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Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman try to sort out Trump's first three days in office and how the onslaught of outrageousness is a feature, not a bug. From erasing LBJ's legacy on Civil Rights to dropping out of the WHO, a new day is dawning in America. They move on to the new AI revolution and how jealous this makes Elon Musk before finishing on the powerful plea for mercy by Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde - an important act of defiance right to Trump's face.
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Welcome to the Weekender Edition of the Craig Podcast.
Jared Yates, next time here, Nick Housman.
How you doing, bud?
I'm okay.
I'm hanging in there by thread.
Yeah, there's that.
Listen, we have a whole lot to cover today.
A reminder, go over to patreon.com slash mongregpodcast.
Listen to the entire episode.
Support the show.
Again, corporate media is not cutting it, Nick, and you need to support the people who are actually going to talk about these things.
Before we get into this, you know, we would not be doing our job, Nick, if we didn't talk about what Trump's administration is doing and why they're doing it and what is happening.
But I think I speak for both of us when I say that the past week has been...
Utterly exhausting.
It's incredible to me that this man has been in power for four days as of the recording of this podcast, and we have just been subjected to a blitz of shit at this point.
Well, I'm really glad you brought it up in that way because I thought maybe I was alone, and I was really getting those, like, I'm going to go around the corner for a pack of cigarettes vibes, you know, for the last week.
And if you don't know what that is, and not coming back, that's really where I feel like I just need to go away and be somewhere else, anywhere else.
And it's not easy.
It is not easy to sleep well.
And we all know this is going to happen, and we remember what it was like from four years ago, but it's having to go through it again.
It's a danger to the psyche, I suppose, would be the way to say it.
Yeah, and I just wanted to make a couple of points before we got to our regularly scheduled program.
First things first, this is worse.
This is more concentrated.
It has been planned.
And what we're dealing with right now, I've talked often about how authoritarianism is weaponized abuse.
And I've talked often about how the...
The message behind it is we are powerful.
We are unstoppable.
If you try and stop us, we will crush you.
The best that you can hope to do is either join us or stay out of our way.
And that has been communicated.
I hesitate to say perfectly, but for the rhetorical aim of what Trump and the people around him want to communicate, they have done a good job of it.
And what you just said about it affecting sleep, it affecting the psyche, that is the intent.
And I know anecdotally, not just from my experience, but the people that I interact with in my life, the people that I talk to, the people that I work with in my organizing and political work.
People are already tired and it weighs on you and it takes a toll.
And so I just want to say now, as we begin this episode and everyone is listening to it, we have to cover this.
We have to talk about it.
We have to bear witness to it.
But I want people to take care of themselves because you have to in the face of this thing.
You have to take time off from it.
You have to say, you know what, for the next hour, two hours, even the next day, I'm not letting Donald Trump and the oligarchs get to me.
I'm going to find things that make me joyful.
I'm going to find things that replenish me.
I'm going to take care of myself.
Because what you are dealing with right now is a blitzkrieg, for lack of a better word, of abusive, destructive behaviors that are intended to basically pummel us.
As it gets going, to try and lay the groundwork for the next four years or however long this project is going to play out, it's meant to go ahead and basically knock us out in the first couple of days.
Right.
And yeah, the cruelty is the key, is the feature here.
You know what's interesting is that the irony that how you described what we're made to feel if we're not going, let's say, if you don't...
We fight back viscerally in the streets, and then we sort of feel like we are afraid, and we go into these little shells, and we can't speak out.
It's probably how the worst parts of the right felt for decades.
Right?
As they couldn't speak the way they wanted to and say the awful things that they wanted to say and they had to keep themselves in these small areas.
They probably were getting a taste of what it felt like for them while the country had been moving in a progressive way for over X amount of time.
In a totally twisted way.
Right.
Like the idea that they couldn't, quote unquote, be themselves by being as cruel and ugly and disgusting as they wanted to be.
And more or less what has happened here, and we'll talk about it in a second with these executive orders and what Trump has already done.
Basically...
This is not just a reaction to those years where people felt like there was no possibility of them, you know, being able to stand up against the strength of tech and corporations and the regime, as they would have called it.
But it is also, of course, a cover for a larger oligarchical power grab.
