Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss Trump as the mad king, his cognitive client ever more apparent as he made an appearance on Meet The Press and admits he doesn't know if he has to follow the constitution. Plus, he wants to re-open Alcatraz after watching the Eastwood movie, while removing funding to NPR and PBS.
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Next time I'm here with my friend, my co-host, Nick Housman.
How you doing, bud?
I am.
I'm good.
I'm good.
I'm just, you know, running on fumes a little bit with all these games.
But every day goes by to be less possible to watch, and I'll be even better.
You know, for all these years that we've been doing this show, during the NBA playoffs, you are split.
Like having to do not just two jobs, but you're having to do two jobs with a lot of intensity.
And now the political world is completely on fire as you're having to do this other thing.
You're doing a great job.
But as a person who has like three jobs, I know what that feels like.
Well, let me ask you this.
Does this sound familiar to you?
When you use video evidence...
To explain how a rule works, and then you have people who just descend upon you and insist that you are not saying what you are saying with video weapons.
My friend, welcome to modern America.
Yeah, it's wild, Jared.
It's wild out there.
And a lot of what we're going to be talking today is about how the American brain is absolutely cooked.
And it's not just in politics.
It is, like, top to bottom.
We have an absolutely full show, as always.
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We appreciate everyone's trust and faith and support.
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It keeps us editorially independent.
Nick, speaking of cooked brains, we unfortunately have to talk about the President of the United States of America.
The Commander-in-Chief, he welcomed in Kristen Welker from Meet the Press in an absolutely...
Stunning interview.
And Nick, we're going to go through parts of this, and it's not just to talk about this man's mental state, but also to get into exactly what is it we're dealing with on the other side of this oligarchical coup.
But before we begin, Nick, can you imagine if Joe Biden or any other Democrat would have given an interview like this?
I mean, I can imagine it.
What would have happened on the other side?
Right, right.
And, you know, the other side would probably be doing what we're doing, if not worse, for calling for impeachment and all those different things.
And then we'd be right where we are.
And our media would never stop talking about it.
Right.
And they shouldn't.
And they shouldn't stop talking about it.
And this first clip that we're going to hear.
You know, sometimes Donald Trump, he lies all the time, he obfuscates all of that.
But Nick, one of the incredible things about having Donald Trump as a political leader in this country is sometimes he will say something that is so clear and reveals so much about him and how he approaches his job and his responsibilities.
This one has to be heard to be believed.
Your Secretary of State says everyone who's here, citizens and non-citizens, deserve due process.
Do you agree?
I don't know.
I'm not a lawyer.
I don't know.
Don't you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as president?
I don't know.
I have to respond by saying again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said.
Nick, I never thought...
And, you know, I've heard everything from this guy.
I've probably watched almost every second of public appearances and public remarks he's ever given.
I am still stunned to hear the President of the United States of America admit in a taped interview on TV that he doesn't know if he's supposed to uphold the Constitution.
I mean, they make it easy on him because when he first assumes the office, they make him, what's it called again?
You have to take an oath.
Ah.
So, and he's done it a couple times now.
So he should, you know, remember that, you know, at the very least, if he doesn't know the specific law and cases and stuff like that, he could at least say, well, of course, you know, it's my duty to uphold the Constitution.
That's the first thing I have promised to do.
And instead, the revelation is my lawyers are sneakily trying to figure out back doors to all of this thing.
And we've been doing this for years, and that's why we're also ahead of the game now.
That's exactly right.
And I think this speaks to the larger animating influence of all of this.
And I want to make it clear, as we're talking about Trump, what we're actually talking about is the interaction between this very, very focused attack on democracy and liberal democracy that's being carried out by the wealth and oligarchical classes and how that interacts with Trump and why Trump makes the perfect figurehead for this.
And it comes down to this, Nick.
First of all, they needed someone who was shameless enough to be the president and not give a shit about the Constitution, to the point where he would even say it out loud.
The second part is that he is the embodiment of the authoritarian right wing's worldview, which is, laws are important, but they're important because you need to restrain other people.
It has nothing to do with me.
It has nothing to do with what I want to do.
When I want to do it, all of that stuff is negligible.
But those other people over there, they are bound by laws.
They are bound by the restrictions of the Constitution.
And the privileges of the Constitution can be revoked if I want to revoke them.
And that's what we have here.
He came and go on the record saying he's going to uphold the Constitution.
Oh, yeah.
And you know what's interesting about that is that obviously there's a lot of people in the country who are in the cult, and they like to hear that kind of thing.
Love it.
Because, again, they're convinced that obviously the other side would do this as well.
And like Newsflash, the other side had control of Congress for 40 years, had control of the Senate for a lot of that too.
And they weren't trying to like subvert the Constitution.
You know, like that doesn't really work as well.
But the other thing that's interesting to me is that there is a distinctly American...
The notion of, you know, feeling like you're fighting against the oppressive forces, and you can kind of go and cheat, and that's actually lauded.
So, like, to reference, you know, Star Trek II or whatever, actually they show in whatever the newer Star Trek, the Kobayashi Maru test, Captain Kirk is lauded for being able to go back the night before the test and, like, rig it so he can win it.
Think about that.
He's fucking cheating, should have been thrown out of the academy, not gotten anywhere near a captainship of a ship.
And here he is being like a lead on a TV show for it.
So that I feel like is what he's tapping into a little bit as well.
And people respond to that in a way that seems outrageous to me.
Well, you know, when I was younger, back when I was in rural Indiana, and I was around a lot of people who would come to support Donald Trump and MAGA and be part of the cult that we're talking about now.
There was something that I saw back then and I heard, and a lot of it was around the Iraq War.
It was basically a genocidal vision of wiping out Arabs because of what happened with 9-11.
But what also occurred, Nick, and I don't know if you've heard this, this might be one of those cultural differences that we have based on where we came from.
There would be so much talk about how due process...
Wasn't necessary.
And if somebody had committed a crime, if they had heard someone committed a very specific crime, that they should just be summarily executed.
