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Jan. 21, 2025 - The Muckrake Political Podcast

01:00:08

Trump Inauguration Live Show

Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman go over the events of the day leading to Donald Trump being sworn in as President of the United States. The cruelty of his policies and lawlessness of his executive orders lay waste to what was once a somewhat sturdy democracy, and they fear it will only get worse as time goes on. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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	Hey everybody, welcome to a live recording of exclusive coverage of the Trump inauguration.
	This is the Muckrick Podcast.
	I'm JJ at Sext.
	I'm here with my friend Nick Halsman and co-host.
	Nick, I gotta start off saying, and I told you before we started recording, I feel like I've had the literal hell beaten out of me today.
	This has been a brutal...
	Awful, tragic farce of a day.
	We're going to go through all of it.
	How are you doing after watching this?
	Well, I made sure that my day was chock full of things to do.
	Very busy, very busy.
	So while I was having to listen to the speech at the inauguration, which was slightly heavy, I've been able to avoid the pitfalls of falling into some sort of morass.
	But I'm excited to talk to you about it because it's important that we do.
	Yeah, there's a lot to talk about here.
	A lot regarding not just the speeches.
	But some of the things that we learned that Trump is going to make priorities on top of that, rhetorical ideas that we're going to have to become very familiar with very, very quickly if we are going to resist this and push back against it.
	Before we get going, I just want to thank all of our patrons who are showing up to the live taping of this episode.
	A reminder, if you'd like to be involved in stuff like this, go over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast, support the show, keep us ad-free.
	And again, Well, corporate media failed us today.
	An absolute disaster from wall to wall.
	We'll talk more about that in a second.
	But Nick, before we get into the actual contents of the speech and the news from the day, let's go ahead and set the table.
	Donald Trump today, surrounded by a who's who of American oligarchs, by the way, on a day in which a report estimated that we will see our first batch of trillionaires within the next decade, surrounded by them, he delivered his second inaugural address.
	For those who didn't watch it, good for you.
	That's why we're here.
	That's what we're doing.
	This is our job.
	This is our mission.
	But I regret to inform you that what we watched was a Christian, nationalist, fascistic speech and statement of goals.
	We just watched the Overton Window move.
	We have to talk about what Trump said.
	We got to talk about the fact that Elon Musk, like for anyone with eyes, saw Elon Musk do a fascistic Roman Nazi salute today.
	Yeah, Nick, this was just god-awful.
	Yeah.
	And, you know, unfortunately, it made me have to look up the history of the Nazi salute, which I did not have that in my head for some reason.
	So you would kind of turn me on to this, the notion that they had stolen it from the Romans.
	Although apparently there's no real evidence the Romans did this other than some mid-1800s paintings from the French whatever.
	But I think you'd be surprised that stuff gets passed down, right?
	Even from Roman times, it might have gotten passed down like, hey, this is what they did.
	Either way, right, if it's Roman fascistic or if it's Nazism, or both, I think that Musk is, he's on one, man.
	I mean, ketamine and him.
	Weren't the Nazis on ketamine, by the way?
	They were on amphetamines.
	Okay, so the same, right, similar.
	He is really...
	They're different, but yes, most of these things are usually driven by a manic state that is somehow or another enabling narcissistic aggrandizement.
	Right, and it's worth talking about much to set the whole stage because he spoke before and that's when he did this thing.
	If you see his speech pattern, I think you know what I'm talking about.
	It's so stilted now and not even stuttery.
	He's not well.
	Right.
	Like, his brain isn't really firing right, and it's troubling, and everyone on, like, even on Twitter was, like, sort of commenting on this.
	It's like, something's off with him, and the weight of this pressure or something is going on.
	His hair was all kind of crazy, a little bit like we saw in the early, you know, German 30s haircut, right?
	Like, that kind of really, now I'm talking like him, you know, shaving the sides and then kind of...
	Yeah, I'm not worried about his haircut.
	I'm worried about the fact that he's the wealthiest man in the world and he obviously has anti-democratic tendencies and he's bought the government.
	Don't care what people's hair is.
	But man is his hair bad.
	But again, I think it's a symbol.
	I think all this is a symbol.
	And that haircut is also part of this sort of weird fascistic Nazism stuff that he wants people to know about.
	I think they're not hiding it anymore.
	And so anyway, yeah, that was the beginning of the bad stuff.
	And I think it only got worse from there once Trump started opening his mouth.
	Well, when Trump started opening his mouth...
	We're going to go through what happened here because a few things were rolled out, not just policy-wise, but rhetorical ideas.
	I want to remind everybody...
	That fascism, authoritarianism, national socialism, whatever flavor you want to go down the road, and we definitely saw the next step in American fascism come into full view today.
	It is based on a lot of things that we've been experiencing for a while, Nick.
	It includes, going back to what you said about even a Roman salute, these sort of mythical ideas of a past, a narrative about what a country is and how it's supposed to work and how things are supposed to work.
	Today, we saw a bunch of the elements that we've seen in the past come together and sort of coalesce in a way that we haven't totally seen them before.
	We covered the Republican National Convention, and this was immediately after Trump survived his assassination attempt, and we talked about how they were trying to aggrandize him, how they were trying to sort of talk about him being chosen by God.
	Well, Nick, to even go through the way that today was set up...
	It began with the invocations.
	Franklin Graham and other religious leaders came out and preached a Christian nationalism.
	In particular, they said that God was protecting Donald Trump against his enemies.
	This was at a presidential inauguration, that he was protected against his enemies.
	He was compared to Moses.
	He was basically said to have been anointed by God.
	He took that and ran with it.
	He said at one point in this speech, I was saved by God to make America great again.
	And that right there is building off the mythology that we have talked about.
	It is now on the official record.
	It is in an inaugural.
	This is unprecedented stuff.
	I mean, presidents have said a lot of things.
	But to go ahead and base this on the idea that he was saved by God and given a mission, on top of that, Nick, I don't know if you know this, he has a mandate.
	He had a massive win in this election.
	It wasn't just a squeaker.
	And on top of that, he obviously is here to save America from destruction.
	More of the cultish ideology that you and I have talked about for a while.
	Yes, there's nothing he will not lie about.
	And we've known this already, but it's going to, you know, really nothing he won't lie about.
	If I'm not mistaken, they had a couple women doing the Lord's Prayer, and they changed the words to indicate Trump was also part of the Lord's Prayer.
