Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the cowardice of the Democratic Party writ large as they capitulated to the GOP in the Senate by helping them pass a Continuing Resolution to keep the government open for business. Chuck Schumer ends up being the focus as he continues to lead his party in a feckless way. They move on to Donald Trump calling CNN and MSNBC illegal with hopes they're investigated by his personal DOJ before running through a list of things the GOP is doing to destroy democracy - like insisting a Seattle man on Social Security was dead and stealing his life savings while he is very much alive.
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I'm here with my friend, my co-host, Nick Housman.
How you doing, bud?
I'm doing well.
Happy St. Patrick's Day.
Well, I mean, people are listening to this on Tuesday.
Well, every day is St. Patrick's Day, right?
To somebody, somewhere.
If every day was St. Patrick's Day, nothing would get done.
I gotta tell you, Jared, having two drinks over the course of like six hours, the next day is gone.
I don't know what's happened to me.
Man, okay.
Well, it sounds like somebody was celebrating, so...
I guess the solution is I need to have more than two drinks more often.
Listen, you are...
You have control over your own fate.
You are the captain of your own ship, my friend.
Thank you.
I will keep that in mind next time.
All right.
Well, hopefully everybody had a good St. Patrick's Day.
We're going to just run through so many things here.
In the wake of that, we have a bunch of developments to get into.
A reminder, everybody.
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And guess who needs community right now, Nick?
The Democrats.
They need community bad.
We recorded The Weekender last week on Thursday, and I would say probably about an hour and a half, two hours after we recorded.
We had talked about how we expected the Senate Democrats to go ahead and capitulate and go along with the Republicans in order to pass the continuing resolution.
Surprise, surprise, everybody.
Everything that we have seen before, everything that we have experienced, it came true again.
Under the quote-unquote leadership of Chuck Schumer, eight Democrats voted with the Republicans in order to move the process along, in order to pass a continuing resolution, avert government shutdown, and to push...
Nick, I cannot tell you, first of all, I knew this was going to happen.
I knew full and well what Schumer was going to do.
I knew full and well what the Senate Democrats were going to do.
Fool me once, shame on me.
Fool me 17 times.
I can't be fooled again.
What were your reactions when we saw this inevitable thing come to pass?
Well, Jerry, do you think that Chuck Schumer wanted to give himself a nice big pat on the back after he got the deal done?
Oh, absolutely, he did.
Right?
He's like, gosh, bipartisan.
We're making the government work.
This is what we need to be doing and show what we can work with these people.
And it's like, again, I said this in the last episode.
There's no difference between what they've already done to decimate the government.
There is a difference, but not a huge difference between what they've already done now with Doge and shutting the government down completely.
And at the very least, if you're that worried about services not being provided, we're already there, Chuck.
So at this point, you might as well take a stand.
And the other thing about the leverage, I'm scratching my head because I can't think of any other position they would have that would give them more leverage than turning down the CER here.
No, I mean, they've had leverage.
And, you know, you think about Hakeem Jeffries, one of the worst leaders that we've seen in the modern era, saying, we don't have any control over the government whatsoever, as they rubber stamp every Trump nominee going down the line, down the line, down the line.
This was the point where something could have changed.
And it's not just that the Democrats got in line in order to pass this.
And once more...
I want to remind everybody during the Biden presidency, I told you over and over again that everyone was like, oh, it's Joe Manchin, it's Kyrsten Sinema.
Those were the two people that were chosen to carry that load because they were going to be politically safe because of it.
The Democrats are always going to wheel somebody in in order to pass these votes, in order to make things run, because the Democratic Party is loyal to two things.
One is their billionaire donors and the market that they represent, and two, It's making sure that they're the party that keeps this government working, even if it's authoritarian.
The second part of this, and this is what really enrages me, Nick, there was no strategy here.
There was no negotiation whatsoever.
Schumer didn't get anything.
He didn't get a single damn...
It wasn't just Schumer doing this.
It wasn't just Schumer saying, we're going to find a place where we have more leverage.
Immediately after, because it's Chuck Schumer, he then went on to give an interview.
Why, Nick?
Because he has a book coming out.
He had a book tour that he wanted to go on.
So he gives an interview with the New York Times.
And in this interview, just a few choice highlights, Nick.
It's like picking up a greatest hits album.
You want to listen to some Neil Young hits?
Put it on.
We've got old man.
We've got the needle.
We've got it all.
Let's just roll.
He reiterates his belief that Republicans will eventually come around and work with the Democrats.
He comes around and says that the Democrats, we're on the right track now.
We just need better social media.
He blames Colombia for Trump going after Colombia during the whole anti-Semitic bullshit thing.
He then refuses to defend Mahmoud Khalil.
He won't voice criticism of Eric Adams or Andrew Cuomo.
This was the quintessential Chuck Schumer interview that we saw in order to try and get his book tour back on track, which has been canceled because he is loathed and reviled.
And if he went to a single one of those book tour appointments, he would have been roundly booed out of the place and chased down the street.
Nick, not only is it that he failed, not only is it that he capitulated and collaborated, not only is it that he couldn't even come up with something decent to say about it,
Chuck Schumer remains completely and utterly confident in everything that Chuck Schumer does.
Yeah.
I mean, again, I'm getting tired of saying it, but it's been five years, I think.
We should go back and find out exactly when we started calling for him to step down.
It's over for him at this point.
Do you think, as parenthetical to this, do you think the AOC is going to try and primary him?
Well, I'll tell you this.
I have been talking with some of the people I know within Democratic politics.
This has resulted in one screaming match and breakdown after another.
Behind closed doors, the Democratic Party is in complete and utter disarray.
You have members who are pissed off, particularly in the House, because they did their part.
They said no to this thing, and they expected their Senate, So many people right now are talking about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez either primarying, and this would be in 2028 for the record, either primarying Chuck Schumer for his Senate seat or running for president.
And you're not going to do both.
You kind of got to choose one or the other.
But what we are seeing is that there is a revolt within the party.
There is one main issue here, Nick, and it's something that you and I have talked about over and over again when it came to Schumer and Pelosi.
