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Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman finish this crazy year of 2023 with a mailbag, filled with penetrating and insightful questions from you: our cherished Muckrake community.
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That is me, Jerry J. Sexton, opening a beer because we're about ready to hit the Muckrake mailbag.
I'm here with Nick Halsman.
This is a weekender edition of the Muckrake podcast.
We are so, so grateful to have your support.
Here's cheers to you.
Here's cheers to a better year than 2023.
Right, Nick?
Absolutely.
I'll drink my Coke Zero in solidarity.
We have a whole host of questions.
Thank you so much for sending all these.
Y'all are the absolute best.
Great questions.
I'm really excited.
We're all over the place here, Nick.
I'm really, really excited to get into these.
If you want to join in on all the fun, go over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
In order to do that, you'll be able to listen to all the Weekenders, you'll support the show, and you'll also be able to, like, go to live shows where we cover political events.
We talk about all kinds of different things from the campaign trail Get to hang out with other people, and on top of that, participate in mailbags such as this one.
Included is the ability to leave us voicemails, Nick.
And our first question in this year-end mailbag, it comes from Tucker.
Hi, this is Tucker Lieberman.
In the past year or so, there have been some big money awards for defamation.
Alex Jones owes a billion and a half dollars to the Sandy Hook families, Fox agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems nearly a billion dollars, and Rudy Giuliani has to pay over a hundred million to Ruby Freeman and Shea Moss.
However, no one seems to be going to jail.
Steve Bannon still hasn't gone to prison for not testifying to the House Committee.
Some Trump allies are getting plea deals in Georgia.
It matters on principle whether people face consequences for their crimes, but as a practical matter, are any Trump supporters in the general public ready to defect?
If Trump allies start going to jail, do you believe any Trump supporters will change their votes before the November election?
Nick, what's your take on this?
Do you think actual punitive responsibility would make an effect here?
Uh, no.
That's unfortunate.
The QAnon Shaman is back, by the way.
The QAnon Shaman is just back, out and about, doing his thing, just absolutely enjoying himself, having a great time.
Yeah.
And, you know, we have the guy.
Oh, my goodness.
Rittenhouse.
Like it's just like there's too much fame involved, whatever it is, that like they're just willing to glom on and they're not going to want to be wrong and admit that they're wrong and assimilate any new information that would, you know, because to me, it's like, why can't it be new information?
Oh, Trump is now I didn't realize how corrupt he is.
I don't want to vote for him.
No, it would be I can't be wrong about my initial opinion of Trump.
So I will reject whatever that is, even though it's just it's not like I'm you know, you don't be wrong.
It's just new information to assimilate.
Instead, it's just going to be, you know, one of those rigid, you know, rigid responses that gets us nowhere.
Nick, have you ever seen one of those gag cans of peanuts that you open them up and the snake jumps out of it?
I am a familiar.
Has anybody ever done that on you?
I've always, like, nobody's ever done the hand buzzer on me.
I would be so upset if someone did the hand buzzer on me, but no one's ever done the jumping snake or anything.
Has anybody ever done that on you?
Yeah, I'm sure that, you know, they've gotten me a couple times on that.
Man, I wish somebody would have done that to me at some point.
That would have been enjoyable.
I would hate it now.
I'd probably go into...
How does that relate to the question?
The whole point is, the snake is out of the can.
And, you know, nobody cares about the snake anymore, which is terrible.
The problem in this, and Tucker brings up a good point, this absolutely should change things.
People should be held accountable for the crimes that they've committed.
People absolutely should be suffering consequences, such as, you know, being held accountable like Rudy Giuliani to the tune of $148 million.
That's awesome.
You know Alex Jones a billion dollars like this is this is stuff that should be happening but at the same time The time to put the snake back in the can was a long time ago.
Everybody knows now at this point that the people who should be holding these people responsible, they're not going to.
Democrats are really afraid of being seen as going after political enemies.
They would much rather, in every way shape and form, whether it's a district attorney or whatever, they would much rather Just like, you know, just pile on plea deals on top of plea deals.
And we're even seeing it now, everybody who defects from Donald Trump, you know, Jenna Ellis, you know, his former lawyer, Michael Cohen.
