Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and NIck Hauselman discuss Trump's latest rally in which he foments more hatred and authoritarianism, aided by the media's coverage of him. They then discuss Elon Musk's contract with the US Government to build them spy satellites, before finishing on the dire situation in Haiti.
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
Nick, we're going to be hanging out in a couple of days.
I cannot wait to be on the road with you.
I will.
Are we technically?
Well, we're not technically going to be on the road.
We're going to be on the road, dot, dot, dot, together.
You have to take a road to get there?
Zach, I don't know, something.
I was thinking of, you know, Willie Nelson, you know, something.
We'll both be on the road and then we'll converge.
Yes.
And we're just going to be hanging out.
We're going to watch some NCAA basketball games.
We're going to talk a lot.
I'm assuming a lot of politics.
That'd be very exciting.
We're going to talk a ton of politics.
We're going to be hanging out with listeners.
I, for one, am excited.
So everybody, as we've been talking about, we are going to Henderson, Nevada for Pete Dominick's stand-up jam.
Podcast jam.
Stand-up podcast.
Podcast stand-up jam.
I'm not.
I talk for a living.
I don't know why I do this.
Well, listen, if you're out there and you're going to come, tweet it out.
Let us know.
Tag us.
Let us know.
We want to see who's going to be there.
We're so looking forward to meeting some of our listeners, and we've already been hearing from a lot of people who are very excited about going to this thing.
So, Friday, March 22nd, we'll be getting into Henderson, Nevada.
There are rumors of an event with me doing something like a bourbon talk.
We'll see about that.
If people are interested, feel free to reach out to me.
On Saturday, March 23rd, Nick and I are going to do our first live around other people recording of the Mutt Craig Podcast.
I'm excited.
Great way to characterize it.
Live around other people.
Live around other people in front of an audience.
That is going to be Saturday, March 23rd.
We'll have more information about the timing of that, but because of it, Nick, we're going to be recording our regular Weekender episode on Saturday, so that means that the Weekender will not be coming out on Friday.
It will be coming out on Saturday after we record it.
Yes, we have to figure that one out too.
That'd be so interesting.
We got to get all that stuff figured out and then you and me are going to be hanging out with people, probably having a beer or two, bullshitting, watching NCAA tournament games.
I'm excited.
I'm ready to go.
Oh, I cannot wait.
I need it.
I could really use a nice little respite from day-to-day activities.
Me!
Respite, respit, respit, respit, respite.
I don't know, crap.
I always thought it was respit.
Respite sounds nice.
Respite?
I like respite.
But if you want to gain access to that show, go over to patreon.com slash moncraigpodcast.
As always, it supports the show, keeps us ad-free, editorially independent, and growing, which we are, and we thank everybody for that.
Listen, everybody, we've got an old humdinger of an episode here today, and it begins with one Donald John Trump.
Nick, he's up to it again.
He's up to his old tricks.
As he's facing mounting legal and economic jeopardies, Donald Trump has started to escalate his rhetoric, which is something we told everybody that he was going to do this.
Now we're watching it at a rally in Vandalia, Ohio.
Trump has said that immigrants are not people, they're animals.
And then the thing that has gotten all the headlines that you and I need to get into and have a larger discussion about, here you go.
Listen and weep, folks.
And you're not going to be able to sell those guys.
If I get elected, Now, if I don't get elected, it's gonna be a bloodbath for the whole... That's gonna be the least of it.
It's gonna be a bloodbath for the country.
That'll be the least of it.
But they're not gonna sell those cars.
They're building massive factories of... Okay.
Okay, there we go.
So there it is, the former president of the United States who attempted a coup against the government of the United States after losing the presidential election of 2020 and saying that if he isn't elected, it's going to be a bloodbath.
Nick, this has been making all the rounds on social media.
It's been in all the headlines, all of the stories and articles.
I have my thoughts about this.
What is your reaction to this?
Well, I mean, you know, part of my reaction is just to see the reaction on the right of all this.
And they're really wringing their hands.
They have their pants in a bunch.
I don't know, whatever that term is.
They are really upset about this.
And, you know, Trump tries, you know, it's funny for a guy that's supposed to be with it and not suffering from any kind of, you know, Brain function issues.
He has to walk back a lot of things.
He has to explain a lot of things that he says over and over again.
It's interesting.
And this one's no different.
He's trying to say that he was talking about the auto industry and UAW.
And of course, remember, UAW is firmly with Biden, having had Biden walk with them during their strike.
And so I suppose he's trying to cleave off some of those people, which he may or may not be able to do.
But to try and link that when clearly what I'm hearing at least is that there was a comma, a pause, a switch to a different subject to some degree in that adult brain of his.
So I feel like he is trying to imply, or at least that's what everyone on the mainstream media people are trying to say, is that he's trying to imply that there will be, you know, blood in the streets if he doesn't win the election, or he wants blood in the streets.
So Nick, before I get into how I feel about this clip and the coverage and discourse around it, how would you describe the general tone of this podcast in response to Donald Trump over the past few years?
The general tone would be, you know, not positive.
Not positive.
Critical, I would even say.
Would you say that we have underplayed the threat of Donald Trump on this show?
If all the things that we've said about him and all the things we've implied even, I don't think you could get that far at all in terms of underpinnings.
Has any show and has any duo in media and political commentary told people more often that Donald Trump is an existential threat to the United States?
Has anybody even come all that close to us?
I don't, I don't think so.
I mean, I remember when you even first started doing it before I was even on board with that and thought, and I was on that thinking that's a little extreme, but within weeks it became clear that you were absolutely right.
So with all that being said, let me say this.
This whole thing.
Uh, is actually really indicative of how our media and our political class deals with everything.
He was talking about a bloodbath in terms of how the economy would work and what would happen to American cars if he wasn't elected.
Basically, he was saying that the automobile industry would suffer if he wasn't elected president.
Of course, everybody ran with that saying that he said that there would basically be blood in the streets if he wasn't elected.
As a result, this was a mischaracterization of what Trump was saying at the time.
But here's a couple of caveats with that, Nick.
Would it shock you to hear that Donald Trump has said explicitly before this moment that it would be a bloodbath if he wasn't elected president and he was speaking about blood in the streets?
