Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman run through the final arguments from both candidates and analyze the electoral college map to figure out who is going to win today. Plus, join. us on our Patreon for a LIVE show tonight at 9PM EST here: http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast
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If you are listening to this, you made it to Tuesday, November 5th, the day of the 2024 presidential election.
Nick Hausman, we have been covering the 2024 election for two years, give or take.
Here we are.
Here we are.
Yes, keep calm Allah and carry on Allah.
That's a quote.
Did you see that?
Oh, it was terrific.
I want to tell you, do not give me that oof.
You thought that was terrific?
Okay, well, I was less impressed by the Saturday Night Live cold opening.
Will it be worth losing their license from the FCC? Oh, good God.
Good Lord.
I love that everybody is acting.
I actually, Nick, it's very funny.
Before we get to the show, I did an interview this morning with like a British cable news channel.
And they were like, Jerry J. Sexton, do you believe it is fair that Saturday Night Live featured Kamala?
And I was like, why are we pretending like Saturday Night Live is going to swing an election?
What are we doing here?
Yeah, because being fair is extremely important to the other side.
Absolutely, yes.
Absolutely it is.
Everybody, before we get into this, and we've got to talk about the race where it is, we have to talk about American politics.
We have some really crazy stuff to get into today.
I promise you this is a jam-packed show.
A reminder that tonight...
Tuesday, November 5th, Election Day.
You are going to want to come out and hang out with us at 9 p.m.
Eastern to watch our exclusive election night coverage with reactions and analysis.
We are in it for the long haul.
We are going to give you coverage you're not going to see anywhere else.
Go over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
For anybody who has been, like, with us during an election before, you know what this is.
You want to be here with the community.
You want to experience this with us.
I certainly, Nick, I don't know about you, I am looking forward to spending this time with you, to going through this with you, and also with the muckrake community.
It's necessary.
We need to do it.
It's going to be hand-wringing.
I don't know how much we're going to know at that moment tomorrow night either, but because of that, it'd be better to be not knowing together than alone.
That is an all-timer of a quote, and at some point or another, we're going to have to put that on a t-shirt.
Let me make sure I've got that correct.
All of us together not knowing.
Yes, or I thought maybe it's better not knowing together.
It's better not knowing together.
Truer words have never been spoken.
All right, so let's go ahead and jump right in, Nick.
Here we are at Election Day, and we did our election preview last week.
We laid out where things were.
The amazing thing is, From the moment that we hit publish on that podcast, it feels as if things have started to shift.
Not only have we seen different polls coming out, I personally have been on one call after another and in one communication after another in which people are feeling very, very drastically different about this.
Right now, this is coming from, first of all, the Des Moines Register poll, which showed that Harris is up three points in Iowa, which is wild.
On top of that, there have been rumors circulating that possibly even Kansas and Texas might be in play and that Ted Cruz could possibly be at the end of his political career.
The internal polls feel different.
The vibes feel different.
How are you feeling right now as it feels like the ground is shifting a little bit?
I don't know.
You know how we oftentimes point out how MAGA can create their own reality?
Absolutely, yes.
This feels exactly the same.
Oh, the polls!
The polls are just completely wrong.
They're over-inflating Republicans because they're so scared they're going to lose their platforms if they get one more poll wrong.
It just feels like people are trying to fake it until they make it and hope that they're right.
I can't get there.
I cannot get to that much optimism just yet.
And again, we're not going to do anything until Wednesday, Thursday, probably, as it is.
But the Ted Cruz thing, I mean, if Colin Allred sends me one more text, I don't know what to do.
And he keeps insisting that it's tied.
No poll I've seen has had him tied or winning the entire time.
So, I mean, listen, I would give my left arm for Ted Cruz to lose.
What would happen to your jump shot, Nick?
I could still do it.
I could kick.
So anyway, I don't know what I would do, but please, he's got to lose.
But again, I don't think any of that is happening.
And I don't think it's, you know, I don't know how warranted this whole, you know, this rosy picture suddenly became.
Well, I'll go ahead and I'll start by saying that the Des Moines Register poll is historically one of the more accurate polls that we see.
It has been dead on.
And, you know, I was asked about this in an interview yesterday, and they were trying to make sense of it.
And somebody said to me, it doesn't feel like Iowa makes sense.
Welcome to American politics!
Iowa does not make sense, and it never makes sense.
But the Des Moines Register has its thumb on the pulse of the state of Iowa.
That being said, I have come to detest hope peddlers.
And by that, I don't mean people who say, hey, there's hope and there's a possibility for optimistic outcomes.
I personally am an optimistic person when it comes to politics, despite the fact that, like, there's an air of pessimism and cynicism that I bring to all this in my analysis.
I believe that people who are telling people, don't worry about this thing, it's in the bag, I think those people are detestable, to be honest with you.
I think they are making their fortunes, they're making their platforms, they're chasing clout, they're telling people what they want to hear.
We do not know where this thing is.
We simply don't.
And it was funny, as we were doing our election preview, Nick, we kept saying, it's like, we don't know what's going to happen on Tuesday.
We can give you our best guesses about the information we've been given and the trends and the trajectories.
We don't know what's going to happen.
But I will say that in the conversations I've been having and the meetings that I have been a part of, it does feel overwhelming.
As if either people have picked up on something, which might be the fact that the polls have been cooked, and we've said all along, you can't really trust the majority of polls that are in American politics now, so maybe they are cooked, or are people talking themselves into believing something that isn't true?
That is, again, another consequence of our current political environment.
If this is true, Nick, if this has actually taken place, There are three factors I think that have played into it.
One is the outrage of American women who say, you know what?
You took away Roe v.
Wade.
You are walking around talking about childless cat ladies.
You are obviously trying to turn us into not just second-class citizens, but third-class citizens who, you know, we have seen one red state after another vote for abortion rights, right?
And, you know, there's even a real possibility that we will see the state of Missouri split its vote between Donald Trump and the right for women to have reproductive liberty.
Right.
There's a very real possibility we might see that.
On top of that, Nick, I didn't think he was going to make that big of a deal.
But Tony Hinchcliffe's joke about Puerto Rico could change this election.
And a lot of the conversations I'm having about the state of Pennsylvania, which remains one of the most important battleground states in this entire election, it turns out there are hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans in that state who are pissed off.
And we've seen a lot of people move.
Also on top of that, and we'll talk more about the chaos of the Trump campaign, I think the last closing weeks of his campaign are going to have consequences.
So if things are actually shifting, and maybe they are, I don't think it's changing people's minds, Nick.
I think it goes back to what I said in an earlier podcast, which is it's growing the electorate.
So if we look at the turnout for this election, and it's very, very large, and early voting tends to hint that this might be large, that might be what changes the entire face of this race in the long run.
