Nick Hauselman is on vacation, so Jared Yates Sexton welcomes on perennial favorite Danielle Moodie (WokeAF, Democracy-Ish, The New Abnormal) to co-host. Jared and Danielle discuss the ongoing debacle that is the discourse around Joe Biden's candidacy, how almost everyone is either focusing on the wrong thing or else profiting off the mess, and what could happen to get things moving in the right direction again.
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Hey everybody, you have undoubtedly noticed that the theme music of the Montgomery Podcast did not play.
That is because I refused to learn how to make it play.
That means that Nick Halseman is out and about in the world deserving some very, very well-deserved rest.
I needed a co-host.
And not only did I need a co-host, I needed a co-host who could meet this ungodly moment.
That's right, everybody.
Danielle Moody is with me on the McCraig Podcast co-hosting today.
I mean, listen, Danielle hosts every podcast that you care about on the McCraig Podcast.
Woke AF.
Democracy-ish.
The New Abnormal.
You love her.
You absolutely revere her.
Danielle Moody, I could not think of anyone that I would rather do this episode with than you.
Thank you for coming on.
Oh my God, thank you for having me.
I can't think of anyone else that I want to talk to right now.
Well, we certainly have a lot to talk about.
So we're recording this because, listen, we're recording this on the morning, well morning for me, the morning of Monday, July 8th.
I want people to know that, because by the time we're done recording, much less before this episode comes out, we have no idea what developments are taking place.
We are going to meet this thing where it is.
Danielle, we've been following, of course, for the past week or so, the fallout from the disastrous performance of Joe Biden at the presidential debate against Donald Trump.
Things have been developing quickly.
There have been a lot of movements here and there.
More or less, a lot of Democrats met with Biden, gave him a soft ultimatum that he needed to turn around the trajectory of his campaign within a few days, maybe a week, before some Democrats started coming out and questioning that candidacy.
We've seen a hell of a lot of things.
Joe Biden went on ABC with George Stephanopoulos on Friday for an interview that I personally think added some new narratives and new wrinkles to an already developing narrative with a lot of different wrinkles.
For those who maybe didn't watch, maybe you went out and saw friends.
Maybe you enjoyed your life.
Maybe your political sick-o-ness took a break on Friday.
I do not blame you for that.
Joe Biden talked to Stephanopoulos, who asked him a lot of questions with a lot of candor.
Biden was... How do I put this?
Sort of annoyed that he had to talk about it in the first place.
Yeah.
He said that there was nothing wrong with him, that he was going to continue on with his campaign.
He dismissed the polls as they sat.
So, Danielle...
I'd love to hear your thoughts, not just on this interview, how you felt about Biden's answers and what you think what has happened with this story since it's taken place.
So, OK.
We're in a world of trouble, and I think that the trouble I think we may actually have differing, differing opinions on where the trouble actually is.
And to me, I don't think that Joe Biden needed to do that sit down with George Stephanopoulos.
And I wish that he did not.
To be honest, I wish that he had just continued being on the campaign trail and talking to the American people, you know, state by state, town by town.
That's what Joe Biden needs to be doing.
He does not need or owe any answers to the press whatsoever.
I wish that he would actually Take a page out of Donald Trump's book, which is fuck them, right?
Like, you know, you want to and if I were Joe Biden, what I if you're going to sit down and do this kind of one on one, what I want is a kind of defiance that I don't know if Joe Biden has, which is you want to sit here and ask me questions about my age.
Why don't you ask me questions about Project 2025?
Why don't you ask me questions about the accomplishments that I've had over the last four years and the kind of bullshit economy that I was handed following the disastrous tax cuts that Donald Trump gave to the rich.
So if you want to sit down and have a conversation with me, don't talk to me about my age.
Everybody knows how old I am.
But do they know how many felonies Donald Trump has?
Like that's the kind of energy and pushback and defiance that I want to see from him.
Which is, I don't owe you, like, and to say to George Stephanopoulos, you or any of the other pundits, I don't owe you a damn thing outside of being your president, right?
But what I owe is to give everything that I have to the American people because we don't get another shot at this.
That's what I want Joe Biden to be doing and to be saying.
And that is not where he is coming from.
So I feel that They need to get past this, and he needs not a reboot into not being an 81-year-old man, because that's what the fuck he is, right?
Like, he's not going to now act like he's 60, right?
He's not.
Um, but I think that what he needs to do is every question that is asked about his age is that he needs to redirect.
And that's what we need to see it and redirect to the danger that this country is facing.
And not an I am here to do the job that the American people hired me to do, which is to save democracy and keep it moving.
So I agree with you, and I'll say this, and this might surprise some people, because I, listen, I was troubled by what happened at the debate.
