Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the helicopter crash that cost the life of Ebrahim Raisi, president of Iran and whether it was an accident or not. Meanwhile Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito revealed details into why there was upside down American Flag flown in front of his house immediately after the January 6th insurrection. They finish with a story about disgraced former mayor Rudy Giuliani being served his indictment at his 80th birthday party, good times.
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We were talking about our weekends, what they were looking like, how we were feeling about them.
Did it turn out well?
You know, if it's neutral, then it's good.
So that's how I feel.
It was very much a normal, nothing happened weekend, and that's good.
It was a neutral weekend for you.
Neutral, yes.
How about you?
I painted my room.
I felt good about it.
I put on some video essays.
I put on some music.
I put on some podcasts.
I like painting.
I'm an official enjoyer of painting.
If you have a room that you need painted, I'm happy to do it.
You roll?
I roll.
I use the brush.
I edge.
I do all of it.
I love it.
Can't get enough of it.
All right.
Well, maybe you can start a YouTube channel for that.
That sounds terrible.
I don't know.
That sounds truly, truly awesome.
People really like the calm of watching the brush.
Well, people, if you want to keep me from starting a YouTube channel where I paint, which just... I've watched YouTube channels where they do housework, and that stuff is...
That is some boring material, is what it is.
What about this old house, Bob Vila?
Oh, Bob's an outlier.
Bob's an outlier.
Bob's soothing.
He's the days of yesteryear whispering to you through the ages.
You know, if he's still around, we need to get him on the show.
I bet Bob Vila's politics are terrible.
Really?
I would bet, I would bet Bob Vila's politics are bad.
Wow, that is a- If you told me right now, if you told me the right, right now that Bob Vila like was at January 6th but didn't go in the Capitol, I would believe you.
Oh, Jared, my goodness gracious.
Bob Vila stands for all that is good in the world.
I'm just saying, man, a lot of people have a lot of opinions.
Speaking of, we've got to get into all of that.
Man, Samuel Alito, I think maybe he was at the Capitol.
I don't know.
We've got to talk about that.
We've got to talk about a whole host of things.
But if you want to keep me, From starting the world's most boring, awful painting YouTube channel, go to patreon.com slash mockragpodcast, subscribe to the show, that way you can listen to The Weeknd, or keep us ad-free, editorially independent.
We thank our subscribers.
We are so, so grateful for them.
Are we not, Nick?
We are so thankful.
Terrific conversation on the Discord server and really just great content every Friday.
We have the best, best listening fans in the world.
Everybody who comes on this show tells us they're so, so grateful for you.
Keep it going, patreon.com slash my Craig podcast.
Nick, we're taping this on Monday, May 20th.
Yesterday, the world was rocked by a very strange developing story.
In the morning, it came out that Iranian President Abraham Raisi was involved in a quote-unquote hard landing in his helicopter.
That hard landing took place in the northwest mountainous territory in Iran, and there was a little bit of a dearth of information on this all day.
No one was particularly sure what was going on.
It took hours and hours to find out that he, the foreign minister and their delegation, had died in a helicopter crash.
After hearing about this hard landing, there are a lot of theories going around, a lot of thoughts going around.
I don't need to tell the people listening that Iran is a really, really important country in the current schema of things for a variety of reasons.
It is strange timing.
I, as an analyst, I'm very interested in what happens now.
There's a lot of branching paths that could come from this.
Nick, what are your initial thoughts on this news?
Well, you know, I was doing it backwards on my Twitter feed, like seeing like the reports and saying, wait, did something happen?
And I had to kind of go backwards to see what happened.
And so I saw a lot of the footage of the rescue people getting to the site or trying to get to the site.
And so that was, it gave me a little solace, I guess, in the sense that when you saw that footage, it was completely, there's no visibility.
It was completely, like, socked in, in a way that, like, we've seen in the past, like, yeah, helicopters lose their, you know, if they don't have the right equipment, if it's an older helicopter, it loses where the horizon, whatever, and it will crash into mountains if it doesn't know what the... You can't, you couldn't get me on a helicopter for anything, Nick.
No.
Period.
I got in the helicopter once when we were in Hawaii, and we looked at a volcano.
Can you imagine what that's like?
Because there's heat, and the heat comes up, and it makes the helicopter move.
Nope.
Nope.
I'm not doing it.
Nope.
So I will never do that again.
And anyway, so the point being is, it feels to me like this would be an accident.
Well, there's a lot going on here.
I want to say, first of all, that You know, the leading theory, and by the way, this is what Iran is saying, but also they're a murderous regime.
By the way, Raisi was a real piece of shit.
Just an absolute, for people who don't know, the Ayatollah of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, is the main hand of power in Iran.
He handpicks who is going to be president and be out on the world stage.
It has gotten progressively worse and worse.
Ricey was handpicked years ago because he was happy to crack down on dissidents.
He was happy to Execute dissidents.
He was cracking down on women's rights, like just a real piece of shit.
The world is a better place now that he's not in it.
But it seems like Iran and most of the intelligence community are all on the side that this happened because Iran lacks a lot of technology and a lot of parts because of sanctions that have been on the country for a very long time.
We don't have the time in this segment or in the show to go into the total history of Iran.
The United States bears a lot of responsibility for why the country is the way that it is now.
But they are also just murderous, oppressive pieces of shit.
But I don't know about you, but it was like my ears perked up and I was just like, this is really interesting timing.
Of course, Iran is now one of the major components of the Chinese-Russian axis of countries that is creating sort of an alternative order and group to the United States.
It's really strange that this is happening after the recent tête-à-tête with Israel.
The whole thing is very, very strange, but I think that it seems like this is an accident, and what happens now based on who gets chosen, but also what this environment calls for from a new ruler, I think that is where my interest goes in this story now.
Fair enough.
Yeah, I mean, listen, if you want to look at like Israel would probably be the target, you know, the prime suspect in this, you know, they're a little bit busy prosecuting whatever they're trying to do in Gaza in a way that That doesn't seem like it would make sense.