Truly remarkable.
And we've seen some crazy things and things shift.
To think that this guy Tony will have that kind of influence, it will go down in the history books.
He'll be more popular for that than any other stand-up routine he's ever done in his life, and that'll be amazing.
And, you know, you're right.
There's a timing issue here because there are shifts.
The Iowa thing supposedly is rooted around when the abortion ban went into effect and they started to really feel what that was like.
That's when it started shifting.
We're hearing about canvassers who are talking to these big Men in the doorways talking about they're going to vote for Trump, and then they can see the wife in the background mouthing, I'm going to vote for Kamala, but she's too scared to say that.
I don't know if I even believe that those are true stories, because how horrible would that be if you live in a relationship like that?
But there is this notion that what they wanted around abortion ultimately is going to come around and kill them.
The GOP, that is, and their hopes for this campaign.
And, you know, it would be truly remarkable if that's what the polls aren't measuring is just sort of the absolute intensity of turnout from women, for instance, that they simply couldn't sort of measure any other way.
Before we move on, I just want to make one point about what you're discussing in terms of that outrage, which is this.
Something that has shifted in the last few decades—and this is one of the reasons why people like J.D. Vance and Josh Hawley and the other, you know, hyper-masculine, absolutely insecure assholes have been pushing— Is that even women who could support Donald Trump or consider themselves religious or conservative,
like as they have been building their careers and their lives, even they are not particularly won over by an agenda that seeks to knock them down and seeks to take away what they've built and what they've earned and what they've created for themselves.
So on one hand, yes, I think abortion plays a role in this.
But all of a sudden, when you have a movement that is predicated on pure misogyny, that does have an effect.
And so there is a distinct possibility, for the record...
There is a distinct possibility that when you and I do either the weekender for this Friday time, what is it?
Or the episode on Tuesday of next week, when we actually have the raw data from this election, Nick, there is a distinct possibility that what we're going to look at in that data is something completely unprecedented.
And maybe something that we won't even see again because maybe the GOP won't necessarily use the same tactics that they've used this time.
Like, we might see a shift in the electorate that represents basically a gender divide in this country that says, guess what?
You may be able to create authoritarianism, but you are not going to create a misogynistic, expressly anti-woman authoritarianism.
That would be very nice if that happened, right?
And especially if Trump loses and they...
I mean, I don't know if we're ready for this part of the conversation, but if Trump loses, do they finally have the come-to-Jesus moment?
And after all the threatening to do this in 2010 and 2016, are they going to be able to do that and actually pivot and have a different mindset that speaks to what you just said?
No.
Come on.
We'll talk more about that in just a second.
We have a clip that made my eyes bleed the other day.
But let's go ahead and start with the closing arguments that have been made by these campaigns as they try and get ready for Tuesday.
This is a clip of Kamala Harris speaking in East Lansing, Michigan.
And we are joined today by leaders of the Arab American community, which has deep and proud roots here in Michigan.
And I want to say this year has been difficult, given the scale of death and destruction in Gaza and given the civilian casualties and displacement in Lebanon.
It is devastating.
And as president, I will do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza.
To bring home the hostages, end the suffering in Gaza, ensure Israel is secure, and ensure the Palestinian people can realize their and ensure the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, freedom, security, and self-determination.
So, Where's that been?
And you'll notice, Nick, and this is something that you and I have been crowing about for months now, which is if you actually take a lot of the words from that statement and you just put them down in a word bank, they would look like a lot like what she has been saying for months.
But it's the order and the emphasis that has changed.
Right?
So what actually happened here is that this was sort of the last minute appeal to Michigan to try and go ahead.
And for the record, I don't know if you've been paying attention to this, the pro-Gaza members of Michigan have been...
Really, really pushing hard lately to say, we have our disagreements with Kamala Harris.
We still think you should vote for her.
We still think that we need to push the government to try and rein this destruction in.
Please give us a reason to vote for you.
She finally did it.
I guess, in a way, it was sort of, you know, there's not enough time to criticize her for it or drag her over the rocks for it.
But this was a necessary thing that finally got set.
I wish it would have went further, but even I am not going to let perfect be the enemy of good.
Absolutely.
And they probably could benefit from hammering Trump on his quote that said that he's like, do whatever you got to do, you know, finish the job.
If that alone doesn't speak to why they shouldn't vote for Trump, I don't know what, you know, at that point, then it's broken.
And there's nothing you can compel anybody to listen to reason when they want to vote.
They're just voting on id.
And that's where we are.
So, yeah, I agree.
I think that she has said all these things.
We've heard her say these things in piecemeal in different spots, but, you know, that was powerful in that state, in front of people like that.
It's very important.
Here's the interesting thing.
I saw something yesterday that said that half the votes are already mailed in, are already done.
Early voting are mailed in, right?
So it's like, and I said that last time, where, you know, eventually everyone's just going to mail in their ballots, right?
It's going to be how it's going to be done the whole time.
And at that case, you know, The run-up to Tuesday won't be much because probably 85% of the voting will be done three or four days beforehand.
So you can't cut it that close anymore going forward.
And it would have been nice if she hadn't cut it that close before, but at least here we are.
The question, and by the way, a lot of those people who weren't going to vote for Kamala Harris, particularly Arab Americans in Michigan, you know, they're not going to vote for Donald Trump.
Like, they're not foolish.
They don't think that Donald Trump is somehow or another going to be better in all of this.
They simply were going to sit out the election because they didn't want to put their vote with somebody who was part of an administration that enabled Israel to carry out these crimes.
The question now is, is that cake baked?
Right?
Like, hearing this at this point, at this juncture, you wonder whether or not those people will say, hey, this is a little bit too late, or whether or not, you know, they've already had their opinion figured out, or is a statement like this going to drive them to the polls tomorrow?
And while we're at it, let's talk about, like, how hard it is to vote in the United States of America, right?
Because let's say, even as an example, That some of these people hear this and they say, okay, finally I've heard you say some of these words.
I'm going to go vote for you.
You now need to go stand in line for God knows how long.
Personally, I'm going to go vote tomorrow morning and I have just cleared my calendar.
I know that there is a possibility that in order for me to cast my vote, it's going to take me hours of my day.
We don't make it easy enough for people to vote.
So now the question is...
How many people are going to hear this and they're going to say, okay, finally, I heard you say something even approximately close to what I've been looking for.
I'm now going to go to vote.
I'm going to put in the time.
Is it worth my time?
That's, quite frankly, what these elections hinge on and what this election is going to hinge on, undoubtedly.
And that's the worst part about all this.
It shouldn't hinge on if you have five hours in your day to go do this.
That's right.
It shouldn't hinge on, can I get somewhere that's miles and miles away from where I live without a car or whatever.
