Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman provide crucial historical context to why Trump's NATO statements this weekend are damaging to the world order. What makes it all worse is that Republicans are full-throatedly supporting his position. Trump then throws some casual misoginy Nikki Haley's way, as he always does, which normalizes this behavior. They finish up by examining Joe Biden's personal twitter feed and how it inflames the conspiracy cultists out there rather than win points among his supporters.
EXCITING NEWS: Jared and Nick will be recording the podcast LIVE in VEGAS as part of Pete Dominick's Stand Up PodJam that takes place March 22-23 in Henderson, Nevada. Click HERE for info and tickets: https://events.humanitix.com/stand-up-podjam
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We're doing, you know, post-Super Bowl high, I guess.
Is that what we call this now?
We were talking before we started recording.
You had quite the weekend.
You had an earthquake on Friday.
You had a Super Bowl party on Sunday.
I mean, I wouldn't blame you for taking the day off.
Oh, I know.
Well, listen, I made a vat o' chili that was really, really good.
Turkey chili, five-way.
For you Cincinnati people out there, five-way chili was terrific.
Wait, you're putting that on spaghetti?
Yeah, well, the fifth way would be yes, you can put spaghetti in there.
And absolutely.
Yeah, we put it in.
Okay, we know a little chili and I put a little spaghetti and put more chili on top and then you know, there you go.
We Okay, this is a weekender conversation that we gotta get into later.
Maybe let's go ahead and put a pin on in that for Friday show because we need to have a chili conversation at this point.
We have a full show.
Listen, we've got Trump antics.
We've got the GOP primary race that we need to talk about.
Just weird happenings there.
We've got a dark Brandon meme situation that we've got to pick at.
We've got a Roths to that column.
I mean, listen, the party doesn't stop here on the Muckrake Podcast.
A reminder, though, that next month on Friday, March 22nd and Saturday, March 23rd, we're heading to Las Vegas, baby.
That's right.
Whatever the Chiefs.
What'd you say?
Vegas!
We are.
We are really, really excited about this on Friday, March 22nd.
I'm going to do the very first live Bourbon Talk on Saturday, March 23rd.
Nick and I are going to be bumming around.
We're going to probably do the first recorded Muckrake podcast.
So if anybody's interested in joining us there for Pete Dominick's Stand Up Podjam, I believe is the title that we're going with at this point, which sounds like a scam, but it's not.
The title.
Do you like the title?
A Rollickin' Good Time.
I mean, what else would you call it?
Stand Up Podjam sounds like something I would tell my grandparents and they'd be like, I don't understand your music.
Yeah, right.
No, it sounds a little bit like, you know, you're going to a Dead concert or something like that.
It does!
It's going to be a great time is the entire point of this thing.
If you want information on that, as always, check the episode notes.
Maybe you want to come down to Los Angeles.
Maybe you want to hang out with Nick and I. That is what we're looking forward to.
We're going to do the business.
We're going to record some stuff and hopefully meet some good people.
That's what I'm excited about.
Absolutely.
We'll be available and hanging out and just talking politics and anything else anybody wants to talk about.
If you don't want to talk politics, maybe that would even be better.
Maybe you want to talk about chili.
I don't know.
I could talk about chili for a while.
Everybody, listen.
Donald Trump, I regret to inform everyone, he's at it again, folks, in Conway, South Carolina, where he was campaigning for the state of South Carolina, which he'll probably win in a walkaway against former Governor Nikki Haley.
We'll talk about that later.
He was talking to this crowd about his feelings about NATO allies, and we got to break this thing down.
One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, well, sir, if we don't pay and we're attacked by Russia, will you protect us?
I said, you didn't pay?
You're delinquent?
He said, yes.
Let's say that happened.
No, I would not protect you.
In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want.
You gotta pay.
Oh yeah, that's a real crowd pleaser, Nick.
We love it in America when we talk about holding up our allies in NATO like a mafioso.
We love it.
Yeah, it'd be a real shame if something happened to that country of yours over there.
You got a real nice country there, Albania.
Yeah.
I mean, this is not the kind of thing that you negotiate like this, right?
We're talking about life and death.
We're talking about the existence of countries in the face of severe threats.
It's not the kind of thing you idly just drop BS that he is doing.
And that's what they're trying to, you know, wave it off as.
It's just him talking like, you know, a cowboy or something.
Like a cowboy.
Yeah, I love Lindsey Graham, who has never met a country that he didn't want to bomb into the Stone Age.
He said, quote, give me a break.
It's Trump.
Nobody invaded anybody when he was president.
Which, uh, that's great.
That's his way of getting people to pay.
Marco Rubio, same exact thing.
Zero concern.
And it literally is extortion.
First of all, trying to get people to pay for NATO, which we'll talk about the history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
That's not what NATO is about, is making other countries pay for anything.
That's not why this thing was ever created in the first place.
And sure, it's Donald Trump letting people know that, you know, he needs to wet his beak as president if he's going to get this office back.
But to watch the Republican Party, like, absolutely enjoy the decimation of NATO, and I certainly have my problems with NATO, and we'll get into that more in just a moment, but to watch it happen, and to watch this party continually move closer and closer to not just the ideology, but also the plans and desires of Vladimir Putin and other illiberal dictators around the world, it's cause for concern, Nick.
It just continues to echo that we do not live in the country we thought we lived in.
And it's not even just the constituents that want to vote for Trump, which we'll talk about a little bit later, too.
It's the politicians themselves.
Like, they're the ones who have become, you know, like, think about it back in the Nixon era.
Nixon stepped down because the Republican Party, his own party, told him he had to.
You gotta go.
And I think the founding fathers, for the terrible issues they might have had with creating this country that we live in, I think had it right for the most part because they figured anybody like that, like who behaved like Nixon, even his own party would have to do something to make sure that they get him out of there.
Um, and they probably didn't envision what we have now where you have so many, even the normal people are sick of fans and toties who don't want to say anything to them and are falling in line because they've realized that their constituents will not vote for them if they don't toe the line.
And that's, you know, it's, we're losing our democracy over it.
Well, so the founders, first of all, go ahead and talk about that.
The founders didn't want parties in the first place.
They wanted it to be a gentleman's club.
They wanted, you know, the quote-unquote best and the brightest to get in a room and figure things out.
They never imagined that somebody like a Donald Trump would come along because they believed that wealth and power would signify somehow or another competence.
They didn't understand that capitalism just completely, you know, pushed forward entrenched wealth and eventually at some point or another it would have You know, dire consequences.
