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Dec. 19, 2023 - The Muckrake Political Podcast

01:00:38

Ron DeSantis Sinking While Clarence Thomas Grifting

Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the implosion. of Ron DeSantis's campaign ahead of the Iowa Caucus and what that means for Nikki Haley's fortunes. They shift to another bombshell report about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's taking advantage of his position to enrich his lifestyle, before discussing 2023 and its most important news stories. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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	I'm feeling the list right now.
	I'm so glad that you put it that way.
	I'm here with Nick Halseman.
	Nick Halseman, how you doing, bud?
	I'm doing well.
	I'm getting ready to do a little vacationing and I've gotten everything done for as much as I can.
	So that always feels good.
	You know what I mean?
	To like get some stuff done, get your list checked off.
	I'm feeling the list right now.
	I'm so glad that you put it that way.
	I'm in that space where I'm going away for a little bit.
	And that sounds ominous, doesn't it?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Jared's going away for a little bit.
	Yeah.
	We're going to take a little bit of time off for the holidays.
	Don't worry, everyone.
	We're not going to leave you high and dry.
	We've got content coming out.
	In fact, after this, we're going to be recording our year-end mailbag.
	So don't worry.
	You've got Eyes Wide Shut coming out.
	It's our deep, deep dive into Eyes Wide Shut.
	We're going to have an interview for you next Tuesday that I think you're all going to want to hear.
	Then we're going to have that year-end mailback.
	Nick, where do the people need to go if they want to listen to all this stuff?
	Well, if they go to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast, that will get them where they need to go.
	And that would be great, because what are you waiting for?
	It's a great time, end of the year, to, you know... Join us!
	Join us.
	Come on over to the good side.
	And by the way, for the record, we're going to give you, uh, campaign coverage that you're not going to get anywhere else.
	We, we, we cover every debate.
	We cover every caucus.
	We cover every primary.
	We're out there.
	We're, we're scraping the, the, the shoes on the pavement.
	We're giving you insight that you don't get anywhere else.
	Patreon.com slash muckrake podcast.
	Great time to join us.
	2024 is going to be the weirdest year, Nick, and we are going to cover it and cover it well.
	By the way, I'm like about a week away from entering Argentina, and I'm kind of interested to see how that's going to be in the midst of what we're going to talk about later on.
	Yeah, we got to talk about Argentina in just a second because, as they say, things are happening.
	Things are happening all over the place, Nick.
	We have an interesting episode here that is all over the place.
	We have to start just by touching on a couple of developments that have recently occurred over in what we would affectionately call Trump World.
	Nick, we got him.
	Rudy Giuliani has been hit with a defamation decision of $148 million for disparaging and trying to ruin the reputation of Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shea Moss.
	$148 million.
	Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
	Oh my goodness, well then right afterwards he's on the street and they're going to have to get an injunction against him to prevent him from continuing to spread the lies of which he just had been prosecuted for.
	He's not well, I think is the answer.
	Okay, so first of all, the worst kept secret in American politics is that Rudy Giuliani is not well.
	I think you and I first talked about this probably back in 2017, 2018.
	We said, you know what?
	Like, we don't need to get into the specifics of it, but Rudy ain't great.
	And Rudy's never been great, but in recent years, substances, influences, you know, a pretty constant kind of bender and a terrible moral compass has led us to the point where Rudy Giuliani has sullied any reputation he ever had with anybody.
	People need to know he was never a good person.
	He was a racist, wannabe dictator mayor of New York City.
	9-11 brain gave him the sheen of respectability that people are starting to peel themselves out of, like getting out of a hot seat in the middle of summer with skin on vinyl.
	But he is a real piece of work, and this $148 million suit He deserved it.
	He deserved the judgment against him.
	He can't stop.
	It's pretty incredible watching his lawyers try and pull him away from a microphone to keep him from continuing to sully these people and rack up judgments against him.
	But you're right.
	He's not well.
	And there's a reason why he is thrown in completely with Donald Trump.
	And like the amount awarded was, I think, directly related to how much peril he's been putting all these people in.
	That's what's so dangerous about him continuing to say this is because people get, you know, listen to this as sort of keywords that get them rallied up to harass and maybe worse.
	So it is really sad.
	He's not part of that Trump world in the sense that You know, if Trump were, if this happens to Trump where he's got to pay $200 million in damages or whatever, he will bilk his followers in for that money and they will pay for it.
	Rudy does not have that.
	Trump is certainly not going to give it to him.
	And so he will probably end up, um, you know, somewhat destitute in his remaining years.
	And that's, uh, it's going to be a problem for him.
	No.
	And to think about, and we always like to draw lines of distinction and talk with nuance in this podcast.
	In Trump's world, there are a lot of really competent people in that world.
	There are a lot of people who can do a lot of damage, who have a lot of intelligence, they have a lot of discipline.
	They are the ones who are, like, pushing all these agendas and all these plans.
	Then Trump has surrounded himself with a whack pack.
	Like people who are just absolutely out there like personalities who do not have control over themselves.
	They do not have a good grasp on reality.
	Rudy Giuliani is in the former camp.
	He is in Trump's whack pack.
	He has gone from a quote-unquote serious person in some people's eyes into this Donald Trump whack pack.
	But Nick, here's the thing about Donald Trump.
	We know this.
	We've seen it over and over again.
	He will throw your ass overboard in a second's notice.
	Donald Trump isn't going to help him pay the $148 million.
	He's probably, I think he's done one fundraiser for his legal fees, but I don't even think that was even half-hearted.
	I don't even think you could call it that.
	Rudy's out there on his own.
	He is reaping the rewards of a path that he has chosen and It's going to be really bad for him.
	I'll just say that.
	It's going to be a bad situation for Rudy Giuliani.
	Yeah.
	You would hope that he would be a cautionary tale to other people who want to get into Trump's orbit, but I don't think so.
	I think that most people who get into Trump's orbit probably figure, oh, Rudy's old.
	That's not going to happen to me.
	It's important before we move on to the next part of the story, Nick, to always point out there are innocent, bystander people who are being affected by this.
	other legal problems.
	So you'd hope that all these suits would be a some sort of warning sign to people who think that they can, you know, function well out of all out of their relationship with Trump.
	It's important before we move on to the next part of the story, Nick, to always point out there are innocent bystander people who are being affected by this.
	Ruby Freeman and Sheamus did not deserve what they got.
	Neither did any of the other election workers or doctors or any other or experts who have been focused on by these people.
	Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump and others like them have continually turned the eye of Soran onto them and put them and their families in danger.
	And it's despicable and they deserve this.
	Speaking of Donald Trump, Nick, and speaking of poorly held secrets, it is now being reported something I think that we all knew deep down.
