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Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the interesting approach by man Democrats to "get along" with the Trump administration in some twisted logic that it'll help them get their policies enacted. Elizabeth Warren has been active trying to keep progressivism alive in her party, even parterning up with none other than Josh Hawley to break up health care monopolies (wut). Trump then announces the US Government is officially for sale to the not-so-highest bidder and they finish on the Hawk Tuah financial scandal.
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I'm sorry that you have to bear through the elements while we record, but hopefully Mike won't freeze up while we're recording this.
Ten years in Georgia, my friend.
It took away my Midwestern cold callus, which I think is something that you can relate to.
Oh, I lost that callus within about three weeks of moving to Los Angeles.
Well, I hope wherever people are listening to this that they are warm and cared for and feeling good.
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Nick, we have to start, unfortunately...
With Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal, who is trying to push what's called the Kids Online Safety Act, which we will get into a little bit in just a moment.
But Blumenthal is taking a really interesting tact trying to get this piece of legislation passed.
This is one of, I don't know, two or three or four appeals that he has made in the last couple of days.
And just be prepared.
This is Democrat Senator Richard Blumenthal.
That this bill fully supports free expression and the First Amendment.
Elon Musk is the champion.
Among big tech executives of First Amendment values and principles and what we have done in some of our changes is to make clear that there's no effect of censorship and the opposition from big tech spending millions of dollars on lobbyists and lawyers is simply the result of their desire to continue to profit by driving toxic content.
At kids.
Your concern as a parent, my concern is mirrored by countless parents across the country, a diverse coalition that enabled us to win in the United States Senate 91 to 3. I hope we'll give it a vote in the House, it'll pass overwhelmingly.
Nick, this was done in the Capitol, but I can't help but hearing this, think about Blumenthal going to a largely ornate court with thrones and jesters and all of the accoutrement of court life, begging for one of the lords or barons to hear his plea.
Well, by the way, in case you didn't know, that was Jim Acosta listening to this and kind of really looked uncomfortable.
He looked pained.
Yeah, I share his feelings.
Yes.
And it sort of ties into this notion that these Democrats are now trying to glam onto, which is, let's like, we'll manipulate these billionaires.
We're going to cozy up to them.
We're going to be nice to them.
We're going to get them to do our bidding.
We're just kind of nice to them and say things like that.
And I don't know.
I don't think that that's going to work that well.
Do you?
Well, I think there will be moments of it.
So, for instance, a little bit of background, this Kids Online Safety Act, for people who don't know, it's trying to pass all kinds of things, including an 11-member council that will review all kinds of Internet, quote-unquote, free speech and damaging content.
There's a reason why Musk might be into this, partly because Blumenthal gave the bill to X or Twitter or whatever we want to call and basically allowed them to do whatever they wanted with it.
And a reminder, the idea that Elon Musk is a champion of free speech is absolute right-wing horseshit.
And this council, you know, on one hand, do we need tech companies to actually regulate this stuff?
Absolutely we do.
But also talking about giving kids dangerous content, Nick, we also know that the right wing also includes in dangerous content LGBTQ trans content and keeping them from that type of stuff.
So it's the type of thing that can go both ways.
So maybe Musk will favor this.
There's a real possibility.
But the larger thing here, man, is that there is an emerging strategy within the Democratic Party, and it includes Blumenthal.
Bernie Sanders has tried his hand at this a little bit, trying to get after the Doge group to cut certain things.
There is what I would refer to as a fawning.
And I was talking to you before we started recording.
In the face of stress, we have natural reactions.
There's fight or flight, which everybody knows about.
There's also freeze, in which you don't do anything, and you just try to make yourself very small.
And then there's fawning, in which you go towards an abuser or someone activating you, and you try and appeal to them and get close to them.
That way, they won't hurt you.
And there are many people within the Democratic Party who now see that their best avenue, or they believe, is to basically fawn over these people, Musk and Trump, in the hopes that they won't be mad at them and they'll help them pass certain parts of the agenda.
And Nick, that's not how representative democracy works.
That is how feudal-like situations work.
You go to the king, the lord, the baron, and you make your case and you laud them and you praise them and you hope that somehow or another they'll take favor on you.
And we're already looking at the Democratic Party very, very quickly before Trump has even inaugurated taking that tact with him.
I mean, it's not how democracy is supposed to work, but here we are.
And, you know, I suppose any tact that works to get to an agenda you need to get, it has to be tried.
The background for this, though, is I think the free speech movement, the First Amendment thing, is a real problem because basically what the right wants is the right to spread hate speech and misinformation, right?
Which is really...
Fueled by Russia and China, right?
That's what it kind of feels like.
And the wealth class, yes.
And if you study what Musk's positions are and how he speaks and how just unbelievably wrong he is on how democracy works, and he'll just sort of lay it out there, there isn't much other explanation that he is a Russian asset at this point.
And so he really, and he thinks that, you know, like, John Lemon asked him something about, well, what about the misinformation?
He goes, what do you mean?
When someone replies, that's the truth, you know, on a tweet, like some rando.
Like, that's, he might actually believe that, I don't know.
So it's really concerning in that respect, in that, in a more micro focus for me, is that there's going to be this battle about, like, how do we decide what is reality and what is truth and what can help and what can hurt the society?
And if Musk has his way, I can't picture any other version of our society than like some sort of hellscape where it's unsafe for people.
Well, I will say in terms of being an asset, I think it's probably more productive to think about the fact that Musk is ideologically aligned with Russia and every authoritarian around the world.
Like that's a big part of this whole thing.
