This is Nick and Jared's first Muckrake Podcast live episode, broadcasting from Pete Dominick's Pod Jam. We get into Donald Trump's money problems, willingness to be bought off by foreign countries, general GOP debauchery, and then we take questions from our listeners. If you want to hear the whole thing and get access to every Weekender episode, as well as exclusive 2024 Campaign coverage, head over to Patreon.com.
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Ladies and gentlemen, Nick Halseman and Jared Dave Sexton!
- Give it up, everybody! - Give it up! - Give it up! - Hey, everybody. - Hey!
I'm Jared Dave Sexton.
I'm here with Nick Halseman and this is The Weekender.
Alright, we have serious stuff that we need to get into, but before we do, this is for the true Muckrake fans out there, for people who don't know.
I found out the other day while recording that Nick had never had a Frosty before in his entire life.
For those who don't know, Nick has some really weird food blind spots.
He hadn't had a Reese's Cup until I made him do it on an episode.
Yeah, and how did I feel about it?
You gotta bring that mic up, brother.
How did I feel about it?
You enjoyed it okay.
I did, and you could see my faith.
It was like a really... You were excited.
You were like a baby learning to walk.
And so last night, for those of you who were here last night for the bourbon talk with Pete Dominick, I drank about a half a bottle of bourbon.
And my good friend Nick was kind enough to get me back to my hotel.
But before that, I sighted a Wendy's in the distance, and I needed a Juju Macon cheeseburger in a bad, bad way.
And I made Nick get a Frosty.
And before we get into the hellhole that is American politics, I need everybody here to listen to this man's review of a Wendy's Frosty.
Nick, tell the people how the Frosty treated you.
It was an abomination, Jared.
I'm sorry.
Has anyone ever had like a real... You've lost the audience already.
It was supposed to be like a chocolate milkshake.
Am I correct in that assertion?
No!
It's a chocolate treat!
I haven't felt chalkiness in my mouth since I was doing math problems in 6th grade.
The board.
That's what it felt like.
This man came to my room today, and we were getting ready for this show, and I was like, Nick, we haven't talked about the Frosty!
How the Frosty treats you!
And I was so wounded.
It was as if a loved one had, like, said something personally demeaning to me.
It was so bad.
You know what?
You're making me feel really bad right now.
It's an American institution.
You know, sometimes I guess I don't like America.
I guess that's what you're saying.
Usually he's the one who hates America, and I have to ask him why.
I don't hate America, I expect more out of America.
Well, listen, there's a whole world of culinary delight out there for you, Jared, and it's not at Wendy's.
I tried to get him to not go, I really did.
I thought maybe we could, you know, elevate that a little bit.
That is disappointing.
There are people right now listening to this, driving their cars and screaming at you.
Alright, who here has been to Wendy's in the last year?
There you go.
That's sizable.
Yeah, alright.
You know, Wendy's is not a thing in L.A.
I don't know.
We don't go.
You're the villain right now.
You know that, right?
Well, you know, you need a villain.
You need a villain.
Every episode.
Well, because, of course, we need to darken the mood because that's what we do.
That is our brand.
That's how we do things.
We need to talk about the former president of the United States of America, Donald John Trump.
Have y'all heard of this guy?
He's having a rough little go right now.
So he is facing a $464 million judgment against him in New York State.
He has a couple of days left to rake up the bond over that.
He's been denied by over 30 groups to give him any sort of a loan in order to make this happen.
They're looking at seizing his assets.
Trump Tower could possibly have something happen to it.
We have golf courses.
We have God knows how many other money laundering operations that could be taken from him.
But I'm happy to report that his lawyer, Alina Habba, went on Fox News and was asked by Martha McCallum, and by the way, we don't give a lot of credit to Fox News.
Congratulations to Fox News for asking this question.
Martha McCallum asked Alina Habba, the Trump lawyer, if they were open to taking foreign aid in order to help Trump post his bond.
And I'm going to read you a quote.
This is an actual quote from a lawyer for the former president of the United States of America being asked if the former president could possibly be bribed by a foreign nation.
Are you ready for this?
This is fantastic.
Quote, well, there's rules and regulations that are public.
I can't speak about strategy that requires certain things and we have to follow those rules.
Not great, Nick.
That's the thing.
They admit that they do all these things.
So Trump is actually, you know, railing against the fact that he has to pay this, but they don't actually deny that he did all this fraud.
That's the thing that's so crazy about this.
Well, he did the fraud.
He didn't fraud?
He did the fraud.
He did the fraud and he says he does the fraud.
He doesn't think he should have to pay for it.
It just boggles my mind that anybody would get that far on that show and not be better prepared for that question.
That's the other thing, right?
Don't you get prepared when you go on TV to answer questions from people?
I find it better not to before you go on TV.
You let your brain just sort of wash out.
Do you drink before you, when you go on your shows?
I'm not answering that question.
Okay.
How dare you ask me that question?
You know, I mean, Pete thinks it works really well too when you get really drunk on stage, so.
Can I ask you for some political analysis?
Sure.
Nick, do you think it's ideal for a former president and possible future president of the United States to be bribed millions of dollars by a foreign entity?
I do not.
Yeah, it's bad.
It's real, real bad.
And I want to point out, and this is, unfortunately, we've got to put this into perspective.
First of all, Trump was bribed by foreign countries during the entirety of his presidency.
It was a wild thing.
The figures that we know about are $160 million, which, I don't know about you all, go ahead and times that times 10 or 20 that we don't even know about.
Meanwhile, of course, the... I mean, how much money did the Saudis give Kushner?
$2 billion.
I'm sorry, what?
A cool two billion.
A cool two billion.