Like, OK, we're going to take the president of the... Netanyahu doesn't make a lot of sense right now.
I mean, that's the thing.
Like, there's a logic behind it, but there's a twisted logic.
And by the way, prosecuting, I'd be careful with that word right now with the International Criminal Court, which appears to be getting Netanyahu and the leaders of Hamas in their sights, which, by the way, best of luck, ICC.
Good luck.
But full throne of support for me on that one.
So if they want to get all those people, you know, in front of a trial, that'd be me.
I agree.
And that is the thing.
I think basically anybody who's going to go with a conspiracy theory here is going to look towards Israel.
The question is, and Nick, with this With this oppressive crackdown that's happened over the past few years, the people of Iran have gotten kind of bold with their protest of this regime.
Like, to protest against the Ayatollah in this country is almost a certain death.
And they have started to go out and visibly protest.
The women have no right to do that.
They've been going out and doing that.
So the question is now, with the death of a leader, are those protests going to grow?
And whoever the Ayatollah picks to be the successor, do they then have a mandate to go out and crack down on these people?
And Nick, you know as well as anybody else that, like, when you crack down on protesters and dissent, what happens is the protests and the dissenters grow.
So is there going to be some sort of a movement there?
Are we going to see someone chosen who's going to like move closer and closer to Russia and China, which has already happened?
Those were the first two world leaders to call Iran after the announcement of this.
It is a really weird time for this to happen.
And there are, like I said, there's a lot of branching roads that could come off of this.
Well, the answer to that question could be gleaned from how Ricey got into power in the first place, because when the Ayatollah appointed him, he was one of these regional judges that only get these good jobs because they're related to somebody in power and because they seem to lack any, what's the word, Jared?
Humanity?
Talent or humanity, yes.
Yeah, and so they will just, you know, at the drop of a hat, if you're wearing a t-shirt, put the death.
If you are, you know, not walking down the right side of the road.
Like, all these different things.
God forbid, you know, anything like being gay or anything like that.
And so this is the guy who just died.
Like, I don't think anyone's shedding a tear over him not being around anymore, but... I shed tears it didn't happen earlier.
Yeah.
Like, people like them make the world much worse.
So, like, you know, Ayatollah would probably be, with that fear in mind, you know, would want someone who's going to completely crack down on this stuff and, like, be even harder.
Well, the other question, because when you have a regime such as what you have in Iran, when you don't have a liberal democracy, like they have, I'm putting the heaviest air quotes on this for people listening to the podcast, elections, right?
When you don't have actual free and fair elections, things happen, man.
You know, windows get open, people fall out of them, you know, in Red Square or in Moscow, and like, there's no telling, like, who is going to replace the Ayatollah after he dies at this point?
They thought it was going to maybe be Raisi.
You know, like, who even knows where this thing is going to go and what's going to happen.
I do want to say, yeah, go ahead.
The last time when Raisi got elected, it was, there was nobody opposing him.
Wait, quote, elected?
Yeah.
Well, there was nobody opposing him because they all happened to fall out of windows or whatever.
They arrested, they got rid of any other opponent because he had lost to the previous president.
So.
He wasn't that kind of popular guy, and so they got rid of everybody to run against him.
Yeah, I wouldn't say he's popular.
I would say he was reviled.
Before we move on, Nick, I just want to say one thing, just because I just want to put a little pin in this so people listening will remember.
Remember back when Shinzo Abe in Japan was assassinated, the former prime minister, and remember when we were covering that, I said, I felt like because we have destabilization and because we have a bunch of radicalization going on in the world, that we're going to see more and more world leaders, like, die.
I'm not saying that Raisi was assassinated, but I am saying it's something to see a leader die as opposed to be, you know, defeated in an election.
Of course, the Slovak Prime Minister was just recently, uh, he survived an assassination attempt.
I just want to put this out there, just to put a pin in it, that what happens when we have all this destabilization, you start to see stuff like this.
You start to see leaders die, you start to see them assassinated, and that sort of like adds up to like a larger destabilization.
Yeah, and probably also leads to tightening of security and tightening of civil liberties and all those kind of things as well as these leaders get a little bit paranoid.
Yeah, I love every time they talk about this guy getting elected.
Yeah, he was certainly elected.
Speaking of people who didn't get elected and probably make the world worse, know probably about it.
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.
This is an interesting, fascinating little story that has popped up in the last few days.
Nick, it turns out back in January of 2021, and can you remember, was anything going on?
I'm blurry, that sounds familiar.
Was anything going on in January of 2021?
Well, I remember one of those days early in the month, I was like doing a live show on the basketball side, and then my phone started getting a lot of texts in the middle of it, and I had to end it early.
But wait, can you remind me though, what was that?
What happened on that day?
Yeah, and after you got off that live show, we then had to do a live show, and by the time that we were done, they were just getting people out of the Capitol.
Yeah, right.
Yeah, so it turns out that back in January of 2021, the date that is written down is most certainly the photographic evidence that on January 17th of 2021, there was an American flag outside of the Aledo residence.
And it wasn't just a normal American flag, it was upside down.
And for people who don't know, that is an SOS symbol.
It is the symbol of something has gone wrong.
In the past, it would be for rescue missions, but during the Stop the Steal push around the 2020 election, this became sort of a metaphor, sort of a symbol of believing that the 2020 election was stolen.
Alito, who is another piece of shit, has blamed his wife.
Said that he didn't know that the American flag outside of his house was upside down.
He said it came as a result of an altercation with a neighbor, which, by the way, we're going to get into here in just a second, because it's an incredible story being woven.
But I love that we're learning more about this guy.
I love that we're starting to understand where his where his chips sit.
Well, I'm glad that you explained the upside down flag a little bit more, because otherwise I thought he would have stolen it from our logo.
