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March 12, 2024 - The Muckrake Political Podcast
53:15
The Katie Britt Disaster

Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman do a post mortem on the Republican's response to Joe Biden's State of the Union address, and just add Britt to the long list of casualties who have seen their political careers stalled. The GOP has been fully taken over by MAGA, as none other than Donald Trump Jr. lets us know. They then discuss Elon Musk visiting with Trump and how that will affect the upcoming presidential race. 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 For more Muckrake, including access to the Weekender show on Fridays and live tapings, head over to Patreon and become patron of the show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Time Text
Hey, everybody.
Welcome to the McCrick Podcast.
I'm Joe J. Sexton.
I'm here with Nick Hausman.
Woo, doggie!
Nick, we got a show today.
We do.
Are you excited about it?
Excited?
I don't know.
I enjoy our time together.
I enjoy what we do.
I enjoy our community.
Am I excited to talk about the things that we have to talk about?
I don't know if that's the word.
Yeah.
I mean, I guess I hear you.
Excited implies some sort of pleasure, I suppose.
Is that correct?
Yeah, this is...
I'll make it very clear.
I'm not in a sadomasochistic relationship with the authoritarian movement taking over this country.
Okay.
Yeah, that is true.
And I mean, you can, you can be, you can make choices about who you're in a relationship with, but I am not with this authoritarian movement.
No.
Yeah, and I'm all for finding comedy in every kind of situation.
Listen, if you're looking for comedy, Nick, and particularly black, macabre comedy, we have a hell of a first segment for you here, everybody.
Yeah, that's right.
We're going to be jumping into the Katie Britt State of the Union response in just a second.
Before we do, a thank you to everybody who came out to our live post State of the Union reaction analysis show on Thursday night.
We had a great turnout, a lot of great support.
I think people had a good time.
These are the types of things that we're offering.
Come on over to patreon.com slash mccraigpodcast, support the show, gain access to all of that stuff.
Again, I promise you, you're not going to find... Man, the stuff on television is terrible.
Can we just say that?
It's awful, Nick.
The analysis?
Yeah, it's not easy to listen to.
Wait, scare quotes around analysis.
Scare quotes.
Okay.
Yes.
Uh, scare quotes or air quotes.
What are they?
Both.
Air scare quotes around it.
The analysis is piss poor.
Uh, that's patreon.com slash one great podcast.
Also everybody, we're going to be out in Henderson, uh, Nevada next week.
You and me.
Is it next week?
It's next week.
Okay.
The, uh, what's the date?
It's Friday, March 22nd and Saturday, March 23rd.
Next week, my friend!
Yeah, I guess so.
What is time?
I mean, it's like 11, 10 days, so yes, but that's good.
You and me hanging out in Nevada with our closest possible friends.
Yeah, listen, I can't encourage people enough.
First of all, the weather is going to be nice compared to a lot of places in the country.
It'll be really chill, really interesting, also really entertaining.
There's a lot of stuff happening throughout that whole weekend.
A ton of stuff.
And again, that is in Henderson, Nevada, outside Las Vegas.
That is, of course, the Pete Dominick.
Podjam.
We are going to be there.
We're going to do a live show doing the Montclair podcast.
Reportedly, I'm going to be drinking bourbon and answering questions from people.
Otherwise, I'm going to be drinking bourbon and hanging out with you and hanging out with people.
You're right.
And then maybe you'll be Mike's, you know?
Maybe I'll be Mike's.
I don't know.
We'll find out.
But everybody, again, that is next Friday and next Saturday.
That's March 22nd and March 23rd.
We hope to see you all out there.
In the meantime, Nick, We recorded our live State of the Union reaction analysis show immediately after Joe Biden said the State of the Union is strong and then, well, he didn't hurry off.
He hung out for a while.
He was not in the mood to leave that building.
Because we immediately went live, we missed the Republican response by Alabama Senator Katie Britt.
And there's a lot to talk about when it comes to Katie Britt.
She has now become a national laughingstock from this terrible response.
We're going to get into why this was so bad and also why so troubling.
But Nick, if you would, roll that beautiful bean footage for us.
Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Party is undercutting America's workers.
China is buying up our farmland, spying on our military installations, and spreading propaganda through the likes of TikTok.
You see, the CCP knows that if it conquers the minds of our next generation, It conquers America.
And what does President Biden do?
Well, he bans TikTok for government employees, but creates an account for his own campaign.
Y'all, you can't make this stuff up.
Look, we all recall when presidents faced national security threats with strength and resolve.
That seems like ancient history.
Right now, our Commander-in-Chief is not in command.
The free world deserves better than a dithering and diminished leader.
America deserves leaders who recognize that secure border I gotta stop.
Have you ever been in an acting class, Jared?
I have not been in an acting class, but I imagine it looks a little something like this.
This would be like, yeah, your monologue work.
And you're learning how to perform a monologue.
And I don't think-- she'd probably get critiqued pretty hard by that teacher.
So there is a lot to get into here.
The rhetoric of it, the lies of it, why this happened, why she was chosen to do this.
I'll say a couple things.
First things first, if you are a Republican, Nick, and the party comes to you and says, We think that you need to give the rebuttal to the Democratic President's State of the Union.
Say no.
Don't do it.
There is nothing good that can come from this.
I don't care if you're Marco Rubio, who we'll talk about later.
I don't care if you're Bobby Jindal.
It does not matter who you are.
There is nothing that you can possibly do.
You're going to just crash and burn Like, it is absolutely just written in the stars.
You cannot score on this thing.
Second thing, Katie Britt is an incredible political creature.
