GOP Already At Each Other's Throats While Musk Gloats
Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the implosion of a bipartisan bill to fund the government, how they were able to divert it by breaking up the bill but still manage to kill funding for pediatric cancer research, among other vital services. They turn to the terrorist attack in Germany and what it means that they're seeing an rise in Neo-Nazism in Europe itself. They touch upon Biden's final days in office and what his legacy could represent after commuting and pardoning so many people (stay tuned for an even more in depth pod about his legacy), before finishing on the reported opulence of Jeff Bezos' wedding.
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Nick, on the weekender last week, we were covering the fact that Elon Musk absolutely scuttled the funding bill in Congress, basically single-handedly.
Congress eventually passed the funding bill after Musk basically blew this entire thing up.
We had an inter-party war with the Republican Party over multiple things.
Most of the bill ended up getting passed, except for, you guessed it, cancer research, especially cancer research for children.
Nick, there is a lot I think that we can look at here in terms of how this whole thing played out, the sort of inter-party dynamics of it all.
Maybe there's some strategy to be gained from this.
What was your take of finally seeing the government shutdown being averted and the Republican Party sort of going to war with each other?
I just think it's going to prepare us for what's going to be in store, but a lot worse.
It's just the very, very beginning of how unruly this is all going to be.
That said, the process of pulling apart all the different things that they had shoved together in one big, basically, omnibus bill, maybe that's not the worst thing, right?
To be able to do that sort of more separately and then be able to address everything like that.
So, you know, my fear is that someone's going to be able to have some weird argument like that saying, look, all the things that Musk and Trump are doing, those things actually work, you see?
And then they manipulate whatever they do to make it seem like it works.
And so that might be my biggest concern out of all of this.
Well, I want to say, first of all, the fact that we have this debt ceiling thing is absolutely ridiculous.
And along the lines of a broken clock being right twice a day, Donald Trump pushing for unlimited debt is both telling in terms of what the Republican Party actually cares about, what their principles are, but also we shouldn't have this.
We should not have these showdowns where Congress gets in a room and, you know, the government is either going to shut down or it's not based on who gets what.
In this case, this was Musk carrying out a power play, going ahead and previewing for everybody that he basically has control over the Republican Party and that Trump is more or less just an avatar, a dancing clown out in front of all of this.
So the MAGA GOP rift at this point, it's already showing us one thing that we covered in the first Trump administration, what we always talk about, which is far right authoritarian movements are dysfunctional.
They destroy each other, they attack each other constantly.
That is one of the weaknesses, but I do not think that people should take a look at what happened here and think, oh, it's not actually going to be that bad.
It is still going to be very, very bad, but there are vulnerabilities that can be exploited if we're looking at an opposition that actually wants to exploit them, which the Democratic Party, it depends on the day, depends on the coin flip.
You know, it's funny, if you look at it that way, in terms of, like, the debt ceiling and whether or not debt really means anything to a government like the United States and the economy like capitalism, Obviously, we'd want more efficiency.
We'd want to eliminate waste.
But you don't need to use the boogeyman of, like, your kids are going to have nothing.
The country's going to be destroyed with too much debt.
And when you kind of wrap your head around why they want to use that specific reason to cut the budget, you start to get a handle on why they're doing it, right?
It's never been about the debt.
It's always been about getting rid of entitlement programs, right?
Freeloading people and the people on the couch who don't want to work and all that bullshit.
So, you know what I mean?
So it just becomes even more clear when they use that kind of line of reasoning and you hear Musk and all those people do it who have no connection to anybody who struggles check to check or month to month to make ends meet.
They don't understand anything like that or what the value of what the government does bring to people like that.
So, you know, it's just really kind of enlightening and revealing of where they really are coming from.
Well, it's revealing in the way that traditional politics, the narratives that we get through liberal media especially, corporate liberal media, is the idea that, oh, we really wish we could fund all this stuff.
Like, I would support it in a heartbeat, but we really need to take care of the debt.
One of the reasons that we have a national government is to take on debt, is to go ahead and do these things.
And meanwhile, the Republican Party doesn't care about debt when they're creating a war, when they're giving, you know, historic tax cuts to the wealthy.
It's a cudgel.
And more or less, it's a language that's been created between the right and liberal moderates, which is you can go out and say that you want to take care of this stuff.
Like, again, cancer research for children.
This is something that the government should fund, one of the few places where it actually does get funded.
But meanwhile, what's actually happening here, Nick?
We go ahead and get, you know, the military taken care of, particularly in this bill.
Musk had his relationship and connections with China.
That was the main thing, making sure that Tesla was going to maintain all of their little inner workings with the government.
Meanwhile, all that happens is that the budget is always going to run the deficit up in the way that the Republicans want it to and moderate liberals are able to sort of shrug and say, well, you know, we just got to take care of the debt.
Meanwhile, what is happening?
The wealth class continues to get their checklist marked off one thing at a time.
And again, you see the rift here between Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
One person's out there talking about buying Greenland or trying to do something with the Panama Canal.
I never thought I would hear about that again.
And you have another guy who is essentially privatizing the government and turning it into an organ for his own enrichment and empowerment.
I mean, for what it's worth, the Panama Canal could very well be related to the fact that the Trump Organization is being sued in Panama now for not paying taxes.
Ding, ding, ding.
You know, and so this is the other reason why this is the conflict of interest is so ridiculous, because we saw it already when they put Qatar, as I think it was, on a terrorist watch list because they wouldn't give money to Jared Biden.
