Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman have to discuss the disgusting rhetoric and symbolism coming out of the latest CPAC, including Charlie Kirk calling for public execution of political foes. In a not-unsurpsising turn of events, Ronna McDaniel steps down as RNC chair, and Taylor Lorenz sat down with the Libs Of TIkTok for an enlightening (not really) conversation.
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Nick, I don't think that I'm exaggerating when I say we're getting into the nitty and the gritty today, correct?
Oh, we have a jam-packed show full of gritty.
We got a whole lot of gritty in this episode.
We've got We've got people at CPAC feeling their feelings, saying their things.
We've got Charlie Kirk proposing something.
You're not going to believe it until you hear it.
We've got the GOP in absolute disarray.
I've been talking with a staffer from the Nikki Haley campaign.
I've got some pretty incredible insight there.
We've also got Libs of TikTok getting interviewed for the Washington Post and giving the entire game away.
But before we get into that, Nick, a couple of business notes.
First and foremost, everybody knows this, next month, Friday, March 22nd and Saturday, March 23rd, Nick and I are going to be in the Las Vegas area.
We're going to go out to Henderson, Nevada, where we're going to be part of Pete Dominick's Stand Up Podjam.
Friday, I'm going to do a bourbon talk for everybody who's there.
We're going to hang out.
It's the first time we're going to do one of those live.
Saturday, Nick and I are going to record our first live McCraig podcast.
Nick, I think I don't have to speak for you.
I'm looking forward to hanging out, seeing my buddy Nick.
And also meeting some of our listeners.
Oh, it'll be a really, really great time.
So if you can get out there, please join us.
It's going to be really chill.
We'll have a lot of great conversations and have a couple drinks, perhaps, and hear some really good music, too.
I'm looking forward to it.
That is Friday, March 22nd, and Saturday, March 23rd.
Third, we will have information in the show notes where you can go and get your tickets for the Stand Up Podjam.
On top of that, go to patreon.com slash mccraigpodcast.
Nick, again, I don't want to pat ourselves on the back and hurt our hands.
We gave the best South Carolina coverage that there was.
Everybody else was basically chasing their tails, having themselves a good time, but you want our political coverage.
I'm sorry.
And also, you want access to the Friday Weekender episode.
I think all of them are gems.
Oh, for sure.
And let's make... Wait, did you say the link?
I'm not sure you did.
Yeah, it's patreon.com slash mccraigpodcast.
I'm not going to forget to say that link.
Come on.
It's always good to say it a couple times.
So, Nick, I regret to inform our listeners that CPAC was held again.
This hasn't gone away.
Of course, this is the extreme right-wing political conference that has always been awful.
It's been especially worse during the Trumpist years, even while Matt Schlapp, the head of CPAC, has been alleged to sexually harass and basically assault and aid.
But guess what?
They did it anyway.
They got together in National Harbor, Maryland.
It was a hootenanny, is what it was, Nick.
We had a bunch of Nazis, neo-Nazis, eugenicists walking around.
They didn't even do anything about him.
They basically welcomed him into the fold because, of course, Trumpism has taken over the Republican Party.
And to make it even worse, and basically to do us all a service, Jack Posobiec, who is a provocateur among the right-wing, he is a grifter, he is a neo-fascist, he did a panel with Steve Bannon.
I'm sorry we weren't there.
But luckily, Nick, we got a glimpse into what this whole thing was all about.
Are you apologizing because we weren't on the panel with them?
Is that clear?
Is that what you're saying?
I have to tell you, if I was on a panel with Posovic or Steve Bannon, I would not be leaving that place on my own reconnaissance.
I would not walk out of that thing a free man.
Well, let's listen to what he was saying.
Let's hear what old Jack has to say.
The anticipation is killing us.
All right.
Welcome.
Welcome.
I just wanted to say welcome to the end of democracy.
We're here to overthrow it completely.
We didn't get all the way there on January 6th, but we will, we will endeavor to get rid of it and replace it with, with this right here.
We'll replace it with this right here.
Amen.
That's right.
Because all glory, all glory is not to government, all glory to God.
All right.
So for those, Who aren't watching on YouTube, the video clip of the podcast, Nick, when Posobiec says this right here, he puts his hand up in a more or less fascist salute.
I love this.
I love it.
I love it when they say what they mean and they come out in public and do it and they, you know, run it up the flagpole and see who salutes.
Here we have it.
They intend to destroy democracy and they plan to do it in a fascistic way.
They tried it on January 6th and now they're going to finish the job.
Right.
It's weird.
They've normalized it, but it's like they've legalized it in a way, right?
They've made it like they're the defenders of democracy.
They're the defenders of the Constitution.
And it kind of makes sense because for all this time, the incredibly unpopular Platforms they've wanted to enact have always been sort of this notion of like we're gonna take care of this and we have to make this happen no matter what because it will be better for everybody.