Nick, I love this story that she tells.
She's like, the American dream!
My family's owned small businesses.
How did I get to become a senator?
That's how you become a senator!
That's exactly how that happens.
You grew up with wealth and privilege.
You then went to the University of Alabama.
You were a political science major.
Which, if you didn't know that, everybody, this should help explain what's going on here.
Also, she was into dance, and I'm sure theater played a role in all of this.
And then the next thing you know, she becomes like an aide to like a Republican congressperson.
Like, this is who she is.
What she presented to the world was a facsimile of a human speech.
It is incredibly off-putting for a reason.
There's a reason that people are laughing at it.
It's overwrought.
It's ridiculous.
But also, it's frightening.
It's really upsetting because if you... I wrote about this on Substag, Nick.
If you were in this person's kitchen, sitting across the table from her, you would fear for your life.
And that is because the Republican Party is unhinged and they are in a death spiral.
And as a result, all they can do is try and appear normal and then talk about the weirdest shit that you have ever imagined.
Oh, you know, remember, we already know that the Republican Party is built on fear, right?
Fear.
And it's scaremongering.
Do you ever see, there's a funny video out there that's more like a meme of a woman, a young woman who's watching a, they're putting the square into a square hole, then a triangle into a triangle hole, you haven't seen this?
And so it keeps saying, take the triangle and put it in the triangle hole, and then they put it in the square.
And it still fits.
and you can and then they take the circle and they put it in the square and it still kind of gets in there and you can see her slowly descending into madness because she cannot handle the fact that these they're not putting the pieces in the right shape to go into this little box like a kid would do it um and that reminded me of this because you can just see her just on the verge of having a nervous breakdown right or at least acting like that to try and and scare up the one
segment of the population that the Republicans don't really have a line into, which would be, you know, housewives in the suburbs.
Well, so here's the thing.
They do have an inline with them.
We have seen this throughout the country.
And this is where Moms for Liberty comes in.
This is where, you know, all the book banning PTA moms come in.
The people who get up in front of, like, these meetings and they read, like, hardcore, like, sexual literature.
Or they start screaming about kindergartners using kitty litter boxes, right?
What is actually occurring in this country, and Katie Britt represents it incredibly well, what she represents is that there is a crack-up happening among the group that you're talking about.
There are white suburban people, and by the way, Nick, how did the white people get to the suburbs?
And don't say with a moving van.
How did they end up in the suburbs?
Well, they ran there.
They ran running away from the cities.
Wait, time out.
They ran there?
Are you saying that they were afraid of something?
Yes, it was completely, I believe the term is flight, Jared.
Wait, flight?
That sounds like there might be a word in front of it that you're not saying.
I'm not into rhymes.
I think you're trying to talk about white flight.
And it's a group of people that quote-unquote escaped the cities because too many black people ended up in these cities.
And as a result, they needed to seek solace elsewhere.
By the way, if you're looking for a reason why a couple outside of St.
Louis Like, went out of their house carrying semi-automatic assault rifles as protesters ran by?
That's what it is.
It is a mind sickness that has infected these groups of people.
It's cultural.
It's a heritage, right?
And they do have an inroads with them.
And if you were to sit down with them in their nicely appointed kitchens in Alabama and in any of these states, this is the shit that would happen.
One moment, Nick, you'd be having a nice conversation.
There'd be smiling.
There'd be pleasantries.
The next thing, the Chinese Communist Party is coming for our children.
And guess what they're going to do to our children?
They're going to take them into a room and assault them over and over.
And you're like, whoa!
And I wrote about this, Nick, and I would be interested to hear what you have to say in terms of the undercurrent of this.
What is horror?
Horror is when you think you are safe and then you realize that you're not safe.
And how many times have we seen in a movie?
Have we seen in a television show?
You're in a place... I'm sorry, her kitchen's nice.
She looks nice.
She looks like a totally normal person until she starts speaking.
And all of a sudden it becomes uncanny, right?
Something feels strange.
Watching this thing, we laugh at it because it's horrifying.
Because it's not normal.
It's upsetting.
And you want to run away from the House before something really bad happens to you.
The problem is, that's not just a speech, Nick.
That's a political party that is representing a part of this country that is not well.
That is really, really coming apart at the seams, and they're threatening the rest of us.
Well, we're also laughing because of the manufactured trembling in her voice, right?
How she's trying to really, like, make it seem like she's scared.
She's sitting in a beautiful house.
She's got an NFL player as a husband.
You know, I'm sure she has a nice alarm system.
It's like living in a really nice area.
Like, there is no notion of, like, on a minute-to-minute time frame, she's afraid for her life.
But that's basically what she was trying to say to everybody.
Well, I just want to say this, Nick, and this is something that not enough people are talking about in their coverage of this because it's uncomfortable.
She lives in the American South.
By the way, as someone who lived there for a decade and who has studied their literature for a while and their history for a while, I can tell you this.
White women in the American South, particularly of a certain class, Have been able to sort of use their fear as a weapon.
This is one of the reasons why you had like a spate of lynchings.
This is one of the reasons why you had the Ku Klux Klan.
It's one of the reasons why you have all these tropes of like black people as like quote-unquote savages who are going to come out and hurt people if you don't put them in their places, right?
And there is a real weaponized fear that takes place with women of a certain class and of a certain background and persuasion.
That's what this feels like!
Do you know what I mean?
It's like at any given moment, if she expresses discomfort, things could get bad.
And that is a really frightening cultural feeling to it.
And I think that's one of the reasons why this thing felt the way that it did.