That no trial, no jury, no, you know, any of that.
You don't go to jail, you get killed.
Which is the animating influence, you know, of lynch mobs.
That's exactly what America has had for a very long time, that sort of vigilante justice.
So when they see this, they work from the same basis.
They would want a judge and a jury in a trial, right, if they got accused of a crime.
But for other people that they see as being subhuman or being dangerous, they don't want that.
And they're fine with someone playing these games.
And I think another difference here, and I've sort of hinted at this, and I've said it a couple times, I want to say it again in the midst of this.
And you know what?
I think you've agreed on multiple times.
Our Constitution is outdated.
It is.
And it needs reworked.
There are multiple things that need to happen with our Constitution.
I don't see it as a sacrosanct document.
I don't see it as a religiously inspired thing, right?
And I can sit here and tell you that a lot of what's in there is absolute horseshit that needs to be done away with.
But it's the difference of doing it for the right purpose.
And what's wrong here is that Donald Trump will use the restraints of the Constitution when he needs to, and he'll move beyond them.
When he wants to and when he needs to.
So what we have here is that malleability that you were just talking about.
And that's when the authoritarian sort of push happens.
And then liberal Democrats are fighting with their hands tied behind their back because they can't fight the legitimacy of the office while they're being restrained by the document and the ideas that these people don't give a shit about.
That's a really great way to put it.
And I also think that, like, part of the restraints that are built in as this Constitution ages year over year and becomes intractable with other parts of it, but it does act as a restraint from this.
Like, this will slow down people who want to take advantage.
Now, I know it sucks when there's a really good reason where we want to get stuff done that will help as many people as possible, but it does act, and we did see it at least in the first term, you know, sort of be effective in slowing this whole thing down, and not even intentionally.
But the people you're talking about who, when you were growing up, like, they're aware of how often people are accused of horrible crimes falsely, right?
Like, they are aware of that.
You know, I think that they're, and again, this is part of that authoritarian mindset.
That happens to them.
When they get accused of a crime, it's not true, and that's when it's a rigged system.
And Trump's a perfect example of this.
Trump has been charged with dozens of felonies.
He's been convicted of felonies.
But when he got held accountable for that, it was lawfare.
Right?
That was fake news.
It was a witch hunt.
When it happens to other people, even people who haven't committed any crimes, 70, what is it, 72% of the people that were disappeared had not committed a crime or been charged with a crime.
That, in that case, they are not, you know, accused of something they didn't do.
He knows in his heart that they did do it because they're out there and he's in here.
Yeah.
January 6th, people are really, you know, encapsulate that.
Absolutely.
Even people like Mike Pence and even people like Mike Johnson had said, oh, well, of course we're not going to pardon, you know, the really severe offenders who really did damage and injured police officers.
And yet they did.
Right?
Because you can't be bothered by going case by case to look at this thing like, you know, a law-abiding person would or would want to actually cared for people.
They break the eggs and they shrug and they say, whoops, oh well, you know, and that's going to happen down the line for every single thing.
Everything.
It's frightening that, you know, we have these regulations that are being pulled apart because people are going to die.
And speaking of the Constitution, here is our next clip from this interview, which has its own constitutional tie-in, but also there are more dynamics to this.
Here is Donald Trump being asked about the possibility of serving a third term.
Trump Organization is selling hats that say Trump 2028.
Yeah.
Are you seriously considering a third term, Mr. President, even though it's prohibited by the Constitution, or is this about staying politically viable?
I will say this.
So many people want me to do it.
I have never had requests so strong as that.
But it's something that, to the best of my knowledge, you're not allowed to do.
I don't know if that's constitutional that they're not allowing you to do it or anything else, but there are many people selling the 2028 hat.
But this is not something I'm looking to do.
I'm looking to have four great years and turn it over to somebody.
Ideally, a great Republican, a great Republican to carry it forward.
But I think we're going to have four years, and I think four years is plenty of time to do something really spectacular.
He doesn't know if it's in the Constitution, Nick.
Not sure, but he looks to the right.
His tell when he's lying is when he glances to the right, maybe up a little bit.
Well, I'll tell you this.
I would bet everything that I have that Donald Trump has never even so much as glanced at the Constitution.
Right.
Yeah, for sure.
But here's the thing.
I don't think he's lying on the other part.
I do think that it's possible.
I mean, I'm kind of...
Here's the thing that Welker didn't do, is she needed to say, one of your spokespeople, and you cannot tell me that Bannon is still in the inner circle, is saying over and over again that they are specifically working on it.
Their lawyers are doing this.
They're going to make it happen where he will be...
Trump said it!
It's not even Steve Bannon.
Trump said it recently.
We talked about it on the show.
He said we have one plan, which is the possibility of him being the VP and having it handed over to him.
And he said my lawyers and advisors are looking at other plans.
Do you remember?
They said, what are the other plans?
And he said, I'm not going to comment on that.
Yeah, absolutely.
So, right, right, right.
So, that's another failure here when they don't seem to be able to call him on this stuff.
And you know what?
I'm going to reverse what I said because it's not – he's been coached to appear as – not empathetic, as – He's telling the truth as well as he possibly could ever could, which is not easy for anybody like that person.
So that's what's going on here, and they're trying to obfuscate until they get to that point.
And the tell here also is people want me to do it.
And I think that they've settled on a communication strategy, which is I don't want to break the law, I don't want to break the Constitution, but the people want it.
And that must be democracy, right?
And that, oh my God, it's so infuriating.
And I just want to put a fine point on this before I move on, Nick.
That happened.
He literally said that he was thinking about serving a third term and they were looking at it.
I think it happened two weeks ago.
I know time is weird now, but it was about two weeks ago that that happened.
And what do you see on every website, every newspaper, every magazine?
Trump has said that he's not looking to serve a third term.
He has been aided and enabled by this intentional media amnesia.
Like, you can't have this one thing where he says this and they have had a strategy, like you put it, that they have been able to obfuscate this and massage this.