Those are the problems we have too.
I'm wrapping my head around how to solve the online voting thing.
One day they figure it out.
They have to figure that out.
For people who don't listen to The Weekender, Nick threw all of his weight into online voting.
And when I said, do you want Musk and Zuckerberg in charge, he said, I'm going to have to think about this.
Yeah, I'm still thinking about it.
And now you're thinking about it.
That's good.
Yeah.
So anyway, we have that.
I mean, listen, we've seen the response by the GOP when we had the most participation of all time in a Democratic election.
They don't want that.
We must stop this.
We cannot have this.
We cannot have people doing this.
Less voting places, longer lines, more opportunity for people to leave that line and not vote.
It's all they want to have happen.
Or we'll purge voter rolls inside 90 days.
All this stuff is horrible shit that's disenfranchisement, and that's all they have to hang their hat on.
So in stark contrast to what Kamala Harris just said, now we're going to check in with Secretary of Transportation.
I've done a heck of a job, Booty.
Like, we're going to see Pete Buttigieg's closing argument at the end of this election.
There's one other message that I think is important, and it is something that is kind of evoked by all of the craziness and some of the ugliness of his campaign, which is I think there's a lot of people left, right, and center in this country who are just yearning for a more normal future, one which frankly has a more normal Republican Party.
A vote for Kamala Harris is a vote for politics not to be punching you in the face every day, every time you turn on the news, because we can get back to a way of doing things in this country where, of course, we're not always going to agree, but it's not this constant in-your-face deathmatch that it's felt like, whether he's president or whether he's candidate.
And I gotta tell you, if he leads the Republican Party to defeat the third time in a row, I mean, 2020, the 2022 midterms, and now, then it will finally, I think, lead us to a moment where the Republican Party finds some way to part ways with him and everything he represents.
And we can sometimes, just sometimes, like at Thanksgiving dinner, maybe leave politics on the back burner.
All right, Nick, I'm going to try and contain my rage as you start by remarking on this.
Well, I guess I anticipate what your rage is, is that you're thinking that if we get back to where we used to be, that's not a good thing either.
That's not good.
So, you know, again, this is the reason why Biden got elected.
We needed a weigh station.
We needed some way to get in between, you know, where we're going eventually.
And it led us to almost a catastrophe where he had to step down and then Kamala jumps in and who knows what was going to happen.
So that's all part of this process of us simply saying, let's just get back to some normalcy for a few minutes here and see if we can get that.
And then we can figure this stuff out.
That's not a great recipe, as we've seen so far.
It doesn't do anything.
It's the most convenient amnesia.
And by the way, Pete Buttigieg is the perfect spokesperson for that amnesia, right?
This is the guy who spends more time on Fox News than he does with his family.
It is this idea that somehow or another we can bridge this divide.
And by the way, not only is this hope peddling at its highest form, but what else is it?
It's absolutely naive and delusional, Nick, because there's a reason why we're talking about politics.
Because they matter.
Because it actually affects our lives.
Like this idea of like, oh, I just want to forget who the president is for a while.
I get that notion, but like that convenience and that comfort, it comes at the expense of a ton of people who have been hurt and a ton of people who are continuing to be hurt and conditions that are continuing to deteriorate.
I get why he's saying this.
I understand why he would go on television and say this.
I wish like hell he wouldn't say it because we need to look at this thing in the face and recognize that quote-unquote normal is how we got to what we now consider abnormal.
It was simply a denial of reality that let things get out of hand and now we have an actual like struggle on our hands when we should have had a struggle well before this struggle that we're currently having.
Right.
I mean, you need to take that ideology that's been fomenting, grab it by the neck, and hold it under the water until it doesn't move anymore.
Politically.
Yes.
Politically, yes.
It has to be put down.
And, you know, it felt like that was going to happen in 2016, right?
Like, Hillary was going to win.
This was going to have been another election they lost.
And, you know, another, you know, I have to figure out what's going to happen.
Tea Party didn't work.
You know, so that was all an exciting moment.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
What do you mean the Tea Party didn't work?
Well, you know, wasn't the Tea Party reaction to Obama winning again?
Didn't the Tea Party move the Republican Party to the right and lead to the Trump presidency and the capture of the Supreme Court?
I mean, I'm saying because if Hillary wins, then...
Oh!
I have to tell you, I think if Hillary would have won, we would have seen the radicalization of the Republican Party probably through a different prism.
Fair enough.
I mean, because again, thanks Obama, you can argue like Obama also contributed to that, right?
Just his mere presence in the White House.
His existence as a human being.
Yes, exactly.
So, yeah, so it's, I don't know.
Because remember, what we would like to get back to would have been pork barrel politics, where we're just kind of arguing about the tax codes, right?
What percentage here, right?
And things got done.
They were able to pass things.
But then other things didn't get done like, oh, Ronald Reagan, nothing happened to him for Iran contract, for instance, or all sorts of shenanigans in the government that was allowed to have happen across the aisle both ways.
I don't think that's good either.
Uh, I don't think that's good either.
I would make the argument once again, that as opposed to looking through personalities and individuals, that all of this stuff was going to happen one way or another.
It's not that Donald Trump came in and exerted his will.
It's the fact that the political and economic system demanded a Donald Trump come in and exert their will.
Right?
Like that.
It's, it's like sailing.
The winds move the boats, right?
You can guide the boats a little bit, but the wind is what, you know, pushes it.
In this case, like this idea that the Republican party is going to wake up and say, Oh, shucks guys, you got us.
Now we've entered the era of Marco Rubio.
Now Mitt Romney can ascend back to the top of the mountain.
That simply isn't true.
If Kamala Harris, the first female of color, becomes the president of the United States of America, if you think white misogynistic supremacy is going to be like I invite you to go back and look at Barack Obama's presidency and what happened with the Tea Party and what happened with the country moving forward.
This is absolute insanity that Buttigieg was communicating.
Jared, why do you hate America?
I want it to be better.
All right.
Speaking of closing arguments, let's go ahead and check in on Donald Trump.
I assume, as we near the finish line, that Donald Trump is at his rallies.
I assume he's modulated his tone.
He's speaking more sense.
I have to imagine things have gotten better.
A little bit intelligence.
And I have a piece of glass over here.
And I don't have a piece of glass there.
And I have this piece of glass here.
But all we have really over here is the fake news.
And to get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news. - And I don't mind that so much.
I don't mind.
I don't mind that.
That's right.
The Republican nominee, a few days before a presidential election, is openly joking and fantasizing about members of the news media being assassinated.
It's never what he says, for me.
It's the reaction of the crowd.
Yes.
You know, how would you ever...
Why is that funny?
Because, oh, he doesn't really mean that.