And I don't want to diminish the notion of our society being a place that could be dangerous.
Absolutely, yes.
But there is a there is a question of like how you choose to live your life in the face of like what an everyday dangers would pose and it's unhealthy to like and I've heard people like even in my family when they like they'll go to the mall and they're already like they're like they're like scanning the exits and they're picturing I mean it's kind of coded but they're picturing like looking for brown people with semi-automatic rifles who are going to come and mow everybody down And it's just, it's sad.
It's sad that that would be any kind of thought in your head.
And I know you want to be prepared, you know, and I get it, but imagine living in that headspace.
Now, the other thing, I've always wanted to bring this up for a while now, and I haven't been off on an example of doing this, but she definitely brought up the notion of like women being afraid of immigrants and rape and all sorts of, you know, violence.
Are you aware of how many rapes there have been, or I'm sorry, pregnancies there have been from rape in states that have enacted abortion bans after Roe v. Wade was rescinded?
Oh, I can't even imagine.
This came out in January, and I remember my wife was saying it, and she's like, she's like, I'm afraid to go outside because there were 64,000 pregnancies, not just rapes.
We're talking about the rapes that resulted in pregnancies that resulted in only the states that had rejected Roe v. Wade.
So, I am so glad that you've brought this up.
Because Nick, you just hit on something that is incredibly important about what's going on in this country.
It is all projection.
The idea that immigrants are going to come in and abuse people, immigrants are going to come in and assault people, immigrants are going to come in and murder people.
No!
That's not what's happening.
What's actually happening is there's an epidemic of it within the white population.
Like, it is within the homes, it's within the communities.
This goes back, Nick, to the idea that QAnon, the liberals and the cabals are going to take our children.
No, people are abusing their children.
Like, oh, they're going to make our children do labor.
No, you're making children do labor!
You're the ones who are hurting them.
So what they are actually doing, like what you just brought up, is actually something that should be discussed and, like, looked at and we should be repelled by it.
But instead, they're projecting the inner sickness on something outside of them, which is exactly what the Republican Party is good for.
It gives them a political background and a political front to go ahead and project that stuff out of themselves.
And, by the way, we're talking about rape, you know, just really briefly.
The chances are the person that rapes is someone that's an acquaintance of the victim.
Absolutely, yes.
This isn't like, you know, what they're trying to make it out like.
These people are pouring across the border and they're, you know, causing all these terrible things.
That's not what the numbers say either, and that won't resonate with people who don't like Biden, for instance.
They will just simply accept whatever these lies are that are being propagated because it helps them justify their position against Biden.
Yeah, it's just supposed to create an emotional alternative.
And, you know, and actually, you know, Jonathan Katz, actual friend of the pod.
We've we've had him on the show before.
Did everybody a service?
He looked into this story that Britt told about, like, this woman who who just confided in her her own personal story.
And we can't let you know she was repeatedly assault and all these lurid, awful details.
I mean, and this is one of the reasons, by the way, that the Republican Party is so off putting.
Like, if a Republican talks to you now at this point, like, the chances of it going in a really crazy direction are high, because they are a self-isolating group.
They're radicalizing, and as a result, they repel everybody else.
It makes them vulnerable, but I wrote about this this week.
Eventually, like, if we keep letting this happen and they're not defeated and put away, it's going to be a problem widespread.
But so Jonathan Katz reveals that not only did she mislead about this, it seems like she outright lied.
It was something that took place in Mexico during the presidency of George W. Bush.
The entire point of this that we need to talk about is, she used a human being's suffering.
An actual issue in terms of how women are treated and how women are trafficked, how women are taken advantage of.
She took advantage of all of those things and used it for her own purposes in order to score political points.
In this shamelessness, Brit is just an absolute modern Republican because they do not care who they hurt.
They don't, they don't care who they take advantage of.
They don't care what kind of damage they do, as long as they're able to get over the finish line, what it is that they're interested in doing.
And you couldn't be more right.
There's a real problem.
There are so many real problems that we could be actually talking about, but instead they're creating an emotional alternative in order to push things the way that they want it to go.
And her spin was just ridiculous when they called her out on it because, listen, these things are happening under all the presidents we've had, right?
These are all things that are terrible and they've happened in America, they happen in Mexico, they happen all over the place.
But yes, to manipulate that story, particularly to somehow make it seem like, yes, it was Biden's fault for this happening is really, I want to say in the past you couldn't do that or you wouldn't do that because you'd get called out on it and they would say why are you saying these lies and then they would have to run away in shame.
we are way beyond that.
And to the point now where when you, you know, her response was, you know, you know, worse.
And we'll talk a little bit about Nancy Mace's response to something similar in a little bit.
It's really gotten to new depths of just creating whatever reality you want without any kind of standards of behavior or ethical attention to the ethical I mean that's the whole thing.
and it, but it'll get worse.
So it's not even worth complaining about almost. - It will get worse unless we defeat it.
I mean, that's the whole thing.
Like I'm sorry, but Katie Britt is not a good politician.
She is not capable.
She is not competent.
Like, there's a reason why she became a quick national laughingstock.
Even the Republicans admitted it, Nick.
I mean, even right-wing commentators and analysts and personalities were like, this sucked.
This was really, really bad.
In spite of that, Nick.
One of the things that we have to talk about is one of the remaining questions of the 2024 presidential election, which is who will Donald Trump chooses as running mate?
There are rumors.
I've talked to a few people.
This seems like it has legs.
The rumors are at this point that he has narrowed down his list of potential vice presidential candidates to three.
One of them, despite her performance, maybe because of her performance, Katie Britt is apparently one of the finalists on Trump's list.