So it just seems like a matter of course and then they get to the point where even the illegal stuff is simply legal because you know, it'll make it better for everybody.
Just trust us.
It'll happen.
Yeah, let's go ahead and break that down from a philosophical standpoint before we get into the ramifications of this and the fact that the Pacific said this.
And by the way, the other voice you heard on this with Steve Bannon being like, absolutely, we are all in on this.
The entire purpose of fascism is to say democracy doesn't work.
Right?
Because basically, all of these people believe that there's a hierarchy in terms of human beings.
Some people are worthy of rights and privileges and protections, right?
There are other people who aren't.
And what happens when you open up representative government to democracy, what you're actually doing, and by the way, I'm not just paraphrasing this, Nick, this is what they literally say and write.
What happens is that you're actually making society worse because you're allowing people who are less than to have a say in what has happened.
Eventually, at some point, people like Posobiec or Bannon will say, hey, guess what?
You've had your fun with democracy for too long.
It's ruined our society.
We are now in the middle of an emergency.
We need to destroy democracy in order to save it.
Right?
We need the power to go ahead and get rid of all these laws and all these protections that have always been there.
They were good and fun, you know, whenever it was only wealthy white men who were voting and basically you didn't have representative government at all.
And now you've ruined it and society is falling apart.
Western, quote unquote, Western civilization is on the line.
And that's exactly what it is.
They are saying this has gotten to the point where the fun and games are over.
It's time for the strong men to come in and to make things right.
Exactly.
By the way, the thing that's disarming is that, you know, if you were to look at the history of our country, you could make a good argument that democracy, quote-unquote, doesn't work, right?
You could make the argument we haven't really had democracy in this country.
Yeah, a lot of those things.
So it's weird because they could use a lot of the arguments that, like, the left would use as well about the frustrations in a general sense that, like, gridlock, we can't get anything done, there's all these sort of issues.
So in some respects, they're not lying.
They're just coming at this.
Well, first of all, the biggest problem is, is that they want to tear this whole thing down.
Well, then you're supposed to have something like all ready to go and studied and, you know, to replace whatever you're going to take down.
But they have no interest in doing that.
They have no ability to do this.
So the worst part about it is that what would be left, we got a glimpse in the Trump administration, is, yes, the only rich people would be able to benefit from whatever the government would be able to churn out.
That's what's so frustrating about this.
Maybe that's the ideology here.
If you believe that the government is there to help people in general, and that usually means the people who need help versus the people who don't want the government's help at all.
But in reality, all they're trying to do is benefit the wealthy who are already who don't need the help in the first place.
Yeah, and, you know, I've said this before, but I want to go ahead and make sure because, you know, context for all this is key.
Steve Bannon's sort of explanation of what has gone wrong in this country, sometimes it's dead on.
You know, if you were to say to Steve Bannon, here's an hour, explain to me, like, what you think has gone wrong in this country, he almost always will start with the 2008 financial crisis.
And he'll say, you know what?
Look at the government.
It bailed out all these rich people and it left everybody else behind.
Great, Steve!
That's awesome!
If we left it at that, we could maybe go watch, you know, serialized episodes of Seinfeld, you know, and have a good time.
But what happens after that?
is what the explanation is behind it.
And the explanation here is that woke forces and sinister puppeteers and cabals, you name it, they are the ones who have done this, right?
It's not actually capitalism.
It's not actually the fact.
And here is the main thing that's happened in all this, Nick.
They are covering up that the people who caused these problems are the ones who should solve them, right?
Because what has happened in America, particularly with neoliberal hypercapitalism, is that you gave the wealthy and the powerful everything that they wanted, and you handed them the government.
That's what happened, and that's why we've reached this point, and it always happens like that.
We saw it with the Great Depression, when all the industrialists, you know, met with all these Nazis, and they got together and they said, we gotta figure out who did this, and we're gonna, you know, we're gonna put things to right.
It is basically trying to hide the responsibility and redirect it.
Kosovik, incredibly, said out loud, in just a few sentences, exactly what's going on here.
And notice what he did at the end, Nick.
He said, all glory to God, not government.
That right there is the story, right?
Why should I be allowed to be the one who does this?
Why should we pick and choose who's able to use the power of government, like, as a weapon?
God gave it to us, right?
Which one?
Which God?
Well, I mean, I think we know which God in this case.
Okay.
Yeah, this is the Christian God, and everybody understands at this point.
Which is why all of these people always cloak this in religiosity.
You can't just say, hey, you know, we're white, we're gonna go ahead and do this to other people.
Although a lot of people in CPAC would have.
Right?
And a lot of them would say, oh, we got to go ahead and put women in their place.
That's what's gone wrong.