Would that surprise you?
Shocked would be not the word I'd use.
It's definitely the opposite of that.
What if I told you that he said this in 2016 and in 2020?
I would say, of course.
What if I told you that he had said this earlier in 2024?
I would say I heard it too.
This is part of his vocabulary.
This is part of his rhetoric.
The fact that it's just coming up now is more about the fact that people don't pay attention to the shit that he says.
And it's just part of his normal vocabulary.
That's what sucks about this, is that this got all of the headlines.
In particular, Nick, do you know why?
Because there's not a lot in the headlines right now.
In the past couple of weeks, the biggest story has been what has happened to Kate Middleton.
And as a result, and right now we're getting ready to talk in a second about his financial trouble, but what happened here was this was cooked up in order to score people cheap retweets, cheap likes, page views, circulation, all that stuff.
Donald Trump was actually just using his regular vocabulary when he said this multiple times already, and it's because people haven't taken this thing seriously for a very long time.
I also want to point out that his entire vocabulary is constantly like this.
He talks about there not being another election.
He talks about American democracy being destroyed if he doesn't get elected.
He talks about the end of America.
He talks about the fact that the Second Amendment might be necessary to solve problems or people might go out in the streets and get angry and violent.
Well, guess what?
This is who he is.
He raises the temperature constantly to the point where he's talking about the automobile industry.
He's talking about a bloodbath.
That is his rhetoric.
That is how he talks about things.
That's what he does to the environment.
It just so happens in this case that it was just rhetoric that he usually uses in a way that other people hadn't heard before.
Wait, is Kate Middleton okay?
Well, we don't know.
Do you not... Wait, time out.
...anything about it, but... You don't know... You don't... Wait, you don't... What?
You don't know anything about this?
I really... I think I was aware that somebody said something.
Maybe she was not feeling well.
I don't know.
I don't know anything.
She hasn't been... She hasn't been seen in months, and there's been, like, weird doctored photos, and strange things are happening.
It's been, like, one of the most populated things on social media.
That's wild.
Oh, wow.
I've been completely... Well, okay.
But did you see what I did there?
So you dropped the Kate Middleton thing, the little line, meaning nothing, and your whole point, which went on for another minute or two.
And now you're off on the rabbit trail.
Yeah, and that's what happens, right?
And now I don't remember anything you said about Trump just now.
The entire point is that Donald Trump has done this for eight years.
And not only has he said that there will be a bloodbath, Nick, there has been blood.
People have died.
People have been, uh, people have been assaulted.
People have been murdered.
People have been attacked.
There's been bombs.
There have been multiple assassination attempts.
There's been assaults.
There's been an, I mean, people died during his coup attempt.
I mean, like, this is nothing new.
This is simply the same thing and it just keeps getting worse.
There's been defamation?
Yes, absolutely.
And the entire point of it is that, and by the way, no one listening to this show, I mean, they heard this and they're like, yeah, this is old news.
Of course it's old news.
It's old news because it's been going on and people don't want to pay attention to it.
And they're waking up and they're like, oh, I think there's something wrong with this Donald Trump guy.
Well, no shit there's something wrong with this Donald Trump guy.
There's something really wrong with this Donald Trump guy.
Are those the people that must be undecided at this point in 2024?
I think those are the people who have been decided, but they don't know why they've been decided.
You know what I mean?
Like, it's like people who found out suddenly that global warming is a problem, and they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you're telling me that the Earth is heating up and that there's, like, rising tides?
Like, somebody needs to do something about this.
And that's what this is.
It is just the most, like, I don't know, it's one of the best examples of, like, the amnesiac culture that we have.
It's incredible to me.
Yeah, I mean, now you're reminding me of like, you know, we keep seeing people.
And by the way, there must be an ethical issue with the people that go with the camera and the mic and they go to Trump rallies and they interview knowing that they're going to, you know, sort of set the interviewee up for sounding problematic, right?
And they love it and they get all the interaction.
And I kind of just end up feeling sad for a lot of that those times because... Sure.
You know, you can see that they all have a lot of passion, right, about Trump.
They all feel very strongly about wanting to vote for him.
But you try and get one sentence deeper into the why's and the where's and the thought process, and it really devolves very quickly.
And it is sad.
It's sad to me.
It's not, I'm not angry.
I'm not frustrated.
I just, I just feel a sense of sadness, but also probably just the, it's futile to think that, you know, you're ever going to try to reach anybody like that because of where they've gotten and how they process these things.
I feel infinitely sad about the state of America in general when it comes to this stuff.
I can't tell you how many segments we've done where we've looked at, like, the terminally confused American voter.
They have no idea what they're talking about.
Everything is contradiction, you know.
It just continually goes down these roads where, like, it has nothing to do with, like, actual objective reality.
People have little grasp on this stuff.
It makes me sad in general.
And quite frankly, one of the things that makes me sad but also pissed off, Nick, is watching stuff like this unfurl.
Yes, you should take it seriously that a presidential candidate says bloodbath in every speech that he gives and is saying that immigrants aren't people.
Nick, we've heard that before!
We've heard him say before that immigrants aren't people, that they're animals, they're bad hombres, whatever it is that he wants to call them.
Like he's been calling them poison and they're gonna poison the blood since he came around.
Like, it makes me so sad that we have an actual threat in this country and it's being treated like, like, like, I don't know, what's happening to Kate Middleton?
You know what I mean?
Like celebrity gossip, like it's something to sort of be tuned in on every now and then, but not really pay that much attention to.
It's really sad to me.
Well, the dichotomy here would be something like, okay, Joe Biden used the term illegal in his State of the Union address as an off-the-cuff, off-the-script comment.
And within, what, like two days, he came out and he apologized, right?
He understood, you know, I'm not supposed to... By the way, tip of the cap!
Put your hand up, take accountability.
I'm glad that he apologized.
Yeah.
Listen, we can give him that same estimation of, like, people at a certain, you know, era, at a certain, you know, age.
Just that's how they talk.
They don't necessarily mean nefarious things about it.
But whatever, he came out, he said, I'm sorry, whatever, took a lot of flack from the right for doing that, which is ridiculous.