If Donald Trump is alive...
And he isn't in prison and he hasn't been, like, overthrown by 2028.
If there are elections, you better damn well believe he's going to try and run again.
And we can't keep doing this thing.
It's like baby peekaboo.
It's object impermanence.
It's like he says one thing and suddenly the media...
I wouldn't be shocked if there's, like, an article that comes out tomorrow when this, you know, gets released that's like, oh, this is where Trump finally becomes president.
It's the same damn thing over and over again, and it's so delusional.
It's fucking infuriating is what it is.
Right, and he can back pocket it when he needs to change the subject for something else, and he'll do the all caps tweet about it or whatever, or drop some dumb meme with it, like him being the Pope.
That's all he has.
He knows how to stir up outrage to distract, right?
And that's why Democrats, like, you know, that's why a normal sane person has never done this before, right?
Because it's insanity what they're doing, and it's in some weird way they've leashed it.
They've caught it under control to understand how they can make it work for them.
And that control, it's funny you mention that.
That control, it lasts for a few days.
You know what I mean?
It's almost like getting ready for the big game.
The big game was going on NBC and talking to moderates.
That's what it was.
The reason he did this interview is not because he likes hanging out with Kristen Welker.
He did this interview because a bunch of moderates are getting really freaked out about some crazy shit that he's been doing.
And so he needed to go out and tell them to keep their powder dry.
And, like, that lasts for a couple of days, and then all of a sudden you get into the next bad shit thing.
All right, let's see what Trump has to say about the economy, which, let me check my notes.
It's not good.
But what people don't understand is, and this is a lot, the country eats the tariff.
The company eats the tariff.
And it's not passed along at all.
Well, some CEOs are saying they're going to have to pass it on.
So how do you deal with those CEOs?
How do you deal with those CEOs?
China is eating the tariffs right now.
What do you say to those CEOs who are saying, we might have to pass this on to the consumers?
Well, they say that because maybe it's to their advantage to say it.
Will you punish them?
No, because you know what?
I want them to build plants in the United States.
That way they don't have any tariffs.
See, tariffs will, and not only will, look at what's happened.
In two months, we're close to $9 trillion of investment.
We've never been anywhere near that.
Nick, did he say anything even remotely accurate at all?
No.
No.
And by the way, he says that China's going to eat the tariff and the company bringing the products in are eating the tariff.
Do you know what China's eating?
China's eating our lunch.
Yeah, right.
But the problem is, at the very end, he sneaks in there and goes, they may raise prices, right?
So he's like, why are you even acknowledging that when you're trying to say they're not?
And it's really, really indicative of just...
Somebody in the 80s got into his brain, probably the Russians, somebody that convinced him of this.
And it's like, you know, if I pay you money and you give me a product, that's technically a trade deficit, but we're each benefiting from this thing.
So whatever he's thinking that, like, you know, that you need to have some sort of weird balance between the two.
And again, the Chinese culture itself would prohibit this.
They don't want to buy American stuff.
You're not going to be able to force them to buy American stuff.
And we've already seen that they don't take kindly to disrespect like he's doing.
And they are going to fuck us.
They already are!
We're a couple of days away from some shelves having absolutely nothing on them.
Yeah.
That's imminent.
That's the other thing.
We're moving around.
I went to the store the other day to buy extra toilet paper and stuff, and it's like, nothing's changed.
No one seems to be even paying attention to this yet, but it's going to turn very quickly, unfortunately.
It's going to turn very, very quickly.
And all of the stats here show that there's going to be some really rank shit.
And by the way, it turns out it's probably not a good idea to have a president of the United States of America that hasn't stepped in a grocery store in, I don't know, 40 years?
Maybe, maybe more at this point?
Grocery is some, like, novelty thing that no one ever uses anymore.
Like, that's how frightening this is.
This is $9 trillion of investment, like building factories and whatnot.
That's just a complete and utter fabrication of a lie, more than worse than anything you could have even heard from Doge when they're making up their numbers.
I mean, this is really just when he's making up his own personal worth and whatever he feels.
You know, again, this is not what a sane person...
Would say or even think, you know?
No, and speaking of insane people, I mean, the president has so many great ideas.
And I think that this is like, this right here is going to be an encapsulation of how Donald Trump sees the world.
And by the way, the distractions you talk about, but also some of the craziest stuff.
This is an idea that he came up with after this interview.
And yeah, it's a real humdinger.
How did you decide to reopen Alcatraz?
Can you walk us through that decision?
Did I say what?
To reopen Alcatraz.
How will you use it?
How did you come up with the idea?
Well, I guess I was supposed to be a movie maker.
We started with the movie making, it will end.
I mean, it represents something very strong, very powerful in terms of law and order.
Our country needs law and order.
Alcatraz is, I would say, the ultimate, right?
Alcatraz, Sing Sing, and Alcatraz, the movies.
But it's right now a museum, believe it or not.
A lot of people go there.
It housed the most violent criminals in the world, and nobody ever escaped.
One person almost got there, but they, as you know the story, they found his clothing rather badly ripped up, and it was a lot of shark bites, a lot of problems.
Nobody's ever escaped from Alcatraz, and it just represented something.
It's strong having to do with law and order.
We need law and order in this country.
And so we're going to look at it.
Some of the people up here are going to be working very hard on that.
And we had a little conversation.
I think it's going to be very interesting.
We'll see if we can bring it back in large form, add a lot.
But I think it represents something.
Right now it's a big hulk that's sitting there rusting and rotting.
You look at it, it's sort of, you saw that picture that was put out, it's sort of amazing, but it sort of represents something that's both horrible and beautiful and strong and miserable, weak.
It's got a lot of qualities that are interesting, and I think that...
All right, I had to leave it out there later, because when he starts listing horrible and strong and weak, this is a crazy person.
You literally heard President shit for brains here.
The only reason that this is happening is because Donald Trump, like many people in this country whose brain is completely cooked, he has a complete inability to tell fact from fiction in any way, shape, or form.