Schumer has his position because he is the most effective at bundling fundraising.
That's it.
Keeping Democratic donors in line.
Again, the biggest problem for the Democratic Party in their minds, it isn't alienating the base.
Everyone's pissed off.
By the way, a new poll, Nick, came out from NBC News.
You want to take a guess at the approval rating for the Democratic Party right now?
20%.
27%.
And I'm shocked that it's that high, a historic low.
65% of people say that they actually want to see some fight out of the Democrats.
The Democratic Party, the leadership, including Chuck Schumer, they're not worried about those numbers.
They're not worried about small donations.
They're worried about the big dollar donors at this point.
So the question is, can they exercise Chuck Schumer out of leadership?
Can they exercise him out of his office while maintaining those donors?
And do you know what my answer is to that?
Who gives a fuck?
Who gives a flying fuck?
Get him out of there.
This cannot go on.
Here's the answer for you on that one is, who raised more money, Harris or Trump?
Harris.
And by an order of magnitude, who won the race?
Yep.
So why do you think that these big donors are so important at this point, right?
If it's not going to be about outspending your opponent to win a race, then...
Let's put that aside and figure out how to get people back on your side because, again, that's what they don't seem to acknowledge.
This is not even just like we're fighting the good fight, we're maintaining the sheen of keeping the government running.
You now need to go back and get defectors from the Democratic Party back on your side, and you have to go back and have town halls and listen to the people.
I was almost trying to think, what would the solution also be?
On a local level, because they don't control the federal stuff anymore, they need to be able to figure out ways where they get wins on the local level of things being built that create jobs, and they can have events around that.
You know what I mean?
You can kind of bring people together to celebrate something and then expose yourself to be able to listen to what they want to say, what they have to say, and then do that part right and not do what the DOP is doing on their town halls.
You know what I mean?
I feel like that's the new level they have to get back to, boots on the ground, real folksy stuff, because if they don't, then the low ratings are going to translate into maybe not even people switching to the Republican Party, but certainly not voting at all.
Yeah, I want to take this from the local and then scale it to the national because you just brought up some good points.
First things first.
For the people listening, and I've been screaming about this for a couple of years now, that we needed to start building coalitions.
We need to get not just in labor unions, but to start getting groups together that are going to advocate for change at the local level and also press leaders and administrators and bosses and you name it.
One of the things that we're capable of doing if we create those coalitions, Nick, we can find the new leaders.
We can find the people who can run for these things.
And for the record, the Democratic Party has not just been bad at finding people to run the local and the state level.
They've been abysmal.
Abismal.
They do not have the infrastructure.
The ones that remain are the people who have just been in there forever and they haven't been challenged.
So you have to find, and I'm not telling the people listening that they have to run for office.
If you have the desire, by all means do it.
I guarantee you can do a better job than these people, not just in running an office, but also running a campaign.
Because most of these people, they do it to get their name in the newspaper and then they'll get some business deals around it.
At the larger level.
You know, the Democratic Party has this so ass-backwards, Nick.
The idea that you have to keep these billionaire donors in pocket is exactly the wrong move.
Who are billionaires interested in right now?
It's authoritarians, is what it is.
The people who are going to destroy federal government and regulations and you name it.
They are either, and I've reported on this over and over, they are either giving donations to Donald Trump, or they see the Democratic Party as not being useful at this point, and they're afraid of Donald Trump, so they're not going to donate.
At this point, you basically flip these people off.
You tell them, hey, you're going to need us here really soon.
And Nick, how's the economy doing right now?
It's shitty.
It's doing shitty.
Is it getting shittier by the day?
I went to the store yesterday and I went shopping very briefly and I shit you not, Jared, the lady that rung me out when she handed me the receipt, she apologized.
Oh, I've gotten that exact same conversation before.
Yes.
And I wasn't even like looking, staring at it, but she's like, I'm sorry.
That's never happened to me before.
And I deserve the apology because I couldn't believe how much everything cost.
So here is the entire point.
The Democratic Party is the only party that has any access to a large, small donation base.
They're the only party that actually relies on the people who participate in the party to give them money.
We've seen how they can raise unbelievable amounts of money from the base, which is currently on the verge of deserting the party.
You say, hey, donors, give us your money or don't.
But guess what?
We're going to bring in regulations.
We're going to change this government.
We're going to change this economy.
And you know what happens if you rely on the base, you bundle them, you build that money, and you build actual power, giving people what they want?
Do you know what happens to the billionaires who have stopped donating?
They show up at your door hat in hand because we've already seen what Donald Trump is doing on behalf of his oligarchical puppet masters.
They are going to come crawling to you the exact same way that they came crawling to Barack Obama in 2008, the exact same way that they came crawling to FDR back in the 30s.
Eventually, at some point, that worm will turn, but continuing to chase this runaway train and pretending like it's not doing real damage to the party and the base is insanity.
And I don't know if you see it.
I assume you do, and I have to assume our listeners do as well.
They're doing long-term damage to the Democratic Party right now, to the point where people are having conversations about whether or not we need a third party to replace them.
And for the record, we may very well need a third party to replace them.
I agree.
Because, again, once people get solidified in their minds, it's really hard to convince them otherwise, as we've seen with MAGA people.
And once people start to have that, it creeps in.
Because, again, fighting the good fight was what kept people on the Democrat side, right?
And it was clear good versus evil, democracy versus authoritarianism.
And if that line gets blurred at all in terms of the effectiveness of fighting that and then you get the apathy, yeah, this could be decades of the wilderness.
And if you had something else that could replace that and get you that jolt that you're looking for, then great.
Let's do that.
And it's also, again, they waited too long.
Pelosi waited too long.
Schumer waited too long because sometimes you've got to throw people in the fire.
And then they will come out of that as leaders and the new generation that we're looking for.
But it's really hard to have that happen when they continue to stay in power.
And you can look at it on both sides.
Fucking Chuck Grassley is still out there, man.
Unbelievable.
He is still out there.
Dianne Feinstein's last year of her life was spent in torturous conditions where she should have just been covalescing at home.
