Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman comment on the new horse race as the media loves when these things get close, despite more and more erratic behavior from Donald Trump. They then discuss how far Matt Taibbi has fallen and what the cause of his about face was, before analyzing an op-ed in defense of John Eastman written by none other than... his kids.
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Well, first of all, the first part of it was hanging out with you at the Podjam.
We got to hang out in Nevada.
Did you discuss that at all?
We haven't really decompressed since then.
We haven't had a chance to decompress.
We had a great time.
That's what I talked about.
It was good getting to hang out with you, spend some quality time walking around.
We had a big long discussion about what the last important rock and roll band was.
Nick, I have a different answer.
Please.
Arcade Fire.
Okay, I love Arcade Fire.
I don't know if they got to the heights of popularity.
They were big.
This is a weekender discussion, but I wanted to let you know that we had a great time hanging out.
We got to meet a bunch of listeners, a bunch of fans.
We had a great time.
It sounds like a bunch of people got sick at this thing.
I didn't.
I don't think you did.
I think we all escaped it, which is a good thing.
What kind of sickness are we talking about here?
Sickness that might not be named.
Really?
That's what I've heard.
Well, how do we avoid, I guess, I don't know.
We're careful.
We're careful boys.
But it is so good to have you back.
You know, I held down the podcast last week, but you were dearly, dearly missed.
And I'm glad that we get back to discussing terrible things in the world.
Yes, the dearly terrible things as well.
So thank you for letting me come back and mix this all up with you, because I certainly missed a lot of things that happened this past week.
There's a lot going on, Nick.
And just a reminder very quickly, to keep this podcast going, keep us editorially independent and ad-free, go over to patreon.com slash frankerickpodcast.
Keep this podcast growing.
We're on a roll right now.
We're doing really, really well in terms of growing.
I think the Podjam made it abundantly clear that we're hitting this thing in a really, really good way.
Support us.
Go to patreon.com slash my great podcast.
Nick, I thought you coming back was a good time for us to really check and see where things are right now.
The election season is just absolutely in overdrive at this point.
It feels as if there's been some movement back and forth.
You know, our media loves horse race coverage, which changes the way we perceive of these things.
Before, it was Joe Biden was absolutely doomed to go down as a one-term president, Donald Trump to be re-elected.
It feels right now like things have switched over, like Joe Biden is probably in the lead right now, at least in the minds and hearts.
But what we are hearing right now And the Biden campaign has been talking to a lot of different media outlets, assuring everybody that they're being prepared.
They're preparing for the worst-case scenarios.
They have talked to Rolling Stone, and at this point they've said that they expect a, quote, uncomfortably close election.
I don't know about you, Nick, but any election, uncomfortably close at this point.
They say they believe that Trump will go into overdrive, is the quote, in order to try and steal the election.
The Biden campaign is spending a lot of time talking to lawyers, getting infrastructure in place in order to take on some legal contests and challenges, but they fully expect at this point that Trump will try and steal the election.
Just what I needed to hear in order to start my week off well.
Oh, absolutely.
And, you know, I guess it's good that, you know, they're trying to be prepared for all these things.
They're in charge, right?
So, in theory, they're in a better situation in this go-round than they were the last time.
But it doesn't stop him from... I mean, I suppose The kind of pressure that the Biden administration would have to be really worried about is violence.
And that's the one thing that Trump can unleash.
But as far as forcing, you know, Kamala Harris to change the votes and stuff like that, I'm not so worried about that democratically.
But there's no question that it's going to be interesting.
And I'm glad that at the very least, they are trying to be prepared to get out in front of these things and the potential legal battles that they're going to try and wage against this if they lose.
Yeah, you know, on one hand you brought up the legislature, Congress, in terms of like certifying votes and all that stuff.
I think, you know, obviously that's where the buck was supposed to stop last time.
Mike Pence was supposed to run interference, there was a bunch of fake electors, you know, the real possibility that Trump was going to declare the Insurrection Act.
At least he is not the president this time.
The thing that concerns me the most, Nick, is that in 2020 what we were shown is that across the country in so-called red states where republicans were in charge of the governorships where they were in charge of the legislatures they were more than happy to uh how do i put this they were ku curious Right?
They were very interested in the possibility of whether or not they could carry out a coup.
On top of that, in every one of these states, they ran a lot of interference in which they went into the voting machines.
They looked at them.
They tried to gain access to them.
They actually were trying to figure out how to use the DOJ in order to, you know, steal all of them.
I wonder what they learned.
I wonder what they figured out.
I wonder what emboldened them in terms of like what they now know is possible, what they can get away with, what they can't get away with, what it is that they, you know, in the face of another election that they might be willing to try.
Like you, I'm glad that the Biden campaign and the Democratic Party are taking this seriously, and they're wargaming it and simulating it and putting infrastructure in place.
That feels a whole lot better than 2000 already, in which it was just an impromptu reaction to it, and we saw another election stolen.
But I will say, I hate that this is now an expected part of our political process.
I think that speaks to a larger problem, that this is something like... When I read this, I was like, of course this is what they're doing, but how disgusting is it that you have to expect that at this point?
For sure.
And I think the probing that they were looking at would probably be the electors in different states that the Republicans control.
Now, at the very least, we're seeing very severe lawsuits against people that were trying to file fake sets of electors.
So, in theory, that should dissuade people from wanting to do that.