Yeah, you know, I mean, we got to get into the story because the story is definitely one of those things that didn't happen for $200, Alex.
Samuel Alito!
And by the way, for people who aren't catching the subtext of all of this, the point of this story is that a Supreme Court Justice of the United States is not in any way, shape, or form, they're not neutral on this stuff.
They're political and they're biased, right?
So to show that he wasn't biased, Nick, Samuel Alito went out and found the closest Fox News personality that he could.
These are tweets from Shannon Bream.
First one.
I spoke directly with Justice Alito about the flag story in the New York Times.
In addition to what's in the story, he told me a neighbor on their street had a fuck Trump sign that was within 50 feet of where children await the school bus in January of 21.
Mrs. Alito brought this up with a neighbor.
According to Justice Alito, things escalated and the neighbor put up a sign personally addressing Mrs. Alito and blaming her for the January 6th attacks.
Justice Alito says he and his wife were walking in the neighborhood and there were words between Mrs. Alito and a male at the home with the sign.
Alito says the man engaged in vulgar language, quote, including the c-word.
Following that exchange, Mrs. Alito was distraught and hung the flag upside down for a short time.
Justice Alito says some neighbors on the street are very political and acknowledges it was a very heated time in January of 2021.
I agree that this probably did not happen.
I have a lot of thoughts on what this story entails and what's being said here.
How does this story find you, Nick?
Well, you know, some of the sleuths out there had made a point of saying that on January, whatever that was, of 2021, there was no in-session school.
So there were no kids at any school bus stops.
I'm sure.
at this time.
Uh, I, so I, I bet you they probably did have a little bit of interactions with some of their neighbors that were testy.
I'm sure.
Probably not then or whatever.
They're trying to mix some stuff on here, but like, um, what I'm confused about is so like, okay, so she's saying she was so distraught about hearing her, uh, accused of being a January 7th, um, January 7th, January 6th.
January 6th.
January 6th.
January 6th conspirator, I suppose, that she decided to hang a flag upside down.
I'm assuming they had the flag already.
It was always normally flying.
Yeah, can we zoom in on that?
This is like one of the most Republican right-wing thing I've ever heard, right?
Like, you personally had an unpleasant interaction with a neighbor And as a result, you decided to fly an upside-down American flag, which says that the country is in distress.
Like, so you getting something said to you that wasn't pleasant... And by the way, we in no way, shape, or form think people should go around calling women C-words out in public.
Like, if this neighbor did that, that sucks.
Yeah.
By the way, Alito is taken away.
So many rights and has done so many awful things.
Like, tell him everything you want.
That's more than fine.
He shouldn't go out in public without having somebody screaming in his face.
But that personal interaction means that you put up an American flag upside down.
Also, by the way, he didn't notice?
He had no idea that this had happened?
That is a wild assertion.
Well, I mean, here's the thing.
Isn't the most reasonable answer that they flew that flag in solidarity with the January 6th?
Absolutely!
Yes, that's why it happened.
People just own it.
Just like, yeah, we were upset.
We didn't like the outcome.
We felt there was some stuff going on.
Like, say the normal GOP party line, and my wife got a little carried away, whatever.
You know, at what point are they going to interview this neighbor?
Like, we're going to get their version of the story, right?
I can't believe we haven't heard that reporting yet.
Just a quick aside before we get into more reactions to this, Nick.
Did people ever interview the Rand Paul guy who, like, tackled him and broke his ribs?
Was that ever an interview?
Did they ever find out what happened there?
I don't know because I would have really enjoyed reading it.
Man, that was such a weird story that took place for like a 24 hour period and then it just kind of went away.
Maybe they didn't.
Wasn't it about leaves on the lawn?
Do you remember?
I have literally no idea what it was about.
I don't remember any sort of investigation into it.
Alright, well, you know what?
For the next show, I'll do a deep dive.
Okay, we'll do an official muckrake update on what exactly happened when Rand Paul got tackled and had ribs broken.
Yeah, I think obviously, you know, one of the parts of the story, Nick, that has come out over the past few days is that Alito, and this was like the day after it was the Dylan Mulvaney quote-unquote boycott.
Of course, that was the transgender influencer that Bud Light gave them a can with their face on it.
Records have come up that Alito had stock in Anheuser-Busch, immediately sold that, and then bought stock in Molson Coors, the competitor, which shows, Nick, that he had an understanding of the MAGA sort of cultural milieu, right?
So, you can't argue that he isn't aware of what's going on.
He's not some sort of, like, sheltered priest-class asshole.
Like, this is obviously a guy who identifies with that entire sort of movement.
So, like, I have a really hard time believing that this was just a complete happenstance.
There's no way that that's the case.
Uh, right, right.
I think what I described is probably what happened.
He is, I mean, listen, we already know how Clarence Thomas and his lovely wife feel about January 6th, and so it would not be a stretch to assume that Alito felt the same way.
Now, they're bound by some weird oath or whatever not to appear political, right?
They're not supposed to ever do that.
And, you know, if he doesn't recuse from all these different cases, it's just, you know, it'll just continue to sully the reputation of a once great court.
Well, and just to be clear, like, that's the problem here.
It's not that he would have, you know, some sort of a bias, like, just in general, right?
It's that he is sitting on multiple cases.
Like, one is to determine, you know, Donald Trump's legal fate when it comes to January 6th.
Another is to determine whether or not Donald Trump has absolute immunity.
And by the way, like you said, in terms of like what they're sworn to do or what their ethics are, I mean, this is a guy who is as corrupted as anybody, save for possibly Clarence Thomas.
I mean, and Clarence Thomas is the GOAT.
Nobody in recent modern history has been more bought off than him.
You have to go back, honestly, you have to go back to the mid-20th century to find a justice that was as bought off as Clarence Thomas.
But Samuel Alito absolutely has a bias.
And, like, that's as plain as anybody can see.
I want to share something real fast, Nick.
This is from a New York Times article about the entire controversy.