But Posobiec made the mistake here of telling the truth.
And I'm very grateful that he did, because this is what we've been covering for a while.
And to have this asshole, who, by the way, has been connected with one white supremacist national group and conspiracy theory after another, this guy did us all a favor.
And again, I'm begging people, listen to what they actually say when they say it.
Right.
January 6th should have been a wake up for the Republicans.
It should have been an embarrassment.
They should have been like broken out of the fever dream and said, Oh, that was way that what the hell was that?
I don't want any part of this anymore.
And maybe there have been a few that you can cleave off from the main part of the Republican Party.
But I suppose and we were warning about this.
And I don't know if I had realized how much it would grow is that this is now become this is like Les Mis for them.
It's pretty bad.
And by the way, I've got some comments from my insider with the Haley campaign in a second speaking to exactly that.
And we're going to cover it.
I mean, the GOP has always been a shit show.
You know what I mean?
And it's only gotten worse in recent years.
It's reaching a fever point.
And it's reaching a fever point Because people like Pasoviac and people like Bannon, for that matter, are the ones who are actually like riding the momentum here.
You know, I don't know about you, Nick.
I'm excited here in a couple of weeks to go see the new Dune movie.
Like, Bannon and Pasoviac and people like them, they're the ones riding the sandworms.
You know, everybody else is just sort of watching them as they go.
They're the ones who are claiming the reins of power and influence at this point.
They're the ones with the momentum.
Well, it just so happens we watched the first Dune that we made last night, just to get ready for the new Dune.
It was actually much better the second time.
I hadn't really watched it the first time when it came out, whenever that was.
I watched it more intently this time.
And yes, I was actually surprised to kind of wrap my head around how political this movie really is.
Oh no, it was absolutely based on that in, you know, the early 20th century in order to, or the mid-20th century in order to diagnose these things.
By the way, speaking of absolute cretins who should be out in the desert somewhere, joining Posobiec at CPAC and also gaining a lot of the momentum, and we'll talk about the actual consequences of this, Charlie Kirk.
Who's been running the Turning Points USA organization, which is basically the GOP Youth Brigade.
That's a hard word to say.
He's been the one leading the charge.
We'll talk about what the consequences are of that.
Um, Kirk is, uh, dangerous.
I don't know how else to put it.
And luckily, Kirk has been feeling himself lately, and like Pasoviac, is starting to talk about the things he actually believes.
We're going to listen to a little bit of a long segment here from the Charlie Kirk podcast.
And again, I'm going to file this under people telling the truth and telling you what they truly and honestly believe.
Uh, let's, let's, let's listen to this, Nick, and we'll, we'll stop and talk about it as we go.
Okay.
But as far as other death penalties, I think what some of those guys did to Donald Trump to use the instruments of government to destroy the constitutional order, that should be under consideration.
Okay.
So what just got put out there, by the way, to go ahead and put this clip into context, Charlie Kirk just said explicitly that he believes that the death penalty executions should be considered for Donald Trump's political enemies.
And I want people to remember that as we're listening to the rest of this clip.
Right, because there is a section of our Constitution reserved for death penalty violations of the Constitution, one of which would be insurrection, and that's how he views this, right?
Anybody getting in the way of the President is committing the grossest violations against the Constitution.
That's a hell of a worldview, is what I'll say.
Unbelievable.
Yeah, that's how you should.
By the way, this is my other problem with death penalty.
Takes too long.
Too many appeals.
It should be public.
It should be quick.
It should be televised.
Well, this can't be right, can it?
The last execution in France was guillotine in 1977.
100% true.
They used the guillotine.
Until 77?
Yeah.
That's so cool.
There's videotape of it.
Yeah, that's so cool, Nick.
Isn't that so cool?
Here we have, and by the way, it's four men who are just sitting around on a podcast, four white men for that record, who are sitting around talking about how cool executions are.
Right.
I mean, listen, in their addled mind, like, they've seen a movie, probably, about it, and about somebody who got executed that maybe was a bad person, so, like, oh, yeah.
This reminds me almost, like, of All Quiet in the Western Front, where you kind of go gung-ho to war.
It sounds amazing.
You are told all about it from your grandparents and your great-grandparents how amazing this is, and then they fucking get there, and they realize, and they're shell-shocked, and they're destroyed when they finally have that moment.
But these are four men hanging out in podcast studios.
They're not on the battlefront.
Like, these are people, and we've talked about this before.
We talked about this with January 6th.
These are people who truly believe they're revolutionaries.
They truly, and the entire time, they're grifting so much money, and we'll talk about that more in just a second, but they are sitting here reveling in bloodlust, and it only gets worse.
Are we ready for more?
You sure?
I'm not, but let's do it.
Honestly, that's like what we should be doing.
And I agree, it should be public, it should be public square.
