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Dec. 5, 2023 - The Muckrake Political Podcast
53:56
Israel Knew About The Attack

Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the Israeli government's ineptitude both with the fore knowledge of a Hamas attack and the response time on October 7th. They shift back to the US where Nikki Haley is going to push Ron DeSantis off the debate stage on Wednesday, and finish with a conversation about the media's narrative of where women stand in today's society. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Time Text
I'm good.
I'm good.
I'm going to tell you that I'm good and that's all that matters.
You know, we're just going to leave it at that.
We're not going to get into what is behind I'm good.
Most of the time, Nick, I don't accept that.
Most of the time, somebody asks me how I am.
I'm honest with them.
But in this case, I'm going to go ahead and just jump right through it.
Well, can I just say this real quick because I'll make it as fast as I can is the way you ask people how they're doing it makes me feel so inadequate because you truly want to know how people are doing and I don't feel like I don't I don't do it enough like I don't care enough as much as you do even though I do care trust me I do I want to know how you're doing but I gotta tell you the way you ask people how they're doing it's it's like penetrating and everybody just wants to tell you exactly what's going on.
I appreciate that, but I will tell you that I think people fall on one side of a line or another.
Either they appreciate it, or I'm like their most disliked person.
I've seen people almost trip and fall when I ask them legitimately how they are.
Like, you know, mid-stride, they're going about their day, and next thing you know they're almost like, Well, I just want you to know, having met you and been your friend for so long, I now really use that as my impetus for when I ask people.
I really want to try and get in that mindset.
I love it.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
That is wonderful.
But we're just going to skateboard right through it.
We have a whole host of things to talk about, Nick.
Before we do, we got another debate this week.
This Wednesday night, that is December 6th at 8 p.m.
Eastern, it's going to be what looks like the final GOP primary debate before the Iowa caucuses.
We're going to preview that in a little bit, but as you know, we are going to be here covering that after the event.
It looks to be about a two-hour thing, so roughly 10 p.m.
Eastern, beaming into your household to give you exclusive post-debate analysis, the type of stuff that you don't get anywhere else.
People who tuned in after the DeSantis-Newsom debate have been raving about all of that.
And by the way, everything that we talked about Has come to bear and pass since that debate.
That is this Wednesday, December 6th, 8 p.m.
Eastern is when it is.
It's in Alabama.
We'll be broadcasting right after that.
Go over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast in order to join in on all the fun.
I will say though, Nick, when I brought up the fact that there was another debate, your reaction was, and I'm just gonna quote you a little bit here, Well, if you were in the live show, uh, last time, and I had that free stream of you when you thought that they were going to go longer, uh, that Hannity was going to impromptu, uh, take over the network, I kind of feel like I had that, maybe, I don't know if it was that exact same expression, but I, I wasn't, let's just say the, the, the accompanying music would be something like... It was abject horror.
I had had enough.
I had had enough.
You had had enough.
Everyone had had enough.
But again, this is what we do.
We stand guard.
We watch this stuff.
Go over to Patreon.com slash Montcreek Podcast.
All right, everybody.
In the main segment today, the biggest news story in the world right now.
Unfortunately, the ceasefire in Israel and Gaza has come to an end.
We're seeing a bombardment of of Gaza.
It looks like Israel is about to go into South Gaza after these hostages have been released.
The U.S. was attempting to lengthen the ceasefire.
A lot of pressure was going on there.
And Nick, in the midst of all of this, and I was actually a little surprised by how little attention this got, because this is a bombshell.
We need to talk about the New York Times releasing a report that Israel had a copy of Hamas's October 7th invasion plans.
They had codenamed it Jericho Wall.
They had had this plan for over a year.
It had been widely shared and circulated among the military and intelligence apparatus of Israel, even in July, just a couple of months before the actual invasion.
An analyst had warned, and tell me if this sets off any reminders, that the system was all blinking red, Nick.
Right?
Hamas determined to attack within Israel, right?
And was completely written off.
It seems like also there's like some semantic stuff in there that makes you wonder if there's some sexism to exactly why that happened.
But this is a damning thing, and it really puts this entire war into a different light.
You and I had talked about this, whether or not Israel, how they couldn't have had any pre-warning about this.
And how are you feeling about this report, especially as this thing is starting to get off the ground again?
Well, it's the cynic in me would say, you know, when we found out about that, the 9-11 memo, you know, how did that, how did that hurt Bush in 04?
Like, it didn't.
He won resoundingly, right?
And I suppose if the Netanyahu government is going to, oh, get to the bottom of all this eventually, like, you know, they're not going to get anywhere with that.
You're not going to be able to prove that they got anywhere beyond The lowest levels of their intelligence, right?
But it is, I still think that the biggest thing that frustrated me, because again, this happens, right?
9-11 happened, you know, for whatever reason, the communications weren't there.
And the same in Israel.
But the delay in the response from, you know, like 7am on October 7, until when they finally were able to mobilize a response and to save people, was like 10 hours.
And so the fact that they even knew about this anyway, and then they couldn't immobilize anything at all, that's still the most damning thing to me, where they should have been on it within, you know, half an hour.
They should have had every, you know, troops there ready to protect Israel.
So, again, I don't have any faith that this is going to have an effect on it, because really what we have to worry about is how is Netanyahu going to get the hell out of there?
How are they going to get him out of there?
And that's that's the real issue here.
And perhaps that's one of the reasons why this got leaked.
Yeah, we talked about this.
I think we discussed it after the Newsom-DeSantis debate.
You and I stayed on for a couple minutes to talk about this report.
Yeah, I don't think that it would be a far-fetched theory that the US administration, which is absolutely tired of Netanyahu, Everything that is getting out into our media is, we are trying to talk to this guy.
We are trying to reason with this guy.
We're trying to tamp down war crimes.
We're trying to tamp down the violence.
He won't do it.
I mean, Blinken can't go over to Israel and get a meeting where he gets heard for anything right now.
So yeah, I wouldn't be shocked if this came out, like you just said, as a leak from the U.S.
administration.