	It's one of those things, like the story came out and we're like, yeah, obviously this happened.
	It has come out that during Trump's presidency, a very, very important secretive binder Full of what has been called raw intelligence and sensitive materials regarding the Russian election interference of 2016.
	It went missing, Nick.
	Just gone.
	Nobody knows where it's at.
	The intelligence community is obviously incredibly upset.
	This raw intelligence probably included information that would out agents, that would expose operations, and would undoubtedly, and hear me out here, this is weird, Nick, probably help Russia out.
	I don't know.
	It's really strange that this happened.
	And as I understand it, the Russian interference information is a very small part of the binder, which is extremely thick and a lot of pages about a lot of stuff.
	So you have to be worried about what this all means in terms of was this kind of intelligence that Russia could have used if they were going to maybe invade another country, perhaps?
	I don't know if that helped them or not.
	Here's the interesting thing is we've known about the documents he didn't return.
	We've had a pretty good sense of sort of like what they were and how much of this and that.
	So it's telling, I think, that this was bottled up for a long time.
	The intelligence community themselves had no desire to have this get out because of how dangerous it is.
	Perhaps they were also hoping that they could still find it, right?
	And at this point, maybe it comes out because they realize it's not going to be found.
	Perhaps Mark Meadows, you know, it was reported that Cassie Hutchinson said that he had it on the way out.
	Perhaps they've grilled him.
	He doesn't have it now, doesn't know where it is.
	And that's when they're worried that it ended up falling into, you know, Russian hands, which is probably, you know, what's the percentage of likelihood on that one?
	It's over 50, right?
	It's a non-zero percentage.
	Fair enough.
	Again, before we get into the actual nuts and bolts of this thing, Nick, I want to point out that Donald Trump, the amount of intelligence that he handed to people, showed people, gave out to people, communicated to people, the people around him probably did.
	I mean, the very first scandal of the Trump presidency was Mike Flynn being an unregistered agent for Turkey.
	You know, like, that was immediate.
	And I don't even think it was a couple of days.
	You remember this?
	When he had, like, Russian diplomats, and it was basically like, let me tell you a bunch of things that you need to know.
	Oh, here's my barometer would be, if Kid Rock is telling you, maybe I shouldn't see this kind of stuff, then I think that's probably where you should stop.
	I went down a Kid Rock rabbit hole the other day, Nick.
	I was like, what's Kid Rock been putting out music-wise?
	Here's a spoiler.
	Bad stuff.
	Really bad stuff.
	But no, it is a thing where this guy does not respect intelligence and nobody cares.
	So never let the Republicans tell you they care about national security.
	Again, it's bullshit.
	But if you actually take a look, This story would not be coming out unless the intelligence community wanted it to come out.
	That meant that in the past three years that Joe Biden has been president, they have been clearing up the trails in order to make it okay to admit that this material was lost.
	That means that they did not want to validate any of the material within this binder by saying, hey, we lost this thing.
	Right?
	Because that gives an advantage to whoever might have grabbed it.
	But that tells you, first of all, that the intelligence community admitting this, they understand that Donald Trump is a danger to national security.
	They would not be talking about this if that were not the case.
	Also, while we're talking about this, I just want to remind everybody, just out in the ether, Nick, we talked about this on a previous podcast.
	During the Donald Trump administration, the CIA sure lost a lot of agents out in the field.
	A lot of them ended up getting their cover blown, and a lot of them ended up getting dead.
	Like look that that is the truth and that is like I'm just mentioning that Nick.
	I'm not drawing any lines.
	I'm not not crossing any t's here.
	I'm simply saying that those are facts and uh we'll just leave it at that.
	Well here's the thing uh you know he would never get a security clearance again.
	Never.
	And he probably wouldn't have gotten one to begin with and so I think Maybe the lawmakers now need to pass that law where you cannot be a president if you cannot pass a security clearance, which you'd have to do way ahead of time before, you know, like now, like it's Hannes and all these guys in the primaries.
	Hold on.
	I want to say though, Nick, The person who fears government overreach, that scares me.
	Do you know what I mean?
	I know where it's coming from, but I do not like the idea of these people having a veto over who can run for president.
	That's my concern there, but I agree that the spirit of that idea is right.
	Yeah, I hear you.
	Because I guess if they don't like you, they could just make some shit up and then run for president, I guess.
	I mean, I guess the process would need to be bipartisan and transparent, yada, yada.
	But, you know, we saw with Jerry Kushner, who had, you know, a very senior position in the White House, you know, really couldn't get a clearance because of all his shady finances that would leave him open to blackmail and whatnot.
	Plus the fact that he was in every second he got was trying to do business on the government dime.
	Right.
	It's a tricky one.
	That's the problem.
	You got to reform everything in order to make things work at all.
	Yeah.
	And the worst part about it is that there's no question that Trump won, you know, running on this, running on security, you know, with Hillary and her emails.
	And it won't have any effect.
	We'll have to get into, I guess, you know, the people want to vote for him.
	Uh, you know, cause we didn't even talk about, are we going to talk about what he's been saying recently at his rallies?
	I, it never ends.
	It never ends.
	It escalates every single day.
	Yeah.
	And it's, and it's the things we've been talking about again, but it's, I think we had predicted this, that it was going to get worse.
	It's going to get worse.
	No, the poisoning of bloodlines is, you know, a thing right out of Mein Kampf.
	Wait, is it bad if a demagogic leader is talking about poisoning the blood of a people?
	Does that, like, ring alarm bells?
	I don't know.
	I'm a simple caveman lawyer.
	You know, here's what's bad about that.
	First of all, it is bad that he's saying it, but what's worse, I suppose, is the reaction at the rallies to those lines.
	I love it.
	So, there's a lot of people in this country that really, really like that idea, and are embracing fascism, and they're embracing, you know, Hitler, Nazism.
	And at some point, if there's enough of those people, then that's what this country becomes, right?
	And we can't really get in the way.
	That's what the democratic process is demanding.
	And that's where we start talking about, I guess, leaving this country.
	Oh man, I like the way that segment went.
	Let's move on to our next story today.
	Nick, we have officially reached the rats leaving the sinking ship portion of the Ron DeSantis presidential campaign.
	Again, this is a really, really important thing that we're going to talk about later when we're actually going through our year in review.
	Ronny Dion is not doing well and has one of the most historically terrible campaigns that's ever been run.
	This entire strategy hinged on a super PAC called Never Back Down.
	Never Back Down has absolutely fallen apart.
	It's hemorrhaging people.
	It has, I mean, the amount of money that's gone through.
	At one point, Ron DeSantis had a $269 million war chest.