By the way, you could force kids to watch it.
You could have like brought to you by Coca-Cola.
And no, I'm not kidding.
By the way, I would totally tune in to see some pedo get their head chopped off.
Convicted by a jury.
I'm talking about a real thing.
I'm talking, I'm not talking about executions in Belarus by firearm.
Andrew's saying don't make kids watch it.
And I think, no, the absolute opposite.
I'm sorry, I jumped the gun, but hey.
Hey, no.
Like, first of all, like, you gotta hand it to someone like Charlie Kirk to go ahead and think about this thing being sponsored by a corporation.
Like, that's his mindset.
Like, making this, you know, much like a Super Bowl or something.
But notice what just got brought up, Nick.
The idea of not just should children watch it, but now all of a sudden we're talking about requiring children to watch it.
And listen to how they talk about this, and I want to talk about, like, what's actually happening at the heart of this in a second, but this is Truly insidious shit.
By the way, what is he doing with his hair?
I wouldn't bring this up if it wasn't a thing where we keep seeing these crazy leaders with weird hair.
I don't know why, but he's brushed his hair.
He's a celebrity!
Because he's a right-wing celebrity.
That's the entire point of all of this, is that they want to be celebrities.
They couldn't be celebrities in the real world, and so in this ecosystem, that's who they are.
It's amazing how much they talk about degenerative popular culture, and how much they want it.
But then you could tap into the notion of, like, old pedophiles.
Everyone would want to see a pedophile die because they don't deserve to live, right?
Like, that's easy to, like, get somebody on board for that.
First of all, as somebody who doesn't want the death penalty in general, I don't subscribe to that.
And also, on top of that, I don't think that we should just be going around executing people, but that's neither here nor there.
Well, I'm going to finish my thought, because are you aware of the amount of people who have been executed wrongly?
Oh my god, it's incredible, first of all.
And let's go two over.
You can't do that.
By the way, whenever they talk about this, whenever they talk about pedophiles or whatever it is that they're always talking about, they don't mean it.
They don't actually mean that.
What they're trying to do is they're trying to use an emotional term that can go ahead and validate any sort of violence or oppression that, you know, they think is necessary, which is what this is all about.
But that said, they try and call like as if he's making a joke and he's like, no, no, I am serious.
Yeah, you know, and they're just talking shit at this point.
But still, I guarantee you he would he would want to have this.
He wants this.
This is not a thing.
But the idea that there, by the way, if there was like more than if there was one person who is wrongly executed, then we need to take a look at the execution process and how we get to that point, because it's severely flawed.
And here's these guys, willy nilly, who just want people executed so they could Watch it.
The right wing does this and you'll notice this has been happening more and more in the past couple of years as radicalization has been getting worse.
They are talking constantly about executions.
They're serious.
They're joking and doing this whole jocular thing.
They're serious about this.
you can drive you can hold on all of a sudden you look at some of these savages like in indiana there was this guy that went in and killed a pregnant woman and her three kids and you know what i want to watch that execution that'll make my day better i want to see him on a public block and get him be publicly executed and i think that would be justice you think children should have you should see it what What is the age?
At what age should you start to see public executions?
16.
Okay, here's the thing, and one of the reasons I wanted to do the Posobiec thing, and also this clip, it's so revealing, Nick.
Notice what they're doing here.
They're talking about executing people who hurt children, and what are they replacing it with?
Hurting children!
They're literally talking about ritualized abuse of children, making them witness violent acts.
And the entire point, by the way, how many times have they talked about wanting to execute people for having children see books that have gay people in it or movies that have trans people in it?
They literally are talking about forcing children, one of them said as a ritual, It would be ritualistic abuse of children to traumatize them with violence.
And what's that also do, Nick?
It conditions them to be violent and to also desensitize themselves, which is part of the right-wing project.
They are actually not just fighting for political power.
They're fighting for the right to continue ritualistic abuse that they themselves have gone through.
That's a big part of our political battle right now.
But, but it's also rooted in the Bible, right?
So these are the sort of biblical notions where we, by the way, we had public executions for a long time in America, right?
I mean, you tell me better than I know, but I, as far as I know, they've had hangings.
Yes.
You can, you could go, I know they would have an audience to see, you know, John Wayne Gacy be, you know, have the injection of the... Well, no, hold on, no, that, the, like, that type of stuff, like whether it's a gas chamber, an electric chair, There's at least been, and by the way, I don't agree with it.
I don't think we should be doing that.
And we can argue about that some other time.
That's at least done with like a modicum of public sort of decorum, right?
Well, we don't want everybody watching this.
We don't need to broadcast this.
The state does this solemnly.
What you're talking about, though, is lynching.
Which is where you used to take your children to watch people be hung and dismembered and tortured and beaten.
And why did you do it, Nick?