All because they don't want to leave.
And they don't want to give anybody else a chance to do this.
And as a result, we're stuck with this.
And you have somebody who's young and Jeffries who shouldn't really be doing it either.
So, yes, we're in a real problem here.
And with the speed with which Trump is taking control of everything, it just has to be really concerning that we're not going to have a democracy the way we're used to having it ever again.
Well, I have a couple of questions for you and then maybe a follow-up, depending upon your answers.
Is Donald Trump an existential threat to the United States of America?
Sure.
Are the people that he represents, including the oligarchs who are carrying out an open coup against the United States of America, are they an existential threat?
Yeah, well, let's just put it that way.
Yeah, sure.
Is the Republican Party an existential threat?
Yeah.
Okay.
Is a growing international authoritarian movement that the United States of America has now allied itself with an existential threat?
Well, existential threats are what?
To democracy, to human dignity in life?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Is it fair to say the 2024 election was one of the most important elections we'll ever see in our lifetimes?
Yeah.
Okay.
How did the Democratic Party do in the Senate?
They lost seats.
How'd they do in the House?
Lost a couple, not a lot, but a little bit.
How'd they do with the presidency?
Okay.
Listen, Jared, she went from, you know, 30 points down to close to even.
Okay.
Anyway, the entire leadership should have resigned.
Period.
And by the way, we talked about this in the months leading up to November.
We said there is no cohesive strategy.
Nothing.
Every single candidate in the Democratic Party was just out there floating on an island.
These assholes couldn't even get up for one of the most important elections against authoritarian takeover and oligarchical takeover.
They couldn't even do it.
These people should have resigned the day after the election.
And everyone can say, well, you know, things are in chaos and they're all in flux.
We've got to have a steady hand.
Where did that steady hand get everybody?
It got us here.
And Chuck Schumer, I want to ask you a question, actually.
Do you think Chuck Schumer survives this?
Do you think that he is going to remain the minority leader in the Senate for the Democratic Party after this?
And by the way, any hesitation to answer that question then leads to further questions, which is, what in the hell is wrong with these people?
Right.
I hope not.
I hope he does not remain in power.
And I bet you this will continue to grow over the next several days into the point where, yes, they can replace him.
So I would give it a 70-30 chance he'll be replaced, you know, sooner than later.
I don't know that I believe that.
But at the same time, like, I hope that that is true.
You know, I keep hearing people, I was on a call a couple of days ago, and they said this was his Joe Biden moment.
I don't believe that.
I really, truly don't believe that this is the thing where there's going to be such an uproar that he's going to be ushered out whether he wants it or not.
But at the same time, the fact that I don't know if he's going to lose his leadership, I think it speaks to a larger rot within the party.
And, you know, this whole thing was such a disaster top to bottom.
And again, it wasn't just that they went ahead and helped the Republicans.
I expected them to do that.
They couldn't even come up with a decent excuse.
And we talked about it.
I think it was not Friday's episode.
It might have even been Tuesday's episode.
I was telling you, like, all I kept hearing out of the Democratic Party was the thing they were most concerned with wasn't helping the Republican Party pass this.
It was going to be the backlash.
That's all they cared about was whether or not people were going to be pissed.
And surprise, surprise, people are pissed.
Yeah.
Leadership.
They need to lead on this instead of continuing to react and react to these things and react in a really poor manner.
I like to say we process, not the results, but you have to look at the results at this point because, again, all-time low for approval rating for the Democrats at a time when the approval rating for the Republicans of their own party is skyrocketing.
Measles has an approval rating of 27%.
It does?
No, it's a joke.
Oh.
But you know what?
I don't know what's a joke anymore.
I don't either!
I don't either at this point.
Not much is funny.
So let's go ahead and go across the aisle.
Let's see what the current presidency is doing.
I'm prone to believe you is because there are a growing number of people who think that, yeah, just get the measles and you'll be immune for the rest of your life.
Seriously, that is a thing.
And having a wife who's a pediatrician, I can't talk about it anymore.
The anger that bubbles off from all of the stuff that deals with medicine.
I can't even imagine the anger that pediatricians have, that public health experts have, and quite frankly, that parents have.
I cannot imagine having a child who is being exposed to this.
Every day that they go to school, on top of the fear that their kids are going to be part of a mass shooting, or that they're going to be caught up in something that defunds public education.
Not to mention the day-to-day agony of having children in a public school that isn't funded correctly, that isn't staffed correctly, that has these draconian ideas.
It is one indignity after another, and it makes my heart hurt.
And remember, pediatricians are generally like the most patient people you'll find on earth.
And when people like that are losing their minds in a really angry way, it's a problem.
And this is probably the most, I mean, aside from the democracy thing that we're talking about, the health part of this could very well be more damaging than anything else.
Can you even imagine?
I know we were going to remove the next segment, but very quickly, Nick.
Can you even imagine in the midst of all of this bullshit, the economic downturn, the authoritarian overreach, the chaos, the brutality, the abuse, can you even imagine if the Democratic Party showed up as a cohesive unit of actual resistance?
Can you even imagine what that would look like at this point?
It feels so distant and just absolutely absurd to think that they would show up and do what they need to do, but they would...
They would not just keep their base.
They would grow their base.
And we would see a group of people who have backed away from the political process, who have stopped voting, who have stopped paying attention.
You could even get some of those people back.
And imagine if every day, and we're getting ready to go through the litany of bullshit that the Trump administration has put out.
Can you even imagine if the Democratic Party did what they were supposed to do and put forward an agenda item for a better future in contrast to everything that we're getting ready to go through?
You know what they're going to say is, oh, it's wonky.
They're not going to follow it.
It's too many words.
It's not whatever.
I mean, you know, but how about this?
It's like, well, what else would it look like then if it's not even just that?
It is a coordinated and systemic attack or shouting down of the president during an address to Congress, for instance, right?
It is dramatic visual, you know, scenes.
Of them being active in this process.
Imagine, imagine, seriously, instead of going out and saying, we have to save Medicaid, we have to save Medicare.
Medicare for all.
You know what?
