Desperate, Trump Claims He Never Said "Lock Her Up"
Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss more of the fallout from Trump's conviction in his NY case. Alex Jones was on a bender as he claimed he was about to be raided by the Feds and turned it into a telethon. Then they tackle the latest firing from the Washington Post and what it means for journalism writ large.
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Oh, this is my first week I've had that's been pretty mellow and chill with my whole scheduling around the basketball stuff.
So it's like, yeah, I feel good.
I ran faster and stronger and longer than I ever had on the treadmill since the last year or so.
And so I'm feeling good.
You wore the treadmill out.
I like to hear that.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, you have to be careful.
The calves get worn out a little bit.
If you do a little bit too much, a little too fast.
So, I'm riding the edge there like Maverick in Tough Mudder.
Well, you are going to be my inspiration.
I'm doing a late run today.
You've got me pumped up, so that's how this is going to work.
But first, we have a whole show for you.
A reminder, go to patreon.com slash mccraigpodcast.
If you were there, if you were not subscribed right now, and you would have been there last week, you would have come and hung out with us last Thursday when we were talking about the breaking news, which was Donald Trump being convicted of 34 counts, felony counts.
We did a live show.
Our patrons came and hung out.
It was a great time.
This is the type of stuff that you get, as well as like post-debate analysis, major, major stuff like the conventions, the stuff you're not going to hear anywhere else, patreon.com.
Well, and newsflash, there'll be a lot more breaking news coming up this summer that you're going to want to be part of.
There's going to be a lot more breaking news coming up.
Patreon.com slash Montcreek Podcast.
Nick, we have to start with the fallout from the Trump conviction last week.
Listen, I know it's shocking to everybody that Donald Trump didn't immediately drop out of the presidential race, apologize, slink away into whatever hole he came out of.
That's right.
He stuck around everybody.
And there is just like So much fallout that we have to go over, just to go ahead and set the table.
Instead of the Republican Party completely running away from him, he had a record fundraising haul, over $50 million.
It was one email and text message after another that was like, I've been convicted!
They're trying to throw me in jail!
Of course it was.
Meanwhile, the polls have come out.
It looks like 50% of America wants him to drop out.
We can talk about what those numbers mean.
It's nearly a 50-50 split on voters, whether or not they think this should disqualify him for office.
There's tons of stuff to pick through, and we haven't even, like, scratched the surface yet.
Nick, how do you feel about this a couple of days removed from the conviction?
It's still sad.
It's just a sad, dark day.
We were walking the dogs, ran into some neighbors.
It's the first thing that comes out of anyone's mouth now.
We were talking about it pretty much.
And, you know, it's just a dark day that we have to even go through this and deal with this.
And then the next part then would be, Sifting through what the, even the people who are not even focused on this that much and who might not even be, you know, completely MAGA right.
You know, I think that there's so much misinformation.
They don't think that there was any part of the case here.
They don't think that there was, that Trump knew even what he was convicted for.
All these things that, that becomes so frustrating because it's not that complicated of a case and it doesn't need to be that, that obfuscated where now people are like confused and think that it was a sham case to begin with.
That's what's frustrating.
No, and I want to make it clear, Nick, we're not saying it's a sad day because Donald Trump was convicted.
We totally understand that Donald Trump should have been convicted.
These crimes were as obvious as anything.
The only thing missing was like a pure confession or a sheet of paper that Donald Trump wrote on, I did crimes.
This thing was open and shut, caught dead to rights.
It's sad that we have now a convicted felon who is one of the major party's nominees, who is also a former president.
It's a big, giant mess.
Meanwhile, you're exactly right.
The way that this country works, Nick, is we have to move back and forth, vacillating on narratives.
Now the question is whether or not this was a witch hunt, that there wasn't actually any crimes here, that it was just political retribution.
Meanwhile, it was just organized crime.
And that is what he got convicted of, was a major conspiracy within his Trump organization with his own private lawyer to pay off a woman that he had slept with in order to help his election chances.
It's not some sort of ticky-tack case.
Like, he was absolutely caught dead drunk.
It gets worse because now they're trying to say, well, Hillary got fined for misfiling her expense for the Steele dossier.
So why did she only just get a fine from the FEC and he gets, he's going to go to prison or he's going to, you know, have a whole trial.
And so then you had to try and pull apart that why that is different.
And Newsflash, it is so different that you can't even put it in the same ballpark.
You know, if you if you remember, Hillary did misfile that expense to steal.
That was it.
And then they paid the fine.
They recalculated it.
And that was fine.
This is so far different than what Trump did and acknowledged that he did that, you know, again, add to the frustration of like, how do we get to that point where they people can mix these things together?
Well, I'm not going to be the person to sit here and tell you that Hillary Clinton has never done anything wrong and didn't deserve some sort of a punishment for the things that she did wrong, but it is not the exact same thing.
Donald Trump, as we can see, and by the way, ProPublica has an investigation that came out today that has shown that multiple witnesses of the Trump cases With an S, because God knows how many felony counts he has left that he has to try and beat.
Multiple witnesses have been paid millions of dollars, in some cases a $2 million bonus severance package.
You've seen people being given jobs, being given advancement in their careers, being given consideration.
This has been, top to bottom, an organized crime case.
And basically, the Trump Organization, I know this isn't a surprise to a lot of people, Is top to bottom an organized crime unit?
I mean there's a reason why the state of New York went after them and all of this stuff is coming out of it.
Donald Trump has been a crime boss pretty much his entire career and a lot of those things are coming to bear.
You know, part of me feels like he would have gotten away with just an FEC violation.
If it wasn't for those meddling kids, I agree.
Well, you know, I think if it wasn't for them trying to write it off as a tax deduction, I honestly, I really feel like that was the last straw.
It's being cheap.
That's the thing.
It's being cheap that like really does you in.
Right because let's not forget Cohen pays $130,000 and when he does that it's basically a campaign contribution of which the maximum you're supposed to be allowed I believe is it's either like $3,300 or $6,600 so you're talking about an order of magnitude way beyond that you're allowed $130,000 so that would have been you know I mean who knows if they would have probably would have done that but once they layered it on top of that and then try to fool the IRS Then it's game on.
