Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman begin the show with a debate preview, discussing what both Biden and Trump need to do to win it. They move on the pre-fascist playbook by Ron DeSantis who has cut ALL Arts funding in the state of Florida before ripping apart the MSNBC segment featuring Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation.
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I'm one of the most pro summer people there are, and I'm feeling it.
I mean, be careful what you wish for, is what I'm saying to myself, because I've been waiting for this.
I got it now.
And yeah, you move a little slower out there when it's that warm.
It was feeling good in the A.C.
Had the A.C.
going, was enjoying that conditioned air.
I was like, you know, 101.
I've been in 101 before.
And then I walked outside, ready to run, and I was like, whoa!
All the air.
All the air out of the lungs, expelled.
That's my favorite childhood memories, believe it or not, are like coming home from daycare, from summer camp, that hot bus, you know, and then getting off and then walking into the front door and having that cold air hit you.
I swear to God, like I will remember that more than any, most of my other childhood memories.
That is a, that is a good point.
Coming home from like basketball camp or a baseball game.
Oh, that's the good stuff.
Well, speaking of the good stuff, everybody, welcome to the Mockery Podcast.
We got, We got business a-doin', Nick.
This Thursday, the 27th, at 9 p.m.
Eastern, on CNN, supposedly, supposedly it's happening.
Nobody's withdrawn.
People are going.
They've got the TV trucks ready to go.
Joe Biden and Donald Trump apparently are going to have their first presidential debate.
Jake Tapper and Dana Bash are going to host.
God help us.
We are going to go live immediately after this debate, if it happens.
You need to go over to patreon.com slash buckrakepodcast in order to come watch the show in totality, see what we have to say.
I promise you it's going to be better than what you're going to see on the networks or anywhere else.
We've been told this through multiple elections now.
This is must-watch, must-listen coverage.
Patreon.com slash Montclair Podcast.
Nick, it's the opening of the season!
This has all been exhibition.
We've been watching all the stuff come together.
We're ready to go.
Come sign up, please.
I promise by that point I will get Jared to pronounce Dana Bash's name properly.
Certainly by that show.
Dana.
It is Dana.
Don't let... Dana Bash?
I know.
It's weird.
I get it.
Rosanna.
Rosanna Dana.
It's something.
I don't know why, but it's Dana Bash.
Dana Bash?
Yes.
We don't want to insult the Bash family.
Jeremy Bash.
Dana Bash.
We don't want to get in their way because they could be... they're tough.
I don't know what to do right now.
Okay, fine.
We gotta go.
Nick, we gotta talk about this debate.
We gotta set this thing up, give a little bit of a preview.
This is the earliest presidential debate I've looked and looked and looked.
I haven't seen anything earlier.
It's really bizarre that this was done.
It's the Biden campaign and the Trump campaign both put some Put a gambit out there.
They're taking a gamble on this thing.
A lot of politicians doing that these days.
This is still a close, close election.
Both of these candidates have a lot of work in front of them.
Nick, what are you looking at?
Let's go ahead and let's start with the sitting president, Joe Biden.
What do you think he needs to do in this first debate, and what do you think he needs to avoid?
I think he probably has to do something similar to what he had done in the previous debates against Trump was to be able to push back strongly, to be able to have that presence where he doesn't seem feeble, right?
That's a really important thing I think people are looking for, which ends up being probably a low bar.
Right, I think he can hurdle that one.
Okay, he did it for the State of the Union, and if he doesn't, anything like that, they're going to turn around and say he was screaming and yelling yadda yadda, which I thought was silly.
Well, hold on.
On that note, can you play this clip?
We need to talk about this.
This is from Representative Ronnie Jackson, who, by the way, his entire career has been Plagued with accusations of improper conduct and heavy drinking, you name it.
This was him going on Fox News talking about the need to drug test Joe Biden prior to this.
Improper conduct?
That, Jared, why are you, why are you, that's like pulling, pulling a punch isn't even the right term for that.
It's really embarrassing as a former White House physician to have to do something like this, but we don't have any choice based on what's going on.
But I'm going to be demanding on behalf of many millions of concerned Americans right now that he submit to a drug test before and after this debate, specifically looking for performance-enhancing drugs.
Because we've seen recently in his State of the Union address that there was a Joe Biden that came out that was not similar at all to what we see on a day-to-day basis for the last three and a half years.
And there's just really no way to explain that other than he was on something, that they didn't give any medications.
I feel like this is probably what's going on over this week at Camp David.
You know, he's going to be at Camp David for a full week before the debate.
Part of that is probably experimenting with, you know, just getting the doses just right, because, you know, they have to treat his cognition.
They have to give him something to help him think straighter.
They have to give him something to wake him up, you know, for his alertness.
And then, you know, he's been agitated.
We see that all the time, and that's a common symptom or sign of this cognitive disorder that he seems to be suffering from.
So, Nick, one of my favorite things about Trump world, and by the way, I'll lay my cards on the table.
There are plenty of open rumors in Washington, D.C., even among Democratic Party strategists, consultants, and members of the party that like to talk about rumors about whether or not Joe Biden is put on a certain regiment of drugs for debates and speeches.
That is something that gets bandied about that is not just within MAGA world.
But I do love the whole MAGA thing that they have to do where they're like, Joe Biden is so feeble, he's incapable of doing anything.
He's really scary, though, when he gets all amped up.
Like, I love that they have to do both of these things at the exact same time.
Well, how about this?
What are the odds that both candidates suffer from the same exact thing that Ronny Jackson is talking about?
That is a possibility.
I'm pretty sure that one of these candidates follows this regimen he's describing that he knows a lot about.
He seems to have a lot of detail.
Personally, I would welcome drug testing before the debate.
I would love to see what these two guys, what these two fellas have going through their system because it would be an interesting readout.
There is a test like that, I think, for government employees just to be, to get hired.
I believe they still have that, I think.
So yeah, why not make that part of it, I guess.
But yeah, the projection is thick, I suppose is the word.
And yeah, of all the people, I mean, he is sort of the poster child now for where we are.
You know, a guy who should be disgraced from his profession and from everything is now, you know, an elected politician, an esteemed member of Congress.
Uh, spouting out about this stuff on the news.
It's really, uh, this is where we come to and it's going to get worse.
That's the problem.
It is.
And by the way, anybody who welcomes Ronnie Jackson onto their airwaves like deserves to have their licenses taken away.
So, uh, Nick, I interrupted because you were talking about Biden needing to show himself to be, be capable.
What, what else do you think he needs to do?
And what do you think he needs to avoid?