But you hear Trump when he talks about the people being animals who are coming to this country.
He tells you that he's not supposed to speak like that, and then speaks like that.
So it tells you a couple different things, that A, he listens, he hears all the criticism, he knows the things, he knows that it's a really problematic term or ideology to view people that way, and then he basks in the glory of then turning people on to that.
And that's the biggest issue.
And then when you speak, and speaking of the people that are at his rallies and they ask, why don't you like Biden?
He's a pedophile.
He's the biggest liar.
He's the biggest crook.
He's the biggest, you know, he's completely compromised.
All these things that Trump is, right?
They just heap it on someone like Biden who is, you know, willing to admit mistakes, willing to sort of say, I'm sorry for that.
I don't want to, you know, offend people for using derogatory terms.
And it's like, but it's all the same playing field now.
Well, I agree that that was good of Biden to put his hand up for accountability on that one and correct himself.
On the other hand, I mean, the stubbornness is legendary.
I mean, he was down at a fundraiser being told that Michigan and Georgia was pissed off at him about not just Gaza, but also voting rights, and he screamed at him.
So, I mean, it's a little bit of this, a little bit of that.
To continue with the Trump story, Nick, is this thing, and by the way, the rhetoric's only going to get worse as his life gets worse.
That's the whole point.
We're in March.
This election, last I checked, is until November.
It's going to get worse.
His economic situation has gotten much, much worse as he has been unable to find the bond for his $450 million-plus judgment in New York.
He's been turned down by over 30 companies in terms of trying to get that bond.
Now New York State is discussing seizing his assets, which will be an absolute shitshow.
A state seizing his assets while also going through a presidential election.
The good news, Nick, is that he's bringing in old buddy, friend of the pod, Paul Manafort, to take care of the Republican National Convention this summer.
I'm just saying for no reason whatsoever, and not that this is at all linked to this story, but Paul Manafort, according to my notes, is a convicted felon for fraud and money laundering.
I don't know what that has to do with any of this, but moving forward.
Man, listen, the articles written about his inability to get the bond doesn't mention Manafort at all.
You can do a search for his name.
So whatever you're saying, man, can't possibly be related because it's not being reported that way.
If you want to try and make crazy connections, what else are you going to do, Jared?
You're going to try and make it sound like Are you gonna start in with this stuff that Donald Trump has concerning ties to oligarchs and criminals in Russia?
Is that what this is?
Because if that's what- I'm just gonna have to step away.
That is just wild shit.
Yes, here it comes.
But, I mean, listen, if I wanted to follow that train of thought, of which I can easily do because I have a predilection for some versions of conspiracy- Well, also, Nick, because you follow reality.
I follow reality, yes.
And I can parse the different conspiracies and what are the good ones.
So he needs a lot of money.
Manafort's the guy who's got all the connections to all the Russian money they want to launder.
So they can kind of watch each other's backs, I suppose, in a disgusting image that I really wish I hadn't said.
But I suppose that is where you're going with this.
Somehow he will all of a sudden have the $435 million he needs for the bond.
And it won't be an insurance company backing this.
It'll be some infusion of cash he found.
Somebody just absolutely swimming in an ocean of blood money.
I also love, by the way, because this is how this whole thing works, I love that Jared Kushner, who's already cashed in on God knows how many billions of dollars of deals, is now going ahead and carrying out a deal in Serbia that Trump wanted to do himself just because he got an inkling.
It has nothing to do with him doing it on behalf of A former president who has basically been enjoying legal bribery.
It's so gross, Nick, and it's so, so bad.
And this thing, I mean, the situation is getting worse, but at the same time, I don't even think he's actually going to be held accountable in pretty much any way possible because the system's not going to do it.
And you can get money to this guy because there's a real possibility he not only is the former president of the United States, who has a ton of national secrets, That he knows that he's probably, well, allegedly already sold off and handed out.
But like, he's right now, if not the frontrunner, he's a toss-up to be the next President of the United States.
No one's going to let him, like, twist on the line.
No.
I think it's, you know, the downfall of journalism as well, right?
Like, there's just a lack of accountability across the board here.
I'm trying to look for the tweet I had found earlier because it's almost like everybody's in on this.
Right?
I feel like everybody across the politics on both sides is sort of in on what, you know, behind the curtain of what, how corrupt all these things can be.
And so it's just frustrating, you know, because we also feel that way.
And it used to be kind of a joke.
Oh, it's all politicians are crooked, whatever.
But it's, it sort of makes it okay, then.
Well, you know, here's the thing.
We talk about it because we have nothing to lose.
And let's be very frank about that.
I don't think people understand it.
There aren't that many journalists and voices out there who talk about this shit and put two and two together to equal four because they want to be seen as quote-unquote respectable.
They want to get hired to places like the New York Times.
They want to get hired into podcast networks or whatever.
The reason why we're not afraid to actually put together the numbers that equal the number is because there's no consequence for it.
Like, we don't need to go.
I'm sorry.
We're going to Henderson, Nevada for a podcast stand-up jam.
Like, we're not going to like a Washington D.C.
Beltway, you know, drink after party.
I'm not interested in that.
I don't know about you.
You live in Los Angeles.
You might be interested in a soiree like that.
I can't drink whiskey, so.
Well, it wouldn't have to be whiskey.
You could have a Cosmo.
What would you drink if you were in a fancy cocktail party?
Oh, red wine.
Okay, well, I mean, it's not a cocktail, but you'd be fine.
But you don't want to hobnob with Mitch McConnell.
No, I don't.
Please don't make me do it.
That's what I'm saying!
The people who don't want to talk about this and actually just connect the dots the way that they are obviously there, they don't want to get those invites taken away, Nick.
That's the deal.
Maybe I do want to do that, though.
I don't know.
Do I want to be, like, would it be a chance to, like, actually talk to Mitch McConnell and, like, Somehow, figure something out about him and maybe make a point to him.
That's not what happened.
Do you think that Mitch McConnell takes his barrier down?
I mean, that man's not even, like, functioning at this point.
Alright, fair enough.
I don't know.
But no, it's all bullshit.
They're all, like, continuing to play the game.