By the way, what does it tell you about the people there that they were willing to do that?
How often do they do this anyway that they didn't even think about the ramifications of that?
That's how crimey these people are.
No, they're the most crimey of the crimey people.
I mean, that's the whole point of it.
We got a lot of ridiculous fallout out of this, but Nick, let's go ahead and start with what I find to be just a piece de resistance.
There we go.
I got there.
So this has just come up in the past couple of days.
All of a sudden, Donald Trump, and this is from Truth Social, you heard it here, This is a truth.
Quote, the sentencing quotes around it for not having done anything wrong will be conveniently for the fascist four days before the Republican National Convention.
A radical left Soros back DA who ran on the platform of I will get Trump reporting to an acting local judge appointed by the Democrats who is highly conflicted will make a decision which will determine the future of our nation.
The United States Supreme Court must decide.
Nick, on top of that, it's not bad enough that Trump himself put this forward.
But Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, has now come out and said that the Supreme Court should weigh in on this.
I think a couple of things are happening here, Nick.
First of all, they are, of course, reaching out to a Supreme Court that they have corrupted and they have stolen to try and get help.
But it's also trying to put this under the umbrella of the legal opinion that we've covered on this show, which is Trump can't be prosecuted for anything.
He is somehow or another completely immune from any investigation, any prosecution.
Like, this is absolute bananas.
It's even worse because he goes on to say, I'm looking for the quote right now.
I hate it when you say it gets worse.
I hate it every time.
I know, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry, but it is.
It's the facts.
He basically insinuates that he's been talking to Supreme Court justices, and hint, hint, we know who the two he's talking about.
Wink, wink!
And he already knows what they're going to say, which is, this is a sham and we will definitely get rid of this as soon as it comes in front of us.
So that's what's so scary.
Now, by the way, if you were ever in a, and I have to stop saying, by the way, I've discovered that I say that too much, so I apologize.
But the problem here is that they should never hear a case like this.
The case like this should never get to the Supreme Court.
They would turn it down in a second.
So we're going to find out now just how corrupt it is if they actually do accept this case and then try and wipe it away.
The fact that Mike Johnson would come out in public and say that he's literally talking to these justices and already knows what their temperature is.
It's corrupt.
Crimey and corrupt-y.
His breath reeking of boot leather and polish.
Meanwhile, as they're trying to push forward with these absolute crazy ideas, Trump made the rounds.
It's not like he went away and said, I'm sorry, he went and played some golf, he went to a UFC event where a fighter jumped out of the cage and shook his hand.
Congrats, I guess.
Meanwhile, he starts making all the media rounds.
He goes on Fox News, and this is some stuff that you have to hear it to believe it.
Nick, before you press play on this clip and the clip after, do you remember, just let's get in our time machines.
Let's fire up our old time machines.
Let's get in the DeLorean.
Let's go 88 miles per hour.
We're going to go to the ancient era of 2016, Nick.
And how did Donald Trump at that point feel about Hillary Rodham Clinton and the investigations against her?
Oh, he was really concerned about him, Jared.
He thought, you know, that they looked like they could get in the way of a campaign, maybe, or even a president.
They could possibly get in the way.
What should have happened, according to Donald Trump and every single person in his orbit, what should have happened had Hillary Clinton been found guilty of crimes?
You know, there's a phrase that they were using, and I had to kind of dig through it.
I'm trying to get there, too.
It was three words.
Smocked him back.
Lock her up.
Oh, lock her up!
Okay, can you hit play?
I want to follow up on what Rachel asked you, though, because I hear you struggling with it.
I hear you say it's a tough question, a bit unsure.
You famously said, regarding Hillary Clinton, lock her up.
You declined to do that as president.
I beat her.
It's easier when you win.
And I felt, and I could have done it, but I felt it would have been a terrible thing.
And then this happened to me.
And so I may feel differently about it.
I can't tell you.
I'm not sure I can answer the question.
Hillary Clinton, I didn't say lock her up, but the people don't say lock her up, lock her up.
Okay.
Then we won.
And I say, and I said pretty openly, I say, all right, come on, just relax.
Let's go.
We got to make our country great.
Yeah.
And it would have been, think of it, you lock up the wife of a president of the United States.
But they want to lock you up over $130,000 of an accounting thing.
And a perfectly stated accounting thing.
But, you know, people also say, can you bring the country together?
And the answer is yes.
Success will bring the country together because I had it together.
Before the China virus came in, I had it together.
Do we have to hear the rest of this?
For the people listening and not watching on our YouTube channel, he looks great.
Like, this conviction really suits him, Nick.
Yeah, his hair, everything is a little bit more, what's out of focus?
Is that the word?
Disheveled, is what I would say.
He looks rough.
Yeah.
Wow.
Well, Sue, and again, you were being asked, like the party in 1984, you were being asked to look at 2 plus 2 and think that it equals 5.
Because the entire point of this is to take your entire experience from years of listening to Donald Trump saying that Hillary Clinton should be jailed, locked up.
We're now being told he never said that.
He never wanted that.
Some people around him might have said that.
You are being told not to believe your lying ears.
And this is I and I know that he lies and he's a hypocrite all the time.
This is a special level of it Nick.
Well, it was disgusting for him to say.
I don't I didn't say I never said lock it up.
He lock her up and then and then for him to describe her as a.
A wife of a former president versus his political opponent?
His political opponent, a former Secretary of State, a former senator.
Yeah, he was just the wife, she was just the wife of a president.
Yeah, it's just so, it's just disgusting on every level.
In fact, the idea that any woman would ever vote for this guy is astounding.
Speaking of Hillary Rodham Clinton, let's go back in time and see what candidate Donald Trump in 2016 thought about Hillary Clinton being investigated for a potential felony and what that would mean for the election.
She shouldn't be allowed to run.
I guess so.
Something must have happened in my mind.
Can you start that clip over?
I just want to make sure I heard him right.
She shouldn't be allowed to run.
Wait, time out, time out.
No, something happened in the background there.
There must have been a mo or somewhere.
Can you play that one more time?