I mean, I think, you know, uh, It would be nice if he could really sort of call Trump out on the issues that he's dealing with.
The confelony stuff should have some weight to it, right?
You should be able to get some of those moderates and those undecideds to kind of respond to the notion that he's already now been convicted of felonies and he's got more of these things weighing in on him.
I think it might be a chance for him to really make it clear that this is the fair arms of justice doing their thing and has nothing to do with You know, him being involved.
The only problem, I suppose, with that is if he brings that up, that opens the door now for Trump to then sort of just throw out every accusation, baseless or not, for that.
So, I don't know.
I think that's the big one.
But, you know, you said this is very unprecedented, right?
Because it's so early, you know, and there's other things that aren't because they've already debated each other, already ran against each other.
I don't think we've ever had a debate before where one of the moderators had to accuse one of the participants or had to Let's compare them to Hitler in the past.
Have you ever seen anything like that before?
You know, I'm scanning my memory bags.
It's coming up empty.
Yeah, yeah.
So, I mean, that's what we're dealing with here is Jake Tapper, you know, rightfully so, had to compare the language of poisoning the blood that Trump clearly uses and is clearly a reference to Hitler.
And that's got them up in arms up until now, but he's still going to go through with it.
Are you now with me on this?
Are they're going to go through with it?
No, no, I'm not.
I'm still coin flip, probably 51, 49% is where I'm at.
Yeah, so just full disclosure.
And by the way, I think that more people who are in the media and commentariat and do these types of jobs, I think they should disclose this type of stuff.
There are plenty of people that you see on cable news or you listen to their podcast that before a debate or before a speech, sometimes people will reach out to them and ask them for some notes.
So, I will go ahead and tell you what my notes that I have contributed, what they said.
And that is this.
First of all, absolutely, Joe Biden has to show a masterdom of facts, figures.
He needs to be very agile.
He needs to have those things at his fingertips.
On top of that, like, he needs to make this case.
One, Here is what I did in my administration in the first four years.
Compare that to what Trump did in his four years.
Talk about Trump as a convicted felon and as a person who is coming after democracy, and then say what you're going to do in the next four years.
Also, this is one of the things.
I've spent way too much time looking at old debates, both the Trump-Biden debates from 2020, the Trump-Clinton debates of 2016, the Biden-Paul-Ryan debate of 2012.
You know, I've been going through all these things.
On top of that, my God, Nick, I looked at so many primary debates, both with Biden and Trump.
Here's the thing.
Trump does a lot better in a big debate when there's a ton of people on the stage.
And one of the things that you'll notice is he picks on a couple of people, particularly either the people who are like running against him, who are close, or the people who are on their way out.
Right?
Like, basically, get off my car, you're done.
And then the other person, he brings them down.
An example of this was when he would go after Rand Paul and make fun of his appearance, or Marco Rubio and make fun of him, while also going after Ted Cruz and making sure that they weren't neck and neck.
The good news there for Trump, and you might remember this, he would go after somebody and then make good with another person on the stage.
He would then sort of be like, I don't know about Jeb, but I like Jeb.
You know, and he would do that.
So those big debates help Trump.
He sucks at one-on-one debates.
He gets really, really flustered.
Of course, we all remember with Hillary Clinton, he like basically tried to physically intimidate her and she would get under his skin and, no puppet, you're a puppet, all that stuff.
Basically, you need to treat Trump like a real threat while also treating him like the small, pathetic man that he is.
And as a result, you are just going to get the petulant, fascist bully that he is, and that's going to turn some people off.
It'll turn some people on.
But I think that is Biden's best sort of route toward victory in this thing.
Yeah, I remember when he called him a clown, Biden called him a clown in the last one, which was exhilarating to some degree, right?
Biden beat the literal hell out of Trump in those debates.
And that is the other thing about it.
Biden does better in one-on-one debates than he does in a crowd.
And so this thing actually turns itself around.
So that is what I'm seeing from Biden or what I would like to see from Biden.
For sure.
And the weird thing, though, is because it's so early, the carryover into the election itself doesn't necessarily have a... it might be tenuous, but, you know, so much is going to happen between now and November.
We're going to forget, like, what happened in the debates, which is why it never made sense, I'm sure to you, and certainly me either, why they decided to have these debates so early in the process.
And we have another one that's going to be early.
So it's almost like, you know, frickin' Trump doesn't even have a vice presidential running mate yet.
So, by the way, I just want to go ahead and throw this out there real quick.
You are on the rumor mill of who's going to be the VP.
You, right now, you think it's Bivic.
So, I sent you a tweet where a guy said he had the Trump plane was in Ohio over the weekend, unannounced, unscheduled, kind of psy-op, secret, whatever.
You know who else lives in Ohio, right?
I was trying to remember who else lives in Ohio, but it can't be Kasich.
It's all JD Vance.
Oh crap, you're right!
Yeah, unfortunately.
So, on that note, speaking of Trump not having a VP, I gotta tell you, I think he's probably keeping the VP pick for after the debate, so if he tanks and it's not bad, he can go ahead and capture the media cycle.
That's actually smart.
What do you think Trump needs going into this debate, and what do you think he needs to avoid?
What are you looking for in terms of his performance?
I mean you have to remember like winning a debate especially from that side is so relative because you're gonna say they won it and they're gonna pretend this or whatever and he's gonna rant and rave and carry on and I really hope just even for his sake he doesn't do which I don't think he will because it's not a woman what you mentioned as far as him like stalking the stage and kind of coming up behind her like he isn't gonna do that he's gonna be stuck behind his podium
So, you know, Trump is gonna, it would be nice if Trump displayed any sense of any policy, any kind of clue about anything.
If I was on that, it would be nice.
But what I expect from him is just ad hominem, just attack, attack, attack, make up whatever he wants to make up.
There's no need for figures.
He won't have those.
And he'll probably try and take, you know, something that Biden does that's good, that would be seen as a good trade and just pretend that it's bad.
And, you know, and he'll rile up the base with all that kind of stuff.
He'll drop all sorts of hatred about people coming into this country from the southern border.
And I think that's, I think, you know, there's no audience.
There's nobody to feed off of there, which I think is important and maybe detrimental to Trump.
So I think he'll probably try and, you know, sort of spew the hate and just continue to do what he were seeing as rallies to maintain that fever pitch.
Um, listen, I am not, again, I'm not giving notes over to the Trump campaign.
We are talking about this in terms of strategy.
That's one of the reasons we do analysis.
We talk about, we try and call it like it is, like, if Trump wanted to win this debate, it's not going to be won on policy.
I can tell you that much.