But again, if Trump is somehow able to get back into power, those people know that they will be pardoned.
And so the law doesn't really apply in that instance.
And so that's a real concerning thing as well.
But yeah, there's no question that I have a feeling people who might feel themselves as very patriotic and maybe even, you know, people who have ethical values, they can very well convince themselves that they would need to change the results because of 2020.
They are so convinced of 2020 with so on that we just simply have to reverse it the other way to right the wrong.
And that could very well happen.
There's no doubt there's going to be a lot of people having to monitor these things.
And guess what we have then?
A potential Supreme Court, you know, adjudication of this race like we had in 2000.
And we all remember how that went.
Yeah, not well.
And that's the thing.
At this point in the entire process, you kind of just want to see a muscular, preventative situation.
We really should, considering how 2020 went, and we had the President of the United States trying to overthrow the government.
I mean, my God, at this point, if you asked an international body to come in and oversee this thing, I wouldn't blink.
Of course, that is the absolute worst-case scenario for, you know, right-wing conspiracy nuts.
Nick, on the other side of the situation, Donald Trump is... I know this is shocking.
We've been covering this for years.
Somehow or another, getting worse.
He has compared himself as being persecuted like Christ, and more on that later in the show.
He has gone consistently after one of his trials as judge's daughter, which is really something.
And, you know, in a replay of something that I got a close and personal view of back in 2016 and then 2020 in my own reportage, he has reposted an image on the back.
This is a hard one to talk about, Nick.
He reposted an image of a back of a truck that had been airbrushed to look like Joe Biden was in the back of the truck and bound in ropes and being taken hostage.
His stuff is just getting increasingly unhinged.
And I know that people are listening to this are like, is this a repeat of an earlier episode of the McGregg Podcast?
No, things are getting worse when it comes to Trump.
And Nick, by my count, we still have seven months left until this election happens.
Oh, for sure.
This will continue to get worse.
It is, um, you know, the whatever decorum we used to have, uh, you know, is troubling.
And by the way, we've seen, I've seen, I don't know if you have them on your timeline, but like there's videos of like FBI agents who are visiting, you know, citizens to, I guess, check on them based on some of their social media posts, which is sort of reminds me of what they did on the back of the, uh, what's it called on the back of the truck?
It's the, uh, the, the, the door that slides.
The tailgate.
The tailgate, thank you.
You know, in a similar way, we've seen violence occur out of people that will post the really inflammatory things.
So part of me doesn't feel so bad that maybe the FBI is monitoring these things and just wants to do a bit of a well check to make sure that these people really aren't zealots who are going to carry out some of the things that they're talking about.
But does it infringe on all sorts of civil liberties and privacy?
Like hell yes.
But this is why we have to be so worried.
It's because the leader of this party is the guy who's inciting all of this.
It's not just rogue people and lone wolves out there.
Well, apologies to the couple of FBI people that I know who listen to this podcast who have reached out in the past.
I'm not in the habit of rooting for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Like, I'm not looking for them to have more insight in our intelligence apparatus to have more power, but I see where you're coming from.
On that note, Nick, this is one of the most predictable things possible.
As we've talked about on this show extensively, Donald Trump is not only running to be President of the United States of America, he's running to stay out of jail.
He's running in order to keep making money so that he can stay out of jail, so he can pay his legal fees, and so that he can continue to pilfer as much wealth as he possibly can.
Reports have been coming out left and right, Nick.
And by the way, we've covered this recently on the show as well.
He took over the Republican National Committee so that he could take the GOP's entire fundraising apparatus and basically, you know, funnel it over here into his own pocket to take care of his legal fees and to get the money himself.
He's taken over one of the two major parties within the United States of America in order to pay his own legal fees.
On top of that, the reports are coming out that he has so exhausted his donor base.
And what I mean by that, Nick, is he is sending out fundraising emails and text messages.
I mean, I'm on all these lists.
If you literally paid attention to any of these, you wouldn't get anything else done.
If you sent him a nickel every time he emailed you or texted you, you would be bankrupt.
That's how much that they go after these people.
And a reminder that a lot of the people sending him money, like the same people like my people who send televangelists money who don't have it, they're actually sending him handwritten notes, Nick.
They're sending it to the campaign saying, we are so sorry.
We believe in you.
You are our hero.
We want to send you everything.
We have nothing else to give.
So what does he have to do?
Like an Alex Jones?
Like a televangelist?
Right?
I mean, there's a long, rich history in the United States of America.
Like, televangelists are like, God has told me that if I don't raise a million dollars in the next couple days, he's gonna strike me dead.
And so what are you gonna do?
You're gonna send money, right?
You wanna save his life.
Trump has no choice, Nick, besides to turn the temperature up and leverage up the rhetoric and talk more and more about the poisoning of the blood, civil war, democracy being killed, because he has to raise more money.
There's no other incentive for these people to send him money because they don't have it anymore.
He has tapped all this stuff out and as a result, the only option that he has is to keep turning that temperature up and up and up and up.
Well, the one thing that he's, the hot ticket item that he's been offering recently is a Bible.
A Bible!
And it was controversial, it sounded like, and I was a little bit confused as to why, so maybe you can help me.
I think it was the cost, or what they were charging for the Bible.
They wanted to charge $60 for the Bible.
Well, Nick, we're talking about the God Bless the USA Bible, for the way, which is sacrilegious, but that's neither here nor there.