Kushner's fund.
And as soon as they did, they were magically taken off that list, right?
So here's another kind of thing where they're going to leverage.
And we know about Greenland is because there's minerals there.
Guess who needs minerals, Jared?
Well, I mean, you know what's funny about it is actually so much of our politics revolves around resource extraction and who is able to get a hold of that.
That is also one of the reasons why there's a right-wing authoritarian international movement Because we need to make sure that certain countries have their resources and minerals available for the wealth class to extract and extort.
And by the way, let's just point out the Greenland thing also has implications when it comes to eco-fascism, which is basically rearing its ugly head right now.
But you have one guy in Trump who's just out here going wild, which is what he does.
And you have Musk who is playing the long game and pulling strings behind the scenes.
Well, also, when you have a real estate guy, he sees Greenland.
This is actually from the book that somebody wrote about him, I forgot which one, where he says, you know, it's like a corner lot.
He looks at it like a corner lot.
There's a value to that when you want to buy a building or something or a piece of property in a different area.
So he literally thinks, he's looking at it like that, too.
I mean, it's insane.
And you'd see the advisors who were in the meetings thinking, like, this is not really serious.
He's just, it's kind of a joke, ha-ha, whatever.
But then half an hour into the meeting, they realize, no, no, no.
He is dead on wanting to somehow buy Greenland.
Which is not going to happen.
The country that right now that has it is pretty protective of it.
It's not going to sell it.
You know, the other thing about the debt, though, I just want to make a quick point about is, you know, it's not really debt for a lot of the things that the government has to spend money on.
It's really just subsidizing the market because we are living in capitalism.
And as we all know, we documented this and said this millions of times before, Capitalism will screw anybody they can to the nth degree to the point where they'll be willing to kill them and crack another dollar.
So that's the whole reason why we have to have subsidizing of the Postal Service and of Medicare and Medicaid and all manner of health care.
So that's why that shouldn't be looked at as debt at all.
And those expenditures tend to be very small relative to GDP anyway.
Yeah.
It's simply a racist trope designed to keep people down and working shitty jobs and feeding the machine.
Amen.
It couldn't be put any better than that.
And I do want to take a second in the midst of all of this conversation.
You brought up Greenland.
Like, there is an effect in how all of this stuff sort of takes place.
Like, for instance, you know, we didn't even talk about the fact that the Canadian government is on the brink of falling apart.
Justin Trudeau, there's a very good chance he's going to have to resign and will be replaced by a right-wing government.
Simply because Donald Trump said some things about tariffs with Canada, which is going to set in motion, you know, the countries that are underneath the American sort of tree.
We've talked about how countries like Israel and Saudi Arabia, they're sort of straddling the line between, you know, the Russia-China coalition and the United States of America.
So they can get away with whatever they want.
Meanwhile, you have other countries like Canada that basically have to fall in line based on something that Trump will say.
He's being used as a battering ram.
And then meanwhile, while we're talking about this, we also have to talk about the fact that Germany, which is in alignment with the United States of America as part of that Western liberal democratic sort of coalition, it's starting to fall apart as well because of far-right tropes, conspiracy theories, and all the stuff that's happening with their plans and strategies.
What is Musk doing now?
He is voicing support for Alternative for Germany, which is a far-right, neo-Nazi-adjacent group that is gaining power, much like all these places.
It's gaining power in France, gaining power in England, gaining power in Germany, and now in Canada.
All those places that are aligned with America.
And we're hearing now that he is planning on maybe throwing $100 million towards Nigel Farage in the UK. We're seeing the ascendance of this as they're coming into alignment with Russia, China, and the right-wing international movement.
And what are we seeing with it?
We're seeing in Magdeburg, there was a terrorist attack on a Christmas market that killed at least five people, and it was carried out by a guy, I just want to go a little deeper into the terrorist
attack in Germany because someone who...
It appears like they'd be a Muslim and from a Muslim country, but was actually virulently anti-Muslim and having been living in Germany since, I think, 06. So to see the, it's not Cope, what is it, the seethe of the right-wingers who can't Use that, right?
They want to be able to say, look, this is a Muslim extremist who's driven a car into a nice people in Germany, and they can't do that, and you can see them getting just upset about it.
That's what's so disgusting about all these things, and I guess I'm dipping my toe back into Twitter a little bit, and it really...
Have you been doing this, Jared, at all?
Have you been going back to Twitter?
You know, I've been off the grid.
So I've been as far away from social media as I possibly can.
But yes, I've been keeping an eye on Twitter, which has been turned into a propaganda organ.
So unfortunately, yes, I have to study that damn place.
It's far worse than it ever has been, even though I got to tell you, Blue Sky is kind of like it had a big influx and it's sort of...
Nick, I'm glad you brought this up because just I want to let people know I talked about this a little bit on the Discord.
There is a huge operation that's taking place on Blue Sky, and I think it has a lot of implications.
I've been studying it, but yes, it's more or less been flooded with a lot of accounts that are trying to spread disinformation and also to continue sort of the liberal coalition rift that we've talked about in the past.
So yes, it's sort of being infiltrated in much the same way that Twitter was as well.
I mean, and the sky is blue.
But it's the engagement, too.
Like, there was a lot of engagement.
Like, I was getting more engagement on my political blue sky than I ever had on my Twitter account, even though my Twitter account had many more followers, right?