	That's right, over a quarter of a billion dollars has been wasted on this abysmal campaign.
	Recently, Jeff Rowe, who is one of the architects of the Never Back Down pack, he sent in his resignation.
	He said, I'm done.
	It's not a coincidence for the record that this is happening just a few weeks out from Iowa.
	For anyone who isn't familiar with the rats leaving the sinking ship stage, this is where people understand that it's a fait accompli.
	That you are not going to win.
	That things are going to fall apart and you want to say, hey, I got the hell out of there before things got really bad.
	This is this is the first horseman of the apocalypse of the Ron DeSantis campaign.
	I'll just say that.
	You know, I was just thinking about this and, you know, help me fill this in a little bit, because I would say that the like the Barack Obama campaign in the 08 was probably a little bit similar to this in terms of where they started.
	Right.
	Hillary was was running.
	It was going to be there's no way there he's going to beat her.
	Right?
	In the beginning, right?
	I think that's how it looked.
	You know, I think, Nick, it's kind of like the equivalent of somebody, like, starting off to do, like, a high jump, and they look a little shaky, and then they clear the bar by, like, a mile, and another person who, like, tries to start running and then impales themselves on the big stick.
	Okay, that's a great image.
	Now, you know, I guess the point I was going to make was, I think it was safe to say in 2008, from the very beginning of Obama's campaign, people like David Axelrod, who were helping him run the campaign, were believers, right?
	They were real believers in Obama and what he offered and what he could help us, you know, aspire to, right?
	Like, there was a real belief in that.
	And I think when you had something like DeSantis, these people were like, OK, I will work for you if you pay me an ungodly amount of money.
	I don't believe in you.
	I'm not going to like have any kind of, you know, emotional connection to this or really, really care.
	I'm just going to kind of clock in and do whatever I can do.
	And if it really goes south, then I'm going to quit and, you know, throw you guys under the bus.
	And I this really kind of feels like that was what it was.
	He didn't have any believers in his crew.
	And, you know, and as he got worse and worse, he kept trying to find some of those people, right, who are the real sycophants, right, the real bad advice people.
	And then that's how a lot of money gets wasted.
	And it seems like a lot of it was funneled to people who were just trying to get some cash in their pockets.
	Yeah.
	You know, I think one of the defining things that can tell you about Ron DeSantis and what type of campaign he ran, Nick, is that recently the head of Florida's elections fraud office left a meeting with DeSantis, had a heart attack, laid on the floor for over 20 minutes, and died.
	You know?
	Like, this was never a human-based campaign.
	And Ron DeSantis, I mean, One of the things that you read in any sort of a profile of his interactions with staffers or people, he doesn't know anybody.
	He doesn't talk to anybody.
	He doesn't care about anybody.
	He, you know, he doesn't ask about their birthdays or their families or anything like that.
	Like he is devoid of sort of human compassion and interest.
	What goes along with that, though, Nick, is that It started with a group of establishment Republicans, like the never Trump people who liked Trump, but they thought that they could get like a more authoritarian dictator out of DeSantis.
	But then the other people that they surrounded him with, the so-called true believers, They were Neo-Nazis.
	Like, this was a campaign composed of people who did not feel at home in the Republican Party with Donald Trump and online groipers.
	Like, that's no way to create a campaign that's going to appeal to people.
	And, you know, you brought Barack Obama, who's one of the most supernaturally talented politicians of a generation, if not the most.
	That was based on, like, I don't know, appealing to people's hopes and dreams.
	You know, the idea of change in the face of, like, a really awful eight years that disgraced everybody.
	And actually, after the 1990s gave people, like, whether true or not, the narrative that things were going to get better and there was a higher calling that they could aspire to.
	All DeSantis has given them is woke mind disease, and that's I'm gonna kill it.
	And on top of that, they didn't even have the guts to attack Donald Trump until like two weeks ago.
	This was never going to work.
	They didn't have the guy.
	And the fact that we've reached this point, They're accusing each other.
	All these people are accusing each other of wrongdoing.
	They're accusing each other of wasting funds, of wetting their own beaks.
	This tells you who this person is and what he surrounded himself with.
	And now that we've reached this, Nick, the numbers are crazy.
	And I don't know if you've had a chance to look at them.
	I'm going to go ahead and get everybody up to date.
	And listen, again, I don't like to pat myself on the back, but I'm going to do it.
	I'm going to give myself a little pat on the back.
	When I covered the last Republican debate, Nick, one of the things that I focused on was the weirdness of the caucus and primary calendar.
	Iowa is January 15th.
	It's right around the corner.
	Nikki Haley is not going to do great in Iowa.
	There are a lot of different reasons, right?
	She's a recent convert to Christianity.
	She's a woman.
	The governor of Iowa endorsed Ron DeSantis.
	Donald Trump is probably going to run away with it.
	The current numbers have Trump at 58%, DeSantis at 22, Haley at 13.
	Okay?
	That's in Iowa.
	So she's probably going to come in third in Iowa.
	In New Hampshire, she has overtaken DeSantis at this point.
	Trump 44%, Haley at 29%, DeSantis at 11%, and Christie at 10%.
	The question now, because DeSantis, if he finishes second in Iowa, he'll go to New Hampshire.
	That means that Nikki Haley is probably going to have the necessary points taken away from her to actually challenge Donald Trump in New Hampshire.
	So this disgusting failure of a campaign is probably going to hinder Nikki Haley from mounting a major challenge against Donald Trump.
	She still has South Carolina, but this entire contest is weird and jumbled because of the Republican slate and calendar.
	But wait, so you're trying to say that New Hampshire, she won't finish ahead of DeSantis in New Hampshire?
	The chance is that she will finish ahead of DeSantis in New Hampshire, yes.
	And then we'll finish ahead of him in South Carolina.
	But if she, like, Chris Christie is not going to get out of Iowa.
	That's not going to happen.
	So let's say, for instance, that Christie's 10% goes to Nikki Haley.
	That takes her, let's just say theoretically, this is all based on CBS News and YouGov, if you just go ahead and give her 10, and I think that's conservative, to be honest with you, let's just go ahead and let's give her 8% of Christie's 10.
	That takes her up to 37%.
	That gives us Trump at 44, Haley at 37.
	That's a different ballgame going into South Carolina than if you took DeSantis' 11 or a chunk of those and gave those to Haley.
	I'm just saying, this all feels very weird.
	There's a lot of moving parts at this point, but the calendar and the slate, I think, is really going to affect this thing going forward.
	I mean, now I'm trying to figure out what the South Carolina polls are between Haley and Trump, because... Not a lot out there.
	Yeah.
	Not a lot out there.
	Because imagine that, as she comes in with, you know, a little momentum and the wind behind her back.