J.D.
Vance, Ohio Senator, my own personal nemesis.
Love it, Nick.
Absolutely love it.
And also Florida Senator Marco Rubio.
This is supposedly the trio that is the final.
What are your initial reactions to this?
I have a lot.
I think that this is a real glimpse into something.
Well, you know, just to put a button on the whole performance of Katie Britt, like, is it fair to say that what she spoke to the camera on was written ahead of time?
Yeah, absolutely.
Is it fair to say that she probably rehearsed it a couple times before she went on camera?
I think so, yes.
So then is it also fair to say if someone said, you nailed it, that was great, like, you know, that probably happened too, right?
I don't know if that's true.
So, she recorded it after the State of the Union.
Like, she mentioned that he got into a back and forth with Marjorie Taylor Greene.
So, I do think it was live.
But yeah, I think somebody somewhere, I have to assume her husband was like, hey, good job tonight.
I'm just thinking like if she was rehearsing it and they're working on the beats and then how she wants to emote and all these different things you know those are all should have been planned out and then they probably were and that was what they came up with which was there's nobody the competent who would have been like yeah you know because I know she's a laughingstock for a lot of reasons but one I think to me the biggest is is this this trembling you know scared uh delivery of these lines which I'm sure That's not all of it.
Nick, if you watch the whole speech, it's not all trembling.
Some of it is like... The emotional spectrum on this thing was incredible.
Well, how do you see her as a potential VP candidate?
Well, you know, Marco Rubio, there must just be a political thing there where he's in Florida, you know, Donald's in Florida.
He must be visiting Mar-a-Lago.
A few times a week at this rate or something.
I don't understand that other than like, you know in the NBA sometimes they'll float like an interview with an assistant coach and how good he is.
It's really just because they want to help him maybe get a head coaching job at some point, name in the news, whatever.
That's what the Marco Rubio thing feels like to me, which was scary because now it turns to Brit is one of probably two candidates he might choose from.
And we know why he wants Brit because she's pretty, right?
Like, I think her appearance is what would probably get him to want to choose her.
And that just leaves your friend and mine, JD Vance.
So if you had asked me who he was going to choose, it's going to be Vance.
Okay, so first off, Marco Rubio, when it comes to the vice presidency, is basically Susan Lucci in the Daytime Emmys.
I mean, it is every time that one of these things gets around.
Like, he is always, always in the running for it.
Marco Rubio, I was thinking about him the other day before this list came out.
Like, what an absolute whiff this guy was supposed to be.
Like, this was a five-star blue-chip recruit.
Everybody's like, he's the future of the Republican Party.
Man, he sucks.
And by the way, we couldn't talk about bad State of the Union responses if we didn't bring up one of the worst political moments of the 21st century, which was him not being able to not look weird grabbing a bottle of water.
Which basically ruined any political aspirations he actually had.
Katie Britt, I have to tell you, Nick, Have you ever seen the movie The Dead Zone?
Oh yeah, you mean Christopher Walken?
Absolutely.
Where Christopher Walken has the ability to tell the future by touching somebody and he gets quick glimpses.
When I found this out and I talked to people and found out it was true, I had a Dead Zone-like flash forward of Katie Britt becoming President of the United States and doing this shit.
And I was like, oh, I need to stay away from that future.
You know what I mean?
Like, really.
J.D.
Vance, besides my own personal problem with J.D.
Vance, which has multiple problems with J.D.
Vance, him being vice president would be a disaster.
It would be really, really dangerous.
He represents the techno right, the new right, the alt right, whatever you want to call it.
And I also have to tell you this, Nick, If he becomes vice president, Donald Trump probably needs to stay away from open windows.
Yeah, well... Because J.D.
Vance would throw him out of a window and not look around.
Like, not even care.
It would happen.
This is a really upsetting list of people.
I hate having to say that Marco Rubio would be the best possible situation.
But also Mike Pence didn't do anything to help the situation either.
Well, I don't want to get out ahead of my skis here, Jared, so let me have, I need your help.
Would you say that there's a certain degree of misogyny in the Republican Party?
I mean, if a duck quacks, call the duck.
Okay.
Now, you know, again, I don't want to get out ahead of myself, but like racism, would you say there's some racism involved?
- I mean, listen, that duck, it is a quackin'. - You know, and maybe it's on both sides, but it definitely feels like, you know, if you had to like count it all up.
So, okay, you have the three people.
You have one, Marco Rubio, who's Hispanic, you know, that's his background from, his family's from Cuba, I believe, right?
You have a woman.
So remember, like, we saw people like Bobby Jindal put in this position, Marco Rubio put in this position, who they were supposed to be the young stars, but it really was a cynical political ploy, right?
Like, you have Obama, well, we'll have somebody else from, you know, another minority.
Bobby Jindal!
Oh, you guys got Barack Hussein Obama?
Wait till you get a load of Bobby Jindal.
Right.
And like, you know, nothing wrong with Bobby Jindal, except for the fact that he wasn't white.
Bobby Jindal, there's a lot wrong with Bobby Jindal.
But I have a feeling that once you get down to it, and we talked about it again in the presidential race with You know, we've already forgotten her name, but you know, Nikki Haley and Nikki Haley.
And in fact, I share her name.
You know, again, I truly believe that when it comes down to when it's not a white guy, they just aren't going to vote.
They weren't going to get behind any of anybody else.
It's that.
You know what?
I think I think they're big fans of tokenism.
I could see Katie Britt getting picked.
I could.