And I'm going to choose to believe in my conspiracy adult brain that, you know, I would tweak Musk all the time, and I'm convinced that, like, they put me on some sort of thing where, like, you know, those tweets don't go anywhere.
Of course they don't.
But it's starting to do something there, too.
So it's frustrating because, yeah, one little dip of my toe back on the Twitter, and it's really disgusting.
But again, it's important for our work because we need to monitor what they're saying, what they're feeling, and what the...
The news on that end is reflecting however soul-killing it can be, because other people probably listening aren't as connected to that.
And it's really fascinating how the scapegoat of trying to use Muslim extremism for terrorism, when in reality, like in our country, it's usually white people who commit these horrible mass shootings and stuff.
It really is indicative and a problem.
Well, a lot of what we're seeing here, and for the record, the way that this misinformation sort of works and the way that the propaganda works, is you do multiple things.
There's going to be one group that's very frustrated that they can't use it for their traditional purposes, and another group's just going to do it.
We saw that, of course, in Great Britain, where there was an attack, and they instantly blamed it on one person when it turns out it was another person.
That's one of the reasons why this guy who carried out this attack in Germany carried it out, was because he had been inundated with Alex Jones-style conspiracy theories that framed it in a different way, and included Tommy Robinson, you know, one of these far-right shitheads who is part of this whole sort of ecosystem.
So what's happened over time, Nick, is something that I was afraid of going back into, I would say, 2016, 2017, which was the Overton window started to change, the environment started to change, people started getting affected by this, even if they understand it's bullshit, it sort of moves things around, which has now led to a place where, again, you have an international authoritarian movement, China, Russia, North Korea, Turkey is on that list, you name it, Venezuela, whatever.
They have this sort of coalition that's moving more towards autocracy, and now the liberal democracies are naturally being moved in that direction on purpose.
You know, again, France is falling to it, Germany is falling to it, the United States of America re-elected Donald Trump, Canada is starting to go in that direction.
It is an assimilation, and the propaganda and misinformation that we're talking about right now has done its job.
I mean, it is the equivalent, again, of playing a completely rigged game in which one team isn't playing all that hard and the other team is not just playing a rigged game.
They've been playing a multifaceted, eight-dimensional chess game.
So we're starting to see this stuff move around.
That doesn't mean it's a fait accompli.
It does mean that we're going to have to push back against this stuff.
And it starts with being aware of it and covering it as opposed to just acting like everything is happening in a vacuum, which, again, is one of the reasons we do this podcast in the first place.
Well, for sure.
And you know what?
There's a chicken and egg situation here because what you describe in terms of ATHS is affecting the people's mindsets.
But the people's mindsets are also fueling a lot of this because to imagine a political party that's steeped in neo-Nazism getting traction in Germany of all places is unfathomable.
Mainly because they have laws against this.
You're not supposed to be able to have done this.
They were always very sensitive coming out of World War II about quashing any kind of symbolism, any kind of speaking up about Nazism.
And people would have argued that it was against any kind of whatever their version of First Amendment rights are, but they didn't give a shit.
They're like, we cannot spread this again.
Well, that uptick in the rural – this might sound familiar – in the rural areas of Germany has become so norm that it's easy for these guys in an election year to get traction.
And that's got to be the biggest concern, the biggest red flag we have right now in Europe in terms of what the political situation looks like.
Yeah, and it also has to do with the fact that America has continued to decline, being taken over by these authoritarian, oligarchical, wealth class elements.
And so the fish rots from the head down.
And so you have all these countries that are now having to face these decisions.
You know, we sort of covered it very, very quickly.
But France and Germany were having conversations about what if America leaves NATO?
Are they going to go into Ukraine and set off some sort of a fight?
Meanwhile, going back to what you were talking about with debt.
And again, the state is meant to accrue debt in order to carry out the business of a state.
So what happens when you're in a right wing environment, Nick?
All of a sudden, you have the moderates, the moderate liberals who have to move further and further to the right, including Macron, including Trudeau.
They start having to make decisions that are based on budgets.
Well, we can't support Ukraine anymore, and also we really need to take care of this immigration problem, scare quotes around it.
And it continually moves the conversation to the right until you look up one day and all of a sudden a neo-Nazi adjacent party is gaining power and purchase in the same way that, you know, we're seeing that in France, we're seeing it in the UK. It changes the dynamic over time until all of a sudden you're not even playing the same game anymore.
more.
It's completely, you know, sort of taken care of, which is why we can't rely on these politicians anymore.
And we have to do the work ourselves in creating coalitions and movements to push back against them.
And there are options there, but this is how this whole thing was always going to go as long as we kept playing the same old game.
Well, now it just makes me feel really sad, you know, even just sort of picturing Biden sitting in the White House for the last few weeks of his presidency, you know, on the And what, you know, what is he going to do?
What is he not going to do?
What is he aware of what's going on?
Like all these different things.
It's really, you know, it makes for a bit of a bittersweet Christmas, wouldn't you say?
It does.
And we'll talk a little bit about his lame duck actions in just a second.
Thank you.
is basically, and this is a sad thing to say, is the perfect president for this moment in the direction that it's going.
An institutionalist who believed that it was essentially good, he was going to be able to put it right again, and all around him this stuff is crumbling as he himself is sort of, you know, going in his own direction.
But, you know, we've been very critical of Joe Biden.
Again, we call balls and strikes the way that we see them.