And it remains to be seen if he redoes Alcatraz.
There are reasons why it's a quote-unquote rusting hulk of a building.
If he manages to do this, it's going to happen because Donald Trump only cares about images.
He doesn't care about substance.
He's not intelligent.
He's not curious.
He likes the idea of Alcatraz being reopened because it's a symbol for him.
And never mind.
Nick, do you know why Alcatraz closed?
I think because they couldn't feed...
The infrastructure had fallen apart so much, right?
Because of the nature, and I can't believe I'm getting ready to do this remedial work, for people who don't know, this is an island prison off of San Francisco.
And because it was off the coast of San Francisco and on an island, it was prohibitively expensive to keep it open.
As a matter of fact, to run Alcatraz, and it only existed for 29 years, the entire reason why they shut it down is, Nick, It costs three times the normal amount of a prison.
It didn't work.
It wasn't cost prohibitive.
And here we have President Shit for Brains remembering through his dying brain and cells, he remembers hearing about this and watching a movie about it.
That's it.
Right.
So, by the way, you may not know this, but it's my favorite thing to do when I go to San Francisco.
And I've gone the tour at least three times.
So I should know even more about what you're talking about, why I closed, than I do.
I'm blanking a little bit, but I love going there.
I don't even know why.
As a kid, I went there, and then it's fun to go back.
But, yeah, the thing is, there are buildings that are literally just a facade.
Like, that's how much it's fallen apart and could no way operate in any shape or form as anything, like, that would house people now.
You're talking about having to just demolish it and rebuild it, and you're talking about having a huge body of water in between the land and where they're going to build it.
So it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars just to build.
It would take probably three times longer than a regular person to build anyway.
And like he said in the very beginning, he said something about movies, right?
By the way, did he even hide it?
He can't even hide it.
He wants to tariff movies that are going to be made outside of the United States.
So basically, I think what he really meant, and again, this is how stupid he is and how insane he is, I think he's trying to limit American productions from going out of the country to film.
But what he ends up saying is they're just going to tariff foreign films coming in to be distributed here, which means, well, we won't have any foreign films because I got a newsflash for it, Jared.
Foreign films don't do, like, amazing business here as it is.
And if you're going to add 100% tariff, people will simply not bring foreign films.
But is there another way that we can consume movies pretty quickly these days, Jared?
It turns out that you don't need to put them on a container ship.
Yeah.
You don't need to have reel and reel and switch the reels every 20 minutes.
He's insane, but I have no doubt people were looking through it to figure out what movie it is that got him on this.
Because remember, we did have a stretch of movies that had island prisons.
It's the Birdman of Alcatraz.
You think it's Clint Eastwood?
Yeah, I think it's probably the Birdman.
Nick, I'll make another prediction.
As this dumb shit idea catches, and again, that's what we're talking about here and why we're going over this, is because of that relationship between having an...
This absolute unserious clown as the figurehead, and this very, very serious machinery that's taking over, these things rub together, right?
Most of the things that Trump talks about have been prepared painstakingly by authoritarians with an incredible amount of intelligence and diligence.
And yet this asshole is in front of a camera constantly.
And has a social media account where he just says things.
So eventually, that machinery comes into contact with this crazy shit.
That's what it is.
So here's my prediction.
If this catches hold, and it very well might, because what is the intention of the authoritarian machine?
It is to continue the carceral state and escalate.
That's the entire point of a lot of this stuff.
So there is a possibility that they'll run with it because President Shit for Brain said something.
Undoubtedly, if he talks about this more, he will start referencing Clint Eastwood.
And we will notice that he has lost the ability to tell the difference between real life and fictional entertainment.
He has no idea.
That's how lost and cooked this asshole is.
Now, let's speak about that for a second, because it's the spectacle and it's the fear that they want to instill in the electorate, right?
Yes.
That's what an authoritarian does.
And I actually, don't get mad at me, I asked Jack GPT, I said, what are the best ways to alleviate crime in America?
I'll give you an answer.
Social programs.
Say it again?
Social programs.
Right.
Eliminate precarity and have social programs.
And it listed seven or eight things.
And guess where on the list of horrible prisons that scare people from going in there?
I'm going to guess as bad as AI is that it wasn't on the list.
It was not on the list at all.
And I know and I can verify that everything else was.
And, of course, my...
This thing got closed.
It's not there anymore.
It's supposed to be.
But the idea that if we can get rid of the lead in paint and the water, seriously, it's a really big one.
It's security theater.
That's the entire point of this.
That's why we have law enforcement with the militarized weapons and tactics that they have.
Yes.
It makes people, quote-unquote, feel safer, but it actually doesn't address the problems that are taking place.
That's the entire point of Trump.
It has nothing to do...
with empirical data or logic.
It has everything to do with emotional intuition of people who are cooked.
That's it.
Because the bottom line is, people who are committing crimes aren't swayed by the fear, oh, I might go to prison for this.
It's generally because their situation is such that there really aren't many other choices for them to do that.
And if you can give them other choices through a variety of ways, especially improving schools and improving health, then you see a reduction of crime.
But man, forget about that, because what are we seeing from them?
That costs money.
And we're not going to spend any more money.
Well, don't spend money on useless shit like reopening Alcatraz.
Exactly.
That's it, because it's a whim.
Speaking of Trump and his whims and money, Nick, we have a whole host of things that have been happening off camera.
First of all, Trump has announced that due to his dispute with Harvard, which we've been talking about, that he is going to attempt to withdraw their tax-exempt status, saying, quote, it's what they deserve.
And they are using the idea of ideological indoctrination for all of this.
Once more, we are seeing what happens when you have a mad king.
We just simply have things that happen because of personal disputes, which, let me check my records, is why this country was founded in the first place, was to keep people like this from doing shit like this.
This is not his purview.
He should not be involved.
I mean, I guess the problem is he could say this kind of stuff, but then this Constitution is supposed to say that he's not in charge of who has tax-exempt status anyway, right?