I have my doubts about whether or not Joe Biden can not just serve as the nominee, whether he can communicate an effective litigation of Donald Trump.
I have some questions about whether or not he can perform as President of the United States.
Those things are real.
I think that those are actual concerns that we should be able to have adult conversations about, mature conversations about.
That's real.
There is a problem, though, because I don't know if you know this, Danielle.
I don't know if you pay enough attention to it.
We're unable to have a discourse in this country about anything.
It is impossible.
So what's happened is that we have an actual situation that we need to address, which is, what should the party do?
What should Biden do?
What should be the pushback against Donald Trump and the Republicans?
That is an actual question that needs a mature, measured conversation.
It's not taking place.
And on top of that, the Democratic Party, and anybody who pays attention to politics, shouldn't be shocked that the Democratic Party is not only eating itself, it is absolutely losing the thread on what is happening.
So when this happened, when the debate performance happened, there should have been a decision There should have been a discourse, a serious one, that took place immediately.
If Joe Biden was going to drop out of the race, it should have happened within 24 to 48 hours.
Yeah.
Period.
The party should have gotten together instead of all these little cliques forming.
And by the way, I reported on this last week.
Every contender within the Democratic Party launched a shadow poll within 12 hours of that debate.
They all started talking to the donors.
They all started to get their little fiefdoms in place.
I can't tell you how many conversations I've had with Democratic strategists who have said they have all formed multiple tickets For who would run in the place of Biden.
And by the way, I just want to remind everybody, who gets forgotten in all this?
Kamala Harris.
But that's neither here nor there.
So the party has allowed this thing to go forward.
And again, there is a problem.
Joe Biden makes the choice.
And guess what?
We are facing a problem here.
We have two very old white rich men who are deciding the future of this country.
And by the way, they have a history, for people who don't follow it, they have a history of holding on to power too long, not letting other people get their opportunities.
I know that's a shock.
Meanwhile, This entire thing, because it's been handled so poorly from Biden to the Democratic Party to, I mean, and we'll get into the media in a little bit, the way that our media has operated with this, the way the Democratic base has dealt with this, the larger issue is that we're in the middle of a large, large existential crisis, like systemic all over every part of America.
That crisis would not exist if we were able to have hard conversations.
We wouldn't have gotten into this thing in the first place.
We wouldn't have had this problem if we were a healthy country that could talk about things like power and aging and decisions.
And what has happened is it has gotten progressively worse.
And it has grown and grown and grown to the point now, and I don't know if you've had this, I've had this, I assume our listeners have, Sometimes in relationships, and that's what this is.
Politics is relationships.
It's the same thing that you or I or other people have with our family, our loved ones, you name it.
Sometimes a crisis of a relationship gets so out of hand that the people involved forget what they're talking about.
Yep.
You look up and you're like, you've talked and argued for hours.
You've exhausted yourself, you've cried, you've said things you didn't mean, and what happens?
You both sit there and you say, I don't even know how this started.
I don't even know what we're actually talking about.
And now, in the midst of one of the biggest crises we are going to face in our lifetimes, we are now behind the eight ball.
We are now losing basically any sort of, not just advantage, but any sort of movement that had been building and had an opportunity to take place.
We're not even arguing about the things that we need to be arguing about.
We're not communicating about it.
And this has turned into the biggest bullshit quagmire imaginable.
Yes.
Yes.
I mean, if there is anything that Democrats are good at... We're so good.
Well, I'm not a Democrat, but that's what Democrats are good at.
But that's what it is.
And I think that to all of the points that you made, but particularly around relationships, right?
That's what we have to understand that we are in this country.
We are in with this country.
We are in a relationship with America.
We are in a relationship with democracy, right?
And the reality here is that no one likes our choices, right?
But those are the choices.
You play the cards that you are dealt.
You don't get to flip the table, burn those cards, and then say, but I'm going to start a new game.
And so the reality is that if Joe Biden was going to lead the race, to your point, it would have happened.
The next day or two days later.
We, I have not been in the same news cycle for longer than a week since 2016.
I don't know where the fuck this is all coming from.
Do you know what I'm saying?
We haven't hung on to a story like this, right?
Since Donald Trump came down the escalator and all the cameras turned on him and then You know, never went away.
So the fact that what I did over the weekend, I put up several videos, right?
And one of them was from a tweet that someone had put out.
And you know, I just want to, like, bring people's attention to why the media has been holding on to this same story for the last week.
And it was a tweet put up by John Varner, and this is what it says.
The media's anti-Biden noise isn't an accident.
CNN, CEO, Trump donor.
ABC, CEO, Trump donor.