A couple of things that have happened lame duck-wise.
He has now commutated 37 federal death penalty cases.
This is everybody on federal death row outside of Dylann Roof, the Tree of Life shooter, and the Boston Marathon bomber.
Biden has said that he is against the federal death penalty, in which I think he is correct.
We have also now seen billions of dollars worth of student death that has been erased off the books.
These are things that should happen.
These are things that he deserves praise for.
It is a little, you know, it's a little too little, a little too late.
But these are things that we do need to go ahead and praise the Biden administration for doing.
You know, we can praise him for it.
But probably the only reason why it's on their mind is because we might have forgotten that when Trump was in office, they went on a killing spree.
Yes.
Just reviving, you know, executions, federal executions across the country.
So that's why they had to do it, right?
Like, they knew that this was going to happen.
And you know that Trump would come in and probably had just summarily executed all of them in one shot.
So it's it's really disgusting because there's too many instances where people ultimately turn out to be innocent of the crime that they were committed and put to death for.
So I'm all for that as well.
And it's good to see he can get that still to happen.
Don't forget, you know, the commuting of the sentence doesn't mean that they're let out of prison.
Yeah, that's right.
And I do want to say, again, because we're calling balls and strikes where they are, I do think that it's very, very metaphorical the fact that he commuted all these sentences except for three.
If you believe that the federal government shouldn't be putting people to death, they shouldn't be putting people to death.
Dylan Roof, the Tree of Life shooter, the Boston Marathon bomber, he didn't commute those because the political pushback and fallout would be ugly.
But if you do not think the federal government should be putting people to death, you don't believe it.
At the same time, Donald Trump absolutely opened the floodgates on federal executions, and he has stated explicitly that he is very interested in executing drug dealers, which is something that he has learned from other authoritarians around the world.
It's something that he has openly lusted after.
So yes, it was a good thing to start going in this direction, but again, it sort of shows the way that Biden and his administration have sort of capitulated and tried to play safe around this stuff, and I just think it's a really good metaphor for what we've seen out of this presidency.
And the right hit him hard on a number of commutations and pardons he's given out.
And it was funny because I was trying to figure out what that was and how he compared to other presidencies.
And it's not so easy because he's been kind of commuting and pardoning throughout his whole presidency.
So there was a moment where he pardoned a whole bunch of, I think it was marijuana convictions.
From, you know, a year or two ago.
And so it's like that, you know, that number is disingenuous when you try and, you know, start accusing him of doing some weird, you know, corrupt thing where I don't think people who are convicted of pot crimes are somehow, you know, sending $10 million to the White House to get a pardon like a lot of You know, it's, again, they kind of failed in what should be, could be, should be a good political move for them, right?
They should be able to benefit from doing what he's doing there.
And instead, they're probably going to just take a lot more shit.
That's exactly right.
And it's the same thing that you say all the time, Nick, which is, you're going to get hit regardless of what you do.
It doesn't matter if you play these games with the Republicans.
In fact, going back to the first segment and all this, it just moves in the direction of the Republican Party in the right wing.
That's all it does.
Also, on the note of student debt, because I never ever want to miss the context for this, the student debt crisis in this country has hampered our economy.
It's hampered people's ability to get ahead, to buy homes, to have children, you name it.
A lot of the problems that we've seen have originated from the predatory practice of exorbitant student debt prices.
The fact that this was taken care of, and of course the Supreme Court has gotten involved in all of this, it should have been done a long time ago.
And quite frankly, while we're talking about all of it, We're good to go.
The growth of the military-industrial surveillance state, the seeding of tech corporations, which has now created this new oligarchical class, and the war on terror, the forever wars, which eventually, you know, Joe Biden will talk about Afghanistan when we do our retrospective.
Like, those things, those cans were continually kicked down the road, and we can't understand our current moment without understanding all of the missed opportunities because people were playing, quote-unquote, pragmatic politics with it.
Yeah, I mean, I'm having a thought experiment right now thinking, like, what if he actually announced, I'm only going to forgive student debt to Republicans?
Oh, God.
You know, it would probably, it would be to see the head spin, you know, but they would still find a way, right?
It would still be a horrible abomination of a misuse of power somehow.
But, you know, it's like, yeah, it's just...
So there's got to be a better way to be able to communicate these policies and make it clear in the face of whatever the Republicans are going to say that there are positive things that can help people.
If they can't get over that, then I don't see how they get out of this, right?
Because we continue to have people who have these instinctual, these self-destructive tendencies.
I think we were talking about an article I had shared with you a few weeks ago about Freud saying, Who describes the reason why we need therapy, right, Jared, is because we need to be able to channel the energy that there is a sort of instinctual self-destruction in our brains, channel that energy into a more positive way, right?
That's what healthy people do, mentally healthy people.
And I think there's a lot of people on the right who lack that health.
Yes, and that is, again, one of the reasons why we're in the mess that we are, is that America is an extremely unwell country.
It's id versus ego is how it breaks down if people want to do a little bit of research.
But when a superpower like the United States of America enters a period of decline or even sort of a manic state of spending and going around the world and, quote, unquote, fighting evildoers, like what happens is that unwellness is exacerbated.
And there is a death drive that takes over.
So what are we doing right now?
We just had a period of moderation.
That's what Democratic presidents have been reduced to in the neoliberal era.
The Republicans come along.
They absolutely wreck shit.
