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Dec. 8, 2023 - The Muckrake Political Podcast
08:57
Trump Admits Desire To Be Dictator

This is a preview of our full episode that you can access over at http://Patreon.com/muckrakepodcast Become a member today and help us maintain our editorial independence as well as unlock a lot of special features like live shows and our private discord.  What a week for the GOP, as co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman go through Trump telling everyone he'd be a dictator, but just on the first day of his presidency so that's okay. George Santos was kicked out, Kevin McCarthy is quitting early, and it's no surprise people have lost faith in government. They end with a discussion of the three college presidents (Harvard, Penn, MIT) going before Congress to answer hypotheticals - and it didn't go well for them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Time Text
Hey, everybody.
Welcome to the Weekender Edition of the Buckcrank Podcast.
I'm Jared J. Sexton.
I'm in a hotel.
I'm drinking terrible coffee.
That's why this episode is late.
I ended up in the middle of nowhere last night, Nick.
We were supposed to record.
I went over two hours without seeing a hotel, without seeing a gas station.
I was afraid for my life at one point.
Here I am drinking terrible coffee.
Good morning.
Wow.
We're not going to tell them what state you were afraid your life for your life.
I think, I think by process of elimination, people can figure it out.
I'll just say it's in, I'll just say it's in the American South, which, uh, I have a lot of affection for the American South, but man, it has been done dirty by its leaders and, uh, its culture.
I hear you.
And you know, I apologize whenever I bring that state up as well, but still, I have feelings.
So I hear you.
But I'm glad that you're safe and that you are in an area where you can broadcast your voice cleanly.
Beautiful.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, hopefully.
I don't know.
This might sound terrible.
But here we are, everyone.
We have a full show.
A reminder, go over to patreon.com slash montclairpodcast in order to gain full access to The Weekender.
Also, by the way, Nick, we've been working for the weekend.
We have been putting in the hours.
We've been doing the exclusive analysis post-debate shows with the GOP debates.
We've been doing it with that Gavin Newsom, Ron DeSantis debate, which again was fascinating.
If you want to gain access to that, go over to patreon.com slash my great podcast also to support the show.
We need that.
That way we're not like the right wing trying to do like surreptitious tobacco ads that you don't even know are happening.
Right.
By the way, you know, I am officially heading down to Buenos Aires in the end of this month.
And maybe maybe I'll find somebody I can talk to because obviously there's a lot of political unrest down there and it'd be an interesting conversation.
Wow, big announcements.
I love it.
All right.
Well, we the whole point is the muckrakers are going places and doing things.
All right, everybody, we got to start with.
Listen, this is Taylor made for the Muckrake podcast.
This is what we do.
This is how we work it.
Former President Donald Trump, who has been making some choices lately in terms of his rhetoric and in terms of what he is communicating to the world.
He went on.
Sean Hannity had a big week, Nick.
He ended up, within a week, he had the Gavin Newsom-Ron DeSantis debate, then he had Trump come on for, I guess, what passes for a town hall, and they had an interesting conversation.
Media has been focused on this and attacking you under no circumstances.
You are promising America tonight you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody.
Except for day one.
Except for?
He's going crazy.
Except for day one.
Meaning?
I want to close the border, and I want to drill.
He says, you're not going to be a dictator, are you?
I said, no, no, no.
Other than day one.
We're closing the border, and we're drilling, drilling, drilling.
After that, I'm not a dictator.
Oh, so Nick, before we get into the political analysis behind exactly what's happening here, you know what I enjoyed in this?
I love that Sean Hannity thought that he was teeing up a softball.
He was like, you know, obviously you're never going to be a dictator.
Obviously you're never going to abuse your powers.
And like, he totally thought that he was doing Trump a favor here in a different way.
He did Trump a favor in a different way, but he thought something else was going to happen.
I thought that was a really incredible exchange, particularly in the back and forth.
How do you feel about it?
I mean, we've seen this a lot, right?
We've seen this with, you know, a lot of times when Hannity's had Trump on giving him a softball and hoping he won't just say the thing out loud, he does.
And so, but hey, listen, do I feel a little bit better now because it's only going to be the dictator for one day versus the rest of his presidency?
