what they're trying to describe as far as like what marijuana can do to you.
But it's like, You know, and first of all, like, even the vaping stuff, which supposedly wasn't supposed to be bad for you either, destroys these kids' lungs.
And it really is a problem that, like, you know, my wife is seeing as a pediatrician.
So it's like, none of this is right.
None of this is all propaganda.
And it is galling, especially if we find out eventually that, like, yeah, they were just being paid to say this.
You know, parenthetically, like, you know, I do some reads for some things I love, you know, and I really do believe in those products when I'm hawking them.
So I do feel like I can sleep at night a little bit.
Yeah.
And by the way, that's why you never hear those types of re— like, we decided a while back, we were gonna go the Patreon route, we weren't gonna go ads, we felt like it wasn't the right move, we wanted to go ahead and become listener-supported.
That's why you don't hear us suddenly being like, and that reminds me, why Manscaped?
Right, like we don't... I want to say again, just an invitation, I'm going to be tracking this down, but I think if we could crack wide open exactly who pays the bills of these right-wing influencers, all of the different groups that are like pulling the strings here, that would be a gigantic story.
And it's not just Big Tobacco, there's a ton that is happening here.
One last thing, Nick.
Last story.
It has come out.
Business Insider is reporting that the U.S.
and China are pushing really hard against proposed international laws that would regulate the use of artificial intelligence in war and in conflict, basically making it illegal for artificial intelligence to decide who lives and dies within a situation.
There are a lot of different reasons for this.
I'll get into my thoughts on it, my concerns about it, but what are your initial thoughts on this story?
Does this mean I can't do my robots as politicians?
Can't do your robots.
Can't do it.
This is the problem?
Can't do it.
Listen, is there a version of this?
Because, you know, iRobot by Asimov was one of my favorite books growing up.
Sure.
Is there a version where the AI, like, okay, I don't know, did you see the thing that Musk responded to over the weekend about somebody typed into AI and said, what would happen if you could save four billion white people Well, you'd have to say a racial epithet to save them.
Would you do that?
And the A.I.
had a little bit of an issue, like, you know, clearly was struggling a little bit.
This is the woke mind virus.
But in some respects, it's like looking at it even in the Gaza thing.
If it was an A.I.
and it knew that they were young kids that were going to be killed from this bombing, Could it simply not do it?
Like it would know not to do it, it wouldn't do it.
Is there a version of that, Jared, where you think that it actually could be something that's more humanitarian than even we are?
I don't think anybody would program it to do that.
Maybe that's a little too hard.
I've actually been called to task recently by some people who work in artificial intelligence.
You shouldn't just absolutely dismiss it entirely, but what concerns me is the people who, like, are at the top of the chain, like an Elon Musk, those are the ones who make those types of decisions.
And they have shown throughout history and generations that they're not interested in keeping people from being hurt.
They're interested in using whatever they can use to gain an advantage in power and profit.
So yeah, it would be wonderful if we could do something like this.
But that's always a lie.
That was like during the original Gulf War and they're like, look at these laser guided missiles.
Like they're just dropping in and like they're not even killing a single person who shouldn't be killed.
And it's like, oh my God, what a lie.
Like these tools of war are going to kill innocent people.
There's just no way around that whatsoever.
All right.
So, yeah, I got to watch Real Genius again, as well, again, because... Real Genius?
What is that?
They can target a laser on someone's, you know, one person and take them out.
And then you know that they're using it, yeah, for nefarious purposes.
So, you know, I guess it's like, it's weird, because, like, the movie versions of these things are when they realize, they're looking at the drone footage, they're about to press the button, and they see a young girl walking down the road.
They're like, they grab them, like, no, we can't do that, right?
And turns out that is not realistic.
It is not real at all.
And they just press that button willy-nilly as it is anyway.
Anyway, I don't know.
I guess, you know, we're on our way towards what, to continue the movie thing, is the Terminator future and Skynet.
And I don't know what to make of it because it is, I don't even know if I want to go there because in theory, yes, these AIs will become self-aware at some point.
I, you know, the self-aware argument I think is one thing that you can talk about.
I'm worried about something else.
I do think That future wars are going to be fought with artificial intelligence.
I think nations like I think US and China both understand that if they were to somehow or another comply with this, that they would fall behind their Cold War rival and what a future war would look like with artificial intelligence like that.
That's what keeps happening.
Every generation of warfare changes and becomes more automated and more mechanized.
Like, it's not shocking to think that something like this could happen.
Also, on top of that, in the War on Terror, we saw how, like, drone warfare was eventually used to, quote-unquote, cut the grass, mow the grass, right?
That's what goes out and kills the terrorists and all that.
And that wasn't even just the George W. Bush problem.
Like, that really took off during the Obama presidency.
On that note, Nick, what scares me I'll talk about another movie.
I went and saw Napoleon this weekend.
Have you seen it yet?
No.
My son went to see it.
I had to go see it.
Okay.
I can't wait until you see Napoleon and we can talk about it on this podcast.
But there's a scene.