He's just joking.
You know, I don't have that funny bone, Jared.
Where did I not pick that up?
Is it kindergarten?
When did I not get that funny bone about murder or being funny?
You know what it is, actually?
And, you know, I've sort of thought about this, but I don't know if I've been able to properly articulate it.
It's like when you're a kid and you hear another kid say something naughty.
You know what I mean?
They say a bad word or they say something explicit and you know that they're not supposed to and you kind of get the titters a little bit.
You know what I mean?
That's what that is.
It's like a joy in the idea of like doing something nasty and bad.
And, like, that is what animates the Trump campaign, for the record.
Like, it's that sort of emotion and the idea of inflicting cruelty on others.
And one might even emote the term garbage to describe people like that who would be willing to laugh, and I wouldn't disagree.
Man, he is really making a case.
Speaking of Donald Trump...
How tired did he sound?
He looked like he was exhausted.
He looks bad.
He sounds bad.
This is not a person who is ready to be President of the United States of America.
I don't even think J.D. Vance needs to worry about poisoning his food, for the record.
Maybe take him on a brisk walk.
See what happens, because this is not a well person.
Speaking of Donald Trump comments, Nick, I think you and I wanted to comment on a recent thing that became a firestorm.
I think our opinion of this might differ a little bit from what people are expecting.
And I don't blame him for sticking with his daughter, but his daughter is a very dumb individual.
Very dumb.
She's a radical war hawk.
Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay?
Let's see how she feels about it.
You know, when the guns are trained in her face.
Yeah.
You'll notice, by the way, that the crowd didn't know exactly how to deal with that either.
Obviously, here, Donald Trump is talking with Tucker Carlson more on him later about Liz Cheney.
And this immediately went off.
It went completely viral and became like a news story for a couple of days that even had to be talked on Meet the Press.
The idea is that Donald Trump was calling for Liz Cheney to face a firing squad and be executed.
Nick, personally, I saw this happen.
I bit my tongue until it bled.
I didn't want to get involved in this discourse, but I actually think that this whole thing has been pretty misleading.
Absolutely.
But hey, you know, they do it to Biden.
They do it to Harris, too.
So why not hit him with it?
But yeah, it seems pretty clear.
He's just trying to say, you wouldn't be so much of a war hawk if you had a gun and get out there in country and then have people, you know, firing at you.
He's like the Colonel Jessup sort of speech, right?
That seems pretty clear what he's trying to say.
But I think, you know, the face, the part about aiming at her face...
It changes something a little bit and makes the misinterpretation maybe a little bit easier.
But, you know, listen, it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy, Jared, who had accused of something he didn't say that might hurt his chances in an election.
I have a few things that I need to say about this, and I want to be very, very intentional about the way that I say it.
First things first, is I don't think that there is a problem in the world with saying that if people are war hawks, in particular people who are not serving in war and haven't served in war and have such a lust and passion for sending people into warfare to die and suffer, I don't think there's anything wrong with saying, why don't you go fight the war?
You know, if this means so much to you, why don't you pick up a gun and go face the danger yourself?
I don't have a problem with that.
The sentiment to me has always been true, and I still believe it's true because people like Liz Cheney and her father and everybody around them, including the neoconservatives, are disgusting war hawks who have killed millions of people all in the pursuit of resources and power.
The problem here is that Donald Trump is disgusting, and he doesn't know how to talk.
He doesn't know how to express things.
And what did he get lost in, Nick?
The fantasy of Liz Cheney being killed while doing that.
You can go ahead and say, hey, by the way, you shouldn't be calling for wars unless you're willing to fight them, but you also probably shouldn't be fantasizing about these people meeting grisly inns.
The problem is that Donald Trump.
It's the way that he's pushing him forward.
And a word of caution in all of this.
And Nick, is it fair to say that over the past eight years, I have highlighted some of the most disgusting things that Donald Trump has said?
Is that fair?
It is fair.
Is it fair that I have sounded the alarm bell when it comes to Donald Trump for eight years?
I will give this piece of advice to anybody listening to this.
You need to pick when you do it.
You don't need to take every dumb shit thing that Donald Trump says and try and turn it into something else, because what does that do?
It hurts the ability for people to trust you and to focus on the things that matter.
This is Donald Trump not calling for Liz Cheney to be put in front of a firing squad.
The fact that people had to manipulate it into that is a different thing altogether.
Just for historical context, Nick, nobody goes in front of a firing squad holding a rifle.
That's not how they work.
It kind of defeats the purpose of the firing squad.
So in terms of this, I think you and I both wanted to correct the record in terms of what was happening.
Donald Trump is a fascist.
He is a violent, violent person who shouldn't be near power.
He was not calling for a firing squad here.
I agree.
And, you know, the funny thing is that he's never served in the military.
He doesn't know anything about that either.
I mean, the closest he's gotten is he's had some poor, unfortunate Purple Heart winner giving him his Purple Heart because he kind of always wanted one, you know, without ever having to do anything to earn it.
So, you know, I don't even know if that's the best argument he's got anyway because he doesn't, you know, he's a draft dodger himself.
Yeah.
I agree.
You know, listen, anything that can be ammunition, I suppose at this point, I'll be willing to take if it hurts him.
But, you know, I agree this was not one of those things that merited the outcry.
For the record, I don't have a problem with draft dodgers whatsoever.
People shouldn't be drafted into wars, particularly illegal wars like Vietnam.
I'm all for anybody who wanted to dodge the draft in Vietnam.
It just so happens that if all of a sudden you start carrying yourself like a tough guy and people start putting your head on Rambo's body and then you become the president and brag about dropping the mother of all bombs, like you can go to hell.
Speaking of ammunition against Donald Trump, Nick, this story is actually pretty big and nobody is talking about it.
Michael Wolff, and by the way, I know that your skin just crawled a little bit, one of the most, like, biggest opportunists in all of American journalism, has released multiple recordings of Jeffrey Epstein talking about how close he was to Donald Trump, observing Donald Trump with young girls, having access to Donald observing Donald Trump with young girls, having access to Donald Trump, and just basically talking consistently about how tied Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump were together.
Of course, this hasn't gained a lot of attention for a variety of reasons, including Michael Wolff's sort of sketchy relationship with the truth, but isn't it shocking that this stuff is coming out and it's barely gotten any play whatsoever?
Well, let's pull this apart a little bit because I had sent you a thing from Mark Halperin saying that someone's shopping something around that if it came out would end his campaign.
I think this was it.
And I think the delay was when he finally released it was he couldn't get anyone to pay him I think he was trying to, you know, he wrote a book, he probably made some decent money on the book, but he was trying to double dip here and get some money from all the recordings he had with him about him and Epstein and Trump.