You're going to try and get rid of Medicare and Medicaid?
Everybody's going to get it.
We're going to go ahead.
If you give us power and you put us in a position of authority, you are going to get that.
We're going to radically change healthcare.
Oh, you want to defund public education?
You want to get rid of the Department of Education?
Guess what?
You give us power, we're going to fully fund education in a way that we haven't seen in a generation.
Oh, by the way, Elon Musk, you want to go out there and you want to do all this horseshit?
Guess what's going to happen when we get in power?
You are going to be taxed to the point of oblivion.
And by the way, every single contract that you have, and if you think that Elon Musk for a moment wouldn't have a realization that all of his future profits and all of his future power would be put in jeopardy every time he opened his stupid fucking mouth, you think for a second that that wouldn't put in the back of his head if they said,
hey, guess what?
Keep going, man.
Because when we get in power, you're not even going to believe the tax rate.
Oh, corporations that want to work with Donald Trump and they want to go ahead and back off the DEI and civil rights legislation?
Guess what's going to happen?
You're going to be taxed into a fucking black...
Whole.
That's what you need to say.
And they have no desire whatsoever to say it because they are cowards.
They are collaborators, they are cowards, and they are in on this whole fucking thing.
Let me add one more.
You can say, we're going to create a new task force, and it's separate to the IRS, that's only going to be focused on people that make $100 million or more.
And these people don't fucking sleep.
Right, exactly.
Because right now, they're decimating the IRS.
They're getting less and less people who can do that job.
So fine, it's not the IRS.
It's a special task force that's designed to recoup the money that is owed legally by all those huge corporations and really rich people.
And that's it.
You can say it's $100 million.
And by the way, Nick, with interest.
With interest.
With interest from all these years.
And better yet, the first assignment that money has to go to as it's flowing in has to be Social Security.
You know?
And Medicare.
And Medicaid.
Absolutely.
Oh, and by the way, guess what?
You thought Joe Biden's anti-monopoly policies were bad?
You wait.
Like, we are going to go back for the last 40 years of administrative malfeasance.
We're going to get that money back.
You will not believe the penalty.
You're going to move to Burma, is what's going to happen.
If you want to even have a business anymore and you are going to pay all of your back taxes, but do you think Tesla is paying taxes?
No, it's not.
They're not paying taxes at all.
We're going to get those back taxes and we're going to charge interest.
And if you pay them, there's a real possibility that you might not end up in prison.
And we're getting ready to go through this litany of what Trump is pushing out.
That's how you actually answer this.
If you are going to push this further, if you are going to continue going down this road, we're going to go down this road too.
You have the choice.
Make your decision.
I got really excited just now.
Well, it's the way you fucking do this.
Yeah.
I have to admit, I was like, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Yeah, that's what you do.
So someone take this who's running, who's going to run, and use that as a platform.
I'm telling you.
There's about four other things I'm sure we can add to that that would really just be stuff that people would not be able to resist and get behind.
I mean, it's so obvious.
It's so obvious what needs to happen in this country and what the answer to all this is.
All right, we've got to go through this horseshit.
Everything that we've already been previewing, unfortunately.
Over the weekend, God, I can't believe some of these things I have to read.
Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 that allows wartime authority to the president to get rid of people in the country.
He claimed a threat from Venezuelan gangs and then deported hundreds of immigrants.
U.S. District Judge James E. Boosberg.
Oh, by the way, he sent them to El Salvador.
Isn't that weird that they made this deal with El Salvador for these dystopian hell prisons, and now they're going to go ahead and do that?
It's almost like they had this all set up.
U.S. District Judge James E. Bosberg blocked the deportation, except for, whoops, the administration didn't pay attention to it whatsoever, went ahead and deported these people, and now, as we're recording this on Monday...
The administration is supposed to go in front of the judge and has now said, we're not going to do that, and I don't think you have authority to call us in front.
We didn't do anything illegal.
You don't have jurisdiction.
I don't even know where to begin.
Let's start with the Act, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
A good year, by the way.
Oh, just a great win.
I mean, just a real summer of love.
Yeah.
Well, you know, the only way that you can invoke that is when there's been a declared war.
And remind me, who's supposed to be able to declare war in this country?
You know, I have lost track of the division of powers at this point, so I have to assume it's, what, the parliamentarian?
Yeah.
I mean, listen, Congress is supposed to, but they bypassed that successfully since...
I think even since Vietnam, Gulf of Tonkin was a declaration and not an act of war, right?
We never really declared.
Did we declare war in Korea?
Gosh, I hate to throw it on you, but like, I don't know.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We declared war in Korea, I believe.
Either way.
Either way, can I just, hold on a second, Nick.
I just want to point something out because I'm glad that you asked that question.
We are students of history.
We're talking about some of the most major wars that the United States of America has participated in in the post-World War II environment.
The fact that we're not even sure if there was an actual declaration of war, people just need to put that in the back of their head when they think, like, none of this is normal, and I can't believe we got here.
This is how we got here.
Yeah, absolutely.
Because Afghanistan, remember that whole sham, they didn't declare war either after 9-11.
The point was, of this, is that it's illegal.
Like, he's not supposed to do this.
Now, what are the odds?
Oh, let me be provocative here for a second.
You know, these violent gang members, or let me put this right, convicted violent gang members who are here illegally should be deported, right?
I have no problem with that.
Okay.
But you heard what I said, right?
I said convicted, illegal, or sorry.
Yeah, there's a judicial process for a reason.
Right, right.
So what's the likelihood that every single person on those planes actually is in the gang?
That's zero that I'm holding up to the camera for people watching on YouTube.
Zero.
So this would be like the movie, right, where some innocent guy is now in shackles.
I think the prison they sent him to is the worst one in the world that we know about?
One of the worst prisons in the world, yes.
Right.
It's got, I mean, it makes Les Mis look like, you know, a Disney movie.
And so, you know, what's going to happen to those people?
Now, again, the way this has been going, and we're looking at how horrible Doge has been, and how mistake-prone they've been for all these things.
Yes, it's pretty much, there's no possibility that every single person that they grabbed is in this game.