CBS, CEO, Trump donor.
NBC, MSNBC, CEOs, Trump donors.
Right?
Goes down the list.
These people are in the bag and have been in the bag for Donald Trump and against Democrats and democracy because Donald Trump is good for their bottom line.
Why are we continuing with this narrative?
It isn't just because Democrats are in disarray, it's because the media are vultures and they feed on the disarray.
So again, I asked Democrats, do you actually care about power?
Do you care about winning?
Because if you do, let me tell you something about horse racing.
You don't change the horse in the middle of the fucking race with four months to go until the goddamn election and 90 some odd days to go until convection.
You don't do that.
Right?
If we were going to have change, these conversations needed to have happened with Joe Biden in 2021.
It should have happened in 2020.
Right.
When Joe Biden took on Donald Trump and won, the conversation should have been like, you can do this one term.
Can I say something on that?
Because you just brought up a really important point that hasn't come up in anything.
The problem, and we're going to talk in a little bit about Project 2025.
The right, and particularly the capitalist class behind the right, they are so much better at all of this.
They get it figured out.
And by the way, Donald Trump is just a node that they can put into a place.
He's very useful for them.
Like if Donald Trump passed away tonight, they would find somebody else the next day to take care of it.
It would be fine.
One of the things that happens is that the Democratic Party and the base that they represent They are so scared all the time.
They're just constantly kicking the can down the road.
And by the way, I want to throw this out there.
The thing that nobody has talked about, there is one individual that made sure that Joe Biden got the nomination in 2020, and that was Barack Obama.
Barack Obama brought together all of the nominees in 2020 and said, hey, congrats on a great race.
You have a great future.
We're all getting behind Joe Biden right now.
That's what took place before South Carolina.
When that took place, there should have been a conversation about what happens with Joe Biden.
There should have been a conversation.
Congratulations, Joe.
You're going to get the nomination.
You're going to win the presidency.
Let's talk about the future.
Let's talk about where this thing goes.
And that's not at all what happened.
And now we are at the concept.
And that's the thing, Danielle, is like, we can't go back in time.
No.
We can't fix that.
That's the problem when you're dealing with a present crisis.
You can't go back in time and fix that thing and then make your current circumstances better.
That doesn't work that way.
But the party just keeps It is a certain neurosis that the party has.
It's an inability to plan.
It's an inability to come together.
It's an inability to get on the same page.
And what you just said, I think, is really important.
It's an inability to reckon with the actual nature of power.
Yes, because if you did, if you understood how power operates, then we wouldn't even be having this conversation right now.
Because here's the thing.
And this is where my frustration grows.
And people understand who have listened to me know that like Joe Biden was not my first or fourth choice for president in 2020.
He was not.
And so When Joe Biden won against Donald Trump and came into office doing more in the last four years than Barack Obama did in eight, and I'm going to be very honest, you're talking about student debt relief.
You're talking about lowering of prescription drug costs.
You're talking about the infrastructure fucking bill.
You're talking about the turnaround of a dying economy and then the ability to vaccinate millions of people, right, and stop the bleeding in this country that was happening in COVID.
Those are just a couple of things, right, that Joe Biden has been able to do.
He also put Contagi Brown Jackson on the Supreme Court.
Granted, he should have had more Supreme Court seats, but, you know, we'll talk about that, right?
Because Amy Coney Barrett shouldn't have been sat, right?
Like, people forget that seat was stolen.
Mitch McConnell stole two.
So when you look at Biden's record of accomplishments, they are fucking long.
And if Democrats understood power, then we would be circling the wagons right now And gaslighting everyone the way that the Republicans do.
Joe Biden had a bad debate.
It wasn't the worst I've ever seen.
You know, what I do know about Joe Biden is this, this, this, this, and this, right?
Republicans are circling the wagons for a convicted felon and a known rapist, right?
Who yet has another story in the press about having raped a young girl, right?
But we're not talking about that for a week straight.
And so there are reasons why.
And I think that it is because Republicans understand we are this close to having everything that we've ever imagined in our lives and more.
And we are going to do everything that we can.
If I got to tell you that Donald Trump is an Adonis, if I got to tell you that he is the second coming of Jesus Christ, that is what I'm going to do because that is going to get us closer to power.
Democrats, on the other hand, they want to make everybody fucking feel good.
And I'm in part of right now where I'm like, fuck your feelings, right?
Swallow them for the next four months.
Well, and I've said over and over again, like, listen, I have several problems with Biden.
I think parts of his administration has been successful.
I don't feel good about voting for the person who has prosecuted Gaza.
I don't feel good about that.
But guess what?
I'm going to take a shower.