And then the Democrats have to come along and they're all about reducing the deficit, which is a total myth and, you know, just sort of an imaginary boundary for them.
They're the ones that kind of put things to, quote, unquote, right to get it back to normal.
And then the moment they get back to normal, you have the Republican Party come in to just wreck shit again.
And everything that we've discussed, including giving more and more power to the wealth and oligarchical class, making climate change even worse, making the economy more predatory, getting in line with authoritarian movements, even things like getting rid of the FDIC protection, which was trying to keep us from having another Great Depression.
This, it's just back and forth.
And until we move out of that cycle, this thing is just going to repeat itself, which I think is, again, one of the reasons why the Biden administration is a really, really tragic example of this cycle that we're talking about.
Yeah, I agree.
I mean, you know, to run on, you know, the old school, we're going to be able to get, we're going to bring everyone back together again, kind of is a broken model.
And, and for kind of a broken down president at this point, I, I don't, I don't want to belabor that point.
But you know, the articles are going to be coming out and they are already started, right about about Biden and what his role was, ultimately in the White House, and you know, how, how, how, How forceful he could be or lack of force he had.
So, you know, it's the end of an era.
And as we move into this thing where Pelosi and Biden and...
I thought we were done with that, Jared.
I thought this era would have been over like a few years ago, right?
And it just persists kind of like the Republican Party has persisted.
This isn't a popular thing that I say, but the people who hid Biden's condition within the administration, they should be investigated.
They really should.
The behavior that took place here, we should know what's happened.
And speaking of investigations, and speaking of a sclerotic government that's falling apart, Nick, we have seen the release of the House Ethics Report about Matt Gaetz, and what we thought...
It turns out that Matt Gaetz, the former representative from Florida and the former attorney general nominee of Donald Trump, turns out the House Ethics Committee found that he regularly used drugs.
He paid for sex, including one interaction with a 17-year-old, which the House report has said, well, he didn't know, but, you know, whatever.
We have now seen the results of that.
It's now...
We knew that this had happened.
We knew where all of this stuff had taken place.
We knew what the allegations were.
To see it in black and white and to know that Donald Trump went ahead and nominated him for attorney general and to know that the Republican Party scuttled the release of this thing, it is nauseating.
There's no other way to put it.
It is one of the most gross, sick-making feelings to see this stuff in all of its disgusting glory.
You know, we've talked about this before already, but like, you know, to finally see, this is a final report.
It's not like a preliminary with people trying to make it seem like that.
And when you read it, it is heartbreaking.
And there was enough evidence to show that he was having sex with a 17-year-old.
And it makes you wonder about, again, we talked about this before, but Merrick Garland's DOJ and why they refused in 03 to, or sorry, 23 to actually prosecute this.
And I know that there was some indication that one witness said something once and then said something else in a deposition later, but that was under oath, which was a damning part of the testimony.
So it really is strange.
Strange is not the right word.
Corrupts, whatever you want to call it, from Garland that they didn't prosecute this.
But don't you find it interesting that Gates a couple days ago had sort of teased that he would show up for the new Congress that he got elected for, and then all of a sudden this report comes out?
Yeah, it's very much the George Costanzo, what do you mean I quit?
Like, oh, you took that seriously.
And, you know, he's already done what, you know, everyone expects him to do, which is he's pushing for a restraining order to, like, have people not talk about this and to keep it out of the public eye.
But I think he's that much of a pariah, even on the right, that, like, they're like, fuck it, we're just going to leak this because we don't want him showing up.
And we talked about this.
The cardinal sin of Matt Gaetz in terms of why he's been ostracized from the Republican Party, it wasn't because he did this.
It wasn't because he engaged in all this.
And by the way, Madison Cawthorn, I'm never going to actually praise that guy because he is an absolute coward.
I'm so glad he's not in the halls of power.
He said he knew about this.
I mean, he laid it out.
The reason why he got ostracized was not because of the terrible things he did or his terrible ideology.
It's because he pulled back the curtain on what happens within the ruling wealth class.
All these people do this stuff.
Like, this is one of the reasons why the Epstein stuff got all the attention it did.
It's one of the reasons why the Diddy stuff has gotten all the attention it has.
It's because at a level of power, the wealth class protects itself.
The cardinal sin that Matt Gaetz made was not doing this stuff.
It wasn't even getting caught doing this stuff.
The cardinal sin was that he was too much of a troublemaker within the political class.
That's it.
They didn't want him around because he was going after people like McCarthy too hard.
Or he was a little too loud criticizing other members of the Republican Party.
They don't care about this.
They would have made him attorney general and they would have buried this thing.
But the fact that Matt Gaetz went to war with fellow Republicans is the reason why we're even hearing about this.
And one of the reasons why he's probably not the next attorney general of the United States of America.
That's fascinating.
You know, I guess I never really sort of wrapped my head.
I guess I assume there were enough people in the Republican Party that were upset about, you know, sleeping with a 17-year-old.
But you're probably right.
They probably just kind of back-pocketed it, waiting to use it when they needed to.
Well, Nick, I mean, just to put this into context, I mean, the Republican incoming president has been found liable for sexual assault.
Has been caught on tape bragging about sexual assault and is committed.
I mean, how many, you know, how many crimes has he been committed of?
How many things has he said out loud that we've heard?
They don't care about this stuff.
They'll use it as a cudgel against their political enemies, but they're more than happy to get in line and salute whoever they want, as long as that person will play ball.
So it's a feature, not a bug.