But again, there's no process to that anyway.
I'm not even sure how they know they identified.
They probably were like, last name?
Is your last name, you know, a Hispanic name?
And do you have, like, a tattoo?
Like, seriously, I don't know what other...
How can you not be more transparent in this process, at least?
Even if you put up a facade, wouldn't you do that?
I mean, most people would be concerned with it.
It also helps, again, that there's not an actual opposition party.
And also that there aren't institutions holding these people accountable.
I mean, hats off to this judge saying that you can't do it.
Meanwhile, there's an aircraft carrier that's going out.
Wait, now, let's address that, because the response from the Trump administration was the aircraft carrier was already en route and we're never going to turn back.
That's just a stupid person writing it.
They don't understand what that means, because it was not an aircraft carrier.
It was a plane, right?
Listen, I wish that we all knew.
I wish that we knew what this authoritarian government was doing and that they felt like they actually had to offer an explanation, but they don't.
And what's more, Nick, with this thing, and again, hats off to this judge for saying, hey, this is too much.
I think that there is a lot of...
Courage being shown by judges right now.
I don't think that it's going to work.
And I think right now we've seen, and we've covered it on this show, there is an advancing of a right-wing ideology that judges need to be impeached, they need to be harassed.
My sources have told me that the Heritage Foundation, the Claremont Institute and all these other think tanks and institutes that are in thrall with the billionaires, they are all working on a plan to try and impeach judges or create a systemic and systematic harassment
at this point to try and get them to stop getting in the way.
But what we're about to watch.
It's not just these mass deportation events in which innocent people undoubtedly are being caught up in the dragnet of this and are being marched in front of cameras by El Salvador for propaganda videos so that a bunch of right-wing chuds can get excited about the cruelty that's being carried out on them.
Innocent people undoubtedly are being put through that and are being made.
The next step in this is the move against the judiciary.
They're getting completely ready for it.
I have to assume as they're creating the system of impeachment and harassment, they're also trying to fast track probably one to 15 lawsuits to get in front of the Supreme Court.
And do not underestimate how the Supreme Court wants to be basically the only court in the United States of America.
Don't sit there and hope that Amy Coney Barrett or that John Roberts will save you.
I want to say this to everybody listening.
I always, we're talking about what's going on.
We're diagnosing it, but we want to talk about action.
When they come for the judiciary, that is the same as what we've been talking about with the Department of Education, what we've been talking about with disappearances.
These are the moments.
These are the fulcrum-type moments where you have to be ready to protest.
And for the record, we've already seen people protesting not just Tesla dealerships, but we've seen them protesting politicians.
This weekend, if people are looking for a glimmer, we saw around the world.
As hundreds of thousands of people rallied against their authoritarian governments, there is a growing desire to push back against this, and people need to be ready to push back whenever they eventually try and overrun the judiciary.
Oh, my goodness.
I can't agree more.
I mean, remember, like, when I'm questioning whether they got everybody who was a confirmed violent gang member of these things being deported, they just had a kidney transplant doctor deported who came back from visiting her parents in Lebanon.
And probably for this, just the unfortunate coincidence, she was in Lebanon.
They said, you're gone.
They deported her out of the country.
They took her cell phone, and she's someone who's, you know, it's not easy to find transplant doctors, okay?
This is what's happening.
We talked about what they can do, what the Democrats can do.
Why the hell isn't Schumer in Venezuela right now in front of that jail demanding the meeting?
You mean El Salvador?
Yeah, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting on Chuck Schumer to stand up for any of these people.
Because, and for the record, one of the reasons, Nick, is the same thing that we talked about with Mahmoud Khalil.
And I didn't even say it at the time when we were covering it.
Fuck Chuck Schumer for not standing up for one of his constituents.
Period.
I mean, just being like, we'll see how the process plays out.
The reason why they have picked the people that they have, including protesters at Columbia, including Khalil, and why they picked these people in order to fast-track this kind of thing is because they know that the Democratic Party is not going to stick up for people who are seen as,
quote-unquote, undesirable.
They're not going to use their political capital.
They're not going to be courageous about it.
And why?
Because they're...
That's it.
It's the same reason why the Democrats wouldn't stand up to going into Afghanistan.
They didn't want to be seen as weak on national security.
But if Marge Taylor Greene could be visiting January 6th people in prison, then I think that we need to have some of our representatives go down to El Salvador right now, demand access, and meet everybody and see whether these people are really gang members or not,
or anybody's innocent.
I think that's...
Bring the cameras and make it really public.
Again, that wouldn't be that hard.
I mean, unless they're worried.
And by the way, this could be as they've been worried that by the time they try and get back to the United States, that they won't let them, you know, could you could you see a thing where Eric Swalwell goes down there and like, you know, as to make sure whatever.
And when he comes back in the country, they're like, sorry, you can't come back in.
I'm fine with that.
I mean, I'm not fine with it happening.
I'm fine with what it would represent.
Right?
Like, if a Democratic leader tried to do something like that and was denied reentry into the country, I'm not worried about them.
They have the money to go ahead and take a hard right turn and go to a villa in France and wait the thing out.
But what does it do, Nick?
It highlights the fact that this thing is getting out of control.
It turns it into a controversy, and it signals to everybody that they're willing to stand up for something.
And for the record, one of the main problems...
I don't know.
Don't stand up for people.
They threw trans and gay people under the bus.
They told black people to go organize their way out of civil rights violations and voter protections.
They have a reputation for a reason that they're not going to put their necks on the line because they're too cowardly that they're going to be criticized.
And then put a bow on the other point you were making was that the judiciary is not going to have enough teeth to enforce their decisions either.
So that's a real problem with it.
Yeah, who's going to do it?
Who's going to enforce these decisions?
Period.
Yeah, I mean, I guess it's like the clerk of the court.
Like, yeah.
Some guys may be knocking on the White House.
Yeah, sorry, you've got to come with me.
Sorry, sir.
Yeah, I hate to do this.
It's like, forget it.
The Secret Service wouldn't let them pass the, you know, where everyone's always outside the gates.
