American Casualties In The Middle East Could Lead To War
Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the escalation of violence in the Middle East as 3 Americans were killed in an attack by Iranian backed militants, and how Joe Biden should handle the response. They then turn to a NEWSFLASH: Republicans obstructing their own bi-partisan deal just so they can claim a political win in November as Biden has started echoing Trump on his border policies. Nancy Pelosi intimates that the Russians are funding pro Palestinian protests in the United States, as one does, and the pod finishes on a bizarre rap song recorded by none other than MC Ben Shapiro.
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Because, listen, Nick, we talked about it before we started.
We were doing our preparation.
We have an incredible mixture of deadly serious and terribly silly stuff today.
This is all over the place.
We're talking conspiracy theories about Taylor Swift and the NFL.
We're talking about Ben Shapiro rapping.
That's right.
Before the end of this episode of the Montclair Podcast, you're going to hear Ben Shapiro Do something that sounds like rapping.
You're going to hear... Nick and I, it sounds like, are going to have an interesting conversation about something Nancy Pelosi said that is absolutely wild.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration is embroiled in one thing after another.
It is really, really serious.
Also really, really weird.
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Go over there, do that.
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Nick, we gotta start with serious, serious stuff.
The Biden administration is in a lot of turmoil right now in both the United States and around the world.
Over the weekend, there was a drone strike in Jordan that hit a base known as Tower 22.
It killed three American soldiers, injured dozens of others, The U.S.
has now blamed Iranian-backed militias while Iran denies involvement.
Biden has already promised to retaliate.
We'll talk about the fact that, shocker of shockers, the Republican Party wants to go to all-out war with Iran.
It looks like the regional war is continuing to spread in the Middle East.
It's getting more and more serious and calamitous with every single day.
Not great.
Yeah, it is not good, Jared.
What was going on there is what we've been worrying about this whole time, which is how this war can slowly spread.
And it might seem like it's not spreading because it's over, you know, weeks and weeks and months or something like that.
But this is how these things go, where it doesn't seem like it's moving anywhere.
And then all of a sudden, it becomes one little thing as a matchstick that starts the whole thing off.
So I'm really concerned.
There's no question when you have individual soldiers who are on these front lines, who at any moment can make a mistake, right to cause something even worse uh it's it's not a great situation to be in uh do we get to say that you know biden has all this foreign policy experience and so boy we're lucky to have him in the in the white house right now i mean we're lucky donald trump is not in the white house right now i mean let's be clear let's
Like, any time that you have to sit here and give criticisms of Joe Biden, which I have a few that I need to let go of, yeah, you just have to simply say, thank God Donald Trump is not president.
God even knows what would be happening right now in the middle of this crisis if Trump was in charge.
I want to say a couple of things, Nick.
I wouldn't be me and this wouldn't be our podcast if I didn't say this.
Um, you know, I'm very grateful that we have people who go into the military and put their lives on the line in order to fight in certain battles, but I'm also not beholden to these national mythologies.
It sucks that three people died.
It sucks that their families have lost them and they have suffered these things.
I don't think we need all of these bases in the first place.
I don't think that we need a presence all around the world constantly.
I think that that's bad.
You want to talk about what's going on actually over there in terms of these.
The Yemen situation with our Navy out there?
I don't think our Navy should be there.
I don't think our Navy should be engaging with those people.
I don't think that we should be over there helping Israel, to be quite frank with you.
Let's get into the core of this whole thing.
It really sucks that three American soldiers died and others were injured.
Absolutely sucks.
But there is this American mythology that if American blood is shed, because American blood is so, so much more special than any other blood, that if American blood gets shed, then it means war.
And I'm going to do something, Nick, in both of these segments in which we're talking about problems that Joe Biden is having both around the world and also domestically.
Are you ready?
You ready for this?
Because this might be the first time this is actually going to happen on this podcast.
I'm ready.
I'm going to say something laudatory about Ronald Wilson Reagan.
And that is this.
Going back to 1983 with the Beirut barracks explosions.
A terrorist attack on a U.S.
base that caused an ungodly amount of damage.
There was saber rattling for days and weeks.
Everybody wanted to go to war with Iran over this because of their ties to it.
And you know what Reagan did?
He didn't do it.
He gave a speech, he talked tough about it, and then he didn't end up doing it.
That is actually one of the best things about his presidency, is he didn't lead to a Middle East war because all this stuff happened.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden, who has been, for all intents and purposes, foreign policy-wise, not exactly the toughest president.
Bibi Netanyahu is basically wiping his boots on Joe Biden every single day, and Biden's just like, thank you, I'll send you more weaponry, it's totally fine.
This is a situation where the Republican Party and American sort of momentum, the way we handle these types of things, there is a possibility this could push a moderate Democratic president into Taking on action that they don't need to and escalating a situation that is already out of control and is already cartwheeling into oblivion.
This needs to be a moment of pause, reflection, and serious thought.
Instead of listening to assholes like Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Dan Crenshaw, people who have never met a single war they didn't want.
Thank God that John McCain isn't around right now.
Now, because John McCain would be flying a plane over there right now to bomb Iran himself.
This whole thing, it demands caution, and we have to take it easy and pump the brakes on this thing.
Well, I don't want to be too alarmist, but you know, the reason why 9-11 happened was because of the United States' presence in the Middle East, and it tends to... A big chunk of why 9-11 happened, yes.
Yeah.
And so it tends to inflame a lot of those things.
And what happens then is, is that we become more of a target even domestically as well for being part of the, you know, supporting Israel.
So that that's the other problem that Biden has to deal with now is as is, you know, the war is already causing issues where we Americans could could be unsafe.