I think you brought up another good point in this, Nick, which is When we think about 9-11, and of course this is Israel's 9-11 moment, that this is in a much smaller geographical space, this is their war on terror.
I mean you're even seeing like releases from the Netanyahu administration, they're talking about they're determined to wipe Hamas off the map no matter where they are geographically, where they are in the world, whether they're in Gaza or not, which is um, maniac behavior, right?
The idea you got to find evil wherever it is in the world and wipe it out, which is how you have a war over in a hundred countries.
Our understanding of nine 11, Nick is not an adult understanding.
I'm not talking about you and me and our listeners.
I'm talking about the American understanding of 9-11.
We have a almost like a cable news time-life understanding of it, right?
We got hit on a Tuesday, September 11, 2001, and then we had to respond and we had to go after al-Qaeda and this was this Terrible international terrorist organization that we know they had they had all of these things hidden in mountainsides and underground and all that like it was basically Cobra from GI Joe.
Well, that wasn't true.
And on top of that, you're exactly right.
It was proven that the George W. Bush administration Absolutely fell asleep at the switches.
And that's one of the reasons, of course, why so many conspiracy theories have grown up around this.
How could the most powerful nation in the world not stop what was an obvious terrorist attack on the way?
There's a couple of things that happened.
Like you said, a lack of communication.
On top of that, sclerotic administrative growth.
Like, one of the things that's going on in Israel is the fact that Netanyahu is not an effective leader, and the people around him are not effective leaders.
As a result, even though they claim to be strongmen, they're going to protect everybody, they can't do it.
But meanwhile, when we look back on 9-11, what you just said is exactly right.
George W. Bush and the people around him failed to protect America.
Not many people remember that.
Now, we have a quote here.
This is from the Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs, Ron Dermer.
He said, quote, we're going to get to the bottom of it after the war.
Well, when in the hell will that be?
When are you going to get into it?
It behooves Netanyahu and everybody around him not to talk about this, to move forward and hopefully continue with this war.
It is beneficial for him.
And as a result, you may never even remember that this report came out and that Israel knew that this was coming for over a year.
Is this a war?
You know, it's an interesting question.
Is it a war?
I mean, it's an ethnic cleansing disguised as a war, but sure, yes.
You know, and that's funny because I've been having this discussion about ethnic cleansing and genocide and a lot of different words that we're using and whether that matters or not, I don't even know.
You know, because, like, in theory, if you wanted to, if the Israelis didn't care at all about lies, the Gazan lies, then they would just level the whole place in one day, right?
Like, that's a theory.
That said, and we have to, again, I mean, you know, I'll acknowledge, you know, Hamas is putting innocent Palestinians in harm's way as much as they can to have this happen.
They don't care about that.
By the way, Haaretz reported, the newspaper in Israel, which is pretty liberal, that they announced, they had an article where it said that, like, they were reporting that most Arab leaders around the region want Israel to get rid of Hamas.
And so they also drew, and by the way, they probably view it as a direct threat to all the money they can make if they can get some deals going with Israel, you know what I mean?
Leaders outside, and you bring up an interesting point here, leaders outside of ones who are Like, in the Middle East.
And by the way, this has always been the case.
America did it.
Europe did it.
Everybody did it post-war.
You want to get rid of terrorist elements unless they're your terrorist.
You know what I mean?
Like, all the other people are going to, like, give your regime a push away.
You want to get rid of them.
Meanwhile, you're always going to have a group over here that you're aligned with or whatever.
And America's played that game, too.
But yes, that's exactly right.
A lot of these leaders absolutely support the idea of getting rid of Hamas.
Right.
And so this is a stress of like a lot of the other Arab countries don't really care about the Palestinians.
And so, I mean, listen, you see the Houthis in Yemen throwing lobbing missiles at ships, which is insane.
Well, Nick, let's for those who don't know, because so much information is falling through the cracks, the big development this weekend, you just alluded to it, I want to get everybody on the same page before you make your point.
Like, Ships from Britain, and then from the United States, and then commercial vessels from both countries came under rocket fire from the Houthis, who of course are in Yemen, and that is an Iranian-backed group.
Major, major battles out in the Red Sea right now, which threaten, by the way, the possibility, again, as we keep covering, the possibility of a larger regional war.
The U.S.
and Iran keep flirting and playing footsie underneath the table and trying to get into an actual hot war here.
Well, before I mean, I don't know if you can characterize this major battle because a couple of ships got hit by missiles and like, you know, minor damage, which seems weird because when you're picturing a missile hitting a ship, that should be it.
Like the ship just sinks.
Right.
So it's not I'm not exactly sure how accurate these missiles could be or what's going on there, where they're hitting them.
And luckily they're not because you're right.
That would then become something major if they started to sink some ships that were, you know, American.
That would be that would be a real provocative.
Start to something but other than that though most of the it's been pretty muted across the board in a way that like I think And by the way, the other thing is making money like a cynical as that sounds does tend to cause peace Right will have countries that would want to have peace in the name of like let's make some cash together And we'll have to exploit some people don't we don't worry about but we will have some peace at least and not a lot of violence in the streets and
So, everybody would much rather this thing come to an end and move beyond it and pretend like it didn't happen.
Because what you're just saying, so much of this is economic.
There are people right now who would really enjoy if Vladimir Putin would go ahead and pull out of the Ukraine so they could get back to doing business with Russia openly.
Not that they're not doing business with Russia, but do it openly.
They would love that.
Absolutely.
For sure.
And so, I mean, so that's the question is, you know, if we get rid of Hamas, great.
Like, it wouldn't be better for everybody.
I think that's even what the Palestinians would tell you.
I don't think that they're that popular there either.
So that's the question is OK, if the if the goal if everyone could agree that you know what Hamas is really shouldn't be around, it shouldn't be leading.
This is the next thing.
Well, how do we achieve that goal?
I think that's where we get to, and that's more.
And I just want to go ahead and draw a through line from the comparisons that we're making.
George W. Bush should not have been President of the United States of America.
He stole the election in 2000.
Benjamin Netanyahu should be in a jail cell.