I'm going to turn on the water and I'm going to take a shower.
Also, by the way, I and again, to lay my cards on the table, I am troubled by his performance.
I am very very concerned but I do want to remind people that like this is a situation where Listen, was FDR in the best shape that anybody ever saw?
No, he was not.
Also, by the way, I find it incredible that the historical context, you know, Woodrow Wilson, who is one of the most like virulent, awful presidents we've ever had, his wife basically ran the presidency for a very, very long time.
We are also dealing with an administrative state where a lot of these things happen.
I don't care who's at the top of the ticket.
Correct.
My problem is I'm not voting for Joe Biden.
I am voting to hit the brake a little bit while we fix things that have gone wrong.
While we create alternatives to all that.
My issue right now is multiple.
One, I want to say for the record, I find that the way Joe Biden has talked about this thing has shown that I do not think that he understands exactly what is at stake.
An 81-year-old man, I don't think necessarily has the long-term vision, which is one of my problems with Joe Biden in the first place.
Second of all, the Democratic Party, and this is endemic to the entire party, All of these, if they wanted to force them out, if the party wanted to force them out, that's something that happens in politics.
That is something that occurs.
What have they been doing?
They've been wringing their hands.
They've been talking to the donors.
We might send a letter.
We might not send a letter.
We're testing it out.
We're polling it.
That is the party.
If you want, if you decide, and by the way, nobody has sent out, like, I was looking at it the other day and I was like, you know what the one ticket that could fix this if you got rid of Joe Biden would be?
It would be Kamala Harris and Michelle Obama.
That ticket makes everyone happy if you go close.
By the way, it's not happening because Michelle Obama doesn't want the job.
No, she does not.
And by the way, I don't blame her.
And that's why I laugh.
I'm like, Michelle Obama is like, America, you have taken enough from me.
I owe you nothing.
I am detaching.
And that is what the Obamas have done.
Yes.
And that is the only thing.
Nobody has put forward an actual solution, which, by the way, tells me that there is not going to be a solution put forward.
Meanwhile, they're all flirting with it.
I don't know where it's going to go.
I've talked to enough people to understand that Biden's defiance has pissed off a lot of Democrats who are now going to start doing this.
You better get it figured out in the next 48 hours, and even that's too late.
Also, on the note of the media, and I'm so glad you brought this up, I want to say that this isn't, and I've seen so many liberal conspiracy theories, and my God, the last thing you want to do is start performing MAGA conspiracism and authoritarianism.
Like, whatever is happening, it is very, very frightening.
Do not seek comfort in MAGA.
What is happening is it's not a monolithic thing.
What you just said is correct.
Our corporate media is controlled by surprise surprise corporations and incredibly wealthy white people.
What do they want?
They want the authoritarian turn that we're watching?
They don't know that they want it.
They don't, I don't think that they know consciously that they want it.
They want it.
And look at how our coverage has been over the past few years and how they treated Donald Trump.
I think, like, I think it bothers these people to know deep, deep down that they want Donald Trump and they want the right-wing authoritarian term, but they don't want to admit it.
Then, underneath all of them, you have a professional managerial commentariat that is so excited to feed on this story.
And why?
Because there's so much money to be made off of it.
This is the main driver of the news.
And by the way, if they were having mature conversations about it, and they were talking about aging, decline, power, responsibility, that would be one thing.
It's gossip.
That's what we're watching right now.
Yes.
We are watching literally, and it's the same thing, whether it's Britney Spears or whether it's Joe Biden.
It is hearsay and gossip.
And for the record, if you write an article that says, I've been hearing about this stuff since January, fuck you.
You should have talked about it in January.
And now all of a sudden you're like, well, I met, I saw Joe Biden and there just wasn't anything behind his eyes.
And that was January.
Well, why the fuck didn't you write that article?
Why are you talking about it now?
Because the the the the C is red frantic.
So those people are doing that.
And by the way, you brought up.
The Epstein stuff that's coming about out about Donald Trump, it turns out, I think that'd be a story.
It turns out that not only is Donald Trump, not only was Donald Trump chummy with Epstein, it turns out he might have been one of his most frequent and dedicated clients.
Why aren't we talking about that?
Because our corporate meat, they don't want to solid their hands with it.
It's gross.
They don't want to get into it.
On top of that, they're so worried about being seen as objective.
And they are anything but objective.
Right.
They are both consciously and unconsciously moving this country in a direction where it's getting more and more dangerous.
And as a result, they're making money, they're building platforms, they're building curry and favor.
By the way, with the Democrats themselves, who are starting to get worried about Biden, there's access journalism you have to worry about with all of this.
And who's getting fucked, Danielle?