And listen, mostly Americans are probably listening to this podcast.
So I think we are concerned about Americans dying, especially if they're dying on on American soil, like that.
That's what you have to be worried about, too, that this thing expands to all sorts of stuff like that, that that it does start to sound a little bit like what the conditions were like back in the late 90s.
So it is really we're going to need some sort of deft politicking here by Joe Biden to figure out how to make this Go away, calm everybody down.
I don't know.
I guess the first solution would be to try and somehow stop Israel from doing what they're doing.
Well, that that that is a big chunk of it, especially now that Israel has more or less taken the mask off and said, we don't we don't care about anything.
We're taking this thing all the way to the end zone.
And, you know, Nick, I brought this up before.
We have a lot to learn from the Cold War because you know what?
You know what?
The participants in the Cold War had a stake in keeping it cold.
Keeping it from getting really, really hot and extinguishing the human race.
You would have moments, whether it was the Korean War or sorties in which, you know, our jets and MiGs would find each other.
They would exchange fire.
There would be moments of like, you know, hostilities.
And on the other side of it, you'd be like, No, I don't remember being shot at by the Russians.
No, I don't remember being shot at by the Americans.
It's a dance.
First of all, the dance shouldn't happen.
We shouldn't be in a situation right now where we're dancing with Iran and trying to dance around, you know, getting into basically a world war because of this stuff.
But you have to be careful about it, which is not what the Republicans are.
It's not what Donald Trump is.
It's not what the GOP is.
They are pushing this thing really, really hard.
And meanwhile, Because of the saber rattling, because of having to support Israel.
Nick, we've put so much stuff into danger.
What's happening over in Yemen, the infrastructure for basically the entire global structure is on the line constantly, whether it's shipping or communications, you name it.
That would not be happening if our fleet wasn't there.
It wouldn't be happening if we weren't, you know, exchanging fire back and forth with the Houthis and whoever else is out there wanting to exchange fire and fly drones at us.
This is a mess.
And it's about time that everyone looks around and says, holy shit, have enough Palestinians died at this point?
Have we gotten close enough to World War III?
At some point, people have to say, you know what, there's too much fat in the fire right now.
This thing is threatening to blow up in our faces in a way that I don't think most people are prepared for.
We need to back away from this.
We need to say this thing has gained enough momentum of its own.
We need to back away from this.
We need to figure out something else because this ain't working.
I hear you.
Especially as we move into an election year, you would think that Biden would recognize some of the polling, even, and how much of a weight it is on him that what's going on in Israel.
Now, again, we talked about this before, there isn't anything he's going to do to stop Netanyahu from doing what he wants to do.
But politically, if you're right, if he were to come out and say, OK, we are not giving any more arms or any more money to them starting today until they have a ceasefire, until there's conditions dramatically, dramatically improve for Gazans, that would probably go a long way as well.
Right.
That's what people are probably hoping for, the very least.
I'm pretty sure most people understand now he won't be able to tell Netanyahu to stop and then they would stop.
But he could at least come out and forcefully say we're not going to support this anymore. - And you know, I said this, I did a Bourbon talk last night We're recording this on Monday, January 29th.
I said this last night, like, you know, you can say what you want about Joe Biden and talk about the positives of his presidency.
To sit here and talk about the weaknesses of it is not to sit here and say that you should vote for Donald Trump.
But let's be very clear, foreign policy wise, he's been a doormat.
Like, I mean, Benjamin Netanyahu has embarrassed Joe Biden on the world stage.
He has not hidden how he feels about him.
He openly wants Donald Trump to win the 2024 election because they are matching illiberals.
And I just want to say real fast, Nick, while we're on the subject of what's happening in the Middle East and the possibility of a regional war or a world war, Let's game this out, okay?
We're in 2024.
We're heading towards an incredibly divisive election.
Things are really messed up.
We have these major, major battles in Ukraine and now in Israel and Gaza.
All of it is linked via this axis of resistance or whatever we want to call it, like whatever's happening with China and Russia and Iran and their whole configuration.
Wouldn't now be a hell of a time to go try and take Taiwan?
Wouldn't now be the time to all of a sudden start going into like, you know, sort of disputed territory?
North Korea is saber-rattling.
They've already said, we're basically planning on going to war with South Korea.
Like, this is the thing.
And you need to turn down the temperature before it boils and before the opportunity is there to do this stuff.
And right now, you can't keep doing this.
You can't play tit-for-tat with Iran like this.
Eventually, you're going to end up starting a situation that is going to set off a chain reaction.
And you just can't keep doing this.
You just cannot keep down this path.
Well, I will say that there might be a morbid incentive to see if Trump were to be in the White House after November, then Taiwan, like they wouldn't get any resistance if they try and take over or something, right?
Like that that might be one calculation.
But that said, if they're afraid that Trump isn't going to win and then they don't get that chance, then maybe there's like, OK, we might as well just do it sooner than later anyway.
But there seems to be some notion of that, because I was thinking about this before, like if Trump were to win the White House, Then could he force Ukraine into some sort of ceasefire or peace treaty with Russia?
Well, I mean, okay, so speaking of Ukraine and what's going on, Nick, Joe Biden is facing another crisis here domestically.
Where right now, as we reported on last week, where Greg Abbott in Texas have refused the orders of the Supreme Court to allow federal authorities access to the border, we now have God knows how many Republican-led states that have joined him in this.
We have, by the way, and we'll talk about this in a second, a convoy of people calling themselves the Army of God.
Ooh, catchy.
The Army of God, which I'll have some comments about in just a second.
Meanwhile, in all of this, Nick, the entire idea is helping Donald Trump.