And by the way, like the fact that she is like And this is through Donald Trump's eyes, like the fact that she is, like, conventionally attractive.
I could see him doing that.
I could see him going in that direction, yes.
And then how quickly does she get marginalized once she gets part of the system?
Oh no, she would be completely marginalized.
Unless, like they did with Kasich, they were like, hey, if you want to run domestic and foreign policy, feel more than free.
But I will tell you, she is a monster.
If she's anywhere near power, I'm very worried because she would play ball.
I mean, that's, that's the, the vision I had in the future.
It was just like the camps are getting opened and like, she's given like sneers and just like winks and stuff.
It's like, Oh, that was really bad.
Okay.
It's bad.
Speaking of bad, we have, we have other things aligning as well.
Nick reports have put Donald Trump meeting with Elon Musk, looking for donations and support.
Musk has come out and said that he's not planning on donating to any candidates.
He didn't say anything about any super PACs or legal funds.
Immediately though, Elon Musk then took to Twitter and accused Joe Biden of intentional treason when it comes to the border situation.
There is a lot cooking here.
There's a lot that I think about it, but you never want to see Donald Trump and Elon Musk in the same room.
Elon Musk has become, you know, and we covered it from the beginning.
From the beginning.
Is it, what's the word I'm looking for, because he owns the platform of Twitter or whatever we call it, but he will, the conspiracy theories and the out now just lying hatred for Biden that keeps coming out daily and then it's also manipulated with the algorithm to be broadcast to way more people than would normally see it.
Is there a word for that?
Or is it just sort of like, you know, capitalism?
Tell you what, Nick.
He's gonna take over Twitter.
Because Twitter has been rigged.
And you know what he's gonna do?
He's gonna unrig it.
And he's going to rig the damn thing.
He's going to get that shit going in the opposite direction.
I mean, it literally, it's really incredible that this guy was forced to buy this thing, which I think about that so often, like how this consequential platform, like the corporatized public space, was forced onto this guy, this failure.
He had to buy it.
And then he buys it and he's like, yeah, I'm just going to use this to amplify, like, straight up anti-Semitism.
I'm going to use it to amplify white supremacist conspiracy theories.
And that's just what we're doing now.
I mean, the amount that he has turned up the dial for, like, Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones at this point, it makes you lose your mind.
And he basically met with Trump.
I have to imagine, Nick, that the conversation went like this.
Could you possibly donate to this?
And he said, well, I'm not going to donate to any campaigns.
Well, we know where you can donate.
And on top of that, is your machine going to be on my side?
And what did Elon Musk have to say?
Well, he's already one of the most essential government contractors.
Are you going to ensure that I'm going to continue getting these contracts and maybe even some more contracts?
And guess what?
He can't be president of the United States of America, but he can have his hand up Trump's ass.
And I think he is one of the most dangerous individuals in modern American history.
I really truly do.
Well, I think he also governs himself in the same sort of headspace as Trump, right?
There's a vindictiveness and a dismissiveness and then also assumption of intelligence that is not necessarily confirmed in a way that um it the whole thing is just is just first of all i'm on twitter way too much as it is and so i'm it's just like it's ruined it's just making my life horrible as you know and then to see him how he is electioneering on there uh it's really gross uh it really is a misappropriation of even even if you're allowed to because it's his own platform and it's a private thing
whatever it just goes you know here we are though i I mean, it goes against what would have normally been a thing where someone like that would not weigh in like this, but it's so heavy-handed.
And it's not, it's against the facts.
That's what's so frustrating about it.
He is fueling what we've already been established from Trump's MAGA movement, just more and more of a disattachment from reality.
And I think that's the feature, not a bug, right?
Which was always going to happen.
I roll my eyes constantly There are these articles, and you know, they started for a while.
They were like, is Elon Musk becoming conservative?
Is Elon Musk being radicalized?
And it's like, are you watching?
Do you pay attention?
The media and political watchers want so badly for one of the wealthiest men in the world not to display radicalization.
They, you know, it's the emperor's new clothes type thing.
But what has happened, Nick, is that, and now you see articles, it's like Silicon Valley's turning towards the right.
They've always been that way.
That's who they are.
They believe that the great unwashed masses, they believe democracy is dangerous.
I mean, Zuckerberg told everybody Facebook needs to be a tool that controls society and tunes it in and tunes it out and their algorithms will make society better.
Same thing with Google.
Same thing with Musk, if you ever listen to him.
They're not turning right.
What's happening is that these people, who are the industrialists of the 21st century, are doing the same thing that the industrialists of the 20th century did.
They want all the money and all the power.
They have a disdain for democracy, and they're very attracted to fascists.
And why?
Because not only can they fund them, but they feel like they can control them and they can use their tools to create a society of their envisioning.
By the way, if anybody is looking for something to do tonight, maybe they're bored, maybe there's not a game on, go look up futurism and fascism.
It's the entire same thing.
It's a cult of the future and how technology is going to bring us in and there are going to be techno messiahs.
Next thing you know, Benito Mussolini is showing you a cool way to salute at a rally.
This stuff is very obvious how it works.
And of course, Musk is going to work with Trump.
And of course, he's going to support Trump.
And of course, he's going to be just hand in hand with these people.
Like, it's so predictable that it's almost insulting that we even have to cover it.
Oh, and we've seen how Musk doesn't really feel like laws apply to him, right?
Circumvent laws left and right and all of his companies.
So, of course, he's going to want a president in the White House who will help him continue to circumvent all those laws, which would definitely happen.
And again, another step towards or maybe a jump into the fascist pool.