So, at any rate, it's, yeah, this is really where we're starting to see the acceleration of the authoritarianism as the breakdown of the three co-eco branches of government is not, are not co-eco anymore.
And speaking of that breakdown, President Donald Trump went to the Department of Justice and he gave, I guess, charitably, I'll call it a speech.
And in front of the DOJ, he had this to say about his perceived enemies in the state.
You can't allow yourselves to be deflected.
You just can't let it happen.
You have such a higher calling.
And I believe that CNN and MSDNC, who literally write 97.6% bad about me, are political arms of the Democrat Party.
And in my opinion, they're really corrupt and they're illegal.
What they do is illegal.
It makes no difference how big a victory I had.
I can have the biggest victory in history.
It makes no difference what kind of a failure the other side has.
can't
So, Nick, we've heard this before with Donald Trump in front of a crowd in Hoboken.
Or, you know, in Alabama or something, and it would be a big applause line.
Just a reminder to people listening to this podcast, this was a speech in front of the Department of Justice, and I don't think it takes, like, an expert level of opinion to understand why he would say this in front of the DOJ.
This was like, he did a speech five years ago, right?
Yep.
I'm just being facetious now, right?
I mean, he's been saying this forever, but this is an escalation based on the location of it.
Right.
Well, I mean, and my point was that, like, okay, why is he bringing that up now?
And he tells you.
He's still upset.
That they reported on the numbers of who voted for him and who didn't, and he thought that he should have a much bigger margin of victory, and that's what he's mad about, to the point where, I mean, right, this part of the speech ends up being he wants their license revoked, I think, right?
Even though there is no FCC license for cable, isn't that the weird route?
Well, he wants their licenses revoked, but also, I mean, undoubtedly, he's telling the DOJ and, you know, his good friends at the FBI, he's telling them that he wants them investigated.
And basically, it's a shakedown.
It's telling them you're going to have your entire lives turned upside down.
And for the record, Nick, is CNN a left-wing network?
No!
Has it gotten progressively more conservative over the years?
It really, really has.
This is what's frightening about the whole thing.
Has MSNBC, although they're critics of Donald Trump, have they kind of moved on the political spectrum a little bit?
I mean, I barely even watch it.
I don't know.
You do tell me.
Yeah, they have.
And you know where it gets you?
Here.
It gets you to the point where the authoritarian president of the United States of America is telling the DOJ, and for the record, Nick, is the president of the United States of America supposed to be coordinating with the Department of Justice?
No.
Oh, okay, weird.
So whatever you do, whatever direction you go in, you're screwed.
So what should you do?
You should probably tell things like they are and quit normalizing this asshole because you're still going to get a target on your back no matter what.
It needs the good trouble.
You need more good trouble or any good trouble at this point, right?
Anything.
Anything.
Yeah, to get the headlines.
Because, again, the point I made even about Trump not having to spend that much money to win an election is because the shit he says just gets covered anyway.
He gets all this free publicity.
This is what the Democrats need.
It's not by going on my sports podcast, which, by the way, if you haven't, did I tell everybody that I had Josh Shapiro on my basketball pod?
No, you didn't mention that you talked to Josh.
I did not, or I did.
I don't care very much for Josh Shapiro, but you can go ahead.
Anyway, well, he came out, but remember, that week he was on Stephen A, and he came on my show, and you see a lot of other people now doing this and trying to get more on the sports thing to connect with the bros, which is actually not a bad idea.
They're kind of trying to do the parallel thing to being on Rogan and whatever, but I think you need to have a lot more literally just on the ground and much more dramatic scenes of confrontations with the other side, because otherwise we're not going to...
You're not going to get hurt.
You're going to get drowned out, and it's going to end up being what we have now.
So in another weird little moment over the weekend, Donald Trump has said that President Joe Biden's pardons of the January 6th committee were not legal.
In a statement, he said, quote, The pardons that Sleepy Joe Biden gave to the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs and many others are hereby declared void, vacant, and of no further force or effect because of the fact that they were done by auto-pin.
Trump here was saying that this entire thing, null and void, the auto-pin is a pretty regular way for the President of the United States of America to sign things.
But in this case, he's just going to head and pretend that the pardons that we told everybody was a bad idea in the first place.
They don't really matter, so thanks for playing the game, I guess.
Turns out, though, in the Constitution, there is nothing about a signature on the pardon itself anyway.
So this whole thing is ridiculous.
What is an auto-pen?
Do you know what an auto-pen is?
Yeah, it's an auto-pen.
You know, now I'm imagining telling the Founding Fathers and showing them an auto-pen and their dumb, racist, sexist, classist asses just dying.
Just like, just wizardry, and then they just pass out, you know, at the ripe old age of like 25. Well, wait, no, Ben Franklin probably would start scribbling.
Oh, Ben Franklin would be very excited, yes.
That is true.
So, yeah, I'm picturing like a robot arm that kind of moves in a way that makes the signature robot.
It's not a robot.
I appreciate the excitement about the robots.
And for the record, there was a ruling in 2005 by Bush's legal counsel that you can sign these things with AutoPin.
But I just want to point out, just because I'm the guy who does this, Nick, this was just a legal opinion by a presidential administration.
It really doesn't matter when you go down that road.
You do all these legal orders.
You do all these memos.
They can simply be undone.
And so, deep down, going back to what I was saying in the beginning, it was a bad idea to give these pardons because it gave the illusion that these people had done something wrong.
And lo and behold, here we are, and it's really probably not going to matter, and he probably will get away with voiding these things.
Well, let's just hear from Adam Kinjinger, who had a response to this, and I think it's kind of curious.
We'll talk about it on the other side.
So I just saw that Trump is, like, threatening the January 6th committee again.
Listen, this dude knows, he knows that this is, like, the thing that embarrasses him.
He won't admit it embarrasses him because he's trying to, like, pretend like he didn't do anything.
He's obsessed.
He's more obsessed with, like, me and Liz Cheney than his frickin' golf score.
Hey, Trump, bring it on, dude!
You weak, whiny, tiny man who, by the way, I saw a picture of you this weekend.