It's sabotaging what's happening with the Biden administration, but also the United States of America, and what is Biden doing in trying to quote-unquote solve the border crisis, which is all a wrestling match in the first place.
He's trying to give the Republicans what they want on the border in exchange for ding, ding, ding, Funding for Ukraine.
That isn't going to be what's going to be pushed across the line if Donald Trump is president.
You're not even going to have a conversation about this.
And now the Republicans, whether it's Mike Johnson or the rest of the whole MAGA Zoo crew, have basically said, you know what?
You're offering us everything we want.
We don't want it.
We want you to fail and we want you to lose the election.
And Trump has even said it.
I'm basically calling the shots behind the scenes.
So we have a twin domestic crisis.
That has the exact same sort of ramifications or affiliations as what we're looking at abroad.
It's the same problem.
It's turtles all the way down.
Okay, so is this a newsflash for people that the Republicans will torpedo things that actually might benefit Americans because it's a win for the Democrats?
Mitch McConnell could not be reached for comment because he is not of a right mind, but I think everybody should remember him saying his number one priority was Barack Obama not winning a second term.
Yes.
Now, if we understand that and know that, okay, then what's the big deal?
Sure, of course they're not, and they probably wouldn't have done it at any time of the presidency for Biden, but... Oh, I think they would have done it in year one or two.
All right.
Year one or two, I think they would have taken this deal happily.
Right.
So, but I guess then the next question is that the people that are going to vote for Trump, for instance, they don't care.
In fact, they probably will cheer this kind of behavior on.
In a way, even though half of what they're screaming and yelling at most of the time is about the border and about getting more people in.
And again, I think we can all agree, we need to do something about the border, right?
And I think that Biden gets upset because, you know, the power of the video, when you do see people streaming across the border like that, that is powerful.
That is a statement that people will all start to think, our borders are wide open, aren't they?
You know, like you have that, that is a thing that is hard to combat politically.
Um, and I would, I would like to be able to see something happen where they can figure out a way to humanely process people and figure out where, you know, people aren't trying to, you know, come with an inch of their lives just to try and get over this imaginary line that exists on some, you know, desert area in our, in our country.
Like, that's what's frustrating to me the most is that, you know, we, there needs to be more to be done anyway.
Well, I want to go ahead and state this in case, because this is always a table setter that has to be stated.
Neither party wants to solve any problem at the border.
It is all a dance, not just a dance, it's kabuki theater.
It's just trying, it's pretending like it's one thing when it's actually the other.
And, you know, when it actually comes to the Republican Party, you just hit on something really important, Nick.
They will spend all day saying that this is a problem that they want taken care of, but they will not support any effort to actually solve it.
And again, I want to go ahead and for just a quick second, go ahead and tip of the cap to Ronald Wilson Reagan.
That's right.
This is Jared Yates Sexton complimenting Ronald Wilson Reagan on the Muckrake Podcast.
In 1986, spearheaded immigration reform and amnesty.
Actually took care of a problem as it was, but didn't take care of it in totality because nobody actually wants to fix what's happening at the border.
And you can't push globalism and free trade without relying on these people as moving them and migrating them on purpose as an exploitable labor force.
Well, guess what?
They don't care about this shit.
They don't actually want to fix the border.
They want to be pissed at Joe Biden.
Whatever it is that allows them to be pissed at Joe Biden, whatever allows them to support Donald Trump, and whatever allows them to engage in whatever cruelties or prejudices that they want, that's what they want.
I'm going to read you a quote, Nick, and you tell me who you think said this quote.
Quote, I'd shut down the border right now and fix it quickly.
Who said that?
Is it Donald Trump?
It sounds like Donald Trump, doesn't it?
No, that's Joseph Robinette Biden.
That's Joseph Robinette Biden who said that, the President of the United States of America, saying the exact thing that Donald Trump would say at a rally and get a thunderous applause for.
That doesn't matter.
They want their own views spoken back to them and repeated to them and grow and grow.
They don't care about the reality of it.
They want to be on the winning side.
They don't want they don't want Biden to win.
They want Biden to lose.
And meanwhile, it has created a situation where a literal paramilitary group is on its way to the border to try and declare war on the federal government.
Congratulations, everybody.
This is a totally functional country that we have right now.
Listen, the Democrats are also talking about finishing the wall.
Yes, yes, yes.
Biden has built some of the wall.
Yeah.
You know, and here's what's interesting about it.
Like, let's just say that it was a perfect situation.
Like, what would the perfect situation look like?
Like, maybe you have a wall and you have people saying, okay, we're going to give you a permit and you can work.
I disagree.
I, dude, I hear what you're saying in terms of like finding solutions for the border.
I don't think the solution is a wall, whether Biden builds it or Trump builds it.
I think there are other ways to handle this whole thing, but I want to push back.
Okay.
If it's not a wall, then I guess you just need a lot more people and a lot more training.
Yeah, but you're talking about actually restructuring our economy, which is what actually needs to happen.
exploit all this labor, but let's do it in a, in a organized way where like they can tax them more or whatever.
Like they'll, they'll be happy to make more money on the people when they go to work in America for the jobs.
Yeah.
But you're talking about actually restructuring our economy, which is what actually needs to happen.
That's the conversation that this conversation is standing in for.
Well, yeah, to me, the argument would then, it's just another, another revenue stream, like basically for them.
Yeah.
Yeah, it would it would basically amount to a tax on the rich is what it would be.
It would be making it would be making sure that middle and upper class people weren't able to exploit these people.
That's what it would be.
Interesting.
Okay.
Um, anyway, so but yeah, I guess it was inevitable that we were going to give them the point to Biden's campaign where he's going to start echoing all some of the hardline Republican talking points.