Oh, you know what?
Okay, that must be part of it, too.
I didn't look that deeply into it, but I have to imagine that, well, $60 is, you know, without the Spirit of God infused into it, it must be kind of, you know, it's expensive, right?
It's a pretty expensive Bible.
I gotta say, in my household, we never would have really, you know, put forward for a $60 Bible.
Yeah, I mean, and it shouldn't cost that much for the good word.
And so that was fascinating to me that that was like the next level of what he's trying to do, which I think taps into what you're talking about there.
But you have no choice.
That's the whole thing.
When you're a con man, like, this is the stuff that you have to do, Nick.
At some point or another, you have to hawk Bibles.
You have to find old-time religion.
Everyone at this point is saying, wow, Donald Trump is really infusing his campaign with Christian nationalism.
One, it's always been there.
Two, he realizes that's the only place he can go anymore.
That's the only button that he can press in order to get more donations and to get more excitement around his campaign and more devotion.
He knows it and he is just an old-time grifter and the old-time grifter is always going to grab a Bible and start using that.
That's as old as time.
And I think they have one guy who's like processing all the orders because it sounds like if you were to buy one you'd be waiting several months until he can get to you to actually put this in.
It's like Moses waiting to get to the promised land is what it is.
Right.
So, I mean, the whole thing is just a house of cards waiting to fall down with the most inept people running these things.
So, you know, this is the fever that I don't know breaks.
Maybe it does over this, where, you know, the regular folk just simply don't have any more money, having given them the money they didn't have to begin with.
And at some point, we understand in this political, you know, Well, in this type of environment, I mean, that's the thing is, you know, I think Donald Trump could still win without donations.
That's the problem in all of this.
It just so happens he needs it for his legal fees, and he needs it because, you know, he's a greedy little boy.
But, Nick, what happens when you don't have the money to give anymore, unfortunately, is that you start giving in blood.
You know what I mean?
Like, you start, like, there's a zealotry that takes over.
If you can't offer the resources anymore, which is, you know, what most people are giving, like, you're more than happy to do it.
I mean, before we started taping this, a guy just rammed into the gates at the FBI, speaking of, in Atlanta.
And I guarantee you that that guy is listening to the shows and watching the shows that you and I are thinking about without even saying right now.
But what we're also seeing around the Trump loyalists and the far right is an increasing acceptance for not just violence, and I've been seeing it a lot lately in my research, Nick.
They're just openly saying, we have no options anymore.
It's just violence.
And these are people who have flirted with it for a while, and they're just saying it out loud right now.
But also, we're seeing a renewed push for something that's getting louder and louder and louder, Nick.
And one of the things that you notice, these guys all talk to each other.
There's articles, there's podcasts, there's all kinds of stuff.
They start speaking to one another.
And the one that I've been paying attention to recently is best embodied in an article in the American Conservative.
And Nick, for those who don't know at home, the American Conservative is one of those publications.
It was started by Pat Buchanan, old expired friend of the pod.
This was like one of those publications that was really critical of big government and sort of a right wing suspicion of power grabs, which makes it interesting that Peter Tungit, which I guess that's an actual name.
He has come out making the argument that Donald Trump should get rid of the 22nd Amendment.
Should he be re-elected President of the United States of America?
He says that it is, quote, plainly unfair that the 22nd Amendment, which says you can only serve two terms as President of the United States, that it would keep him from a third term, and says we need to go ahead and get rid of it, and is now endorsing already in 2024, quote, Trump in 2028.
How's that fit on you?
You know, again, this goes back to what I was saying about, in their minds, the 2020 election was stolen.
So he deserves another round after this if he wins to get back.
It's kind of what it feels like to me because they certainly acknowledge that FDR, the reason why we have this because FDR was in office for so long and it just became, you know, a problem, especially with health and especially the guy as old as Trump.
There's no way he should be allowed to run after this anyway.
Um, but it just, I know you might want to be dipping your toe into the authoritarianism where we don't have elections anymore and we can kind of get away from elections altogether.
And I don't know what my first reaction to that was, was to simply, this is, this is in their mind, this writing a wrong from the last election.
And they wanted to just tack on one more four year term for him.
I think, did you feel that, or do you feel like this is more along the road of just having Kings?
It's both.
I mean, both things at once.
I think you don't tell yourself, and for those who don't remember this, the argument that they made was, and this is, to really follow this logic's incredible.
Like, you gotta do, like, the things you gotta do to your brain, it's like making saltwater taffy, if you've ever seen one of those, like, on the Food Network, right?
That he was so hobbled by the Russiagate investigation, That his entire first term was basically taken advantage of, and the deep state just absolutely undermined him, so he deserves two more terms.
Well, if you're thinking that, then what you're doing is you're wanting to get rid of this 22nd Amendment anyway, right?
Like, you literally want to go ahead and put him in power.
And on top of that, these are the same people, Nick, who are consistently saying, well, if Donald Trump can be president, Donald Trump Jr.
should be president, and then maybe Barron should be president.
Like, they do not believe in democratic representation, they don't believe in democracy, they believe that some people are made better than others, and as a result, we should have this entire class of rulers.
The problem in this, I mean, besides that ideology is disgusting, is that this is what they're going to be pushing.
Let's make that clear.