You did it to condition them to carry out that behavior in the future.
That's one of the reasons why it was in public, was to go ahead and tell everybody, this is normal.
It's how we should be behaving.
It's what they're talking about.
things i think you could do it earlier i think you maybe at age 12 whenever sixth grade or so you are a person you know they're old enough to you don't you know you need to like really wallow in it and have them be broken on a wheel or anything but if it was something like chopping you know if we had a guillotine or something i think it's i think it's the age where they can't be you know it's i think there's too early and you become desensitized to maybe like I think it's when you can actually embrace the meaning.
But it should also be taken in a holy way.
I don't mean holy in a bad way.
See, one guy stands up and says, hey, I think this might have a bad effect on children.
And what gets said?
You can abuse children if you use the specter of religion, which is one of the reasons why religion holds the power it does and why we see the problems, which is within extremist religious movements and extremist religious sects, like what you have is ritualized child abuse.
See what he did?
He went ahead and moved that back.
He put up that shield of the religious sort of connotation with it.
And I don't know who these people are.
There's a bald guy with glasses who's the one who said they should be 12 or in sixth grade.
There's something in his eyes that's concerning.
There's anger, there's fury, there's all sorts.
And the dead, also dead.
You know, listen, I don't know who the guy is, but it makes you sit back in your chair.
It comes through the screen.
So should we continue?
What you are watching, and I am not exaggerating whatsoever, Nick, what you are watching here is a group of people that if there was a uniform and an armband to put on, They would be more than happy to put on the uniform and the armband.
That's what this is.
I don't want to make jokes about it.
It's true.
These are the types of people who are more than happy to carry out the violence that is necessary for an authoritarian state.
In that, like, this is heavy.
Bluntly, we have kids who are 14 who are committing carjackings in cities and doing bad stuff.
And I think if you sent the message to them, if you do a bad crime, you will die and it will be like this and that will be you.
It would be a positive message.
My argument would be younger people get involved with that because they're with around older people who do those things.
I want you to imagine, every day, all of a sudden they said, and today, remember that awful five, you know, the guy that went and shot up a school?
Because, you know, left hates school shooters, and so do we, but they focus on the gun.
I think they're evil.
So, you know, you take one of these school shooters, and they say, today, we're going to publicly execute this person, and they read off...
Yeah, the shooters at the Super Bowl thing, and you read off what they did.
You don't celebrate it.
You just say, look, this is what they did.
And if you do this, this will be your fate.
Ready, set, go.
Boom.
End of life.
It's something, isn't it?
To be able to sit there and so flippantly talk about snuffing out life.
This is the pro-life party, Nick.
This is the supposed pro-life party.
I don't even have anything else to say to this.
It's disgusting.
And again, I thank Charlie Kirk and Turning Points and all this crew of assholes for making it very clear who they are.
By the way, Nick, you're the one that told me this.
I didn't even know about this Missouri thing where they joined Texas, Arizona and Arkansas in outlawing finalizing divorces.
If the wife is pregnant, even in cases of like severe spousal abuse, like the things that they are doing are only precursors to what they want.
And if you listen to Posobiec, you listen to Kirk.
And by the way, if you listen to any of these think tanks or institutes, you read Project 25, you listen to their speeches, you read their books.
This is what they want.
They want a society that is not only brutal and authoritarian, like it really is in their minds and their imaginations a world that is almost beyond our imagination.
Well, they also sit there in their stew and rail against the thought police and the woke virus and all that stuff.
And yet they're the ones who want to control everyone's lives.
They want to make sure under the auspices of, well, if you're pregnant, of course you need a father to be part of this and help you.
Nevermind the fact that it may be that there's a, there's a 5% of these cases are all domestic abuse where they have to get out of this thing they just found out they're pregnant you know what i mean and they're like nervous as all hell it's gonna get worse and they won't let them have a divorce despite that like because they know better you know what i mean they think that they they have an idea of how life is supposed to be lived and you cannot violate those laws based on some book that some randos wrote oh geez i don't i'm gonna go to hell for this one
but uh you know a bunch of randos wrote wrote how many years after jesus was around you know they don't even care about the Bible.
That's the entire point.
Like, and by the way, fuck them.
Like, you don't have to be in an abusive, violently abusive relationship to want a divorce.
You should be able to get a divorce if you want to get a divorce.
Period.
Like, the state's standing in the way.
I hate how people do that.
They're like, well, you know, you can terminate a pregnancy, blah, blah, blah.
You should be able to do what you want to do.
Like, period.
But I'm 90% sure that if a man wants a divorce from a woman who's pregnant, he can get it.
Well, they want to move away from any sort of a society where women have protections.
Like, we were talking about this the other day, like, the IVF stuff isn't about more or less babies.
It's about creating a second tier of a society.