This, and by the way, I want to point this out, and we're getting ready to talk about Nancy Pelosi in a second, some of the dumb shit things that she said over the weekend.
I want to point this out because this is important, Nick.
It's not, one of the things that I think people have done over the past eight years is they've really focused in on politics because of the Trump era and the dangers we're within.
People are like, why doesn't Biden get it?
He's trying to appeal to the wrong people.
They don't want to go with him.
That's part of it.
But guess what else?
Some of the Democratic Party, they believe this shit.
They believe the same stuff as the Republicans.
They don't want to get to it in the same way.
They don't want to display the same cruelty.
They don't want to talk about racism and sexism and misogyny.
They would much rather be on the right side of history.
But when it comes to some of these issues, They're doing the same thing.
It just so happens the Republican Party wants to accelerate it with cruelty and white supremacy and misogyny.
Biden, nothing in it.
I said this last night and I want to reiterate it on the podcast.
What have you seen in his political career that makes you think he doesn't believe this?
What have you seen that he's done?
What laws has he pushed?
What things has he been on the side of whatever that makes you think that this is any different than what he actually truly believes?
It's what he actually truly believes.
Right.
Maybe your perception of the Democratic Party is wrong.
That's actually what's going on in this country.
Oh, well that too.
And then also what happens when you have to vote not Trump more than the candidate you're voting for.
Which sometimes you have to do!
Yeah.
Which sometimes you have to do.
I'm not excited about voting for Joe Biden in November.
Am I going to?
Yeah!
Yeah.
And then I'm going to go home and I'm going to take a hot shower.
And I'm not going to feel good about it.
But guess what?
It's better than letting Donald Trump be President of the United States.
Are you going to put your hands up on the wall behind the thing and let the water hit your head?
Yes!
As like a Berlin soundtrack plays, I'm going to let the water cascade over me.
And you know what I'm going to do the next day?
I'm going to get up, I'm going to drink my coffee, and I'm going to work my ass off to make things better.
To figure out a way, four years later, where I don't have to vote for another Joe Biden.
Speaking of people that I don't ever want to have to vote for, Nancy Pelosi made headlines this weekend, Nick.
Listen, you know what?
When Impel shows up on CNN's Day of the Union, you know me, brother.
I'm tuning in.
She went on CNN's Day of the Union, which I guess is still on TV, and in addressing the protesters calling for a ceasefire in Israel, she laid out some truly interesting takes on the situation.
They're in front of my house all the time.
So I have a feeling for what feelings they have.
But we have to think about what we're doing.
And what we have to do is try to stop the suffering and gossip.
This is women and children, people who don't have a place to go.
So let's address that.
But for them to call for a ceasefire is Mr. Putin's message.
Mr. Putin's message.
Make no mistake, this is directly connected to what he would like to see.
Same thing with Ukraine.
It's about Putin's message.
I think some of these protesters are spontaneous and organic and sincere.
Some, I think, are connected to Russia.
And I say that having looked at this for a long time now.
You think some of these protests are Russian plants?
These are plans.
I think some financing should be investigated.
And I want to ask the FBI to investigate that.
When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best.
They're not sending you.
They're not sending you.
They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us.
They're bringing drugs.
They're bringing crime.
They're rapists.
And some, I assume, are good people.
Just, I don't know why that quote's floating around in my mind as I'm listening to that interview.
I don't know.
It's whatever.
Okay, I'm a little bit confused because... Some of them are not Russian plants, I assume.
I think she conflated two ideas in her head and it got muddled.
I don't think she was talking about the protests from Gaza are being supported by Russia.
Did you feel that's what she was meaning?
Well, Nick, I wondered the exact same thing until it came out that she has been pressuring the FBI to investigate pro-Palestinian protesters.
Okay, that tells me that she might have gotten conflated in the interview and gotten confused, but she's going she's going to go ahead and hit the accelerator.
That's fine.
Okay, well, because that was my first instinct was like, I think that she kind of got you know, that's the stuff because listen, we know that the Russians had funded stuff like for instance, in 2016, a lot of you know, pro Hillary, was it pro-Hillary?
What were they doing?
Pro-Trump stuff, yeah.
Pro-Trump stuff.
Yeah, that was what it was.
Anyway, and people in America who were all pro-Trump didn't believe when they were able to show evidence that it was funded by, like, Russians were sending money over to have these events.
So, like, it's not that far-fetched to think that they would be trying to get more, you know, social or, you know, political discord being sown here.
You know, and then again, is she privy to something that we don't know in intelligence?
Maybe she's dropping a little bit of a hint here.
Again, the fact that she thinks, because here's the problem, there certainly is an organic, like she mentioned, right, an organic movement of pro-Palestinian marches and people at her house, you know, calling for a ceasefire, all those things.
She didn't say that that wasn't happening either.
You don't think it's possible at all that Russia is behind any kind of supporting pro-Palestinian marches here?
Oh, I have to assume that there are elements of Russian intelligence and misinformation campaigns all over the place.
I don't doubt that for a second.
I want to take a second.
I want to take a quick detour.
I want to go back in history for a couple of things, Nick.
I want to go back into the 1950s, a little time that some people refer to as McCarthyism.
And the reason that there was the Red Scare in which Joseph McCarthy and the other people went after a supposed communist in the government, and Nick, are you ready for this?
I'm gonna drop a bomb.
Do you know why they went after a communist in government?
Uh, yeah.
Yeah, because there were some communists in the government.
Yeah.
But guess what?
They weren't actually going after the communists in the government.
They were actually wanting to destroy the New Deal, which included some communists and some socialists who were able to, you know, turn the American economy around and win a world war and defeat fascism in the United States.