And of course, that whole idea of not having parties, that only lasted for a few years, which, you know, showed how perfect and divinely inspired they were.
To give everybody a quick little history lesson, they don't know it.
NATO was founded in 1949.
It was done as a counterbalance to not just the Soviet Union, but what we would call the Soviet Bloc.
It was the idea that America could bring together a lot of European nations around Russia, and that felt pressured by Russia militarily, that they could get together in an alliance.
This was in addition to what's called the Marshall Plan.
So after World War II absolutely decimated Europe and left America as the lone standing superpower, and Great Britain said, hey, guess what, America?
We're tired.
We don't got a lot of juice left.
Why don't you take the baton of capitalism and run with it?
And America's like, well, I mean, if you need us to, absolutely.
And by the way, not only did they take it, they went ahead and got everybody on the American dollar for the system of economics.
Then they went ahead and went with the Marshall Plan, which put all of these countries into debt to America and basically made them enter into an economic agreement with America in order to make this system that was preferential for American capitalism.
NATO was another aspect of this.
NATO went ahead and created a situation where you could have an alliance.
It wasn't just militarily.
That was an important part of it.
It was to keep Russian aggression out, but it was also to go ahead and cement these ties, right?
Like, we take care of you.
We'll go ahead and handle all this stuff.
Basically, it meant if Albania were to be attacked by Russia, guess what?
We've got nukes.
So if you will help us, you'll help us economically, politically, culturally, we'll go ahead and take care of you.
What Trump is doing here, first of all, by saying that you gotta pay your dues, yeah, there were quote-unquote dues that were due.
That's never been what this was about.
It was about expanding American power and influence.
Trump doesn't know this.
Trump has no idea.
He's a rent-seeking asshole.
That's the only thing he understands.
The people around him understand this, and they want to get rid of NATO for a variety of reasons, because they want to get rid of the American system that we're talking about here, and or pervert it into something else.
Now, everybody who says, well, Trump doesn't get it.
Well, technically, they're right.
But it's not like you're going to talk to him and convince him that this is wrong.
This is now, more or less, Nick, the main, like, principle of the Republican Party.
It's one of their platforms, which is, like, really damning, to be honest.
I think I disagree with you, Jared.
I think I disagree with you in that Trump's motivation for being this way on this side of the fence.
I'm really truly feeling like he is doing Putin's bidding.
I think that he is trying to dismantle NATO.
Let's look at it in the modern context.
So why did Russia go into Ukraine?
Because they were afraid that Ukraine wanted to join NATO.
That's not why they went into Ukraine.
Well, you know, that was under the auspices, right?
And why did Ukraine want to join NATO?
Because they were afraid that Russia was going to invade.
And guess what?
Russia invaded for the exact reason.
Now, why they didn't go into Montenegro all these years is primarily because of NATO.
NATO wasn't going to be a thing where they would retaliate.
It was going to stop them in the beginning right before anybody even tried to go in on that.
And that was the beauty of that.
So the idea that he is out there trying to basically, it sounds like he wanted to dismantle NATO and take us out of it, right?
He was testing the waters a little bit during his presidency.
Nick, I've told this story on the podcast before.
On his inauguration day, I got really, really way too drunk with a member of NATO who told me that all of them understood from the moment that he opened his mouth about NATO that he had no other desire besides dismantling NATO as a group.
Period.
Right.
They all knew it from the very beginning.
Yes.
So, exactly.
And then who, and really, does he really care about NATO?
Like, no, he probably didn't even know what NATO stands for.
He has no clue what NATO is.
No.
You're right.
And, and, but someone either gave him a great, oh, the talking point is great.
You can, you know, you can say, you know, hey, they got to pay up and pay, you know, whatever.
Well, OK, so we agree on a lot of principles here.
I don't actually think we're in disagreement.
We're talking about different things, I think.
Right.
any kind of support we have for Ukraine as soon as he gets in the White House and let Putin take over Ukraine.
And then from there, I don't know what stops Putin at that point from going farther.
Well, okay.
So we agree on a lot of principles here.
I don't actually think we're in disagreement.
We're talking about different things, I think.
Right.
So on one hand, I don't think Vladimir Putin is getting in Donald Trump's ear and is like, hey, I need you to take out NATO.
I don't think that's happening.
I don't think that he has compromise on him.
I don't think that whatever.
I think that they are ideologically aligned.
I think when Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin sit in a room together, they're like, hey, I see you, man.
I know you.
We're the same guy.
It's the same thing with Kim Jong Un.
Like Donald Trump is just like a principalist, like power-seeking, wealth-hungry monster.
And I think as a result, they all know one another.
I will say that most of the people around Donald Trump are ideologically aligned completely with Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orban, Kim Jong Un, any of these people.
They're part of an illiberal project that wants to destroy a liberal democracy and turn it into an authoritarian machine, which is what we talk about a lot on this podcast.
What, what Trump does, and this is the, the, the venal grossness of him, Nick, basically, and do you know the story about when Rome started falling apart?
Do you know what happened as Rome started falling apart?
Well, I believe I read in your book.
Well, I hope you did.
Eventually Rome, which had this like globe spanning empire, they, they, they would send out a message like as like, I dunno, you know, Britain was in trouble.
Right.
And they would say, Hey Britain, I know we've taken care of you in the past.
Best of luck.
You know what I mean?
Like, uh, the cavalry's not coming here.
What they want to do with their isolationism, with this rent-seeking that Donald Trump is interested in, they want to dismantle the parts of the American empire that were holding up any of the load-bearing elements of this stuff, right?
They want to start collapsing America into its own little authoritarian, weapons-dealing, militaristic thing.
And if Trump does win again, and if he continues to gain power the way that he is interested and the people around him are interested in, All of a sudden, Nick, it's like that thing when you turn on a computer game and it's World War II.
The Allies are over here, the Axis is over here.
We're not on this side of the equation anymore.
That's what's happening, is that the decline of the American empire is about these illiberal monsters taking over the neoliberal global machine and turning it into their own piggy bank, you know, their own cash register, a golden goose, whatever you want to call it.
I don't think Trump gets it.
I don't think Trump understands.
I don't think there's necessarily a compromise on him.
I think that this is where America is going and where the trends and the trajectories show us going.
And the Republicans are on board for it.
Fair enough.
I don't know.
I prefer to think that some of those conversations that he had with Putin, that they stole the notes or whatever they burned them, whatever that was.
Stuff must have been said.
I think stuff was said.
Don't get me wrong.
I think stuff was said in those meetings.
That is not where I'm coming from here.