They asked Stephen Gillers, who is an expert in judicial ethics at New York University's law school.
He said, quote, I don't think such an objective observer would question Alito's impartiality based on this incident.
I find it impossible to believe that Alito knew the flag was flying upside down, or if he did know, that he knew the relationship to stop the steal.
I don't believe he would have allowed this to happen otherwise.
Nick, what does that mean that he thinks it's impossible?
Why would you, for a moment, find it impossible, except for that you have a vested interest in believing it's impossible and not calling into question this asshole's ethics?
Well, I mean, is he trying to somehow imply that he was leaving his house every day and not noticing it?
Which, by the way, I have, I have like ADHD.
Like there are things that I don't notice, right?
You know, like every now and then like something like just sort of like goes beyond my, my, my vision.
But like the idea that he didn't know that his wife in response to this thing and started flying the flag upside down, that's wild.
How's it impossible though?
Do you know what I mean?
How, how is that possible?
No, it is not.
I mean, it's impossible to someone who like still doesn't, who still believes that the Supreme Court is this, you know, pristine, ethical, you know, entity.
I would make the argument that he thinks it's impossible because he is in the establishment, which by the way, he has ties to the Federalist Society.
Shocker!
Shocker!
Oh my god, I know, everybody's completely shocked.
He has a vested interest because he is part of the gatekeeping society of the judicial system.
And he, along with so many others, including members of the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, all around.
Nick, if you start questioning the Supreme Court, the entire House of Cards starts to fall down.
You know what I mean?
Like, if that's at the top of it, then all of a sudden you have to start questioning whether or not some of these things are corruptible or corrupted.
And as a result, they have a vested interest, and they don't see it because they don't want to see it.
But they would easily accuse Katenji Brown-Jackson of something, you know, unethical, if they could.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I think if you found out, Because Sotomayor has some weird ties that show up every now and then.
It's been brought up in the media, but you don't see right-wing and Republican pundits going after her.
You don't see legal scholars going after her.
I think there is a vested interest, and it's almost like it's out of bounds.
Do you know what I mean?
You just don't get into the Supreme Court.
You leave it alone.
You say you're disappointed with it, and that's one of the reasons we don't talk about packing the court or reforming the court, because it is like one of those keystones that keeps this thing sort of going.
Fascinating.
I don't know.
To me, it feels like because they have the court now, and they finally got control of it, maybe they don't want to change anything.
Don't look at it.
It's like when you're pitching a no-hitter.
Don't even talk about it!
Yeah, they don't look at the So part of it feels like that, but maybe, maybe, but I don't know.
It just seems like we've seen so often how they'll just completely twist their ethical compass to, you know, attack, you know, the same thing on the other side.
So either way, it's just shitty.
It's awful.
You guys have to go, and we should certainly make their meals out a little bit more uncomfortable.
Yes, they shouldn't be able to go anywhere in relative peace.
Listen, if Alito's worst crime was flying a flag upside down, first of all, fly a flag upside down.
Like you said, it's our logo.
Do it.
Whatever.
I don't care.
But his worst crimes are literally taking away people's rights and livelihood.
He's an awful, awful monster.
Nick, speaking of Stop the Steal and absolute monsters, We need joy here every now and then.
We need things that make us happy.
We need things that keep us going.
This is a pretty incredible little story that we're talking about.
Rudy Giuliani, America's mayor, Nick.
The guy who inspires all of us.
On Friday, he was celebrating his 80th birthday in Palm Beach.
And you know, when I celebrate a birthday, when I celebrate a milestone, what I like to do personally is I like to get on Twitter or social media and mock the people who are trying to hold me accountable for my crimes.
That's how I like to mark my trips around the sun.
Rudy Giuliani tweeted, quote, if Arizona authorities can't find me by tomorrow morning, One, they must dismiss the indictment, and two, they must concede they can't count votes.
This, of course, is from the false electors scheme that Giuliani was facing legal repercussions for.
He then posted a picture of himself with people celebrating his 80th birthday.
Crazy!
Within a few hours, Nick, The Arizona Attorney General, Chris Mays, retweeted, the final defendant was served moments ago.
Rudy Giuliani, nobody is above the law.
And that's right.
They delivered papers to his 80th birthday party.
And Nick, I'm just going to read a little bit of the description of when this happened.
Apparently around 11pm, and this is from the New York Post, one of the few times we'll ever talk about the New York Post.
As the papers were served at Rudy Giuliani's 80th birthday party, people were, quote, screaming.
And there was one woman who, quote, cried as Giuliani was handed the papers.
Incredible.
Just an incredible story.
I'm so glad this could happen.
Great stuff.
I mean, they do this a lot.
They like to wait until the last second just to kind of screw with you and make you think that, oh, I'm not going to get service, it's going to expire, and then boom.
They must have had him tailed, right?
They needed to know where he was at 11 p.m.
on the other night.
I, okay, so I think part of the dramatics of doing it after he tweeted that, I think that that was a little bit for, like, dramatic purpose.
But also, don't tweet and mock the people trying to serve you legal papers.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, he is, first of all, 80 seems too young, doesn't it?
I thought he'd be 85 by now, I don't know.
He is in rough shape.
Yeah, yeah.
He is in rough shape.
Yeah, so they couldn't, you know, it couldn't happen to a nicer guy and it's going to be bad because he's already doesn't have any more money left.
He can't afford to defend himself and Trump is not going to help him.
So his only hope is that Trump wins in November and he will somehow, but these aren't kind of the things that you can get part in, I don't think, but he can probably figure out a way to get down the train and kind of get him exonerated or something.
Nick, I want to talk about this birthday party for a second.
Okay.
So, Rudy Giuliani, again, America's mayor!
For a while, you couldn't pick up a paper or watch TV without this guy being revered.
People might not remember this, but in 2008, people thought he was not only going to be the Republican nominee for president, but was the de facto next president of the United States of America.