But they went after that consistently.
And basically at that point with McCarthyism, you were able to say whoever you were against and whoever you didn't agree with, they were communists.
They had to have been in on this giant conspiracy.
That was really useful when black people showed up and said, hey, we kind of won equal rights.
Communists.
When the feminists showed up and said, hey, we want equal rights.
Communists.
When gay people showed up and said, we want equal rights.
Communists.
When young people said, we don't want this war.
Communists.
And what has happened is something that we see throughout history, which is, and Nancy Pelosi needs to go away.
Nancy Pelosi, you have had a fine service.
You were Speaker of the House.
You were the kingmaker at the Democratic Party.
You controlled all of the fundraising and basically the entire power structure.
I hope you go and enjoy the ill-gotten funds that you have gotten from all of your stocks that you have manipulated based on the intelligence you get as a representative.
Best of luck.
Get out of here.
What Nancy Pelosi is doing is a thing that more people need to understand.
They red versus blue Democrat versus Republican.
When you get to a certain level of power, Nick, there's a consensus that happens, which is those rabble rousers, particularly leftist or particularly people who don't agree with what the government is doing.
Those people are the enemies of the state.
This is why the FBI gets used against them.
That's why the FBI got rid of labor unions.
That's why the FBI got rid of socialists.
That's why FBI harassed immigrants.
That's why the FBI and the CIA surveilled people and manipulated people and carried out PSYOPs in the country.
What she is talking about is she cannot understand that the majority of Americans do not approve of what is happening in Gaza.
And as a result, it's not that people disagree with her, Nick.
It's that people are obviously being manipulated and or paid or they're part of a larger conspiracy.
Power brain.
Power brain will wear down the brain of any individual and it is not a Democratic or Republican situation.
All that sounds reasonable.
I totally get that.
I can't disagree with any of that.
And it is interesting though that, you know, more Hmm, I guess it's not interesting only because it's Joe Biden who's funding this war, for instance, again, in Ukraine, and also in supporting Israel against Palestine.
So they can't say anything negative against that, right?
to have to toe the line and be all together on the same side?
Because it seems like politically, someone like Nancy Pelosi or other congressmen could come out and say, yes, we have to stop this.
And it's a humanitarian crisis and it's war crimes, all those different things.
No one is doing that on either side, right?
No one seems to want to speak out to that.
And I suppose it's this weird, warmongering, toeing the line thing that everyone has to stay on their own side of the aisle.
But it is strength.
There seems to be an opening there where somebody can make some way politically doing that.
Yeah, but I think that's whenever we start to understand how politics work, again, from a partisan element, as opposed to it being a consensus where there's some disagreement on the Lyndon Johnson gave us the Vietnam War, and do you know who he blamed for the protest, Nick?
Do you want to take one guess?
The Communists.
The Communists!
He looked around and nobody approved of this war and he said, obviously the Communists are that.
And by the way, Lyndon Johnson, for anybody who isn't getting on Wikipedia automatically, a Democratic President of the United States of America.
Like, it really is about the status quo and continuing on the trajectory of things.
And Pelosi, that's what this is.
It's simply having the ability to say, obviously these are foreign agents, I don't have to consider what I'm supporting or what I'm a part of.
That's what that is.
Yeah, and then for what it's worth, LBJ, while he might not have had anything to do with JFK's assassination, within a week of him dying, he was escalating the war and getting the war machine ramping up and all that money coming in, so yes.
Ready to go, baby!
And figuring out how to fake an incident that will then cause the war as well.
That is not speculation.
Right.
By the way, we have to be worried about that as well.
The Gulf of Tonkin incident, which happened to start the Vietnam War.
We're in that situation right now, and anything that happened right now in the Middle East, that could do the same thing.
Well, real fast, the Gulf of Tonkin, though, that was a superpower looking at a quote-unquote third-rate country that they could bully, or they thought that they could bully and they could take advantage of.
I'm telling you right now, the United States, at least Biden and the people around him, the people who aren't interested in nuclear Armageddon, they're not interested in a full-on war with Iran or China.
You know what I mean?
Like, they are, that is a little bit different than carrying on where the French left off in Vietnam.
And this whole situation, I mean, all it takes is, I mean, this drone thing was enough.
You know what I mean?
It really, really, truly was.
Speaking, Nick, of people who really, really want their worldview repeated back to them and continually reinforced.
Some really special Mind Palace shit happened on ex-Twitter today.
Vivek Ramaswamy, the one-man trolling operation who apparently ran for president for a bit and basically did it in order to sell books and get himself a show on Twitter, Replied to a Jack Pobosik post about Taylor Swift and her ties to George Soros, which already fantastic post.
He replied.
Well, wait, wait, wait.
You got to read the first post, don't you?
OK, I'll read Jack's.
Thinking about when Taylor Swift called out the Soros family in 2019 for buying the rights to her music and then how she came out a super liberal in 2020, basically saying that George Soros bought off Taylor Swift.
And we talked about this last week, Nick, which is that the conspiracy theory that's growing.
is that Taylor Swift is a deep state psyop, which is why everything has happened.
Vivek replied with this gem.
I wonder who's going to win the Super Bowl next month.
And I wonder if there's a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall.
Just some wild speculation over here.
Let's see how it ages over the next eight months.
That's right, Nick.
The conspiracy theory we were talking about last week now has a new wrinkle.
The Kansas City Chiefs won the AFC Championship, which means they're going to the Super Bowl in a couple of weeks.