	I mean, there's just no way.
	No one's going to beat Trump in any of these states, I don't think.
	Nobody... I know this.
	But I will say that the race would be different if DeSantis, you know, went ahead and got out of this thing.
	I don't think he's going to.
	But we could be looking at a Super Tuesday that could be... I'm not saying it could be like a total shocker, but I am saying it could be interesting, is what I would say.
	Yeah, I'm sure it'll be newsworthy, and it is interesting without question as these things jockey, because again, the other part of this is that Trump has not, you know, indicated who he would choose as a vice president, which probably factors into this to some degree, but I guess we know who it won't be.
	And so, at any rate, it is sad.
	I suppose we spent enough time on DeSantis' campaign, or a lot of time on it, just because it's almost like a how not to run a campaign, in a way.
	But even if they ran it right, it didn't matter because of the candidate, right?
	They could have had the best people running this thing, and it wouldn't have really mattered because of what we'd already have been describing this whole time, and he's just not a good candidate.
	If he was a decent candidate, if he had, like, even the beginnings of human charm, I don't know what this would have been.
	You know what I mean?
	I really don't know because Iowa could have been a standing ground against Donald Trump.
	I mean, they, Iowa wants to move away from Trump and DeSantis was the one who could have done it there.
	But yeah, if he had even an ounce of charm, I don't know what this would have been.
	But he doesn't.
	That's just it, he doesn't.
	I know you had broken it down for me before, because I know I was mystified about how he ever won Florida.
	And it's a really clear answer, I'm sure, right?
	But it really feels like this is going to hurt his Florida chance to continue being governor and run again.
	Well, no, he can't run again.
	What he'll do is he'll probably try and run for Senate at some point, but God knows it.
	Like, it behooves him to not get destroyed in Florida by Donald Trump by over 40 points.
	Wow.
	He needs to get out before that.
	And, you know, the whole point of this is the Democratic Party of Florida really, really screwed the pooch here.
	The fact that they allowed Ron DeSantis to gather around him, basically a cult of personality and a dictatorial governorship, that's on the Democratic Party, both the national and the Floridian Democratic Party.
	Fair enough.
	One of the most fascinating stories in a very long time.
	I will remember the Ron DeSantis campaign.
	I can't wait until he drops out.
	We can do the autopsy at that point.
	All right.
	Speaking of weird people, Nick, ProPublica will not leave for Clarence Thomas.
	They have got his number.
	It's like Hershel Walker with Roger Sollenberger over at Daily Beast.
	It's like a dog just snapping at somebody and not letting go.
	ProPublica's Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan, Alex Majerski, and Brett Murphy have released a report Regarding Clarence Thomas's both public and private signaling to donors within the Republican Party, the Supreme Court itself, and also the Republican Party writ large back in the early 2000s, apparently Thomas was signaling all the way back then that I don't know.
	He wasn't getting paid enough.
	Back then, in 2000, he was making $173,000, which is the equivalent, Nick, if you want to feel bad about inflation, that's the equivalent of $300,000 a year at this point.
	Is that right?
	That's right.
	Oh my god.
	It's pretty, yeah, that's a tough one.
	Here's a quote from the ProPublica article.
	In early January of 2000, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was at a five-star beach resort in Sea Island, Georgia, hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.
	After almost a decade...
	After almost a decade on the court, Thomas had grown frustrated with his financial situation.
	According to friends, he'd recently started raising his young grandnephew, and Thomas' wife was soliciting advice on how to handle the new expenses.
	The month before, the justice had borrowed $267,000 from a friend to buy a high-end RV.
	Give it to this guy.
	Yeah.
	He found himself seated next to a Republican member of Congress on the flight home.
	The two men talked and the lawmaker left the conversation, worried that Thomas might resign.
	Congress should give Supreme Court justices a pay raise, Thomas told him.
	If lawmakers didn't act, one or more of justices will leave soon.
	Maybe in the next year.
	Nick, that's right!
	Clarence Thomas, back in 2000, basically blackmailed the entirety of the Republican Party, the Supreme Court, and every Republican donor to pay off his debt and to corrupt him.
	He literally begged everyone to corrupt him.
	And you want to hear something wild, Nick?
	It worked.
	You know why it worked so well?
	The timing is important of this, right?
	What was going on in January of 2000?
	I can't even imagine at this point what possibly was cooking up in January of 2000 that would completely change the history of the nation.
	So, I actually saw Al Gore speak at a high school that I was substitute teaching at.
	It was late, it was probably in the summer of 2000, but remember, I think what he was preying upon, and this is why the timing is important, was it looked like Al Gore was going to beat George W. Bush in the presidential election.
	Wait, wait, wait, correction.
	Correction, Nick.
	He did beat George.
	Okay, well let's get to that, because...
	It just so happens that Clarence Thomas got to decide who won that race later on in that year.
	And so, this is really why he becomes a little bit more nefarious than a guy who all of a sudden woke up after, let's see, 10 years of being a Supreme Court Justice and realized, shit, I don't get paid a whole lot.
	I thought I got in this to actually make some money.
	Like, what did he think after, you know, when he first got the job and committed to This is a manipulation of all manipulations.
	I guess I want to give him credit.
	of a sudden he's like, I want money.
	And then that timing is really important because I think he realized he, there was pressure on everybody to maintain that because they thought recognizing leverage is what it is.
	And, and, and if he were to resign when Gore was in presidency, then they lose that seat and becomes a lot less conservative.
	So this is a manipulation of all manipulations.
	I guess I want to give him credit.
	I didn't think he was that smart, but he, that's a pretty smart move.
	Well, I, I, to, to be fair, I don't, I don't think he dreamed this thing up for himself.
	I I mean, Ginny Thomas, very shortly after this, landed a six-figure gig at the Heritage Foundation.
	I mean, she has done a really good job of understanding exactly what she can do because her husband is a Supreme Court Justice.
	This is Nick, we talked about George Santos.
	We said, you know, probably the greatest liar and grifter that we have seen in Congress.
	The Supreme Court has been a bastion of grifters from the very beginning.
	Liars, grifters, manipulators.
	The very fact that corporations are people and the fact that that was made up from whole cloth by a bunch of people basically who conspired to do it tells you who these people are.
	These are scoundrels in the Supreme Court and they always have been.
	He, Clarence Thomas, is on the Mount Rushmore of the most scoundrelish Supreme Court justices of all time.
	It's really incredible how blatant he has been about it, how big of a role he has played in to the blatant corruption of the modern Supreme Court.
	You kind of have to take your hat off for him.
	You really do.