Like, this has already started, and if he does get elected, And again, they're saying uncomfortably close, which I think is pretty accurate.
If he is to somehow or another get in power, you better believe there's going to be rumblings of this stuff.
And especially if he steals an election, like, there are going to be rumblings of this stuff.
They're already getting themselves all amped up for this stuff.
And they're talking about it, and we talked earlier about Charlie Kirk discussing public executions.
They're talking about even lowering the age of consent with women, of course.
They want to put children into workplaces.
Like, the things that they're talking about, they're not theoretical.
They're talking about what they want to do in the world, so you'd better pay attention to what it is that they say what they want to do, because it is, quite frankly, what they want to do.
Sure.
And they also reference Reagan in this article, and how Reagan lamented that he was going to only have the two terms.
And they quoted it from 85, which I suppose is about a year before Reagan becomes an Alzheimer patient who doesn't really know what's going on.
But that also leads me to think that If a president got into that state again, you could be propped up by the vice president or a whole other shadow government.
We would never really know, right?
We didn't know how out of it Ronald Reagan was the last couple of years of his presidency.
It was not good.
And I wouldn't put it past people like that, even though let's say Trump wins again and then he starts to falter and he doesn't have any faculties left.
They'll just prop him up and run the government the way they see fit in a very nefarious way with those diabolically genius people behind him.
Well, I mean, what does Trump do anyway?
Trump talks to people, they tell him what to say, and then he falls in love with it and he says, let's go out and do it.
I mean, Trump is not a brain genius who's putting this stuff together, you know?
And by the way, Ronald Reagan was more or less a puppet of George H.W.
Bush and what we now refer to as the Deep State or the military-industrial complex.
I'm sorry, Ronald Reagan may have knew about Iran-Contra.
He was not drawing up the plans, no matter what SNL told you, you know?
And it's funny, Nick.
I'll go ahead and lay my cards on the table.
If I was back in the 1940s, let's be clear, I would have absolutely been pushing for Franklin Delano Roosevelt to run for multiple terms.
I'm not going to sit here and lie.
Like, that would have been my jam.
Like, a podcast during FDR's presidency, the McCraig Podcast, like, you would have gotten tired of listening to it.
It would have been too much.
I just saw some pictures or video of the conference at Yalta.
Yeah.
If you would have seen those, you would not have wanted FDR to run again.
No, he was in rough shape.
Yeah.
He was in rough, rough shape.
No, absolutely.
Which, by the way, I wish so badly that we would have had, like, blood pressure medication.
Like we could have had another we could have had another three terms of FDR, people, and we could have avoided the Cold War.
That's a reality that might have been a little bit better.
That's fascinating.
It is because Truman was absolutely rolled by the hardliners who wanted the military industrial complex.
But that's neither here nor there.
But now I have to tell you, I don't think a president should serve more than two terms.
I don't.
I think it's a problem.
I think that like, I think it opens up the window for exactly what we're talking about here.
It is an authoritarian impulse.
And by the way, we talked about this a little bit when we were in Nevada.
FDR had a little bit of an authoritarian impulse.
He did!
And he pushed some things that were really, really hard and like it sort of stretched our norms and like brought people out of their comfort zones.
But in this, this is a setup for an authoritarian government and these people are being very clear about what they want and they're not hiding it anymore.
Well, where do we stand on the term limits for the other, you know, senators?
Get them the hell out.
Right.
Get them out.
Yeah, I'm running out of politics and term limits.
There you go.
Because you have these congressmen who, you know, who'll be there for, you know, 20 years at a time.
It seems a little bit much, probably indicative of the grift to some degree.
So, yes, I wouldn't mind some version of term limits for sure.
I couldn't agree more.
By the way, Nick, one of the things that we talk about a lot on this show is how people convince themselves of the things that they believe, particularly as they are so gross.
We have a couple instances that we're going to go over in this segment.
The first one is not friend of the pod, Matt Taibbi.
For people who don't know this, because you only see Matt Taibbi now of like the Twitter files and absolutely being a raving lunatic on social media.
There was a day in the past where Matt Taibbi seemed like a pretty reasonable, independently-minded reporter.
Well, let's talk about a little something.
This was posted.
These are supposedly things that Matt Taibbi has said, and this is, quote, why he doesn't spend time on reporting about Republicans anymore.
Okay, so here is the list, Nick, and we'll go through them one at a time.
Quote, there is an enormous army of mainstream media reporters already going after them from every angle with most major news organizations little more than proxies for the DNC to the point where stations hire Biden spokespeople as anchors.
How do you feel about that first point of why he doesn't spend a lot of time talking about the Republican Party?
Yeah, it sounds like a Fox News talking point to me, right?
And I certainly don't agree that the general mainstream media doesn't have any scrutiny on the Democrats.
It seems ludicrous.
Isn't that absolutely absurd?
And you know, it's really funny because it's like, And again, you're stretching your brain into Taffy doing these things.
Matt Taibbi is supposedly an intelligent journalist and an intelligent person.
This is stupid.
Like, our media spends so much time going after the Democratic Party in order to prove itself as independent from Republican claims of bias.
That's absurd.
Also, by the way, I'm sorry, but you can't turn on CNN without coming across a former Trump staffer.
You can't turn it on without seeing Michael Steele on there.
They are constantly trying to prove themselves as being independent.
And also, for the record, I don't think you should be going out and automatically hiring Jen Psaki.