This is not a guy who's going to come out with a lot of stats and figures and rationalizations, which we'll get to in a little bit.
We have another thing to talk about with that.
It is going to be ad hominem attacks.
Basically, he needs to go out and he needs to say, you know, he needs to insult Joe Biden continually is what he needs to do.
And the problem that happens there, Joe Biden gets under Trump's skin.
He really, they really do not like each other.
And there's something about Biden going after Trump that just gets under his skin.
And he goes into like this defensive mode and he gets very weird as opposed to being offensive.
If he gets on the offense and he dominates the entire thing by just being an incredible bully the entire time, that's a positive for him with his base and possibly even with some of the quote-unquote swing voters.
But Nick, if he gets trapped, and this is another part of the notes that I turned over, if he gets trapped into relitigating 2020 over and over, That's not good for him.
And that looks bad.
And it keeps you from talking about anything in the future and actually going after your opponent.
If you're just ranting and raving about wild conspiracy theories, the only people that gets is your base.
So I'm going to be watching that.
I'm really going to see whether or not they can get this.
And obviously you can't train Trump.
You can't get Trump on a leash.
Like it would have to be somehow or another sort of a coincidental sort of an instinctual thing.
And I don't see it happening.
Totally, and I think he'll have to attack his age, Biden's age, and his cognizance.
He's gonna go after that, which then opens him up for his own criticism as well for all these things.
I mean, the gaps he's making on his campaign trail are pretty severe, and he doesn't know a lot of times exactly what he's talking about.
He gets confused with stuff.
So, you know, which is why these are hashtag great times right now for anybody who needs to be able to vote, so.
It's not ideal, is what I would say.
It's not an ideal situation, but we're going to be watching that.
We hope you will join us.
That's patreon.com slash montclairpodcast.
To the news of the day, Nick, we are going to go down, unfortunately, to the state where so much is happening nowadays.
On June 12th, Ronnie Dion DeSantis vetoed every single art grant.
In the state of Florida, a total of $32 million in total.
He said it was quote in the best interest of the state.
He had vetoed just an ungodly number of programs so that he could, you know, brag that he had gotten the state budget quote under control.
This is Like, we knew that he was doing a lot of this stuff to try and become the Republican nominee.
At this point, it's just, you know, sweet, sweet lust and hatred of everything.
I was taken aback by this.
I know this isn't something that maybe surprises people, but seeing it in black and white that a governor of a Republican state vetoed every single arts grant is pretty wild stuff.
Sure, and you know, I don't want to cast this person on other states in the Union, but Florida, of all places, does have a very vital arts community, and a lot of people rely on that, and a lot of people have built their lives around being able to attend these things, so this is going to be another one of those where he's just He's got a gun.
He's fighting.
He's just squeezing the trigger, looking for anything that's just thrown in the chamber.
And that will be maybe points that progressives, liberals, and that gun is going to be hitting him in the toe in every toe he's got in his foot for this one.
Well, so first of all, I would be remiss if I didn't say it's actually criminal that Florida only had $32 million for art.
That's actually really.
Yeah, it's really nuts that they only had $32 million set aside for art in the first place.
A society that was healthy and thoughtful would absolutely support art.
I think this is part of the larger issue.
And you know, I rant on this show all the time about the wealthy and powerful, how they've pooled their money through think tanks and institutes, which we'll get to in just a few minutes, and how they've gone after education and science and certainly art.
Like, I could sit here and I could talk about that ad nauseum.
It's not just them.
The way that art is treated in this country, and I'm not just talking about painting.
I'm talking about all different types of art, including creativity, including innovation.
Like, all of those things have been so attacked and drained and de-emphasized in this country, and not just by Republicans.
One of the worst things that happened back during the Obama administration was all he talked about was stem this and stem that and the humanities were dying on the vine.
We have created a society where art is not appreciated.
It's not valued.
It's not funded.
It's not supported.
And on top of that, we look around and we're like, oh, why are movies not new anymore?
Why are there no books for us to read?
There are obviously books for us to read, but why is it that we find ourselves in an absolute dearth of culture?
Why do people believe a bunch of dumb shit?
Why do they believe a bunch of dumb YouTube videos?
You've undermined education, you've undermined science, you've undermined art, and what happens, Nick?
You said shoot themselves in the foot.
That is the thing!
This is a suicidal activity!
I hate to put it that way, but the way that we've treated all this stuff as a culture, it has consequences.
And, like, you can't just get rid of this stuff and expect to have a healthy, innovative, like, culture that moves towards the future, which is part of why we're here.
You know, we're talking about, you know, billions of dollars of budgets here, and then you realize they're going to cut like $31 million, which is like nothing.
And it doesn't affect the bottom line at all.
I'm an art major, you know, from college.
I was a painter, I was a drawer, I did all those things.
And I, you know, it's been under assault, you know, probably since Reagan, I think, came in power.
I feel like in the 70s, we started to really recognize the beauty of how kids can learn and expand their horizons through art and artistic endeavors.
And then Reagan comes in, they realize how important it is to control the kids' minds.
Because all this represents to them is DEI.
It represents to them equality of everybody.
Look at the 60s and 70s.
They looked at that era and they said, we can't have this anymore.
Because of the rebellion and fighting back against authority and demanding better rights and a better country.
You can't have that.
You have to crush it.
You know what the other thing they said they can't have from the 70s?
We can't have a president just give up the White House like he did.
Right?
Yeah, absolutely.
No, you can't.
You know, out of all of that, all the Nixon stuff, it's almost like, okay, you know, it's not a stain on our country.
He didn't, you know, embarrass us all.
He simply gave up too easily, is what they really are going to say.
And all of that response.
By the way, Nixon probably been the first guy to fund, you know, the arts, NEA.
I think he might have been.
I don't even remember when the NEA started.
It depends on how many gins he had had that night.
Yeah, very.
Was he up ranting about the Jews in the academies?
If he was doing that, he probably wasn't going to fund it.
Fair enough.
If he was crying, then maybe you could get some, a couple of... If Kissinger was holding him softly in front of a White House fire as he, you know, he just drank, what, probably 13, 14 G&Ts, you know, and he had just an hour before had called for the nuclear bombing of Moscow.
No, we're good on that, Mr. President.
Thanks.
Yeah, right.
So, but we'll cut some arts funding for you.
That'll make you feel better, right?
Yeah.
So, um, yeah, anyway, so that's, that's the problem.
And then obviously fascistic governments come into power and like, as they begin their, their, uh, march towards power, the attack on the arts is always one of the first things that they end up doing.
Sure, and anything that creates like an individual sort of a mindset, pushing back against authority.