I'll turn it up a little higher.
She shouldn't be allowed to run.
Okay, how's that?
Yeah, okay, now you can go ahead.
I just wanted to make sure my ears were working.
Good.
And I'm not talking about what happened last Friday.
I'm talking about Right now.
She shouldn't be allowed to run.
memory last Friday, I believe he's referring to when she kind of like lost her balance, you know, after the 9-11 commemoration, I believe is what he's talking about, I think.
But anyway.
She shouldn't be allowed to run.
When you look at General Cartwright, four-star general for doing almost nothing by comparison, could serve five years in jail.
That happened two weeks ago.
General Petraeus destroyed their lives for doing nothing by comparison.
How about the young man took pictures of his submarine?
He wanted to have some pictures.
The submarine's not like it's a brand new submarine.
It's many years old.
They put him in jail for a year.
And she does all of these different things.
They're also conducting... By the way, I just want to jump in here.
Aside from the fact that he's, you know, he's talking about Hillary, he's also minimizing severe breaches of our security by people in the military who were caught, right?
Like that's... If you're going to come on to our podcast and say that Donald Trump doesn't care about protecting America's secrets and security, I'm going to walk off.
I'm not going to do that.
I'm not going to sit here while you even allude to that possibility.
This is a man who would never tell American enemies classified intelligence and or pack it up like a doggy bag from a Chinese restaurant and throw it in a spare bathroom in Mar-a-Lago.
I will not stand here for that.
A second criminal investigation.
Into Hillary's illegal pay-for-play corruption at the State Department.
There's virtually no doubt that FBI Director Comey and the great, great special agents of the FBI will be able to collect more than enough evidence to garner indictments against Hillary Clinton and her inner circle Despite her efforts to disparage them and to discredit them.
If she were to win this election, it would create an unprecedented constitutional crisis.
In that situation, we could very well have a sitting president under felony indictment and ultimately a criminal trial.
It would grind government to a halt.
Sheesh.
Okay.
How about that?
How about that?
Great.
It's good to hear from the past every now and then.
Check in on how the old favorites are doing.
Ah, you know, um, I don't even know where to begin.
I don't even know.
Because, obviously, looking in the future after he, then he wins and he wants, doesn't want these things.
Like, I don't know.
He's got my brain wrapped in a loop here, too, because I almost get it.
Like, he doesn't want, he didn't want her to be, after he won, he didn't want her to be investigated, right?
And, you know, by the way, I said it again, there was nothing to investigate.
She was not going to be going to prison or being tried for deleting some emails, right?
That was the whole crux of the matter here.
You want to compare that to stealing secrets and putting them in the, did you say the Mar-a-Lago bathroom?
The Mar-a-Lago bathroom.
Yeah, you know, that's like, again, it's that same notion that he had already got us on the path of minimizing severely big huge breaches of our, you know, our security apparatus.
So, it all makes sense, you know, at least he's consistent, I think, right?
I don't know.
Is he not?
Is he, is he, is he consistent?
He's consistently inconsistent.
That's the way you look at it.
Meanwhile, Nick, following up on a story that we've been covering for a couple of weeks now, we had talked about this developing conspiracy theory that the libs in the deep state are definitely going to try and kill Donald Trump if they can't lock him up in jail.
It's in the cards, right?
We heard about it.
First of all, I told everybody I saw it in far-right forums and communications.
That's where this stuff always begins.
It made its way to Alex Jones, who we'll get into in just a minute.
Who claimed that he had these dreams and prophecies of it.
Marjorie Taylor Greene picked it up.
And what'd we say, Nick?
Before too long, it's going to become the main cause of the right.
They're going to put this everywhere.
Here is a clip from Donald Trump Jr.
himself talking to Tucker Carlson recently on Tucker Carlson's show.
Once they, it's almost like you get kidnapped and the kidnapper has a mask on, but once he shows you his face, he's got to kill you.
Correct.
And they've shown their face.
Yeah.
You know, again, I don't think there's anything they wouldn't do.
I mean, you put out something, I think it was, I think it was on Twitter yesterday, which was, you know, sort of that extreme, like, well, if they can't get Trump this way, what's the next level?
And I, I think we've, they've proven that they'll do that in the past.
I think we're now figuring that out.
We understand it.
I think the system's probably been broken for You know, much longer than any of us would care to admit.
And for me, I saw it firsthand.
At least 61 years it's been broken since they killed the president in an election.
Exactly.
False.
Wrong election year.
It was the year before the election year.
If we're getting technical here... Nick, what happened 61 years ago?
What are we talking about here?
You know, JFK was assassinated in Dallas in 63.
Remember, the election year is 64.
That's right.
And, Nick, who is they?
There's a lot of the pronoun they being thrown around.
Who is they?
Who killed JFK and who's coming to kill Donald Trump?
You know, in his addled mind, it's probably a mixture of like the CIA and the FBI and like a lot of the deep states, you know.
And?
And?
The liberals?
Who am I missing?
And?
Soros?
You're getting warmer, my friend.
Oh man, who am I missing now at this point?
I mean, maybe Russia?
No, he loves Russia.
No, no, no, no, no.
You were almost there with George Soros.
Okay.
I don't know.
You have to tell me.
Who's behind everything in these conspiracy theories?
I need someone to say the Jews in general.
Oh, there we go!
We got there.
Yeah, absolutely.
They took down JFK.
And, of course, this catch-all of they is going to be very useful as this continues to grow.
And mark my words, this is what's going to happen as these convictions are playing themselves out as more of these trials and as the election is playing itself out.
We're going to hear more and more That Donald Trump is being targeted to be killed.
It's already being transmitted.
It's already going throughout all this.
Meanwhile, we're hearing about the Great Replacement Theory constantly.
This happened because of the immigrants, because the Jews have brought in the immigrants, according to these conspiracy theories.
Now we're actually retrofitting the JFK conspiracy theory to involve the Deep State.
In this case, it's a quote-unquote satanic cabal, right, that's pulling all these strings, as opposed to the military-industrial complex and the intelligence complex.
It's now being sort of moved around.