But the cynical version is too, it's like the isolationism seems to be just a sweet siren call to a lot of people in America, and it always has been that way, right?
Our way of life and the poisoning of the blood, all that stuff that they talk about, we're going to have the signs on the streets aren't going to be in English anymore, and our cultures and whatever.
All those people.
It's really, I guess in the most cynical way, a great way to get more votes because it pulls on certain people's, you know, anxieties and fears.
The liberal democratic project was the idea of bringing all these different cultures together.
Like even Immanuel Kant would say, like in so many words, and he was like one of the forefathers of this entire idea, We want a metropolitan world.
We want it where, like, different cultures are living together.
They're sharing things.
They're blending things.
You know, what globalism has become, right?
The problem with that project is the way they went about it was completely flawed and it opened the door for all of this stuff.
They were also classist and sexist and racist, right?
And that is what has allowed this thing to happen.
Nick, what we're actually talking about here, it is exactly what you're saying, which is they want to collapse in on themselves.
Basically, we're in the 1930s right now.
Right.
You know what I mean?
And things are getting really bad globally to the point where, you know, we've talked about it.
Things might come to a head and there might be some decisions needing made.
This is like being like, you know what?
Maybe that ship of Jews should turn back around.
Maybe you take care of yourselves.
I think we're full up here, you know what I mean?
Good luck going back to, like, any number of these countries where, you know, families were just completely decimated.
And I think that that is a lot of what is happening.
It rings of Charles Lindbergh.
It rings of American fascism.
I mean, all of these things that we've seen before, it's now happening as America is in decline, as the system is spasming again.
And I think that's why Trump is the perfect person for these people.
I don't think he understands it, but I think, again, his rent-seeking, his power madness, his illiberalism, his inherent fascism, I think it's all aligned with these people, and I think that's the thing.
He's a cog in this larger problem.
Right.
And the fact that we didn't, I don't think anyone 10 years ago would have been able to assume or envision that so many people in this country would gobble this up and full-throated supporting of this.
That's why I think we would have thought, okay, he's going to get his, that, you know, the 20% of the country that's going to be really, you know, the crazies, whatever.
This has metastasized.
This has gotten the people, the normal Republicans, right?
The people who are, You know, college-educated males, you think, you know, are supposed to be the serious people.
They are all in on this, and that's what's good.
And it's revealed in those polls about how many of the people in the Republican Party believe that the election was stolen in 2020.
And ad nauseam, there's a long list of these conspiracy theories without any evidence that they believe.
You'll see it in the border stuff, too, where people, you know, who are supposed to be, you know, reasonable people are starting to spout out saying stuff like, you know, Every single person coming across that border is simply here to take advantage of our system.
And they're not here.
They're not political asylum seekers.
They're not.
It's like, what evidence do you have of any of that that you're saying that's right?
Gut.
What?
Gut.
They've got a gut feeling about it.
Yep.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They lack gut health, I suppose, is what we would say.
So, yeah, it's, you know, they've always operated on feelings and not a lot of evidence.
And it just makes sense.
But here we are.
And the Republican Party is never to be changed back, I don't think.
It has to go away.
It just has to go away.
And you know, you said a while back, and I think about this all the time whenever I'm doing analysis, it's like when the masks started slipping, like everybody could see what was underneath it.
And you know, part of this, and unfortunately we've got to talk about another thing that Donald Trump said within this primary against Nikki Haley, and as the contest in South Carolina heats up.
And again, it's Donald Trump's party.
Let's make that very clear.
In the past, we could talk about different factions.
We could talk about establishment Republicans trying to push back against MAGA, trying to use it as a battering ram, of course, in order to deregulate and get tax cuts.
Now it's his party.
Nikki Haley is going to be defeated in her own state of South Carolina by probably a vast margin, and it's going to become very clear.
But in South Carolina, also, you know, down there campaigning You know, in the same areas he said this about NATO.
He made this personal with Nikki Haley.
And she comes over to see me at Mar-a-Lago.
Sir, I will never run against you.
She brought her husband.
Where's her husband?
Oh, he's away.
He's away.
What happened to her husband?
What happened to her husband?
Where is he?
He's gone.
He knew.
He knew.
But no.
Think of this.
Think of this.
I will never run against you, sir, but it's all overtime.
We've got, like, 19.
The great Dan Scavino, he made 10.
Oh, I'm sorry I didn't cut off before he uttered the two words.
Any day that we have to hear Dan Scavino's name on this podcast is a bad one.
And for anybody who doesn't know, Nikki Haley's husband is in the National Guard.
He's currently deployed, and that's why he hasn't been on the campaign trail with her.
But Trump has to put it out there because what does he love to do, Nick?
Anybody, and there's like this thing that happens with him, if you are in the campaign against him in the primary, at first he'll insult you and he'll bully you, and if you stay in, Ted Cruz could not be reached for comment, he starts going after your family.
He starts talking about how your dad helped kill JFK.
He starts talking about how your wife is ugly, right, and his wife is better looking.
It starts to become really, really personal.
So we're there at this point in this thing, and Nikki Haley, to her credit, responded to this, but we need to talk about all of it.
It's disgusting.
I mean, every bit of it's disgusting.
You know, to sit there and mock my husband for not being with me on the presidential trail because he is deployed and serving our country.
You mock one veteran, you're mocking all veterans.
But this is a pattern, Dana.
He's done this over and over again.
whether he went and called military members suckers, whether he was at Arlington Cemetery saying, what was in it for them, why would they do this?
The problem with Trump is, he's never been anywhere near a uniform.
He apparently had some sort of foot reason that he says he couldn't do that.
But the reality is, the closest he's come to harm's way is a golf ball hitting him on a golf cart.
These men and women sacrifice for us every day They're willing to shed blood.
That's the values that made this country great.
And anybody that excuses what he continues to say against the military is hugely mistaken because this is going to be the President of the United States.
We have to start doing more to help our veterans.
They don't get the do they deserve.
They don't get taken care of.
We've got to start watching out for them.
You can't do that if you've got a commander-in-chief that disrespects them.
Those are fighting words for the military.
In South Carolina, we love our military.
We fight hard for them.
We want to make their lives better.
We don't mock them.
And what he did is just disgusting.
And anybody that agrees with it or says it's okay is disgusting along with them.
There you go.
Here's the thing.
Will this remove one vote from him, from his votes in South Carolina or anywhere?
Not a one.
Not one.
And that's the problem.
That's the issue.
He has no, there's no recourse for him.
There's no accountability for him.