	Yeah, and he, the veiled threats of like how he, how the Constitution needed to be interpreted, and the quotes that he would have on this thing, it's like, it really, it made it sound like he's like, we all know how you want me, oh, here's the other thing, the backstory of this was, he never asked a question for 20 years on the bench, which is completely strange, everybody else asks something, he never would speak up because
	A, you can just assume that he was just uninterested, or B, he was just waiting for the time to put his stamp on the Republican vote, whatever that's gonna be, and the conservative vote, and then move on.
	I don't think he ever really spent much time thinking about any of these cases, and so it just continues to add, we're gonna add a little bit more context into what's going on, but it's like, I don't even know if it needs the context.
	The guy is corrupt.
	He's corrupt.
	He should not even be, he shouldn't even resign in disgrace.
	He should be let out of the Supreme Court in disgrace.
	He should have his ass kicked out of the court, if there was any justice.
	Also, for the record, what's that sound, Nick?
	What?
	Oh, crickets!
	It's absolute crickets as the Democrats say nothing about this, as they don't act on this whatsoever, as this hasn't even become a campaign issue.
	Like, we don't hear anything about this.
	We don't hear anything about Supreme Court reform.
	We don't hear anything about adding justices.
	We don't hear anything about it, and that is a disgrace.
	That they would rather protect the sanctity of our institutions, and big scare quotes around sanctity of our institutions, than to actually call out some of the most blatant corruption that we will ever see.
	You know, I think it would be a great, remember I told you I would want to run for president and I would just say I'd release all the UFO information like that would probably catapult me to the White House?
	Maybe this would, I think that there would, this wouldn't be a terrible idea to run on the Supreme Court cleaning this up a little bit, I think.
	Maybe it's just me just wanting it, you know, wanting someone to finally do something about it that had enough power, because you would need the president's pressure to get anything done, because they don't have anything to answer to, and that's... I know how the Constitution was set up, but this is disgusting.
	It's repulsive.
	Okay, from one bad thing to another, Nick, we're heading down to your future destination, Argentina.
	We had covered the election of far-right asshole and maniac Javier Mele.
	You know, there's been a lot of talk recently about, since he took office, about, you know, is he really going to do anything?
	Is he really going to follow through on his promises, the mayhem that he was telling everyone that he was going to do?
	Well, guess what, everybody?
	The rubber's hit the road.
	Malay has begun economic shock therapy, which is funny because, you know, he was claiming to be like a capitalist anarchist or whatever in the hell it is they claim.
	He's just a neoliberal.
	This is neoliberal shock therapy, which means that they're going to slash all of the budgets for all the social programs.
	They're going to let things just absolutely skyrocket in terms of price.
	And guess what happens, Nick?
	Whenever people get upset about it, when they start getting laid off, when they lose their jobs, when their money doesn't go as far, they're going to protest.
	And guess what happens when that happens?
	The neoliberal dictator pushes back.
	That's right.
	Malay has almost completely transformed civil society within just a few weeks.
	He has combined security forces to break up protest.
	He's also created a program that is going to target parents and anybody else who goes to protest and all of this, and they have started a national registry of dissidents and protesters.
	I wanted to bring this up, Nick, not just because this is happening in Argentina, but because this is what happens when neoliberalism and advanced dictatorial neoliberalism rolls into town.
	Well, we all understand, I think, that in Argentina there is a long history of protesting.
	It's a very common and desired way of expressing their feelings toward the government.
	Are you trying to say that Malay did this on purpose to gin up a lot of protests so that he could then put them down with violent measures?
	Is that what you're trying to say?
	I think it's a little bit of column A, it's a little bit of column B. I mean, he knew absolutely it was going to happen.
	And you know, I have to tell you, Nick, this is a playbook that isn't new.
	This is what every neoliberal dictator has ever done, beginning, of course, with Augusto Pinochet.
	Chile was the original laboratory for this.
	You go in, you break up every labor union, you make sure that the force of the state is there to put the fear of God into everybody.
	And you make examples out of people, right?
	The first time that anybody speaks up and says anything, you smack the shit out of them.
	And you make everybody aware that if they're going to make any noise, not only are they going to lose their jobs and their livelihoods, they could very easily lose their lives.
	So yeah, this is a little bit of incitement, and it's also a little bit of reaction.
	And it's the exact same playbook that everybody follows.
	It's frustrating.
	I'm worried.
	I'm worried about going down there.
	Actually, I'll be down there for 10 days.
	I will stay away, I guess, from the protests.
	It's the solution there.
	But it is, yes, if they got smacked around, that would be a good result because I'm worried about just killings, you know, and all sorts of horrible stuff that they might do.
	So really quickly, I did ask a friend of mine who has a lot of insight and is an expert on international monetary policies.
	I said, what did you think about Malay's devaluing of the peso?
	And his only response was, he's an idiot.
	Yep.
	And so this is one of those things where it's like this is not a well thought out plan and a process of what might happen in terms of trying to like spurn the economy to a jumpstart.
	But it's not about spurring an economy because actually what occurs is you have to pay off your debt.
	You got to pay off the IMF.
	You got to do all that stuff.
	So it actually isn't about Argentina.
	It's not about making their lives better.
	It never is.
	What happens when shock therapy has to be brought in, the people feel the pain.
	And I wanted to bring this up because what's happening here It's not just Argentina.
	This is the next step.
	And you know, whenever we, and I'll go ahead and draw the line since this is a, you know, a regular episode and it's not behind a paywall.
	Nick, this is why we talk about things like Cop City.
	This is why we talk about surveillance.
	This is why we talk about drones.
	This is why we talk about fucking robot dogs.
	Like, eventually at some point, if we don't win this battle against authoritarianism, It's going to be our rights that are on the line.
	It's going to be smacking us around to make sure that we don't go out and protest when America feels the sting of these economic rollbacks as our rights are taken away, as our privileges are taken away, and as our safety is put on the line.
	What's happening in Argentina is, again, in the playbook.
	Everyone thinks it goes around the world and everybody else has to deal with it, but America doesn't.
	But this is what comes around.
	It boomerangs around, and that's what globalism's great secret is.
	Neoliberalism's great secret is the boomerang comes around for everybody.
	Sure.
	And on the people you mentioned who are around Trump's orbit, who are already preparing for another, you know, four years of him, and they're not going to waste time like they did when they first got... No.
	No, they're not.
	You know, they didn't think they were going to win.
	They were not prepared, and they lost a year of what they could have gotten done.
	So there's no question they're looking at this and they've already talked about what they would want to do with a civil unrest.
	So the next level that would be, okay, how do we cause a civil unrest so that we can then put it down and then increase our power?
	So it is really, really frustrating to see.
	And I'm kind of, I am kind of almost curious to see what it's like firsthand if I could be there without, you know, having to face any danger.