	It is disgusting, and they knew this.
	The manipulation of religious people to form this cult was a big backbone of what he's done here.
	The problem here is that he's not necessarily lying to the fact that they won by millions of votes.
	They won all the swing states.
	This is what a lot of the country wants.
	That is what I think is probably the most soul-killing of all, is that there is a resistance and there are lots of people out there, but the democratic version of this is where we're at.
	Well, you don't get to be a fascistic president just because people voted for you.
	I mean, like, you can win an election, that's fine, but you don't get to then rule as an authoritarian.
	That actually, Nick, to be frank, is something I heard a lot on our media today, which was the idea that, well, we voted for this, so everything that's about to happen, and for the record, we'll talk more about these executive actions in just a second.
	Nick, he's trying to get rid of birthright citizenship with the stroke of a pen.
	That's not how any of this works.
	Meanwhile, you have journalists and other politicians who are like, well, I mean, yeah, technically it's not constitutional.
	We'll see if he can get away with it.
	Just because you win an election doesn't mean that you're suddenly a dictator.
	And it doesn't matter what the Supreme Court gives you or whatever.
	Like, this is not just a blank check to go out and do whatever you want and trample the Constitution as it's written.
	Fair enough.
	So, I mean, I guess what we're talking about, the process would need to be, just like, let's just for a second, the birthright thing is great because what he wants to do is literally, if you're already a citizen, but you were born to parents who are not, he wants to revoke the citizenship.
	It's not even like going forward.
	Am I reading that correctly?
	I want to go ahead of my speech.
	Yeah, that's right.
	So imagine someone who's like 15 years old, who's born here and a citizen, they're going to try and strip that away overnight.
	Kind of like what we saw, there were a lot of people who waited months and months using the app to schedule an appointment for asylum, wiped everything away over in a minute.
	And all those people who have been waiting and waiting for months and struggling to get here to have that legal hearing to begin the process, it's gone, destroyed.
	It is unconscionable that they wouldn't have even any sense of humanity and maybe any kind of easing towards the fascism.
	I suppose that's one of the features, right, is that you just go right overboard the first day.
	That's right.
	And they did.
	I mean, this was a blitz.
	What we saw today with the executive actions, which we'll talk about in a little bit, and on top of that, like firing of people, basically ushering them out of office.
	Nick, we didn't know who was the acting attorney general for hours today.
	Like, that's how big of a mess this was.
	But I will go ahead and say, because this is important, and I want to focus on this for just a second.
	Part of this is storytelling.
	Part of it is managing how people see reality, and Donald Trump has been a master of this.
	The Make America Great Again slogan has been part of it.
	The way that they've now positioned him as an anointed divine agent.
	Nick, something got rolled out today, and every time Donald Trump talked, it began the speech.
	The inaugural speech.
	It ended the inaugural speech.
	It began every speech.
	He gave three total speeches today.
	Every single one of them began and ended with this idea, and it is this.
	It is that we are now living in the, quote, golden age of America.
	Now, that...
	Does multiple things, because I want to dissect it to take away its power for anybody who wants to oppose this stuff.
	First of all, obviously it's Donald Trump.
	He loves garish, golden things, right?
	The next thing is wealth, because so much of this has to do with raising up the wealthy and promising other people that they'll be wealthy.
	The third is this idea that by declaring that we're entering into a new era, it makes it real, right?
	America has been in decline.
	We've talked about this, and America is in decline.
	The American empire is losing influence and power.
	It's one of the reasons why people are freaking out and they're looking for authoritarianism.
	What's actually occurring right now is that Donald Trump is now bending reality with the narrative.
	It went from make America great again to we are now in a golden era.
	And what's it going to do?
	What you and I have discussed about for the past couple of months as he's been talking about Greenland, he's been talking about the Panama Canal.
	All these sort of actions that are about imperial America being sort of awoken from its slumber, it is a manic reaction to the depressive state that America has been living in.
	And this is going to be a story that is going to be told much like your friend and mine, Ronald Wilson Reagan.
	It's morning in America.
	Right?
	It is a story that people are going to get on board with, and every victory that Donald Trump has, whether by hook or crook, is going to feed into this narrative that we are now living in the golden age of America.
	Did Reagan invoke Manifest Destiny in any of his...
	Oh, yeah.
	The Shining City on the Hill, Manifest Destiny.
	They didn't always talk about it, but we are going to hear a lot about Manifest Destiny in the next few months, for sure.
	And by the way, he dropped it in the context of Mars.
	And, like, you know, expanding our nation and putting the flags.
	But it was pretty clear he's talking about Greenland and talking about Panama Canal.
	Like, the things that he's willing to lie about now is that he will tell you that the Chinese are running the Panama Canal.
	And it's like me telling you that 2 plus 2 equals, you know, I guess that would be pig.
	You know what I mean?
	Like, it doesn't make any sense.
	We've discovered that he can say anything he wants, and people will be like, you know, they're looking for the ammunition.
	They're just squeezing the gun, right?
	They're firing at the libs.
	This is another one.
	They don't care what it says, what it is.
	They just shove it in there.
	They can continue to use it as ammo to fuel their rage against the liberal progressives.
	And they like it.
	And so it doesn't matter what the reality is.
	Let's just pretend like this is going to be as good as it's going to get, I think, today.
	What we got a glimpse of is that this is going to get really bad very quickly.
	Like, there's a real possibility that while people are listening to this tomorrow on Tuesday when the episode releases, there's a very good possibility that we're already going to see immigration raids being carried out in predominantly Democrat-run cities like Chicago and New York City.
	And, for the record, based on what I've seen from our media and what I've seen from the capitulation with the Democratic Party, chances are they're...
	We're going to say they're going after criminals, and they'll make a big show of it, and they'll support it.
	And then we're off to the races.
	And Nick, the basis of this, the foundation of what we're talking about in terms of this possibly getting worse.
	I want to go through the structure of it, because again...
	These speeches don't just happen, right?
	And because Donald Trump is a dumb asshole, we do have an understanding of the fact that this speech is not exactly the speech he wanted to give.
	We'll get into that in a little while.
	We'll take that chronologically.
	But to go into how this speech is constructed, Nick, I want to go through a couple of the points, how they worked.
	We start off hearing that the golden age of America is now.
	That is the thesis.