We're actually watching the past get kind of like molded around like so much Silly Buddy.
Yeah, it's, you know, I remember last week I said that I'm convinced they're going to stage an assassination attempt.
To make this come true, you know, because if you think about it, let's say they get some, you know, poor maggot guy to do it.
They're like, don't worry.
I'll win and I'll pardon you and I'll pardon you in this notion of I'm a, you know, I'm going to let forgive you for trying to kill me.
Whatever, right?
Like I know it sounds crazy.
I want to I don't even know the reaction to that.
If anyone even heard me say that last week, but like I can't shake the notion of that would be something that they're talking about right now.
It's the narrative that is taking shape, and it's the narrative that is holding so much of this weight.
And by the way, Nick, let's take this to its next step.
So if you have, let's say you're living in this fever dream.
Let's say that your leader, a divine agent of God like Donald John Trump, let's say he's being targeted to be killed, right?
He's being persecuted right now, but he's also being targeted to be killed.
What would you do to protect him if you believed in him as a divine agent of God?
Well, you would throw yourself in front of the bullet, I imagine.
Sure.
Would you try and stop it before Judas and the Romans and all that take him out?
Oh, yeah.
In fact, you'd probably have to really be proactive in trying to stop it.
You probably would have to take some real actions.
And I want to point out that we're hearing a lot of the right-wing fringe who's talking about targeted prosecutions, investigations.
And like we were talking about with the far right and the forums and Alex Jones and so on and so forth, let's go ahead and get a taste of what's brewing in the fringe of the right.
This is not friend of the pod, Tim Pool, and not friend of the pod, Laura Loomer, who are absolute loons, but let's see where they take this little thought experiment.
I'll put it this way.
Should Democrats be in jail?
No question.
When Donald Trump gets elected, should he start locking them up?
No question.
Should there be lists of Democrats that need to go to jail?
100%.
And the reason for that is they've committed crimes.
We need to make sure that when Donald Trump wins, we've got An Attorney General, a Deputy Attorney General, a head of the CIA and the FBI.
Kash Patel would be fantastic.
We can have Attorney General, there's some names floating around.
And then they can start having their investigators and the Feds issuing subpoenas, pulling up evidence, and with real evidence, bring them to judges for warrants.
Then these people can spend three years of their lives fighting tooth and nail against the government for crimes they committed, and we can prove.
Oh!
We still have that punishment, by the way.
We do!
is that we can show the whole world, we will uncover what you've done.
We will make sure everyone knows and you will be held accountable for it. - Not just jail, they should get the death penalty.
You know, we actually used to have the punishment for treason in this country.
- Oh.
- We still have that punishment, by the way. - We do.
I mean. - If you wanna talk logic to a crazy person, We still do have that penalty.
Yeah.
What are the crimes that the Democrats have committed?
Treason, Nick.
What are you talking about?
Have you looked around?
Have you opened your eyes lately?
Treason.
Damn, that treason doesn't grow on treason.
So the treason is that they're using the Department of Justice as a weapon to drag them through all these cases.
And destroy America by proxy.
Sure.
Right.
And so by the way, as long as they threaten to do it to them, that's going to be the thing that's going to keep us like in the, like, like the nuclear arms race.
We didn't have a world war because of mutually assured destruction.
That's the whole thing that the Republicans are pushing.
We're in, we're in on mutually assured destruction.
If you pay any attention to the right, they are all ready, ready for this.
They, they are so pissed at the Democrats for weaponizing the legal system that they're going to respond by weaponizing the legal system.
You know, and again, when you say, well, there was a trial and they put on the evidence, he had his highfalutin lawyers and all this stuff and all this preparation they could do for Trump and he loses like that.
That's not going to have any bearing on their thought process, I suppose.
It's not.
By the way, before we move on, Nick, I just want to take a moment.
I think every now and then it's good to sort of like put your feet in the ground and say, hey, let's look around and see where we are.
We're in a spot, aren't we?
Do you feel it?
Do you feel it building?
You know, the spot that I think we're in is basically the Democrats, there is going to be a way to frame all of this to the public.
They haven't figured it out yet.
But I suppose, like, you know, in some respects, the GOP is digging their own grave with this, in theory.
Like, there should be a way to frame this where it kills them.
By the way, is this much different than, like, McCarthyism?
Because while McCarthy didn't have trials of people, he had these horrible, you know, HUAC committees that were bringing people in and making them testify.
And if they didn't, they could put them in contempt.
I don't think it's any different, right?
What they're threatening at this point, right, is what the bullshit that they're trying to do anyway with these, the weaponization of the Department of Justice stuff, like, you know, inquiries as it is.
And the problem, I think, now compared to McCarthyism is that when Jim Jordan does this and when these guys do this and call these people and dox these people, basically, they are now under threat.
Their lives are threatened.
Well, and I do think the next step in the evolution is the actual weight and brunt of the government being used against people.
I think they're going to try and do this shit.
I think they're telling you exactly what they want to do and what they intend to do.
It's not the first time we've talked on this show about, you know, the right talking openly about executing and imprisoning their rivals.
Like, I think they're in it to win it.
I think it's like McCarthyism, but on steroids, and they have a plan to do it.
It's not just one drunken, you know, member of Congress who's doing this.
I think that this has legs, and they know what they want from it.
And the Democrats are forcing them to do it.
Oh, they're totally forcing them to do it.
Before we move on, I just want to share one quick thing.
This is one of my favorite articles in a while.
This is from Axios, and man, they really go after it.
The name of the article is, Guilty Verdict Fuels Trump's Push for Black Voters.
And we don't need to go into the particulars, Nick, but the argument is being made that maybe Donald Trump will be more popular with black voters because he's convicted of a crime.
I just want you to put that in your mouth for a little bit, chew on it, see how it treats you.
How's that treat you?
How's that feel?
I might have to leave and run to the toilet and let that out of my mouth because that's how it feels.
That is... cynical isn't the right word, right?
It's because it's so beyond... I mean, I guess we have to get into the racism part of this, right?
Yeah, yeah.
It's one of the most racist things I've seen, like, published since I've looked at, like, Der Stormer.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah, right, right.