Did you hear the guy that when Trump said, only on day one, like some people laughed, but there was one guy in the background who goes, yeah!
Yeah.
This is how authoritarianism starts, democratically.
And, oh, I know you said it as well, but like, this is what's, this is what's so troubling because we're supposed to honor everyone's right to vote and choose who they want to lead.
So if it falls into that, it's because of how we elected it.
And that's what's so frustrating, because in theory, we're supposed to be okay with that in some weird way, right?
The wild thing in all this, I wrote about this on Substack this week, the wild thing about this, Is that the GOP primary and again, it's it's shaping up and we'll talk about in the future.
I've been thinking a lot about these primaries and caucuses and the schedule and how things might get weird.
But theoretically, it's shaping up to be Donald Trump and possibly Nikki Haley and Nikki Haley's appeal.
And she even said it.
I don't know if you watch the actual debate.
I ended up hosting the post debate show.
Her final statement at the debate, Nick, was I am not the candidate of chaos.
She said, I'm, you know, I'll go in, I'll do what needs to be done, but I'm not the candidate of chaos, which turned the page towards Donald Trump.
Donald Trump's entire, like, appeal is, I am the agent of chaos.
I, and that's what you need.
I'm the strong man who can go ahead and take care of this, right?
And the point of it is, Nick, that voter base, particularly the MAGA voter base, and even parts of the Republicans who are maybe quote unquote anti-Trump, They have literally lost all trust in liberal democracy.
They really think representative government has not only failed, but that the only way to deal with that failure is to go ahead and install a strongman who will take care of it.
That's what the Republican race has come down to.
After all these years, after everything that we've talked about, after everything that we've documented, we've told everybody this was only going to escalate and get worse.
Donald Trump saying out loud, yeah, I'll be a dictator and laughing about it.
It is simply an escalation of something that we have seen every step along the way.
Yeah, you know what?
If when we've gotten this far mixing capitalism and democracy, you know, this is maybe the use answer to the question I'd had, you know, years ago.
Is this inevitable result of that?
And then you throw in the thing that's going on in Israel and Gaza with a huge section of his base who wants You know, they think the end times are coming, right?
And that's what happened there.
And so I bet you they're just salivating at the opportunity to get him in there.
That might do something else that will cause this heaven on earth or whatever they want.
It's a really interesting flashpoint, I think, here.
And almost to the point where I wonder if Biden is even considering that kind of thing.
And we'll have to try and do... I mean, listen, do you think that that conflict is going to still be going on by November of 2024?
- It doesn't show any signs of stopping. - I mean like active, or they had like a longer ceasefire or whatever.
Because of the whole time it's been-- - You know, Nick, I'll be completely honest.
At this point, first of all, there's not, like, even if it were to stop, there's no way to repair the damage that has been done or to even begin to, like, start to, you know, even take care of anything that has happened so far.
So yeah, I think this is still going to be an issue.
I think people are pissed off.
I think things are going to be changing in a big, big way.
We still have a national reckoning to do with our part in this and this terrible, terrible event.
But I also think, Nick, what you just said about, like, some people really do want the end of the world.
That is part of Trump's base.
And they truly believe that they need a strong man in there who is capable of handling the end of the world or even ushering it in.
Others simply think it's time for an autocratic Takeover that it's time, you know that that the right has as has all the power and and we're not talking about like banning abortion After six weeks, we're talking about taking it off the board.
We're talking about basically instituting laws Changing the constitution doing everything that you possibly can to basically like we talked about the other day reinstituting the nuclear family Uh, you know, rolling back gender protections of all sorts.
We're talking about civil rights.
We're talking about child labor.
We're talking about it all.
The whole point is he is talking to them, but he's also talking to the donors.
Like, the donors have already made a plan, which is Project 2025.
Somebody's going to get, like, one Republican.
If a Republican wins the presidency, I don't care if it's Donald Trump, I don't care if it's Nikki Haley, I don't care if it's Ron DeSantis, whatever.
Matter of fact, Chris Christie wins, he gets it as well.
Project 2025 gets handed to them, and when they get inaugurated, that's the playbook.
All of the Republicans are also talking to all of the donors and saying, I'm the person who can get it done.
Because that's what the Republican Party has become.
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