That's not exaggerating.
He had one of the most grim birthday parties you could ever see.
He's surrounded by all types of people.
On top of that, he's live-streaming a big chunk of it.
And who's he live-streaming with?
And it's not like he has, like, a show anymore.
He lost his show.
Steve Bannon's showing up.
Roger Stone is showing up.
And, Nick, I'm gonna go through some of the stuff on Rudy's Amazon wish list for his 80th birthday.
And by the way, if I... Nick, real fast, I want to play a quick little role play game.
It's your 80th birthday, right?
That's a big birthday.
How would you like to spend it?
What would you like to do?
Well, what I like to do for my 80th birthday, I like to go to a really great dinner, have 10 friends with me, and have some wine, have some speeches, I don't know, something like that.
Have your family with you?
Yeah, them too.
Right, like I would say a dignified affair, correct?
I might even say this, I probably have it kind of close to my birthday, the actual birthday.
Not 11 days before my birthday?
Well, he's having multiple birthdays.
Okay.
So, and I'm sorry, but if my 80th birthday involves me doing a live stream with people who have recently either been given, like, pardons or have been conspiring with Chinese billionaires to, like, milk people to build a fake wall, like, I don't want any part of it.
You know what I mean?
Like, I would rather just gracefully go to sleep and not wake up.
Didn't he have like blonde bombshells?
He's so gross.
He's such a gross person.
Yeah, you think he somehow compelled blonde bombshells, a bevy of them, to appear?
I don't... oh man.
You got to pay people to come to your party?
I don't know.
So, oh, that's so grim, but even more grim, Nick.
Here are some things from his Amazon 80th birthday gift registry.
Are you ready?
I am.
Before I read this off, would it be fair to assume that Rudy Giuliani at some point in his life was a millionaire?
Yeah.
Probably multi-millionaire, right?
Probably.
Will you look real fast while I read this off?
Will you find what his peak net worth was?
What would you guess?
What would you guess was Rudy Giuliani's peak net worth?
Oh, wow.
Well, I mean...
Multiple best-selling books, I assume.
I would have, before I even just saw the quick results, I would have probably said like maybe like in the 5 to 10 million.
Okay, so he was like a, he was a lawyer, he was the mayor of New York, I assume he had investments.
My guess would be 30 to 40 million dollars.
Okay.
Well, you know, the half-assed, you know, whatever, I'd see as much as a hundred million, less than 50, was once worth more than 50.
For the record, I don't know if people know this.
I don't know if people have ever looked at this stuff.
Like my, you know, it's like WikiWorth or whatever it is.
They're like, oh, Jared Yates Sexton, multi-million dollar, you know, fortune.
Oh yeah, they think I'm worth millions.
So, best of luck to those people making those estimates.
But yeah, he was a multi-millionaire, correct?
Yeah.
Okay, here is his 80th birthday, Amazon.
A document scanner.
Okay.
I guess the ones he had broke.
That's tough, Nick.
Can you imagine?
You're Rudy Giuliani, America's mayor, and like you're putting this thing together and your cursor hovers over the document scanner.
We've also got a podcasting mic.
Oh, that's rough.
A 55 inch television.
55?
A 55 inch television.
55.
Okay.
I mean, You might as well paint big if you're going to ask for one.
Geez.
Stain-resistant sealing paint.
Stain-resistant sealing paint.
That is gross.
Why would you need... It's really gross.
It's really, really gross.
Okay.
Next one, which is also gross, but like in a different way, an electric razor.
Yeah, I mean, you know, he's old, right?
I mean, you know, people like that like the Atlantic Racers.
I don't care!
You're 80 years old, like you're a former multi-millionaire, and you're opening up gifts and, like, smoking cigars and hanging out with, like, Ukrainian criminals.
Yeah.
And you're like, oh, it's great!
Okay?
A sleeper chair.
Yeah, I'm sure he's in that chair watching TV at 8 o'clock at night.
Well, I'll tell you what's going to help with him sitting in that chair watching TV late at night.
That is a cooling comforter.
Yeah, that's cool.
I would like one of those.
Would you like a cooling comforter?
I don't know.
Doesn't that sound good?
A cooling comforter?
Maybe while I'm sleeping.
I'm not a blanket guy.
I want a cold pillow.
Can you get me one of those?
I'll get you a cold pillow.
Does that exist?
Are there cold pillows?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's cool pillows.
Yeah, because the pillow I have sucks, man.
I'm sorry, man.
And finally, but not least of all, an iPad.
Need an iPad, man.
Gotta have one.
This sucks.
The iPad and the non-stained ceiling paint seem to be connected in my mind.
I don't know, but hey.
No, that is, he's so gross.
And like, I just, I just want to point out, like, we've talked about the people in Trump's orbit, right?
And how Trump is sort of this He reveals stuff about people, right?
The moment that they come into his orbit and spend time with him, you start to realize things about them, like that their public personas and the auras and the narratives about them were never real.
Has anybody suffered more from that reveal than Rudy Giuliani?
That he is just like a low-rent, disgusting, offensive, like just really, really gross person.
Has anybody suffered more?
Well, so the interesting question is, he has no question been the guy who suffered most.
Right.
Is it a matter of this time, the amount of time he's known him and been connected to him, or is it because he's rude?
I mean, it's probably both.
It is both.
You know, the cross-dressing video they did, right?
When he's dressed like a woman.
That was so awful and also offensive and strange, but he's just, he's a disgusting person.
Well, you know, good luck, Rudy.
We hope you have a fantastic 80th birthday and hope you enjoy it before you go to jail.
Moving on to more serious matters, Nick, with President Joe Biden, something has bubbled up in the past few days.
Where he was facing the possible end of the tariffs that Donald Trump had put against China.
And Biden went ahead, he codified those tariffs, and he actually added to them.
At this point, we now have new tariffs on clothes, appliances, electric cars, which by the way, now from China, have a 100% tax.