Which, by the way, now that I'm looking at the notes in our show, that's like the through line on this thing.
Oh, well, I wanted to share one thing is, you know, when we talked about Boeing last week, I kind of forgot somehow this passed my mind.
But, you know, there's a tweet that came out from a reporter where Congressman William Keating appears to have sold Boeing stock on February 28th when the DOJ announced it was investigating him on the 29th.
Um, that happens all the time as well, right?
And I just kind of felt like, um, how would he have known to sell a whole shitload of Boeing stock before it was announced that they're going to be investigated?
Listen, I'm going to ruffle feathers.
I mean, that's how Nancy Pelosi has basically made her modern fortune.
You know what I mean?
Like that, that, that, that's how that whole thing works.
Like it should be completely and utterly illegal, but these people are playing a game and we're not invited to that game.
Just to make it clear, it is legal what he did.
Well, I mean, sure.
I suppose.
Shouldn't be.
But, like, everybody knows that Trump is going to get anything that he ends up paying.
He's not paying.
He's going to steal it from the Republican National Convention.
He's going to fleece his supporters.
And on top of that, he's going to use someone like a Paul Manafort or a Gobachwain to get God knows how much blood money and dirt money, basically, from Europe.
Is what's going to happen.
He's going to get it from Russia, the dirty parts of Ukraine, or wherever else he can get it.
And probably the Saudis while we're at it.
Let's get into, I really hate to do this, but let's get into the Trump's mind for a second here because I'm kind of curious how he got to the point where, okay, Paul Manafort, we know all of his transgressions.
Did he serve prison time recently?
Sort of.
Sort of, yes.
Has he been embroiled in the most ridiculous scandal and like tainted beyond belief?
Yeah.
He was part of one of the largest scandals in American history that the media actually covered and then apologized for, more or less.
Yeah, and he was exonerated.
He got a pardon, right?
Trump pardoned him.
No, he got out because of COVID.
Ah, okay.
So here's the point.
Like, that's a lot of baggage, right?
A lot of baggage around him that he's carrying around, barely, he couldn't... They don't care!
And all the people that they could figure out, like, maybe to do back channels of Russia or whatever to get more money, like, why?
Why does it have to be this guy?
Like, they're just inviting it again and all the scrutiny and all the, you know, you know that the CIA and the FBI are probably, like, perked up a little bit in their chairs as soon as they realize he's gonna be back.
I had a conversation.
It was back in 2016, Nick.
And it was when Manafort took over Trump's campaign.
And I was talking to one of my old media acquaintances.
And, you know, they didn't think much of Manafort taking over the campaign.
Manafort hadn't played a major role since, like, Gerald Ford.
You know, like he had no idea what was going on and suddenly he was in charge of like a presidential campaign, a real one.
And I just said, why would he be in charge?
And the person just kind of like looked at me and they were like, I don't have an answer for that other than what the obvious answer is.
Which is that he was a direct link to Russia and a money man between the blood money of Russia, Ukraine, and those parts of Europe, and Donald Trump's entire operation.
That was it!
Everybody knew it!
No one reported it!
Then he got caught with all of his shit from Ukraine and his money laundering, and nobody connected the dots, Nick!
They had the entire story that he was running a go-between, basically, from Russia to the Trump campaign, and nobody really wanted to talk about it, because everyone's in denial about what's been going on.
And it's very obvious how this whole thing has worked.
And they don't care!
They'll bring him back.
They'll run it back.
They're not worried about it.
Do you think that, you know, the Russia connection to Trump seemed to be pretty strong before Manafort became involved in the campaign.
So do you think that it was Russia that said, you put in him, you put Manafort in?
Is that the Russian?
That's something.
I thought that was pretty good.
So, you know, do you think that they, they, they made, you know, cause obviously they, you know, Trump needs all their money anyway, when he was helping them water their money before 2016.
So do you think that they just, they installed Manafort because they needed all the data for the elections and all that kind of stuff?
No, I think it's a little bit of column A, a little bit of column B. Nobody wanted to work with Trump.
Manafort came in and said, I'll do this for free.
Trump's like, the price is right.
And he's like, by the way, I've also got some other things I could do for you.
And I think those were all put in the same sort of place.
All right, because it's just helping me wrap my head around how we get back again to hear if it's not like Putin or whoever is saying, OK, you know, people really, truly still want to believe that Vladimir Putin is a puppet master who's controlling Donald Trump.
That's not how this stuff works.
They're on the same team.
They're on the same wavelength.
Putin is doing all this stuff.
They're doing all this stuff over there.
It's like a pack and a candidate.
You know what I mean?
They don't have all that much direct communication.
It's not like the pee tape is out there, like everybody was hoping for, for a very long time.
Everybody wants it to be like movie of the week or movie of the month, but it's still treasonous activity.
It's still that that's the whole point of it, which is unfortunately what we've missed out on.
Speaking of people who have absolutely no scruples whatsoever, Nick, a report has come out that a confidential classified contract has been put in place between the United States government and Elon Musk and his SpaceX program to pay 1.8 billion dollars.
That's right.
Be with a billion.
1.8 billion dollars.
So that Elon Musk and SpaceX will create a vast spy satellite system, a new age, top of the line, almost indescribable spy satellite system, supposedly to give the United States an edge.
According to one insider in the project, quote, no one can hide.
from this project.
Nick, I want to talk about this and its implications and sort of put this into context for other people.
Am I wrong?
Like, did I suffer like some sort of an injury?
Isn't Elon Musk like basically at this point an avowed anti-Semite who is spreading conspiracy theories including white replacement theory and trying to get things like birth control maybe legal?
Am I wrong here?
No, you're not wrong.
Oh, okay.
And by the way, when you say no one can hide, I think what you mean is, like, this satellite system will be able to see everybody anywhere they go, is what you're saying.
Yes.
Yeah, it's, you know, I've been waiting for Real Genius to finally become a real, you know, documentary, and here we are, because again, how far-fetched would it be to, okay, hey, can one of these satellites, you know, shoot a laser beam in a direct target and kill somebody for us?
That'd be nice, it'd save us some time.