I think that's gross.
That's where I come at on this.
And I just think that this is a childish beginning of an argument that like has absolutely no validity whatsoever.
Way to get to number two.
Oh man, number two is really where it's at.
Number two, Matt Taibbi doesn't cover Republicans because the Republicans have very little institutional power nationally.
It's not their point of view prevailing in schools, on campuses, in newsrooms, where over 90% of working reporters vote blue, and especially in the intelligence and military apparatus, which has openly aligned itself with Democrats.
Even if Donald Trump were a threat to democracy, he lacks the institutional pull to do much damage, which can't be said of Wow.
Wow.
You know, when you say things, it's safe to say that your credibility is on the line when you publicly say anything, right?
And then, you know, we have to decide whether you have any, if you deserve any more credibility going forward at that point.
And when you start talking about the military and intelligence apparati being openly aligned with Democrats, I think you've destroyed quite a bit of your credibility.
That is, and this is a technical term, so take a walk with me.
That's what we refer to as talking out of your ass, is what that is.
If you think that the intelligence apparatus in this country is Democrat, my God, man, My God!
Are you for real?
On top of that, if you want to go ahead and talk about institutions of power, are you going to tell me that the majority of law enforcement agents in this country are Democrat?
No!
What he's actually saying, and this is what he's always trying to do and what all these people are always trying to do, they're saying that like the quote-unquote woke narrative that's throughout culture somehow or another, it holds so much sway that it's infected all these different things.
Nick, you're telling me Republicans don't have any institutional power.
Last time I looked, women across America have to go to different states in order to get reproductive care.
That's the last time I looked.
Also, the last time I counted, the majority of governors, 27 of them, are Republicans.
The majority of legislatures, 28, are controlled by Republicans.
Last time I checked, when they're not playing clown games, they're in charge of the House of Representatives.
They're also, they stole the Supreme Court, which is a backstop of conservative reactionarism.
This is stupid.
It's absolutely stupid, and it's missing a crucial component.
What's happening in schools?
What's happening in the military-industrial complex?
They're saying the Democrats hold all the power there.
No.
All of our institutions, they're not Democrat or Republican.
They have one aim, which is the maintenance of institutional state power.
That's it.
And also the operation of global capitalism, which, by the way, is inherently conservative.
And so to sit there and say Democrat, Republican, blue or red, it's absurd.
This is child logic.
It's so stupid to even look at it.
But I also can't help but think that this is a reaction to when, how many times did we see reporting of Trump wanting to do some sort of policy and then you hear the chief of staff or general or somebody say, yeah, we're not going to do that.
Now we had talked about this when these were happening in real time saying those are basically coups, right?
These are, these are people in the government basically defying an order of the president.
But why are they doing that?
Because the orders were fucking illegal.
Fucking illegal!
That's what this is really about.
Like, they were trying to protect the democracy itself and the Constitution, but these idiots want to make it seem like it was an affront to, you know, the way our government works when it's the opposite.
It was actually trying to protect the government from a madman trying to, you know, commit crimes in an office and then subsequently get immunity from said crimes after the fact.
Yeah, that's the amazing thing is they can't even get Donald Trump on like the most obvious crimes that he's committed because the institutions are programmed to take care of him.
And like you said, we even said on this podcast, we're like, no, these generals should not be doing this.
It's a problem.
But on top of it, they're doing it not because they're Democrats.
They're doing it because Donald Trump was an existential threat.
They would have been fine doing anything that a Republican president would have asked them.
Believe me, we saw the war on terror where a million people were killed on behalf of a man-child, a Nepo president.
All right, we got this next one.
Man, it just keeps going.
Three.
The Democrats' ambitions are significantly more dangerous than those of the Republicans.
Fantastic.
From digital surveillance to censorship to making intel and enforcement agencies central players in domestic governance, all plans being executed globally as well as in our own country, they are thinking on a much bigger and more dangerous scale than Republicans.
I lived in third world countries and the endless criminal indictments of people like Trump and ongoing lawfare efforts to prevent any even third party challenges are classic authoritarian symptoms.
The Republicans aren't near this kind of capability.
Yeah, I love it when Trump always characterizes Democrats as vicious.
They're so vicious!
You know, I like to vicariously get a thrill from that, but this is crazy.
Digital surveillance, and then, so the censorship that he mentions, we know, is about trying to, you know, curb misinformation, right?
That's what that's about.
But the idea, like, the Democrats are trying to make intel and enforcement agents essential players in domestic governance.
I must have missed that memo, Jared.
When did they discuss that?
So okay, there's a few times where Taibbi comes close to something that makes rational sense.
I have a problem too, and we talked about this a little bit earlier.
I have a problem where Democrats are like, Robert Mueller's gonna get Donald Trump!
You know, the CIA's gonna do this!
I have a problem with that, and this stems from the hashtag Resistance Democrats not knowing what to do with Donald Trump.
He is an existential threat, and they keep hoping the institutions will take care of him.
Meanwhile, they know nothing about the history of the FBI or the CIA.
Makes sense.
Digital surveillance, that is not, that's a bipartisan issue.
Like, Republicans created the original apparatus that he's talking about.
It did take fruition under Barack Obama.
Do you think it didn't continue under Donald Trump?
Do you think it's not still going with Joe Biden?
This isn't a Democrat or Republican thing.