It's the vulnerable people.
I'm like, I'm like raising my hand.
It's women, people of color, it's immigrants, it's gay and trans people.
And what sucks about all of this?
Those people have not been brought up in any of this.
They haven't been brought up by Biden.
They haven't been brought up by the Democratic Party.
They haven't been brought up by our media.
They haven't been brought up in all the conspiracism that's grown out of this thing.
None of that has been focused on.
Because instead, what are we obsessed with?
What are we addicted to?
We're addicted with gossip and drama and as a result that's what's happening is that this cycle just churns on and on and the people whose asses are really on the line become more and more vulnerable with every passing hour.
I mean, here's the thing, and this is what I tell people all the time.
This is why you support independent media.
This is why people need to listen to your podcast, my podcast, and thoughtfulness.
Because if you are going to cable news for that, You are going to stay starved, right?
Because that is not the place where you're getting any deep analysis, getting any thoughtfulness, getting anything other than one commentator from the next saying the same story, the same talking point, the same bullshit over and over again.
And that is why I posted the things about the donors, because people need to understand where they're getting their information.
And like, why?
Like, so to me, Biden's debate fuck-up and Biden's age is more important than Donald Trump being a rapist.
Right?
Then Donald Trump, having been one of the most frequent clients of Jeffrey Epstein, who, by the way, was murdered.
The man did not commit suicide in jail three days after- I will not sit here for this conspiracy theory.
Bill Baer saw him in prison.
This podcast will not stand here for conspiracy theories.
That man was obviously- Like, this is news, but here's the thing.
Because the media loves Donald Trump because he's good for ratings, because they want to court the right wing, the Supreme Court also made them terrified.
Right?
Because that's the other layer that is a part of this that we're also not talking about.
July 1st made it so that if Donald Trump becomes president again, he is a king.
He can shut down those networks and people will say, Danielle, that's impossible.
That won't happen.
Tell the women bleeding out in parking lots about all the things that can happen.
Right?
Like Roe v. Wade being overturned, or Affirmative Action being overturned, or Chevron being overturned.
Right?
Don't talk to me about, like, oh, he could never possibly do X, Y, and Z. They're afraid for their jobs.
Right?
And their livelihoods.
Because he'll only need one channel, which is Fox, to be state TV.
Right, so I think that, you know, we have to understand, people need to be more inquisitive about why they're getting the information that they do.
For instance, my mother, as she's following Gaza, Started saying to me, you know, I feel like the news is not giving us all the information about how this started and like why we're here, right?
Like in this place, in this moment.
And I said to her, I said, mom, you're right.
They are not.
And if you want to know more, here's where you can go.
And here's where you can go.
And here's where you can go.
Because if you're turning on MSNBC, To get that information, you will not, because no one is in a place of acting like the fourth estate anymore, acting with journalistic integrity, right?
They all have special interests.
I actually, I'm really glad this is taking a turn and I'm welcoming it because I actually think this is important.
I want to say, Very quickly, people have asked me within the party, they've asked me for advice.
And listen, they don't often listen to what I tell them.
But they love to ask!
I have told them, you know, you have a lot to learn from what has happened now in Europe.
Which you and I can talk about in terms of forming a popular front.
Listen, I gotta tell you, the far left of France, including the socialists and the communists, are not fans of Emmanuel Macron.
Their politics do not quite work together.
They are not on the same page.
But I will tell you that what needs to happen now, I think what you said earlier, if Biden's going to stay in this race, and again, that's it's his choice.
That's that's the way that this thing works.
And like, I don't like it.
I don't feel good about it.
There's a bunch of other things that we can talk about.
I think you're right that he asked it.
First of all, the media has a deserved lack of approval.
It has not only shoveled people with misinformation, it has done it on behalf of its corporate overlords.
Yeah.
It's done it on behalf of the wealth class.
He should tell them to fuck off.
Yep.
But you know who you shouldn't be telling to fuck off?
You shouldn't be telling the base to fuck off.
Yep.
You shouldn't be telling your voters, hey, don't believe what you feel, don't believe what you see.
And by the way, whoever decided that the good idea was to go after bedwetting podcasts is wild.
Because what has actually happened in this country, and I think that this is an interesting thing for you and I to talk about.
The more conversations that I have, I talked with your partner Wajahat the other day a little bit about this, but I think it deserves a little bit more sort of searching.
What we have been doing, you and I, Waj, other people, for years now, is that we have been the ones who have been saying, hey, guess what?
Things are fucked right now.
And all of these prevailing opinions, prevailing discourse is not only bad, it's destructive.
Here's where it's taking place.
I think that, quite frankly, we are seeing a generational change.