Right?
Like, it made it possible for it to get over the finish line of getting the presidency and gaining power in all three wings of the government.
And what we're dealing with now in our own way is it is a time of tribulation.
Like, we are going to get hit with this stuff constantly.
They have not let off of the gas here.
They are pushing and pushing and pushing, and it is no accident, Nick, that what we are seeing at the very beginning of this is Trump and the people around him being as ugly and as destructive as humanly possible.
It was strategized that way, and you're not crazy if you think that that's what's going on.
If you feel attacked, if you feel paranoid at this point, the reason is because...
You are attacked, and you should be paranoid by the way that these people have behaved.
They are communicating to you.
We have all of the power, and we will crush you.
And that's what this is all about.
I'm trying to kind of come up with, like, and, like, you know, because it's not healthy to live in that space and feel that way.
It's awful.
And part of me feels, I was talking to a friend who also lives in San Francisco in California, where we have our bubble.
We have this sort of interesting area of the country that seems, I guess I can't say impervious to the federal government what they're doing, but it does feel like if you played this out long enough, eventually California would not be part of the rest of this country.
It would be one of those safe havens where people are going to try and get to.
In that dystopian version on Apple Plus or whatever.
Part of me feels like, well, I'm still sheltered.
I'm still protected.
There's still all these layers in between of this.
But again, if I lived in a lot of the other states in the Union, yeah, it is a really troubling thing.
And if I was a part of a community that's not accepted by the right, yes, it would be a real...
I guess you have to be just more vigilant and more streetwise, I suppose is the word, as you're moving around under this regime.
Yeah, on top of having to take care of yourself.
And by the way, in modern America, Nick, that's part of it, is living in modern America without this administration being in charge is hard enough.
Taking care of yourself and staying in good health and staying in good mental health and staying positive and staying hopeful.
That's hard enough without this abuse being heaped upon us.
And with this added on top of it, it's basically we're trying to do the hardest thing while also riding a unicycle over a dental floss.
And the whole point of bringing this up in the first place is...
I think it's important that a lot of people cover politics and a lot of people cover current events.
This show, over the years that it's been broadcast, we get into the muck.
That's why we have the name we have.
That's why we have sort of the self-selecting audience that we have.
We want to talk about what's going on.
We want to talk about what the actual implications of it and what the background is of it.
But at the same time...
Like, we do need to at least emotionally be honest and say that this is hard.
This is really, really gross and disgusting.
And you should feel outraged.
The more that we talk about this, you shouldn't become numb to it.
You should be disgusted by it.
You should be concerned by it.
You should be pissed off about it.
And I just wanted to make sure that we said that, particularly as this is the first show after the inaugural live show that we did, covering that absolute debacle, where we say...
This is going to be hard, and the stuff that we're going to talk about on this episode is going to be hard, but people need to take care of themselves while remaining disgusted by it.
Exactly.
And, you know, it's funny, on Blue Sky, Mel had said to me, great show, really like the show we did, but also it was very depressing.
Sure.
It's one of those dichotomies, like it's a depressing show that people are resonating with, but again, it does...
There is that balance that we have to try and figure out how to have where it isn't just simply like, you know, don't go outside anymore.
Don't leave your house, whatever.
We have to be able to find those moments.
And whether it's playing catch with the dog in the driveway or taking a walk around the neighborhood or exercising, looking at the sunset, looking at the water.
Did you know that looking out at the ocean, there is some intrinsic therapeutic value that might...
Yeah, evolutionary-wise, that's one direction that you don't have enemies coming for you.
Oh, that's interesting.
Yeah.
Okay.
I mean, I would like to think it's more of the relaxing, you know, wave.
No, it feels good to have barriers around you where it feels like you are at least safe from, like, you know, an attack.
Yeah.
Okay, but, you know, the soothing, sure, whatever.
But anyway, yes, there are moments we can find that we can break it up a little bit so it's not constant.
And whatever, and by the way, the first thing we have to talk about are these slew of executive orders and sort of reorganizing of the federal government that, you know, has been abusive in and out of its own right.
Here's the thing, Nick.
All of this stuff, it's overwhelming, and it's just happening in waves.