Nick, let me ask you a quick question.
When you went to the polls in November, did you vote for Elon Musk?
I did not.
Wait, did you even have the opportunity to vote for Elon Musk?
I looked long and hard, but I could not find his name on that.
Yeah, it wasn't on there.
It's really weird now that we have the richest man in the world, who, by the way, his fortune has almost doubled since Donald Trump's election because he paid a couple hundred million dollars to push a puppet across the finish line.
And his wealth has gone up and it's going to go up even more as he takes control of the federal budget and basically every priority.
We now have a situation.
Let me let me say what this is very, very clearly.
We now have a situation in which we have a puppet president who is up for sale.
Everybody at this point is trying to gain favor with him by giving him money, including Mark Zuckerberg, who has donated over a million dollars to his inauguration.
The Republican Party continues to funnel money towards him.
Foreigners continue to funnel money to him through his properties, who is completely beholden to the richest man in the world.
And the opposition party that is supposed to represent the rest of us who think that all of this is actually really, really terrible, the best idea that they have at this point is to praise the richest man in the world who now controls the opposition party and basically the entire purpose and direction of government.
That's really scary shit.
That's like next-level stuff.
Things have evolved in a really bad way very, very quickly.
Well, I think it's worth saying that, you know, the argument against Biden was that, oh, Obama is really back there pulling off the strings, controlling all that stuff, too.
He's really wealthy, too, Jared, in case you didn't know.
Yeah, he's at Musk's level.
What's that?
He's not Musk level.
Let's be clear about that.
But here's what's interesting about that is because Musk, personality wise, you know, has never really like fit in.
He's always yearned to be a cool person and he's simply not.
And now he's hanging around Mar-a-Lago and he's probably getting a taste of like, oh, but it really just feels like he's hanging on and they're going to be like, is this guy ever going to leave?
Like, that's what it almost seems like.
He's got how many kids?
And he ended up staying at Mar-a-Lago for Thanksgiving.
Like he's abandoned his family.
He's just there to try and be in the cool.
I doesn't want to miss anything.
This total FOMO thing.
And that's not a good thing to have if you're going to be the behind the scenes brains compared when you combine that with what Trump's mindset is as well.
Well, I mean, that that money goes a long way.
I mean, you know, you can be annoyed with him all you want.
And for the record, I don't know if anyone listening to this has ever been annoyed with their boss before.
But like when when your boss is in control and is in control of the purse strings, you tend to pay attention to them, even if they're annoying.
Like, if your boss says, I'm going to come hang out with your family for Thanksgiving, you're like, um, I guess I'll put sheets on.
That's fine, right?
And so I think it is very telling that the Democratic Party is moving in this direction.
And, by the way, it should be cause for concern.
Speaking of the Democratic Party, Nick, a quick little screw you to Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, both independent senators at this point, who have just decided on their way out the door that they were going to block the Democratic Party from keeping a 3-2 majority on the National Labor Relations Board. who have just decided on their way out the door Chuck Schumer was trying to get Lauren McFerrin, the current chair of the board, to stick around for at least the first two years of Trump's administration and,
And a reminder, we've reported that they are more or less going to try and gut that board on behalf of Musk and Trump.
Bezos and Zuckerberg and all these oligarchs.
But yeah, Manchin and Sinema went ahead and did the bidding of their corporate owners once again on their way out the door where they will receive very, very generous parachutes from the people that they have served, including torpedoing almost the entirety of Joe Biden's agenda.
But it was like one last, you know, fuck you from a couple of them before they left.
Yeah.
You know, it really made me sick in my stomach to start to picture their civilian life as soon as they're out of office.
Because that will be...
Well, we already know that Manchin is just chock full of corruption as it is.
But yes, I'm sure that what they did and the disruptions that they were able to pull off will be finally rewarded or nicely, handsomely rewarded.
And it's just...
You know, that's the other problem is I don't know how we ever prevent that kind of thing, you know, unless you have some sort of non-compete or you can't receive gifts.
I don't know what you're supposed to be able to do once they get out of office, but it is so gross.
And, you know, it's good to rid it.
Let's get rid of them.
They shouldn't be involved in the government as it is anyway.
It shouldn't have been in the first place.
So, that's a good thing.
Can we find a little small victory in this thing?
Well, I'm glad they're not going to be around.
That is a good thing.
I will say also, Sinema has not been around, hasn't been attending votes, or basically doing anything because she doesn't care about her responsibility as a sitting senator.
Nick, I want to talk very quickly about a thing that this made me really, really consider.
Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, I think, are two of the most influential politicians that we have had, if not in the last 20 years, more.
These were complete corporate checks on democratic agenda and any type of reform.
And I want to remind people, because it seems like light years ago, Nick, that when Joe Biden came into office, he wanted to be an FDR-like president.
And in every conversation they had, it was about how he wanted to rein in neoliberalism.
He wanted to create a better situation for Americans.
He was completely stymied by them because of minoritarian institutions such as the filibuster and the control that they had because of that.
Manchin and Sinema, on behalf of their corporate donors, torpedoed that agenda, hurt America, basically, to keep that agenda from getting over the finish line, and laid the foundation for Donald Trump to win a second term at this point.
The Democratic Party was unable to explain it.
They weren't able to actually point out their own members that were undermining their own agenda, thereby just leaving people to believe that they didn't have any capability and they shouldn't be trusted.
But these two, and they are absolutely immoral, unethical cretins, these two have had an outsized impact.
And basically, whatever money they get from their corporate donors when they're done, well worth it.
You know what I mean?
They earn their paychecks that they're going to get.
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