There it is.
And I suppose that, you know, Newt Gingrich is the guy that kind of sparked this whole thing when he went after fellow Republicans, too.
And that got him a meteoric rise.
And fall.
Yeah, the fall was probably just as fast.
So, you know, perhaps they'll learn from that.
But I don't mind so much because, you know, not having Matt Gaetz in Congress is not a bad thing.
Well, I mean, he might get back in Congress.
I mean, you know, he's going to make a ton of money somewhere.
He'll either be a lobbyist.
I know he's already making a ton of money doing cameos.
I assume he'll have his pick of corporate jobs, you name it.
He might end up back in Congress.
I think he's got a show already.
Is it Newsmax?
Or maybe it was even one of those.
I swear I saw that.
I have ignored this for a variety of reasons, including prioritizing my own mental health.
Okay, so just trust me when I saw something that, oh yeah, OAN, OAN, he landed a talk show, which by the way, you know, he could get out of it, I'm sure, if he wanted to, but yes, he got that, which shows you how far he's fallen as well to be, can't even make it on Fox.
Well, speaking of Republican cover-ups, Nick, and this goes along with a large theme of this show so far, Texas GOP Representative Kay Granger has been missing for six months, hasn't shown up to her job.
No one really said anything about it.
And an enterprising journalist tracked her down.
It turns out that Kay Granger has been coalescing at a dementia health center for the last six months.
Constituents didn't know.
It wasn't publicized.
This is one of those crazy ass things that you hear about.
And you suddenly realize that everything that you know about politics in terms of conventional corporate media narratives isn't true.
Also, by the way, all the leaks about Biden.
And it turns out that the business of government is on the track It's on autopilot.
It's on Tesla self-drive at this point.
And this revelation, it's not getting as much attention as it deserves, but I think that this is damning.
And the fact that this has come out when it has and it's not getting the attention it needs, it tells you basically everybody's in on this grift.
You know what's weird about this, Jared?
I mean, first of all, it makes me angry because it reminds me of what happened with Feinstein, where they were wheeling her out, and it was awful.
It was abusive.
It was abusive.
And she deserved to sort of be where Kay Granger is now.
At least she's convalescing in a home where they can take care of her, and it's not like they're...
Weeping around in front of Congress and holding up her thumb or up or down, right?
So, but...
And then she didn't run again, so that, you know, I have to imagine in some addled way they were thinking, well, you know, there's only a few months left in this term, you know, we'll just sort of whatever, but...
I don't know, because it makes you feel like, okay, what about the level of power that you feel that you have forces people to prop them up and keep them there?
It sort of staggers my mind.
But again, at least it seems like they're keeping her comfortable where her family can visit her and, you know, have her remaining days in peace.
You know what I mean?
Well, and for the record, as somebody who has had, you know, a record of this in my family, I've experienced it.
Like, it's a really, really hard thing.
And they don't need to be serving in Congress.
You know, the family needs to spend time with them.
They need good care.
The Feinstein thing, it still makes me so sad and so angry.
But the revelatory thing here is, one, the Republican Party hasn't told anybody.
Two, the Democratic Party hid a lot of this Biden stuff.
And they're more than happy to leak about it now.
They all knew about this.
And of course, when they were trying to push Biden out of the nomination after the disastrous debate, they were like...
Well, you know, I saw him in person and it was concerning.
Well, they're only doing it when it gets revealed or when it's politically advantageous.
And here's what we're learning in all of this.
It doesn't matter who is in the office when things are on autopilot like this.
All of the bills, all of the legislation are being made by the think tanks and the institutes that we have talked about and we've covered, which are, you know, paid for by the wealth class.
It doesn't matter as long as someone's able to go in and be made to push a button or, in some cases, don't even have to show up at their job because a majority is there.
And then everything else is just sort of being turned into an organ for the continued extraction of resources and exploitation of labor.
We're now seeing that come into full force with Elon Musk.
What used to be subtext is now text, which is representative government has been completely and utterly corrupted and turned into an organ for the wealth class to use.
And this thing right here, this should be a major, major controversy that should create a lot of self introspection and a lot of consideration about what these parties are doing and how they're operating.
But again, unfortunately, it's just sort of like one of those weird things that are like buried way, way down in terms of the daily news.
Well, let's dig into the Kate Granger thing a little bit deeper because it's interesting.
And you have had experience with dementia in your family, you mentioned.
Is it safe to say that the signs probably didn't just appear six months ago and then the day after the signs appeared, they put her into this place?
Well, and, you know, this is the sad part about it.
It's one of the more tragic things that you can experience in life is watching, you know, a loved one succumb to this type of stuff.
There are periods of denial, you know, when the signs start showing up and, like, you know that they're there.
And again, the Biden story is very similar to this.
Like, there are moments where people are in this period of being like, no, everything's fine.
Like, yeah, they're getting a little bit older, you name it.
It's obvious that for Granger to be put into care, people knew it.
And the fact that she went into care without resigning her position and everyone's like, ah, just keep it quiet, we'll go ahead and milk out the last of this.
That shows more or less a conspiracy that To hide this stuff and to just sort of like stay away from it.
So, you know, we can look at it.
And of course, we'll talk more about the Biden thing when we get to the retrospective.
But like the way that this stuff is being handled, it shows the division between the political and wealth class and everyone else, which is if you were part of that specialized in group, like you got it under control.
You know, the proles don't need to know about this.