But...
I suppose because he's got so many lackeys in the government, in the Congress, that they'll just do it anyway.
He can cut through the red tape and just tell them to do it.
And then sort of the argument is, well, you know, they'll be able to pass it anyway.
And then so why do I have to wait?
You know, and that's the thing.
But, you know, kudos again to Harvard for standing up for them because, again, the money he's trying to freeze.
Funds things like really important research to help people overcome cancer, among other things.
You know, that is important.
The things that they'll end up doing and the innovation that they can create from that.
Now, we all know, I've said it before, you know why he's going after Harvard, right?
Well, because it's the biggest kid in the schoolyard.
Admission.
Oh, is that true?
I didn't even know that.
Yes.
He applied to Harvard and they said no.
And he went to NYU, right?
Listen, I've seen two reports on that.
I'm choosing to believe that that is the case.
And that makes as much sense as anything else, doesn't it?
Well, I mean, Harvard is the crown jewel of American higher education.
And for the record, I want to go ahead and withdraw my kudos from Harvard, because even though they stood against Trump's legal threats and all of that, like, the president is still talking about, like, we really need to combat the far left and anti-Semitism.
So, you know, it is what it is.
I'm glad they're making a stand or whatever.
I guess good job there.
But Harvard is the standard bearer of American higher education.
So if they can go in and do this, much like going in and arresting a judge in a courthouse, they make an example.
And that's the whole point of a lot of these tactics, is to go ahead and say, hey, we did this to Harvard.
So what are you going to do, Michigan State Polytechnic?
Right?
Like, you are going to be powerless if we're able to go do this here.
This is, again, economic blackmail.
And economic bullying.
We don't know what's going to happen from this, but we're going to talk about more things in a second, but show that there is a pattern of these behaviors that is playing out.
And when you mix all this stuff together, this is a new red scare, right?
Isn't this the same version of a red scare that they did in the 50s to scare people from communism?
And now it's simply just, you know, it's...
It's woke.
Yeah.
woke right to to stay in line just the same reason why they did because it kind of And the idea that Harvard is woke or leftist is absolutely crazy.
Harvard and the other Ivy League institutions are the standard bearers of capitalistic practice in this country.
That's where these decisions are made.
That's where the stakeholders are educated.
It's absolute horseshit, but it's exactly what they keep doing.
Relatedly, Nick, this is fun.
An executive order was focused on pulling funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
And if that sounds familiar, everybody, it's probably because you watched Mr. Rogers or Sesame Street at some point and heard it in the end credits.
The CPB is what funds NPR and PBS.
These groups are now saying that he has no authority, which he does not.
But we'll see if that happens.
This has long been sort of the, this has been the desire of the Republican Party for a very long time to go after both NPR and PBS, and now Trump has pulled the trigger.
Right.
I mean, they're convinced that PBS is indoctrinating kids as woke, you know, lefty, whatever, from the beginning.
And it's been very clear that they have a big subset of their focus is to control the kids.
Absolutely.
From trans to the curriculum in schools and everything in between.
Control the kids.
We cannot have professionals design the curriculum at all for these people because who knows what they're going to learn.
You know, public school system, why parents think that they're customers who get to decide that kind of stuff is beyond me.
And so this is another level of that for that.
Now, the other side of that on the NPR side is local reporting.
goes away if they cut that funding and then we really are uninformed and we've seen that MAGA crowd is uninformed.
They don't have any means of receiving the information.
I don't know if they want it, if they could get it, but certainly it's nice to know that it could be out there and they could receive it and they could know.
Even like, you know, local sports teams.
Anything you'd want to know about what's going on in a very local way, which could be threatening, right, because that's harder to control from the federal standpoint.
So they're trying to dismantle that.
I mean, if they had their way, they'd dismantle every media outlet.
They'd get rid of NBC, ABC, CBS.
Well, we'll talk about CBS in just a minute, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, you know, I think there are a couple of things happening here, too.
First off, NPR and PBS are just two of the most, like, least threatening targets that you could have as a Republican Party going after people.
Like, I mean, if you listen to NPR, it is so tirelessly nonpartisan.
Like, there are interviews and stuff where people bring up facts, and of course, facts are now political.
That's, you know, the sort of, it's the state of play at this point.
But also, Nick, do you think it's a coincidence that over the past couple of years, all of these wealthy billionaire wealth class people have been funding things like Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire creating children's programming?
It's the exact same thing that's taken place with what's happened with public education.
You now have all kinds of right-wing for-profit groups that have created "curriculum" that is going to slot right in the moment that these things run aground of what is essentially a cultural revolution.
That's what's occurring here.
They are going to clear the way as much as possible until you only have one political ideology and viewpoint that is able to be funded and supported by I think that's what's happening here.
I do think this will probably be overturned by a court.
I think that it's going to be another one of those things on a random Thursday when we hear this at like 1.30 p.m. or something.
But at the same time, the message is very, very clear.
This is a cultural revolution and they're going for it.
That's it.
And just be prepared when the court rules against them that they're going to ignore it and they're going to argue that the people want it.
That's what democracy is supposed to be.
Elections have consequences, Nick.
Yeah, exactly.
That's all the things they're going to focus on, and it's going to be red meat for like the 29, 30% of the country, and that's enough.
They're allowed.
And I'm upset with you that you reminded me that The Daily Wire creates children's content because I was like, wait a minute, that sounds familiar.
Matt Walsh did a children's book, if you remember.
The reprogram, you know, it's supposed to take on transgenderism.
And I didn't think we can get any lower than that.
And the reason why I forgot about it is because they kind of pushed the trans thing away.
They don't...
They're saving it, right?
They only bring it up when it's right around elections.
So put it on your calendar right before the midterms, you know, a month or two, whatever.
They'll start to ramp all that stuff up again as if they really care about it.
And we'll have to go through all that awfulness again.
And that's what's going to be in these razor-thin margins in these congressional districts.