And, you know, it doesn't seem like anyone bought them.
And finally, he just said, F it, I just got to release them before the thing and I'll get some extra SEO and maybe I'll drive people to more sales from the book.
Does that sound like plausible to you?
That is a distinct possibility there was another rumor going around about what the story could have possibly been.
We talked about that off mic because we don't need to talk about that on mic.
But I also want to say something.
I don't talk about the Jeffrey Epstein stuff a lot on here for a variety of reasons.
One, it's absolutely disgusting.
But second of all, do you know why this doesn't catch a lot of traction?
Because it's not just Donald Trump.
It's not just members of the Republican Party.
Bill Clinton had a relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
Bill Gates had a relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
On top of that, nearly every major elite university in Ivy, including Harvard, had a relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
Almost every financier had a relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
Because the main corridors of power in this country are corrupted.
And as a result, it just sort of becomes a wash.
Everybody gets dirty in it, so nobody's going to actually cover it.
And the actual components of the Epstein situation, which involve the CIA, Mossad, massive, massive conspiracies of wealth and power, nobody wants to crack that egg, Nick, because the inside of that egg is really bad.
So as a result, even something like this isn't going to gain traction because the people who would cover it and discuss it have relationships with the people who would be indicted by this thing.
Okay, yeah.
I'd also offer that, you know, from what I've seen in the tapes, there isn't anything new in there.
So it's a big shrug.
It's like, yeah, of course, we knew he hung out.
We have video.
We've seen him.
We know he's an asshole.
He most likely violated laws in terms of minors and stuff like that.
So whatever it was, we knew a lot of that whole Jeffrey Epstein connection anyway.
So to me, this is not a surprise.
We know this stuff.
It's not that much of a revelation.
To hear Epstein discuss how he would pit Bannon versus Kellyanne Conway or whatever, I'm like, yeah, we understand.
That's what he does.
He likes to do that, whatever.
It didn't illuminate much more for me.
Speaking of Trump pitting people against one another, I just want to take a moment as we go into this election to talk about something that we haven't really, Nick, which is...
You know, we've been very critical of the Harris campaign in the way that has been waged.
I think that it has not been that effective of a campaign with flourishes of actual decency and actually some pretty incredible moments that show what the Democratic Party could do and also lower moments where we've seen what they're not willing to do.
Nick, one thing about this is that as we've discussed the 2024 political environment, we agreed that this is not a good time to be an incumbent.
This is not a good era to be an incumbent.
On top of that, the inflation situation was terrible.
You have the Gaza situation.
You have Ukraine, which has continued on under Joe Biden's watch.
Also the overturning of Roe v.
Wade under Joe Biden's watch.
not a lot in the way of like movement of the Biden administration over the past couple of years in many directions.
We haven't talked about the fact that people say, well, you know, it's shocking that this race is close.
This was Donald Trump's race to win.
The fact that we're discussing where this thing is, I think we would be remiss on election day if we didn't discuss how terrible and maybe truly one of the worst campaigns ever waged in American political history the Trump campaign was.
And I think that deserves it, the fact that this has been an absolute disaster, top to bottom, start to finish.
And yet, the guy's going to get 70 million votes?
He might get more votes than he did in 2020?
It's a distinct possibility.
Yeah.
And so, right, we can't look at this as a results-based process because the political situation is so skewery as it is.
But yeah, I mean, you know, I guess the question is, what could he have done differently?
What would he have done differently?
You know, these rallies, a lot of people were clocking these rallies, right?
So that was obviously a good thing for a campaign.
They don't stay.
They leave and all that stuff.
And he drones on and on.
But yeah, I would hope that someone would look at this on the Republican side and say, you know, maybe if we don't tap into anger and hate and disgust so much, we'll do better.
And we can attract some more of those voters.
I would hope that that happened, but I don't have that.
I don't think it will.
So, Nick, if I said to you, you know what?
You have 20 minutes.
And if you simply live for the next 20 minutes, you will be given $50 million, right?
If you just simply live for the next few minutes, you will receive $50 million to do with what you want.
Sign me up.
You or I... We'd probably pop a squat in a chair, maybe even open a book, maybe open up a cold beverage and just sort of let the time go by, correct?
Correct, absolutely.
That was good.
This campaign has been the equivalent of hearing that and running immediately into traffic.
Donald Trump, all he had to do was to slightly moderate himself.
And do you know what we're hearing from insiders, Nick?
He got bored.
He was so bored by trying not to be outlandish and wild.
And matter of fact, I think in American history, if this goes down that he loses this election, the period after his shooting and to the Republican National Convention and beyond will be one of the most consequential periods that we will ever see.
In that time period, Trump shook up his staff, brought in like wild-eyed crazy people like Corey Lewandowski, went ahead and sold his VP spot and the future of MAGA to JD Vance.
And then the media, Nick, we covered this.
The media was like, please be presidential.
Please, please, please be presidential.
And what did he do?
He followed Hulk Hogan and Kid Rock and got on stage and absolutely gave one of the craziest acceptance speeches you will ever hear.
On top of that, talking about immigrants eating cats and dogs and the pets, all of that stuff.
The messaging was terrible.
There has been absolutely no disciplining, no self-discipline.
The whole point is this, Nick.
Donald Trump was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.
If he simply would have taken his money and would have just invested it and would have just taken people's like suggestions, like expert suggestions, he would have so much more money than he has right now.
Correct?
And why?
Why does that not happen?
Because Donald Trump is self-destructive.
And what we have seen from the moment that he emerged on the public scene is that he cannot help himself.
He hates himself.
He is not able to moderate himself.
And as a result, we now have an election that looks a lot different than it could have possibly been if Donald Trump could have moderated himself and modulated himself.
And as we've covered and as we've said, Nick, he is incapable of doing it.
Right.
And he needs a huge help, a bunch of help to be successful.
So in 2016, it really wasn't necessarily a product of what he did to campaign.
It was Comey.
It was Hillary.
There's a lot of other events, too.
And as a result, what we've seen since then is, yes, a self-destructive nature that's going to torpedo him and, God willing, or hopefully bring down the Republican Party with him so they'd be forced to have a reckoning and change things.
But you already thought that that's not going to happen anyway.
Your lips to God's ears, my friend.
On that note, Nick, you sent me this over the weekend and now we have to go over it.
That's the origin of a lot of segments on this show.
We're now going to look at a column that appeared in the New York Times.
The title is, In Shift from 2020, Identity Politics Loses Its Grip on the Country.
This is by Jeremy W. Peters.
And let me tell you what, this is a muckrake podcast special, my friends.
Let's go ahead and start at the beginning of this thing.
Quote, the last time Kamala Harris ran for president during the 2022 primaries, people were losing jobs or friends because something they said or posted online came off as insensitive.