	I hope you're safe and it should be okay down there, but I think what you just said absolutely hit the nail on the head.
	Donald Trump isn't going to drain the swamp.
	He's not going to make life better for anybody.
	He's an agent there for the exact type of agenda that we're talking about.
	If you look at Plan 2025, it is basically a roadmap of how to get to this point.
	It just accelerates.
	It's quicker.
	We'll talk about that here pretty soon when we're doing our mailbag episode.
	All right, finally, Nick, this is, unfortunately, our last regular episode of you and me recording before you take off and before I take off for parts undisclosed.
	I mean, you're going to Argentina.
	We decided that we were going to do a quick year in review as we start looking towards 2024.
	The two of us have picked what we believe are the three biggest stories coming out of 2023.
	Like, what are the things to pay attention to, to think about as we move forward?
	Let's unveil them together.
	Do you want to do a thing where we just randomly throw them out?
	Do you want to do it in reverse order?
	How do you want to do that?
	Well, I mean, let me just, I guess, make clarify.
	And by the way, this is our, I forgot, I kind of forgot to tell you, this is our episode 250 of the regular.
	Episode 250?
	That's a lot of episodes.
	Yeah.
	I mean, it's probably a little bit off because, you know, we're out of town.
	I don't have all the folders.
	Yeah, sure.
	But somewhere around there.
	Anyway, here's what I did.
	I don't know.
	So what the categories are supposed to be the most, the most important news stories.
	Is that what we're trying to get?
	You know, I kind of did the three that kind of resonated with me.
	In terms of importance or like, you know, because I was trying to, you know, look at some articles and remember some of what happened because, you know, what is time?
	Um, so I, you know, one of them might not be the most important story, but maybe, maybe we can figure it out.
	You know what?
	I assume that we're going to have some cross pollination here.
	Yeah.
	How about you start, you, you throw out one of them.
	Okay.
	The first one I wrote was Tucker Carlson being fired from Fox News.
	Wow.
	That's not on my list, but I can't wait to hear about it.
	Well, I just thought that like, here is one of those moments where, you know, was there a light shining a beacon where we could see people actually having to pay for spreading this kind of misinformation?
	Like, was there finally going to be a movement against these people?
	I think the answer is no, no.
	But for a moment there, it did feel like that was at least a really big story that is now, by the way, could be the origin story of a whole other catastrophe that he's now spreading on X. So to me, that felt like there was levels here that like, you know, of what happened to Fox and then how it spurred him on to something else that could very well lead to some other problems we have down the line.
	Yeah, the Tucker Carlson firing.
	First of all, it wouldn't have happened if Rupert Murdoch didn't, like, leave his fiancée.
	Like, it's really fascinating that she was so in love with Tucker, and then, like, they broke up, and he was like, nah, he's disposable.
	Because Murdoch likes to get rid of big personalities off of his network.
	But it also signaled something else, Nick.
	It signaled that Fox News was going in a different direction.
	That they recognized that the writing was on the wall, that they could let Tucker go, and that they were going to continue more or less sort of, um, not to the left of Trumpism, but a little bit on the periphery of Trumpism.
	They've tried really hard to move beyond him.
	They tried really hard with DeSantis.
	They're probably going to try pretty hard with Nikki Haley, and then eventually they're going to fall in line with Donald Trump, and they're going to treat him like a messiah again, particularly after he wins the nomination and if he wins the presidency again.
	I think it was a very big moment, and what's cooking over at X, what Elon Musk is pushing, I think is very significant, for sure.
	Yeah, especially because, you know, it's teetering on the edge of falling apart.
	Musk has even said this, and he's gonna try and We didn't even really talk about that.
	He's going to try and blame the advertisers who decided not to spend money on a platform that's got so much hate speech as the reason why, like they're to blame for its X going under.
	It's dangerous the kind of mindset someone has to run a company that big that is in charge of so much information that we have people rely on.
	Well, relatedly, one of my stories is Elon Musk in general.
	I said this, I taped a podcast with Daniel Moody the other day, and I said, you know, for all the coverage of Elon Musk this year, there still wasn't enough.
	Because what has actually happened is, he's not the richest man in the world.
	I mean, Vladimir Putin and probably other despots, like, secretly are above him.
	But the public richest man in the world has decided not just to be an oligarch and not just basically to control entire swaths of the United States government in the military-industrial complex.
	He's decided to make himself the main character.
	You know what I mean?
	Like, he has decided that he is so special and that he is so talented that he really should be in charge of everything.
	And meanwhile, he's failed everything.
	Like, I mean, I don't know if you had to take your Tesla in and get it worked on or not, but basically every Tesla got recalled the other day.
	He can't make a rocket that doesn't explode.
	He fails at everything.
	But he has decided...
	to surround himself with far-right ideologues, conspiracy theorists, and he's creating his own media empire over at X, which is far-right anti-Semitic conspiracy theory bullshit.
	But on top of that, like, he effectively broke social media and ushered in a new era.
	We're watching right now a post-social media era, right?
	They're all sort of broken.
	On top of that, because he did that, Nick, news organizations are falling by the wayside.
	Media doesn't really want to cover big stories anymore.
	They don't really want to get into things that make people feel unhappy because it keeps away advertisers.
	That is going to change the way we see reality.
	It's going to change the way that we, like, view the news, the way we receive information.
	We don't know where we're going yet, but everything right now is set up to really affect us as a culture and to affect our politics going forward.
	Well, I would like to think that a Woodward and Bernstein style, you know, duo would uncover something that would be massive and make money for the publisher and all that kind of stuff.
	We just covered today that a president stole secret information about election interference.
	Right.
	We just covered that!
	It's a giant story!
	Right, that's true.
	And I bet you people didn't even know about it before.
	It was in our b-block!
	Yeah.
	Okay, that's a good point.
	That's depressing.
	I'll just go back and watch All the President's Men again.
	Why not?
	It's a great movie.
	Yeah, it's quaint in a way.
	It's very quaint in a way.
	Alright, what's your second story?
	My second one was the implosion of the Titan Submersible.
	I love the direction you're going here.
	This is great.
	But again, you know what, it kind of piggybacks on the Musk thing.
	And we already talked about it a lot, but it's just what it stands for.
	I think that the rich people don't think that rules apply to them and laws apply to them, and they could just sort of do whatever they would like.
	And it's just scary because, and I keep thinking of the movie Don't Look Up, where they have the Musk or they have the Zuckerberg character who was supposed to be in charge of all this as a private person.
	And everything is blowing up left and right.
	And they haven't, you know, and he just continues to pretend like, oh, we had thought about that.
	And we knew that might happen, whatever.