That's like what they think is going to be the difference.
Well, I mean, they virtually erased trans people from the American population with a couple of chosen executive orders, right?
And by the way, the Democratic Party laid down and more or less let that happen.
And, you know, I think the Daily Wire has stopped production on their, like, child content, but that doesn't mean that it's going away.
It means that they learned how to do it, and now it's probably going to come to replace these things.
And one last point on this, Nick.
We've talked about this from time to time.
The right-wing influencer/institute-funded cultural center, it's full of a bunch of people who have failed.
They have all wanted to become screenwriters and producers, and they were completely and utterly turned down because they're talentless.
This is about taking the people who weren't able to do these things, who weren't able to be successful, and saying the problem isn't you, the problem is culture, the problem is the deep state, globalists, whatever you want to say, and then to go ahead and push them forward.
If you look at authoritarian regimes in the era of mass media, this is what always happens.
It always gets rid of the dominant culture and it replaces it with one that goes ahead and influences people and moves things around that is ideologically beneficial.
Yeah, I mean, the Tim Pools who are now being invited to the White House press briefing.
Tim Pool, who it was discovered was being funded by foreign countries, including Russia.
Yeah.
And he gets the first question in front of everybody of the mainstream media.
And then they're doing these other private ones.
I don't know if you've seen these clips where they're having just like the right-wing influencers sitting there, you know, and asking questions to Levitt.
And it's like, you know, that kind of access is insane.
Incredible.
And waste her time on propaganda.
I mean, she's more than happy to answer those questions.
Yeah, I wish I, if I could pretend to be that way, I would love to be able to get in there and then ask them.
I don't think we're getting credentialed for the White House right now.
I was told that they were kind of willy-nilly.
Well, if we got credentialed, Nick, I think that we would walk in there ready to go, and then all of a sudden it would be like, we have the FBI who would like to have a conversation with you.
Yeah, step in this room for us, please.
Yeah, come on over here.
Speaking of cultural revolutions, media, blackmail, you name it, there is a kerfuffle.
That is taking place at CBS.
For those who haven't necessarily heard about this, at CBS, which is owned by Paramount Global, there is right now a merger with Skydance Media that's in front of the FCC.
Paramount Global has ordered CBS News to basically stand down in reporting anything critical of Donald Trump so that they will get their merger approved.
They've also been in talks about settling a lawsuit with Donald Trump, basically handing him over, you know, A couple, you know, million dollars, maybe up to $20 million in order to bribe him, more or less.
Meanwhile, at 60 Minutes, which is one of the flagship journalistic enterprises in television, we've seen Bill Owens, the longtime lead there, has resigned, saying that he doesn't have any independents.
60 Minutes lamented this after airing an investigation into Trump.
And what they do, we're recording this on Monday, May 5th.
Last night, they aired another investigative thing critical of Donald Trump.
So we have, once again, another corporate media dust-up, which we keep seeing in the midst of these.
And it's revealing a lot about corporate interest and also how Donald Trump is going to be able to...
Blackmail media conglomerates into getting in line.
And quite frankly, it's only the employees and the people of conscience who are able to push back at this point.
For sure.
And, you know, 60 Minutes, it was nice knowing you, but they'll be canceled.
I'm sure they will not remain on the air much longer than this, especially when this merger is on the table here.
It feels like Conan O 'Brien hosting The Tonight Show when he found out Jay Leno was coming back.
Yeah.
Which is basically you run up the pirate flag and you're like, hey, do something about it.
Right.
I am positive that 60 Minutes, the ratings for 60 Minutes are not good enough to be a powerhouse demand, you know, and a fixture.
I know it's been there for that long, but I would not be surprised if they just pull the plug on that.
Hats off to them.
Hats off.
And I think this is instructive for a bunch of reasons, Nick.
One...
Is that people who are listening, who work at workplaces that are becoming more and more authoritarian friendly, that, you know, we're just like, well, we don't really want to get rid of DEI stuff or, ah, we got to take this off the website.
We got to do this.
Like, you need to have the courage within your workplace to not just go along with it and go ahead and make yourself a speed bump.
Go ahead and make yourself an impediment.
I'm very, very proud of people at 60 Minutes for doing this, but when you look at the conglomeration of the media the way it is, and I'll talk more about that in a second, it makes this almost a fait accompli.
And we are going to watch CBS on behalf of Paramount Global.
They're going to fall online.
That's simply how this is going to work.
And by the way, it wouldn't cost that much to take the crew of 60 Minutes and spin it off into an independent news thing that's online.
Sure.
And it could generate a lot of money.
There's no question they could do it without having to be under the thumb of CBS or Paramount.
Now, let me ask you this because...
We've had major conglomerates owning these channels for a long, long time.
What are the odds?
This has always been happening where the pressure from the government has made them editorialize a little bit.
I know that 60 Minutes supposedly had been immune to that all this time, but I find it hard to believe that this isn't some sort of business as usual that we've been through our whole lives.
And thanks, Bill Clinton, for that.
With the deregulation of telecommunications ownership, it delivered us to this moment.
Going ahead and taking away the regulatory body of the government and allowing all these mergers, and that is part of the thing that accelerated neoliberalism in the United States of America.
That also gave you Fox News.
That also gave you the current environment of misinformation and disinformation and laid the groundwork for what the tech oligarchs have done and eventually what's going to happen.
And Nick, we didn't even talk about it.
You and I are a couple of cinephiles.
We love it.
This is network.
That's what this is.
And that, like, as that was coming into full view in the 1970s, as we were waiting on that thing, and by the way, if people haven't listened to our episode on network, go listen to it.
We talked about this.
We talked about exactly where this came from, what it symbolized.
Eventually, over time, you were going to see these major, giant corporate monoliths.
And for the record, the way things are right now, Nick, the way that this economy works, they're just going to continue to gobble each other up.
That is simply the way the cap.
That was always going to happen the moment you deregulated these things.
It took away any impediment for this authoritarianism and financial blackmail through neoliberalism.