He should not be the leader of Israel.
Like, even if September 11th would have happened, if, I don't know, an Al Gore was in office, even if the attacks of October 7th would have happened with somebody besides Benjamin Netanyahu in charge of that government, these are not the people who should be handling the situation.
Right.
And Netanyahu should not be in power, and I know the United States doesn't want him in power at this point.
Hardly the Israelis don't want him in power.
In a just world, this release would do something.
You know what I mean?
If people knew about this, we would have a different situation, or if we had the capacity to care about it.
It's a huge, huge reveal, but I don't even feel like it's gotten the play that it needed to have, which I think is incredibly unfortunate.
I agree.
I think, you know, Golda Meir had to resign after the Yom Kippur War because they were surprised and attacked that way.
And because the government was kind of set up that way, once you lose enough confidence in the people of Israel, then you kind of have to resign because you're not going to get anything done.
But if you are like Netanyahu, they've kind of rigged it in the last several years in a way that like, you know, just like we did here with Trump, like we didn't realize, wait, there's not a law against that that you're doing all these different things.
And so as a result, someone can take a severe advantage of the situation, which he's been doing now for all these years.
And you know what the worst part about it is, is as how bad it's been for Gazans for the last 10, 50 or for, you know, for a long, long time, for decades.
It's probably worse in the West Bank and because Israel sort of condones what the settlers are doing.
Settlers can kill people with impunity and they don't get thrown in jail.
They steal land.
They steal people's houses.
And it's like it's and it's you can't say that the Gazans aren't seeing that and also feeling that, even though it's, you know, separated by, you know, a big land or a big land portion where they're not connected to that.
But it definitely is is attack on.
They're all the same, you know, country.
So that's what we have to be aware of, is that it's the atrocities are really probably going on more in the West Bank than they have been in Gaza.
And so that's the other reason why that you have to leave and the other insane, insane people.
Imagine Trump putting all the insane people he wants in.
That's what's in Israel now.
No, you couldn't have nailed it more on the head.
Netanyahu has effectively created around himself a rigged government, an authoritarian push, and on top of that, the settler movement, along with like the really, really rabid Zionist, they have created what MAGA wants to be.
They have effectively created a society that works like that, and now they have the keys to a war machine, which is the problem.
They weren't able to actually protect the country, and on top of that, they should not be prosecuting the retaliation, which is why things are happening the way that they are.
Yeah, and the saddest part about all this is that the real victims of all these of the atrocities on October 7th were people that I probably the vast majority would want a two-state solution would want Palestinians to be treated like you know humans and and they're the ones who had to suffer while the guys in the government like Netanyahu and his cronies uh aren't touched and that's really um the problem here and you get to a certain age that's what makes me worried maybe we'll share it on thursday
but there's a clip from netanyahu when he was in his 20s in a very positive way talking about the hopes to have a solution uh that can have two states and they can be peaceful together um and i i worry that as you get older like that into your 70s and 80s and you feel like well you know i'm closer to the end than the beginning you kind of don't care you don't have that hope anymore and that's the killer i don't know if it's a lack of hope And that's something we can talk about if we wanna get into that clip more.
I think Netanyahu has realized, and this is a hard thing to realize about how politics work, you kind of have to, like, twist your mind a little bit.
Think about Ronald Reagan and the Soviets.
The Soviets were the best thing that ever happened to Ronald Reagan, you know?
Like, they were his best friends, not because he hung out with Gorbachev, you know, and talked about, like, working together, because fear of communism allowed him to run roughshod.
It allowed him to not only become one of the most powerful governors in the country, but one of the most powerful and transformative presidents of an era.
Hamas, Netanyahu can sit here and tell you he hates Hamas and wants to destroy Hamas, it's the best thing that happened to his political career.
Period.
He would not continue to have power and he probably would be in jail if it wasn't for Hamas.
So yeah, you kind of have to look at that.
I don't know if it's you lose that hope or the cynicism and opportunity overwhelms it.
All right, Nick.
Well, I was just going to say, on a similar note, speaking of the Republican Party, again, on Wednesday night, this Wednesday, December 6th at 8 p.m.
Eastern, we're going to have our, presumably, the last GOP debate before the caucus in Iowa.
Uh, we again are going to be broadcasting live after that.
That should be around 10 p.m.
Eastern.
Go to patreon.com slash monkering podcast.
Nick, let's set the stage for this.
It looks like I thought Chris Christie was not going to make it.
It looks like Christie did.
So we have a stage of four at this point.
We have Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Chris Christie, and Vivek Ramaswamy.
Nick, a lot of things have happened since the last debate, and if people didn't listen to our last post-debate analysis, we told everybody.
Nikki Haley was going to get not only a boost in the polls, the machine was going to get behind her.
The news now is that not only have the major donors that we've talked about, including Jamie Dimon, who we'll talk about in a second, from JP Morgan, Coke Land is now behind Nikki Haley.
The Koch brothers and their entire political machine have pushed their chips into the center of the table behind Nikki Haley.
Ron DeSantis is coming off of the Gavin Newsom debacle, which I kind of want to talk about what has come out from that debate as well.
Chris Christie is hanging on by his fingernails.
Vivek is just going to be Vivek.
That's who he is.
What are you looking for going into Wednesday?
Well, you know, maybe they'll give him a little party, like a cake, for like Christie and maybe, you know, Vivek.
Just kind of like, thanks for playing, that's really nice of you to do.
Here's a watch!
Yeah, yeah.
We really appreciate it, yeah.
So, you know, but that said, because of that, you have to imagine someone's going to set somebody on fire, you know what I mean?
And it's gonna be ugly, it's gonna be cross-talking, it's gonna be all the stuff, you know, we saw in the beginning of the DeSantis and Newsom debate, but worse.
And you know what?
I gotta say, whatever I had responded to in Nikki Haley's first appearance in that first debate, obviously, some other people are now responding to, but I wonder if guys like Jamie Dimon, who, you know, they're gonna, they don't care who's in charge, right?
They just like sort of status quo.