	That is the storytelling narrative that he's going to use.
	We then get into the weaponization of the Justice Department because we have to talk about how, like, he was done wrong.
	We then talk about because he was elected, sunlight is pouring over the entire world now.
	Then we hear about the, quote, radical and corrupt establishment, that they've let in immigrants from prisons and mental institutions.
	He then immediately, Nick, ties that to disasters in North Carolina and California, which tells us that we have been betrayed.
	Almost a knife in the back, if I could borrow a phrase from fascists in the 1920s and 30s and 40s.
	He then goes ahead and tips his cap to the wealthiest people in the room, which we'll talk more about in just a second.
	And then he says that this election was a, quote, mandate to reverse a horrible betrayal.
	It is a story that moves back and forth, and it was really well crafted.
	And I have to tell you that whoever put this together, and I think Stephen Miller and his fingerprints are on it, whoever put this together understood exactly how quickly American media and the political class...
	Swallow narratives, and especially whenever they have these sort of, like, redemption arcs.
	Because that's all we heard about in this.
	This was a return story.
	This was a redemption arc.
	Yeah, but also a vilification of the other side.
	You know, Swalwell comes on.
	We were driving, listening to whatever the three-letter thing is, and said something like, you know, if he wants to work, I'll work with him to lower prices and help people, you know, improve their lives.
	If he wants to do that, great, I'm on board.
	But it's like, at that point, they're already trying to be conciliatory to this in the face of just the most horrible Stephen Miller-fueled rhetoric we've heard ever in any kind of speech.
	That's not really going to get anywhere.
	And besides, we already know he's not lowering the price of eggs.
	He already admitted that you can't do that.
	He doesn't have the control to do that, and it's not going to happen.
	He doesn't give a crap if they do or not.
	That's the other thing.
	You'll say that he did.
	That's it.
	A lot of friends who had their houses burned down, the $10 million mansions in Palisades that burned down.
	And he mentioned when you said that the government has betrayed them.
	But I think he said something like, I have people in the audience who lost their homes, really wealthy people.
	Imagine that.
	Did you hear that?
	Yeah.
	Oh, no.
	He was alluding to Jeff Bezos, although Bezos did not lose his home.
	Okay, so either way, but he's like, you know, even rich people have been let down.
	Rich people don't get let down.
	They're the ones who, they get what they want, and everything is catered to them.
	Well, that was an ad-libbed part.
	All he wanted to do was basically mention, and for the record, for those who didn't watch this speech, if you can find a photograph of it, find a photograph of it.
	His cabinet.
	And his children were behind the oligarchs.
	The oligarchs got front row seats right there.
	They're in every picture that got taken.
	I think that that was an ad-libbed part where he wanted to mention his wealthy friends.
	And also mentioning California fires and his wealthy friends.
	Nick, he's talking about Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos.
	That's literally the only reason that he would say that.
	Or Tim Cook.
	Those are the people that he doesn't care about anybody, but those are the people that he's going to feel bad for.
	He doesn't give a crap about anybody else, any poor people, anybody in need.
	It's like these are the wealthy people he respects because they have money who lost their homes or whatever because of what they think is a lack of preparation or something by the fire department.
	It was so indicative to me hearing that.
	Let me just say this.
	You saw the picture of him or the video of him swearing in, right?
	Did not put his hand on the Bible.
	Isn't that, this is your religion, like, isn't it when the devil puts the hand on the Bible, something bad happens, right?
	Well, yeah, you're talking about holy water, but that's okay.
	Oh, it's holy water?
	Yeah, but no, no, he didn't even put his hand on the Bible, and that, you know, whatever, he's not a religious person, I don't even give a shit if people put their hand on the Bible, but no, it is very indicative.
	I will say, Nick, All of the visual signatures, all of the metaphors, they were so on the nose here.
	Everything from the oligarchs to Melania to how he behaved and what everybody around him did, it was really on the nose because they're not even really particularly worried about hiding any of it anymore.
	Right.
	Well, if you will, let me criticize Musk's hair.
	I guess we cannot say anything about what Melania was wearing.
	I don't know.
	They're weird people.
	I don't know what to say at this point.
	But, Nick, we then get into Manifest Destiny.
	And for those who don't know, I'm sure you've all heard Manifest Destiny.
	Just to give you a quick bit of history, this was the idea that the United States of America should own the continent and move all the way out to the West, out to California, taking all the land in between.
	One of the reasons we did Manifest Destiny, Nick, besides wanting all of that land, was because we needed to vent internal conflicts, take care of a lot of our political problems, and push people further and further.
	That's how these things work.
	Yeah, but there was more.
	There was more, right?
	It was also to take out the native population.
	I mean, that was the other aspect of it and steal their resources and land.
	I'm talking about the socioeconomic aspects of why these things occur.
	It was a madness that took over things.
	It led to a genocidal behavior.
	It led to a destruction of the natural environment.
	It was one of the worst periods of American history that anybody could ever imagine in terms of what Americans were actually doing.
	So now we're reviving that.
	And not just are we doing it like in the idea of the American continent.
	Now we're talking about the potential of military maneuvers against the nation of Panama, who were named in the inaugural address as potential belligerents.
	We were also talking about going to Mars.
	And what do we get then, Nick?
	During a presidential address, we have to put the camera on the richest man in the world who, like a freaking geek, Puts up both thumbs to everybody who will look.
	He gives the thumbs up sign of approval during a presidential inaugural address because who is this actually about?
	It's about the oligarchs and primarily one oligarch who bought MAGA and bought the presidency and don't ever let anyone forget it.
	Oh, but we also got to, at least we'd be remiss if we didn't mention that Vivek got kicked out of Doge and now he's trying to pretend I'm going to run for office so I can't be in Doge.
	He wore out his welcome, without question, right?
	And I told this before.
	I'm telling you, Musk will ultimately do that as well.
	Someone had to go.
	Someone had to go when it came to the visa argument.
	And Vivek got out ahead of his skis and started talking about how Americans were jocks and they should appreciate dorks more.
	He basically got out way ahead of it.
	And now, as a parting gift, he might become the new governor of Ohio.
	We don't even know.
	But I also have no doubt that in his interactions, in Behind Closed Doors, he is too much.
	He did wear out as welcome.
	I'm sure he was typically whatever he's been, because we've heard the descriptions of him from college, of a guy that is just too much to handle.