Um, you know, uh, but the other more, the more pressing problem to me is what you said as far as, um, the connection that Musk has to Russia is, is, is concerning to me.
Who he has to everybody.
China, to the Saudis, to, to Russia, you name it.
And he's already been accused of, you know, intervening to some degree in the Russia conflict with Ukraine.
Can you put that into context for people, what he has already done with his Starlink satellites?
Yeah, well, he literally saved the third fleet of the Russian whatever, I don't know what it's called, because the UK was about to destroy it and, you know, they're all like Pearl Harbor or whatever, and he turned off the Starlink.
Wait, Nick, when you say it like that, it doesn't sound good.
It doesn't, it's not good, Bob.
So the guy, the guy who literally, and by the way, is it the position of the United States that Ukraine should win their war against Russia?
Yes.
Okay.
And so the main defense contractor that the United, well, I mean the one main individual that they rely on, are you telling me that he solely without any sort of input from anybody else, that he made a decision that he was going to turn off his satellites in order to run counter to the United States military position?
I'm telling you that.
Wait, did that happen before any of this?
Yes!
Yes, and more!
That's incredible when you say it out loud.
Incredible.
And so, you know, and he kind of has wavered back and forth.
And then he did, you know, he has helped Ukraine.
But again, it's only because the United States has given him billions more dollars for that, you know, to get that contract done.
So he'll do okay.
I'll help them out too, if you give me enough money.
And here we are with this.
It's such a, we're talking about spy satellites.
Now, you know, I don't know, this must be the residual of 9-11, right?
And the Patriot Act and the Maybe I don't know if we care anymore, but there's a certain sense of, you know, well, everyone sees what we're doing anyway, you know, and like, you know, even our wireless routers are being monitored by China or whatever, right?
So it's like at this point, I don't know if anybody still has that same, you know, revulsion to spying on you and being too much in your business.
I hope that wish they should.
They should still feel bad about that.
The one thing I said, you know, when he took over Twitter and obviously turned it into a right wing hate conspiracy machine, is that he then not only had access to people's DMs, he also had access to their cookies.
and also the tracking of where they went online.
Those who don't think about it very much, the internet is the unconscious made conscious.
It's what you think about, what you're thinking about things.
It's basically a map of your thoughts, you know, put into a digital space.
Because of the cookies of a website, they probably have access to all of that.
Now all of a sudden, we're talking about handing this over to a guy who's basically a supervillain at this point.
Like, like, like an absolute creep of a white supremacist conspiracy theorist.
Also, Nick, you know what I didn't even bring up?
Like, how often now he's attacking the literal definition of democracy.
How we probably shouldn't have votes the way that we used to have it.
Also, DEI?
Like, going after, like, minorities and saying that they're not as smart and or, you know, as talented as other people and they're only being chosen?
You know, racism?
Uh, and misogyny, for that matter.
This guy is continuing to be shoveled, and for those who think this is the first time, SpaceX has received over $15 billion, with a B, dollars from the United States because we needed to privatize everything, and as a result, we're relying on this space idiot to take over our entire space program.
We have made Elon Musk a load-bearing wall in the administrative state.
It doesn't matter what he says.
It doesn't even begin to matter what he says, what his political positions are, any of it.
And you are literally asking this person, who spreads conspiracy theories, who is an anti-democratic person, who is in bed with the Chinese, with the Saudis, with the Russians, and God knows who, Nick.
God knows who.
This is what happens in late-stage privatization, is the United States government relies on somebody like this.
It doesn't matter what they do, what they say, they have to rely on the technology because they don't have it.
And there are multiple tech companies and individuals that they have to do this with.
It literally doesn't matter because they will just absolutely betray every principle that supposedly they hold in order to gain more power in what they think is the geopolitical game.
Well, are we still talking about Trump?
I mean, sorry, geez, about Musk, and can we keep fleshing out who he is?
Is that the section of the show?
Sure!
An awful person, by the way.
I mean, listen, I watched chunks of the Don Lemon interview with him, so you didn't have to.
But what was illuminating to me was that when Don Lemon confronted him with so much hate speech on his platform, Um, he says, aren't you concerned about this?
Shouldn't this all be taken down?
And, you know, the way his, uh, Musk's thought process goes, he gets kind of intractable very quickly and kind of doesn't, can't get beyond, like, whatever the sentence is that's repeating in his head.
He goes, so he thinks that moderation, and I don't mean by moderation like eating less, I mean moderation like, you know, moderating your comments section, um, is, is basically censorship, right?
He can't get beyond that notion.
But Lemon's like, well, you have rules on your platform that that says you cannot have hate speech.
And he shows him what, you know, what's on there.
And it's some of the most awful anti-Semitic images you can imagine.
And he kind of doesn't want to look at it and kind of just says, well, you know, who's to decide what is hate speech or not?
It's censorship and you want censorship.
Oh, then he likes to get clever by trying to turn it on to Lemon and say, well, you want censorship and I want free speech.
The free speech thing, you know what, I guess it's the first two amendments are really a fucking problem for us now because free speech ends up encompassing everything.
Whether it's misinformation or, or, or information that would kill you and your health.
Uh, and then the second amendment is the other one where they think that they all deserve guns.
You mix those two things together.
I don't think that they thought about it when they were trying to get them ratified, but the first and second amendments are fucking problem and have been so bastardized and so manipulated here.
A, we should rewrite them anyway because they're not clear anymore what it means, and B, it's insane the intellectual dishonesty the lengths they'll go to to just manipulate those two things.
It's really horrible.
Well, first of all, I want to point out a little bit of context about the Don Lemon thing.
For people who don't know, Don Lemon, who aspired from CNN, was basically given a Tucker Carlson, not as big as Tucker Carlson, but a sweetheart deal from Elon Musk to do a show on Twitter, X, whatever.
He was canceled before the first episode aired because he absolutely beat the brakes off of Elon Musk.
I mean, like, Don Lemon did a journalism.
And Elon Musk did not want to journalism.
For those who don't follow it, and I follow it, unfortunately, closely, the people like your Tucker Carlson, your Alex Jones, your Andrew Tate, all the just the worst of the worst, Nick, they, I mean, the bootlicking factory that they've put together for Elon Musk is absolutely incredible.