For a car, for an electric car from China to be sold in America, it will be double the original cost.
We're also looking at solar panels.
This is, I think, an interesting thing that has happened that shows a lot of what's going on with America that isn't Democratic or Republican.
It is bipartisan as part of the consensus.
I think it's also very telling about what's going on in this current moment in terms of our relationship with China.
Not just the economy, but sort of the changing political sphere that we've covered, we've talked about, we've warned people about, and we've projected it.
But seeing this happen, I think, is revelatory.
I wonder if Trump somehow did this on purpose to time the expiration for just before the election because, you know, it doesn't make sense to do this now because... Well, to be clear, he didn't do anything.
He had no idea what he was doing.
But they happen to be expiring now, like months before the election, and it's going to make goods more expensive.
All the things that we like to buy from China.
He's already been hammered for his entire presidency for prices because of how much inflation has been affecting everything.
Finally, that is going down.
Like, I gotta tell you, I went to the supermarket and I shopped, and it just felt, in an anecdotal way, and I talked to a couple people in line, and they're all like, yeah, it kind of does feel like a little bit cheaper, you know, when we go to the store now to buy food.
So it's like, that's thawing out, and now he's going to throw this out there.
For what it's worth, the electric vehicles from China are so cheap that 100% tax actually still is cheap, and that must be the gamble that they're making, thinking, okay, well, it's still going to be, instead of $10,000, it'll be $20,000, which is still a pretty cheap electric car if it runs.
Yeah, I want to say, first and foremost, That when it comes to this type of stuff, and you know, I want to make it clear because a lot of people aren't careful with their words.
I do think there's a difference between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
I do think there's a difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.
Lay my cards on the table as always.
I think that the Republican Party, if you vote for them or allow them to get into power, it is fast tracking the authoritarian push in this country.
The Democratic Party maybe taps the brakes or keeps it at its current speed, but things still need to change.
Right?
So there are a lot of things that the Democratic and the Republican Party actually agree on.
And one of them is the burgeoning Cold War against China.
It's, you know, going back to what we talked about with the military-industrial complex, that's part of it.
But the other part is that the United States government is starting to push for much, much, much more economic protectionism.
And for people who don't know the history of this, Back when globalism was starting to really reach its full bloom, this was back in December of 2001, that's when China was really welcomed into world trade.
And the reason that it happened is that a lot of people believed that we were going to liberalize China.
If we brought it into the world trade, like, they would start to become more and more democratic.
They would start to become more liberal.
And what actually happened is that China used its population, as well as its authoritarianism, to basically take over a lot of the production of consumer goods.
So America got flooded with a bunch of cheap Chinese products, and America was fine with it.
You know, like, we're happy to pay, you know, very, very little for these goods.
What happened, though, is that neoliberal globalism, neoliberal capitalism, it outgrew America, which is what I'm always trying to explain to people.
It co-opted our government, and even things like the Iraq War were not for American benefit.
They were for the larger capitalist benefit.
And what's happened?
It's outpaced American interest.
It doesn't care about America anymore.
Capitalism jumps from host to host.
It doesn't give a shit about nationalist agendas.
Now, America is trying to reel that back and sort of, like, re-control it, and Nick, it doesn't work!
You can't really do that unless you have a major plan for something happening in the future.
This is noodling around.
And by the way, who's going to suffer?
It's not going to be the parties.
It's going to be me, you, the listeners, everybody else, because those goods are going to become more expensive.
And by the way, all we're ever doing is giving more money to manufacturers and employers to do what they do.
We're always left sort of in lurch.
So the plan is continuing.
It's going to make things worse for us without a plan to actually change very much.
And it's just going to continue this sort of bipolar world that's emerging.
Do you have a problem with a globe that eventually ends up being like China makes the clothes and Mexico makes the car parts and we do innovation?
Do you have a problem with making a global economy like that?
Well, we've made it.
But my problem is that the construction of that globe depends on people being oppressed and being exploited.
It means that people have to do jobs for cents on the dollar.
If they get paid at all, their resources are going to be stripped.
And by the way, it requires authoritarianism to keep people in line, and that's what keeps us in cheap goods.
And now we're seeing that, like, that deal's not even there anymore.
So I have a problem with that system on its face, and I have a problem with what that system is becoming now.
All right.
Because, you know, because obviously the reason why China can make these things so much cheaper is because the labor is so much cheaper.
Now that said, the cost of living is so much cheaper.
But so the real issue we have with that, with what China is doing, is the authoritarianism then leaks into workers' conditions, right?
That's really the issue everyone's going to have.
Well, and what's going to happen, because I've been telling everybody, we're reindustrializing.
This is one of the reasons for the Infrastructure Act and the CHIPS Act, right?
Was to go ahead and restart American manufacturing.
Well, how do you compete with China if you are going to have minimum wage and workers protections and labor unions and benefits and all that?
You can't.
Right?
You just can't.
You can't recreate that.
So what has to happen is either the system needs to change, and we need to change the way we consume things and the way we move forward, also what people are paid and what their benefits look like, or we need to look more like China.
And that's sort of what we're looking at now.
We need to have a system that sort of recreates that, but in America, which, by the way, is what neoliberal globalism wants to happen.
It would be nice if we could somehow compel China to, you know, have better worker protections.
We tried.
We tried, but we weren't particularly interested in it, you know?
Yeah, I mean, like, because everything was so cheap.
But like, you know, is there a way to say, OK, we are not trading with you until you do this and we prove it and whatever we can monitor?
I don't know.
I mean, I think.
Well, they've created their own economic system.
Look at what happened with Russia.
We tried to levy all these sanctions on them, and China's like, hey, don't worry, we'll take care of it.
So we have this entire parallel system that either we're going to buy into, which, by the way, is why the Republican Party is gaining power, right?
So they can go ahead and create a system where they can be part of that.
So we either create an alternative that is better and it wins, or we go on over to the dark side.