An unfamiliar new language around identity was catching on with terms like Latinx and BIPOC.
The homeless were now unhoused and there were pregnant people, not women.
Back then, as the progressive movement tried to establish itself as a bulwark to the Trump White House, considerations of race, gender and sexual orientation became urgent and unavoidable.
Unavoidable, good Lord.
And some progressives tried to enforce a strict set of cultural and political expectations almost everywhere, inside classrooms and boardrooms, movie studios and publishing houses, congressional offices and political campaigns.
Nick, as we're jumping into this article, let's go ahead and set the record straight.
Why did quote-unquote wokeness and cancel culture accompany the Trump presidency going back into 2017?
Why all of a sudden did this happen?
Was it just like it came out of nowhere?
I think it comes out of the rage that someone like Trump could get elected president having been exposed as a serial assaulter, sexual assaulter.
And it was finally time for people to...
By the way, it's not finally time for people to speak up.
Whatever he's describing, this notion of a progressive movement that was enforcing a strict set of cultural and political expectations...
That was happening in the 90s.
What is this thing where all of a sudden it happens overnight in 2017?
The premise is ridiculous.
It's absolutely absurd.
And for the record, and we'll talk more about this as we go through this article, this is the New York Times getting high on its own supply.
Because let me tell you something, the New York Times has done more to influence the liberal rightward trajectory in this country than anybody else in this country.
There is no other human being or entity that has done it.
This is the New York Times saying, look what we did.
is what they're saying.
And you're exactly right.
Me too, cancel culture, wokeness, whatever it is, was largely a reaction to the election of Donald Trump.
There was rage there, but there was also a sort of hair pulling among white liberals, right?
Because what happened?
White people largely got Donald Trump elected.
And so what happened?
We started sifting between, no, I'm one of the good ones.
Those are the bad ones, right?
So a political and cultural and social orthodoxy started to sort itself out.
And by the way, capitalism was more than fine with this, Nick.
We saw one corporation start to decide on one end of the line.
We're either a woke company or an anti-woke company.
Nick, did they do that because of principles or did they do that for profit?
Well, they did it for profit.
But, you know, it's nice that we have it.
They can put it on record, but it's for profit.
Let's not pretend that it's anything else.
But, again, there is that cleansing of their hands because it is woke and it is progressive and it is all-encompassing and trying to be more open to society, right?
Like, that is happening whether their motivation is there or not.
And by the way, it also doesn't hurt that all of a sudden you start seeing these things come out when you start having more people of color, more gay and trans people, more immigrants who are necessary for the economy.
So maybe as they're taking jobs and maybe as they're making a living and paying taxes, maybe all of a sudden we need an environment in which they feel welcomed and they're not going to leave your business because they feel discriminated against.
Right?
Right.
Also, the underlying truth of it, it was overdue.
We should have been talking about these things for forever.
It was the political environment around Donald Trump's election that went ahead and threw gas on this fire and got it actually going.
The idea that somehow or another this was just something cooked up that happened is wild.
Moving forward.
Quote, Do you know what I say to that, Nick?
What?
Good!
Maybe you should think about what you're getting ready to say.
Maybe there should be a filter on the things you say because maybe your first instinct is to utter some racist, sexist, xenophobic, trans, and gay-phobic bullshit.
So maybe you should think about the consequences of the things you're about to say.
So I guess what you're trying to say is, you know, being in a state of fear of that that will then govern better behavior is fine.
Well, guess what?
Most people who aren't straight white men have that filter already because the things that they say could lead to them being, I don't know, assaulted, being hurt, being discriminated against.
So maybe it's a good idea to take a second and think about what you're getting ready to say.
He goes on.
But the country is also in a starkly different place from four years ago.
Case in point, Ms.
Harris is boasting about protecting her home with a Glock, proclaiming her patriotism, and campaigning with Republicans like Liz Cheney.
Nick, the analysis in this piece is puddle thin.
There's no discussion about the fact that this country has moved to the right.
There's no discussion of any of that.
It's simply that these things just happen.
And all of a sudden we're talking about glocks and sitting around with Liz Cheney.
Well, do you think I'm reading too much into this when I think that what they're saying is that, you know, proclaiming her patriotism is something that the left never does?
What?
He has to bring it up and point it out as a piece of this sentence, right?
Isn't that what he's trying to say?
Yes.
Which I think is absolutely insane.
The left doesn't have patriotism?
That's just ridiculous.
But you can tell that's the tone that he's trying to establish.
And I think it's just insulting.
It really is.
You know what I say to that, Nick?
Horseshit.
Because this is a completely...
of all of this.
No, people don't want to necessarily just talk about racism.
Do you know what they want to talk about?
They want to talk about the economic underpinning problems here.
The problem is that as wokeness and all of this came to the forefront, we discussed them as ways to cut the economic pie the way that it worked.
Who should get fired?
Who should get jobs?
We didn't talk about the fact that we live in a time of intentional inequality and intentional scarcity.
We should be talking about broadening this out and, like, making lives better and not just, you know, giving preferential treatment to white, straight men.
The problem is that our politics has completely diluted that and left us without any discussion about the economic conditions that got us to this place in the first place.
Oh, exactly.
And I'm stuck on this thing, like, when he tries to say certain identity-focused progressive solutions to injustice...
I mean, it's a word salad to me without ever referencing what we're talking about here.
And again, there is a popularity, which is the reason why the Me Too movement actually took hold, was because, you know, first of all, I would say most women, you know, finally were able to say, you cannot treat us like this.
You can't grab our, you know...
And you've been treating us like this our entire lives.
Yeah, for the entire history of the country.
You know, it's like Cuomo, Andrew Cuomo, like, you know, He probably didn't think anything was wrong with any of his behavior because that's how it was for decades and decades.
So I think it's broadly popular when we finally said, you know what, you need to behave in the workplace.
You need to treat people, treat women like equals.
I mean, I don't think that that was an unpopular opinion at all.
It's weird that that was met with a reaction to get women out of the workplace.
I'm going to read a quote and listen, I want to set this up for people.
I'm going to read this and then I'm going to let you respond to it.
And in the time it takes you to respond to it, I am again going to compose myself because I don't want to be unprofessional.
I don't want to break things.
Quote, Some schools have rebuked student activists for heckling visiting speakers and suspended them for disrupting events.
And to the consternation of free speech supporters, they have cracked down on pro-Palestinian activists who have pitched tents in campus quads and taken over academic buildings.
Please, for the love of God, talk so I can get myself together.
Well, we know your take on a lot of that in terms of universities being really progressive places is completely false.
It's horse shit!
If there's anyone that would go, it would be you.
And I also don't think that this is new anyway.