And Don Lemon destroyed him in one single interview and was canceled.
I take a little pleasure of watching the right because I for some reason my feed of course maybe everyone's like this on X now or on Twitter is just right-wing propaganda it's all right and so but it's why I do take pleasure I'm like okay when they say look how Musk owns Don Lemon with this little clip and then you watch it you're like geez he he was Lemon actually is really good and Musk didn't answer the question and he was evasive and he was you know defensive but like I They don't see it that way.
I guess it's their reality.
They've colored it that way, and there's nothing that will penetrate what they feel, but it's like, you know, I don't know.
They're in a completely alternate reality at this point.
And by the way, Musk is so paper-thin and incompetent, it's incredible.
And more about that in the second or next segment.
Nick, on the point of the First Amendment, I just have to say, the problem isn't the First Amendment.
The First Amendment is one of the best things that our founders ever possibly did.
Theoretically, you should be able to, up to a certain point, be able to say whatever you want.
The problem is that because neoliberalism has created the environment that we have, that we have come to associate economic consequences with infringements on free speech.
The idea that you should be able to say anything you want without any sort of an economic consequence, that's wild.
That you shouldn't be cancelled, that people shouldn't boycott you, that they shouldn't do whatever.
What the right is actually wanting to do, and they're not serious about free speech, what they're saying when they want free speech is they want to rewire the economic and cultural and political systems in order to make it to where it's okay for them to say anything they want and nobody can punish them for it.
So as a result, the First Amendment isn't even what we're discussing anymore.
What we're talking about now are a bunch of interlocking, complicated socioeconomic factors.
And that actually has nothing to do with free speech, you know?
Like, what they're actually talking about at this point is an absolute load of bullshit.
Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, there's got to be a component as well of just humanity that's lacking here.
You know, as Levin will even say, it's like, don't you understand that this causes when we see the manifestos of violent perpetrators of horrible crimes, they reference these memes and these pictures and these social media stuff.
The problem is that Don Lemon tried to meet him in good faith.
He tried to say, oh, I thought you cared about these things.
He doesn't care about these.
He hasn't cared about free speech at any given point.
And by the way, here's the thing.
I think Don Lemon has his moments.
I don't think he's ready to have a big giant theoretical in the weeds conversation with Elon Musk.
Because in order to talk to Elon Musk and gain anything from it, you have to have a conversation about this stuff.
He doesn't want free speech.
He wants to change society, and he wants to feel better.
And, by the way, one of the reasons, Nick, why he wants to change society is what we have to talk about next.
And once again, one of the greatest moments in the history of the Muckrake Podcast, and I'll reference it in a second when it comes to Elon Musk.
Sam Bankman-Fried, who of course has been, speaking of Paul Manafort, he's been found guilty of defrauding his investors with his FTX Bitcoin scheme.
He has been found guilty.
There's been a sentencing memo that has come out with a bunch of findings in order to influencing that sentencing.
And Nick, within This this document there have been notes from Sam Bankman freed have been found a reminder that he is famously one of the top donors for the Democrats or has been that based on the scandal that was erupting around the collapse of FTX and this crime is being discovered.
He was Considering, quote, going on Tucker Carlson and coming out as a Republican and coming out against the woke agenda.
This, I think, is really telling of a lot of different things, but I want to remind people of one of the best moments in McCraig podcast history, which was when we found out that Elon Musk had been accused of a bunch of sexual improprieties.
And what did you say?
You said immediately, I bet in the next couple of days he comes out as anti-woke.
And by the way, Before the show had even published, it happened.
And I mean, we had gotten done taping, I had gone to have a drink and a bite at a bar, and I had to come back and do like an emergency podcast update because you had nailed it so dead to the wall.
And here we have it again because They, these guys, Bankman Freed, Elon Musk, all these people, they understand the political environment really, really well.
And they understand that it really doesn't matter what you believe or what you want.
What matters is playing a certain part at this point.
Right.
Well, I think what matters is if you embrace the anti-woke side and the right wing side of things, you can then say that whatever's reality is, is lies.
Well, real fast.
Bankman Freed and Elon Musk were happy liberals for a long time.
Sam Bankman Freed was the number one donor of the Democrats.
By the way, everybody, he gave just as much to Republicans, which we'll get to later.
Elon Musk was the darling of liberals, right?
Logic and technology are gonna save the day.
And what are the advantages of going quote-unquote anti-woke next?
Yeah, you basically get to then, in a public way and in a way where you can elicit sympathy, you can then just unleash any amount of lies you want about the whole system.
And because you're using the certain keywords, that section of the country just comes out and is behind you immediately.
And we could do that as well, Jared.
We could start doing that tomorrow.
And probably, could we have a bigger audience if we did that?
Maybe?
Okay, so let's go ahead and talk about this.
I think about this a lot, which is if I, if I reached out to like, let's say an Alex Jones, right?
And I, and I reached out to Alex Jones and I said, Hey, I know that I'm like a leftist fire brand.
I do all this stuff.
I'm like out there debunking conspiracy theories.
I need to tell you the truth about something.
I've seen the light and you wouldn't believe the conversations I've had.
Would I be on, would I be on Infowars within 24 hours?
Yeah, I think you would.
Would I be on Fox News probably within 48 hours?
Yeah, they would love that.
They would love that shit, man!
They would be so ready to go!
These are decisions that people are making from a purely cynical background.
And you're right.
Saying that you're anti-woke or coming out as a Republican basically says the media doesn't have shit on me.
And everybody who's going to buy your product or support you, they don't care.
They don't care if you assaulted someone.
They don't care if you abused somebody.
They don't care if you, like, you know, ripped a bunch of people off.
In fact, they'll celebrate it!
Andrew Tate is under investigation for human trafficking, Nick!
Human trafficking, which is what all these people are supposed to care about, but they don't care.
It's professional wrestling.
What this is for Sam Bankman Freed, he was thinking about a heel turn.
He was thinking about becoming a bad guy, and people love a bad guy on that side of the road, and that's all that matters.
I mean, listen, I only feel bad in some respects because this is not supposed to have been leaked.
This is, I think, a mistake by the lawyers, right?