Eventually it was always going to reach this point.
Period.
Just period.
All right, well, speaking of what neoliberalism has brought, Nick, good news down in South Texas.
I know some people down in South Texas.
South Texas has a new city.
And the name of that city is Starbase.
That's right.
Based on a vote of 212 to 6, we have officially a company town, Nick.
SpaceX, on behalf of Elon Musk, is going to do what we reported on.
I want to say it was about a month and a half ago, two months ago.
It is going to be an established company town on behalf of SpaceX.
I, for one, can't wait to see what kind of laws that town passes.
Oh, well, here's the thing.
The people who voted, the six people who voted against it, I think, whoever it was, they want access to the beach because they have to close the beach down whenever they have a launch.
And it's a real, you know, it's a beach that's been there for a long, long time.
It's people enjoy it and they want to be able to use it.
That said, I wouldn't go anywhere near any kind of water near that where Starlink, or sorry, where...
What SpaceX is launching because you now know that they will just pollute the entire ecosystem of that town and everything there without anybody regulating that.
So they're going to destroy the environment around that whole area.
They're going to destroy the environment.
And if the water was even remotely safe to drink or swim in, you would have to look for debris falling out of the sky because this damn company can't.
Like, keep from exploding rockets everywhere.
It would make Aaron Brockovich look like a romantic comedy.
It's going to be nuts.
And again, prediction time, simply because all you have to do is look at history and how this stuff works.
You are going to see so much rank shit out of this new town in terms of, you know, not just tax incentives and the way that it's going to help this corporation, but also in the way that it's going to restrict the freedom of people in that town.
And eventually, like every other company talent, because Nick, you say this all the time and you're exactly right, they're rewinding time.
They're going back to the time before things like the progressive movement helped people get out of this type of bondage and this type of abuse.
We are going to see some really gnarly shit come out of this because this is going to be a laboratory for the type of tech overreach and overgrowth and oppression and exploitation that they have in mind.
This is going to be one of those little places that's going to start and we're going to see exactly what these people want to do in the long run.
And for what it's worth, most of the people living in this needed area work for SpaceX.
So they're just employees who may or may...
Would it be surprising if you found out that Musk threatened their jobs if they don't vote in favor of this?
I don't know how much threatening there was because I think a lot of people who get in these jobs and in these corporations, I think that they can't see the forest for the trees.
Right?
Because you're just doing what you think is in your best interest at the time.
Yeah, fair enough.
That's true, too.
So, yeah, and there must be some – it's this weird – I forgot there's a term for it, you know, in terms of, like, the weird sort of sci-fi futuristic thing, how everything's going to be so amazing, you know, and technology is going to solve everything, right?
It's going to solve the climate change.
It's going to solve, you know, world hunger.
It's going to solve all these things.
But I guess they're going to put a couple wires together with a circuit board and then, boof, we're – Yeah, you and I are going to be having a space cocktail on the surface of Mars in a couple of months.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
And by the way, speaking of tech utopianism, before we get out of here, I just want to take a quick look at an op-ed that Jeff Bezos is...
Washington Post published.
This was written by a fellow from the American Enterprise Institute, so you know it's good.
James Pethokakis published, quote, And Nick, you have no idea how quickly I clicked on this link because I knew this was going to be a treasure trove.
We'll go through a couple of quotes from this thing.
It starts with quote federal workers and Tesla shareholders find themselves in an unexpected alignment.
Both are probably relieved by Elon Musk's decision to step back from Doge and refocus on his electric vehicle company whose recent profits in stock performance have been disappointing.
But even if you don't belong to either constituency, you should be rooting for a Tesla rebound and not for the reasons you might think though its electric cars are struggling to keep pace with China's BY.
The company's future, and perhaps the world's, rests on building a different product.
The perfect robot.
Nick, I'm very excited to hear about how the world is going to be saved by the perfect robot.
Yeah, for the whole low price of $40,000, you too can have a robot that will, I guess, you know, clean your floors like Rosie and the Jetsons and cook your food for you.
I love that you brought it up that way because what we're actually talking about is exactly what has sustained Elon Musk and the tech world for so long, which is the promise of a future that they, first of all, can't deliver.
And second of all, what are they offering?
They're not offering anything that fundamentally makes a life better.
They're offering something that takes care of menial tasks.
Right?
And meanwhile, we all know exactly what's going to happen if they're ever able to even field a robot, which is they're going to lay a bunch of people off.
And more people are going to suffer.
More from this article.
Quote.
Like electricity and the microprocessor before it, the humanoid robot in the lexicon of economists is a general-purpose technology that thrives on economy-wide versatility rather than specialization.
Currently, robots tend to be devoted to a singular task in a confined space, but most human environments are built for creatures with hands, legs, and a sense of balance.
To do the kind of tasks we need AI to do in the real world, we need a robot that can replicate our dexterity, mobility, and efficiency.
Picture an economy animated by tireless bipeds.
By day, they fasten battery packs on EV assembly lines with mechanical precision.
By night, they navigate warehouse aisles sorting parcels.
In hospitals, they ferry linens and medicines.
In research labs, they run experiments.
At home, they vacuum carpets and tutor kids between loads of laundry.
A software update at midnight, and by morning, they have mastered something new.
Nick, I find this language interesting.
How do you feel about this vision of the future?
Do we need it?
Do we really need it?
That's what he says.
We need it.
We need it.
In the service of, like, you know, the almighty dollar or something like that, some churning of whatever, you know, never mind the things that make life worth living, you know, and actually give meaning and purpose.
I do worry that we're running out of that meaning and purpose, right, as we're progressing.
That is one of the biggest catalysts of the fascistic.
I found this interesting, and this is one of the things I want to focus on.
I just want to look at this again.
They're working on assembly lines.
They're in the warehouses.
They're in the research labs.
At home, they vacuum carpets and tutor kids between loads of laundry.
You know where I've heard this before?
Let's take the robot out of it.