That's what's so, I think maybe I was even getting it before.
It's become such a full-throated support of this person, doesn't matter what he says.
And he's said it before and it really, that's what's so, that's what's disgusting about this country, really.
I want to say something, and I want to make it very, very clear.
The reason why there is no consequence for Donald Trump, and Nick, it's not just attacking Nikki Haley and her husband.
It's not just calling dead soldiers at Arlington losers and suckers.
It's not just going after John McCain as a loser for being captured and spending God knows how long inside of a Vietnamese war prison, right?
It's constant.
It has happened constant.
It's not all of that.
Here's the sad truth.
That whole, we love our troops, we support our troops, they should be treated well?
Nobody in the Republican Party actually believes that shit.
Otherwise, they wouldn't send them in wars to go get destroyed and killed and get their limbs knocked off and suffer God knows how many injuries and debilitating traumatic disorders.
They don't actually care about these people.
The only reason that they ever talked about caring about troops was it was a cudgel to attack people who attack their plans to go to war.
That's the only reason that they've ever done this.
Donald Trump called bullshit on it and everyone said, yeah, you're right.
It is bullshit.
Okay, fine.
We're good.
We don't have to pretend anymore.
It was never real in the first place.
And it's weird hearing Nikki Haley talk about this, Nick.
She says, we can't have a commander in chief do this.
Well, you did!
He was Commander-in-Chief, and it didn't do anything to him.
And what's happening now?
He's blowing you out of the water, and you don't stand a chance of beating him in this primary, and he is the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party and could very well be the next President of the United States.
Maybe it's time to look in the mirror and realize the country that you thought you lived in doesn't exist, which is what a lot of us have had to do.
And we can't ignore the misogyny that's going on in this, which is getting sure.
He says, where is he?
And as if he doesn't know, and that's whatever.
But then he goes, he knew.
That's what Trump said.
He said he knew meaning Haley's husband knew what he's trying to say is here is this like strong woman who's standing up and saying these things.
He got out of there.
He left her is what he's trying to say, right?
Because everyone needs to leave a woman like that.
Like that's basically what he's saying.
And that's that's what was so horrible about dealing with it when he was running against Hillary.
And I, and I think the only thing we have that's lucky in this context is that she's going to get out of the race sooner.
So we don't have to deal with, it won't get worse, right?
Cause it'll get worse and he'll do what he did to tech crews to her directly as well.
Uh, unless she drops out, which she probably will sooner than later.
I was, um, man, I am a political sicko.
Uh, a couple of weeks ago, I was spending a lot of time with old 2016, I was watching old debates.
I was watching old speeches and rallies.
This is what I do, man.
I don't know.
It's my job.
And you know, I was watching the debate after the whole Access Hollywood video came out, and I don't know if you remember, but Trump brought all of these women who had accused Bill Clinton of sexual abuse to the debate.
And I realized something watching it that I didn't realize in the past when I was watching it because I was so appalled by it.
You know what I mean?
Like the brazenness of the stunt.
And this is on me.
I realized watching this, not only did he do it to save his own skin, and not only did he do it in order to put up an argument, like, yeah, I've said some disgusting things.
Look what Bill Clinton did.
And for the record, Like, yeah, you should look at what Bill Clinton did.
I'm not going to be one of those people who pretends like Bill Clinton didn't do anything wrong.
But he also did it, Nick, for the added pleasure of rubbing Hillary's face in it.
Here are women that he mistreated and he did it Like, basically, you know, away from you, right?
To hurt you.
And I realized then, it's like, there is a special level of abuse and cruelty that is in that.
Here, Donald Trump is not just pissed that Nikki Haley wasn't loyal to him.
What he's going to do is he's going to psychologically attack her.
He's going to literally not just destroy her, but he's going to destroy her while ruining anything in her life.
It is a level of viciousness that we haven't seen in American politics outside of this.
There's been some disgusting stuff.
Right?
But the straight-up ferocity with which he attacks people like Nikki Haley, it's incredible.
And it normalizes it.
It makes it okay for everyone else to say it now.
It makes it okay for everyone else to feel that way and think that way.
And this is part of the reason why you see right-wing people, they want their First Amendment rights.
They don't want to be silenced.
It's because they want to be able to have these awful thoughts and not have any pushback About women or about people of color.
And that's where they're moving towards.
And it's, you know, it's, you know, again, we don't live in the country we thought we lived in.
We thought there was some progression.
We thought civil rights had helped us move along.
And listen, it has, and it is better, and there has been some.
But man, there is a sleeper cell of people in this country that have been activated.
And, you know, they need every last single tiny vote they can find.
And that's what they're trying to do and mine that.
And, you know, we got to talk a little more about, you know, Biden now and what his fortunes are going to be.
Yeah.
OK, so listen, maybe this will be unpopular.
I don't care.
I truly believe this.
So, again, for people who haven't kept track of this stuff and maybe have looked away from it for a while, there was a conspiracy theory that was making the rounds for a while.
It was on Fox News.
Vivek Ramaswamy was talking about it.
Other people picked up on it.
Basically, people were either saying outright or alluding to the possibility that 1.
Taylor Swift's popularity was manufactured by the CIA as a psyop to try and control people.
2.
That because she was eventually going to endorse Joe Biden, like she did in 2020, for the record, That they were trying to build up her fame, that they created this fake couple between her and Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelsey, and that they were going to fix the Super Bowl to make sure that the Chiefs won so that they could have like a beautiful moment and raise their profile and then she could endorse Joe Biden and win the election.
For those who don't care about football, the Super Bowl took place last night.
We're recording this on Monday, February 12th.
It was an exciting game!
Kansas City won in overtime!
And what happened?
Taylor Swift went out onto the field, she kissed Travis Kelsey, they had a romantic moment as every media outlet in the world trained their cameras on them, and of course, like, a lot of people are going to believe that that was fake, and that's totally fine.
The official Twitter account for Joe Biden, not his presidential account, but the at Joe Biden account, posted what has come to be called the dark Brandon meme, which is any picture of Joe Biden with glowing red evil looking eyes, which is a meme that has made the rounds for the last year or so trying to take back the whole like Biden is an evil dictator idea with the quote, just like we drew it up.
Insinuating that they had fixed the Super Bowl, they had created this moment for Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce in order to bolster Joe Biden's chances.
I think this sucks.
And I think it sucks really, really bad, and I'll get into why.
What is your reaction to this, Nick?