It's about making sure that women get all their protections and liberties rolled away in order to create a patriarchal society, which goes back to what we were talking about with Posobiec.
Like, they literally want to create the old regime They want to roll time back.
They want to go ahead and put white wealthy men on top, and they'll use evangelicalism for whatever purpose.
They don't care about the Bible.
Like, quite frankly, they've turned Jesus Christ, who basically gave out like a humanist, egalitarian, you know, sort of a gospel.
They've turned him into Rambo at this point.
They've turned him more or less into a twisted version of the Sharia law that they used to rail against.
But they don't care about any of that.
Well, I mean, Charlie Kirk doesn't, necessarily, but, like, the people that are listening to him, the people that you grew up with, like, those are the ones who really, really believe it, right?
They're the ones who are already conditioned to believe all of this anyway, and that's the gross manipulation of the background of people to get them to follow them.
I got to tell you, the people that I grew up with and the people in the church that I grew up in, Nick, they knew one book of the Bible, and that was the book of Revelation.
And the only reason they knew that was because it kept them scared of the new world order and basically created the conditions that were possible for right now.
They didn't know the Bible.
You know, they didn't know the contradictions of the Bible.
They didn't know Christ was somebody who could help them get rich or do better.
That was basically all it was.
They weren't even particularly interested in what the Bible had for them.
All right, good times.
Yeah, it's not great.
By the way, speaking of not great, and speaking of Charlie Kirk for that matter, he was part of the Trumpist gang that has succeeded in getting Ronna McDaniel to leave the GOP.
She has announced that she is going to step down as the chairperson early next month.
Uh, now we're looking at the possibility of Lara Trump taking over the GOP.
She has promised to basically turn every cent over to Donald Trump, even while resolutions within the RNC are now trying to keep it from paying his legal bills.
Nick, how do you feel about that?
Do you think that resolution will pass?
You know, you know, it's funny, I kind of was like, oh, cool, like, yeah, like, as if it would, but now that you ask it that way, I'm trying to, I'm trying to, like, it probably won't, because Trump won't let it, right?
And so they're going to have to continue, continue, by the way, to fund his legal issues.
They're going to have to fund all of it.
Meanwhile, what has happened with Charlie Kirk?
There's been a huge backlash because Turning Point USA has been just absolutely siphoning off massive amounts of donations from the RNC, from wealthy donors and people who are more interested in what he does.
We now look around, basically every major state GOP party is in absolute tatters, Nick.
They're fighting each other.
They're extorting each other.
I mean, they're getting in literal brawls.
They're getting caught, you know, trying to, like, hand each other, like, corrupt money at this point.
But the Ronda McDaniel, to be the chair of the RNC is not, like, a great job.
It's a terrible job.
And so, in my thought process of this, in a political sense, the people that would go to Mar-a-Lago and talk shit about her are the people who would want that job.
Oh, you know how bad she is?
Like, I can do that job.
So you'd almost think that, like, okay, is that what Charlie Kirk is angling for?
But the problem is, is he is so wealthy right now, and so powerful on his own thing with Turning Point USA, that he wouldn't, that's not even a thing.
So it's like, I don't understand exactly why he decided to target her, of all people, other than the fact that she's a woman, I suppose, among other things.
But like, it is, it is, it's all very, very strange that they targeted her like this, and that he was involved.
I'm still trying to parse that out.
Well, on one hand, as we have covered on this show, the Civil War within the Republican Party, the Trumpist takeover, and by the way, in our coverage of the South Carolina primary results, I just want to remind everybody, Trump beat in Iowa, he won Iowa, attacking the popular Republican governor, Kim Reynolds.
In New Hampshire, he won attacking the popular Governor Sununu.
Then in South Carolina, he beat a popular two-time governor in Nikki Haley.
He has taken over the Republican Party.
Charlie Kirk helped take over the Republican Party.
He doesn't want that job.
He just wants it to become more and more extreme.
And also they're interested in turning it into the full throated, completely co-opted party.
I said this on the live stream, Nick.
I don't know if Trump gets his way, if there's going to be enough money to go around to senatorial and congressional candidates.
They don't know that either.
Everybody that I've talked to at this point understands.
And by the way, you have the chairperson of the GOP stepping down in March of a presidential national election year.
That's pretty bad.
There is no plan whatsoever to fund, and by the way, that's fine if the Republicans don't want to fund their campaigns and they just want to turn into a giant ill-gotten piggy bank for Donald Trump, but this is a party that is coming apart at the seams and it's only getting worse.
Yeah, I mean, Rondo probably would have said, like, what can I do?
People don't want to donate to this party anymore like they used to.
And, you know, but that said, Charlie Kirk's the world can tap into that, which is another reason why you're thinking there might be some synergy here of him being part of that process, because obviously, Turning Point can raise a lot of that money.