Because somehow, all black people get arrested at some point, and they must then, you know, commiserate in a way that they're willing to give a vote to someone who has been so completely racist their entire life anyway.
Like, yeah, that'll work.
And again, let me remind people that in 2016, there was a big push heading like around this time, that saying that, you know, black voters are going to vote for Trump, like 17, 18% of black voters are going to vote for Trump.
And it was so ridiculous and preposterous, I made a bet about it.
And I remember when we looked at the numbers at the end, it was like 7%.
It was half of whatever they were trying to say.
So whatever this notion is that they're building towards, again, they just inflate numbers.
They try and make these bullshit things to create something that's not there.
And so I don't think we have to worry about it too much, but it certainly is revealing.
That is a wild thing to write and hit publish on the internet.
Speaking of wild things and speaking of Alex Jones, Nick, some developments on that front.
Of course, everyone knows that Alex Jones was found guilty for roughly a billion dollars worth of damage against the Sandy Hook families in that massacre.
This weekend, and again, I'm one of those people who pays way too close attention to the comings and goings of Alex Jones because I think you can learn a lot about the right and where it's going by watching him.
He's incredibly influential for all the wrong reasons.
He came in, he aired an emergency broadcast.
That's not so far outside the type of thing that he does.
Basically every day he has an emergency broadcast.
But he went into his studio and told everybody that federal agents were trying to break into his studios.
Basically promising that on air federal agents might bust in at any moment and pull him away in handcuffs.
Got a huge number, a ton of attention for this.
Said that they were going to get rid of InfoWars.
He said that he was going away forever.
They ended up playing Frank Sinatra's My Way as a sign-off, which, incredible stuff.
And there's a couple of clips that we need to share.
Before we play this first one, though, Nick, I just want to give a chance for any listeners who are maybe parents.
Maybe you have some kids around.
Maybe you're giving Junior a ride to school.
This might be a good time to hit pause.
You'll listen to this later.
And yeah, so we'll give people just a second on that.
And then here is a sampling of Alex Jones's reaction live on the air.
I've been under attack.
I've been gaslit.
I've had secret federal filings filed on me that I'm committing crimes, referred to the Justice Department, which of course wasn't true because we'd already filed it in federal court months before.
They don't even check this shit.
If you're gonna fucking frame somebody and fucking lie about it in the goddamn federal court, who the fucking knows it's already filed in the goddamn court, you bastard?
So fuck you!
And fuck anybody else that tries to go on your shit!
You want fucking war?
You fucking got it!
I told you one more fucking lie and I was gonna do this, alright?
I tried to sustain this place.
I didn't believe America was as corrupt as this.
I didn't believe we were this fucked and we are this fucked.
This country is administratively got a bunch of scum in charge of it.
That's why it's going down the tubes and America and the whole world sees it.
So you misjudged who I am, and in a year, millions misjudged who I am, and you have no idea!
No idea!
So go ahead!
Try to jerk off some operation to shut the doors here and do that improver thing I said.
It doesn't matter!
And I don't sit there and make threats.
I make promises.
I haven't had time to dig it out of my phone.
But I will.
And you will, at the end of the day, know That Alex Jones, the American patriot, defeated your evil ass.
You guys want to comment?
Wow.
I mean, a real impassioned plea.
I love when a guy who basically has millions of people who own a ton of weapons are ready to like go have like, you know, bloodlust like type battles with the federal government that he tells them that he's declaring war.
I assume there aren't any possible consequences of that whatsoever.
Well, I wish I could say no, and no one listens to him, and he's a bunch of hot air and all that stuff, but it's like, we've seen time and again how people are activated by this stuff, right?
It's like, that's not even made up.
That's not even sugarcoating, whatever.
That's the truth.
Well, I would also feel a whole lot better about this if, you know, he was a serious journalist, thought about the consequences of it all, and didn't, I don't know, allegedly pick up a bottle of liquor and get drunk on the air.
Well, let's find out what that sounds like.
What would you say at the end there?
We'll take the next call.
trying to be dramatic here but it's been a hard fight these people hate our children what would he say at the end there we'll take the next call oh okay but nick this is a totally serious person can Can't you tell that he's, like, actually crying and, like, actually feels this?
I mean, I guess he's relying on people that don't actually see the video and they're just listening to it, and maybe it sounds more compelling, because it certainly is when you're watching it.
So, Nick, I assume, like you, that, like, InfoWars wasn't on the air today, Monday, June 3rd, right?
It had been shut down.
Alex Jones had been, like, pulled out of his studio and everything was over, right?
I mean, I'm fairly certain I would have heard of that if that was the case.
Oh, that's weird because what he said didn't come to pass.
He told everybody that.
Also, would it shock you to hear that he went ahead and sold supplements and told his listeners that the only way to fight back against the federal government and the tyranny was to buy supplements?
Oh, yeah.
No, it's actually a really great way to run a sale.
Yeah, it's really, really great.
It's like what he continues to do.
He manipulates his listeners and his viewers by making them think that this is the end, like a prophet who is always claiming apocalypses around the corner.
Meanwhile, the Sandy Hook judge in his bankruptcy was asked to liquidate his assets.
That's why this happened.
The judge said, no, we're not going to do that right now.
So as a result, what he said didn't come true.
There were no federal agents outside getting ready to kick and scream their way in.
Also, by the way, Nick, I think it would be fair to say he was trying to capitalize off Trump's conviction, probably, to try and get a couple of dollars.
Would that sound right?
That sounds exactly right.
Yeah, and this worm, meanwhile, whose dad bought him his entire business, is just going to, if Infowars dies, he's just going to transfer what assets he has over to his dad's supplement company, which I'm not even joking you, is called Dr. Jones Naturals.
It's just going to continue on, and meanwhile, what's he doing?
He's feeding into the right-wing conspiracy fever dream, this idea of persecution.
He's just adding to the environment, and if nobody dies from this, we'll all be lucky.
Well, and we also have to remember why he's in this situation, right?
Why does the federal judge have this decision to make about liquidating his assets?
It's because he tortured families of people who lost children in a horrible tragedy that is unspeakable, that continues to keep happening in our country.