Well, I mean, I saw it and I thought, maybe the slightest chuckle, like, all right, you know, sometimes if you can, you can take away the power of let's go, Brandon, which is just a horrible thing that really supposed to mean, you know, FU Joe Biden.
But, you know, in the climate we're in now, and the amount, the sheer incredible amount of people who believe in that conspiracy, I don't know.
What is the goal here?
Is the left or is Biden trying to own the right now, just like they try and own the left and the libs and whatever?
I mean, is that the best way to do that?
And is that what you want to do?
I mean, listen, he's going to be vilified no matter what he does by people on the right.
So it's like you shouldn't be afraid of saying certain things or whatever, because they're going to do it anyway.
But like, you know, do you need to do this?
I don't know.
I'm kind of mad.
I don't know if I'm like, you know, negative against it.
I just feel like I just kind of maybe a shrug for me.
I think it sucks ass.
And for a variety of reasons, but I'll go ahead and start by giving background on this.
This was absolutely done to troll people and score points with people who support Joe Biden and don't like the right and they don't like MAGA and all that stuff.
And by the way, fair enough.
I understand why you don't like these people.
I get it.
But it's part of what you were just talking about in that last segment, which is the desire to Hurt others, or troll them.
It's a trolling, is what it is.
And the only people it actually scores points with are the people who already support you in the first place, and it's supposed to make them feel more invigorated about you.
So yeah, you got a viral post.
Congratulations.
And everyone knows Joe Biden didn't post this thing.
If you went to Joe Biden and said, what's dark branding?
He'd say, what's that, Jack?
He did not post this.
He doesn't know what it is.
This was somebody on his social media team that posted this thing.
But also, I just want to point out, Nick, it was a couple of weeks ago that we were reporting on some dude in Pennsylvania who cut off his dad's head, you know, and blamed it on Joe Biden and all these conspiracy theories.
We've reported on bombers.
We've reported on people who, you know, go after journalists, who go after politicians, who send pipe bombs in the mail, who pick up a gun and go into offices.
Why are we doing this?
Why are we continuing to stoke that paranoia and to make fun of it?
Take it seriously.
Like, I get it that this was, like, signaling to certain people who get it, like, aren't we cool that we understand what this meme is and we understand, like, you know, blah blah blah, these conspiracy theories are ridiculous.
Absolutely.
But guess what?
You're also adding to an environment where really bad things happen.
And I would be remiss, and I know we're going to move on a second, that this took place about an hour after Rafah was being bombed, which was where supposedly the Palestinians could go to get away from the destruction and the death.
Turns out there's nowhere to run outside of running into the fucking sea and drowning at this point.
But that doesn't feel great.
And maybe the people in charge of this social media account, maybe they should have some more tact.
And maybe they should think about what they're doing before they go forward.
I understand this was a jolly good time for a lot of people.
I thought this sucked on a level that's really hard to even communicate.
Well, let me just add to that because if you want to get an insight into what you're dealing with on the other side and the people who are thinking about the conspiracies, I posted online, you can see it on the YouTube side, there's a Shadow of Ezra, it's this really well-followed account on X, and shared a video clip of Ice Spice, who was sitting next to Taylor Swift, and she's a rapper,
And it says, Ice Spice, who attended the game with Taylor Swift, was seen making hand gestures associated with satanic symbolism while wearing an upside-down cross.
Usher, during the halftime show, was dancing in a fire pit with an Illuminati sun symbolism.
The Super Bowl is nothing but a major satanic ritual.
This was viewed 3.4 million times, which is quite a bit on Twitter or whatever you want to call it.
This is what we're dealing with.
And now they see the dark brand and stuff, just like we planned it, or just like we drew it up.
You know, again, you're feeding into people who are unwell.
No, they're seriously unwell.
By the way, this isn't the first person to claim that the Super Bowl is a satanic ritual, which is a really interesting way of saying that this is secular culture.
That's what this is.
That's what they think Satanism is, is secular culture.
Also, for the record, I think Ice Spice, I could be wrong, I think Ice Spice is just wearing a crucifix and doing the rock on thing, which is whatever.
But on top of it, Nick, guess what?
You've made up a fake evil entity in Satan and made everything that is associated with secularism into this evil thing that Satan controls.
Rock and roll?
Rock and roll's cool as shit!
You know, like, like, you made up this thing for people to get all jazzed up about and all of a sudden they're throwing up like devil's horns.
It's like, oh, wait, they're being rebels, is what they're doing.
And they're reveling and feeling cool and spitting in the eye of, like, your, your stale, oppressive, repressive culture.
So, yeah, that's what's going to happen on both sides of this equation.
They're not well.
And they want to believe that all this evil stuff is happening and that will explain why the world is the way that it is, as opposed to the fact that their ideas are wildly unpopular and aren't held by other people.
Well, guess what?
You're going to end up looking around and seeing a bunch of this stuff everywhere.
And it's not, I don't think it's coincidence that it's two different videos side by side in one tweet and the one that with the satanic hand signals they think is extremely degraded video.
You could barely make it out.
It's completely isolated.
Whereas the other video next to it is completely clear of Usher dancing in his fire pit.
So it's not like they couldn't have captured higher quality video.
So it could have very well been manipulated to whatever they were doing to make it seem even worse than what she was doing.
Yes.
Again, it's unwell.
If people are unwell, they are unwell for a variety of reasons, some of which are related to this religion in general.
And again, the Republican Party has figured out how to mine this for votes.
Yes.
And that's really why I think at some point the founding fathers, who should be able to argue, understood that part and didn't want it to become that.
And here we are.
And it's a party that's so desperate for any amount of votes that this is what they're willing to do.
And by just to go ahead and bring this thing around, I'm glad you brought this up.
Not only did the founding fathers hate the idea of religion being involved in politics so much because they saw the genocides taking place and the ethnic cleansing taking place in Europe, that they went ahead and they were like, we need a firm division between church and state.
Do you know what?
Those motherfuckers were in the Illuminati.
Like they were the ones you want to talk about Beyonce and Jay Z, like putting up the hands.
They were doing that.
They were hanging out at the meetings, learning the secret handshakes and all that stuff.
And why?
Because they rejected the idea that religion needed to control everything.
So if you actually want to talk about the basis of this country and the founding fathers, which is what all these people want to do, they hated your religion.
They hated it.
They hated it so much that they joined secret societies so they could talk about how much they hated it and all of those hand gestures, all of that symbolism.
If you want, if you're listening to this and you're one of the people who listens to this show to get pissed off because you don't agree with us, go Google George Washington Masonic symbols.
Good luck.
Enjoy your afternoon and evening because that's all that this has been from the very beginning.