Vivek is insinuating that the NFL fixed the playoffs in order to get the Chiefs to the Super Bowl so that they could win in order to give Travis Kelsey and Taylor Swift more exposure so that when she endorses Joe Biden for the 2024 election, it'll have that much more juice to it.
This is some incredible conspiracy theorying.
I mean, it's top-notch.
You know, I am morally opposed to football.
However, I viewed this game yesterday.
Did you happen to view this game?
Oh man, that's the most non-football-watching phrase I've ever heard.
I viewed this game yesterday.
I did!
I did view this game yesterday.
I took both games in, and I have to tell you, that was a pretty impressive fixed job by the NFL to have, you know, the greatest quarterback we've had of this, or any generation, winning the game for them like he normally always does, and then having the other quarterbacks struggle.
Uh, that, uh, I don't know.
I don't think, you know, the Soros thing was funny.
I guess I had forgotten that.
That did, is that right?
Taylor Swift called them out specifically?
Not really.
No, but she had a problem with the rights to her music.
It wasn't like she was going after George Soros and then they bought her off.
Right.
And by the way, the, the, the capitalistic approach to solving that problem, which was just to rerecord them and then push everybody to buy the new versions or the old new versions.
It's genius and should have been celebrated by everybody.
But again, we talked about this last time.
The only reason why they hate her is A, probably part of it is that she's a woman, and then B, she has said some things that are progressive politically, right?
And that just breaks it up for them and they can't handle it.
But I'm telling you, I truly believe that this is a real couple and that they really do enjoy each other's company and that they cheer for each other.
I'm telling you, I'm convinced.
I've studied this hard.
So, um, I think that this is all just absolutely batshit ridiculous.
If we had podcasts and if we had social media, like in the early 20th century, can you imagine how many people would have been like Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe?
Obviously a deep state plant.
Like that's what this is.
It truly is.
It's, it's, it's mind worms.
Like, and I've heard people, I've, Nick, I spend too much of my time dipping my toe and jumping into the cesspool of right-wing conspiracy theories.
I have come across conspiracy theories that the NFL is fake.
That the games are completely and utterly rigged, which is a wild accusation for a sport that chews up its participants and spits them out as like absolutely destroyed versions of themselves.
If you watch this game yesterday, the Kansas City Chiefs and the Baltimore Ravens, Like, if they fix that game, it's kind of incredible because the Ravens beat the living shit out of Pat Mahomes.
The number one quarterback of his generation.
Like, he was getting beat up.
Like, they were racking up one penalty after another trying to hurt him.
Right.
Okay?
So, that's an incredible thing.
But, the important point here isn't just the absurdity of this.
I think that this is a really good Rosetta Stone, Nick.
I think that what this is, is an example of how right-wing conspiracy theories work.
I talked about the Taylor Swift thing on the weekend or on Friday, which said they can't blame capitalism.
They can't say that obviously millions upon millions of people love Taylor Swift.
That's why they're paying their money to her, right?
That the market has decided that Taylor Swift deserves this power and this wealth.
So they have to take it off of capitalism and turn it into a conspiracy theory.
In this case, what Vivek is doing is he's taking a bunch of different things that right-wing people don't like and explaining them in a way that tells the person who doesn't like them, you don't like them because there's something wrong with you.
You don't like them because there's a plan that you're picking up on.
You don't like Taylor Swift, right?
It's not because she, you know, nasty woman syndrome, you're afraid of an independent woman talking about her feelings or expressing herself and being sexual, but actually what you're doing is you're picking up on a deep state George Soros driven plot.
And you might not like her with Travis Kelce, and maybe it bothers you to watch a couple of people.
Nick, they are a real couple.
I have a problem with the way that they have been commodified and packaged by the capitalistic sort of complex, but guess what?
They seem to love each other.
They seem to be in a relationship where they like one another.
And so, you see that and you hate it, so you're not going to think about how maybe you're not feeling fulfilled, and maybe your life isn't so great.
And on top of that, you wanted the Chiefs to lose that game because you didn't want to hear about Taylor Swift anymore.
And guess what?
They won it.
It has to be a conspiracy against you.
It's the exact same thing as the 2020 election.
You didn't like what happened in the 2020 election.
Instead of like looking inside of you and saying, am I actually in the minority?
No, it's not me that's wrong.
It's the children, right?
It's that's where the problem is.
It is changing the entirety of their reality view where anything that inconveniences them or they don't like or approve of has to be evil, has to be part of a larger conspiracy.
Totally.
And the manipulation of this is that, first of all, there's a whole fan base that was cheering against Kansas City or cheering for the Ravens.
So he's got all those people, right?
We lost.
I can't believe it.
It's fixed.
But then there's a lot of people, apparently, who don't like the Kansas City quarterback.
Patrick Mahomes.
Right there.
I don't know.
There's a little bit of something there too.
Wait, I don't know why, because he seems like a very nice gentleman, but at any rate, so you have a whole bunch of other people there.
Like, you know, like when, when the Patriots were winning, right.
And they, people hated them.
They don't, they didn't like Brady.
They were the same idea.
So it's, you're manipulating people who just have a built in, you know, sports, you know, hatred of something and then expanding that out.
And then they're the ones who are guiding people like into a political realm when it didn't have to be political at all.
That's like, we're getting to the nefarious category here.
I'm actually curious because he says the word culturally in there, which I don't know if I have to, we parse it out for a second to figure out exactly what Vivek is trying to signal here.
He goes, there's a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped up couple this fall.
Basically, it's the idea that it's a psyop that is being created for artificial consumption.
But culturally, to me, almost would have been like if it was like if they were different races or something like that.
No, no.
I think he's just simply saying it's the right wing idea that the culture is degenerative.
That like it's it's decadent and depraved.