The regular people don't need to know about this.
What they don't know won't hurt them.
And that sort of a mindset, it just makes it all the more tragic.
But one more thing about that is, okay, so let's just say my point was trying to get to the fact that there was evidence way before this that she should step down, right?
This is not going to be a good thing.
Oh, sure.
Probably for a year, two, three, whatever.
Well, then the question is, are they afraid that they're going to lose their seat and lose that vote in a very close and contested Congress?
Well, do you know what she won the 2022 race by in Texas in the 12th District?
It was not close.
Right.
She almost doubled up the guy behind her, 64.3% of the vote.
So this was as safe a seat as possible.
So why wouldn't they have just been able to say, we'll just find somebody else to take, you know, we'll give you a big party and we'll celebrate your service, thank you, and we'll be able to replace you with someone else who's going to understand everything the Republicans want, right?
Right.
So what does that say about that, that they were still willing to prop her up in a situation where she should be convalescing and enjoying the last few years of her life in peace?
That is what's probably the most interesting thing to me there, because it's not about the votes and keeping control of Congress or getting control of the policy.
It's something deeper and probably, I guess, more nefarious of which you just laid out the last few minutes.
It's contempt.
It's contempt, is what it is.
Really, when you actually take a look at politics, and this is how far things have been perverted with the decline of the United States of America, it's basically saying this representative, the people who voted for her, the people who depend on her to represent them, they don't matter.
matters is whatever you want it's whatever you see as being necessary and you're exactly right there's actually no political advantage to this right the republican party just sort of operated without her vote like it just was saying like this matters so little our representative government has been corrupted so much that we don't even care to make sure that these people are represented it is pure uncut unadulterated contempt is
You know how we can solve this and not ever have any more congressional members suffering from dementia.
Is this where you try and get robots into Congress?
That's where we are.
We robots.
Nope, nope, nope.
We're not going to let those people put robots in.
And by the way, one of the people who would design those robots, and Nick, I just wanted to talk about this for a minute just to do a thought experiment.
Speaking of the wealth class, speaking of contempt for modern society, speaking of oligarchs, Reports have now said that Jeff Bezos' upcoming marriage is set to spend $600 million on the wedding.
He refutes this.
He says that he isn't actually going to spend that.
It's really telling that Elon Musk came along and said, well, I hope you still have an epic wedding.
Oh, these people.
But Nick, I just wanted to talk about first of all, and we sort of texted about it, like, what can you, how can you spend $600 million on one of these things?
Like, just to do the thought experiment, I think, puts into perspective the massive difference between the oligarchical wealth class and the rest of us.
So I will say, I do have some experience in this area.
I have worked on...
Multi- $100 million weddings.
Okay, tell us all about it.
You do live in California.
I did a video once for a guy, George Roberts, who probably will kick me off the pod now when I admit this, but...
George Roberts was the R in the KKR. And if we don't remember, the Barbarians at the Gate is based on them.
They would come in there in the 80s and do leverage buyouts.
Oh, sure.
Very nice guy, though, I'd say.
Well, I assume he's a nice guy when he's not, you know, kicking you out of your job and robbing your...
Right, right, right.
I mean, it was weird because, you know, and then, listen, people with that wealth, and we see, like, Bezos' wife, who, like, is giving away, you know, $20 billion at a time, you know, to charities, pretty much to wash their hands, right, to make them feel better about it.
But, you know, he loves South Park.
We created South Park when we put him in the South Park episode, a South Park episode that we wrote with, you know, animation and the whole thing.
Like, this gives you an idea of, like, the scale of what this was, right?
Right.
But the threshold then, this was a while ago, was I think around a million or a couple million dollars tops.
That's what really puts you in a class of incredible party where he built a barn in the middle of a field and out near Napa, right?
So to think that you could get to $640 million, even with what inflation is from 20 years ago or 15 years ago, I got to tell you, Jared, I don't think he's spending more than $100 million.
Oh, well, I mean, he'll be slumming it.
I hate to say that guy's name, but he quoted out saying something like, the only way you can get to $600 million is if you're going to buy a home for every guest.
And he's probably closer to being true than not on that one.
So, again, I don't know how you can do that.
Now, maybe if you had, like, the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, like, if you got every one of those fans to play a whole set, you know, and then probably had your guest feeling kind of sad by the end of that...
I just can't picture how you're going to get that high.
You know what I mean?
Well, okay, so a couple of things, and this is one of the reasons I thought this was worthy of talking about.
I think there's a couple of threads to connect here.
First of all, there is something that happens, particularly when you start going into oligarchical territory.
It's court drama.
Right?
It's where you are so separated from power, you're so separated from the actual, like, center of power and wealth, that what happens?
You spend all of your time wondering what the oligarchs are doing.
Right?
Who's in?
Who's out?
Like, do they not like each other?
You know, Trump's whole administration and circle and ecosystem is just like this.
So you're alienated from it, and you start having these sort of rumors about it, which for the record is what oftentimes leads to revolutions.
Right?
It's rumors about what the wealth class is doing.
The next part of it is, personally, you know what I'm more used to when it comes to weddings?
With my family, it's like you rent out, like, you know, a shelter in, like, a park.
And, like, I went to a wedding one time of a family member where it was, like, they bought a bunch of jello shots and made hot dogs.
And it was a big crisis because they ran out of buns.
Right?
You know, and like my dinner ended up being a hot dog on a paper plate with a couple of jello shots.