	And it's clear they don't think about any of this shit.
	They're not prepared.
	They're not safety conscious at all.
	And that's sort of, it kind of just stuck out to me.
	And it was a big story, right?
	There's no, there's no question.
	It was a big story for several days.
	Yeah.
	It, I think that's a great angle to get into it.
	That's an awesome pick right there.
	Because first, I've been thinking about this a lot recently, Nick.
	We don't have a meritocracy.
	What we have in this country and around the world is a system that is designed to protect entrenched wealth and power and to promote it and expand it.
	I think a lot about how much better the world would be if we had an actual meritocracy, how much further along we would be, you know, if like people with good ideas and skills were actually promoted ahead.
	But meanwhile, what happens is, you know, the old saying they're born on third base and they think they hit a triple.
	It's like a bunch of people who really truly buy their own bullshit because they don't know anything different.
	Elon Musk is the best example of this.
	He isn't capable of really doing anything and he thinks he's brilliant.
	The Submersible, you're exactly right.
	They think that they rule the world, that they're these incredible geniuses.
	And what's happened is that we're all living in the consequences of the fact that they're not as smart or as talented or as capable as they all believe they are.
	It just so happens that they hold all of the wealth and all of the power and all of the influence.
	They can tell us lies all day long that we can see through, and we're getting pissed off being told those lies.
	And they got lucky, I think, right?
	They got a little bit lucky, which is what everybody requires, you know, even the people who are meritorious of luck.
	Hey, 0% interest rates help with luck as well.
	Oh, listen, the entire SpaceX has been funded by the government practically in subsidizing that.
	So it's all propped up for him, for Musk at least.
	And then, you know, the other guys to be able to prey upon, like visiting the Titanic and getting these really wealthy people who, you know, yeah, again, you think they're untouchable, right?
	They know everything and they're the safest people and nothing will happen to them.
	And meanwhile, this billionaire dies, his son dies.
	I mean, it was so... By the way, there's another angle of the story.
	Which was that, you know, there was evidence, perhaps, that they kind of knew what happened to it right away, or really quickly, and they kind of held out hope and spent a lot of money on rescue stuff, even though it seemed pretty clear that there was no way they had survived that.
	That's interesting, you know.
	And by the way, for whatever reason, it channels the Malaysian airline flight that disappeared.
	We never really found out what happened to that.
	And that came up in the news again this year, again, with other interesting stuff, which Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
	my conspiracy feathers.
	So all of those things touch upon it, which why it makes it kind of notable in my mind. - Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
	My second story, Nick, is the Trump campaign or what I guess you would call the Trump campaign.
	He's not really campaigning for president.
	He's not really, I mean, he's barely been out there at all a few dozen events that he's, you know, lackluster at.
	He doesn't really put any energy into it.
	Meanwhile, he leads in all the polls.
	He's not going to any of these debates.
	It looks like a fait accompli that he is going to be the nominee of the Republican Party.
	But what is he doing?
	His rhetoric is escalating every single day.
	He is openly embracing dictatorial ambitions.
	Meanwhile, Nick, the Republican Party, that civil war that we talked, I think actually, I think we talked about this before the beginning of 2023.
	I think we were talking about this back in 2022, that this was coming, that this is like where the Republican Party was heading toward.
	They have no idea what to do.
	They're still severely split between all of these different ideological camps, and they're going to absolutely come behind Donald Trump again, and they're going to use him for all of their ambitions.
	But the bigger story behind all of this, Nick, and the acceleration of what's going on in this country, the story that I'm going to take 2023, what I'm going to take away from it in part, one of the biggest lessons, is how few lessons have been learned.
	We are still seeing the media.
	We're still seeing politicians.
	We're still seeing people who have not learned from the past seven years.
	And that upsets me that that hurts because that is one of our main missions for doing this podcast is to try and inform people and try and change discourse.
	I think we've done well in certain aspects, but there are some people who are not going to even open their own eyes because the opening their eyes would be too painful.
	And I think that's something that I'm going to think about for a very long time.
	Yeah, I mean the horse race-ification of this is what has always existed, but when you take someone like Trump, it just normalizes things.
	So nobody even thinks twice about what he's been saying recently with the rhetoric.
	We know it's going to continue to get worse.
	And that's the thing, like, you know, You know, in theory, there's so many people in America that would say, I'm not, I'm not, what he's saying about bloodlines being, you know, tainted by immigrants or whatever, that's not what we're about.
	You can find, you know, a vast majority of Americans that would believe that.
	I still believe that.
	But meanwhile, it's normalized and no one's going to react weirdly about it.
	They're going to shrug and then, you know, the next person that comes along, that's what we were always been warning about is that the Santa's failed miserably at it, but there's going to be someone much better.
	I'll tell you what I've decided on this.
	I've figured out, Nick, is it's still Trump.
	It's going to be the people behind him who have figured it out and how to use him more effectively, how to use him more as a puppet.
	And meanwhile, Nick, the same people we're talking about, the attacks on gay and trans people around the country, like the way that like the media reports on this, they have not learned.
	They still go ahead and they trumpet the exact same things, they help the exact same people, and they spread extremism and radicalism, and this shit doesn't stop.
	It just continues and continues and continues, and it's so upsetting.
	You know, by the way, just as an aside, the Pope said that, you know, priests can now bless people of the LGBTQ community.
	And that actually just resonates with me for a second, because I was thinking, would that have any effect on, like, Trumpers, the people who want to say that they're religious and all that kind of stuff, and that, you know, would that make them progressive?
	I don't know.
	And then also, is this, again, another signaling of the inevitable Progressivism that exists in our society and in our civilization, right?
	There seems to always be some version of a movement forward progressively for rights.
	No matter what people think and say, it just takes a lot longer than people are happy with.
	And perhaps that's the ultimate long game fight against Trumpism that will ultimately overcome it.
	It's the parallel thing.
	As things are moving forward, people are trying to push it back.
	And then they eventually cross and there's a major crisis.
	What's your final story, Picnic?
	Well, you know, October 7th, I think, has to probably be the most, you know, important story that's come out of all of this, and certainly the most polarizing, the most, you know, engaging of people's ideas and stuff like that, and also the most tragic.
	Yeah, I think that that ultimately is what is going to define 2023.
	And I just worry that it's going to continue to define 2024 for way too long.
	So yeah, that's where I'm at.
	We still, every single day, are watching the entire region teeter on the brink of a larger war.
	Every single day, innocent people are being killed for no good reason.
	I look at this, Nick, and I think that it's a larger story as well.
	It also encompasses the fact that China has created its own alternate organization of countries, and they're pushing all the different buttons in all the sensitive places.
	They're basically testing the United States and its capabilities and resolve.