	Like, you don't want to deal with this guy.
	He's an idiot.
	He's, you know, whatever he is.
	His personality is not meshed well with others.
	So, again, not surprising.
	But I'm telling you, it's going to happen with Musk as well.
	Musk is going to get out of his skis.
	He's going to get too popular.
	that they're going to get to, you know, he's going to outshine Trump and they're going to turn on him.
	Hundreds of millions of dollars in complete control over communications will gain you a lot of patience.
	We'll see.
	By the way, he might not care at that point because of all of that that he gained and he's already, you know, firmly, he's got what he needed to get out of it.
	So before he goes ahead and finishes this by mentioning our golden age has begun again, which is going to be the fascistic rallying cry, Nick, he then tells the story of America, which is something that we love doing in these inaugural addresses.
	We love telling, you know, about American greatness and exceptionalism.
	But in this one, we have a little bit of a different story, Nick, which is that Trump positions his political comeback along this narrative line.
	The founding...
	Westward expansion, electricity, the splitting of the atom, landing a man on the moon, and Donald Trump getting elected to president again.
	Again, we have the narrative that is building and growing and is being sold to us.
	What did you make of the speech the day before where he intimated that Musk was really good with the computers and the ballots?
	I don't know what to say about that because it was weird and off-putting.
	I told you when it came to the election and the idea that it was interfered with, I needed to see.
	I still haven't seen evidence, but man, did that feel very strange.
	Well, if you compare that with what Rogan was saying about Musk, who had been able to look at his app and predict the hours before anyone else did that he had won the election, of which was pretty close.
	You couldn't quite say that he knew.
	You have to wonder what that meant.
	Maybe he had a better algorithm that could measure stuff better in real time.
	But yes, this notion that he is now in the triumphant return, I believe Biden, when they welcomed him to the White House, said, welcome home.
	Welcome home.
	And it's like, what?
	I mean, listen, I get all about being cordial and whatever and doing your role, I guess, but like, welcome home?
	Yeah, Biden saying welcome home.
	For the record, and we're going to jump to the second speech of the day.
	Trump comes out and we'll get to Biden in just a second.
	Trump comes out and he talks to like an overflow room.
	And Nick, he immediately says, hey, I wanted to talk about a bunch of things in my speech, but I was told that I shouldn't talk about it because I need to talk about unity.
	So there was a strategy.
	I'm going to give the inaugural, which is going to allow the media to say, well, Trump said some wild things, but they weren't that wild.
	Then he comes out and says, we talked about it.
	We wanted to give this speech so it'll give people what they want.
	He comes out.
	He immediately starts talking shit about Biden, saying it's the worst administration there's ever been.
	He also gets into the pardons.
	And for those who haven't been paying attention today, Joe Biden, fantastic parting gifts.
	One, he goes ahead and pardons Liz Cheney and the January 6th Select Committee.
	He pardons Fauci.
	He pardons Milley.
	Thanks a lot.
	That's wonderful all the way around.
	I can't imagine that backfiring in any way.
	Nick, that's not enough.
	Joe Biden then goes ahead and pardons his entire family.
	He pardons his family.
	So Trump comes out and says, you know, I wasn't supposed to talk about that.
	I wasn't supposed to talk about the January 6th protesters.
	Don't worry, I'll take care of them.
	He rambles about the border.
	He says again that the 2020 election is rigged.
	He says, thanks everybody, and then takes off.
	So what are your thoughts on these pardons?
	What are your thoughts on...
	It's just awful.
	It's awful.
	It's awful that Biden was in that position where he had to even think about it.
	Like, that's terrible.
	That's terrible.
	You know, and I get it with the Fauci stuff and Milley, like, you know, they have to get this cut off at the knees before he really does it.
	Now, I got to tell you, I know we're supposed to listen to what he says and believe when he says it.
	But I really kind of felt like he liked it as a rhetorical cudgel, and he wasn't necessarily going to, like, prosecute Fauci.
	But now, because they pardoned him, he gets to say, oh, I absolutely was going to do it, and I wanted to plaster these guys to the wall, yada, yada.
	And that's a problem.
	I don't understand what else he did with his family.
	I mean, he would argue, I'm trying to spare my family from any kind of political witch hunts, whatever.
	But, man, when you accept a pardon...
	There is a bit of an acknowledgement of guilt.
	Now, they might not, quote-unquote, accept the pardon, but it's there and it covers them anyway, but that's just sort of semantic at this point.
	It's all awful.
	And I honestly, I really feel like he wouldn't have done that part.
	He would have gone after.
	I don't know.
	Again, you're going to tell me I'm crazy, right?
	But I just feel like I don't know if Trump would have actually gone after them and prosecuted them or not.
	Maybe he would have, maybe he wouldn't.
	All I know is it's a bad look for a president to be leaving office and to pardon his entire family.
	He probably pardoned Bidens who haven't been born yet.
	Right.
	Like, if Trump did this, we would have a problem with it.
	On top of it, I've already been very vocal about how he didn't need to do these preemptive pardons from members of his administration on the January 6th committee.
	It's bullshit.
	It looks bad.
	It adds into the whole Banana Republic feeling of everything.
	On top of that, Nick, he then, he goes to the arena where all the people, and for the record, The amount of people who went to Washington, D.C. to go to the inauguration to celebrate Donald Trump and weren't able to go and do anything or whatever, he continues to just absolutely spit in the face of everyone who supports him.
	He goes over to the arena.
	They have an indoor parade.
	It's awful.
	It sucks.
	They're doing all the things.
	Trump gives another speech.
	It sucks, Nick.
	It absolutely sucks.
	He announces he's firing a bunch of people.
	People go crazy.
	He talks about how bad the Biden administration is.
	He then says, I'm going to go and I'm going to sign all these executive orders.
	He's got a dumb little desk sit up.
	And for the record, he knew exactly what he was doing.
	Our media ate this up.
	They talked left and right about how good of an idea this was.
	So we were treated to the visual.
	Of the President of the United States of America sitting at a little tiny desk on a stage while his supporters whooped and hollered because he, in front of them, signed executive orders that froze regulations, froze federal hiring.
	He ordered federal workers to return to in-person work.
	He, like, did this completely superficial call for reducing prices.
	There's not much going on there.
	He calls for the withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords.
	Which everybody loses their minds.