Yeah, it's very, very concerning.
At the very least here, I mean, the protections are there and whistleblowers are around for that kind of thing.
Unions are getting stronger.
If they're not being killed.
If those whistleblowers aren't being shot outside the Holiday Inn.
Yeah, you know, I just came across that again.
It's so disheartening.
We, I didn't, I like to think we don't live in that country.
We do.
We live in that country.
People will get... Anecdotally, do you know that a second Boeing whistleblower died?
No.
Another one?
A fast-acting disease.
I'm not, I'm not alleging anything.
I'm simply saying that the Boeing whistleblowers probably shouldn't stand in front of windows.
Yeah.
Okay, so New York Times, speaking of Joe Biden, Ezra Klein has this article called Seven Theories for Why Biden is Losing and What He Should Do About It.
Real fast, to get people up to date who maybe haven't heard our past podcast on it, what is Ezra Klein's position on Joe Biden's re-election campaign, Nick?
He needs to go to the right.
Well, no.
Well, that is what he's going to talk about.
But also, Ezra Klein was the one who had a conversation with Obama on a Monday, and Wednesday was like, Joe Biden needs to get out of here!
Yeah.
Oh, right.
I forgot.
Yeah, he was the guy who said, yeah, maybe we should find somebody else.
We need to find somebody else at the convention.
So Ezra Klein, where he's at on this whole thing is pretty defined.
He starts the article by saying, It's not Joe Biden's poll numbers that worry me, exactly.
It's the denial of what's behind them.
Among likely voters, Biden is trailing Donald Trump by one percentage point in Wisconsin and three points in Pennsylvania.
He's ahead by a point in Michigan.
These are not updated, by the way.
Sweeping those three states is one route to re-election, and they're within reach.
Still, Biden is losing to Trump, and his path is narrowing.
So, Nick, let's go through this list very quickly.
Number one, the polls are wrong.
This appears to be Biden's view.
There are two things to say about this.
The first is that it's false.
Even as pundits predicted a red wave in 2022, the polls showed Republicans falling short, and they were right.
The second is that to the extent polls have been wrong in recent presidential elections, they've been wrong because they've been biased towards Democrats.
Sure, the polls could be wrong, but that could mean Trump is stronger, not weaker, than he looks.
I happen to agree with Ezra Klein on this.
Yeah, it's reasonable.
It's a reasonable assumption or hypothesis.
So yeah.
So I don't think that's the reason why it shows that Biden's losing.
I think that Biden has trouble with the polls because he has trouble.
Correct?
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
Not a guy who's not in the White House who can just sit there and criticize him without any kind of, you know, he doesn't have to do anything about it.
So, yeah, anyway, the polls are probably, unfortunately, a little bit more accurate than we like to think.
So, number two, it's the media's fault, meaning that the media has been doing a bad job of covering Joe Biden.
Where does that, where does that sit with you?
Do you think that's one of the reasons why Biden is losing right now?
Well, I certainly think that the interactions that the White House has with the media, because it's not the media.
I look at it as the White House PR is the one, the culprit here.
They don't seem to be able to get their message out.
They don't seem to have a coherent message, and they never seem to be able to get enough of the credit when they do things well.
And so that should be more on the comms than it is on the media in general.
I would.
Well, so first of all, we've covered the New York Times is absolutely shitty about this.
But also, it doesn't appear that the Biden administration has particularly good relationships with the media.
It doesn't appear that they work with them very much.
It actually appears that they're more interested in working with like social media influencers than they are like the actual media.
By the way, to get back to the Alito story for one second, the reason why they leaked or talked to this Fox News person, you know, there's a picture of her with Alito's wife at her birthday party.
Like, she's a family friend or something like that.
Like, that's how deep that stuff kind of goes when you want to do it, right?
You know, Hillary Clinton was probably, you know, the godmother of Trump's kid or baron or something like that, right?
Allegedly.
We gotta put that out there for legal reasons, allegedly.
So I agree, the comms department within the Biden administration sucks.
They're really bad.
So I think the media, I don't think it's the media's job to carry the water for Joe Biden, but I do think our media has done a terrible job of educating people on the dangers of authoritarianism, and it's been that way for forever, correct?
Yeah, absolutely.
Okay, number three, it's a bad time to be an incumbent.
Yeah, I think that's true.
I think it's kind of a shitty period to be the President of the United States of America.
And because it's not, you know, you're not all powerful.
But also, I would make the argument, I'd love to hear what you have to say.
I don't think Biden has done enough to push back against sort of the tides that are there in America and what's going on.
So I think this is part of it.
But I don't think it's the whole story.
Yeah, absolutely.
It definitely is tough.
Yeah, he's a sitting, he's a target right now and everyone can take shots at him.
Number four, voters are angry about rising prices and high interest rates.
I think that that is not wrong.
I do think that is one of the reasons why Biden has problems, but also the president doesn't always control those things, nor has he given an articulate answer for why things are happening.
Meanwhile, you know, we hit the all-time high stock market.
The economy is doing really well and by those kind of metrics, but here we are and you know people it's it's all the prices.
It's that's why it's confounding that he would try and do this thing with China now and that will trigger higher prices right now.
So only thing that they're that's a clothing some of his numbers back.
I think I bet you that's what the biggest thing is inflation is what's killing in the most.
I think it's incredible that the stock market is doing so well while so many people are not doing well because I don't think it's an actual indicator of what's actually happening in the economy.
But that being said, like, no, people, the vibes are bad.
It feels bad right now to go out to buy something or do something.
Well, but also the vibes are bad because Trump is out there, too, in my mind.
That's also part of the bad vibe.
Yeah, and that could influence people who would never, like, vote for Trump, but they just sort of get, you know, listen, it's influencing me every freaking day.
I got to hear that guy.
So, yeah, it's like, that's why Trump just has to go.
We have to get, you know, get back to something else in terms of how these parties interact with each other and how they run their campaigns, because this is not sustainable.