Yeah.
Totally great.
This guy's already been bought and sold and now because of a fraud judgment against him and other legal bills, which by the way are going to come about because, let me check my notes, he tried to overthrow the government of the United States of America.
Now foreign entities are possibly going to pump millions of dollars into this man's pocket.
This is just... I know that we've gotten desensitized to Donald Trump.
Like, you know, somebody right now could like raise their hand and say, hey, Donald Trump actually shot somebody this afternoon and he's fine.
Like, we wouldn't be shocked by it at this point.
This is big shit.
It's not just the fraud though, Jared.
It's the debt.
So, you know, we know that to get security clearance, you have to be able to pass a certain amount of tests, and having a huge debt to somebody is a big no-no.
You can't get security clearance.
Remember when Jerry Kushner couldn't get it when they first got to the White House.
So, what does it say about this if their leading contender for the presidency, again, and he wouldn't have gotten it had he not been elected somehow in 2016.
He is ripe for corruption because someone will come in and say, oh, I will take care of your dead, and then he will be beholden to them, and then we'll have to go through watching our government being run by a puppet.
So the amazing thing here, and I always like to think about those old dead white assholes, our founders, right?
As they're getting together in a swampy room and discussing how to set up this country.
Are you trying to, the swamp is like the smell in the room?
Oh, can you even imagine the smell in that room?
They didn't have, did they have, they had soap.
They didn't have like showers back then, did they?
Nick, they literally nailed the windows shut.
And it was in the summer.
Do you know this?
Like, they didn't want word getting out about what was going on because, by the way, they didn't have authority to frame the Constitution, but that's neither here nor there.
But they nailed the windows shut.
So it had to, the stink in there had to have been incredible.
But as they're sitting around, these rich white assholes are sitting around, and their entire view of the world is that wealthy white men are the most, like, they're the most ideal candidates to run a country.
Right?
Remember that in order to vote, in order to participate in government, you had to be a landowning person, you had to have a certain amount of income, all of that.
They literally believed that by creating the government the way they did, that rich people would never find undue influence from bribery or corruption.
And by the way, they did create a couple little things in there to make that happen.
Meanwhile, none of those things have been enforced, ever.
And now we're literally facing a situation where, for legal bills, we're going to have, possibly, a President of the United States who is under complete debt to another foreign nation.
By the way, already is.
Already is.
Already is.
I mean, Russia, we don't need to get into the whole Russia thing, but they propped up his money for years anyway.
Sometimes, even for me, studying this and looking at the history of it, I'm still shocked by how crazy this is.
Well, are you shocked about how crazy the Trump thing is or how crazy the formation of this country was?
Well, I mean both.
They didn't do a good job.
Right.
And do you feel bad if we have to point that out, that this country was founded on principles of slavery and women didn't have the right to vote?
Not great.
It's bad.
But if you were to study that as a kid, for instance, would that make you feel really horrible as a person?
Uh, probably would not make me feel great, which I think is one of the reasons why our educational system is being absolutely destroyed.
Alright, so do you want to get rid of learning that in your schools then?
Let's probably teach that.
Yeah.
You know, listen.
We're not supposed to like school, are we?
I think when we started doing this, when Trump got into power, we were trying to sound the alarm for a long time about the norms that were being destroyed, even though it had seemed very trivial at the time.
But here we are, and we also know that it will only get worse.
So every new campaign, every iteration of this is going to continue to devolve into Every day.
Every day it gets worse.
Well, I mean, until it got exposed what was actually going on behind the scenes.
It makes us, you know, we actually, can you believe it that we were actually seen as like the bastion of ethical behavior in government for a long, long time?
Well, I mean, until it got exposed to what was actually going on behind the scenes.
Yeah, but, you know, countries would think that we were doing it better than most.
So the question then, you know, you could illustrate would be, did we ever, did we ever, Were we ever really like that?
Or was it just a facade the whole time?
Oh, it was a total facade the entire time.
Like, to be honest, the cycles of American history are the moments of, like, the most incredible inequality and corruption, followed by moments of reform.
And I want to put this out there, and this is one of the reasons I was talking last night about how optimistic I actually am.
Like, when this stuff happens, When it becomes so obvious.
We talked about the Supreme Court.
Like, when the Supreme Court is so obviously corrupted and stolen and, you know, we literally have a Supreme Court who's owned by a billionaire.
You know what I mean?
Like, let's just call it what it is.
After those periods of time, there is a real vigorous push for reform.
Right?
There's like democratic movements that come about.
Progressivism has basically got its start because of this stuff.
Like, this is old, but it's new.
Because, I mean, look at this stuff.
Like, TruthSocial is being bought.
Like, do you know of anyone who has ever opened an account on TruthSocial by any chance?
Well, this isn't really the crowd to ask that for, is it?
Oh no, I mean like some of us like to get our jollies.
You're a lurker, is what you're saying.
If you think that I don't have a burner account on Truth Social, my friend, you are wrong.
It's getting ready to be sold right now, and Trump could possibly come away with billions of dollars.
And the question there is, who's paying for Truth Social?
This is like high-tech money laundering.
On top of that, he's a real estate guy.
Not that real estate people particularly at that level are ever money laundering with cash being Overpaid for apartments and condos and such, especially by Russian mafia figures.
But you've also, I mean, now we're looking at, speaking of social media, you're looking at TikTok, which is basically being shook down by the United States government.
Steve Mnuchin is coming in like underdog here.
And who's helping him?
You guessed it, everybody.
The Saudis.
Right?
So we basically at this point are being rotted out from the interior.
We all know it.
We all see it.
And I have to expect that there's going to be something of a reckoning from that.