That's what's so frustrating about all this is that at some point, you know, like, look at how Trump is arguing the cases before, you know, that he has right now in front of the courts.
He's trying to say that he has absolute immunity from everything.
And there's no question what he the way his cabinet was run, that they all felt like they were absolutely had absolute immunity to do whatever kind of corrupt things they wanted to do the most corrupt cabinet we've ever had.
It's not a stretch to assume that he would continue to extend that to the business leaders or anybody else who wants to blow smoke up his ass.
That's what's so frustrating about all this.
That's not how democracy works best.
Well, it's amazing, Nick.
It's almost like you're saying that the rule of law is supposed to be objective, but it's actually subjective based on the amount of wealth and the color of your skin and position in society.
Sure, I thought you said that.
Now, how about this?
You know, like even with the EPA and all the things that the environmental stuff that people want to rail against because we can't make money because we have to have, you know, standards of emissions.
But it's like if you really look at every one of those laws is in reaction to some version of murder.
You know, somehow, some people have been killed or maimed or severely, you know, injured because of what these corporations do.
So if you can't figure out how to run your company and still be safe to the public, then you shouldn't be running that company.
And that's a small price to pay.
And yet I've had conversations with people, with conservatives all over the place at every age who just can't, The idea that the government would come in and try and tell you how much you can emit in pollutions into the water that people drink is, you know, is an affront to humanity.
And what's worse is they're also trying now to bypass all these different government agencies, right?
They're not law.
They don't have to follow these things from across all different agencies, not just EPA.
This is definitely not a democracy when you get to that point.
And that's where we are.
No, and, you know, everything that was old is new again.
It's the exact same thing.
I mean, these are the exact same conversations that took place, you know, near the tail end of the Industrial Revolution as the administrative state started to grow.
Now it's being pulled backwards.
There's a reason.
Elon Musk is not just the most wealthy person in the world.
You don't get to be the most wealthy person in the world unless you are locked into the system of capitalism.
And when you're locked into it, you become an essential part of it.
He is basically one of the, like, essential legs of the military-industrial complex.
And not only the military-industrial complex, but also our communications, also our transportation, also, you know, you get into the space program, whatever it is.
Basically, what's happening at this point is he is negotiating for more control beyond Democratic and or legal responsibilities.
That's all this is!
And to think that it would be otherwise is insane!
Which brings me back, and it wouldn't be me and it wouldn't be this show if I didn't bring it up, we would never have gotten to this point if the Democrats hadn't have made googly eyes at these assholes for years!
And had actually regulated them and didn't just like say, oh, Mark, oh, Elon and Steve, please bring us the new economy.
Guess what?
You got the new economy.
And guess what?
It's destroying democracy and it's leaning towards like a new type of fascism.
Y'all were too busy drawing hearts on your tablets all day because you thought that the tech people were going to be on your side because they were educated.
And it turns out they were steeped in Californian ideology.
No offense, my friend.
But this very specific type of mindset and worldview.
They weren't ever interested in elections.
They weren't ever interested in building democracy.
Like, the entire point of this was always to consolidate control.
And whoops!
They consolidated control.
And here we are.
Sorry.
That's just the long and the short of it.
Is there a version of reality where one of these people, these billionaire tech bros, could actually be well-intentioned and want to see democracy thrive and lead the country?
I think they all think they're well-intentioned.
I think Elon Musk, before he hits publish or send on something that is just anti-semitic you know disgusting poison he still thinks that he's fighting the good battle i i don't i i think that they get so lost in personal fulfillment and they more or less it's a narcissistic ideology it's this belief that they are masters of the universe and what they think is perfect and and
And by the way, not only has it been fed into by Silicon Valley, it got fed into by Washington, D.C.
It got fed into by our media.
It got fed into by our political class.
Everybody bought into this because they got a cheap hit out of the quote-unquote new economy.
And as a result, they treated these guys like gods and they acted like gods.
Surprise, surprise.
Well, on that note, Nick, the Republican National Committee, totally take it over!
It's done!
Finish it out!
The Republican Party, as we told everybody it would be, it has now been handed over to Trump loyalist Michael Watley.
Speaking of people who probably should avoid standing next to open windows.
People did not trust Lara Trump, the Trump daughter-in-law, to take over the entire corruption of the RNC, so they brought in Michael Watley as a co-chair.
They now have total control.
Here is Donald Trump Jr.
taking a break from, I don't know, whatever recreational activity he's into to lay it out for us.
I think the RNC is going to be a little bit more of that old school establishment.
That Republican Party, frankly, no longer exists outside of the D.C.
Beltway, but it takes a little while to make that transition.
But again, I think the moves that happened today, I think that's the final blow.
People have to understand that America first, the MAGA movement, is the new Republican Party.
That is conservatism today.
Um, Jared, I think that the, uh, the active word there is blow, uh, as he's describing that he was actually less sweaty than normal in this, uh, in this clip.
But, uh, yeah, it's, um, he's not lying, is he?
No, he's not lying at all for, for maybe a first.
Uh, he's exactly right.
MAGA has taken over the Republican party in totality.
There, there's no disputing it at this point.
Yeah, and you know, they don't have to be afraid of saying that now, and they're proud of that.
They're proud that MAGA has taken over, and it's the through line from Reagan to the Tea Party to MAGA, and then, you know, I just shudder to think of what the next You know, 10 years from now, what this is, because again, this is a completely desperate party who can't grow a base that very easily without using this kind of, you know, the fear mongering and the hatred that they've been spewing.
Well, I mean, that's the whole point is, like, you really can't grow the base.
You have to hope.