There's only the notion that perhaps, and I was talking to a friend of the pod, Jason Needleman, who's, you know, political science professor, he's been on the show a bunch, And he was thinking that, you know, that he maybe he would want Nikki Haley because she's a little bit more mentally stable.
And, you know, these markets guys, they want they want stability.
They want to just know it's not all over the place with like the one tweet will cause the market to roil.
So so I kind of get it there.
But there's also this notion that, you know, do do do.
Do something somehow do they think that that Biden would eat more easily beat Nikki Haley and that's why maybe the Democrats are going to like we've seen that in the last time where the Democrats pushed some of these really extreme people in the primaries in a way, right?
They try to help those guys in the Republican primary knowing that if they got that far they would lose to the person who's a Democrat.
It's dangerous to do that, right?
It's very dangerous.
But I don't know if that's part of this or not.
Do you think it's anything to do with that?
I think so.
We're talking about JP Morgan's CEO, Jamie Dimon, who is just going all over the place telling Democrats to support Nikki Haley, which Interesting.
To get in the weeds, this is something I would usually save this for a live stream, but I think this is important to talk about.
The idea at this point is that Trump's nativist protectionist philosophy, and by the way, it's not his, it's just the people around him, the new MAGA right, they want to go into a full-fledged Cold War with China.
You know, they want to go ahead and basically put down like a wall between America and China and go ahead and push American reindustrialization and just basically rip the Band-Aid off.
Because America is going to reindustrialize.
We're going to start making our goods along with Canada and Mexico.
Nikki Haley and possibly even Joe Biden, he's been trying to work with this.
There are a lot of people, Nick, who don't want to rip off that Band-Aid.
They want to slowly wean off China.
You know what I mean?
Like, they want to go ahead and keep trading with China, try and keep it very, very stable, and keep up building American production of not just goods and, you know, electronics, but also semiconductors.
You know, they want to go ahead and make sure that, like, I gotta tell you, America, if it keeps getting its iPhones, It'll kind of be a miracle at this point.
People don't like to talk about this, but it's a little wonky.
But they kind of want somebody who, like you said, isn't going to fire off a tweet and start off a trade war that is going to, I don't know, turn into a hot war in these current circumstances.
The other thing about it, though, I just want to say real fast, Ron DeSantis, man, this is, it's put up or shut up time, and I don't know what he could do.
I guess he could turn water into wine on the stage, but I don't even think that would save his campaign because he would look crazy doing it.
Did you see, Nick, by the way, that what came out of the Fox News debate is that apparently Fox News set up the monitors so that DeSantis could see the questions that were coming?
Yep, yeah, and Newsom was not happy about that.
I mean, it didn't help him much, but geez Louise.
I mean, Gavin Newsom still stole his lunch in front of the world and absolutely destroyed him.
DeSantis is in trouble.
Chris Christie is about done.
I hope they show like a Christie's Greatest Hits, and I hope they do like swooning music and like a slow motion thing of him being like, We don't need Donald, duh.
The worst insult that's ever been said.
Vivek doesn't care.
Ramaswamy is there to become an influencer.
And I gotta tell you, as long as he's on the stage with everybody, he's going to be the lightning rod.
He's going to be the guy that everybody goes after.
But I think Nikki Haley is probably, if she's smart, and if the money around her is smart, she's going to spend this entire debate going after Trump.
We shall see if she can resist going after Vivek or not.
I don't know.
They seem to have a thing.
I don't know.
or prosecution of Donald Trump.
We shall see if she can resist going after Vivek or not.
I don't know.
They seem to have a thing.
I don't know.
Part of me could envision her going at DeSantis a little bit.
You know, he's ripe.
Do you remember that?
But again, she's behind him, right?
So she needs to kind of do something.
So there might be some interactions between them that I think would be interesting.
And then we'll see how the Santa's acts, you know, to a woman.
Because I feel like I can't picture in my mind, I'm like, maybe I'm blanking, any kind of direct interactions between them and the other debates.
They had a moment on China and fracking.
Do you remember that?
Where Nikki Haley was like, you've been welcoming China to Florida over and over.
And on top of that, you banned fracking.
And he's like, well, that's not true.
Yes!
It was.
But she owns him.
He's got nothing on her, which is another thing.
Nick, I've been thinking about this.
Who has Ron DeSantis actually scored points on?
Do you know what I mean?
Like, the entire time of the last, you know, few months that he's been a nominee, who has he actually dunked on in this entire time?
Can you think of anybody?
I mean, I have to go through my notes, but nothing comes to mind right now.
But, you know, my brain is mush these days.
Yeah, I don't think he has.
I don't think there's been a single moment in any of this.
I mean, the only thing that he's done, of course, is he says the word woke 87 times within like a two minute span.
But that's all he's got.
And people, You know, people want to sit around and talk about wokeness and they want to talk about a war on wokeness, but that's not really what they want.
You know, they don't really want a person who just says that all the time.
They want a cult leader is what they want.
And Ron DeSantis, I'm sorry, but if you join a cult of Ron DeSantis, you've got bigger problems.
You know what I mean?
Like, if that's the guy you're pledging your life to, I had a moment the other day, Nick, where somebody came after me because I judged that debate for Gavin Newsom, and somebody had, like, DeSantis and, like, their screen name on Twitter, and I was like, Either that person is, like, paid by the Ron DeSantis campaign to tweet, or, like, they need help.
Do you know what I mean?
Can you imagine being, like, a public Ron DeSantis supporter at this point?
I mean, listen, you know, there are people who are fans of lots of things, and they, you know, they drink the Kool-Aid and they like it, but, uh... That's like driving around with a sticker that says, Honk for E. Coli.
Right, okay.
All I can think of is is what Newsom said when he goes, you're trying to out Trump Trump.
How's that going for you?
How's that going for you?
That was like that was devastating.
Like there's no other way to say that.
How's it going from your 40 points behind whatever it is?
It's like it's not going well.
I want to point out, listen, I don't pat myself on the back very much.
I want to give myself credit where credit is due.
The calls for Harris to go back and become governor of California have started.