You can, as an individual, again, say, For the next hour, two hours, I'm going to have a nice dinner.
I'm going to talk to loved ones.
I'm going to go for a walk.
I'm going to get a breath of fresh air.
Will things happen in that hour or two hours?
Yes, it will.
It will.
But it is an illusion of control to just sort of doom scroll on social media and feel like, oh, I'm absorbing all of this and I have control over it.
So what we're about to discuss...
It is overwhelming, but we as individuals need to maintain ourselves if we're going to keep this up for a long time because this is relentless.
All right, so in the first three days, the first thing that we need to talk about in this blitz, Nick.
Donald Trump, through executive orders, has more or less ended all DEI programs within the federal government, calling them, quote, illegal discrimination.
A bunch of federal employees have been put on paid leave.
They've been told they'll find out their fates later.
Of course, they're going to be let go.
He has also asked the government to begin targeting private sector companies who have DEI policies.
That, of course, is intended to intimidate corporations.
And sent a threatening message to agencies saying, These programs have divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars, and resulted in shameful discrimination.
He has warned employees to report any efforts to skirt directed orders and warns of adverse consequences if they do not report on their co-workers for attempting to get around this ban.
I mean, just wrap your head around what you'd be trying to get around.
Like, you're trying to help somebody get treated better at a workplace, you know, because there's discrimination going on, basically.
And that will get you into trouble, right?
I mean, I guess it's going to be the end of HR departments, right?
Like, what are they there for?
Because you have to imagine they're going to also fold in any kind of sexual harassment stuff as well, the way they seem to treat this stuff.
So I shudder to think.
I mean, I'm lucky, you're lucky we kind of live, or you weren't lucky until recently, of having a work environment that you can control on your own, right?
I don't go into it, sit in a cubicle, and work in an office.
I don't have a boss.
I'm very lucky to not have a boss.
Right.
And I don't have a boss.
I haven't had a boss.
It's probably for, you know, because I wouldn't have done well under a boss.
But I do shudder to think what would happen now.
You know, under these conditions, because in my mind, it was just a reaction to how bad it had been for all those years before we had any kind of, you know, standards of behavior in an office.
I think if you needed to figure out what that was like, look at Cuomo, Governor Cuomo in New York, and how he was doing for decades and probably never thought anything was wrong with him pinching people's butts and whatever he was saying, all this suggested stuff.
So the bottom line is...
Yeah, they're trying to go back, right?
We're trying to go back.
And they ran on this, and the only credit you guys can give them is that they are fulfilling a lot of their campaign promises.
I hate to admit that, that basically they laid it all on the line, what they were going to do, and now they're doing it.
I mean, it was Project 2025, all these institutes and think tanks that the wealthy have created to do this.
First things first, Nick, they are not going to do anything.
For their middle American working class devotees.
They're not going to be helped.
As a matter of fact, they're going to be harmed by this agenda.
This entire agenda is designed explicitly to help the wealth class.
The only thing that they're giving their supporters who are in the working class in middle America is that they're humiliating their enemies.
You know, they're perceived enemies.
They're basically taking...
People of color, women and immigrants, gay and trans people, and basically sticking it to them, making their lives worse.
And that is the gift that they're giving those people on that end.
On the other side of this, a large part of it, and Nick, we even saw it, Executive Order 11246, which was a Lyndon Johnson executive order, which banned discrimination by federal contractors.
What they are trying to do, like you said, is to roll back the progress of the 20th century, which it's not like we said that multiple times on this show and told everybody who would listen to us that that was the entire purpose of it.
It's intended to go ahead and reinstate the old apartheid white supremacist system in this country.
While they're doing that, Nick, there is an added component of it, and it's the insidious part of it.
This, report your co-workers for trying to skirt all of this, the adverse consequences.
This is divide and conquer.
And basically what we have seen, anytime there is increasing precarity under neoliberalism, it's supposed to make everyone feel like, hey, things are getting really, really bad.
Things are getting ugly.
The least I can do is take care of myself.
Right?
It goes ahead and knocks out any sort of opportunity for solidarity among the people who are being mistreated.
It turns them against one another.
Right?
And basically at this point, this is the type of weaponized government that we saw a little bit of in the first Trump administration, but it's accelerated now.
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