And I know it's weird that people would be upset.
What do they care?
He built an empire.
He's doing his own thing.
He's making his money.
Why would anybody in the Republican Party be, like, upset with this they're supposed to be a free market people um but they they might literally want to try and tap him into something where he is now going to funnel a lot of that money um and it's just all thanks to the supreme court you know all this money that's now involved it has gotten as bad as it has ever has been um and there's no turning back no one's ever going to turn that spigot off they are not interested in actual politics they are not they're
The GOP is all they exist for at this point is they are a PR front for their billionaire corporate donors.
That's it.
They do what they ask.
They put forward the legislation that's written for them.
They use all of their talking points.
And meanwhile, they are the most half-assed, disgusting pseudo celebrities you could ever find.
And like you said, like Citizens United opened the door for all of this.
They would much rather give money to Charlie Kirk, who's going to go out and throw bombs at these people.
Right.
They want somebody that makes them laugh and makes them enjoy the cruelty that showed to, you know, liberals and leftists and Democrats.
That's all.
They're not particularly interested in anything else.
Unfortunately, we do have minoritarian institutions, which means that Donald Trump could still win the presidency.
The Republicans could still win Congress, and they could still win the Senate, and they have stolen the Supreme Court.
They are not a serious political party, but they have ramifications from their terminal dissent into fascism that we're all going to have to suffer.
We're basically trapped inside of this thing, and the water is coming in fast.
Oh, well, the line of the graph of on the way to fascism, there's a parallel line on that same graph of incompetency.
Yes.
You know, and they're both heading to the same spot.
So if they were able to get what they kind of want, which is control Congress and then the White House.
You know, the only thing that would save us from the absolute worst version of all of this would be the gross incompetency that they have.
But I gotta tell you, when we're hearing this Project 2025 stuff, it's like someone is behind something there and is trying to get them more organized.
Again, will they be able to do it?
I don't know.
But that's what makes us all the more frightening.
And the mobilization against this has to be massive.
It has to be massive.
And you know, I'm glad you put it that way because what we're looking at today, there's another through line here, which is the fact that are we dealing with grifters and bad faith actors?
Absolutely we are.
But there are real consequences from this stuff.
Like, Charlie Kirk did this to be outrageous, but he's also going ahead and basically floating ideas to all of these people.
They're like, yeah, I kind of like that idea.
Let's kill our enemies in public and enjoy it.
Meanwhile, Posobiec is just being honest about a fascistic takeover of the government.
And, like, every time they say something like this, it gets worse.
And by the way, speaking of bad faith actors, Nick, we gotta cover something.
Taylor Lawrence of the Washington Post ended up interviewing the operator of Libs of TikTok, that is Shia Raichek.
First of all, I don't know that this interview should have happened.
And we can talk about that a little bit in just a second, but I do think, because we try and be an educational podcast and because we talk about these things, I do think there are some interesting things here to illuminate and pay attention to, but here is part of that interview.
Oh, and just to set this up, you know, Lives of TikTok is this horrible account that would share people from the LGBTQ community who would be posting themselves about their thoughts on life or whatever, just, you know, being on their own channel.
And it would also end up being something that would cause a lot of terror in these people's lives.
She would unleash the right and these wackos to attack these people and just further foment the hatred towards everybody who's not, you know, White and religious.
And by the way, I think I think Reshek is an absolute buffoon, and we'll see why in a second.
But let's also point out incredibly influential.
The stuff that she shares not only puts people at risk.
We've actually just seen recently Tulsa student 16 year old next Benedict, who died after an altercation in a bathroom that's still trying to be figured out and seems like the police aren't really serious about it.
That took place in Oklahoma.
Where Raishak has now become the Oklahoma Library, is now on the Oklahoma Media Library Advisory Board, which means that she has power, and she has helped determine the focus.
Basically, she's the one that says the eyesauron needs to look over here, and it has ruined people's lives, and it has radicalized people.
But yeah, to hear her talk, let's unfortunately do that.
What happens to all the people living happy lives as trans people?
Well, first of all, the whole trans, it's based on a law.
You can't change your gender.
Okay, but... So they could go live their life.
I mean, I can't tell someone what to do in their house.
Sounds like you do want to tell people what to do in their house.
I never said that.
So you're totally okay with people being trans, just not as long as they're in public?
No, I never said that.
They could...
The whole thing is based off of a lie, and I think that this lie cannot be mainstream in our society.
It's just, it's a lie.
And what harm is it causing, do you believe?
I like the truth.
I like truth.
Right, but I'm saying, what's the harm of people expressing their gender identity differently than you believe it to be?
What harm are they causing?
Like I said, we are a nation of truth, and I seek the truth.
But I'm asking about the harm.
What's the harm?
You might believe it to be false, but what's the harm?