You're hiking up your pants now to really just below your man boobs and you're sweating so much.
Like, looking pretty bad there.
But bring it, man.
Like, stop with all the big mouth talking stuff.
You're a grown man.
You don't talk like one, but you're a grown man.
Come on, dude.
Bring it.
Okay, I got two quick things before we get into this.
One, can we just stop it with Kinzinger?
He fucking sucks.
Let's stop body shaming people.
The problem with Donald Trump is not what his body is like or how he wears his clothes.
Also, Kinzinger is just an asshole.
I hate that he has anything to do with this.
The second thing, if I was made dictator of the United States of America...
Five to ten year moratorium on people filming rants in their cars.
Let's be done with this shit.
Why do we keep doing it?
It's so, ugh, I hate it.
Make a video in your car.
I don't care.
Make a meme in your car.
Announce something in your car.
Quit making political videos in your car.
And on top of that, let's quit Adam Kinzinger.
But other than that, I'm glad somebody calls him out for being a small tiny man.
I thought you were going to lead with the rant in the car thing, for sure.
Oh, my God.
It's weird.
I don't know.
I guess people are in their cars a lot.
You know what he's doing, though.
He knows that he can get under his skin by doing the fat shaming and describing his look.
That sucks.
Now, what I'm worried about, though, and listen, I want to give him props for destroying his political career to stand up and be part of the January 6th committee.
He knew he was going to be done as soon as he agreed to do it.
I won't say...
The same thing about Liz because what she stands for, but at least with him in my own home state of Illinois, we'll take him at his word on that one.
I don't know.
I'll throw that out there for him.
But I'm worried about him now, Jared.
Now I'm worried that by him doing that, he really will have the full force of the government pressed on top of him when he might not have done before.
Now, the next question I have for you then is, are they going to then play this out?
Are they just saying it and like, ah, we're going to tweak them a little bit with the whole, we revoke them even though we know it's not legal.
Do you think that they're going to investigate or have them subpoenaed or have them arrested?
I've been following Donald Trump in this movement for 10 years.
And you know what I've learned, Nick?
Listen to them.
Listen to what they say.
Period.
They're serious.
Yes.
I do think that they will go after.
And for the record, and this is...
This is going to be a little bit of tough medicine, but I'm going to say it anyway.
If you join the January 6th committee, you should have done so with the full understanding that you were putting yourself in a position where if this asshole got back in power, that you would have the full power of Donald Trump focused on you.
So as a result, yeah, I do expect him.
To have some legal problems, and I do expect them to have the focus of the Trump administration on them.
Maybe if they're arrested, maybe if they're tried, maybe if they're put in jail, maybe that will get some sort of focus on this thing about what's going on.
And once more, going back to the idea that a Democrat could leave the country and not be allowed in, going to the idea that a Democratic Party official should have tried to go into these offices where Doge was taking over the government and gotten arrested, or at least gotten escorted out, and not just said, thank you,
security.
We'll be on our way.
It creates an actual situation where people can see what is happening.
And so, yeah, I do think that they're going to go after them.
Wow.
It's chilling.
And, you know, and by doing that, I mean, maybe he wants it.
He's willing to.
He's got enough people behind him that can defend him.
But, yeah, I'm worried that he'll be woken up in the middle of the night with some sort of weird, you know, warrant for his arrest or something.
And they'll be, you know.
They'll walk him out of there and yank him off to some prison somewhere, which, you know, maybe he wants to get there.
He's like, let's get to that part now.
Let's get this out on the table and really make it clear to everybody what this means.
Maybe that's what he's trying to do, but man, I am worried for him.
Speaking of Doge, the Seattle Times, through an investigation by reporter Danny Westneat, found a guy named Ned Johnson, an 82-year-old resident that Doge had designated as deceased.
They cut off his benefits, and because they were trying to get back, quote-unquote, false.
They withdrew $5,201 from his bank account, his entire life savings.
He has gotten that money back, but has yet to receive any payments from Social Security since then.
This is one of those moments where we start to realize that there are actual effects.
We've talked about Doge.
We've talked about the money.
We've talked about the corruption.
We've talked about the overreach and the coup.
This is one of those moments where we have actually found a human being.
One solitary living human being who's just trying to go about his life, an 82-year-old man who had his entire life turned upside down because Elon Musk and a bunch of people who are probably still looking for dates to prom are going in, rewiring the government,
and basically running roughshod in their own coup.
It is truly, truly frightening.
I mean, we just had another report from Farenthold that I watched where they're already going line by line by all the supposed savings they're making from Doge, and it's all a sham.
Accounting is, you need to get a degree in accounting for a reason, right?
It's complicated.
You've got to understand how you add and subtract.
They don't have this expertise, Jared, and it's not transparent like Musk keeps assisting.
In this kind of thing, there's probably another Gary, what was his name?
The same name as this guy.
And, you know, from 50 years ago, they thought, okay, he's dead.
And there's no amount of checking this at all.
And it was amazing that he got the money back.
He kind of cut through that part of the story pretty quickly.
But the hoops he had to jump through, it's truly heroic.
And remarkable story for him to be able, he had to go to the office of Social Security locally, which has been decimated and however anyone's working there anyway.
Line, you know, so many people out the door waiting and he somehow jumped in the line, told them what happened and they were able to fix it.
But like, people don't have that ability to do that on a grand scale.
You know, I find it all part of the process here of we're wondering if they deported the right people to El Salvador.
We're wondering if they even get this right, if they can get anything with Doge right.
It's just these are supposed to be the kind of things that you cannot get wrong.
Right?
If you're dealing with things like people's savings, you cannot get it wrong.
If it takes a little bit longer to make sure, great.
But these are the things.
There should be no tolerance for this.
And instead, Musk gets to say on TV, we're going to get all this stuff wrong and maybe we'll fix it later.
Nick, did you have a grandpa?
I did.
I had two.
Did you have a grandma?
I had two of those too.
Did you care about them?
I did.
Did you love them?
I love them.
What would you have felt if you would have seen The United States government and the richest man in the world abuse one of your grandparents?