And what do they do, Nick?
And we'll talk a little bit about this in a few minutes.
They want to take over the structures for themselves.
There's a reason why authoritarianism is always accompanied with some sort of retroactive artistic medium.
You know, something that looks back at like Greek statues, you know, the revival of ancient Rome or Germanic ruins, you know, or runes.
I'm sorry, not ruins, runes.
And, you know, all of that type of stuff, like it is, it is, it's what happens when you stop the engine of creativity, which is what the Republican Party is doing.
And they've not done it alone.
We've done it as a society.
It's everything from free music and content, which now, by the way, is being taken advantage of by AI and creation and all of that.
Like, you end up sort of losing the soul of a society.
And that's what's happened.
That's where this is.
Yeah.
Nick, speaking of losing the soul of society, we gotta look at the Democratic National Convention.
There's been a couple of weird things that have been going on here.
There's been a lot of flirtation with taking this thing virtual.
We've been talking about Chicago police and Illinois police who are getting ready for, it sounds like a hell of a time.
They think this thing is gonna be something and hopefully we'll be there.
But Nick, they have basically shut down a ton of accreditation for the media, and they have shifted that accreditation over to, let me check my notes, social media influencers.
That's right.
The kids who are popular with the kids are getting an invitation to the DNC.
This is part of the next chapter of the Biden re-election campaign, as well as the DNC strategy in order to bring on Youth voters, unfortunately the Democratic Party right now is having a real hard time with youth voters for a variety of reasons.
How do you feel about the coming social media, politico, activist revolution?
How's that, how's that setting with you?
I mean, I'm always happy to see when they would have influencers go to the White House, do some funny content around it, which gets the right completely riled up.
We've seen a few of those already in the White House.
I like that.
I think it's all good.
I think it's smart.
I think that's what you need to do and provide some version of access.
You know, having done this and been in this sphere for a long time, like and I've covered like, you know, premieres of movies and stuff.
You know, oftentimes it's like, hey, welcome, you're so good, we give all access.
And then like, yeah, you stand here and just wait there.
And don't worry, you won't be able to see or hear anything.
But maybe someone will walk by for a few seconds, you'll get a shot of that and you can do a selfie.
It sounds like you're speaking from experience, Nick.
It sounds like it did happen to you.
It did.
I was, listen, I could see the red carpet.
That was exciting.
But like to get anywhere, you know, meaningful access was completely null.
Was this like the premiere of Space Jam 2?
Yeah, well no, it was actually, well one of them was a premiere of a Kyrie Irving's movie, Uncle Drew, in New York when I went to that.
Wow, a cinematic masterpiece.
You know, it was actually kind of entertaining, believe it or not.
There was some good stuff in there.
They got you!
They got you, they got you, they got you.
They gave you the credentials and you were like, oh it's pretty good.
Yeah, well, you know, listen, it shouldn't dunk to the barrel because it's a basketball movie and whatever, but nonetheless, so that's interesting thing.
I went through the process, Jared, by the way, you and I are now in the system as social media influencers, begging them for credential.
We'll find out, you know, we're gonna find out what they say, but I think we're too, are we too old?
Is that the problem?
Hold on.
I swear to God, if I get a lanyard for this convention that says social media influencer, I'm going to lose my ever loving mind.
I, I, okay.
Uh, yeah, no, we're going to be very, how do you do fellow kids?
If that's.
Yeah.
You know, but by the way, if maybe, maybe the backlash against like what's going on in Israel and all those things that have gotten the younger people so soured that they don't even want to do it.
And by the way, maybe they don't even know about it.
Like, you saw it on thehill.com.
Like, they're ain't reading that website, so I have no idea if they even heard about this possibility of getting that access.
Well, I heard it from a Democratic staffer who was very pissed off about this thing.
By the way, I want to point out in the background of all this, Nick, this is for people from TikTok and YouTube.
A reminder that the Biden administration and the Democratic Party moved to get rid of TikTok.
One of the means that they've been using for re-election is opening up a TikTok account.
Are you kidding me?
For real?
So, in the midst of all of this, one of the things I wanted to talk about, and yes, you're exactly right, like, they have struggled because of the consequences of what's happened in Gaza.
They've had, by the way, like, they thought that they could get the youth vote through student loan reform, which, by the way, helps, but also, like, It hasn't totally worked, and on top of that, like, it's like, in 2024, like, this should just happen.
POT.
POT's legal everywhere.
And on top of that, it is a little bit, like, ageist to be like, oh, the kids will love us if we, like, reschedule POT, you know?
You know what kids care about?
Climate change.
The Biden administration's record on climate change is garbage.
It's really, really, really bad.
We're producing more oil than basically ever.
Also, what we've talked about before, there's not a lot in the way of future plans.
The problem here, Nick, is the Democratic Party told itself a story, which was the demographic generational shift was coming, that young people were automatically going to support the Democratic Party instead of the Republican Party.
And the Republican Party believed that for a long time, too.
They taught themselves the same fiction.
That is changing now.
And one of the things that no one wants to sit around with is that young black people, young Muslim people, young Hispanic people, a lot of them are going to the right.
And here's the reason why, Nick.
It's because they have at least started speaking to the dissatisfaction of younger people.
Younger people feel screwed.
They don't see a future that's there for them.
They have a ton of influencers and politicians who say, hey, things suck.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party is like, hey, things aren't that bad.
Let's figure it out.
That has led to a lot of younger people becoming radicalized.
And I don't know.
I don't think getting them to the DNC is going to fix it.
Uh, probably not.
I hear you.
But like, I get it.
Like, if it was my job working in the White House to figure out outreach to younger voters or whatever, this is what you'd have to do.
You gotta get the chapel roan.
You gotta get the chapel roan out there.
What's the Chapel Rhone?
Oh, I love it.
I knew, I knew that if I mentioned Chapel Rhone that you weren't going to know Chapel Rhone.
That makes me happy.
That makes me happy.
Yes.
What is it?
Is it a TikTok channel?
Keep going.
You want to take some more guesses?
TikTok channel?
No, I can't even fathom what that would mean.
Chapel Rhone.
What does it mean?
What is it?
You don't have another guess?
I think, listen, the rule three for comedy.
Give me two more guesses.
Uh, you know, I suppose it's a, it's not a podcast.
It's not a podcast.
It is not.
Okay.
Give me one more for comedic purposes.
Um, and it is not, um, I mean, I guess I'll get away with it.
It's not some pop band or something.
That's, uh, that's, you know, it's a pop singer.
Oh, huh.
Pop singer.
Not rock and roll pop pop.