The harm is that there's a lie that is very mainstream and is being embedded into every institution.
I guess I'm wondering what the material harm is.
Aside from it's maybe something that you disagree with, as in your version of the truth is different than their version of the truth, What is the material harm of them living their life as a woman or man or gender that you don't agree with?
Not anything that's wrong is there a material harm necessarily.
So there's no harm?
I didn't say that.
So can you name a single harm?
The way that it's pushed on to kids first of all.
What's pushed on to kids?
Yeah, it's disgusting.
gender ideology, transgenderism. - But if they're leading happy lives and they just are leading a different-- - Well, there are studies that show that they're more suicidal after transition.
- We don't have to finish it, but anyway, that's-- - Yeah, it's disgusting.
Yeah, so what were your reactions on watching this thing? - Yeah, there's no thought behind any of these positions And that's, you know, you push them on anything, and they don't have much to say besides, well, it's a lie.
It's a lie.
It's like in the most dead, unaffected tone.
You know, they don't, they don't understand what they're doing.
I think that's part of the deal here.
And it's disgusting.
First of all, I really hate that this person has a platform in the beginning, and I hate that this has continually been risen up.
You know what I mean?
I have a problem with that.
But I do want to say something, Nick, which is something that has become more apparent to me as I've studied this and really spent a lot of time in it.
There are so many people in this country who are not thinking very deeply about politics, you know, like they continually regurgitate talking points, which is one of the reasons why these think tanks and institutes like are so dangerous, because they're basically They're basically nationalizing scripts.
And that's what she's speaking.
Like, this person is not a serious person.
In fact, if you go back and look at her history, she was clout chasing, right?
She was trying to find conservative right-wing trends that she could capitalize off of.
And by the way, she's not the only one.
There are people in the liberal class, leftist class, all that, who do all this.
They try and build up platforms and influence for themselves.
But, like, she's not a serious person.
But what is she doing?
She's making an incredible living off of this thing, right?
And what did she do?
It's like when we talked about Nick Fuentes.
Nick Fuentes realized that, oh, the right needs Nazis to say things, right?
Neo-Nazi-ish people to say neo-Nazi-ish things.
She realized, oh, we need people who will specifically target gay and trans people.
Who will put a spotlight on them and give everybody, like, basically feed the outrage and anger machine.
And what is she doing?
She's a functionary of this thing.
It doesn't matter if she's a deep thinker.
It doesn't matter if she's all that smart.
She's willing to fill the market need.
And the fact that there's a market need is what we need to take a look at.
I mean, there was some solace in the fact that it had calmed down, I think, for a while.
Didn't it seem like the anti-trans backlash had kind of like, you know, It would have had a big, you know, bonfire for a while.
And then it's just me is like observing social media, I suppose.
But like, you know, and I'm sure it'll come right back as we get closer to the election, right?
That's gonna be another one of those issues.
But for a while there, it felt like, you know, she had burned out and there wasn't much left to light for her.
I would say for gay and trans people, it didn't feel like that.
You know, I think their lives have been very, very impacted by this.
But what actually happened was that those think tanks and institutes that we're always talking about, they realized that they had set it up.
You know, they set up their franchises around the country and they were running on their own.
It was time to introduce the next product.
And the next product was going after DEI diversity shit, which is why you just hear about that constantly.
So yeah, I think it's still there, but I think the national discourse got shifted in order to introduce the next outrage, and it will absolutely flare back up before the election.
For sure, yeah.
It will, and the only question is, you know, as we progress throughout time, over time, and things tend to move towards, you know, more acceptance of people, you know, in 20 years, are, is it going to look, are we going to think how ridiculous this whole thing was, that they were trying to stir up so much shit about people who just want to live their lives?
If we win...
I mean, that's the thing is, just to go ahead and put the ribbon on it, you know, if Posobiec and people like him get what they want, like, this trajectory that we've always expected was inevitable, we'll look up and we'll be like, holy shit, progress doesn't run in one way.
Thank you Benito Mussolini for, you know, your fascist ideology explaining that.
He said, you know, everybody thinks that things are just always going to move in one direction and progress and get more tolerant and all of this.
And we say no.
And we can turn it back and wrestle it back.
So there's a possibility.
We look up in 20 years and like this period of acceptance and growth and progress, it just feels like a fleeting memory.
Like we can't just hope that it just gets better.
Like people like this are working really hard to make sure it doesn't.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, a bunch of grifters and assholes.
That's what we had to deal with today, unfortunately.
Maybe that's the title of the pod.
Maybe that's the title of the pod.
Man, I just really hated having to listen to Posobiec and Kirk and Raishak.
That was a tour de force.
Everybody, we will be back with the Weekender Edition this Friday.
A reminder, go over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
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We've been telling you where this thing was going.
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