I think we are seeing a medium change.
People are not watching this shit anymore.
They are turning it off for a variety of reasons.
And I think what it speaks to is a larger thing, which is there is a disaffected feeling in this country that the people in power are lying to us, which they are, and they've been doing so at an accelerated clip.
There is a feeling that our institutions are failing.
They are.
They are.
And by the way, like, you brought up the Supreme Court.
One of the biggest and most destructive Supreme Court rulings that we have ever seen, in the same week that they got rid of Chevron and the administrative oversight of corporations.
That is out of the news, Danielle.
Yeah, it's like it didn't, it's like it didn't happen.
It just didn't happen.
And for the record, to go ahead, because I call balls and strikes where I see them, I think it is, I think it is awful that the only thing that we're told is, well, you should probably just vote for the guy who won't use those authoritarian powers.
Guess what?
Like we talked about earlier, like you keep kicking that can down the road.
Yep.
Eventually someone who will use those powers will pick up the can.
Yeah.
So maybe it's time that instead, and by the way, all this gossip, the way this thing needs to work out, it will work itself out probably terribly, but that's a different story altogether.
It is time to start having hard, nuanced, uncomfortable conversations about not just what is happening, what has happened, and where it's going.
And if you can start to do that, all of a sudden we're not having a conversation about Joe.
I'm so tired of talking about Joe Biden.
Yeah.
I am so tired of talking about Joe Biden as a human being as opposed to where are we?
Where are we going?
What should we do about it?
I was emboldened by what has happened in Europe.
I don't have a lot of faith in either the French coalition or the New Labour coalition in necessarily answering the problems.
That's been one of the main issues, how we've arrived here.
But there needs to now be a sea change and an introspection where we start looking at the way things are and the way that they could be and the way that they should be.
And we're not doing that.
I could not agree more.
I think that, look, If we are able to win this election.
I'm going to knock on some wood here.
Sure.
Knock on every piece of wood that is around you.
If we're able to squeak out this election, I believe that a reckoning is coming.
I think that what we are not paying attention to, all of the things that you named, we have a weaponized, radicalized Supreme Court of the United States with nine unelected black robes that make decisions about the rest of us.
At least three of them we know are absolutely compromised, right?
Alito, Thomas, right?
And most likely Kavanaugh, right?
Roberts.
Uh, Gorsuch, I don't know too much about, uh, other than the fact that he votes with all of the Republicans and doesn't ever deviate.
Um, but the fact is that this Supreme Court needs to be handled and the handling looks like impeachment.
The handling looks like an expansion of the courts.
It looks like recognizing that Congress and the presidency is not what brings about change in this country.
It has only ever happened through the courts.
And that is why the right has had a 50-year plan to bring us to the precipice of hell, which is where we are right now.
Can I read something on that note?
Please.
Because I want to give this context.
The letter that the Biden group sent congressional Democrats.
Okay, so it is one, two, three, four, too many paragraphs to count.
I'm going to read you the fourth from last paragraph.
I know what you're going to read.
Very, very quickly.
We have spent many, many paragraphs, and this is the problem.
This is exactly the issue that you and I have been circling around this entire time.
The entire letter is about Joe Biden saying, I'm in control of the Democratic Party.
I am the nominee.
Here's what I've done.
This is the last major paragraph of this letter.
We are protecting the freedom of Americans.
Trump and the MAGA Republicans are taking them away.
They've already, for the first time in history, taken away a fundamental freedom from the American people by overturning Roe v. Wade.
They've decided politicians should make the most personal decisions that should be made by women and their doctors and those closest to them.
They've already said they won't stop there and are going after everything from contraception to IVF to the right to marry who you love.
And they have made it clear that they will ban abortion nationwide.
We will let none of that happen.
I have made it clear that if Kamala and I are re-elected and the nation elects a Democratic House and Senate, we will make Roe v. Wade the law of the land again.
We are the ones who will bring real Supreme Court reform.
Here's the thing, that's what the fuck we should be talking about.
And if I had written that letter, right?
That paragraph.
First paragraph.
First paragraph, everything else following it.
So here's my question to you, because we're media, we follow this stuff, we analyze it, we see the consequences of it.
The only way out of this thing, if Joe Biden stays and I don't have control over that, you don't have control over that, the Democrats don't have control over that either.
They may think that they do.
Joe Biden has that.
If Joe Biden stays in this thing, am I wrong in saying that the only way to turn this thing around is instead of going on with George Stephanopoulos, instead of talking about your mental acuity, that all you can do is say, here's the thing.
I'm going to make sure that women get their right to reproductive rights back.
I'm going to make sure to expand the Supreme Court.