You kids and your highfalutin shoes and your fancy instruments and your synthesizers.
Yeah, right.
We don't want to hear any of that.
I do think that there is an inroad in this stuff, but they haven't figured it out.
And by the way, Nick, it shouldn't surprise everyone.
You have the oldest president in history who's struggling to bring in young people.
That makes sense.
It happens.
It does.
It does.
And it's tough.
But I think that, you know, again, is that going to be the thing that sways us anyway, ultimately?
Or is this going to be the 60,000 people in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and I don't know, Arizona, wherever that's going to be?
That's what's so frustrating about all this.
It's like, I don't even know if it matters if we look at the polls, national polls.
I don't know if it matters at all.
Yeah, it is going to be something to watch.
I'll just say that.
Nick, you sent this clip to me.
Um, and you know, I watched it the first time and I was like, oh, this is interesting.
I think we should talk about this too.
And then I watched it again and I was like, no, we need to break down this whole damn thing.
This hardly ever happens that, and first of all, cable news is absolutely terrible and dreadful.
This is so instructive and there's so much corn on this cob.
Here we have Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts.
And again, the Heritage Foundation is the main think tank and institute behind Project 2025.
They are doing the bidding of all of the wealthy right-wing donors.
He decided to go on MSNBC and have a conversation.
You're going to hear Simone Sanders.
You're going to hear Michael Steele.
There is so much happening here to digest and get into, and I could not be happier with how perfectly this stuff is put together.
We're going to divide this up into a question and answer and give and take.
It'll be pretty obvious where this stuff is.
Nick, roll that beautiful bean footage.
President Trump is going to make decisions about policy in his administration if he wins.
Project 2025 is something that's going to transcend the next four years, the next ten years.
It really is, for the first time in the history of the conservative movement, the apparatus for policy and personnel.
That's the most important thing to remember.
I have one follow-up, it's just that you have said that this plan is about institutionalizing Trumpism.
So, because I also know you all, you're not just the president of the Heritage Foundation, you're also president of the Heritage Action, which is the political action committee.
And so, is it tied to Trump or not?
I said the context for that comment to the New York Times was that the work of the Heritage Foundation was to institutionalize Trumpism.
Trumpism as a new version of conservatism.
Conservatism that recognizes that by every objective measure, the United States is weaker in 2024 than it was in 1984.
We also happen to think that's reversible, by the way.
We're ultimately optimists.
And by institutionalizing Trumpism, what we're saying is that even though we are known as Ronald Reagan's think tank—I'm a son of the Reagan revolution, I'm very proud of that—that that's 40 years ago.
And we need to understand what time it is in America.
And right now, Donald Trump, whether someone likes it or not—I happen to like it—is the standard-bearer for conservatives.
Okay, that is so much the institutionalization of Trumpism.
What's that sound like to you?
How's that feel to you?
It just feels like...
More of the wishy-washy, ethical, you know, they don't have any standards.
They never really cared about any of the platforms they've been trying to create.
They were just trying to find who can get the most votes, and we'll figure it out after that.
It doesn't really matter who.
So, that's what it seems like.
It's just a very nebulous, you know, standard of, you know, conduct that they have, and it's gross.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
So first and foremost, we need to understand that the GOP and their associated groups never cared about any of this shit.
They simply saw this as a project that had one step after another, right?
It's like a corporation, I don't know, it's like a McDonald's executive getting upset because they changed the number of pickles they put on a Big Mac.
They don't care.
They don't have an emotional, ideological attachment to most of this stuff, right?
They've went from libertarianism, which is what Reaganism represented, right?
It was the idea that the government just needs to be shrunk down and do that, and we don't need a big government, we don't need big budgets, unless, of course, we're facilitating a Cold War.
But Trumpism is just the next step.
It's just the next iteration.
It's the next product.
It's the next means that they need to get to the next place.
I love that this guy is being so open about this.
And he's like, yeah, this isn't, you know, this isn't Reaganism anymore.
This isn't Reagan.
It's something different.
Yeah, 40 years have passed.
It's a long time.
Everybody has to evolve and everyone has to progress.
So, like, as the left has progressed and try and increase the access to health care for women and try to allow more people to have more rights, it's the opposite, right?
It's almost like the movie Memento, where you have two different plot lines that are going in different directions in time, you know, and they're going back, we're going forward, and at some point they cross and then now we're getting farther and farther apart.
That couldn't be more accurate.
I love, though, this idea.
It's the next step in conservatism.
Which, by the way, if you actually believe in conservatism, like if you... I don't know.
This is one of the reasons why Bill Kristol is, like, a Democrat now.
Like, if you believe in conservatism, you're a Democratic Party member now.
Like, this is not conservatism whatsoever.
How do you think it's going to go if Trump wins and we start having all like thousands of videos of ice you know stormtroopers busting in the doors and grabbing people because I don't think we talked about it really just I don't want to take a quick detour because they're they're all for this they're all for uh you know um uh gosh uh What?
Deporting people who are not here legally, but you have to imagine if you're going to try and deport 11 million, 20 million, whatever the number is, There's going to be a percentage of people who are citizens, who should not be deported, who are going to get deported anyway, right?
So that's going to be so bad for them.
And we're going to end up seeing these kind of like, you know, Nazi-esque, you know, images going on.
And that's going to kill them, I would hope.
Oh no, it's night of broken glass, night of long knives shit.
Yeah.
Like, if they actually were to bring, and by the way, he's going to talk about this mass deportation thing in a little bit, and we'll get into it there, but, like, that idea itself, and that's the whole point, is the right wing's not actually conservative.
The right wing is actually radical at a level that would shock most people.
Like, they're fine with that.
They're fine with scenes of, like, children being, like, ripped out of families' arms, and, like, people being rushed in kits.
They're fine with that.
But yeah, let's continue to see this whole project roll on.
I don't think it's time for Trumpism in that regard because one of the things that as a lifelong follower and participant in Heritage, having spoken at various times there in the roles that I've played in the party, I see this as a dramatic shift away from those Reagan-esque principles when you have someone like Trump who has advocated some of the things he has.
But before we get to that, I want to get to the nub of this, because you can't really do anything until you remove what has been identified as the problem, and that is 50,000 federal employees.
Axios noted, quote, the massive headhunting quest aims to recruit 20,000 people to serve in the next administration as a down payment on 4,000 presidential appointments plus potential replacements for as many as 50,000 federal workers who are policy adjacent, as Trumpers put it. federal workers who are policy adjacent, as Trumpers put it.
Policy adjacent to what?
I mean, you're talking about people who've been in federal government.
