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Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the latest escalation of college campus protests and the use of police force to break up encampments. Joe Biden finally weighed in and it's about as tepid as you can imagine. They pivot to the latest reporting on what a 2nd Trump administration would look like and it's frightening both in its authoritarianism and full throated support by so many GOP members.
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I'm here with my good friend and co-host Nick Halsman.
Nick, how you doing, bud?
I'm good, I'm good.
I'm hanging in there, I believe is the right phrase.
These are the times that try a man's soul.
That's the only thing I can say about it.
These are not the salad days.
These are not the most fun political days.
Real fast, I gotta do the plug because there's so much to talk about today.
It's a weekender edition, but let me tell you, this is not a weekender edition for the faint of heart.
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Nick, all the stuff we have to talk about today, it follows a common theme, which is this.
We've been doing this podcast, is it 2017?
Is that right?
We've been doing this for For seven years now?
I mean, I can remember that I was in, like, Denver the first time we were releasing our first pod.
Yeah, that had to be, yeah, it was probably 2017.
So we've been doing this for seven years now.
And one of the things that this show has been dedicated to, our friendship and our dialogue has been dedicated to, is talking about extremism and radicalization in the United States.
And we've been telling everybody that this was going to lead to a major conflict that would probably be generationally defining.
A lot of things were going to change.
We've tried to tell people about shifting tectonic plates and all of this.
My God, things are shifting and moving and getting weird and more dangerous and strange by the moment.
I wish I could be even more cogent than that.
But yes, weird and strange are the words.
And it's really, I'd be surprised, I think I'm surprised that it's affecting my normal everyday living as much as it has.
You know, it's just kind of put a little bit of a cloud over everything.
Why wouldn't it?
Why wouldn't it?
I mean, you're right.
Well, it's in our faces.
It's all these things.
And, you know, certainly what we're going to talk about first is designed to do that and make sure it's in our faces.
But it's so complicated, I think, is the other thing.
That's why we're here, right?
To figure out how to make it a little bit less.
That's, I mean, that's what we're here for.
And I think it's important to point this out.
You know, we sort of have every now and then we'll have a dialogue about like the 1990s and what culture was like and what movies and music were like.
And, like, that was a period of time where it almost felt like it was safe to tune out politics, and, like, you didn't really have to worry about it, didn't really feel like it influenced you.
On top of that, like, the War on Terror, like, we had this big giant global operation that killed about a million people, and we didn't have to think about it that often.
You know what I mean?
This is, like, reality.
Like, we're living in the middle of an incredibly important time, and the fact that it is influencing our daily lives, I think, is correct.
I think everything that we're about to talk about is pretty important stuff that should influence us.
It's not comfortable.
I would even go so far as to say that now is a time of great discomfort.
But yeah, I think that that's correct.
Especially if you consider there probably is some sort of shelf life to democracies, right?
And if that is the case, at some point there comes a time when it kind of ends, and I sure hope it's not now, but... I'm still optimistic, but things are shifting in really weird ways that make me nervous, because some of the stuff that I've predicted has come true, but it's come true in a different facet, or maybe, you know, looking at it up close.
We gotta start Nick, we of course recorded on Monday, and since Monday, all hell has broken loose in multiple ways.
I'm going to try and summarize all of this the best that I possibly can.
Columbia brought in the NYPD.
Hundreds of arrests after a building was occupied.
Over in UCLA, we've had multiple days of unrest.
We had one night in which the pro-Gaza encampment was attacked by a violent mob.
As the police stood by and watched the next night, last night, as we're recording this on Thursday, May 2nd, the police came and finished the job with rubber bullets and mace.
On top of that, the number stands at around 2,000 plus students, faculty members, staff members, and community members who have been arrested.
On top of that, in weirdly Optimistic news.
UAW President Sean Fain has come out endorsing the encampments and the protests, saying that the war in Gaza is wrong.
He wants it to end.
That's a sign that I've been waiting for a while, but this morning, as we were preparing this episode, President Joe Biden came out and spoke a little bit on the protests.
We've all seen the images, and they put to the test two fundamental American principles.
Excuse me.
The first is the right to free speech and for people to peacefully assemble and make their voices heard.
The second is the rule of law.
Both must be upheld.
We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people or squash dissent.
The American people are heard.
In fact, peaceful protest is in the best tradition of how Americans respond to consequential issues.
All right, I mean, we're okay so far with what he said, right?