It's an institutional thing.
It's an absolute absurdity.
And by the way, Donald Trump broke a bunch of laws and should be held accountable for breaking those laws.
I'm sorry, there's no way around that.
You can't argue that.
Well, I think the key that we can argue in terms of when they're saying this is just, you know, bullshit charges in a banana republic, the speed or the lack of speed of the process is indicative to me of a system that's actually being tremendously fair to a guy like Trump.
And, you know, nothing happens quickly.
Everything has to be very deliberate.
All the things have to get laid out in a row.
And we're wringing our hands about Yeah, it's absolutely absurd.
Child-like stuff here.
I mean, it's like that to me says this is not any kind of sham trials.
These are real things that they're actually trying to follow that along.
Yeah, it's absolutely absurd.
Child-like stuff here.
His last point.
4.
Last and most important, the Democrats are being organized around a more potent but also much dumber, more cult-like ideology.
People like Yuval Harari and his transhumanist divinity concept scare me a lot more than the Republicans.
I was once undercover in an apocalyptic church in Texas.
Ask your average Russian or Cuban what over-empowered pseudo-intellectuals are capable of.
Fantastic.
Okay, the idea of transhumanism, for people who don't know at home, it's the idea that technology is somehow or another going to graft itself on humans and create us into a different species.
This is something that has the attention of a lot of people in tech.
By the way, Elon Musk, who has actually inserted microchips into a person's brain.
Brain!
Yes, I have a problem with this.
I think this is disgusting.
But, Nick, the tech oligarchs, they're not Democrats.
They worked with the Democrats whenever they wanted to get Democrat money, particularly during the Obama administration, in order to, you know, take over the space agencies and also the military-industrial complex.
They're libertarians, at best, and right-wing nutjobs like Elon Musk, at worst.
The idea that this is somehow or another a democratic takeover of society is one of the most asinine things I've ever heard.
Right.
I mean, being organized around a cult-like ideology of transhumanism is, I don't know.
Again, I missed that memo.
I have not been, you know, and I've been studying, I've been listening for it, Jared.
I'm ready for it, but I haven't heard anybody.
This is not some sort of mainstream ideology that's taken hold of a party.
It just sounds like a guy who is so hell-bent on rationalizing his position within a party that is authoritarianism that he's just kind of projecting some other random thing that sounds okay.
And then certainly the idea that there are dumber people in the Democratic Party than there are in the Republican Party, that's another one of those bridges a little too far for me.
So to bring us to the conclusion of this list, I want to say this.
The reason why Matt Taibbi is who he is now is because, first of all, he's a contrarian.
He has always been an independent journalist who made his wealth by saying, you think things are one way, they're another thing.
He has been perpetually annoyed by resistance liberal accounts.
And do you know one of the reasons why, Nick?
Well, all you have to do, and by the way, if you're not a political sicko enough to have read his book, The Exile, a book he published in 2000 about working in the post-USSR Russia, in which he was running a publication that, how do I put this, Nick, wasn't politically correct and didn't treat women well.
When it was revealed during the Me Too era that this book said a lot of really nasty things about his behaviors in Russia, like our friend Elon Musk, all of a sudden he started aligning pretty quickly with the anti-woke crowd in order to make his money there.
But on top of it, like your Greenbergs, like all of these people, even Richard Dawkins recently, who is like the new atheist, is talking about being a cultural Christian.
They are so anti quote-unquote conventional ideas, and they're so annoyed by the liberals that they see in the resistance groups online, that there's like, screw it, I'm gonna go be a right-wing nutjob.
And that's where he's making his money now.
This list is embarrassing.
It's absolutely embarrassing that someone who's supposed to be an intelligent journalist and pundit would ever say any of these things.
There was no bigger fan than me of his work in the Rolling Stone from back in the day.
It was good!
But you know, they also caught him recently sort of publicly talking to Elon back and forth on Twitter, where there was some sort of arrangement that he had made with Musk as well, as we pulled him into this, that he wouldn't criticize him.
You know, I think because Musk was then going to amplify his account.
Now, Musk then gets upset because Taibbi continues to work right on Substack.
But I don't blame Tidy for doing that because if you've ever tried to write some sort of, uh, you know, think piece on Twitter and then have anybody try and find it later, like it's impossible.
It's a mess.
So Substack makes a lot of sense.
You have Substack, right?
You can have, you know, ways to find your different articles and you can organize- Dispatches from a collapsing state because I don't want to accept the pennies on a dollar that these publications were offering me because they were insulting and I have a bigger audience than them.
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
So here you go, you have a whiny little kid in Elon Musk who's like upset that say he didn't want to play only in his playground.
And but but but what that revealed was this sort of, you know, agreement they had where I won't say anything about you, I won't criticize you, which is basically like, I won't criticize the right, as long as you continue to help me and make more money.
So it's it's, At some point, the Me Too thing, which has sort of spurned a lot of this, right?
To cover my ass, I gotta join this, you know, the right wing so I don't get cancelled.
Hopefully that goes away, right?
Enough people to sort of learn how to behave better.
Is that what we're talking about?
Well, I mean, in part, but Taibbi has no interest in that.
And that's the larger problem.
How does ideology work?
And this is something that we've tried to talk about on this show and shine more light on.
Nick, it's not necessarily that people are logically making decisions about what they do.
They're doing things, and then they're making up stories about why they did it.