So anything that happens to him is good.
You know, I will have no problem with anything happening that causes him any kind of discomfort and pain.
And suffering because of what he did for so long to those families.
And I'm not even speaking out of turn.
This is what a federal judge and a jury decided.
This is not even anything we're making up.
So I'm waiting.
I would hope that at some point, yes, he is liquidated or his assets are all liquidated.
It's going to happen.
That's the entire point.
He used this basically as like a manipulative moment to basically create a fake telethon.
And just to make sure that the information's out there, it's not just that he called Sandy Hooks a hoax.
You can do stuff like that.
Like, you can just, you know, run off the mouth and say dumb shit.
He basically used the entire weight of his promotion, which not only millions of people listened to, it had unbelievable amounts of assets.
It had people going to their homes.
It had people interrupting them.
It basically inspired people to make these poor, grieving families' lives a hell.
And he deserved what he got.
That judgment was correct.
He deserves to be run out of business.
He's going to survive.
And part of the reason he's going to survive, Nick, is because stuff like this, what he's doing, along with what we just talked about with Trump, it keeps this entire ecosystem rolling.
It keeps it profitable.
It keeps the money rolling in.
It keeps this entire thing growing and getting worse by the Yeah, I can't wait until, it can't come soon enough, where he ultimately has to, you know, pay the fines and that's not even enough.
The penalty is not enough for what he did.
No, he should never be on the air again pulling stunts like this.
Speaking of Alex Jones, let's talk about the antithesis, the people who are supposed to hold people like Alex Jones accountable.
The Washington Post, one of the two major newspapers and media outlets in the United States of America, is in absolute disarray.
Nick, in the past couple of days they have fired the top editor Sally Busby.
They have also announced that they're going to start quote-unquote strategically using artificial intelligence in their operations.
This comes after a few years of being owned by Jeff Bezos since 2013.
They have not been profitable and unfortunately if you're not making money, even if you're a newspaper, You are going to basically be throttled.
And what we're seeing is one of the major media outlets in the United States of America be more or less throttled.
Yeah.
By the way, my first instinct reading this was like, yeah, you know, if you're going to lose that much money and if you can, if you have to conflate the number of views to your articles with the amount of revenue, it's going to come in.
And as a CEO, you're going to be like, great.
That's the person in charge of it.
You're fired.
You didn't, you failed.
Right.
Like that.
And a very top line, you know, business, you know, focus thing.
That's sort of what it is.
Now, the question here is, is, you know, you know, we give all the credit to like the president of the United States for our economy, even though, you know, they really don't.
They shouldn't.
They don't deserve all the credit.
I don't.
But sure.
OK, fine.
People do.
And they give me, you know, and they don't deserve all that credit.
They don't deserve all the blame.
It's like they're sort of in the middle of all that.
And I have to imagine in a situation like this, you know, as you're trying to balance everything as the top editor, you know, you have decisions that you're making.
I'm sure are coming from the top that they don't have any influence on that affects the bottom line as well.
So I wouldn't, I have some sympathy for Sally, but the bottom line is, it's like, if it is a business, is it a business?
Are we supposed to run it like a business?
That's the question, right?
Yeah, you know.
If it is, then yes, she gets fired and that's all.
She knew it was gonna happen probably way before this.
Sympathy for Sally sounds like a long-forgotten Oasis beat track.
And I'm up for that.
Yeah.
Or maybe like Counting Crows.
Okay, I see it.
Yeah, so Jeff Bezos, who has helped ruin so much of America so far while enriching himself, he buys the Washington Post in 2013 for a quarter of a billion dollars.
It's basically what you or I would drop on popcorn at a matinee.
Right, so he buys the Washington Post, one of the most influential newspapers in the world, and basically since then has tried to run it like a traditional business.
You can't do that with newspapers!
And on top of that, he's comparing it to the earnings that took place back in 2016 through 2020.
Which was the time period in which, like, all the waters were high because Donald Trump was selling subscriptions.
Because what did we need to do to save democracy?
Small d democracy, Nick.
We needed to buy subscriptions to newspapers!
You know?
We didn't need to get in the streets.
We didn't need to go into, like, some sort of a mass strike.
We didn't need to do much of anything except for read, consume, and repost news.
This is not the type of outcome that you want to see in a situation like this.
You don't want to see them moving towards artificial intelligence, which by the way, anybody who hasn't Googled anything recently, tell me how good that AI is treating you.
And that's one of the most powerful corporations in the world, and they can't figure out how to use AI to get actual information out there that can inform people.
This is a mess, and I don't think it's coincidence whatsoever.
That America's journalism is being absolutely rooted out.
More or less, the copper wiring is being taken out of the walls.
As authoritarianism is growing, as the threat continues to grow, these two things go together.
And these two things influence each other time and time again.
And you don't need some sort of a crazed, megalomaniacal billionaire buying something like the Washington Post.
Well, I think the idea was he was so rich that he could operate at a loss with this notion that we're going to do journalism.
But even still, I know I've sent you a few over the years, but like every day I come across an article, even in the New York Times or Washington Post, that is so poorly written and so poorly edited.
That it's already it's the quality of the writing is already so compromised as it is even even if you know before they you've taken the fact that they probably already cut a whole bunch of people at you know to try and make this thing profitable so um you know obviously you can't make it where like the government's going to subsidize that because then it becomes propaganda So I don't know how you're supposed to solve this, you know, because in theory, if you have a brand like the Washington Post, you should be able to figure out how to make it work enough where you can pull that profit.
But I don't know how else to explain it other than, you know, a massive management failure as well.
I just want people to think about something because I also think this is a good demonstration of what's gone wrong in this country.
For anyone who's like me who comes from a small town, you undoubtedly saw your small town newspaper die, right?
You saw it eaten up.
A bunch of different small towns had to come together for one newspaper.
That thing probably died.
You lost local journalism, right?
Then all of a sudden you have a bunch of like local TV stations that have local news and you looked around you're like something changed here.
The quality is off and all of a sudden Clear Channel owns everything, right?
So all of a sudden you live in information deserts.
Right?