I said, you know, if you want to try to engineer something, you want to get Newsom near that ticket, you're going to start seeing some Harris for California governor talk, and it's soft launched.
I'll just say that.
Yeah, I mean, you know, you'd have to try and have her save face and make it seem like she's not just, you know, stepping down because they don't think she's a good candidate, yadda yadda.
I guess, listen, everything is unprecedented in this time of day, this era.
So, like, we can't throw that out there, but the idea that the vice president would somehow swap with the governor of California for that governor and then run for, leap over the incumbent to go run for the president?
How could you ever?
You couldn't write that in a screenplay.
No one would ever believe that.
All I want to bring up is 1972, where the Democratic presumed nominee for vice president was revealed had undergone electroshock therapy.
I just want to bring up, like, things get weird in times like these.
That's all I'm saying.
Yeah, right.
They do.
I just watch all the president's men, by the way.
And yes, so you're right.
That would be weirder.
It would be weirder.
It would be weirder, I suppose.
But anyway, we digress.
It would be weird.
But that debate, again, is Wednesday, 8 p.m.
Eastern.
We'll be broadcasting live after that with exclusive analysis.
I think that this is going to tell us everything we need to know going into Iowa.
I would bet within the month between this and the Iowa caucuses, I think the picture of what's getting ready to happen is going to shore up.
Because you are going to see I mean, the amount of Nikki Haley ads that are going to happen in caucus and primary states, you're not going to be able to get away from them.
Like, the money that the Kochs and Diamond and all these people are pushing towards her, she's going to overtake DeSantis, is what's going to happen.
The question is, what happens after you overtake DeSantis?
And I think we're going to get the beginning of a glimpse of Nikki Haley, you know, quote-unquote frontrunner, because of course she's behind Trump, but the person who's showing up who's the de facto frontrunner.
Yeah, but by the way, like, if or when Trump wins the nomination, like, they're going to give him the money again, right?
They're going to be like, oh, just kidding.
Oh, no, you know, you couldn't be more right.
Everybody right now saying they'd never support Trump.
They're done with Trump.
Nick, they're kicking it.
They're done.
They're getting in rehab.
They're done with Trump.
They're never going to touch this stuff again.
They will absolutely touch this stuff again.
And that sound you heard is the Koch brothers, well, one of them, the one who's alive, keeping his cryptkeeper arms around the pot that is in the middle of the table, ready to pull it right back.
Uh, that, you know, that image is even more gruesome in my mind.
The lift with the drool and the... Oh, such a, such a gross bunch of human beings.
And by the way, they did the same thing to Ron DeSantis!
Yeah.
Like, like, like, Ron DeSantis.
It's basically like running into, like, your, your ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend.
You know what I mean?
It's just like, oh, good to see you in Tuscaloosa.
Although I almost feel like it's like you're running to your ex-girlfriend and you don't realize the guy she's with is her boyfriend and you're just trying to like have a, you know, hey, how's it going?
And it's a Koch brother.
Yeah.
You know, it's really, it's really tough.
And the Ron DeSantis, I will remember this forever.
I will never leave my mind what a devastating political turn the Ron DeSantis campaign has had.
I can't overstate that enough for people.
Yes.
It's sad, is really what it is.
It is a feces map of a campaign.
Can I just, for the people who haven't yet watched or listened to our post-DeSantis Newsome broadcast, for those who don't know, just to get everybody up to speed, because that is a reference that we're going to need to bring up for a long time, Ron DeSantis,
A national political figure, the governor of Florida and the second runner in the GOP primary, thought it was a great idea to pull out of his pocket, which he wasn't supposed to have props by the way, he pulled out a graphic novel displaying a sex act and a map that was described as a map of where feces have been found.
Like, he thought that was a great idea.
It's unbelievable, Nick.
It truly is.
And you know what?
It started out really the same way, and it's ending the same way.
It is just.
It's shit in, shit out.
All right, everybody, we got to talk about these two quick articles that caught my eye.
Nick, the first one was an editorial from the Washington Post.
And man, there is some squirrely stuff happening in the discourse in American politics.
The Washington Post, the editorial board.
And a reminder, what you just said, the Washington Post is the newspaper.
That took down Nixon.
Like, the pinnacle of American political reportage.
They released this article titled, If Attitudes Don't Shift, a Political Dating Mismatch Will Threaten Marriage.
And again, I've said this before, there are certain articles, Nick, I see them, I put them on my tab, I grab my coffee, I kick up my feet, I say, hold all my calls.
This one from the Washington Post, Nick, is pretty wild.
I'm going to read from the beginning of it.
Quote, ideological polarization is now a mainstay of American politics.
Millions of young Americans will go home this Thanksgiving and find themselves in uncomfortable situations with relatives, especially uncles, who love former President Donald Trump, hate vaccination, and think January 6th, 2021, Capitol insurrection, and very fine people on both sides.
In some ways, polarization is exactly what one would expect in a large, unwieldy democracy such as the United States.
Americans no longer agree on many questions of how to live or what to live for.
These differences can't just be papered over through good faith dialogue because they are real.
The problem with polarization, though, is that it has effects well beyond the political realm, and these can be difficult to anticipate.
One example is the collapse of American marriage.
A growing number of young women are discovering that they can't find suitable male partners.
As a whole, men are increasingly struggling with or suffering from higher unemployment, lower rates of educational attainment, more drug addiction and deaths of despair, and generally less purpose and direction in their lives.
But it's not just that.
There's a growing ideological divide, too.
Since Mr. Trump's election in 2016, the percentage of single women ages 18 to 30 who identify as liberal has shot up from slightly over 20% to 32%.
Young men have not followed suit.
If anything, they have grown more conservative.
Alright, we're starting off on shaky ground here, Nick.
How do you feel so far with this editorial?
None of this.
They're not citing any polls or any numbers here, so none of this really rings true.
I have a daughter in college right now who's 19, and I have a son who's in high school.
I'm about a few years before what they're talking about for this, but I can read the tea leaves going on, what's going on.
None of this rings true to me.