All right, culturally propped up.
But again, it also tells you the vacuousness of Vivek Ramaswamy's thought process because he tries to sound as smart as he can.
But in that inevitably doesn't really work and make sense.
So no, it's stupid.
It's it's straight up stupid, but it's actually brilliant.
I want to go ahead and put my cards on the table, Nick.
Before I, like, did a good amount of my healing and I really sort of had my own, like, spiritual political awakening, there were so many things that bugged me about culture.
Things that I didn't like, things that I would see on TV, things that I would have to watch, or things that other people enjoyed.
Music, culture, art, food, whatever it was.
I also really, really, really was annoyed by popular culture.
Do you know what I mean?
Like it bothered me that people like these things.
And I learned something very important.
It's a phrase that I throw around now, which has actually helped.
It's a lot like the serenity prayer, you know, grant me the strength to understand the things I can change and the things I can't.
And you know what that phrase is, Nick?
No.
Not for me.
Which is an incredibly powerful phrase that is made for someone else.
I don't have to worry about it.
The right wing, however, and the people who support it, they don't believe in that.
They want culture to reflect what they care about.
They want culture to vocalize for them what it is that they feel like is important.
They don't want to be challenged.
They don't want other people to have things.
It's a matter of control.
It's a bunch of people who have been abused and a bunch of people who are miserable, who seek power through control.
And so as a result, they, listen, I said it on the last podcast, I don't like Taylor Swift's music that much.
There's a couple of tunes that I like, you know, but I'm not, I'm not really into her music all that much.
I don't need to be.
I don't need to be a fan of the most famous, you know, musical act in the world.
Why, why do I need to be?
Right?
Like what, what does it say about me or culture?
Like, I don't have to worry about that.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
It's also the same idea when they'll rail against like being silenced or being canceled.
Right.
Because of the thoughts they want to have.
And it's not, and everyone's like, what are you talking about?
You are talking right now.
You are on your whatever platform.
You are the most like, whether it's Joe Rogan or any number of these people, you are one of the most listened to human beings in the entire world.
Right.
And so the point is, is that they're not being canceled by like liberal people or progressives.
They have a conscience.
And their conscience is telling them, you know what, that's a shitty thing to say.
And I think that's the battle going on in their heads right now.
And that's the talk that they're stuck with every day because they know that it's horrible shit.
But they demand, they need to be able to think it and think that they don't have any recourse against what they're saying.
So that is just fascinating to me because, you know, you'll see this happen all the time.
And you know, as soon as the phrase starts, I'm going to get canceled for this, dot, dot, dot, you know, when they say that.
And you know, it's just complete bullshit because no one is being canceled for the shitty things that you want to say.
And what you just started to talk about, I think, is a fundamental thing that people need to understand about this political culture, which is, Trump, MAGA, the Republican Party.
The reason why they enjoy cult-like control over the people that they do is because Trump came along in 2016 and here's the root of his power.
He said to people, you're not actually racist.
You're like a, you're a realist, right?
Those bad feelings that you have inside of you about people of another color, immigrants, black people, Hispanic people, whatever, your feelings about women, your feeling about gay people, your feelings about your neighbors, the people you don't like, that's not a problem!
Right?
Everybody's telling you that you need to change or heal or something needs to improve with you, that that's a problem.
Trump said that's not a problem.
That's actually realism.
Right?
Your ugliness is you see the world as it should be.
That's incredibly powerful because it's enabling.
Trump and the Republican Party have told primarily white people, there's nothing wrong with you.
You don't need to investigate your privilege, you don't need to think about who you are, you don't need to heal.
Matter of fact, it goes back, we talked about JFK, JFK said, I'm going to ask of you, right?
Don't ask what the country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.
Trump turned it around.
It's time to ask what the country can do for you.
I'm going to ask you to do less and expect more.
And so what we're talking about here right now is a fundamentally unhealthy state of mind, which is why this is a mental health crisis.
These conspiracy theories are just an extension of that.
That's all it is.
And the mental health issue to me is a thing where, because remember, you're allowed in the United States, you could be a racist.
It's legal to have all manner of horrible thoughts that you want to have.
And the people who are understanding and who want to accept people are supposed to then accept everybody, right, on that same level playing field.
That's what they're trying to demand.
But there is a certain anger that also concerns me probably the most, is that there's an anger associated with this that continues to bubble out and cause violence and cause a lot of problems that way, outwardly, that probably are the biggest motivational factor for wanting people to be kinder to each other and be more empathetic and have some more of those thoughts that they don't want to accept.
Absolutely.
And by the way, speaking of people who should be canceled, I want to share with you one of the most, uh, absolutely cursed objects that I've ever come across.
Nick, um, Ben Shapiro, uh, our, our, our little, our little right-wing friend of the pod, um, decided he was going to do a, uh, a rap.
He's going to do a rap and he's going to do it.
He did a rap with Tom McDonald, who I had never heard of before, but they did a rap together and now we're going to have to listen to part of it.
Let's just keep it real, thanks.
Don't care how you feel, man.
If you want my pronouns, I'm the man.
I'm the man who don't respect.
Let's look at the stats.
I've got the facts.
My money like Lizzo.
My pockets are fat.
Homie, I'm epic.
Don't be a wap.
Dawg, it's a yarmulke.
Homie, no cap.
Look at the graphs.
Look at my charts.
You're blowing money on strippers and cars.
You going to prison.
I'm on television, dawgs.
No one knows who you are.
Keep hating on me on the internet for my comments.
Well, this ain't rap.
Well, this ain't rap.
He's right about that.
Great.