What happens is it keeps going up and up and up and up.
And then you have these major news corporations like the Washington Post that they get hit with it too.
It's a lot like what I've talked about with higher education.
It started with the small sort of regional schools and it's making its way up to the very, very top.
This doesn't work.
This neoliberal economy that we're always talking about on this show, like nothing is immune to it.
Everything has to be destroyed and then liquidated and then basically profit, you know, a few private equity firms who we'll get to in a minute.
And basically you have the erosion of everything that was supposed to, I don't know, make us a better democracy, make us a better republic, and make us better people.
And you're left in a society where people like Alex Jones thrive, where misinformation and disinformation thrives, and people have to come find people like us to get information about nearly anything.
Yeah, well that's the rise of Substack, right?
Substack is now going to become the place of record.
And that's interesting.
And there are plenty of people out there that have journalistic training and do it that way.
But it also gives rise to the Alex Joneses and those kind of people who are going to spread all manner of disinformation under the guise of what it looks like well-researched journalism.
And, you know, it makes that water even more muddy.
So that's what's concerning to me.
Now, I suppose at some point you can be like, well, I know that this person Is it has integrity that's why I'm going to read that them and assimilate their information but You know how that goes, right?
That ends up becoming, you know, depending on what side of the aisle you're on, is what you're going to be convinced is the real thing.
And not that the newspapers ever were the greatest arbiter of that, in theory, right?
So I don't know where the solution, I'm always at the solution, how you can make this work.
The only way I can think about it is you can't have these big bloated corporations that are trying to run a huge newspaper with thousands and thousands of employees.
But I don't know how we then govern this where we know what's true and what's not.
I mean, that's the $65,000 question, right?
By the way, Nick, you ready for this?
You want to hear some good news?
Yeah.
Matter of fact, I'll even take this a step further.
You want to hear some good news from some stuff that the federal government and the Biden administration are doing?
That would make me very happy.
I mean, I'm pissed at them because of what they're doing with immigration status and, of course, the ongoing conflict with Gaza, which is absolute horseshit.
But let's talk about some things that are actually being done that we can look at and be proud of.
Nick, you know, while Alex Jones was claiming that the feds were going to raid InfoWars at any moment, they were actually busy raiding somewhere else, which were the offices of Cortland Management, which is a landlord corporation with over 85,000 residences over 13 states.
It turns out that Cortland Management had been using a consultant firm named RealPage and basically unilaterally raising all of their tenants' rates and basically conspiring to keep these people from being able to fight back, from being able to get due recourse.
And the feds went after them, raided their asses, and it looks like they're actually going to get what's coming to them.
Hey, finally.
Yeah.
I think that, you know, renters need more, more advocate, you know, people to advocate for them and protect their rights.
Rent seekers.
Some of the worst people in this country.
The people who were absolutely being predatory towards people in need.
And I'm not even talking about somebody who maybe has like, I don't know, an apartment for rent or a house for rent.
You know, their parents passed away and they're renting their house.
I'm talking about these giant corporations that have made it their entire purview and mission to get rid of single home ownership.
They've basically tried to ruin the bedrock of the quote-unquote American Dream to keep anybody from being able to afford to buy their first house, to keep them from ever owning anything and getting ahead financially, and they've put them in a constant renter class and basically erased any opportunity to sort of get some skin in the game of the so-called American Dream.
And they have done it with incredible precision and also cruelty.
And these types of people, they need to be drug into a courtroom and they need to be exposed for the frauds and the predators that they are.
Oh, absolutely.
And you know what, the irony here is that Trump is running as a real estate person who, how sweet irony would it have been if he was the one involved in this or Jared Kushner, you know what I mean?
Like that would have been just the chef's kiss on all this.
But, you know, I think that they could use this as well as a cudgel politically because I would have a hard time seeing Trump being for this.
Right.
Trump would be a guy who'd be like, yeah, of course, you got to raise the rents as much as you can and squeeze whatever you can and they let them move out and be on the street.
Fine.
It's a well.
And so I think you could probably get him in a corner a little bit on this one, too, because it's, you know, here's here's Biden.
Now, the question is, is Biden going to be able to take credit for this?
Well, we don't know.
So basically the way that this all operates is that, and we're going to talk about another one of these things in just a second, basically you have a bunch of these entities like the FBI who investigates this type of stuff.
They're supposed to be somewhat independent of the oversight of a president or an executive, but we all know that it sort of goes back and forth.
This type of stuff sort of depends on a little bit of a hat tip, a little bit of an okay.
Occasionally a president will battle against the Department of Justice, tell them to back off, or will, you know, tell the intelligence apparatus to back off.
The question is how Biden will react to this.
We don't know where the money is.
We don't, like, do they have offices in Delaware, Nick?
We don't know.
We don't have a clue.
Is this going to go forward?
Is it going to do this?
Is Biden going to want to take credit for it if that's actually the case?
We don't know.
And quite frankly, this is the type of stuff that our government is supposed to do.
I'll take you up one more notch, Nick.
And I don't know if people have heard about this.
This should have been a bigger deal than it is.
The administration and the federal government have now filed an antitrust suit.
Are you ready?
They went after Live Nation and Ticketmaster.
And let me tell you, if there's anybody who deserves an antitrust suit, it is Live Nation and Ticketmaster.
Merrick Garland has said, quote, it's time to break them up.
This is a conglomerate that has more or less made buying tickets to anything in this country an utter hell.
And has preyed on one person after another.
This is the type of stuff that the Sherman Antitrust Act was created to go after.
And thank God somebody finally did.
It's only decades late in getting done.
You know, it's funny because I can easily see a whole bunch of venues all the way across the country being like, you know, it's been a cut to like, you know, 20 years ago.
So tired of having to deal with, you know, developing their own app or their own system way of selling tickets.
So it was easy to offload all of that to another company.
Well, unfortunately, any other company ends up being just one company.
Now, though, I think it is a lot easier to deliver tickets to run that whole thing individually.
So I would argue that the individual venues would probably end up making more of a profit when they cut out Ticketmaster, too.
So they're on board.