You have to hope, going back to the Katie Britt thing, you kind of have to hope to infect the rest of the culture.
Like, I think we're seeing a lot of that right now.
We're seeing a lot of particularly middle class white liberals who are starting to get a little bit more comfortable with this stuff.
They're just tired of the culture wars.
They want everything to return to quote unquote normal.
You can't build a base outside of that.
You kind of have to make, like, uncomfortable allies with it.
We're the ones who are going to put things right again.
Just give us the power.
I promise we won't bug you.
We're just going after people of color, immigrants, women, and, you know, gay and trans people.
And if people will sacrifice them, then they'll make that deal with the devil.
But they're not going to grow a base otherwise.
They're only going to get weirder.
Again, Katie Britt and what we're getting ready to talk about with a couple of these Republican representatives and also candidates.
They're only going to get stranger.
There's no way that they're going to moderate themselves or that they're going to find, you know, quote unquote, independent voters.
That's just not going to happen.
And forgive me for even making it seem like they're trying to grow the base.
They're not even trying to do that.
They're just trying to grift the base.
That's the whole thing.
You have to maintain the base and put them in their own alternate universe while grifting them, right?
And so what's happening?
And by the way, Michael Watley, for anybody who doesn't know, is not only a guy who helped Donald Trump with January 6th and stood by him, he also helped George W. Bush with the 2000 recount.
So just so we'll make clear that this is not Donald Trump who created this problem.
He's just a symptom of a larger problem.
Again, I can't wait until the Trump people just get a taste of murder.
Like, this Michael Whatley is annoying.
We want Lara Trump.
Well, I mean, Vladimir Putin gets away with it.
That's all that's missing.
You know what I mean?
It's like an animal that hasn't quite gotten a taste for the blood yet.
Well, do you think it's possible that Trump has had people murdered in this past?
I don't know.
I hate that I can talk to you about that and wonder if it's a possibility or if he just hasn't done it.
We're waiting around for him and the people around him to understand that Putin's way of doing things is a lot quicker.
Oh yeah.
Well, wait, I don't know if everyone noticed, he was hanging out with Orban.
Oh yeah, no, they're tight.
Yeah, him and Orban are real tight.
Basically, well, we don't want to get gross, but you know, pumping him up, I suppose.
Yeah, they were pretty excited to be bro-ing out together.
And Orban is telling everyone who will listen that Trump is going to just, you know, destroy Ukraine and hand it over to Russia, which is great to hear.
But what is the RNC becoming?
It's now going to become basically a funnel for his legal and political bills.
That's it.
He has taken over the party of Lincoln in totality.
There is no distance between the two.
There is no barrier between the two.
It is now the MAGA party.
And by the way, what's interesting to keep your eye out for is the delays they're going to want to use to pay the bonds of all these cases.
They don't owe money towards because the RDO is what?
Was it 400 million or whatever it is?
They owed maybe 500.
Probably the delay is a little bit longer and it might actually coincide with the RNC becoming completely controlled by Lara so that they can now funnel the money.
It might take a month or two.
So you can tell pretty quickly where they're going to get that money all of a sudden.
Oh look, I actually do have that money.
Here it is.
But give me 30 more days so I can kind of get the transfer.
Sorry, Lindsey Graham.
I hope you weren't planning on using any money for your re-election bid in the future.
I'm going to South Carolina in a week or two.
I want to have a meeting with Lindsey.
I think I have faith in you making that happen.
The infection of this party is just...
It's really incredible.
Nick, you grabbed this clip of Representative Nancy Mace going on this week with George Stephanopoulos.
I just want to say, just because we're sensitive on this show, that there's going to be talk about sexual assault here.
It sucks.
This whole thing sucks.
But I think it's important to take a quick look at this because what happens here is indicative of something much larger.
So just a quick little content warning there.
Yes, this morning.
You've endorsed Donald Trump for president.
Judges and two separate juries have found him liable for rape and for defaming the victim of that rape.
How do you score your endorsement of Donald Trump with the testimony we just saw?
Well, I will tell you, I was raped at the age of 16.
And any rape victim will tell you, I've lived for 30 years with an incredible amount of shame over being raped.
I didn't come forward because of that judgment and shame that I felt.
It's a shame that you will never feel, George, and I'm not going to sit here on your show and be asked a question meant to shame me about another potential rape victim.
I'm not going to do that.
It's actually not about shaming you.
It's a question about Donald Trump.
No, you are shaming me.
You've endorsed Donald Trump for president.
Donald Trump has been found liable for rape by a jury.
Donald Trump has been found liable for defaming the victim of that rape by a jury.
It's been affirmed by a judge.
It was not a criminal court case, number one.
Number two, I live with shame, and you're asking me a question about my political choices, trying to shame me as a rape victim, and I find it disgusting.
And quite frankly, E. Jean Carroll's comments when she did get the judgment, joking about what she was going to buy, it makes it harder for women to come forward when they make a mockery out of rape, when they joke about it.
Doesn't it make it harder for women to come forward?
It makes it harder when other women joke about it.
And she's joked about it.
I find it offensive.
And I also find it offensive that you're trying to shame me with this question.
I'm not trying to shame you.
You are.
I have dealt with this for 30 years.
You know how hard it was to tell my story five years ago when they were doing a fetal heartbeat bill and there were no exceptions for rape, incest, or rape or incest in there?
I had to tell my story because no other woman was coming forward.
No rape victims were represented.
And you're trying to shame me this morning.
And I find it offensive, and this is why women won't come forward.
Women won't come forward because they're defamed by those who perpetrate rape.