My daddy was a federal government employee, so I would be really appalled thinking that he could be on someone's chopping block because they think he is part of some deep state, you know, Yeah, effort.
Talk to us about what that looks like.
If Heritage is calling for removing 50,000 federal employees, who are you replacing them with?
And where do they come from?
I mean, even if it's not 50,000, if it's 10,000, if it's 2,000, where are they coming from and who are you replacing them with?
Because I suspect a lot of those people you're talking about have been in the federal service for a long time and have served not just Republican administrations, but also Democratic administrations, etc.
They have, and 95% of them who give political contributions give them to the Democratic Party.
I reject that.
You're going to fire someone because they wrote a check to a Democratic candidate?
No, we're going to fire someone, and the number needs to be more than 50,000, considering that there are more than 2 million federal employees.
Because over the last century, the radical left has seen the administrative state as the fourth branch of government.
They're unelected bureaucrats.
Nothing against your dad, obviously, a human being.
You know that about me and Heritage.
But ultimately, we have to devolve power from the imperial But you would fire my dad because he wrote a check to a Democratic candidate without any appreciation or understanding where his political allegiance or alliances are.
We will dramatically reform agencies that take rights away from people.
If they're doing their job, why does that matter?
They're doing their job about a mission that's misaligned.
For example, the U.S. Department of Education.
Thankfully, President Trump deserves credit for saying that he wants to end the Department That means that employees in that agency, even if they've been serving that mission with great competence, will have to go look for another job.
What's more important than that, Michael, is that we actually have a delivery mechanism for education in this country that reflects the 21st century.
So at Heritage we see this a very different way.
You want to look at it from the lens of unelected bureaucrats, most of whom, not your dad I guess, who wants to say that they are more important than the everyday American.
We want to look at it from the standpoint of the everyday American and say it's time that they are put in the driver's seat rather than unelected bureaucrats.
Okay, there's so much happening in this.
I want to talk about Michael Steele, what happened with him.
Before we do, Nick, did your ears perk up there?
Get rid of the Department of Education.
We already have a cutting-edge technology that can bring you education.
They're talking about rolling out a corporate-based internet learning substitute for public school education, which what this guy is talking about is complete corporate dominance and the end of public education as we know it.
I wrote that down.
He had delivery mechanism for education and I'm like, what?
It didn't really expound on that.
And again, If you are ever an interviewer or a journalist in these situations, you know, a good rule to follow would be that you don't want to speak for more than about a minute straight because you're not there to be talking.
You're there to have your guest talk and you can interrupt and quickly get whatever.
So they both do this in a way that it's really frustrating.
It took Michael Steele like a minute and a half, two minutes to get out, whatever.
And he was answering the question for him in a way, right?
And then, and then, you know, you don't always, you never want to say, talk to me or talk about this.
That's not a great phrase to use.
Ask the question, get it specific and make them answer.
So this whole thing is already starting to evolve.
And then you can see the Heritage guy is jutting his jaw.
He has a little bit of a hostility to him when this subject comes up.
It's getting awful and it gets worse.
This is, and one of the things that I wanted to talk about is, this is not how you do this.
This is a terrible interview for a variety of reasons.
And one of the things that we see here, Michael Steele made this question about himself, And his family.
And I want to point out one of the things that happens here.
Michael Steele is the former head of the RNC.
He was a puppet of the party.
He had no power.
He basically was like the guy in Indiana Jones who gets lost in his own museum, right?
He had no idea what he was doing there.
Listen to him, Nick.
He truly, honestly believed in the project of the Republican Party and conservativism.
It wasn't real.
He wasn't part of something that was real.
He is now on live TV trying to work his mind through it.
He's like, I went to the Heritage Foundation.
I gave speeches for you.
You gave me money.
Why are you doing this thing?
Dude, you are a political analyst and commentator.
You don't understand what's happening here?
And why does he not understand it, Nick?
He doesn't understand it because he had a personal role in it to keep him from understanding what was actually happening.
On top of that, he mentions that his dad was, you know, in the federal government.
The administrative state is real.
The quote-unquote deep state is real.
It's not an evil cabal being used, but the administrative state is an anti-democratic body that was created for anti-democratic purposes.
You'll notice something, Nick.
The Republicans always say they want to destroy the deep state.
Are you hearing anything about destroying the deep state?
No, nothing.
What are you hearing?
I'm hearing indoctrination, like how are they going to take over that part of the- They want to take over the deep state!
That's the whole point!
They understand that the administrative state is very powerful, and it's anti-democratic, and it always has been, which is something we need to reform.
What they're going to do is take out the people who are there, who are actual faithful stewards of the federal government, and replace them with drones and cronies and criminals.
That's it!
Yeah, like the weather office, who had that map that Trump had to draw, and then they embarrassed Trump because they asked him about it, and they're like, yeah, that doesn't... what he added was nothing that... But the weather office, the weather office is more than Trump adding on a hurricane thing.
It's also understanding climate change.
It's understanding that something is happening.
If you get rid of that, and you get rid of the Department of Education, you take over public schools, all of a sudden, we're not talking about climate change.
It's not understood.
It's just something that's over here that doesn't get talked about.
It's an urban myth, almost.
Right, so it's a destruction of the protection of Americans and their lives, all in the name of the dollar.
You know, I mentioned I watched three days of the condor.
Maybe I said that last week.
I can't remember.
And, you know, at the very end, Cliff Robertson has an amazing line where he goes, just picture what's going to happen 10 years from now, 20 years now, when we don't have free access to oil.
Do you really think the American people are going to just That's exactly right.
Or are they going to expect that their lights are going to turn on when they want them to turn on?
And are we going to ask people for that?
No, we are going to have to seize it, seize the oil, seize the coal, whatever we need, any resources across the world, we're going to have to take it.
And I feel like this is the same mindset here.
Whereas like, we don't give a shit about anybody.
We're simply going to be here to get like these white rich people, what they want when they want it.
That's exactly right.
All right.
So we keep going.
Let's go.
Yes.
They aren't going to be in the driver's seat because they aren't going to be doing the jobs.
The folks you identify who are Trump-aligned are the ones who are going to be coming in.
You are positing that those people are incompetent.
And I can tell you from looking at the resumes of the 11,000 that they're very well-volved.
As much as you're thinking, I'm positing these people are incompetent, you're positing that they're somehow executing a nefarious agenda.
Some of them are.
Why does the Environmental Protection Agency have 350?
Have you identified them?
If I could interject, because I did actually work for the federal government.
As did I.
As did the chairman.