Well, you know, down the street from my house, there's a Masonic Temple, and it's got the friezes, and it's got the statues, and there's a thing on the top that looks like how you beamed to the pyramids, I'm telling you.
But I really, Jared, I actually like the idea that the devil is real, and you do deals with him, or whatever the devil is.
You can do whatever you want!
You can believe any bullshit you want, that's fine.
But here's why, I like it so much because it explains everything.
It would finally explain everything if you really believe, like, you know, it does.
It's like, how about we have wars and murder and all these things?
How would Trump ever get rich and all these things?
It's like, maybe there is a devil, you get to sign the paper, there's your soul, whatever.
It would certainly explain it a lot better than where we are now, having to... It would make you feel better.
It would keep you from questioning how things work.
And here's the thing, Nick.
I got great news for you.
Somebody grew up in the evangelical church.
Are you ready for this?
I'm ready.
If the devil caused all of that, this evil entity, I got good news for you.
Let me tell you the good news, Nick.
God's coming for him.
And all you gotta do is get right with that God, and that God's gonna take care of that devil for you.
It's coming, it's coming, it's coming.
And as a result, you don't really have to change anything.
It's an incredible deal.
It's not me.
I'm not the one who did that.
It's the devil on my shoulder that made me do it.
You know, and instead you don't have to look at yourself.
You don't have to look at systems.
It's incredible.
And by the way, if you think Usher, who put on just like a pretty lackluster halftime show, was doing this as a satanic ritual, pick it up, kid.
Like, I mean, if we're going to get moving, let's get moving.
First of all, the guy's in shape for 45.
Oh, he's in great shape.
Nobody's going to deny that.
You know, and he was, he was dancing.
It's funny because it's like everybody kept joining him.
I had to be like, who's that?
Who's that?
I don't know anybody anymore.
I don't know any artists.
As a member of Generation Napster and LimeWire, I take offense, Nick.
Really?
This was on everybody's playlist.
Well, yeah, I knew Usher, but like, everybody else who kept coming on, I was like, well, I mean, Alicia Keys, but that's like, Alicia Keys is like, that's pulling all, she was around in the late 90s.
Like, I remember her, but I haven't seen her for a long, long time.
You weren't excited to see Ludacris?
You know, Ludacris with his hair in the glasses, I didn't, I'm like, who is that?
I'm like, oh, okay.
And I know Ludacris is more like Fast and Furious probably than anything.
I just gotta say, the fact that you didn't understand, or you didn't recognize Ludacris's, like, trademark delivery, that's upsetting.
I'm busy.
Nick, let's talk about somebody who has literally no idea who Ludacris is.
And that is Ross Duthat at the New York Times.
Not a friend of the pod, for the record.
We won't even say that sarcastically, that Ross Duthat is a friend of the pod.
We talked about on the Weekender.
And I just want to get everybody on the same page because not everybody listens to The Weekender.
For those who do not know, the special investigator out of the DOJ in the Biden's document case released a pretty rough report that said that they were not going to charge Biden with any crimes, but also that they had uncovered some very troubling issues from Biden's memory.
Uh, including allegations that he doesn't remember his vice presidency, doesn't remember his son Bo dying, uh, some really bad things.
And over the course of the weekend after the story took off, because the New York Times did what the New York Times does, which is they talked about it without actually talking about it.
They turned it into clickbait without actually having a responsible discussion.
I watched what happened on social media.
I'm sure you did as well.
As one side said, this is the biggest thing ever.
The other side said, we don't care about this.
It's a political hit job.
Meanwhile, nobody met in the middle to have a conversation about maybe we should find out if something's happening here.
That was my thought, is we should probably know if Biden's in decent shape.
And then Ross Douthat showed up.
Before we go through this article, Nick, what'd you think about the discourse this weekend around this subject?
I mean, it's, it's the hand wringing at its finest.
It sucks.
You know, and like, if you want to know how, like, we want to find out if this is, if Biden's truly like this, it's like, well, how do you find that out?
I mean, does he do the man, person, kitchen, camera thing?
Like, I don't know, in terms of testing his, whether his brain's functioning.
Ask his biographer!
In the report, it said his biographer talked to him and noted extensive memory problems.
Like, let's go talk to that dude.
Okay I mean that's that's not a you know the worst way to do it either I suppose.
You know I thought it just it just feels it just makes everything feel worse than or maybe it still makes it feel as bad as it is.
This is bad.
It's just bad.
It's bad.
The state of the country is bad.
This race is bad.
There is truly is no good choice here as it is I mean really and so the one thing I will say though is that a lot of the people who want to retort back at this and by the way this report the way he frames it the special the investigator Uh, is irresponsible, right?
No, there's no disagreement there.
It's not in his purview.
Did he take the documents on purpose?
No.
End of story.
That's all that really should be of what he was investigating.
But these guys continually do this.
We wouldn't have had Watergate, uh, crap, not Watergate, uh, Clinton's thing.
Well, we wouldn't have had Monica Lewinsky and Kenneth Starr just stayed on his purpose.
He was supposed to do, right?
Yeah, it was a whitewater situation.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that's the other problem here.
But the bottom line is, it brings up the thing, well, look at Trump.
Trump isn't any better.
That's not the argument we should be having anyway, right?
That doesn't really get you off the hook on the Biden side.
And that's really the frustrating thing for me.
I couldn't agree more.
First of all, do I think Donald Trump is fit to be president?
No, I do not.
Do I think that if he were to get an actual like mental acuity or mental wellness test that he would pass it?
No, I do not.
I truly, truly don't.
Man, I'll tell you what I hated.
The regular chumps, your James Carville, your Paul Begala, all these people, like, oh my god, this is so bad for the Democratic Party.
Guess who else it's bad for?
The United States of America.
And the world, which is under an American hegemonic system.
It sucks for everybody.
If this is true, you have bigger fish to fry than the 2024 presidential election.
That's a different conversation.
So we can't even have an actual mature discourse in which we discuss any of this stuff, in which we figure out whether or not we have a leader who is capable or competent.
And maybe he is!
You're exactly right.
Robert Hur, the special prosecutor investigator, I mean, it was a hit job of a report.
He absolutely released this in order to poison discourse and talk about Biden's acuity.
But guess what?
We're here now.
I don't know what to tell you.
Merrick Garland appointed him.
He gave him the power to release this report.
So now, maybe we should have this discussion.
Garland could have redacted part of this.
We've seen it happen.
You know, and did they sneak it in there and Garland missed it?