Well, I would be livid, but they're also preying upon, oh, the government's screwing up again, right?
We've had that for so long as well, and with the whole Reagan eight words, nine words that you're all afraid of.
So it's mixed, right?
Because some people might even just be like, shrug and be like, ah, this is what happens all the time anyway, right?
So if the richest man in the world would have stolen the life savings of your grandfather, would you have been pissed off?
Oh, I would have been to no end.
Okay, going back to Chuck Schumer, and unfortunately we've got to talk about him.
And maybe this is happening right now.
I would love to be wrong.
Why isn't Chuck Schumer, along with Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell of Washington, why are they not in front of a camera right now with this 82-year-old man?
An 82-year-old man who was just going about his life, just living, trying to make the best out of his final years, when all of a sudden the richest asshole in the known world dipped his grubby, stupid little fucking hands into his bank account and took away everything that he had.
Why are we not looking at this person right now?
Why is this not what's happening?
Because, quite frankly, this is an abominable action.
And it makes it very apparent that there are real human consequences to something.
For the record, you talked about what Fahrenheit was going through with this investigation.
You start talking about billions of dollars?
You start talking about millions of...
That's hard.
You know what I mean?
It's hard to wrap your head around that.
And think about all this Byzantine, labyrinthian-type movement of the federal government.
You start putting human faces on the actual suffering, and you start actually affecting things.
I mean, imagine Donald Trump bringing a pediatric cancer patient to his speech, and then making it a win when the Democrats don't clap and stand up for that little kid, right?
When all it was was a complete exploitation of a kid when they're cutting funding for pediatric cancer, right?
At the same time, they're trying to, you know.
And then here, they don't have any sense of, oh, we can do the same thing, although this would actually be in earnest, right?
They're actually standing up for someone and trying.
You know, where's Elizabeth Warren for all the matter on that one, right?
I mean, like, and whatever, if the answer is, oh, she's doing this, whatever, it's not public enough.
You know, it's not enough.
It's not bombastic enough.
It's not dramatic enough.
It's not any of those things.
And it's remarkable that they're going to maybe pretend to be like the adults in the room.
But this is what you've got to do now if you want to play in this sandbox.
Speaking of Doge, Nick, last week, I didn't talk about it, but there was an outbreak of just absolutely apocalyptic weather.
It was wild.
Absolutely.
It was some of the worst wind I've ever seen.
And that storm system produced multiple tornadoes.
It produced floods, blizzards, dust storms, you name it.
Just a wild outbreak of weather that killed over 40 people in a climate change-induced disaster.
There are now questions being asked about whether or not DOGE's actions have hurt the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA for short.
And on top of that, good news, Nick.
As climate change gets worse, and according to my notes, it has not been solved yet, and there are going to be more disasters to come.
We're also looking at NOAA possibly having what's left of their unit being reduced by 20%.
It's unfathomable.
Remember, Trump made a whole political thing out of the hurricane that hit North Carolina.
And made it sound like, oh, they're not sending any money because they didn't vote for me.
They didn't vote for, yeah, for Trump.
They're going to punish us.
And it was like, it was disgusting how they did that, right?
And here we are again where you actually could point out that this is the result of what the draconian cuts are from those agencies.
And, you know, the Democrats are like, oh, we can't do that.
We can't politicize this tragedy, this and that, whatever.
But it's like, there's no question.
And, by the way, I did check on this.
It's not unheard of to have this kind of tornado in March.
It's early.
And that tells you a lot as well.
Having a very severe tornado hit like this in mid-March like this is the kind of thing that we're going to end up seeing probably more and more.
It'll be pushed all the different normal times of year we see this are going to get weird.
And that's going to lead to depths because people aren't prepared thinking, oh, it's early.
We don't have tornadoes like that yet.
And then here we are.
Yeah, and it's going to increase the frequency as well as the freakish nature of all of this.
I mean, you know, we saw people die over the past week in dust storms.
I mean, like, we are reaching a level of escalation when it comes to climate change where this sort of just bizarre off-the-map type stuff is going to continue.
And as it does, we have made, listen, the United States of America has not done a lot right.
Over the past few decades.
You know what?
One of the things that's actually done well is predicting weather and getting alerts out to people to let them know what is happening and that they need to take shelter.
And if we see that along with the worsening effects of climate change, and I've told everyone...
This is literally mystification.
I always expected, when I was a kid and I heard about climate change and I watched it as an adult, I always expected eventually we would come to our senses and then we would, you know, do something about it.
Little did I know the true nature of capitalism until I got older and I realized, oh no, they're going to profit off of it and basically they're going to create systems that is going to hide what's going on as things continue to get worse.
This is criminal.
And, you know, they're continuing to say that people haven't died because of their actions.
I don't think that we have any idea how many people have died so far because of what Trump and company have done.
And that's with USAID.
That's with all these agencies that are being absolutely screwed with.
The amount of death and suffering that is going to happen because of these people, if they continue unabated and there isn't an actual resistance or an actual movement of people pushing against them, it's going to be unfathomable, to be honest.
Yeah, and again, it's what happens when we have people in charge who have no shame.
And if you don't have shame, you don't really have a conscience.
Yeah, yeah.
And so this is just par for the course.
Oh, some people are going to die.
Oh, that's really too bad.
Sorry.
But, you know, it'll be a lot better eventually.
And again, these are the things you cannot make a mistake about, right?
These are the things that, you know, if you're releasing a warning or you're studying this and making sure you have to get it right.
And I feel like that no longer applies anymore.
And that's Musk.
I mean, Trump as well.
But Musk is this weird influence over everything now where it's like they don't give a crap if they break anything or they affect people and torture people or kill people in the name of some weird nebulous future that's going to be really rosy for everybody.
Yeah, I have a hard time believing that their future is going to be rosy.
Just a reminder before we finish this episode, everybody, I just want to state again, based on everything that we've talked about, talk to your coworkers, talk to your community, talk to the people around you, be ready to get in the streets.
I'm telling you, this thing is escalating.
We will be back with the Weekender episode on Friday.
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