And I worked with a number of those civil, we call them civil servants in the United States government, people who are not political appointees.
And they have the institutional knowledge.
If all of them acted that way.
Nick, we pause.
Okay.
Dude, I just have one thing to say before we move forward.
Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum.
Just, Karlum Globetrotters.
Just, just, they are just absolutely giving the- look at the- okay, if you're not watching this on YouTube, you can't see the clip.
He is so happy with what's going on right now.
They have led him into every phrase and catchphrase and tested idea and rhetoric that he could ever ask for.
And what are they doing, Nick?
They are both arguing, this means something to me.
This is my experience with it.
You're a bad man who's trying to take away what was important to me.
And, like, this just absolutely throws, like, gas on a fire.
Like, it's Harlem Globetrotters basketball, is what this is.
I mean, and I think if you, you know, it's it's the Reagan's nine words about, you know, I'm here to help from the government, you know, and he's echoing that because of course everyone feels like yes, the government is complete waste of time and there is incompetent yet.
Yeah, but like, you know, when you step back, it's almost like when you criticize the referees in the basketball game.
You know, they'll miss a call here or there, but like the best of the best get 90 plus percent of their calls right.
And so, you know, for this government to lurch along and actually function day to day, so many things are going right.
And believe it or not, these nonpolitical appointees are doing their jobs have nothing to do with any sort of policy or whatever, who they voted for, who they paid for.
And, you know, it really is incredible when we don't fill those positions how many people actually suffer and probably die because the Republicans don't want to, you know, hire the proper people and qualified people.
So that is exactly what needs to happen here as opposed to, I worked for the government, he worked for the government, it's good.
Like, things aren't working well.
So if you're going to talk to an asshole like this, and this asshole says, this is the problem, and you say, no, it's not, you have to tell people what the problem is.
Right.
The problem, okay, we do need administrative reform in this country.
You're all, I'm sorry, but to run the world's largest superpower, you have to have an administrative state.
You have to make sure that they have the tools and funding that they need and the priorities are there.
What's the problem?
That our representatives who decide how much money they have and how these things work, what direction, they suck and they've been corrupted.
So if you're just going to say the government's good, don't go after the government, you're just allowing this guy.
It's like when you, like when you're there and you're watching the Washington generals and you're like, are you going to play defense?
And the Harlem Globetrotter bounces it off the backboard and does like a 360.
You're like, you could have stopped that.
Like this, this is, this is a, it's like watching a car wreck.
Okay, go on.
Alicia has a question along those lines about one of the policy priorities that you all have identified in Project 2025.
I actually, Dr. Roberts, have a question about this upcoming election.
Is your organization going to accept the results of the 2024 presidential election?
No!
I believe that Dr. Roberts can't hear.
So Alicia just asked, is your organization going to accept the results of the 2024 election, regardless of the outcome?
Yes, there is a massive fraud like there was in 2020.
What does that mean?
There is a massive fraud.
There was not massive fraud.
There was massive fraud.
We have an election fraud database that has documented that over the years.
By the way, the Heritage Foundation has been concerned about election integrity for decades, not just about 2020.
We've been documenting this problem for a very long time.
I believe, according to the Heritage Foundation, sir, there, by your count, Heritage Foundation has done an investigation, and according to your count, there have been 1,513 proven instances of voter fraud across the United States since 1982.
Yeah, that's probably one percent of what's happened.
1,513.
Because it's very hard to document.
And the Democrat Party is very good at fraud.
The key thing here, which I think we would both agree on, is that we aspire at the Heritage Foundation to seeing a poll after this election where every American believes their vote was counted.
I care as deeply about someone on the political left with whom I disagree.
saying that they have confidence in the outcome of the election it seems rather than turn this into a partisan conversation which you do a good job of at msnbc we might say we aspire to something more noble which is that every american believes their vote i mean i don't think it's partisan to ask if you will accept the results of the election alicia i don't know if can you hear alicia now all right you know i've been pretty critical of msnbc's um production values for a long time whatnot you know he's got an earpiece Just really a quick aside.
The idea that somebody remotely will be talking and the other two, the hosts in here, they just have a soundboard and they have the one dial all the way down.
Like, they didn't put it up so you could hear it.
Like, the idea that a guest can't hear a question is wild.
And it happens the entire segment here.
He had to repeat it another time.
So, A, let's get out of the way.
But B, you know, There's a way to push back on this kind of stuff, right?
And there's a way to kind of talk him down before... It's not this!
Yeah.
Should we keep going or do you want to say anything else?
No, I just want to say real fast, like, this isn't how you do it.
Like, you can't, like, like you said a while ago with how long Michael Steele was talking.
Do you know what doesn't work against the right wing?
Reading their own words against him.
Trying to catch him in blah blah blah.
Like, you allowed this guy to say, yeah, that's a lot of voter fraud and there's even more than that.
And by the way, I'm being bipartisan.
You're just letting this guy just, he's playing ball by himself.
They shouldn't have invited this guy on, first of all.
Second of all, they thought they were gonna get him!
They thought that he was gonna walk out bruised and bloody, and instead they just introduced a bunch of their viewers to the Heritage Foundation and gave this guy something to show his people to get funding.
That's it!
Meanwhile, the only guy that would have been perfect to interview this guy they got rid of not long ago, Mehdi Hassan.
Mehdi Hassan would have taken him into a steel cage and had him like crying on the mat because these people don't know how to do this.
Like, that's not what MSNBC's interested in, which is one of the reasons they moved away from him, besides other reasons we don't have time to get into.
But like, it just, this was not prepared, and they keep doing the same thing.
They keep hitting their heads against the same brick wall.
Keep it going.
I do have another question.
I'm specifically interested as it relates, Dr. Roberts, to the deportation of immigrants in this country, just understanding sort of how it is going to work.
We talk about folks on the interior, how you see a future administration utilizing the National Guard, ICE, police forces to deport something like 11 million people.
Could you hear her?
So she is asking about immigration and how you see immigration, how in this plan, how you talk about using like the National Guard to deport individuals.
What is the, Alicia, and do tell me if I am adding quickly.
Yeah, people on the interior specifically.
People on the interior specifically, not people on the border, people within this country.
Well, first of all, we need to close the border, and secondly, we need to have the biggest mass deportation system ever in the history of America, because it is unjust and illegal and evil that more than 10 million illegal aliens have come to this country.
It's imperative that we send those people back, invite them back to come through the legal system.
We love immigrants at Heritage, but we also love the rule of law.
So, how do you plan to carry that out?
Well, are you talking about going door to door?
Because that's what I mean, I could read from the plan, but I think the first thing is that there's gonna be a lot of self deportation.