This is a song that hit number one on iTunes for the record because the people in MAGA world in the right wing will absolutely buy anything because this is a parallel economy where the only thing they care about are buying products that express who they are.
And that is part of the grift.
Nick, I'm going to talk about the lyrics in a second and the cultural ramifications of this.
It's disgusting and it's bad.
Can we just say that?
That was bad.
It was bad.
It was not a good rap.
I mean, listen, there are the parody raps that people do, um, and like, you know, maybe in that realm, he kind of passes somewhat, but, um, I don't know.
Yeah, it was just, uh, well, it was bad.
Are you saying his rapping itself was bad?
Well, I'll say this.
His rap was crap.
Okay, I hear you.
I hear where you're going on that one.
How about that?
How about that, Nick?
Did you take time to call up the actual lyrics and examine them?
Yeah, I'm going to read these lyrics for you real fast.
I'm going to find that myself.
Here are the lyrics that Ben Shapiro rapped.
Quote, let's look at the stats.
I've got the facts.
My money like Lizzo.
My pockets are fat.
Homie, I'm epic.
Don't be a wap.
Dog, it's a yamaka, homie.
No cap.
Look at the graphs.
Look at my charts.
You're blowing money on strippers and cars.
You're going to prison.
I'm on television.
Dog, no one knows who you are.
Keep hating on me on the internet.
My comment section all woke Karen's.
And I make racks off compound interest.
Y'all live with your parents.
Nikki takes some notes.
I just did this for fun.
All my people download this.
Let's get a billboard number.
Which, by the way, the lyrics that go on from Tom McDonald, I just want to share very, very quickly a refrain.
Quote, This ain't rap.
This ain't money, cars, and clothes.
We ain't selling drugs.
We ain't gonna overdose.
We ain't pushing guns and promoting stripper poles.
We won't turn your sons into thugs or your daughters into hoes.
That's right!
Ben Shapiro and Tom McDonald made a rap song which claimed That hip-hop is an undercover weapon to pervert and degenerate the white race.
That's right.
That's what that is.
No doubt about it, what it is.
And with, I don't know, is it a dog whistle when it's just entirely that, and you know, without even taking a breath?
Like, the whole thing was so horrible about these racist tropes.
Um, you know, that, uh, that I was just dumbfounded that in 2024, someone's going to release something like that.
Uh, but it makes sense.
Ben Shapiro pops up in my timeline all the time and you read all about what his thought process, it completely makes sense.
But it's this rage, this faultless pseudo anger at like this, this boogeyman that doesn't really exist that somehow is policing everyone's minds.
And it's the other way around, which is really what the sad thing about it is.
Yeah, the Ben Shapiro thing is really super strange because basically he is allowed to go in front of these white evangelicals and basically tell them that Jews are controlling everything without talking about Jews.
It's a really strange thing!
A really strange space that he's in, you know, that he goes out and he does that.
Also, I would be remiss if I didn't point out this ecosystem of right-wing ideological products.
And I want to lay my cards on the table, Nick.
And I don't know how you feel about this, but I'll go ahead and put mine.
The products that I use, I make choices based on who I think that I am and what I'm giving to the world.
You know what I mean?
The clothes I wear, what brands I use, what TV shows I watch, what music I listen to.
I am both doing it because I enjoy these things, but also because in capitalism, particularly America's twisted version of capitalism, I'm expressing something to other people, right?
So like, for instance, like I have a certain I don't know, skin care, beard care routine.
And I buy certain things and I feel good about it and I like those products.
And I think, you know, subconsciously, even though I've come to understand it through my analysis, I think certain things about myself based on what I use and what I wear.
What the right wing has done has almost it's like putting a penny into a light socket And like, shorted it out, you know what I mean?
And basically now, you can wake up in the morning, you can eat anti-woke cereal, you can drink right-wing militia coffee, you can then basically eat candy bars that have Donald Trump on them, you can drink beer that is anti-woke, anti-bud light trans beer.
Like, this entire thing from top to bottom is a cultural takeover and parallel economy.
And this right here, I'm sorry, this doesn't even pass the smell test.
This sucks.
If this is what you're listening to, congratulations.
You played yourself.
Yeah, you also omitted the Alex Jones supplements you can take.
Oh, you gotta pop those supplements, baby, in the colloidal silver until your lips turn blue.
You gotta do it.
Yeah, yeah, I get it.
I mean, listen, it's funny.
Maybe people want to hear this.
I don't know if you do.
I've done a rap parody in my... Oh no, don't do that.
I did.
I did.
You didn't hear it?
You never heard that one?
Oh, wait, I have heard this.
Yes, I have.
You might have to share it at some point.
No, no, you don't need to do that.
Well, anyhow, but, um, so, but, you know, the thing with Cardi B, which is hilarious, is, you know, he, he was such a self-owned, uh, and we don't get into the details about what the song is.
If you want to know about it, go look it up.
That's fine.
Yes.
Um, if you know, you know, but, um, the fact that in this, like, limp Sad.
They're going to.
to try and like come back at her with that one line because he was so thoroughly embarrassed by what he was saying.
It's also just, you know, it's just lame.
But but but hey, I suppose they're going to make some money off of this.
And that's probably they're going to make money off of this.
And they already have.
And yeah.
I don't know what else to say there.
This is what there is to say about it.
Sucks.
Sucks.
I'm sorry people had to listen to that, but that's what you come to the Muckrake Podcast for.
We are going to be back on Friday with The Weekender.
Go over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
Support the show, gain access to the additional shows, keep us ad-free, editorially independent.
I need that shower now after listening to that song.
I know I need that same shower.
Same shower I'm going to have after November.
If you need us before then, everybody, you can find Nick at Can You Hear Me?