Right?
And so Taibbi here is making up a secondary story for himself, that he is an independent person and that the Democrats are dangerous, when in fact, he is making more money by appealing to right-wing assholes and also protecting himself from being canceled and making a market choice.
So as a result, he has to look at all these people and say, oh, the Democrats actually hold all the power, as opposed to it being a military-industrial complex that is neither Democrat or Republican.
Alright, we're going to look at this article, too.
Speaking of people and their brain games, Nick, this is an article on The Blaze, which, of course, is the brainchild, the wonderful, wonderful product of Glenn Beck.
This is an article called The Heroic Sacrifice of John Eastman.
And for those who don't remember, John Eastman is the right-wing nutjob lawyer Who was working with Donald Trump to help overthrow the election of 2020.
Eastman was busy just for months in the Claremont Institute, which is one of those far-right bodies that is paid for by right-wing billionaires who want to destroy democracy.
Basically coming up with every possible legal theory that he could in order to overthrow this election.
And he suffered incredible consequences of that, and I think rightfully.
Well, guess what?
We have a dissenting opinion here on The Blaze from the heroic sacrifice of Jon Eastman.
And Nick, like all good articles should be, this is written by the subject's children.
All right.
These are written by Benjamin Eastman and Christina Wheatland.
Let's look at the opening, and then we're going to go deeper for some pretty remarkable stuff.
An open letter from Eastman's children and a call to action.
Tucker Carlson hosted Dr. John Eastman on Fox News on June 27, 2022, shortly after the FBI unlawfully seized Eastman's phone, which contained attorney-client-privileged information.
After Tucker showed the video of armed FBI agents frisking Eastman, he scoffed.
Disgraceful.
Wearing his little mask.
Put your hands up as if Eastman is a threat.
He's not.
He's a lawyer.
On this rare occasion, Tucker was wrong.
John Eastman is the greatest threat to the far-left's regime of anarcho-tyranny.
This regime unleashes violent criminals on our streets, extends bail to serial rapists, and releases illegal aliens who commit criminal acts.
But if a conservative lawyer dares to provide legal counsel to a sitting U.S.
president, his livelihood and reputation will be destroyed with the full force of government and other institutions infected by—are you ready for it, everybody?—the woke virus.
How's that for an opening?
Wow.
They're laying it on, I believe the term is, thick.
And by the way, you know, as a lawyer, there's a thing you do when you become a lawyer.
I think you swear, right?
You swear you're going to do something, right?
You're going to uphold the Constitution, right?
I think that's one of the key things.
Part of that, by the way, is not giving clients advice who are relying on you as the expert on the Constitution.
That is, what's the word again?
Unconstitutional.
And even if, by the way, I think what ended up dooming Eastman is that they actually did try these things.
Perhaps if it had just stayed dormant on a piece of paper and none of the things were actually tried by Trump in the campaign, maybe he kind of gets off.
But in theory, even submitting these as ideas that he did was enough to get this far.
Yeah, I love this little thing that they say here.
This is, of course, is the stated goal of the 65 Project, a group of left-wing activists dedicated to destroying regime critics through the mechanisms of lawfare, make patriotic lawyers toxic in their communities.
Yes, they are looking for lawyers who break the law to be quote-unquote toxic in their communities.
I'm sorry.
One of the things that bugs me so much, Nick, in all of this, They tried to overthrow the government.
Like, they did.
That's what they were trying to do.
They tried to overthrow the election.
They can say that they thought it was a crooked election, whatever.
They want to stylize themselves as freedom fighters.
They don't want the consequences of it.
If you don't want the smoke, don't do the crime.
Like, what are these people doing?
You're trying to overthrow the government.
Have a little bit of pride.
If it doesn't work out, there are consequences on the other side of that.
Why do you whine and have your children write op-eds?
By the way, it reminds me of the same argument I would put on, like, even with what Trump's doing with the fraud in New York.
I'm sure thousands of people do the same fraud every year and don't get caught.
And so they might feel like it's OK.
But the bottom line is, if you're going to do it, you have to understand and accept that the possibility arises that you will get caught and you will get thrown in jail or get sent to a big trial.
And that's the thing that really they don't get.
They're beyond that part of the equation.
It's really bizarre.
It is.
And by the way, speaking of bizarre, this section of it that we need to take a look at is really special.
The heading is, A Deep Betrayal and Tribulation to Come.
And Nick, you better believe that when I saw tribulation that my ex-evangelical spidey senses started popping off.
Quote, Earlier this week, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza for the month of Ramadan, a month of prayer and fasting for Muslims.
The United States ambassador abstained from the vote, allowing it to pass.
As President Biden declared in his statement at the start of Ramadan, this sacred month is a time for reflection and renewal.
Meanwhile, Christians are in the midst of their own penitential period, the 40 days of Lent leading up to Easter.
One would hope that a government so concerned with protecting the sacred nature of the penitential season of Ramadan would be similarly respectful of Lent for devout Christians.
Nick, and by the way, before we get to the real nut of this, do you feel the tension building?
Do you feel it?
And you're like, what's this have to do with Gaza?
What's this got to do with Ramadan and Lent?
What's happening here?
Oh, we get to Roman Catholicism next!
We do!
And yet, on the Wednesday of Holy Week, the lead-up of the holiest day of the Christian calendar, Judge Yvette Rowland of the California Bar Court issued her ruling recommending that Eastman, a Roman Catholic, be disbarred.