	Trump says, hey, China's already polluting, so what does it even matter?
	That's great.
	He addresses censorship of free speech, which is horse shit, and the weaponization of government.
	He does that, and Nick, how does he end it?
	He flips the pins out into the crowd as they roar and go nuts.
	And what does our media have to say about it?
	What a showman!
	And why do they say what a showman, Nick?
	Because he provided them a product that they could then sell to viewers.
	This is the only reason why people would turn into cable news, and my God, were they thankful to have him today.
	Oh, and I'm sure that those pens he threw out in the audience are already on eBay.
	You know, and everyone's in on it, and might as well.
	Yes, because the other thing is a stately person would win this election, be inaugurated, put this hand on the Bible for whatever, but have the speech and then go off and maybe get some work done or just sort of bask in the glory of the win.
	He has to continue to do speech after speech and then light everything on fire.
	And of course, we didn't mention in the executive orders, this is like basically walking away anything that Biden did as an executive order just because it was Biden who did it.
	Yeah, 80 of them.
	Yeah, just like he did with Obama.
	No matter what was a good thing that worked and helped people or helped American people or was a sensible policy, gone.
	It doesn't matter.
	If they did it, I've got to get rid of it no matter what.
	It's like the oppositional defiance disorder that he's got.
	So it just reminds us of the lack of decorum, the lack of the classlessness of him.
	And who knew that...
	That channeling that would be so powerful as a politician to gain followers.
	I mean, I guess this country has been, you know, there's enough people who have been waiting for this.
	They've been waiting to kind of unleash their inner id, and they need more.
	We could go over what happened in the first administration over and over again.
	You can tell if the people voted for him a second time, and they'd be like, yeah.
	More, more please.
	More mismanagement of this, of COVID. More abuse of power.
	Yeah, we want that.
	Well, in a second, we'll go through the rumored executive actions that are going to be carried out tonight and what we think about them.
	But before we do, Nick, what you're talking about is a catharsis.
	You're talking about an experience that people had.
	They went into an arena where Donald Trump humiliated and basically shit on everybody that they don't like.
	They don't expect the government to do anything for them.
	You talked about his mismanagement of COVID. Do you think that they think the Democrats would have managed COVID any better?
	No, they don't think that.
	They don't think anybody would have managed anything.
	They probably don't think that Trump did anything.
	Right.
	So basically what happens is they went to a rally and had their own personal reality, experience, and personality.
	Like, you know, confirmed.
	And it got celebrated.
	That was about them.
	And Trump understands that.
	This whole, like, wrestling heel thing that he does.
	Nick, the Paris Climate Treaty, we just...
	Watched your city burn to the ground because of climate change.
	We're all going to get devastated by this thing.
	And they whooped and hollered as he withdrew the United States of America.
	They loved it when he signed a letter to the United Nations informing them.
	It was a giant middle finger, and all it is is catharsis.
	They don't even care that anything is getting done on the other side.
	It's simply about the emotional experience that they're being handed.
	Well, and by the way, just so I'm clear, what I meant to say is the COVID mismanagement, they think the Democrats mismanaged it.
	Oh, sure.
	Yeah, sure.
	But the only reason why they're against the Paris Climate Accords, you know why, Jared?
	Well, they don't believe in climate change, but on top of that, it's because it's Paris.
	Yeah, the word Paris, I'm telling you, if it was the America Climate Accords, whatever, oh, they'd be all for it, whatever.
	They wouldn't even know what it was.
	They wouldn't care.
	I'm telling you, it's like the people who might dismiss black and white movies just because they're black and white or something like that, right?
	It really is that basic.
	And, you know, the whole notion of like, well, China is polluting, so what's the difference?
	That's so stupid.
	That's the most childish, immature response I've ever heard of a thing where it's like, well, let's just destroy the whole country because China, and by the way, China has taken a lot of climate change somewhat seriously.
	They have taken steps to try and curb some of what they're emitting as well.
	It's not like there's other countries that are even worse.
	That don't have the technological infrastructure that China does.
	But the point being that it's like, why not get as clean air as possible?
	Why not protect the climate as much as we can and lead the leader on that?
	It just makes no sense.
	You're talking in a completely different reality than these people.
	You're talking about taking care of a problem that is obvious.
	They deny it completely based on their personality and their own reality.
	These are people who think that he's taking away people's stoves.
	Gas stoves.
	Oh, yeah, for sure.
	No, they're not going to.
	Nick, one of the most animating aspects of this movement over the last few years was the idea that they weren't going to be able to have hamburgers anymore.
	That was like an actual legitimate thing.
	So right now, Donald Trump is back at the White House, which, by the way, Joe Biden telling him, welcome home.
	Man, that is just a kick in the gut after all this.
	He is signing a bunch of executive orders.
	We'll find out more as time goes on, but it looks like the list is like this.
	Declaring a national emergency at the border, which will allow the ability to send troops there.
	Hey, Nick, fact check.
	How's immigration right now coming into the United States?
	If you want to believe the reports, it's as low as it's ever been.
	It's as low as it has been in the modern era, so that's fun.
	Ending birthright citizenship.
	Once more, just ending constitutional ideas with the stroke of a pen.
	We think that, I mean, again, there's the Supreme Court that's going to have to weigh in on this one.
	I can't wait.
	I can't wait, man.
	I can't wait to see what the Supreme Court has to say.
	There's no question, too, that Thomas and Alito are mortified that somebody could get to this country and be born, or sorry, the parent could be born to have a kid, and that person is just equal to me?
	I'm sure they can't fathom that.
	It's awful.
	Ending diversity initiatives within the government, because obviously anybody from a different race or creed who was hired, they obviously aren't as good as old white guys, right?
	Because obviously no one, the old white guys never were incompetent or got hired because they weren't qualified.
	Of course it never happened.
	And of course that was not actually the original DEI, which was like white guys just get jobs because they're white guys.
	Also, a wide-sweeping, cruel, anti-gender declaration.
	This is what they have called the, quote, end of radical gender ideology.
	They have defined that woman means an adult, human, female.
	This would be throughout the government.
	They have also said that this will apply to any place that gets federal funding.
	That remains to be seen.
	There's going to be a battle that comes with it.
	But Nick, this isn't just in terms of like on forums or how people present themselves.
	There are people tonight, if this gets signed, there are passports that might not be valid anymore.