Sure.
Okay.
I mean, this sounds like an email that I've gotten from a lot of administrators in my life, but that's fine.
But, like, you know, what do you expect from, you know, the president?
He's going to say the right, right, like, the right things in theory.
There's a reason why this, these remarks were given the way that they were.
Okay, so right now he's establishing a rule of law, but also writing for, you know, a protest and how it's a tradition and all that stuff.
All right, here we go.
But neither are we a lawless country.
We're a civil society.
An order must prevail.
Throughout our history, we've often faced moments like this because we are a big, diverse, free-thinking, and freedom-loving nation.
In moments like this, there are always those who rush in to score political points.
But this isn't a moment for politics.
It's a moment for clarity.
Who is he talking about scoring political points?
First of all, I'm sorry, my mind is reeling from hearing that now is not the time for politics.
That's an incredible thing by the President of the United States to say in the middle of a national crisis.
He's talking about commentariats, he's talking about provocateurs, he's talking about people who are trying to move this in a direction instead of trying to calm tempers, is what he means.
So let me be clear.
Peaceful protest in America.
Violent protest is not protected.
Peaceful protest is.
It's against the law when violence occurs.
Destroying property is not a peaceful protest.
It's against the law.
Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations.
None of this is a peaceful protest.
Threatening people, intimidating people, instilling fear in people is not peaceful protest.
It's against the law.
Dissent is essential to democracy.
Okay.
Um, he's not lying.
Those are all against the law, you know, breaking and entering.
You know what else was against the law?
Black people eating at lunch counters in the South.
Yeah.
Okay.
I mean, okay.
All right.
Uh, so you're not happy with what he's saying there?
No.
Okay, so I suppose, so what he's expecting is the appearance of a protest where you, you know, sit in quietly, meditating, you know, maybe you're in the way.
And then you leave.
And then you leave.
I want to make something clear real fast, though, Nick.
There are multiple reasons why Joe Biden gave these remarks.
And by the way, I want to lay my cards on the table.
I think that this is a portrait of cowardice.
I think Joe Biden has not once more lived up to the moment.
I think it's been a shameful display.
And again, as I always say, whenever we have these conversations right now, I have to vote for him in November and take a shower and then move on.
But there is a reason why this was given and why it's being handled the way that it is.
Right now, the Biden administration has Anthony Blinken and an entire group of people in the Middle East trying to secure a ceasefire.
between Israel and Hamas.
That's currently what's going on.
So, as a result, he's trying not to rock the boat, but also, rhetorically, it's making it very clear that he does not support these protesters, and I think that is an act of cowardice.
Okay.
Interesting.
Right.
Well, he certainly is making it clear he doesn't support, you know, breaking the law parts of this, of the protesting.
If the law doesn't get broken by protesters, I'm sorry, but the arc of this country looks a lot different than it does.
I mean, you know, yeah, go ahead.
Oh, OK.
Here.
But dissent must never lead to disorder or to denying the rights of others so students can finish the semester and their college education.
Look, it's basically a matter of fairness.
It's a matter of what's right.
There's the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos.
People have the right to get an education, the right to get a degree, The right to walk across the campus safely without fear of being attacked.
Let's be clear about this as well.
There should be no place on any campus, no place in America, for anti-Semitism or threats of violence against Jewish students.
There is no place for hate speech or violence of any kind, whether it's anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, or discrimination against Arab Americans or Palestinian Americans.
It's simply wrong.
There's no place for racism in America.
I need to interrupt because I feel like there's a couple of things we have to discuss before we get further in on what the protests are about, because it just keeps ringing as far as, like, what... I keep trying to, you know, compare the 60s protests and now on college campuses, which, you know, Joe Biden's career is sprung from that era, right in the middle of that.
So I think that there's a distinct What's the difference between why people went to college in the 60s versus why they go to college now?
Do you follow that idea?
I guess I can follow it.
Can you be more... So what I'm getting at is, back then, college was much, much cheaper, right?
It didn't cost very much to go to college.
It was easier to get in college.
Now, it does feel like a lot of the criticism of the protests is more about, like, we are customers who are paying all this money to go to college to get my degree so I can then get a job to pay off all the debt I'm gonna have on this, right?
So, that kind of hit me this morning, where it's like, part of this is, like, this is the customer saying, you know, you can't get in the way of what I'm paying for, because it's all this money I have to pay.
Does that make sense?
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