The interesting thing, as you no doubt know, is that simply talking about this and beginning to implement a plan and President Trump deserves a lot of credit for talking about this causes people to say, I don't want to run the risk of being arrested for doing something illegal.
But secondly, there are great plans using the Department of Homeland Security to return these.
I'm sorry, self deportation, Jared.
Self-deportation, baby!
They're going to just turn themselves in?
You got me!
You got me.
I was playing hide-and-go-seek like a child.
We're done.
We're done here.
I spent three months walking across three different countries because it was so bad where I had to come from.
I had no other choice.
And I'm just going to be like, eh, you know what?
It's cool.
Thanks.
I'm going to go back.
I just want to say, I just want to say, why does he say that Trump has a great system of self-deportation?
Because Trump and Stephen Miller cooked up a plan to make life absolutely hellish for these people, in order to torture them.
Which, by the way, Nick, one thing that you'll notice in this interview, and there's even more of it to come, They keep expecting this guy, who is the president of the most well-funded right-wing think tank and institute in the world, one of the most effective political bodies, they keep expecting him to screw up and say, oh we're gonna kill a ton of people and man we're gonna get excited about it.
We're going to love watching it.
Are you going to accept the election results?
Oh no, no chance.
No way we're going to do that.
He's polished.
He knows what he's doing.
This isn't going to help your cause or do what you think is going to happen.
You need to say, oh, how do you feel about children being, like, you know, ripped out of their parents' arms?
Like, you have to do this.
He's not going to do it for you.
You're just giving him millions of dollars of exposure.
That's all.
These people back to south of the border.
The great thing is, even a majority of people on the political left agree with this because they see the damage that this has done.
Just before we go... I think we want to take a couple more minutes.
I know we're talking rap, but we want to take a few more minutes.
No, I'll stay as long as you want.
Of course you will!
You're winning!
What do these people do?
What are they doing now?
The folks, the 11 million, 20 million, whatever you want to deport.
A lot of them are committing crimes like murdering the 12-year-old girl in Houston.
So that's one out of 11 million.
We can take the remaining time of the segment and I can give you a lot of examples.
In Texas, undocumented immigrants were 37.1% less likely to be convicted of a crime.
Undocumented immigrants, according to a survey, University of California Riverside study, 33% less likely to be in prison as of 2021.
Tell that to the survivors of the young lady.
I'm just giving the numbers.
Real fast, and this is just something that I have to work with constantly.
Democrats and liberals want to read statistics all the time.
They want to give you the real empirical evidence behind this stuff.
You'll notice what that guy said.
Tell their families.
Tell their families.
Do you know what the Republican Party is great at?
Creating an emotional response.
People are killing people, and they're going to kill your family.
Well, the statistics say here that that is statistically unlikely.
They're going to murder you.
It is about a state of mind.
And when you are in a state of activated trauma and fear, those statistics don't matter one shit.
And this is always what ends up happening.
And this is... I'm going to take this I'm going to take this video, I'm going to clip this part of it, and I'm going to show it to people at organizing events and strategic events because they need to understand how absolutely ineffective this is.
It's incredibly bad.
Especially because you can respond with like a lot of instances of people who came here and have thrived and have been really amazing members of the community doesn't do anything about them you know let's talk about them and what they do because he even was willing to acknowledge oh i'm not against immigration i'm not against immigrants coming because of course he knows you know the more people he can get to pay a lot less money to do jobs and the americans don't want to do is is going to help the you know the rich white people but that that's what they can have to be able to turn it in on because i you're absolutely right you're absolutely right you're
You know, the numbers are compelling in a very unemotional way, in a rational way, but that's not going to speak to anybody that's listening to this, and it's galling.
It really is galling if this is happening, and they kind of... I want to know, was this over the weekend?
Is this when I sent it to you?
Was this a show that was buried over on the weekend?
I gotta find that out.
So, you know, this is not primetime kind of, you know...
But those are stars!
Simone Sanders and Michael Steele are featured players at MSNBC, and they have the head of the Heritage Foundation on.
It is so bad.
So bad.
I don't even know if we have to finish this whole thing.
No, we don't.
I just want to say, like, if you go and watch this thing, one of the most, like, awful things I've heard in a long time, he is pushed, of course, and Simone Sanders thinks that she's got him, right?
She's going to say, do you think that abortion is a woman's right?
Nick, he proposes getting rid of the Department of Health and Human Services and replacing it with the Department of Life.
And by the way, that is so, that is where the Heritage Foundation shines.
Do you know how many millions upon millions of dollars were spent coming up with that?
And it's brilliant.
It's brilliant in the same way that Pro-Life, and that's their slogan, it puts everything, how could you be opposed to the Department of Life?
Like, why don't you want people to have good lives?
It is so Machiavellian and brilliant, and the wealthy get what they paid for.
These people are incredibly talented, and they make life hell for people who want to fight against this thing and make other people's lives better.
Yeah, and they allowed him to have a platform to say that, you know, days after birth, there are abortions being performed.
I mean, all of that nonsense.
And I'd seen that in the past as somebody who, you know, in my family, who I would have thought was, you know, somewhat rationally on the right, you know, and who was probably always pro-choice becomes pro-life and becomes pro-life primarily because of late term abortions of which those don't even happen hardly at all.
And it's not really the issue.
But they've been scared into doing that, and they've been scared all along the line here.
And then platforms by even places like MSNBC.
It's truly remarkable.
You couldn't be more right.
That lie is put out there.
It's not really pushed back against.
Also, Nick, you have the head of the Heritage Foundation, the most powerful, well-funded, right-wing think tank institute.
Why don't you ask him on the air who funds them?
Ask them where their money comes from.
Ask them what the agenda behind all this is.
You don't do it.
Because all you're talking about is the frontward facing thing.
Trump, the Republican Party, legislation.
You're never getting into what's actually going on.
Because they, on MSNBC, are part of the same corporate mindset.
They have no desire to talk about that stuff.
They have no desire to talk about where any of this comes from.
And as a result, all you're able to do is fight on their territory.
He ran circles around them.
It's incredible that this happened.
All right, everybody.
We, again, we're going to come back on Thursday.
Come hell or high water!
If there's a debate, if there's not, we're still going to be recording, but hopefully there's going to be the first presidential debate.
We will go live immediately following that.
Again, it starts at 9 p.m.
Eastern on CNN.
When it ends, we'll go live a few minutes after that.
Exclusive analysis, post-debate coverage.
We'll be taping the weekender.
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In the meantime, you can find Nick at Can You Hear Me SMH.