Can I, real fast, just to get the record straight?
The quote-unquote collapse of American marriage is not what's happening now.
The collapse of American marriage was that the feminist movement allowed women to start finding some common ground with men economically, socially, and legally.
They started being able to go out and make a living for themselves.
There wasn't going to be as much discrimination.
And, by the way, they found themselves able to leave marriages in which they were being abused, in which they weren't being treated right, and they were able to go out and find something akin to an authentic life.
Everybody says that's the collapse of marriage, which is why Republicans want to go ahead and take away women's rights.
They will say as much as they possibly can.
It's not that America lost its morality.
It's not that America lost its principles.
It's that women who were being taken advantage of and abused were able to start charting their own course.
So already, we're off to a galloping start in this editorial.
I mean, listen, I got a spicy take on all this.
We'll get to that spicy take.
Moving forward.
In another era, political or ideological differences might have had less impact on marriage rates, but increasingly the political is personal.
A 2021 survey of college students found that 71% of Democrats would not date someone with opposing views.
There is some logic to this.
Marriage across religious or political lines, if either partner considers these things to be central to their identity, can be associated with lower levels of life satisfaction, and politics is becoming more central to people's identity.
This mismatch means that someone will need to compromise.
As the researchers Lyman Stone and Brad Wilcox have noted, about one in five young singles will have little choice but to marry someone outside of their ideological tribe.
The other option is that they decline to get married at all.
Not an ideal outcome, considering the data shows that marriage is good for the health of societies and individuals alike.
There it is.
I was waiting for that, by the way.
When are they going to start talking about how good marriage is for, like, society?
Oh, well, sure.
And I have a reason why we're talking about this in just a second.
I'll save it for the end.
But, Nick, I love the idea that, like, it says, like, rhetorically, it says somebody's going to have to compromise and then points out that women are the ones who are going to have to choose somebody.
By the way, it's not just ideological differences.
It's the difference between a person who believes they should have autonomy over their body and someone who thinks that they should have no autonomy, and if they go ahead and have autonomy, maybe they should be prosecuted as murderers.
But they're going ahead and saying this is for the good of society and the individual, and there's a reason for that.
But what are you thinking about?
Alright, are we ready for my hot take?
I have a hot take too, but I'm ready for yours.
Alright, where do they even go at the tab?
I know what it says on the tab, but here's the thing.
My first instinct, especially watching my kids growing up and seeing where the future is, I'm fascinated by the whole notion of dating now, what it's like.
High school, now I'm seeing it in college.
So I quickly looked up some stats and I said, okay, what is the, the increase in, in, uh, in homosexuality among men now versus, you know, whatever.
Do you know the increase of percentage of men who are now consider themselves gay from 2011 till 2023?
And by the way, I want to point out any of these statistics, and this is something that always gets to, has to be pointed out.
The numbers have absolutely risen because people have found more freedom to have authentic lives.
Instead of everybody thinking it's a contagion, it's the fact that people have always been gay, or lesbian, or transgender.
It just so happened that they weren't able to express themselves.
Right.
So among males, it went from like 3.5 to over 7% in 10 years.
Like double.
Sure.
So, and again, that's people who are willing to say that to somebody.
Oh, I bet the numbers are higher than that.
Absolutely.
So, so right away, it's like, okay, that's what if we're moving more toward that, where people can finally feel more comfortable as our authentic self, then yes.
Straight women, we're gonna find less people to want to marry who is a man who wants to marry a woman.
Like, that's simply, there's gonna be less numbers there.
And because of that explosion, where people are now finally living that authentic life, then it's gonna probably feel even more so just on that alone.
So anything else they're talking about, I mean, listen, ideology, I get it.
Like, if my wife was a MAGA, I don't, how would we ever get along, right?
That would be really strange.
I mean, again, have you ever stared at the Madeline, Mary Madeline and Carville, you know, Holiday photo they put out every year?
I don't actually think they're that different from each other.
I think, for people who don't know, the Mary Magdalene and Carvel marriage has always been like, oh my god, how they get along.
Their politics aren't that different.
That's how they got along.
They were just involved in the whole dog and pony show.
Well, also it's safe to say that if you were going to be a Republican when they were the big thing about, oh, how can they be all opposite?
That was definitely not such a big deal compared to now, right?
And we know that Madeline is not a MAGA.
She's not one of those anyway.
So that could exist.
But I do get some of that notion of, yes, it's probably a huge turnoff.
I suppose this has to be the word.
Like, you know, if you're going out and then the guy just starts talking all sorts of aggro, you know, toxic masculinity bullshit.
Yeah, I'm sorry.
You're out on a date and all of a sudden the guy's like, I think women should serve men.
And it's like, oh, check.
We're good here.
But again, you'll notice that the Washington Post, it doesn't exactly say it explicitly, but rhetorically, it's that women are going to have to change their political opinions.
That's really, yeah.
But I want to point out, I have a couple of things I want to bring up, because one of the reasons why all this is happening, it goes to exactly what you're talking about, the great thing that nobody wants to talk about, the great weight that nobody wants to talk about, and this also has to do, again, with why Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court, and also why the right is doing what it's doing, birthrights.
Birth rates are absolutely down.
This is why people are talking about white replacement theory.
Guess what?
The boomer generation was a historically large generation.
We created a country that was supposed to take care of them and revolve around them.
All of a sudden, there ain't so many of them.
They're not working as much and or they're dying.
America is not the only country that's going through this.
This is happening in China and countries all around the world.
This is influencing stuff whether they know it or they not.
More or less, and if you go back to times, by the way, early 20th century where we started talking about birth control, Nick, same shit!
Women are being selfish.
They're not thinking about the race.
They're not thinking about the country.
They need to have babies for the country, which is why when fascists and authoritarians take over, one of the first things they do is they tell the women to go live in the kitchen and have babies.
That's the entire thing.
It turns into a population war, which is one of the reasons why this is happening.
Also, the second thing, Nick, is that this is normalcy bias.
You know what's happening in this country?
Less people are getting married, more families are living together.