Let's think about a human being doing all of these things.
What are they talking about, Nick?
They're talking about slaves.
That's what's happening here, is this language that it's hiding.
We need people who are going to do things without rest, without money, without any support.
They are basically making the same case that people who have enslaved people for millennia.
Which is, how great would it feel if we had a class of things that would do these things for us?
It is a revelatory article, and we'll get to more of it in a second.
But what's at the heart of this tech appeal is our society would be so much better if we had an enslaved class.
You know what's weird about that is, like, you know, I don't know if you've experienced this.
In downtown Los Angeles, guaranteed if you're walking around, you will see a robot.
That's wheeling, going down the street.
Have you seen them?
Yeah, I've seen this.
And they make them a little bit like human looking, like the eyes.
I mean, that's about as well as looking.
But there are times when you see people will just tip them over.
And I kind of feel bad.
I feel bad for the robot thing because it's stuck and there's no way, you know, someone's going to have to come and get it and write it.
And someone did it on purpose because they either wanted to be a jerk or they just, whatever.
Or maybe they're just morally opposed to this technology.
But you'll see it all over the place in LA, probably in New York, I'm assuming, or I don't know where else, in bigger cities.
And, you know, you just sort of sense this is the future.
Like, this will be, there will be, you can't, you won't be able to walk down the sidewalk without bumping into 10 of these things at any time.
And I suppose it takes away, you know, what is it taking away?
Like, there's no, if everything is done for you, right, then you might change the way you treat people.
I think that's what you're getting at when you have these slaves, right?
You'll start, that can infect the way you treat humans.
Well, I want to make one point here, which is, we don't even know if this is going to happen.
The people who, I mean, Elon Musk doesn't actually make things that work.
If he is our last hope to make this happen, well, I got bad news for you.
It's probably not going to happen.
So even if it does happen, that does change sort of the interaction of things.
And Nick, what do they say about artificial intelligence?
They're like, oh, it's going to gain consciousness.
So what are you going to do to that thing that has consciousness?
You're going to use it and abuse it and enslave it.
Right?
So what we're actually hearing from these people is a willingness to do this regardless of even if we have robots.
Right?
So someone who's going to enslave something that has consciousness, doesn't that then say that they would be willing to enslave other things that have consciousness?
And I'm going to finish with this quote from this article, Nick.
Quote.
To be clear, this is an optimistic scenario.
Even as robots would replace many of their human masters, I love that he chose that word, human masters' existing jobs, they would also liberate us from drudgery and dangerous tasks and create job opportunities in new fields.
The goal is a harmonious cycle of ever-advancing robotic workers and AI brains that generate more productivity, more science and more wealth, freeing up humans to pursue both leisure activities and more fulfilling work.
And Nick, I want to tell you something.
When I wrote American Rule and when I wrote The Midnight Kingdom, I unfortunately had to spend a lot of time reading quote-unquote scientific journals that were published in the South during slavery.
It was a lot of like people who were quote-unquote experts talking about why chattel slavery was a good thing and why it needed to continue on into perpetuity.
They used almost this exact same language, which was, we need an enslaved class of people to save the Southern aristocracy from drudgery.
Why?
Because they were better than everybody else.
And if they had more time, Nick, and if they didn't have to do all these tasks, think about all the things they would come up with and all of the good that they would do.
The mindset of the tech fascist class is the exact same mindset of the authoritarians of the past as well.
They look at this thing and they see themselves as higher than everybody else.
And that's why they've taken over the government, why they're taking away all these social programs, all of that, because they believe that they are special.
Going back to what we were talking about in the very beginning, they believe that they should have control over everything and everybody else is an impediment.
Whether it's doing this to robots or doing this to people, it's part of a larger worldview that informs these people and how they interact with the world and other beings.
So you're saying that all the extra time that slavery afforded them, they didn't go and volunteer their time to help other people at soup kitchens and whatnot?
No.
No.
Listen to what I'm saying.
Why would anybody who owns slaves ever...
Although I guess...
You know what?
In the sick, twisted rationalization of the whole slavery thing, they probably did go to the church and volunteer.
Oh, no.
That was where that whole genteel Southern culture came from.
Which is still sort of like lionized, right?
Like sitting around, having tea, dressing up, doing those kinds of things.
And like if this comes to pass, whether or not it's the enslavement of artificial beings, and again, I love that they keep using the word master because they made it obvious what they're talking about.
Whether it's those people or it's an enslaved class of people underneath like a new fiefdom.
What we would see basically would be a revival of that.
And Nick, we hear it from the right all the time.
Men and women don't get dressed up anymore.
They don't listen to this music, the architecture, all of this.
It's wanting the aesthetics.
That have the benefits of quote-unquote Western civilization, which what is that built on?
It's built on making lower subhuman classes, which is what they believe people are, do the work that they shouldn't have to do.
It's white patriarchal supremacy through and through, and this type of worldview is not just in tech.
It's throughout the authoritarian right.
It's how they view the world.
It's how they view other human beings.
And that, my friend, is why they want to control the public education.
Exactly.
Because why are these kids in school?
Why are these kids learning for jobs that won't even exist anymore?
They're not going to do anything great.
Going back to RFK, they're never going to write poems.
They're never going to pay taxes.
All this other shit.
The idea is that there is a hierarchy and they are at the top of it.
And they believe that it is their natural right to reinforce it.
And the threat of people who don't look like them coming into the country is worthy of doing what they're doing.
Exactly.
And, by the way, you can do that and you can create a subclass of people that you can exploit because they're afraid that they're going to get sent on an airplane to El Salvador.
Well, hope you have a great week, Jared.
That thing pissed me off, man.
The moment I saw that article, I was just like, fuck this guy.
Can't wait to get into this.
And it's revelatory.
Like, that's the thing.
He's such a bad writer that, like, the subtext became text.
Exactly.
That'll be the title of the pod today.
All right, everybody.
That's going to do it for us today.
We'll be back with The Weekender on Friday.
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