Next up, voters think Biden is too liberal.
Do you think that's one of the reasons why Biden's in trouble?
Yeah, there's a certain section of voters in the United States who think Biden's too liberal.
You know what their names are?
Republicans.
That's it.
That's literally it.
That's it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And we've covered it.
The American voter is not particularly educated about what's going on.
Like they have a lot of things going on.
They get a lot of their news, of course, from like things like Fox News and the internet.
The idea that Biden is losing because he's too liberal is absolutely asinine.
Next up, voters think Biden is too old.
Do you think that this plays into one of the reasons why he's losing?
Absolutely.
I think it's part of it.
Also, by the way, newsflash, I'm just hearing this on my earpiece.
Donald Trump is old.
Yep.
Yeah.
But he talks louder.
Well, I think he talks louder, but also I don't think it does Biden in terms of like his age.
I don't think it does him much good in the fact that he doesn't assert much control over what's going on.
It feels like this is a person who, for lack of a better phrase, is quote-unquote asleep at the wheel, right?
Like it really is a thing where Biden spends a lot of his presidency not being able to get things done because of where the tides are going, and like his inability to sort of like rein that in I think feels bad.
Is that fair?
Yeah, I mean, listen, the presidency is so much, it's as much about appearance as it is about substance, right?
And, you know, it certainly has the appearance of that.
I would like to believe that a lot of the things that they got done, he's been instrumental in, you know, twisting arms and using the power of his position.
But the appearance makes it seem like he's not doing that, and that's the problem.
Finally, Democrats need to redefine Trump and Klein here argues that they have not done a good enough job of actually talking about how dangerous he is and how extreme he is.
Does this strike you as as one of the answers?
I mean, yeah, I think what we've done and how we've, you know, described Trump is a lot more seriously in tone than what we hear from them.
And they don't want to be alarmist, I suppose, but yeah, there could be a better framing besides, you know, I mean, we've heard, we've heard Biden say this is about democracy, right?
He's sort of brought that up a little bit.
And I imagine they're going to hit it harder, but they certainly haven't gotten out ahead of this and made it a more clear, cogent argument.
I would say, and you know what I'm thinking about, Nick?
I'm thinking about what we were talking about on the weekend or on last Friday.
Biden challenging Trump to the debate was really flippant.
Do you know what I mean?
It's just like, make my day, pal!
And on top of that, like, all these weird sort of pokes at him, like, oh, you're at a trial, I'm out doing this, or whatever.
I feel like that sort of mocking, playful tone doesn't communicate seriousness.
Do you know what I mean?
I don't feel like Biden or his administration or re-election campaign have done a very good job of actually talking about what's at stake here.
You know, they talk about the rights that have gone away or what's happened with the Supreme Court or whatever, but I do not feel like that message has been drilled down on.
It was for a minute when he talked about, like, semi-fascism and, you know, radical MAGA Republicans or whatever, but I don't feel like that has particularly taken much precedence lately.
Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly.
And, you know, it's not going to change, is it?
I don't know.
I really truly don't.
I mean, we'll see what happens when these debates start, but like, treating this like it's a joke or sort of a memification type process, like, it doesn't feel good.
Right, like beneath the presidency, right?
Like to do that kind of stuff, but we're already here.
Yeah, like you want him to be the elder statesman, the guy who behaves properly and is appropriate, I suppose.
But, you know, that gets all destroyed once Trump is involved anyway.
So I don't even know.
I don't know.
And do you think that, you know, is Biden going to win a debate against Trump?
You know, I've been thinking a lot about what that debate's going to be like.
I still, I would still be shocked.
I wouldn't be shocked if it didn't happen.
I would not be shocked if one or both of them pulled out of this debate, but like, I don't know at this point what it's going to look like because the the Biden comms, I think you nailed it Nick, like they have been all over the place.
They really don't know what they need to say or how they need to say it or what they need to present to people and it just feels like it feels like one mistake escalates into another mistake escalates into another and then they're just trying really hard to react to it as opposed to define it and again we've talked about it We have no idea what a second term from Joe Biden would look like.
I mean, other than to think it would look like this term, and that's a weak appeal.
Like, tell me what would be different.
Tell me what laws you would pass, what your vision is, and it just, it's not there right now.
Absolutely.
And again, it's not going to change.
They don't have the ability to get that done in the next three or four months.
You don't see that changing?
You don't feel like that's going to change?
You know, I mean, they're not going to switch the correspondents.
You know, the head of the Kareem Jean-Pierre, they're not going to switch her.
And then what's the other guy's name who comes out there and does the international stuff?
Anyway, he gets way out ahead of his skis.
You know what I'm talking about?
God damn it.
Which, by the way, their messaging on the Gaza thing has been piss poor.
They just really don't know how to talk about it.
They don't know how to present it, how to argue, or anything.
On the what thing?
On Gaza.
They just are like, oh, I'm sorry, I can't hear you.
I got to go to lunch.
It does feel like those things communicate something to the electorate, but I'm not sitting here saying that it's like a foregone conclusion that he's going to lose in November, but I do think that there are issues that need to be addressed and maybe it starts with the debates, maybe it starts with the convention, but there's got to be some change in communication somewhere.
There is, yes.
Sorry, I thought of something I can't say, but it would be too mean to Trump.
Anyway, I'll tell you out there.
All right, wonderful.
I can't wait for it, everybody.
We are going to sign off now.
We will be back.
I can't wait to hear what this is going to be.
Yeah, I don't know.
What a cliffhanger!
Okay, we will be back with the Weekender episode on Friday, if you want to listen to that.
And by the way, you do!
Even the ones who aren't subscribed, like, you're listening to the preview.
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Come on over.
In the meantime, you can find Nick at Can You Hear Me SMH.
You can find me at JWestExton.
I'm going to go find out what Nick is thinking that he can't say on the air, probably for legal reasons.