We're starting to see a rise of multi-family homes because people can't afford houses, they can't afford child care, they can't put together a main living with the way things used to happen.
So guess what?
You're sitting there, those analysts, they're saying one in five women are going to have to change their opinion.
Maybe, or maybe things are changing.
And maybe with everything from the rise of open authentic lives, maybe the rise of different types of lifestyles, maybe the American family isn't going to look the way that we thought it was supposed to look.
And maybe that's not a bad thing.
Oh, yes.
And if I have to hear it, by the way, nuclear family is comes back this this that phrase, I can't believe we have to deal with that after 1989.
And yet that's what these Republicans want to bring back.
The population war is interesting, because there is a subset of the of the of our population or of our of our culture that does have a lot of babies in their families, right?
And it's generally a lot of like religious families.
So that's another interesting thing where, and I'm talking about all the religions, when a lot of the really fervent religious people will have a lot of babies.
And those are the people who tend to be, we talked about this before, kind of primed for the kind of authoritarian rhetoric that we see coming out of the politicians now.
And so that's not good either.
And by the way, not only are they primed for authoritarian ideas, they're ready and primed for patriarchal ideas.
The thing that all this has in common, the nuclear family, the extended religious family, you name it, there's a patriarch.
A man is in charge.
He is the head of the family.
Like, all of this stuff, it's intertwining and it moves around.
There's a reason why this is being pushed, and the reason is, whether the Washington Post understands it or not, they're saying, hey all, You're becoming a little too radical out there and how you think about yourselves and how you think about your relationships.
You need to think about other things.
You need to get your priorities straight.
It is a centrist, moderate push, which we'll talk about in just a second, to say, hey, things are getting a little bit out of whack.
We need to go ahead and pull this back a little bit.
But another reason why it's a lot different now, I think, with the younger generation is that I saw a Twitter thread last week about how, you know, the Gen Z people will roll their eyes out of their head when they hear about people who are, you know, 50 or 60 who were able to, like, buy a house, and then it was, like, a nice house there, and then they've been to the next house, and they were able to get into the market in a way at a time when, like, it doesn't exist now.
They can't.
They'll never get that.
And someone pushed back on that and said, You know what?
That house that they think that they'll never be able to get back in 1965 was like a one-bedroom, one-bath, little nothing, barely, you know, they had to fix it up over 20 years and the whole thing.
And then they were able to, after 25 years, graduate to something better.
And meanwhile, now what they want is, you know, a three-bedroom, two-bath house at 2,500 square feet on a nice lot.
And they're never going to get that, right?
Because that, obviously, you can't compare those two things.
Interesting point where perhaps what we've now become accustomed to what we want and what we were used to when we were growing up you know might not be as attainable but only because it is it is that much it's more it's that much more nice what they're looking for compared to what the predecessors had be able to get into when they started out.
I don't know if that rings true to you or not.
Well, no.
And how are you supposed to buy a house when basically you have corporations using artificial intelligence and algorithms to buy up every possible house in order to turn it into rent-seeking properties?
Like, it doesn't work.
Like, you can't go around saying, why aren't you all getting married and having more kids and meanwhile have a corporate stranglehold over the entire economy that doesn't actually want to pay people and doesn't actually want to provide, going back to what you said, The boomers could pick a job and they had it for 40 years!
And then go back to the joke I made about Chris Christie.
They gave you a watch and they said, take care of yourself.
That's how it used to work.
Things are changing and they either need to change one way or another, but these centrists are absolutely, I mean, their heads are up their own asses.
Nick, one last article.
We'll touch on this just a little bit.
This showed up in The Atlantic.
This is by Annie Lowry, who, by the way, I should point out, is Ezra Klein's spouse, which will be relevant in just a moment.
The name of this article, Nick, it's, listen, it's a quiet title to an article.
It's not trying to make any waves.
It's not trying to upset anybody.
The name of this article in The Atlantic by Annie Lowry, Inflation is Your Fault.
Yeah, hey, that's going to flip right by.
No one's going to tap on that when they scroll.
Nobody's going to talk about that.
And by the way, this went viral for all the wrong reasons, which is one of the reasons why this stuff comes out.
And I'll talk about in a second why this got published in the first place.
I'm going to read a little bit from it.
Quote, People hate inflation, but just not enough to spend less.
This is one of the central tensions of today's economy, in which things are going great, yet everyone is miserable.
And in some ways, Americans have nobody to blame but themselves.
Three years ago, the pandemic gnarled supply chains around the world, leading to shortages of many consumer goods.
At the same time, the American government transferred roughly $1.8 trillion to households in the form of generous unemployment insurance benefits, and amped up child tax credit, stimulus checks, and delayed or forgiven student loan payments.
Less supply, more demand.
It was a recipe for higher costs.
Costs really rose.
A dozen eggs went for $1.33 the summer after the pandemic hit.
The price topped out at $4.83 last winter.
Gas prices nearly tripled the cost of leasing an apartment surge.
More recently, prices have been driven up, if more slowly, by the strong labor market.
The unemployment rate is as low as it ever gets and has been for some time, with labor shortages in a number of sectors.
Air traffic control, education, retail, trucking, police and public safety, nursing, plumbing and electric.
The tight labor market has forced employers to pay workers more, boosting wages, particularly at the lower end of the income spectrum.
Shut it down, Nick.
We're to blame.
Eat shit.
Pay more.
And don't complain about it.
Period.
Yeah, I mean, listen, I think the real reasons for this is credit cards.
You know, when you charge something, you don't pay for it right then, it comes in the monthly a month later, you can have a balance, you can find a low interest rate, perhaps.
I really feel like you don't have the sticker shock a lot of the time, because it's like you're not paying in cash, like they used to back in the day a lot more.
So I think that's a real big part of it.
And if we ever went back to that, then people would really be like, oh, you know, I really can profoundly feel it.
But even still, you know that there was an egg Uh, what's the word I'm looking for?
Uh, when they were the collusion, uh, egg collusion, egg collusion.
And so now it doesn't necessarily cover the most recent years of the last four or five years, but that lawsuit just came out and they proved that there was collusion.