I mean, again, you know, so then what's, I mean, you know, listen, what we saw with the Mueller report, for instance, and how they were able to butcher that to hide the true facts of what he undercovered, you know, would have been that big of a deal.
Garland said, you know, we're going to just hide the inappropriate parts where you're saying that he's an old guy who forgets everything, and that's why he'd get off from, you know, not be prosecuted.
Alright, well let's see what good old Ross has to say about this, because this is the same guy who brought us such a sterling column such as, maybe we should have women paid for sex as sex slaves in order to make white men feel better.
This is from his article, the question is not if Biden should step aside, it's how.
Alright, well let's see what Ross has to say.
Joe Biden should not be running for re-election.
Okay, let's go!
That much was obvious well before the special prosecutor's comments on the president's memory lapses inspired a burst of age-related angst, and Democrats who are furious at the prosecutor have to sense that it will become only more obvious as we move deeper into an actual campaign.
You agree?
I agree.
He didn't do a Super Bowl interview, which is what every president who gets completely free air time, you know, so there you go.
Yeah, it is what it is.
And yes, this is going to be a campaign issue, period.
We know that now.
What is less obvious is how Biden should get out of it.
Note that I did not say that Biden should not be the president.
You can make a case that as obvious as his decline has been, whatever equilibrium his White House has worked out has thus far delivered results largely indistinguishable from, and sometimes better than, what one would expect from a replacement-level Democratic president.
Nick, before we move forward, I want you to sit with this for a second.
The same way I had to sit with this for a while.
Ross Douthat, who is paid six figures by the New York Times to express his political opinions at least once a week, if not more, is saying here, you know what, Joe Biden might be a mental decline.
I'm fine with that because his White House is handling things just fine.
This is some wild shit, is it not?
The idea that it's like, ah, we'll just let, we'll just let the team take care of stuff while he sort of like, you know, slides into this warm bath.
Well, there was an emphasis on one of the words that might have not been as clear.
He's talking about, like, okay, he can finish this term out, right?
They've been able to do this term with however they're covering it for him.
I don't think there's lies there, right?
I mean, maybe, you know, we both feel like there's probably some people who are having to help him a little bit through this process, right?
Sure, but that's not what is supposed to be happening.
Like, this is, okay, Nick, this is the equivalent, it's like in baseball where everyone looked around, they're like, everyone's on steroids, shouldn't we just move forward?
It's like, wait a second, wait a second, do you not realize the integrity of this is like falling apart at this point?
Right.
And by the way, I love how he's using, like, warp, like, you know, replacement winds, you know, language.
Here's the thing.
I would say there's probably at least 25 presidents who would take what he got done in his first four years.
Absolutely.
No, we've seen the score.
Listen, there were major disappointments in this presidency.
I don't think Joe Biden is the right guy for the moment, I'll tell you that again.
But there were major achievements, absolutely.
No one's going to argue against that.
Quote, if there has been a really big age effect in this presidency so far, I suspect it lies in the emboldenment of America's rivals.
A sense that a decrepit American chief executive is less to be feared than a more vigorous one.
But suspicion isn't proof, and when I look at how the Biden administration has actually handled its various foreign crises, I can imagine a more disastrous outcome from a more swaggering sort of president.
Nick, have you heard an argument yet in all of these words that have been put forward?
No.
No!
It's incredible that this person is considered one of the major pundits in this country.
But, moving forward.
Okay, so now we're saying he just won't be able to campaign for president and maybe shouldn't be president after that?
That's the argument.
continue working out okay for almost five long further years and saying that Biden is capable of occupying the presidency for the next 11 months is quite different from saying that he's capable of spending those months effectively campaigning for the right to occupy it again.
Okay.
So now we're saying he just won't be able to campaign for president and maybe shouldn't be president after that.
That's the argument.
That's what's being argued at this point.
Yeah.
And I think it's everyone's feeling this, right?
This is sort of how we feel.
Sure, but isn't there a larger reason to get at here than what Ross is, you know, jerking around on?
This is lame.
I'm not sure you'll discover it.
I'm sure, I'm sure I will.
The impression the president gives in public is not senility so much as extreme frailty, like a light bulb that still burns so long as you keep it on a dimmer.
But to strain the simile a bit, the entire issue in a re-election campaign is not whether your filaments shed light, it's whether voters should take this one opportunity to change out the bulb.
Every flicker is evidence that a change is necessary, and if you force Biden into a normal campaign season role, frequent flickering, if not a burning out, is what you're going to get.
Let's give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that Biden senses this, that he isn't just entombed in egomania, but he feels trapped by his own terrible vice presidential choice.
If he drops out and anoints Kamala Harris, she's even more likely to lose to Donald Trump.
But if he drops out and doesn't endorse his own number two, he'd be opening himself to a narrative of identitarian betrayal.
Aging wife, president, nice first woman of color, veep, and setting his party up for months of bloodletting and betrayal, a constant churn of personal and ideological drama.
You guessed it, Nick!
The reason we're in this mess.
DEI!
DEI.
That's the problem here.
We have a black vice president and you just can't do it.
Can't do it at this point.
Well, and a woman.
Yes, a black woman president.
So as a result, Joe Biden can't not run.
That's why he's doing this.
Well, I will just say this.
Living in California, we can't buy incandescent bulbs anymore.
So he kind of lost me with that other, you know, the first paragraph there about the filaments and whatnot.
Don't have them anymore.
But, you know, listen, we had the single most qualified candidate of all time in this country run against this guy, Trump, in 2016.
And one of the problems, I have to believe that one of the big reasons why she didn't win is because she was a woman.
So, you know, for a vast swath of people here, unfortunately, and probably feel like Trump when how he's describing Haley right now, he's trying to drop all these dog whistles.
So it's like all these things ring true to me.
Right.
Like, I don't know if he's you're upset with this article, but right now I'm sort of like, yeah.
But but the whole point that I'm saying, Nick, is like it's it's this idea that Joe Biden is hanging on to the presidency because he's afraid that Kamala Harris couldn't be Donald Trump.
That's not what's happening.
Right.
That makes sense, too.
Joe Biden doesn't think about Kamala Harris.
I'm sorry, but he doesn't.
He sees her as a really easily accessible scapegoat when things go wrong.
That's all he's thinking about Kamala Harris.
And quite frankly, he's kind of living out the exact same situation that Barack Obama had with him, which was just like, no, I'm sorry, Joe, you're not going to be president.
You're vice president.
Like, get used to it, you know.
Like, this idea that that's the number one reason that this is happening is a wild assertion.