	Meanwhile, I mean, Joe Biden and the administration, Every single day you hear more and more about how they just can't, they can't make Netanyahu stop doing this and they have no idea how to handle it.
	Like, it is very much, to me, it feels like the moment where Rome looked around and was like, we can't, we can't defend Britain anymore.
	Good luck everybody, take care of yourself.
	Like, it feels, on one hand, like a historic tragedy every single day that needs to stop.
	On the other hand, it feels like something is gaining in momentum here, and that's why I chose it as well.
	We're on the same page with that.
	Historically, this is going to be a major, major moment.
	Even if it ended right now, it still would be.
	There are going to be reverberations in terms of coalitions that are going to be destroyed.
	This isn't going to simply just go away and it's not going to just end up just fine.
	There's no other way to put it.
	This is a fucking mess in every way, shape, and form.
	It's also an existential crisis for Israel.
	And, you know, you know, Turkey was a really close friend of theirs for a long, long time.
	And now they're fighting amongst themselves.
	And that could crumble again.
	A lot of the motivation for having allies that Israel has in the region are economic.
	Right.
	They can all stand and make a lot of money between each other.
	And if that's not going to happen, they realize there's a problem.
	Then Israel could easily, you know, the public opinion without question is turned against them.
	And without question, they need to come up with something else because what they're doing now is really, you know, is war atrocities.
	And they have to figure out how to be able to do it.
	It's it's it's Netanyahu, his gang of criminals and the people around them who are absolutely obsessed with actual ethnic cleansing.
	They see this as an opportunity to carry that out.
	He needs to go.
	He needs to.
	He needs to be in a jail cell and he should have been in jail cell a long time ago.
	And I'm with you, Nick.
	I don't.
	I think you're right.
	This is really going to go into 2024 and beyond.
	And I don't I don't I don't yet know what the fallout from this is going to be, but it's going to be considerable.
	I mean, listen, if you talk to people in Israel, I mean, they have compelling arguments about what's going on.
	Like, you know, you Americans don't know what it's like when we're getting, you know, rockets fired at us every day for, you know, a decade.
	You don't know what it was like.
	Everybody here knows somebody directly related to October 7th that was killed.
	Like everybody, you know what I mean?
	That's how close this was to everybody's homes.
	And I get it.
	But, you know, you know, then, you know, sometimes they'll say, like the other day, I got a text from somebody in Israel saying, well, you know, U.S., what did U.S.
	do in Dresden in the middle of World War II?
	And I said, well using another country's war atrocities as a justification for what you're doing is not going to Go well.
	You know what I'm saying?
	It's not going to be a compelling argument, even though you might have a point.
	You know, in war, there are casualties, is what I think he was trying to say in some respects.
	And sometimes there are gross atrocities going on as well that happen, in the name of whatever.
	But again, you know, I think everybody looking at Dresden, for instance, that killed more people than Hiroshima, would tell you that that was a war crime that was committed that no one ever paid for, and it never should have happened.
	And did not advance the cause of World War II at all, in terms of good and evil.
	So, it's a real interesting problem that does make me concerned that if enough people across the entire world decided that Israel didn't deserve to be a state anymore, that could ultimately, you know, cause it not to be a state anymore.
	I don't think Israel as a state is in danger, and I don't think seeing it through that lens is necessary, because I... And by the way, if they want, they can stop.
	Like, at some point, I would love if somebody somewhere would do the math for me.
	Like, how many lives equal how many lives?
	And nobody will do it, because that's not the point of it.
	The point of it is, much like 9-11, to take advantage of a situation and to carry out a political program.
	The United States and the neoconservatives wanted to go into the Middle East, take a bunch of oil, take a bunch of property, and privatize places like Iraq.
	Which is what they did!
	And Netanyahu and the criminals around him want to get rid of the Palestinians.
	The settlers that they represent want their land, want their resources, want their place.
	So at no point is it actually going to get taken care of.
	It is an atrocity on top of an atrocity.
	Well, I guess the question that I finally have is, is there a way to dismantle Hamas that will stop killing innocent Palestinians?
	That's my... No, and you're not going to dismantle Hamas.
	Like, I'm sorry.
	I hate to tell people that.
	You're not going to.
	I mean, basically, you're going to say that.
	And by the way, I'm done hearing about hostages.
	If you're going to shoot them as they wave white flags and say, I'm a hostage and you shoot them, I'm done.
	I'm done talking about it.
	Like, if you actually want to care about people, take care of people.
	This whole thing has just gone so bad.
	And what's more, Nick, the larger part of it, geopolitically, it's a disaster.
	In America, it's a disaster.
	Every coalition that has been built has been severed at this point.
	Like, this whole thing, and it has been part of a larger, antagonistic organization of countries and interests, this whole thing, it could not be a worse situation in every way, shape, and form.
	Right.
	Well, as we know, in the Tet Offensive, it's really what turned the public against the war in Vietnam, because it became televised.
	We finally got to see some of the actual footage.
	I would not be surprised if the footage came out of those hostages being shot by Israeli soldiers, came out, and that really did it, because they're probably all wearing body cam and stuff.
	And I've been trying to figure out any other information about that, and no one seems to understand anything about why.
	Speaking of things that suck, can we point out that 2023 was a hard year?
	Yeah.
	It was a hard year, right?
	This was this was a tough one.
	Yeah, it really was.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, it was.
	I, I still, I, Nick, I, I, I know that I've earned a sort of moniker of like doom and cynicism.
	I, I still retain hope, but this has been a year to try your soul.
	This has been a year to really, and, and, and again, this coming year is going to be a lot.
	Like it's, it's only going to, it's only going to get crazier from here.
	2023 was a rough one on top of a lot of rough ones on top of other rough ones.
	I'm worried about, let's, I'll leave it at that.
	We'll leave it at that.
	Alright everybody, we will be back live together, we'll be back in the new year, but you know, we've got, don't worry again, we've got more content coming at you, we've got the Eyes Wide Shut Deep Dive coming on Friday, we've got an interview coming next week, and then we've got the Mailbag coming the Friday after that.
	We've got you taken care of, I've got some people coming in, while Nick is, be safe in Argentina for God's sakes.
	I will, although I was thinking it'd be cool to interview somebody down there who's involved, but now I'm picturing the police bursting in and arresting all of us.
	Well, listen, you might talk to somebody.
	Also, if anything goes down, we're going to have you send in a voice thing.
	We'll figure this out.
	We're always figuring it out.
	In the meantime, everybody, you can find Nick at Can You Hear Me?
	SMAG.
	You can find me at J.Y.
	Sexton.
	For God's sake, stay.
	Man, I can't land the ending anymore.

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