None of these stances that the university have taken are new at all to the discourse or the landscape of, you know, protests on campus.
So I don't know.
I think he's trying to make it seem like this newfound wokeness has now influenced all this when it's like nothing has changed from the 60s.
Okay, so here's the thing.
Why did universities and corporations start putting diversity statements on their websites and in their charters and asking for them and they're hiring things?
Is it because they were dedicated to that?
Maybe some of the people who, by the way, have been fired, Nick...
Who have been laid off.
And by the way, you know what doesn't show up in any of that?
A lot of those things have disappeared as Republican politicians have passed laws threatening their funding if they didn't do it.
Right.
So it was an economic concern.
You didn't want to be a university or a corporation that was seen as being part of the problem, possibly losing students, losing funding, and also being boycotted.
So a lot of these places didn't really mean it.
There were people who meant it.
The institutions didn't necessarily mean it.
So what happened was that the Republicans, through strong arming this stuff, they gave people permission to stop doing it.
It was an illusion of progress.
It had the components of progress.
It had things that were actually going to change things over time and actually lead to things.
But the Republicans came in and they made sure that any of these things that we're talking about were dismantled and basically thrown away.
I am speechless.
Keep going.
Oh, God. God.
Well, you know, here's the thing.
A lot of the things that they did that you would consider like DEI and a lot of those, you know, things they installed at those campuses, they're not just out of the blue random some person decided, hey, we should do this.
There's a reason why those concepts were important, whether or not they were even adhering to them or not.
But to have those installed is because there was an issue with those things on campuses.
They weren't doing it themselves.
they weren't doing it themselves.
It needed to happen.
Here's a quote, Nick.
And by the way, this is going to be one of the reoccurring things we're now going to examine.
Quote, by the middle of the 2020 primary, Democrats were engaged in policy debates that no voters asked for and that had no enduring constituency, said Liz Smith, a senior advisor to Pete Buttigieg's presidential campaign, which targeted voters closer to the center left of the party.
Thanks for interviewing Liz Smith, everybody, who is a centrist and a politico who has served the Democratic Party through its trajectory to the right.
You'll notice, by the way, for all this talk about the left, by the way, we've got quotes in here from Rahm Emanuel.
We've also got quotes in here.
Let me get this guy's name.
Mark Melman, a Democratic strategist who is also president of the Democratic majority for Israel, which has challenged and defeated progressive candidates like Mr.
Bowman and Ms.
Bush.
Nick, there's no discussion with anybody on the left.
Do you know why?
There are two reasons.
One, the New York Times is a moderate-to-right-wing newspaper who is interested in continuing the business of the status quo.
Number two, Nick, do you want to...
Pose a guess as to why no leftists were talked to in this piece.
They didn't ask any of them.
Well, one, they didn't ask any of them.
Two, where are they?
Where are they?
Where are these leftists who are in power, Nick?
Who are these people who have been pushing the trajectory?
What happened here is the New York Times and these other corporate media conglomerates, they attacked wokeness and leftism and Me Too and all of this, gay and transgender rights.
They attacked this shit, DEI, for years.
This is an article that could be summed up in three words.
Good job, us.
We changed the tone and the tenor of the country.
We allowed moderate liberals to accept rightward ideas and a rightward trajectory.
Congratulations, everybody.
We did it.
Yeah, it's hard to believe.
But you're right.
And I don't want anyone to tell you that the New York Times is any kind of liberal rag that's going to push some sort of agenda like you hear on social media.
It is...
It is unfortunate, and it's, again, part of the downfall of our journalism itself, you know?
The economy never got brought up in this.
Economic conditions never got brought up in this, because actual leftism is about changing the economy in order to make it more fair.
This doesn't get brought up in any of this.
All this culture war bullshit is always about disguising actual economic concerns, and congratulations, New York Times, you did it again.
Nick, before we get out of here, we have to touch on this story.
Okay.
For people who aren't plugged into this stuff, Tucker Carlson, that asshole, has recently...
I don't know how to describe this to everybody.
You're just going to have to listen to it.
Apologies.
Do you think the presence of evil is kick-starting people to wonder about the good?
That's what happened to me.
That's what happened to you?
Oh yeah.
I had a direct experience with it.
In the milieu of journalism?
Nope.
In my bed at night and I got attacked while I was asleep with my wife and four dogs in the bed and mauled.
Physically mauled.
In a spiritual attack by a demon?
Yeah, by a demon.
Or by something unseen that left...
Is that right?
...claw marks on my sides, on my...
So it left physical marks?
Oh, they're still there.
Yeah, yeah.
A year and a half ago.
Was your wife terrified?
I know you were.
I wasn't.
I was totally confused.
I woke up and I couldn't breathe and I thought I was going to suffocate and I walked around outside and then I walked in and my wife and dogs had not woken up and they're very light sleepers.
And then I had these terrible pains.
Oh, no.
Nick, um...
That's right.
Tucker Carlson is now going on every outlet that he possibly can and telling people the story that one night a year ago, he was sound asleep, and then he was attacked by a literal demon that left marks.
Which, by the way, did you notice that the guy didn't ask to see the marks?
It's strange that way.
He didn't offer to show them.
Maybe they're still there a year and a half later.
Yeah, I would have liked to have seen them myself.
But that's right.
Tucker Carlson was attacked by a literal demon in his slate, Nick.
You know what it makes me...
I just have to throw this out there.
The ride the demon at Six Flags Great America outside Chicago, that was called the demon.
That's all I'm thinking about now is being on a roller coaster and whatever.
But what do you think it really was, Jared?
Well, I'll tell you a quick little story and then we'll get into why this is happening because it's important for people to understand the context.
Nick, there are times in my life – are you ready for this?
We're past spooky season, but I want to tell this story.
There are times in my life where I've been very stressed out.
Right?
Like, things are going a little tough.
I'm working a little too hard.
Maybe things aren't going my way.
This has happened a handful of occasions.
And in the middle of the night, as I'm, and here's the thing, Nick, usually I'm like real close to falling asleep, or maybe I've been asleep, and maybe I'm waking up.
I'll see a figure in the room.
It'll be a dark figure.
Sometimes the figure moves.
Sometimes the figure will get in my face.
But guess what?
It's coming to attack me.
And I wake up with a start, Nick.
I've literally rolled over a person next to me in a barrel roll to get away from this figure.
And by the way, it felt like I was being suffocated.
Sometimes it's like I can't move.
I can't breathe.
Do you know what the scientific term for that is?
It's sleep paralysis.
That's what it is.
And there's even a really good documentary called The Nightmare that people can watch if they want to want to look into this thing.
It's something that human beings have.
It's a leftover evolutionary, like neurological trait that we have where, you know, you don't necessarily feel safe sleeping.