	There are people in prisons who might be moved over into other populations and put in danger.
	We have literally No idea the ramifications of this.
	And they're doing it for the catharsis and the cruelty that you and I have discussed.
	So just to follow up on that, the Biden administration allowed people to pursue the right of pursuit of happiness.
	And if they're non-binary, they're able to put that on their passport.
	The fear now is that if you were to go out of the country and want to get back as a citizen of the United States and you have a non-binary designation on your passport, they might interrogate you.
	They might not let you back in the country.
	This is turning into one of those, the handmaid's tale kind of a thing.
	So as we were talking, breaking news, Donald Trump has signed a pardon for 1,500 of the January Sixers.
	This is a big one.
	Nick, this includes people who had conspired to overthrow the government and try to carry out a civil war.
	We will find out exactly what happened here, but this is a big one.
	And I think we knew this was coming, and yet watching it happen in real time is stunning.
	I mean, I'm sorry, it's not stunning.
	We knew this.
	I bet this was, you know, in my family.
	Well, I knew it was going to happen, but it's still stunning to see it take place.
	Right.
	And we know what ends up being stunning is that, like, the entire right of this country is cheering that on.
	They're not even going to be like, yeah, we get it.
	It's, you know, kind of sheepishly accepting or whatever.
	No, they are full-froatedly excited about this.
	These are political prisoners.
	These are people who were persecuted.
	He's refined people who just wanted to make their point outside the Capitol.
	And the only thing I'm impressed by is that he did have – I thought because of his inability to be effective or focused or concentrate, he would just simply just give them all pardons.
	I'm not going to count them up or whatever.
	But apparently he did parse out a few of the people that might have had a little bit more of the violent crimes.
	They got six commutations.
	They have not announced who they were, but there were six commutations and roughly 1,500 full pardons.
	Right.
	So, you know, by that count, there's not that many other people who are going to end up either being commuted or have a pardon less.
	There's going to be very, very few.
	But again, I'm...
	I'm really surprised that he even decided to parse it out that much.
	But 10 years from now, 20 years from now, when you think about how this is going to be reported or written about or whatever, it seems pretty clear to me that it will end up being...
	Portrayed as in a Trump manner where these were patriots who were unfairly prosecuted.
	Depending upon where the country ends up, there's a real distinct possibility for that.
	I watched our media struggle with how to cover this.
	Surprise, surprise.
	This could be seen as a really ugly moment in American history if we end up winning out.
	If we don't, yeah.
	Yeah, it could.
	I've said that.
	Like, revolutionaries and or criminals.
	It can go either way depending upon how history treats it.
	And right now, all I know is that They've won.
	They've won.
	Not only were they, like, pardoned today.
	Donald Trump took the oath of office in a room that they broke into on their way to try and overthrow an election and try and possibly kill elected representatives.
	And that was on purpose.
	Well, I mean, I guess that's what you have to do.
	The irony not lost on everybody, anybody.
	Yeah.
	And the desecration of that building will forever.
	Be burned in my mind.
	I'm actually just kind of thinking to follow up on that last point about, you know, what the history books are going to write about this, but like the Trail of Tears, does anyone even learn about that anymore?
	Oh, they're not going to if Trump and his cronies have their way.
	Right.
	I mean, or it'll be the opposite.
	Well, they will portray slavery as a positive thing from slaves.
	They're already doing that.
	Yep.
	Yeah, and then, you know, the insurrection was simply a fight for the country that was won, you know what I mean, like by them.
	Yeah, all of those things.
	And, you know, we saw Bill Barr has even said this.
	He goes, you know, the history is written by the victors, right?
	So, you know, you win enough of these, you get to change whatever the history was.
	And the reason why we need to remember things like what happened in Tulsa or what happened with the Trail of Tears is that we don't do it again.
	And that's the fear, is once you put that away and you hide it, then it breeds the fascism again, and we can have those moments that were so awful.
	The Biden administration and Merrick Garland not only failed, but they failed America.
	They really, really, really put us all in a really bad situation.
	The Democratic Party failed.
	I can't help but say our media failed.
	Watching this today, Nick, was so soul-crushing.
	And I still believe in the long run that we are going to defeat these assholes.
	I still believe that the future will be better and that we're going to organize something of a real resistance and not a grifter resistance, not some simulation of it on social media.
	I still truly believe that.
	But Nick, this...
	As a political observer, as a political analyst, as a political strategist, as a human being and as a person who cares about women and people of color and gay and trans people and immigrants, and I know people of all those different creeds, as a person who cares about these people, I'm so, so heartbroken today.
	Like, this sucks so bad, and I knew it was going to be bad, but it just felt infinitely worse than I expected it to feel.
	Absolutely.
	Knowing what they're going to end up having in their psyche walking outside in our society is soul-killing.
	I was actually reflecting on this earlier today.
	The Black Lives Matter movement was, quote-unquote, defeated, right?
	It is...
	Everything that stood for and every kind of progression he wanted to make is gone.
	There isn't going to be any kind of leverage to push back against police brutality anymore with the Department of Justice.
	They were betrayed, for the record.
	They were betrayed by the Democratic Party, is what happened.
	They looked to the Democratic Party to embrace them, which they thought was going to happen after all these gestures and all of that.
	And then immediately the Democratic Party ran as quickly as possible away from criminal law enforcement reform.
	And by the way, Nick...
	We didn't even talk about this when we did the Biden retrospective.
	Biden was one of the leaders of running away from Black Lives Matter.
	And what did he do?
	He said, we don't need to take money away from law enforcement.
	We need to give them more money.
	We need to invest in law enforcement.
	And so they got betrayed.
	And it's hard to win when you're fighting against both of the major political parties.
	You're fighting against a developing oligarchical class.
	And by the way, we talked about them.
	We haven't talked nearly enough about what this was.
	I'm a personal political masochist, Nick.
	I like to watch old Vladimir Putin addresses, okay?
	And you know what those are?
	A lot of them, he's in a big room at a circle table that is the size of my house.
	And the oligarchs of Russia are around that table, and they're going back and forth.
	Those videos of those meetings look a hell of a lot like this.
	And the inaugurations of Vladimir Putin surrounded by his oligarchical class that he works hand-in-hand with, it looked like this.
	This was a precursor for something that we are going to see a lot more of, unfortunately.
	Yeah, I think the Biden administration, what they missed out on was...