Okay.
Yeah, I can follow that.
Yeah, and the entire point here is that, first of all, Ross should not be writing this column.
This isn't his column to write.
This isn't, like, his fight to be had.
He's on the other side of it.
I'll just keep going forward.
There's no easy escape from these dilemmas, but the best approach available to Biden is a distinctively old-fashioned one.
He should accept the necessity of drama and bloodletting, but also condense it all into the format that was originally designed for handling intra-party competition, the Democratic National Convention.
That would mean not dropping out today or tomorrow or any day when party primaries are still proceeding.
Instead, Biden would continue accumulating pledged delegates, continue touting the improving economic numbers, continue attacking Donald Trump, That's right!
August in the convention, when he would shock the world by announcing his withdrawal from the race, declined to issue any endorsement and invite the convention delegates to choose his replacement.
That's right.
Ross Douthat is now arguing the people shouldn't have any part in this thing.
And that is who he is and what the conservatives are.
They don't believe in democracy.
They want backroom deals all day long, which is their solution to Donald Trump, by the way, is that people shouldn't be allowed to pick Donald Trump.
They shouldn't be able to move forward with Donald Trump.
We should get back to the backroom party politics.
You know, I think you know, Here's my thing.
It's more of a practical issue with this.
Is if you were to wait, let's just say we're going to wait until then and then have, you know, Newsom or Whitmer suddenly become the nominee.
You can't launch a national campaign from scratch two months before the election.
Watch them do it.
They can do it.
I just think that you would need to develop a kind of name recognition and familiarity with voters across the country.
You don't have enough time.
I mean, I know that certainly Newsom has done some legwork already, right, going on Hannity and doing the other stuff.
So there is a little bit of that.
But I just feel like that's the bigger issue, even though, you know, would that be an amazing moment in political history?
Like, yeah.
And would that somehow galvanize everybody?
And you know, and again, is this going to be the thing like we saw in the early 2000s with Bush, like the undecideds are going to decide this race?
Because I don't know if you know, you remember back then, we couldn't fathom how you could have been undecided in 2003 or 2000, you know, whatever, right?
How could you possibly?
And yet there were, right?
People were doing that.
Does that still exist today?
Do we still have people who are like undecided that haven't?
Oh, you know, this Trump guy's interesting.
But you know, Biden's kind of interesting too.
Do we have that?
No, not anymore.
No, we don't have that in significant numbers, for sure.
So what are we doing here?
I don't even know, there's no one to sway, right?
Well, okay, so the entire point of this, by the way, is we're in, we're going to be in one of the longest campaign cycles we've ever seen because Trump has just run, you know, roughshod over these people, right?
So we're going to have a long ass general campaign.
It's basically going to be determining how many people show up to vote.
How many people are going to be disgusted by this thing?
How many people don't want to vote for Biden or Trump and they're sick of it and they don't want to go vote for Biden because they feel bad about Biden?
My answer is this.
Biden shouldn't have run for re-election in the first place.
And I think a lot of us knew that he shouldn't.
We understood that, matter of fact, a lot of people understood that if they were going to vote for Joe Biden, that he wasn't going to run for a second term.
Right?
That was in the air.
That was in the water.
I think it was a mistake for him to stick around.
And now that we're talking about this mental fitness stuff, all of a sudden we're having to look at the potential for some sort of a disaster that could potentially take place, you know, before the election or even after the election.
It's not a good situation.
And there's not a real good way to take care of it.
I don't think picking a candidate at the convention, though, is going to help anybody.
I think that is as anti-democratic as it gets.
I think that's a really bad look.
Well, at that point, there's no alternative.
You can't have a primary, right?
No, there's no primary at that point.
No.
Right.
So it's like, yeah, it's not great, Bob.
There isn't a great solution here.
No, there's not.
It's a bad situation all the way around.
Thanks, Ross Douthat, for your bullshit.
I hope you have a great apartment in New York City.
I hope it's wonderful, the amount of money that you get paid to just spray this bullshit all over the New York Times.
Good luck.
Yeah, I mean, he was excited about the last few paragraphs to kind of lay that all out there and have the backroom dealings and the cigar smoke and the white guys.
Loved it!
He loved it!
He loved the idea of getting to that.
And by the way, somebody like a Ross Douthat, they love that shit.
It would make great TV for your Chuck Todd's.
It would make great TV for your pundits.
They love that stuff.
And why, Nick?
Because they don't think the American people should have anything to do with any of this.
It's people like them in the room.
That's the entire purpose of it all.
They don't want the American people to make choices.
It took a progressive movement and then a revolution within the Democratic Party to even get to this point where you have, you know, these primaries and people making choices.
And they said, as soon as Trump got the nomination, they said, we should not trust these people with it.
Party politics is the way to go.
And they're dead wrong.
I'm sorry.
They're dead wrong if you value democracy.
Right, but if you value making sure Trump doesn't win again, you know, there is some notion of, well, we have to do whatever it takes, and it really doesn't feel like Biden's gonna beat him, right?
Okay, but do you, okay, do you see what you're doing, though?
You're starting to make the literal deal with the devil, right?
Which is... The problem is, I've already been saying that Newsom should just take over anyway, like, for the last several weeks, since his last year.
So I'm like, I'm already there.
I'm like, please do that.
And we know, I know why he can't, I know why they won't do any of this stuff.
It makes all sense.
But like, but man, in August, when we're taping the live reaction to the Democratic National Convention, and this shit goes down, and you start cheering because Gavin Newsom gets the nomination, like in a backroom deal, you and I are gonna have a chat.
What's gonna happen?
All I can say is they better have a really great, like, crane, you know, a camera on the crane that, you know, that rises up as it comes on the stage.
The lighting has got to be perfect for this music.
I want it to be cinematic, man.
See, you're already talking yourself into it.
You're already the Riefenstahl in this situation.
I really think that it's more just Trump has to, he can't win.
He cannot be allowed to win.
I don't disagree, but I'm not going to throw democracy out in order to save democracy.
Yeah, the devil is here.
I'm ready to shake hands and sign the way.
Please, please no Trump.
By the way, if you don't make the title of this episode, the devil is here.
I have lost all faith in this podcast.
Oh, thank God.
I don't have to agonize now for the title.
Thank you.
The devil is here.
I'm ready for it.
All right, everybody.
Thanks again for listening to the Muckrake Podcast.
We'll be back with the regularly scheduled Weekender on Friday.
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That is patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
In the meantime, you can find Nick at CanYouHearMe?