So what I can tell you almost definitively is that Tucker Carlson had an episode of sleep paralysis, probably as he was like having trouble at Fox News or being fired from Fox News or as his professional career was having trouble.
And as he was starting to embrace, embrace both Christianity and right-wing politics even more.
Thank you.
I agree.
And that documentary is actually by my really good friend Glenn.
It's a terrific documentary that reenacts some of those episodes.
Terrifying.
If you have anxiety, I would not recommend watching it, by the way.
It's a tough watch for someone who has suffered sleep paralysis.
Yeah, it's not easy.
But I agree.
And again, I would sort of...
Question the veracity of these actual marks that he had.
He's thinking about stigmata.
Isn't that what they're trying to play on?
Do people all of a sudden have blood coming out of their hands like Jesus on the cross?
Isn't that sort of the same notion?
You know what you just touched on is one of the most important elements of all of this.
And we'll get into the political consequences of it in a second.
What Tucker Carlson is telling us, Nick, and I want to strip away all of the...
Man, he sounds so ridiculous in this.
It comes down to this, if I can translate it.
I am so important in the world and in the struggle between God and Satan that Satan literally sent a demon to attack me in the middle of the night.
That's what he's saying.
That he was literally attacked by supernatural evil because he is so important.
It is one of the most narcissistic things that you will actually hear.
Well, you know, let me just share this clip with you because he actually responds to what you just said.
Oh, good.
I kind of thought it would be nice to hear what he thinks.
Obviously, he thinks people are going to question what he said.
Oh, sure.
On February 20th, 2023, I was attacked in my bed by a spiritual being and clawed.
And left bleeding and scarred.
And do I understand what happened?
No, of course I don't.
I don't really understand anything.
But that did happen to me.
He doesn't understand anything.
What was the date?
What was the date on that?
The date of this is...
Well, this was shared today.
No, what was the date of the attack?
Oh, shoot.
I don't know.
A year and a half ago.
It was a year...
Half ago.
So that would have been right around the time where his text messages were coming to the forefront because of the Dominion voting lawsuit.
Okay.
I don't care if people believe me or not.
It did.
And I think it was just a momentary glimpse of something that's happening at all times, which is, again, this war between forces that we can't see but that has been ongoing and has been, in fact, described by every culture since the beginning.
Every culture that we know about has described this battle, and in fact, it's been the basis of every religion.
It's certainly the basis of Christianity, which I think is true.
By the way, factually speaking, Christianity is true, but even if you don't, I think you can acknowledge that we're the only culture that hasn't been really absorbed in thinking and talking about this.
Not since we dropped the atomic bomb in Nagasaki, the second one, in August of 1945 and decided that we were gods and the god himself no longer existed.
Since then, we have been a secular society, and that's why we're now being destroyed, in my view.
Say to Jared has to— I'm sorry, what?
I have not heard this clip.
That is a wild mischaracterization of history.
Oh, I know.
I was hoping that you didn't explode and have to put yourself back together after that one.
Nick, the height of modern American Christianity took place in post-World War II America in contrast to our fight against the Soviet Union.
What kind of dumb shit thing is that to say?
I have no idea.
Like, I had never even heard of that concept of, like, you know, we are suddenly gods for dropping the bomb and now we don't, God doesn't exist.
Like, I don't know what to say other than...
Is he born again?
Oh, he's born again now.
Nick, do you know...
People ask me all the time, they're like, did you ever play Dungeons& Dragons?
Do you know why I didn't play Dungeons& Dragons?
Why?
Because you were scared of the devil.
Do you know why I didn't mess around with a Ouija board as a child?
Scared of the devil.
Do you know why I didn't do Bloody Mary in a mirror?
Wait, what is that?
Bloody Mary, you look in a mirror and you say it over and over again and then she appears behind you.
Oh, that's cool.
No, I'm afraid it's going to happen.
Yeah, I was afraid of the devil.
And because I grew up in the 1980s during the Great Satanic Panic, in which we were told that demons were walking the face of the earth constantly, that they were affecting our politics.
On top of that, rumors that devil worshippers were looking to kidnap you around every single corner.
This is absurdity after absurdity.
But politically, really quick, Nick, before we bring this thing to a close...
Why is it important for a budding, white supremacist, xenophobic, anti-gay trans right-winger, why is it important for him to say that he is in a battle against supernatural evil?
What are the benefits of claiming that?
Well, you forgot to add a guy who had lost a huge platform on television where he can command millions of viewers who's launched his own thing and he wants to keep that going for as long as possible.
So now let's ask that question.
Why is he trying to appeal to evangelicals basically, right?
He's probably looking at his numbers after a year of being kicked out of Fox and there's a stagnation there and you want to continue to grow.
Well, here's a segment of the audience we have yet to tap into.
Why don't we do that?
Which is growing more and more radical with every passing day.
So he's looking to build his audience.
And by the way, why wouldn't you listen to a guy who was literally attacked by a demon?
Like, obviously, he's important and he's on God's side.
I mean, obviously.
And on top of that, if you were attacked by a demon, would you wait a year and a half before you tell anybody about it?
Brother, if I was attacked by a demon, we wouldn't have an episode where we didn't talk about it.
And you wouldn't be showing the damn scars you have.
I'd be like, hey, everybody, welcome to the McRae podcast.
I know we need to talk about this election, but I need to tell you something.
Like, it would never, ever end.
But the whole point is that liberalism is supposed to give us a society where everybody is represented by laws and everybody is treated fairly in the eyes of the country.
Correct?
Correct.
Okay.
Liberalism was an escape from the orthodoxy of the Christian religion, which created mass wars and genocides and disruptions around the world.
The only way to get away from it is to say, your laws don't matter.
It's the laws of God that matter.
And as a result, we are able to persecute whoever we want.
We're in a religious war.
That gives us the reason to do it.
So Tucker Carlson absolutely did this for economic reasons and for political ideological reasons, which is why Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orban, and all of these right-wing authoritarians around the world are all finding religion.
It's almost like the game genie in the 1990s, Nick, that allowed you to bypass the code of your Nintendo game and use cheat codes.
It is the shortcut to getting around liberalism writ large and being able to do anything that you want.
God told me to.
This is for a higher purpose.
I don't care about your elections.
I don't care about your laws.
Well, I can't wait to have sleep paralysis very soon, and then we can make some more money, Jared.
That's what I'm looking forward to.
You would eventually, there would have to be a live episode intervention.
And you would have to be like, Jared, we understand that something happened or you think something happened.
For the good of the show, you have to stop.
Yeah.
No, we'd have a camera on the corner of the bedroom.
You know, it's black and white and it's like you're thrashing around.
A paranormal activity type situation is what it would be.
Yeah.
All right, everybody.
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