Here's how I'm going to do it.
That changes everything.
Everything.
That's the only way out of this thing.
It is the only way out, and I said it over the weekend on MSNBC.
I said to Katie Fang, she was saying, I don't understand, Danielle, why the Democrats can't circle the wagons.
I don't understand why.
She's like, I am talking about this just to say that, like, We're in an existential crisis, right?
I want to hear the phrase existential crisis coming out of Joe Biden's mouth every time that he opens it to talk.
I want him to tell the American people we're in an existential crisis.
This is how I plan to fix it.
Right?
This is what my administration is going to do in a second term.
Right?
Because if Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans take over the White House, they will never leave.
And we have opened the door to authoritarianism at the hands of a weaponized Supreme Court, which I will fix before I leave office in four years.
Right?
Like, that's it.
Just tell the people the truth about what they are up against, and every time that he is asked a question about his age, say 34.
That's what I would say.
People are concerned about your age.
34.
What is that, Mr. President?
That is the number.
That's the only number that you should be concerned with.
34 felony counts.
You want that in the White House?
That's the only number that you should be concerned with.
They need to hammer that home.
Stop the hand-wringing.
Stop the whisper campaign behind, stop this bullshit with the donors, right?
Stop it.
From here on out, the most important thing is expanding that goddamn Supreme Court, bringing in a special counsel to review their ethics, right, or lack thereof, getting women back the right to choose, and bringing back affirmative action, which has made this country better, right?
Donald Trump was able to do this because he became president in 2016.
Now we all understand how important the Supreme Court is.
Right?
We need to fix that.
Do you want him to add more judges?
Or do you want it to be me?
That, I mean, that's it!
Right?
Because again, when I look, oh my God, Jared, when I look at the comment sections and people say to me, well, this is happening in Biden's America.
We lost abortion and this is happening in Biden's America.
And I'm just like, you really don't understand how things work.
And this is how civics has failed us.
Right?
And purposefully so.
Yes, this is happening in Biden's America, but it's Trump's judges.
It's Trump's judges because you butt her emails, right?
So that to me, it needs to be hammered down.
They need to circle the wagons and everybody needs to get on the same fucking page and we need to drop this story.
He said in that letter, I ain't leaving.
We need to come together and our singular focus needs to be beating Donald Trump.
He ain't leaving.
So move on.
So I want to say, first of all, I think when it comes to Biden, I think that there are two major, and by the way, this is one of the reasons why America doesn't necessarily work, how much we deal with cults of personality and how much power we put in anybody's hands.
You know, I like literally what's in the background of this is that we have one person who gets to make a decision about what goes forward.
And on top of that, he has to do a lot of other soul searching.
One of the main issues that Biden has had is that he is at his heart an institutionalist.
He doesn't want to talk about the Supreme Court.
He doesn't want to talk about like the moment that that came out, the moment that the decision and Trump be the United States came out.
The first thing that they said was they released a statement that said that Joe Biden respects the institution of the Supreme Court.
Now is the time.
If you decide if you look in if you look in your soul and you're like, I'm the right person for this job, I'm going to do it.
The next part is looking into your soul and saying, how did we arrive here?
Yep.
It's I'm not going to continue to, and by the way, he's done that.
Like he has had moments of his presidency where he said, you know, I feel very strongly about this.
I'm going to push on this thing.
Now, what we need to see from this person, and by the way, I think that's the issue.
It's not just that we saw a president who is obviously getting older and is diminished in his capacities.
And by the way, part of the problem is the communication of it.
What really bothered me at the debate was his inability to prosecute Trump.
It was his inability to put into words, like, quite frankly, you want to talk about that letter?
Multiple paragraphs before that, we're talking about tax reform.
And by the way, do we need to reform taxes?
Absolutely, we do.
And guess what?
You can do that after you address these things.
Because if you start addressing taxes without addressing the Supreme Court, Danielle, you and I both know what the Supreme Court is going to do.
They're going to say, unconstitutional, get out of here.
You have to get out in front and you say, by the way, I'm going to do this.
I'm staying in.
Here's what I'm going to do when I get elected.
And it's a list of things that will get people excited about and that they believe in.
And what's more important, they need done.
And I'm sorry, but if he came out today and said, I'm in favor of reforming the court, and if we get power in both houses going into 2025, we will add to the Supreme Court.
And that's where we're going to push it.
And by the way, there will be Democrats who won't want to do that.
And guess what?
I need to know that Joe Biden is willing to fight those people.
Yeah.
I need to, and by the way, maybe he feels like fighting the Democratic Party right now because the shit's going back and forth both ways.
So maybe that could possibly lead to something, but something has to change.
