This is a preview of The Weekender edition of the Muckrake Podcast. Please go to our Patreon to gain access to the regular Weekender episodes on Fridays.
Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the first American Pope who hails from the Second City. Next up is a brewing conflict between Pakistan and India that has deep ramifications. While Israel plans to take over Gaza completely, the US is trying to deport people to war zones and force other countries to buy Starlink as part of trade negotiations. Corruption: what is it? They finish the pod on John Fetterman and his mental deterioration after suffering a stroke.
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The sound of the can opening means it's the Weekender, and also there's a new Pope elected, a Chicago Pope!
Nick Hausman.
How you doing, bud?
I'm good, I'm good.
Hopefully he likes Italian beef.
I have heard he's a Chicago Cubs fan, so...
So I've got that going for me.
Hey everybody, welcome to The Weekender.
We have an absolutely full show.
As always, the world is teetering on the brink of something absolutely crazy in so many different ways.
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Nick, we had this show all planned, ready to go.
And then over at the Vatican, white smoke poured out.
What a ridiculous spectacle.
All of this is.
A new pontiff has been elected.
And guess what, everybody?
Nick, first of all, I love that it's a Midwesterner who is the first American pope.
My Midwest heart, and I'm sure your Midwest heart beats true with this thing.
There's a lot to talk about this, not just in terms of the American component of it, but also there are political ramifications that come along with it.
How are you feeling?
Are you proud?
I mean, the slightest bit of pride, perhaps, from that.
Is your dad excited?
Yeah, I don't know.
I can try and picture him driving around Chicago and being in that sort of thing.
I imagine Chicago right now.
This is going to be a really fun night in Chicago.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I don't know.
I mean, nobody knew anything about this guy until today.
I'd imagine he was sort of, you know, nobody famous.
But obviously, we're more interested in, you know, where his positions are and how that's going to work.
I think in a Republican way of looking at this, we can at least say that he was not in the Hitler Youth as a kid.
That's a good thing.
Well, and by the way, Nick, because, listen, I know this is my job.
Everybody knows it's my job.
I have to do this.
He does have a background of protecting problematic priests.
But it's almost impossible at this point to find somebody within the church who doesn't, which speaks to the larger ramifications of the Catholic Church and organized religion and what needs to be fixed.
But I can confirm that he was not a member of the Hitler Youth within the United States of America.
Yeah, so hallelujah.
Hey, hey, holy mackerel.
Now, the other thing is, obviously, where does he stand on certain things like gay marriage?
I mean, gay people in general and just sort of civil rights?
Well, would it help?
And this is one of the things, unfortunately, part of my authoritarian research beat is I have to keep track of how, like, these radical Catholic converts within the MAGA world and the authoritarian right work.
They're pissed off.
They're very, very angry.
They've already called him, quote, a shit-lib and a woke Marxist pope.
Within the church, Pope Leo XIV now is considered a social progressive.
In large part, we actually talked about this after Francis died, that Francis had more or less stalked.
The cardinals with a lot of appointed people in order to keep the church from moving into that regressive, reactionary, authoritarian movement.
So chances are that not only do we have the first American pope, and Nick, let me tell you something, the American media The moment I heard about this, I was like, I can't even imagine how happy cable news is.
Like, they are just happy as hell having this.
Like, finally, people are watching us, you know, and getting excited.
There's going to be a component of it where I do think that this is going to have ramifications for our politics.
MAGA is not happy.
Trump has yet to fully react.
He said that he's proud that he's an American, but Steve Bannon and these other right-wing assholes are very upset about this.
Well, let's make it clear that the media is excited in your mind because there's just something to report, not that he's progressive.
No, they're very excited that he's American.
Ah, okay, that too.
Yeah.
It's like, you know, we've seen him support.
Like, he's on Twitter.
Like, he's a tweeter in chief.
You know, and by the way, has vocally criticized the Trump administration and J.D. Vance, so...
There you go.
It's hard not to.
It would be hard in a situation where he was as a cardinal to not criticize J.D. Vance for, in an intellectually dishonest way, using Catholicism or religion and Christianity to his own ends.
It's disgusting.
You would be shocked by how many members and leaders in the Catholic Church basically pushed against Francis the entire time and basically were aligned.
With people like J.D. Vance.
There was a lot of that.
And I think the larger thing, this isn't necessarily a conversation about religion because believe what you want to believe, don't believe what you want to believe, whatever.
What we're actually talking about here is that religion, as we have discussed ad nauseum, it is sort of a narrative that helps with the ideology of what people want and how they perform within the political sphere.
And so here we have a position where one of the largest organized religions in the world that has particularly been embraced by a bunch of converts who want to use it in order to rationalize oppression and exploitation.
We now have another situation.
I think I said in our discussion about Francis dying.
That we could possibly see a larger schism depending upon who gets elected.
And now you have an American pope who happens to be socially progressive.
I think the foundation is there for this to turn into a little bit of ugliness.
I'll just say that.
Yeah, but probably necessary, I think, right?
I think we need to kind of face this at some point and kind of get through it.
Yeah, you have to.
I mean, otherwise you go into the abyss and that's where it's at.
Well, that does that.
I'm sure we'll keep an eye on Our American Pope, which sounds like a show that lasted on Showtime for about half a season before it got shit-canned.
To another international subject here.
Nick, after we recorded on Monday, there was a terrible development where weeks after militant attacks in Kashmir, India, It struck, according to some reports, nine sites in Pakistan.
There have been multiple reports of ongoing drone strikes and battles.
Pakistan has claimed that it is down two Indian jets using Chinese weaponry and jets.
Pakistan has vowed to retaliate.
We have already heard from members of the defense team in Pakistan that they consider this on the verge of a nuclear war.
There's a lot to get to here, but what are your initial reactions to it?
You know, it's kind of always interesting for how long this has been a problem or been a conflict.
You know, why?
Why does it pop up when it does?
You know, nothing in my mind instigated this necessarily, you know, other than, you know, the low-level, you know, conflict they've had this entire time over Kashmir.
So it is really, really concerning.
The way we're moving towards America first and isolationism.
Part of my mind thinks, and I think this is what they're hoping a lot of Americans feel, is that, oh, it's just over there.
Even if it does resort to some terrible war, it doesn't affect us at all.
And I'm worried that that's starting to infect my brain as well with what Trump has been doing over the last several months.
So that is a concern because we have to realize how closely affecting this can very well be for the whole world.
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