	You kind of had to, from day one in 2021 when they took over, they needed to have sort of a ceaseless campaign against Trump the entire time, right?
	They needed to be able to rally people and remind them and not get complacent and not feel like, oh, he's gone forever.
	They needed to have looked at the results, realized he had expanded his base from 2016 anyway, and needed to be able to shift the mindset of the country every single day.
	And I can say this, Biden wasn't up to that.
	He was not up to it no matter what.
	There's no version of Biden from 2021 on that has that ability, oration-wise, energy-wise, any of those things.
	So that's a real, real big problem on that front.
	Crap, I forgot the other points made about Trump.
	But yeah, so I think that's sort of to fill in what you're talking about, how they failed, you know, was that they didn't take seriously enough the threat of Trump coming back for 2024. No, they did not.
	And now we have arrived in a place where Donald Trump has more support.
	He's grown his base.
	We're now seeing in polls that are coming out that a majority of Americans allegedly support action in Mexico and limited military engagement and deportation of immigrants.
	And on top of that, Nick, just to go ahead and put the cherry on top of this, Donald Trump over the weekend released a meme coin that has netted him roughly $60 billion and is on pace to deliver him maybe tens of billions every month.
	It is now over 85% of his wealth.
	And what is that good for, Nick?
	It's great for money laundering.
	And I'll tell you what, it's wonderful because...
	Foreign states don't even have to rent his hotel rooms anymore.
	They don't even have to buy Trump products or pretend to lease out spaces in his hotels to have meetings.
	They can simply go ahead and shove millions, if not billions, of dollars over to the President of the United States of America.
	This, right now, where we are, and we haven't even gotten into TikTok.
	I think we're going to save that for the weekender because that's a big issue to talk about.
	This right now, as of January 20th, 2024, 2025, is not just a bad situation.
	All of these dominoes are in line for a very, very bad and declining situation to take place.
	I'm just sorry.
	Yes, I'm also checking the price of the Melania coin.
	Oh yeah, Melania coin got released as well.
	And they weren't planning on doing it yet.
	I don't think they had it all set up.
	But when they saw what happened with Trump...
	Yeah, why not get those billions?
	By the way, Melania pushed Trump coin down in terms of market cap for a while.
	So, you know, we'll bring this up because it's worth talking about.
	I knew about this two weeks ago.
	And we talked about this.
	We said, I wondered whether or not I should try and buy some of this coin because I knew they were going to pump it and then dump it eventually, which is sort of what's in the middle of happening now.
	And I said, no, I can't do that.
	It's not ethical.
	It's not right.
	You shouldn't be able to do that.
	I got to tell you, though, I ended up buying a very small little bit of something that wasn't for the Trump coin.
	It's so confusing, Jared, if you try and get on these exchanges.
	It's all a farce.
	There's nothing clear about any of it.
	So I ended up screwing it up anyway.
	I think I'm saying to myself, in my point of life now, in my financial situation now, if I had bought, let's just say I had like $10,000 and I put it in there, it'd be worth a million bucks in less than a day and a half.
	I kind of wonder if my ethical issues would have gone away pretty quickly if I had seen that gain.
	Well, I mean, I don't know what to say to that.
	First of all, I can't imagine being okay with that.
	One of the things when it comes, I understand people who have bought Bitcoin and they've watched their money sort of expand.
	I don't understand exactly how to make the mental, ethical, and moral decision to jump in on that.
	And the whole point of it is it is a siren song.
	It is a Faustian bargain.
	And that's one of the things here, Nick.
	I do want to talk about TikTok when we do the weekend, or God knows we're going to see a hell of a lot of things over the next couple of days that we're going to have to cover, but I think this is essentially important.
	But when it comes to this, there are all these twin sort of appeals.
	You know what I mean?
	Which is, hey, I understand that you're not totally in line for me, Trump saying this to young people, but I'll give you this.
	Right?
	On top of that, this pump and dump scheme, every time they happen, everyone understands if you get in at the right time and get out at the right time, you're going to make incredible amounts of money.
	It is one Russian nesting doll of a scheme after another.
	And if the person goes ahead and uses their influence for it, and you're one of the lucky ones who doesn't get screwed and loses everything, then all of a sudden you develop a relationship.
	it's a lot like him and the oligarchs.
	It's a bunch of people who are all out for themselves looking for riches and looking for power.
	And they know, and I've said this before, like if Donald Trump is president and J.D. Vance, my God, J.D. Vance is vice president of the United States of America.
	Those two understand that if one of them is standing in front of a window, they might go, you know?
	Like, but it is an opportunity to go ahead and gain more power and to gain more wealth.
	and people will go ahead and go down that road.
	And if you can sell your ethics or your morals like that, there's plenty of money to be made.
	That's what this environment is about, unfortunately.
	And the argument could be someone was going to buy it.
	Might as well be me.
	I could change my fortunes.
	I mean, there probably were a few people in there.
	That said, I think it was 80% of the coins bought in that first run are Trump and his company and his associates.
	So it's not that far of a stretch.
	Imagine if Trump goes to...
	He wants birthright citizenship revoked, right?
	And he's going to have, let's say he wants to go through Congress to make that happen.
	Probably not the most popular bill to get passed.
	But what if he told the key Congress people that he might have some reservations about it, about his Trump coin a few days before?
	Get registered, get ready.
	We'll give you the address so you'll be able to log in.
	Because again, people try to log in and could not get through like tickets when you're trying to buy them at a concert.
	So what if he sets them up, right?
	This is not even illegal.
	Remember, they can front-run on trades anyway on the stock market, right?
	They can do whatever they want.
	So imagine if they go to Mike Johnson and the 12 different people.
	Here's the address.
	Buy whatever you want, whatever.
	It's going to 10,000% increase in a day and a half.
	Don't win and sell.
	They'll get the vote.
	They'll be able to get anything they want done on that one.
	And that's another layer of what you're talking about oligarchically, that they're going to be able to monetize this.
	Don't forget, they can't get any banks.
	The Trump company can't get any banks to deal with them anymore.
	So they're using Bitcoin as their bank, and it's all the incentive in the world to pump all this stuff up so the money they have already in there will gain massive amounts of what they would consider interest, but I would consider, yes, Ponzi scheme, pump and dump, whatever you want, with no regulations.
	Oh, you want regulations on crypto like we've been talking about for years?