For Catholics especially, that day has significant meaning.
Wednesday of Holy Week is also known as Spy Wednesday because it is traditionally commemorated as the day that Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus by conspiring with the chief priest.
Spy Wednesday, therefore, is a day when Catholics explicitly contemplate the betrayal by one of Jesus's closest followers.
This is the day that the Catholic Bar chose to betray one of its own by falsely accusing him of attempting to overthrow our democracy.
Oh, baby, they got there!
I gotta tell you, I've never heard of Spy Wednesday before.
Is this something that you knew about?
No, if you think the Baptists are talking about this shit, you're wrong, my man.
We spend much more time talking about hell.
I would imagine so, yes.
Spy Wednesday was a nice little cherry on top of the cake.
Poetically.
You put cherries on top of cakes?
I don't know.
What was that?
Cherry on top?
Yeah, you can do that.
Poetically, the disbarment goes into effect after three days, unless they... Three days, like Christ.
Unless a day is requested and issued.
Because the ruling was issued on Wednesday, these three days will be during the Holy Tridem.
Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday.
In years past, Eastman would often be found in church during the Tridem, praying the Stations of the Cross and contemplating the death and resurrection of the Lord.
That's right, everybody.
John Eastman, who tried to overthrow the government of the United States.
for Eastman and his family this year.
While it may seem a little heavy-handed to compare the work of Eastman and others to the passion and death of Jesus Christ, a little reflection can make clear the connections.
That's right, everybody.
John Eastman, who tried to overthrow the government of the United States.
Basically, Jesus Christ.
Wild.
Wild, really.
I mean, I suppose, right, these are kids just trying to raise a little extra money for their dad's legal offense fund, I suppose?
First of all, the amount of cope that is taking place in this article is unreal.
Like, I'm sorry, but if you are sending in op-eds comparing your criminal father to Jesus Christ, you need to take a few plays out.
You really do.
And by the way, it gets worse, Nick.
He says, or they say.
Jesus was betrayed and unjustly condemned because he preached a gospel message that was contrary to the desires of the ruling class of his time.
Eastman has been betrayed and indicted for speaking up about election illegality and fraud, contrary to the desires of the political establishment and the mainstream media.
At stake is the very soul of our nation, which was founded on the Judeo-Christian fundamentals of truth and justice.
Absolutely.
So this Holy Week, Eastman will indeed be taking up a cross, attempting to protect the institutions of our nations that guarantee our religious freedom and our American way of life.
You got me!
I think he should be let loose.
Or maybe crucified.
I don't know.
Let's go ahead and make a martyr of him and let's go for it.
What are we doing?
I'm waiting for the t-shirt to come out, the picture of Eastman on the cross being, you know, put up.
Maybe a painting on velvet of that or something could work?
Obviously, you're trying to rationalize why your father did this thing, which is why Christian nationalism is so helpful, right?
All of this is based on the Judeo-Christian background, so you're not actually committing a crime.
Like, maybe you're committing a crime based on what the regime thinks or what the sitting power political class thinks, but what you're actually justified in doing, Nick, is you are doing the holy work of the Lord.
And as a result, you can't be questioned.
You shouldn't be in prison for, you know, committing crimes.
You shouldn't be disbarred for committing crimes and betraying your oath.
What you're actually doing is the the commands of a sky god that nobody else can hear but yourself.
And so as a result, you really shouldn't be held accountable in any way, shape, or form.
And they know that they can tap into people who have already been from the day they're born, you know, taught this and they can use the right keywords and channel enough of that to to get people to listen to them and believe this.
But again, this is not anything about a patriotic lawyer doing, you know, the important work here.
There was, you know, this is no evidence and just spitballing bullshit out there, hoping that, you know, that it would work so that he could be getting a pardon for all of this.
And, and by the way, the bottom line is it didn't give him a pardon.
I guess, I guess Trump didn't give him the pardon after all, because he realized it just wasn't, it didn't go far enough.
It didn't work.
Yeah, I mean, listen, Donald Trump has a long history of leaving the people behind who have helped him.
It does not pay to work with that guy.
But I don't know.
I look forward to the next edition of Jon Eastman's Superstar.
I assume it will be a genre-crossing, incredible display.
I just can't wait for the musical numbers.
That's a deep cut, Jared.
I don't know.
I think most people might get it, but we'll find out.
There's a couple of people out there just very, very excited.
I hope someday, if I am ever thrown in jail for trying to overthrow a government, I hope somebody writes an op-ed that just explicitly, not even metaphorically or rhetorically compares me to Christ, but says it out loud.
And says at some point, Jared Yates Sexton is picking up the cross.
As long as it doesn't say, Jared Yates Sexton died for all of us.
Nick, I know we talk about this, but it's just like the things these people are doing, they just get more and more just unhinged and depraved.
I can't believe they wrote this, and I can't believe that Blaze published it, but of course they did.
Of course they did.
They have clicks to feed.
They certainly do have clicks to me!
Something like that.
Alright, everybody, that's going to bring us to the end of the Muckrake Podcast.
We'll be back with The Weekender on Friday.
You need to go over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast, support the show, keep it ad-free, editorially independent, and gain access to all that exclusive coverage.
In the meantime, everybody, you can find Nick at CanYouHearMe?