They are judged and they're shamed, and you're trying to shame me this morning.
I'm not shaming you at all.
I told you courageous.
I told my story.
It took me 25 years to tell my story.
I was judged for it.
I still get judged for it today.
I'm asking.
Oh, my goodness gracious.
It's a brutal, brutal exchange.
Yeah.
You know, so I said this on Twitter.
You know, the comms departments of these people are prepared for tough questions, right?
And they knew they were going to, he was going to ask something about Trump and why you're endorsing Trump, right?
So they're always trying to figure out a way to turn it around on the questioner, on the host, right?
And make it, you know, a thing about them.
And sometimes that is affected, but this is as gross as it could be.
To try and turn this around and make it seem like Stephanopoulos is shaming her, and then she goes on to shame E.G.
and Carol, right?
She's shaming her, she's just throwing... It's, again, where are we going with this?
It's going to continue to get worse, and I think she should be ashamed, but you know what?
It got her to the talking point.
I think she got what she wanted, but I don't... I'm not even sure if these clips are going to help Mace like she thinks they are.
I would take this step in a different direction very quickly.
There is nothing to gain from having these people on your shows.
Nothing.
There's nothing here.
Stephanopoulos can show this, and ABC did, this went viral, obviously, that this was a very, very uncomfortable conversation.
And it went viral for her, too.
I assume that she had a pretty good fundraising a couple of days from this as well.
Also, all she did was she was presented with the fact, and by the way, Donald Trump has been convicted for actions around sexual assault, which is what's happening here, just to go ahead and get the legal stuff out of there.
Like, That just gives the answer to the cognitive dissonance of Trump supporters who don't think that these things should happen.
There's tons of people who are like, well, women shouldn't be believed.
And of course, she does lip service to that with the E. Jean Carroll stuff here, which is truly insidious.
But also there's just nothing to gain from this.
It's, it's, it's, it's got you.
It's, it's wannabe got you journalism that actually is just sort of creative for social media.
And by the way, we haven't even talked about how many women out there in the world have to listen to discussions about this thing that like remind them of their own personal trauma, the things they've gone through.
And it's a political football.
How disgusting is that?
And there's an entire political party that has just closed ranks around a person who, Nick, not only has he been convicted in a court of law, we have him admitting it on tape.
You know, like this is this is like a thing that people had to deal with and I just I hate that the Republican Party has just slipped to this link.
We were talking about before we started going.
We have the North Carolina governor candidate Mark Robinson of the party who Donald Trump loves and calls him the next Martin Luther King Jr.
You know, who basically says constantly like puts quotes around the Holocaust.
He praises Adolf Hitler.
He goes constantly after gay and trans people.
Like, this party is going to new lows.
And that's really saying something after all these years, Nick, because it started really, really fucking low.
Yeah, and you know, she even tried to say that Stephanopoulos would not know what that shame is like.
Awful.
I gotta tell you that that is completely not true as well.
You know, he certainly there are scenarios where men can also understand.
It's weird.
It's it's an odd thing, but it literally it's just it's rhetorical battle.
Do you know what I mean?
It's just something.
But I was also trying to figure out, OK, what would the the normal or the the ethical or the intellectually honest way to deal with that question?
Right.
Because, OK, Nancy Mace has this past and she's been very vocal about it in a positive way to help other victims.
But now she's endorsing someone who's clearly been involved in this kind of violence.
So it's like, the answer, I don't know, I've been trying to think about what the answer would be.
There's one thing.
You know, go ahead.
There's one thing.
Yeah, go.
I am resigning from the Republican Party effectively today.
That's the only thing you can do.
If you put the R next to your name, and I'm sorry, like, that is how bad the condition is.
If you put the R next to your name at this point, there's really no coming back from it.
Do you know what I mean?
There's really not.
And it's also telling us she tried to make it, she said it wasn't a criminal case.
Like, what does that mean?
How does that have any bearing on what we're talking about, why you're endorsing it?
So anyway, it's a real problem, and like I said when I was asking you about misogyny and racism and all these things that are metastasizing in the Republican Party, exchanges like this are almost surreptitious, but also serve as another way to normalize that and make it okay.
I much prefer to go back to a time when people at least thought it wasn't a good idea to say some of this shit out loud.
Yeah, but you'll notice going back to what we were talking about in terms of like the administrative state making sure that air and water are clean and now moving towards the other side of that.
What the Republican Party is seriously pushing is a society in which women don't talk about this.
And, you know, going back to what we talked about it during the IVF shit.
Like, they want to go to, you know, get rid of no-fault divorce.
They want to make it to where, like, women basically have no legal recourse or safety or whatever, right?
Like, that isn't... Everybody says handmaid's tale, Nick.
And I get it why they say it.
That's not.
That's America.
We've seen it.
We've been there.
You don't have to go to a dystopian future to see it.
That happened to women in this country, right?
From the very beginning in this country, women were second-class citizens, and they did not enjoy the rights or protections or, you know, rights to property in the same way or rights to representation.
Like, this shit has happened before.
They're just trying to restore what it used to be.
And that's the scary thing, is it doesn't have to be some sort of like off-the-wall type of thing.
It's literally just going back to the faulty, disgusting heritage of this country.
That's all they're trying to do.
And that's what this is about.
Have a great week, everybody!
Hey, everybody!
Thank you for listening to the Montclair Podcast.
We're going to come back with the Weekender Edition on Friday.
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In the meantime, before the weekend, or you can find Nick at CanYouHearMe?
That's me.
You can find me at JWestExton.
I'm crumpling up a paper because I don't like these people.
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