	Forget about that.
	No, that's gone.
	No, that horse is out of the barn until it collapses and causes a giant economic meltdown.
	You know what he said?
	Everyone thinks in the crypto world that he's going to pass a law that says that your gains and the crypto will not be taxable.
	Now, if that happens, because why would he do that?
	So his money, whatever bill, what did you say?
	$60 billion?
	I think it's $60, whatever it was.
	It might be more, by the way.
	But let's just sell out $60 billion.
	If he cashes that in, he's going to have to pay taxes on that.
	He sure doesn't want to pay taxes on that, right?
	So, boom.
	I don't know.
	It's not an executive order, but enough people pass that law, non-taxable event, and he gets all of that money.
	It frightens me that people in power can do that and are allowed to do that.
	It's wrong.
	And it's set up perfectly for the corruption that you're talking about.
	And I want to say this.
	You know, you and I, we've been doing this for going on eight years now.
	Isn't that wild, first of all?
	Going on eight years, we've been doing this.
	And we started it, the first time we had a conversation, you and I, we were trying to warn listeners about Donald Trump.
	Going into the election of 2016. When we started doing it, we were trying to be muckrakers who were trying to discuss the corruption, the growing authoritarianism, growing radicalization, and then sort of morphed into trying to understand what this developing oligarchical class was doing and how they were changing our politics and culture and the environment of everything.
	I knew, Nick, We were critical of the Harris campaign.
	I think history borne out that we were correct with those criticisms.
	We were critical of the Democratic Party.
	We were critical of how our media dealt with things.
	And then he got elected.
	And from November to today, I... I studied it.
	I prepared for it.
	I got myself logistically ready.
	I got myself ready security-wise.
	I've gotten together my own effort in terms of, like, organizing and strategies that I'm trying to put together.
	I don't want to be a cliche, but we really are in a new era today.
	Right.
	Oh, I thought you were going to say, and you still weren't quite prepared to deal with the emotional toil.
	I'm not.
	I'm not.
	I want to be completely honest with you.
	I feel shaken by it.
	I have not lost all of my hope.
	I'm not, you know, a complete pessimist or cynic now, but I was not prepared for the emotional toll that today was going to take.
	Right.
	Or on top of that, how everything is sort of falling in line for him.
	It's like watching, real fast, Nick, it's like watching a person go and play, like, blackjack, right?
	And they hit some, like, incredible runs where you're like, oh my god, their luck is incredible.
	And then over time, they gain so much money and so much influence that they buy the casino, and then the casino deals them a blackjack every single hand.
	And now we are just watching.
	It's not luck anymore.
	It's that things have moved to a point where things are so rigged.
	That's what concerns me.
	It's the oligarch part coming together.
	It's the political and media class coming together.
	It's the world environment coming together.
	It's also how the environment has been shifted and changed.
	And like watching it now, it's not just surreal, Nick.
	It's really frightening.
	It's what it is.
	I will say this to you, Jared.
	There is no spoon.
	Yes, yes.
	And if you don't know what that refers to, it's the Matrix, where when he learns how to control his environment, it's because he understands that the environment isn't even what he's seeing.
	And there is this notion, I hate to say, I'm bringing up like whatever, but like this book I'm starting to listen to, like Ivan the 50s, talking about the power of the subconscious mind, where some of these people will tell you that you can literally control...
	Like superheroes.
	That's what Donald Trump believed.
	I mean, that goes back to the power of positive thinking.
	Like, so many of these people have bended others to their own reality simply through abuse or force.
	Right.
	So, to me, it almost sounds like maybe it's some weird version of The Matrix that we're all in and he has figured this out.
	No, it's money and abuse.
	Those things go hand in hand to change things very, very quickly.
	I mean, these people cannot be held accountable.
	Accountable by the institutions that we have.
	They were always rigged.
	It just so happened that it was camouflaged for a while.
	We could believe that it was free and fair and not rigged.
	It's rigged, top to bottom.
	Although, are we one step away from realizing that it is in the Matrix?
	But either way, that's what's probably the worst part.
	It's remarkable that there has been no consequences for this guy and his behavior.
	He gets away with everything.
	And we've always warned that someone else can come along and do it even better.
	The Project 2025 stuff made it feel like these guys are much more organized.
	I don't know.
	The vague is gone.
	That's starting to have a weird shift.
	I really wonder now.
	They kind of screwed up the control of the Department of Justice in a way where that wasn't as organized as you thought it was going to be from day one.
	Those are hiccups.
	Nick, you can't look at what happened here.
	Everything from the executive orders that they were ready to go with, the narrative storytelling that they put in place, the fact that they now have control over the vast majority of electronic communications in the country.
	Partners that they have in all this, it's going to be dysfunctional to a certain extent because Trump is dysfunctional, but they are in a much, much better position than they were in 2017. That idea needs to be thrown out.
	Like, this is a completely different regime that we're dealing with now.
	It's got another breaking news that Trump rescinds task force to reunite families separated under his first term.
	So remember what Stephen Miller's whole take on that was he wanted to make it so awful for their lives, the people who are coming across the border, that would somehow be a deterrent to them.
	And they're right back at it.
	Remain in Mexico is going to be another one of those things, which if we don't forget or don't remember, those are the images of Planet of the Apes style of people on horseback chasing migrants.
	That's the feature, not the bug.
	All right.
	I'm going to go try and ground and regulate this.
	That right there, I think, was the straw that did it.
	Yeah, sorry.
	Remember, the border stuff is going to be the cruel, the most cruel.
	The immigration and border is...
	Oh, I mean, they more or less tried to erase the existence of trans people today.
	I mean, it's all across the board.
	It is what it is.
	All right.
	We're going to get out of here, and we will be back with a weekender on Friday.
	Thank you all for listening.
	I just want to say very quickly before we log off, authoritarianism is weaponized abuse.
	They want you to feel alone and terrified and like you have no power and like there's nothing that you can possibly do.
	Someone in the chat said the cruelty is the point, and that is correct.
	It is about cruelty and abuse.
	Take care of yourself in the next few days.
	Get some rest.
	Drink some water.
	You know, hang out with people who share your principles and believe in the same things you do.
	We are going to organize and fight against this thing, but today is a rough one, and I think we all should go morn.
	It's a good time to go morn.
	All right, everybody, we will be back.
	Take care.

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