Like, these people, like, yeah, they're going to be welcomed into media spheres, and they might even have a chance on, like, dancing with the stars.
But, like, those things really don't matter because this is a cult.
And cults don't matter, don't care if people go to jail.
They stick by the cult leader, even if they go to jail.
They stick by the cult leader, even if all evidence is there that they're taking all of their money.
This thing, unfortunately, is years past where it needed to be taken care of.
We screamed about this, Nick.
You and I talked about this way back in 2016, before we even had the Muckrake podcast.
We've screamed about it on this show.
There are consequences of not dealing with this when you needed to deal with it.
I mean, for what it's worth, there are cult members who do get out.
We've seen stories of very few and far between.
in a major, major way, I don't see how the consequences of it outstrip this thing.
I mean, for what it's worth, there are cult members that do get out.
We've seen stories of very few and far between.
But again, some of these states, it doesn't take a lot to shift the whole presidential We only need, you know, a few thousand here, a few thousand there, depending on what county you're in.
So there is hope that it could shift enough with enough of these indictments and guilty verdicts and whatnot.
And for the record, you know, we don't even know what's going to happen in Donald Trump's suits.
We have no idea if he's going to be ruled ineligible.
It depends on what the system and the institutions want out of the entire thing.
This could change.
It could.
I'm not going to hold my breath because he's a powerful, white, wealthy man.
But at the same time, like, yeah, maybe it could shift.
Maybe things could get better.
But the problem is that this should have been taken care of years ago.
Alright, next up we have from Olga.
Hi guys!
Hey Olga.
Not a pleasant question, but one that has to be asked anyway.
If Trump is re-elected, what are your thoughts or predictions for how things will go in this country?
Meaning, how likely do you think mass deportations and his other threats will be?
And just as concerning, if he doesn't win, any predictions for what happens next?
I'm asking because this is on my mind quite a bit, and I'm growing increasingly worried that this really can incredibly result in him winning a second term.
Love the show.
Thanks for all that you both do.
Oh, well, if you want to ask me, if I get to jump in here first, if he's reelected, without question, he'll be deporting people.
I think that is one of those areas.
I mean, we're already deporting people, but yes.
Yeah, fair enough.
But I would think that, you know, with executive orders and this whole notion of being an authoritarian for a day, you know, I think most authoritarians start out, oh, I just want to do it for a day, right?
And after that day goes by, they realize how much they like it.
So, um, I think that, uh, yeah, it'll be terrible.
I think it'll be all the things that he's saying, and they've already talked about it and they've released it and they've leaked it.
Um, all of their plans are going to be from day one, uh, starting so they can get rid of all the bureaucrats that don't like, um, this tests, uh, for, for government workers, all sorts of things like that will definitely happen.
Yeah, I'm really worried.
There's absolutely a real chance that Donald Trump wins the election in 2024.
First of all, he's got the Electoral College on his side.
It's a minoritarian institution that makes it very possible that this would happen.
Also, the Democrats have shown a complete inability to understand what makes Donald Trump popular or the ability to critique him in a way that really holds sway.
On top of that, I don't trust a lot of those people or people in the media to have the spine to stand up to him, as the people around him really... They've spent the last three years, more than that really, they've spent the last five or six years really studying how to turn the government into a weapon.
They are prepared to do so.
This isn't a fun topic for The Weekender, Nick.
I've started having conversations with a lot of other people.
I don't think I have to name names.
I think people can connect the dots pretty easily here.
A lot of other analysts and critics of Trump about What we think might it might look like not just for the country but for ourselves for the people that we care about for vulnerable populations.
This will be an antagonistic aggressive administration that would absolutely clean house when it comes to the administrative state and turn it into a weapon the likes of which I don't think most people can wrap their heads around.
I think absolutely deportations would happen.
There would be more cruelty there, but there would also be a using of the power of government and the power of... I'll just go ahead and say it, Nick.
Elon Musk has basically access to all of our internet usage, our DMs, you name it.
I mean, like, this has changed in the last few years.
I don't feel good about it.
I don't feel safe.
I don't feel great.
It would literally be a hellish experience.
And I don't think that all of Project 2025 would be carried out, but I do think roughly 70% of it would, and I think it would be enough to radically change the United States for the much, much worse.
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