There has to be some sort, like, if you decide to do it, you decide to do it.
If you decide to do it, you need to decide to go in this route.
And what we have seen so far around the world, thank God it's starting to, like, Come into people's grasps, you know?
They're starting to maybe finally reckon with some of this stuff.
Maybe getting Marine Le Pen, like, a breath away from power, like, scared the shit out of some French people to the point where they showed up to vote.
But it needs to shift.
And if it's going to shift, it has to be now.
You cannot prosecute the past.
You can't change the past.
Joe Biden is our nominee right now.
Where's that going to go?
What's it going to be?
It has to somehow or another spin out of this thing and move away from this.
There's no other way to put it.
It's a cannibalistic suicidal cycle and it's just getting worse by the hour and it has to change.
People need to pay attention just to everything that you just said and what has happened in France.
What has happened in the UK, right?
They recognize the existential threat.
They saw, you know what?
Under the conservatives in the UK, our economy is in the fucking tank.
It is terrible.
Like we had our like there were so many problems right over the last seven to eight years.
That and the amount of times that they've had to shift from prime minister.
I don't even I don't even know.
At this what was it three?
Like I have I have no idea.
It's worse than the spinal tap drummer at this point.
I mean, it's it's it's ridiculous.
And Marie Le Pen is, you know, Donald Trump with lipstick.
Right.
Like she is a fascist.
She hates immigrants.
She hates people of color.
Right.
You hear them on the news.
Oh, the media is trying to make us into racists.
No, you are racist.
Right.
Like.
And so we have to understand.
Again, I'll say what I said at the beginning.
You play the hand that you are dealt.
You may not like it, but you play it to the best of your fucking ability.
And the thing that we need to do now as a country is circle the wagons around our president, around our democracy, around freedom and our rights, and make it that this is not about Joe Biden.
This is about the preservation of what we have left of America after the Supreme Court has taken a sledgehammer to it over the past three sessions.
Right?
People need to wake up to that.
The White House, the administration, is more than one fucking person.
And that's the thing that people need to understand.
Figurehead.
There are more people that are managing behind the scenes than you could ever imagine.
So have faith in that and in the ability of this democratic process, this function, this project of democracy, to be able to go on for four more years so we can figure out how to extend it past that.
But we need to buy ourselves some fucking time right now.
So I'd rather deal with a president that I don't agree with on a lot of issues than deal with tanks in the streets.
Those are our fucking options.
Which, by the way, you're not being hyperbolic.
No, I'm not, actually.
That is literally what we're talking about.
Tanks in the streets.
Donald Trump said to General Milley, after the protesters who came out for George Floyd, can't we just shoot them in the leg or something?
Millie said you cannot.
It is against the law.
Well, guess what?
Insert the Supreme Court.
The laws don't apply to you.
Don't worry, General Millie.
I'll pardon you if anybody says anything.
Right?
That's where we are.
So the ability to protest, the ability for us to comment and analyze America will be labeled enemies of the state, shut down, thrown in jail.
Folks like this is this is what this decision is about.
Yeah, it's not a game.
That's the thing that pisses me off the most.
And I I will say very, very briefly, because we got to wrap this up.
We have been so overrun with pundit brain and pundit ideas.
Like this isn't, it's not an Aaron Sorkin show.
It's not something where the stakes are like fantasy baseball.
Like it is so, our priorities and our perspective has been so Set a skew that it has gotten.
First of all, that's how we've arrived at this point.
And at this point, it is such a crisis.
It's honestly like arguing about who didn't fill up the gas tank when you need to get out of the desert because your car ran out of gas.
Like at this point, you just need to pick a direction and go.
And that is the problem at this point is we're not, I don't think that we're equipped for that.
And we better learn in a real hurry.
We have to recognize that, like, the car is on fire, so it doesn't matter who filled up the tank.
The car is on fire.
We're in the fucking desert.
The buzzers are circling.
And we got one bottle of water and don't know which direction to go in.
So maybe, you know, focus on, like, the fucking crisis at hand so that we can get our way out of this.
Daniel Moody, always a joy.
One of my favorite people walking around on the face of the planet Earth.
We tell the good people where to find you.
The good people can find me over at daniellemoody.com, where I have merch and stuff open in the damn shop over there.
In my future is woke capsule.
You can also catch me, Woke AF, daily on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, as well as Democracy-ish and The New Abnormal.
Get wherever you get your podcasts.
Wonderful.
All right, everybody, that's gonna do it for us.
I will be back on Friday with another wonderful guest host.
In the meantime, go over to patreon.com slash mcgreggpodcast.
Make sure you get The Weekender on Friday, support the show, keep it going.