They were raising egg prices.
And by the way, let me just give you a little hint.
It wasn't just eggs.
If they were doing it, everybody's been doing it.
Right.
And so, uh, That is really the issue here.
Whatever else they're saying, if they're not going to mention credit cards and the ease of use of those and the people having credit card debt, which I don't think they do in this article at all, and they're not mentioning collusion, then I don't know what we're doing here.
By the way, you're not wrong about credit and debit cards, but what would happen to the United States of America if we were actually taught how to budget and spend money, like in actual courses?
What would happen to the American economy, Nick?
Oh, it would probably crater.
It would crater into a giant atomic cloud.
Right.
Because this is what happens.
We talk all the time about how capitalism works.
It has to grow and grow and grow and grow.
And guess what?
Over time, there's no real money to spend anymore.
Everybody has to go in debt.
And then all of a sudden, you look around, you're like, oh my God, nobody has anything to spend anymore.
Things are falling apart.
You're not wrong in what you're saying, but this is in an environment that has been created.
Like, there is a reason why this has happened.
It didn't just happen because you and I and everybody listening to this is selfish, or because, like, we're going out and doing whatever.
We've been told to go out and buy everything.
The American economy depends on it.
And by the way, I don't know if you've been talking to anybody, Nick, this country's depressed as shit.
It is not a happy country right now.
So you're telling me that I have, I have money supposedly that you gave me that most people are using to pay off debt for the record.
You're telling me that I shouldn't go out and spend my money when everything feels like it's falling apart anyway.
And also the American economy tells me to spend my money.
Shame on me.
I guess I'm the asshole.
Right.
And by the way, you know, you kind of get happier when you buy something nice for yourself.
Yes, we are addicted to the dopamine that is one of the main coping mechanisms that this country, which has a mental health crisis, is one of the few things we've learned to do besides go out and use drugs and opioids.
Okay, so moving forward, because there is more corn on this cob, Nick.
Oh man, it pisses me off.
Quote, sticker shock is real.
And in surveys, people say that they are trading down because of cost pressures.
But I thought they were spending all their money, but that's neither here nor there.
But in fact, they're spending more than ever have, even after accounting for higher prices.
Huh, crazy.
They are spending not just on necessities, but on fun stuff.
Amusement parks, Uber Eats.
Can you imagine wanting to go to an amusement park?
People just have a lot of money on hand.
More broadly, they seem to be less likely to change their purchasing habits in response to price shifts.
A raft of recent studies have found that American consumers have become less price sensitive in recent decades.
Households are using fewer coupons.
People are spending less time mulling over what to buy when they're shopping.
Why?
Maybe because although prices of many consumer goods are higher than they were a few years back, they're still much, much more affordable than they were a few decades ago.
Your grandparents might have gone to three different grocery stores to get the best deals.
Would it really be worth for you to do the same now?
Who has the time to go to three grocery stores in this exploitative economy?
Well, you know, then they're going to go home and they're going to put on a little muumuu and then vacuum the rug for a while and have a drink, you know?
The Americans are working more than ever!
I'm sorry that they're not cutting coupons, which I don't even know where to get coupons now, but I'm sorry they're not perusing like scavengers constantly trying to get 50 cents off of a cup of soup.
Like, and meanwhile, they're not going from store to store.
What in the hell are you talking about?
Right.
Well, by the way, what she's also saying is the economy is going pretty well.
And I've seen those reports that say that wages have increased faster than inflation.
So if that's the case, then yeah, they're going to they have that money.
They're going to be able to spend it.
That's all.
Listen, OK, so let's finish.
Let's finish this up, because you're exactly right.
And there's something to talk about here and why this is happening.
Quote.
Another theory.
Consumers might have become more brand loyal, less willing to trade Coke for Squirt or Nike for Skechers.
Perhaps that's because companies have gotten better at tailing products to people's taste.
Perhaps it's just inertia.
People get stuck in their ways as they get older, as the average American has.
You'll pay more Starbucks coffee because you always get Starbucks coffee.
By the way, this is somebody saying, y'all like brands too much.
That's why inflation's happening.
Because you want Coke instead of Sam's Choice.
That's really what's getting published in the Atlantic right now.
You know what's funny?
You have to remind me that's the title of this thing, because it didn't feel like that's the title of this thing.
But you're right.
The whole thesis is that they're trying to blame the consumer for why the prices are higher, for why there's inflation.
It's insane.
But hey, you got to get readers, don't you?
I'm just going to go to the end of this quote.
People want to blame Joe Biden for their bills.
They want to accuse stores of gouging them.
The strange truth is that most people really are in a more comfortable position, even if they're not happy about it.
Nick, the entire reason that this article, and by the way, how many people in your regular life read the Atlantic?
Oh, I don't know.
Not a lot.
Are you having a lot of conversations about the Atlantic with people?
Nah.
Yeah.
This wasn't to you, the consumer.
This was to elites.
Who want to believe that everybody is just wrong about how the economy feels to them and they just need to shut up about it.
And you're right.
Joe Biden can't control this.
That's one of the reasons everyone's pissed off.
Because corporate control of the economy far outstrips what the government can or is willing to do.
So as a result, everything feels really bad.
Everybody gets really frustrated.
But who's to blame?
You.
It sucks.
I hate this.
I'm done.
I know.
There's not much to say beyond that, so I hear you.
It's so fucking stupid.
I'm so tired of these moderates getting after this and trying to push this thing.
All right, Nick, we will be back for The Weekender on Friday.
If you need to listen to that, and you should, go to patreon.com slash mcgreggpodcast.
But also, Wednesday night, roughly 10 p.m.
Eastern, we'll be live streaming after the final GOP debate before the Iowa caucus.
Again, patreon.com slash mcgreggpodcast.
If you haven't been to one of these, if you haven't listened to it, you're missing out.
You should really come hang out.
It's good for the live show.
It's good for information moving forward.
If you need us before then, you can find Nick at Can You Hear Me SMH.
You can find me at J.Y.
Sexton.
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