Out of discovery, this document got out there.
And, you know, if I were spitballing, you know, and looking at my future thinking, I'm going to spend 50 years in jail now.
Let's spitball here and figure out what can I do to get out of this.
I'd be writing all sorts of crazy shit on that list.
And so I kind of feel bad because it's like that's sort of what happened here.
But again, that isn't the point either.
The point is what you said is that this is this is the the reveal like this is what you would do and that would it probably have been if the goal was to try and get more public sympathy and perhaps muck up the whole process.
That was exactly what you would need to do.
And I guess the only credit to him is that he didn't do that.
I don't know why I kept him from doing it, but Nick, while we're on the subject, because it wouldn't be the McCrae Podcast if we didn't bring it up, man, it's bullshit that the Democrats lifted this guy up as a hero for so long.
You had Bill Clinton and Tony Blair sitting with this guy in cargo shorts being like, how do you do it, man?
In the exact same way that they kept making googly eyes at Zuckerberg and Elon Musk.
And listen, people need to remember this shit.
These people were raised up on high by the Democrats because they wanted to believe that they were on their side and the Silicon Valley people were on their side.
And all they did is they gave them the keys to the government, as we talked about with Elon Musk a second ago, They made them indispensable.
They made them multi, multi, multi-historical billionaires.
And in the process, all they did was just, like, raise up on high a bunch of incompetent people who are not just cynical, but sociopathic in their political and cultural dealings.
Well, here's an interesting problem, right?
Because, you know, Bankruptcy was saying all the right things.
He sounded very progressive.
He was giving a lot of money that, you know, I guess he didn't have to the cause.
Are they supposed to vet?
I guess when you get to a certain level of political power, you do, right?
You can't afford to go to, like, you shouldn't be going to dinner with, like, a white supremacist, for instance, right?
You shouldn't be doing that.
Or, Nick, if you'll acknowledge me for just a second, Bill Clinton, who ends up on a stage with Sam Bankman Freed, is the same Bill Clinton who ends up on a flight with Jeffrey Epstein.
And I'm sorry, but let's be very clear about this.
One, you shouldn't be on a flight with Jeffrey Epstein.
Two, the best defense you have is that Bill Clinton didn't know about it.
Shouldn't he know?
This was an open secret in Washington D.C.
and New York City.
So as a result, yes, you should research these people before you're appearing in public with Tony Blair!
Or before you end up on the Lolita Express.
Like, yes, you should know better than this.
Fair enough.
So like, the aid would be like, you know, this guy is really great, he seems great, but we are, we do hear a lot of whispers that this is probably a pyramid scheme, so maybe you should pass on appearing with him and yadda yadda.
Right.
That's what they had the people there for.
So, uh, look how many people got roped into the pyramid scheme of crypto.
And I don't just mean people buying Bitcoin or whatever.
I'm talking about like big name celebrities and actors and athletes and politicians who were doing commercials for it, who were talking about it.
Like it was the future, like those people, shouldn't they have known better?
No, they were getting paid in the same way.
No, Nick, we've talked about, like, the Saudis.
How do they keep getting people when they're cold-blooded killers, when they're just absolute psychopaths?
How do they keep getting people to, like, do what they want them to do?
They just flood them with cash.
And everybody is for sale at that point.
I mean, it really shows, like, the rotten moral core of all this stuff.
I do feel compelled to tell you that when Bitcoin first, like around 2021, everyone's like, this is a sham, whatever.
And it went down.
If you had held on to your Bitcoin until today.
Good luck, everyone.
Yeah.
Good luck.
Good luck.
I have enjoyed sitting at a roulette wheel myself every now and then, as I've talked about on this.
I played crafts, by the way.
Not long ago.
For the first time ever.
Okay.
Well, I mean, we're going to Vegas.
Maybe we could, maybe I mean, I could now almost do it and not be so completely brain-frozen because I was, it was so, have you ever played Crafts before?
No, no interest.
It's like, it's, it's, it's overwhelming.
Nick, I about said I'm neurodivergent, but I think anyone who's paid attention to the show knows that you and I are both neurodivergent.
So it's overwhelming for me.
That's my particular type of neurodivergent.
Well, I mean, the pressure because everyone's like they have their own money on whatever and you have to roll and you have to get the dice to hit the wall all the way on the other side.
And I was really worried I was going to throw it and go off the table.
And my my best friend next to me didn't tell me what he should have earlier was like, hey, it's OK if it goes off the table.
People do it all the time.
Oh, yeah.
I was like getting stuck in between.
I wasn't rolling all the way.
And then the guy who was running the pits like, sir, you must throw it.
And I was losing my mind.
I couldn't handle money and whatever.
So I did not like it.
That was the problem.
But it was probably as Well, how about this?
In Vegas, you and I, maybe we'll bet on a basketball game.
I think that's... We could do that.
Well, listen, blackjack's fun.
Yeah, we can look into blackjack.
From something lighthearted, including just the buffoonery of all this stuff, something very, very serious that we need to talk about, Haiti is descending into chaos, unfortunately.
Prime Minister Ariel Henry has resigned as chaos has just grown and grown and grown.
Currently, gangs and militias and warlords are battling over power in the streets.
It's widespread violence, a lot of tragedy.
Already, it appears that this is going to turn into a situation that could have major ramifications for American politics, including the 2024 election, in which refugees from the violence might come to the United States.
The United States might have to make some decisions about what it's going to do about this situation.
Um, what, what are your initial thoughts about this?
Because I want to talk about the historical context and what I see coming down the road.
I mean, I, my mind tends to drift on these things.
It's like, okay, what is the solution?
How would you ever get this back under, you know, some sort of control?
And I don't, I don't know how you would do this because the circumstances for which the last guy in charge got killed was insane.
Uh, and, and felt like there was all sorts of weird collusion across other countries.
And it's just very, very, like, it could be a movie.
Um, and it, it really is, um, I, I don't know, like, like, even like, remember when in New York, the subways, when they, they wanted to put the National Guard in the subways, or they were doing that because it was big.
And by the way, we subsequently saw something, an absolute horrible, horrific tragedy happened after that.