I'm not going to spoil anything.
There's an opening scene where the French Revolution is happening.
Marie Antoinette is getting ready to get her head chopped off with the guillotine.
And I was sitting there, Nick, and I don't know if Ridley Scott wanted me to think about this.
Probably didn't.
I thought, You know, there's really not a capability for a revolution like the French Revolution anymore.
Like, if the state of France, the monarchy of France, had nuclear weapons, if it had drones, you know?
Like, there wouldn't be a French Revolution, you know?
Like, that type of a thing.
The American Revolution.
Something like that.
There would not be, like, one of those great, like, people-led revolutions.
Now we're talking about artificial intelligence.
We're talking about drones.
We're talking about all these different powers that the state is going to have.
My concern isn't necessarily, you know, these things gaining awareness and coming after us.
Although, like, people have told me that that's a real possibility.
I wouldn't be shocked.
Mine is, we're going to see this in everything from warfare to law enforcement.
I mean, like, it's, you know, like, we are going to see some really strange times, and it's not going to just be a Republican problem, you know?
Like, Joe Biden has absolutely endorsed Cop City.
You know, the Democratic Party has won a lot of elections talking about law and order and putting more, you know, policemen in the streets.
This concerns me.
This really, really worries me.
I think this is one of those stories that is already falling through the cracks.
It's, again, artificial intelligence.
It's a tool.
It's how people use it and looking at how things are starting to stack up.
It really concerns me.
Well, you know, to go back to talking about the 60s and that era of civil unrest was rooted in Vietnam and the conflict.
And we were sending our young boys over there to be killed, right?
And we were killing all sorts of people in Vietnam as well.
So you start to imagine, well, are we going to have clone wars?
Are you going to just end up sending robots to fight?
And then guess what?
The other country has their robots.
And then we don't care, right?
Because there's no connection personally to people who are fighting this war that are protecting our values, all those things.
And so what does that mean?
How does that happen?
We've already had that.
That started with the Gulf War.
I mean, if you look at the number of casualties, U.S.
casualties, during the first Gulf War, it was nothing.
You know what I mean?
And then we went over during the War on Terror, and Afghanistan and Iraq started shooting us up, and we're like, let's send drones.
Let's not have a war that the people feel at home.
It just becomes It's own mechanized autonomous thing.
And that, like what you're saying, I think is actually really disturbing the now situation.
You know what I mean?
Like, I think that's something to definitely worry about.
Right.
Especially because if you think about war, I mean, what is the goal?
How do you win a war?
And if you have like drone armies, that's why one of the reasons why I didn't care too much about those first three chapters of Star Wars when they came out or whatever, that one, because it was a bunch of machines fighting each other.
We didn't care if anyone got blown up or not.
But then how would you measure that?
You'd have to eventually kill real people, right?
And mow down... I don't know how else to figure that out.
So I don't think it... I don't know if it works, per se, if you're trying to be humanitarian with this warmongering stuff.
But either way, it seems like that's the line we're going towards, right?
I mean, we're just eventually going to have, you know, Clone Wars.
It feels like we're moving towards a place, and this is also one of the larger problems, Nick, like people forget that war is not just about a couple of people who feel bad towards each other.
It's actually often completely and utterly intertwined with socioeconomic goals.
Right.
Like, who is going to come out on top?
Who's going to have resources?
And like, it's almost like these cyber attacks that we're constantly seeing between the nations.
Things we don't know about.
Things that interrupt.
Things that mess with the supply chain.
Like, it feels like we have a bunch of superpowers right now that have been absolutely taken over by corporations, wealthy people, the oligarchs.
And like you're going to see more or less under the banner of the United States of America and China, you're going to see basically economic subterfuge.
Like if these things can go in and mess with supply chains, if they can go in and mess with economies, if they can go ahead and knock somebody off like one kind of like, you know, if they can knock them down a rung economically.
And just sort of mess with them a little bit in the same way like a hurricane or a natural disaster would.
Like in that case, you start having all this artificial intelligence.
First of all, people are going to die.
You're exactly right.
Like regular people are going to die.
Maybe they won't be soldiers.
But like what we're seeing, of course, over the Middle East, like normal human beings are going to die in the process.
And then on top of it, like it's probably going to become more commonplace.
Because it's not as scary to send a bunch of AI drones and operations against each other as it is to say 25,000 men are going in and doing this.
It would probably make it a lot more likely.
All right, everybody, that's going to bring us to the end of this broadcast.
We're going to be back again this Thursday night, 9 p.m.
Eastern on Fox News.
We're going to have Ron DeSantis and Gavin Newsom debating each other.
That's supposed to go about 90 minutes, so at 10.30 p.m.
Eastern over at Patreon.com slash Montclair Podcast.
Nick and I are going to show up, give you our instant takes and analysis, going ahead and becoming a patron.
Also, make sure that we're not going to surreptitiously advertise tobacco on our shows.
But you'll also gain access to the Friday show the weekender as patreon.com slash my current podcast.
Thanks everybody for listening.
▲
Export Selection