But obviously the biggest issue here are us, you and I. To go see a freaking concert is almost impossible now, the way how much prices have gone up.
And again, I don't know about you, but have you ever gone to a concert and sat pretty close?
Yeah, yeah.
Well, if you ever did that, it's really hard to go to another concert again where you're sitting way in the back, right?
It really is.
It's like, I probably wouldn't want to go at that point.
And so, yeah, it's outrageous.
I mean, you're talking about $300, $400, $500 minimum just to kind of get in the door in some of these places, and that has to stop.
And I know the artists are behind it, too.
I think in addition, I want to talk about the political ramifications of this.
In addition to going after places like Live Nation and Ticketmaster, they should be going after, like, SeatGeek and StubHub.
You know, all of these places that are gobbling up tickets, that are taking away opportunities.
Because when the federal government doesn't do its job and protect the consumer or protect the citizen, what happens, Nick?
It's what we cover all the time without ever saying explicitly.
You have rooms full of people who are paid a ton of money to figure out how to take advantage of the vacuum of protection.
Correct?
They'll figure out any way that they possibly can.
By the way, Google should be broken up.
Amazon should be broken up.
Facebook should be broken up.
All these things should be broken up.
Our economy would be better.
Our country would be better.
The culture would be better.
The environment would be better.
All of this brings me to a point, Nick, which is not only should all this be done.
This is popular!
Doing this type of shit actually makes a dent in the everyday experience of life.
If you actually do what's right, and you use the power of the government the way that it should be used, this is the type of stuff people say, you know what?
I don't like Sleepy Joe.
I don't care for Sleepy Joe, but I do appreciate that the government went out and did this.
I do appreciate that these predatory companies are being put in their place.
This is the type of stuff they should be doing, and as a result, we call balls and strikes, this is the type of stuff you should be leaning into.
Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like, oh, student loans!
Right for another one of those things is that's very popular.
And again, balances the playing field against a completely tilted thing to the predatory lenders.
And this is the same.
So I agree wholeheartedly.
And again, it's also a shrewd political move.
However, you want to slice this thing, and you know that you're going to have some Republicans speaking out against this, right?
Because they recognize how beneficial it's going to be to the Democrats in charge, and it's going to sink them, because how can anybody in their right mind want to argue for more expensive tickets to concerts?
I agree.
And Nick, let me, let me, I'm going to pitch you something.
Are you ready?
Can, can, can you, can you get ready to give me the green light or the red light?
Give me, give me some real feedback on this.
I could use it.
Yes, go ahead.
Let's say that there's a, I don't know, a president.
He's a little bit older.
His opinion ratings aren't all that good.
Re-election seems a little rough.
We're not really sure where things are going.
Wait, I need a second.
You've got to use your imagination.
Okay.
Yeah, I got it.
What do you think about an election campaign that says, you know what, this other party is dangerous.
They've gone too far in rolling back rights and protections.
If I get another term, I promise you I'm going to codify a woman's right over her own body as well as voter protections.
On top of that, I'm going to go after major monopolistic corporations.
I'm going to make sure that you get a fair share.
We're going to start building some things, investing some government money in, I don't know, more infrastructure and things that are absolutely crumbling.
And we're going to make sure that these things are going to be permanent.
They're not going to be rolled back by executive orders in the future.
We're going to go ahead and push the country forward in that direction.
How's that sound?
Just make sure the camera's got a little bit of a lower angle.
Maybe some music fades up with some strings.
And you got me.
I'm hooked.
I'm sold.
It's not that hard!
No, it's not hard at all.
Which, by the way, we're not even talking about the fact that the Democratic Party has said, we don't really want to talk that much about Trump's felony convictions, all 34 of them.
What the hell?
Well, but I think that was your point was that they need to be focusing on the list of things you already described.
And, you know, they don't really need to spend too much time on Trump.
I feel like if either they had said they don't want to spend time on Trump, they're spending too much time on Trump as it is anyway.
And we need to have a picture of the future that will lift us.
These people over here are dangerous, felonious criminals.
Comma.
Here's what we're going to do.
That's all.
Just start and move.
Are you concerned, though, that when you start painting, because obviously the right is painting, you know, Biden as someone who's going to literally destroy the country, right?
And then we kind of go back and say, well, no, he's literally going to destroy democracy.
It's going to be whatever.
I almost feel like that might be the turnoff as well.
And so it's enough to be like, The slightest bit of lip service towards what, you know, the conviction, whatever, and who he is as a person.
But I don't know if it's worth trying to convince people that, like, the destruction of democracy is going to be at our feet if the Republicans take control again.
I think it's the truth.
I think I agree.
I'm just wondering, as a political thing, if it is worth more of what you're talking about as far as what we can progress to.
We don't need this.
We need this.
Right.
Because people are always skeptical, right?
I don't think this is just like we think, you know, just like, you know, we're like, we know that, you know, if Biden wins another term, buildings will not collapse.
You know, they're going to be like, yeah, well, it's not going to be like, you know, our country is going to fall apart if Trump wins.
Which it could, and it would.
It would certainly not resemble what we have now.
But I do feel like that bombastic approach might end up turning off enough of the edges that maybe it doesn't work.
Whereas the other side would be, like you say, we're going to make sure women have the rights over their bodies, we're going to make sure that you don't get screwed by big corporations, all that stuff.
That's the thing they need to be focusing on.
I agree with that part.
I mean, you can massage it around the edges, but like, this is the type of shit that people want.
It's the type of things that people look around and they're like, ah, what are you going to do?
It's going to be that way forever.
Have a leader who says, no, it's not going to be.
We're going to change this.
Yeah, maybe they can also say something about health care.
Maybe they could do something about health care.
You know.
Which we haven't heard shit all about in a while.
Period.
Right?
Right.
I mean, listen, it's terrible.
Health care is too expensive.
All these different things.
It's better than it was.
But I love the fact that when the GOP starts to criticize the Affordable Care Act, it's like they're pretending like it worked beautifully before that.
Perfect.
Just absolutely perfect.
We love it, folks.
All right, everybody, that's going to bring us to the end of this episode.
We're going to be back with the Weekender edition on Friday.
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