Wild wedding.
I'll just say that.
That was a wedding, and just a quick anecdote, Nick, that was a wedding where I got to the wedding, and somebody met me at the door and said, don't tell anybody the mother of the bride is here.
There's a warrant out for her arrest.
Yeah.
No, that sounds kind of, you know, that's fun.
Yeah.
That's a way of putting it, that it was quote-unquote fun.
But the whole point here is that at that level, when you have the amount of wealth that Jeff Bezos has, you almost have a responsibility to flaunt your wealth.
And we're now entering that time period, whereas the oligarchical class takes over, you have to create big displays in order to sort of like cultivate sort of the illusion, well, not even the illusion, but a representation of the power that you have.
How do you spend $600 million at a wedding?
You spend it by basically just creating these big representations of your wealth in order to increase your aura, but you're also doing it more or less as sort of bribes.
Right?
Like, so it's like almost in the past when feudal lords or nobles or kings or whatever would hold these big pageants, it would basically be about bringing people into your circle and handing out gifts so that you can buy their loyalty.
And so, yes, I could see where you could figure out a way, all kinds of creative ways to spend $600 million.
You're basically doing it to go ahead and fortify your power and to also go ahead and curry favor among subordinates and even to bribe people while you're trying to, I don't know, take over the government in totality.
Yeah.
Okay.
And all that is absolutely right.
And the number is almost immaterial at this point, right?
Because it's just going to be so disgusting, whatever it is.
I did ask a friend who used to be in this business.
They said it's possible.
Sure.
But they're thinking it's going to be the talent.
You'd have to have a multi-day thing.
And again, I'm getting ready in the weeds because I like this kind of stuff, I guess.
But you'd have to have the talent.
Like, it would be like, you know, Stones, Billy Joel, Paul McCartney, everybody, you know, doing full sets across three days, you know, and that kind of thing could get you into that realm, really.
Because it's like, even though you can get the most expensive, you know, flowers on each table, right, you can't get $100 million with that.
It's got to be the talent.
It's got to be the other stuff, too.
God forbid it's a drone, you know, editing.
Well, and it's also the garishness of it, right?
It's the audacity.
So it's like having a hologram of Tupac performing with a hologram of John Lennon.
Or if you wanted to have, like, not Salvador Dali, oh gosh, he died, but, you know, in the 70s, the...
Picasso.
You wanted Picasso to do the lettering on the cards for each individual, you know, placeholder for the souvenir.
Well, and what the whole point of this, and, you know, this isn't gossip, even though it sort of is in the realm of gossip.
What we're watching, Nick, is what I've been talking about for years now, which is the eradication of liberal democracy, which is the idea that everybody deserves a government that should be able to look out for their interests and also sort of, you know, serve as sort of a meeting ground of ideas and governorship.
Instead, what we're doing is we're being pulled back into a feudal situation.
You know, what you just brought up is exactly right.
This isn't going to be a two-day event.
this is going to be like a medieval festival with all of sort of the accoutrements of modern tech society because that was the purpose of this all along it was to roll back time away from liberal democracy and get it to the point where you are back with feudal lords and barons and you know king type figures and so it's hard for us to wrap our minds around that because we've been fed this bullshit that progress is a straight line right it's always going to get better at
Things are always going to improve.
There's going to be, you know, the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice, whatever it is that you want to believe in, whatever line you've been fed.
But the entire point is that people like this recognize that if you are very determined and you have the resources and you have the environment, you can roll time backwards, which is what's happening with our government.
It's what's happening with our culture and stuff like this is very indicative.
And again, a perfect metaphor for all this stuff.
Well, I feel compelled to put on the record that I love Renaissance Fairs.
I love them.
I can't get enough of them.
I don't know why.
Maybe in my youth, something about face painting.
Whatever it is, I love them.
I don't go to enough of them, and I now need to find when the next one is in my area.
Well, the good news is that society might start to look a lot more like a Ren Faire Festival.
You know, with RFK Jr. getting in the Health and Human Services, we might start having plague doctors.
Yeah.
Let's get back.
Why not?
Wow.
Yeah, I want to lobby to have the word fair spelled with an E at the end of it.
You know what?
Just for you, I'm going to go ahead and make that proclamation.
On the Muckrake podcast, fair is now spelled with an E. Ye olde Muckrake podcast.
Ye olde...
God, I don't want to...
I don't want to have to be broadcasting, you know, with like a beak mask and a bunch of herbs in the bottom of the beak, right?
I just, you know, when basically the oldest person in your village is 22 years old and they're an elder.
Right.
Like, I would rather not get there.
Well, you do have the look of someone that could be pushing a cart and yelling, bring out, you're dead.
Wow, that's a really interesting thing for a friend to tell you in the holidays.
Thank you.
The guy who'd be yelling and saying, I'm not dead yet.
Well, on that note, I'm going to go off the grid again.
So, I'm going to go take care of myself away from all of this.
Again, we wish you all happy holidays.
We hope that wherever you are, whatever you're doing, that you're happy, healthy, and safe, and hopefully have good people around you who love you and take care of you.
Nick, it is a joy as always.
Happy holidays.
Look forward to talking to you for the weekender that will come out on Friday.
Thank you.
Happy holidays to everybody.
Again, I hope this is a special time for people and they can find some solace and some family love.
In the midst of all of this maelstrom of destruction and everything that we're covering, take the moment of joy and replenishment where you can.