Um, it's like, it's something you're like, listen, if whatever you can do to figure out to get like some version of order restored and some safety for innocent people, but I don't know if you mentioned this, but like they're breaking in all the prisons and getting people in there, you know, breaking them out.
I mean, to be, to be frank, that's what happens when a regime falls is you, you, you go in and release the people from prison.
So it's it's it's gonna be something military and I don't I don't I can't even understand how that would be and who's gonna contribute to do this but uh it's it is just a awful and I my heart goes out to everybody who lives there who is just trying to live their lives.
Yeah, before we get into the modern context, I want to give it a little bit of historical background.
Haiti is a white supremacist dream in terms of how it's treated.
It's treated as like, look what happens when black people are in power.
You know, like, oh, it's so sad and so tragic.
And as a result, the United States has gone in and plundered them multiple times, taken over.
I mean, I can't imagine the United States in an election year sending troops into Haiti.
I have a really hard time believing that's going to happen.
But I mean, stranger things have happened, and we'll talk about the consequences later.
That white supremacist, like, framing, though, is completely and utterly wrong.
They want to believe that either Haiti is somehow or another racially or culturally inferior.
There's even some evangelicals that believe that Haiti's troubles has originated from a deal with the devil that took place, you know, back in the 18th century.
But what actually has happened with Haiti?
And for people who don't know, Haiti won its independence back in the early, early 19th century with the Haitian Revolution.
This happened after the French Revolution, and the Haitians said, hey, the French are saying that all men are created equal and there should be, you know, like more power to the people.
They believed them.
And so as a result, they overthrew their slavers.
And then they had to fight a war against Napoleonic France.
Are you ready for this, Nick?
Mm-hmm.
They won.
Yeah.
Then they had to fight Spain.
Then they had to fight the United Kingdom.
And they won.
Somehow or another, they were able to manage to win their independence against the largest powers of Western civilization, these so-called, like, white saviors.
They defeated each of them and ended up getting their independence.
But guess what?
France came along with the entire united mind of the world and said, hey, that's great.
You guys are free now.
You're going to have to pay for yourselves.
So for years and years and years and years, they had to pay unfair reparations that wounded and destroyed their entire economy.
And then we kept going in and messing with them because our banks and corporations wanted to exploit them.
And what did we do, Nick?
Like other nations in the Global South that we now blame for their refugees and their immigrants, we kept them unstable and we kept them under our control and our thumb.
So now we've reached another point with this.
Here's the problem, Nick.
The things that happen in Haiti have a weird effect on America, and they always have.
Immediately after the Haitian Revolution, the United States government was like, what are we going to do about this, like, you know, Black-led independent state nearby?
George Washington was incredibly racist against them.
The Federalists were as well.
There was also a fear among Southern slavers that the revolution was going to spread to the South.
That is one of the reasons that they were so paranoid about not just slave uprisings, but also the abolition movement.
So as a result, almost like the moon affects the tides, Haiti affects America and the white supremacist sort of underpinnings of all this stuff.
There's a real possibility we're going to have to have a lot of refugees come over from this.
This is going to become one of the topic du jours of Fox News, Donald Trump, the Republican Party.
If this continues, this is going to become one of the major conversations and white fear mongerings of this entire thing.
I think this could be the beginning of a very, very large story going forward, and I don't know what's going to happen.
I'm with you.
I wish peace would settle in and they could have something of domestic tranquility, but we haven't given them the possibility for that so far.
Right.
And you can easily see Biden's advisors saying, listen, it's an election year.
We do not want to get involved in this at all.
We'll figure it out after we win.
But the humanitarian thing to do would be an international coalition of several countries go in there as peacekeeping force and try and get order and try and get things back in working condition there.
ASAP, right?
And limit the violence and limit all the horrible things that are going to happen there.
Uh, but yeah, I don't, I don't have any faith that that will happen at all.
Um, and we, you know, immigration is just another horrible, um, issue here that people want to use whatever their own nefarious means.
You know, and I like, you know, the, the notion of the debt that they were saddled with over multiple decades from France, it's just like you'd see from descendants of slaves here, you know, who, The crippling debt that they were placed under after becoming free after the Civil War has lasted until now.
It was economic subjugation is what it absolutely was.
Same way like you were freed from slavery and as a result you had Jim Crow.
Or you had sheriffs that suddenly sprouted up and started arresting people and made them slaves again anyway.
Made them servants, yeah.
It's a really awful situation.
It's tragic the way that Haiti has been positioned and treated for all these, not just years, I mean now centuries.
It's absolutely awful.
On one hand, it would be great if this thing got itself figured out and people could live in safety, but also if it continues, It's going to end up becoming like a major, major issue.
And it's got just tons of ramifications that that could take place.
And like you said, when it comes to like a Biden or a sitting president, like being an incumbent in times like these is never a strength.
It just isn't.
And so you're right, like you have a you might end up having a situation.
Are you going to send in U.S. troops and risk having U.S. troops die because they go into Haiti to take care of something?
Or do you let the situation get worse and you suddenly have, you know, an immigration refugee crisis?
They'll hit you with that.
It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.
I don't know if it's necessarily going to turn into that type of an issue, but I'm saying that it has all the potential to become that.
And we should also, you know, while we're talking about politics and consequences, we should just, like you said, we should pay attention to the human suffering that's taking place here.
And it's awful that these people are having to go through this.
I mean, listen, we can go over to Puerto Rico next door as well and discuss, you know, how the conditions there that never... They should be a state, first of all.
That should just be it, right?
But, you know, it is what it is.
All right, everybody.
On that note, we're going to take off, but we are going to be back.
A reminder, the Weekender will not come out on Friday.
It will come out Saturday after our live recording at the Stand Up Podjam in Nevada, Henderson, Nevada.
A reminder, you can still get tickets for that.
You can find it in our show notes.
We hope to see you and hang out with you.
Thank you again for all of your support.
We're looking forward to seeing you down there.
Thank you for subscribing and becoming patrons.
If you haven't already, go to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast to gain access to that and other exclusive shows.
Keep us growing and editorially independent, as we were talking about.
All right, everybody.
In the meantime, you can find Nick at Can You Hear Me SMH?
