Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss a bombing of a fertility clinic in Palm Springs, CA and how our political leadership has been laying the ground work for more and more events like it. Meanwhile, Elon Musk has been hacking into his own AI, manipulating its responses to questions about White South Africans and genocide as well as minimizing the holocaust. Kristi Noem has been pitching a reality TV Show where immigrants compete for citizenship, as James Comey comes under fire for posting a pic of some rocks in his Insta.
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I'm here with my good friend, my co-host, my cohort, Nick Housman.
How are you doing, Nick?
I'm doing well.
Doing well.
Looking forward to another week of living and abutting authoritarianism.
Yeah, I mean, you can't beat it, right?
I mean, really, just the ideal of all worlds.
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Nick, we have a whole slew of different things to talk about today.
Weird, disturbing things that I think are very, very telling about where we are.
But in an event that has already sort of moved out of, like, the consciousness of America, on Saturday, a car bomb detonated outside of the American Reproductive Center in Palm Springs, California.
Not too far away from you.
The suspect who died in the bombing has been reported as a 25-year-old.
The only casualty, thank God, from this allegedly had an anti-LGBTQ IVF agenda described as a pro-mortalist or someone who...
This is a really disturbing thing, and I wanted to spend a few minutes talking about what this is, even though in America, as we've experienced it in this modern era, events and tragedies like this keep mounting up, and we don't pay enough attention to them, and we don't discuss what they tell us about what's going on in our politics and our culture.
Well, here's the thing.
I'm not so sure that 2025 has as much of an effect on this attack as we might think, in terms of this is the kind of thing we've been seeing in attacks on places like this in the past, right?
So this feels like another one of those versus maybe some sort of boiling point, perhaps, that's coming up.
I don't know if that's how you feel about it, but maybe you feel the opposite.
But that was my first take on it.
It was like, ugh, this is another one of these things where the animus towards facilities like this has always been bubbling.
Well, it's been going on for a while, and one of the great untold stories of modern American history is the extremism that has been focused on reproductive care facilities.
And this was one of those things where a lot of people didn't connect the dots back in the day when reproductive doctors were being hunted down and assassinated.
We saw all these types of clinics being attacked, some of them being bombed, you name it.
It just so happens that...
Outbreaks like this show us that there is, one, an effect of the rhetoric that is being said out in our political culture, like talking about not just gay people and trans people, but also talking about reproductive care and how there are these deep statists who are practicing their own ugly eugenics, which we'll talk about in a little bit, unfortunately.
But this, to me...
It speaks to another problem that goes undocumented in this country, which is how many people in this country, this guy was supposedly thinking about live streaming his attack, how there are these subcultures of people who worship shooters, mass killers, terrorists, you name it.
And these people have started to find each other and they are motivated by their own things.
But our political culture and our rhetoric also feeds into that.
There is a natural cycle between what's going on politically and I'll talk a little bit more about the historical precursors of this stuff.
But what it tells us is that we have an environment that is becoming more and more ripe for these kinds of attacks and these kinds of tragedies.
For sure.
And I also start to worry about, like, how is it possible that, you know, a regular person can build some sort of a device like this that can have that much destruction?
It doesn't necessarily make you think about Timothy McVeigh.
I mean, perhaps you're going to talk about that kind of precedent.
Because that level, you know, brought down like half of a huge building, right?
This is a, you know, they did a lot of damage.
And thankfully, no one was in the building, I believe, when this one went off.
But, you know, the easy access to this kind of stuff.
Which is what the internet is, basically, is another level of that concerning thing where, you know, if that was in the, I mean, I guess what, we saw bombings of churches during the civil rights movement as well in the 60s.
So you had that kind of thing, but at some point the knowledge that's now being passed around makes it really dangerous in this society.
Well, there's all kinds of these things that, and, you know, unfortunately, one of the aspects that I have to deal with of myself and my own political analysis is looking at a lot of disturbing things.
You know what I mean?
And starting to see how they affect each other and how they interact with each other.
And so you keep seeing these things bubbling up.
There are these extremist online gangs and organized crime rings that are exploiting people, radicalizing people.
On top of it, like just a few days ago, Nick, and this might not even be something that came across your radar.
There's this story of a woman in Texas who was arrested for buying a bunch of school shooting supplies for her child.
And so, as the political structure...
Kind of gets worse and more and more poisonous.
And as conditions get worse, and we're certainly living in a period of American decline, these things start bubbling up.
And political rhetoric, like, basically just...
Throws more fuel on the fire.
And you brought up Timothy McVeigh, which is, I think, one of the more misunderstood elements of the past, what, 30 years at this point.
That didn't happen in a vacuum.
This was part of the patriot movement in this country that was stoked by the Republican Party and the NRA against Bill Clinton in order to start pushing their agenda and gain more and more power.
It got treated like it was a lone wolf situation, but we saw the paramilitaries and extremists who are currently threatening America, like, gaining more.
More members and power and purchase in that time.
And these things are symptoms of a larger problem.
Right?
The fact that you could see a reproductive facility in California, of all places, right?
It's not just in, like, so-called red states.
The fact that you see these things, and we've covered them in the past, such as the New Year's bombing in Las Vegas with the guy who blew up the Cybertruck.
There are these things that keep happening that you can't just isolate them and pretend like they don't have, like, a larger sort of a meaning in this ecosystem.
And we've been talking about it.
Like, we're entering into a period of time.
That is incredibly fertile for violence.
And I'm not just talking mass shootings.
I'm not just talking mass tragedy events.
I'm talking about the possibility of domestic terrorism, which this certainly is, and more and more people sort of acting this way and being radicalized towards these types of violent actions.
And looking for the reward, like you said, live streaming this, becoming a famous person, which is another one of those obsessions we have now in our society.
So all those things are, yes, are building toward a moment where, you know, I mean, like France went through this in the 70s, if I'm not mistaken.
I think that was the decade where they had all sorts of domestic terrorism going on all the time in a way that, you know, more rooted in like civil rights and in that era.
You know, this is a thing that either ebbs and flows, and it feels like that.
Or, you know, I think your point you're trying to make, I imagine, is that this is now going to continue to increase, and there isn't going to be an ebb.
You know, it just will get worse and worse.
Yeah, it is.
And, you know, you brought up what was going on in France.
It was in France.
It was in Germany.
It was in Italy.
And in these moments, and, you know, it was both sort of wrestling with the consequences of empire at the time, everything from Vietnam to authoritarian sort of crackdowns against like civil rights movements and social movements.
But also sort of anticipating something, Nick, which is the turn that took place in the 1970s where the entire system had to change into neoliberal and, you know, neoliberal capitalism.
And as it happens, it's not just like little blips here and there.
There's a reason why we have all these tragedies.
It's because of all of these different conditions that are taking place with the people, the communities, their situations, but also the larger culture.
Like, we feel this and it gets worse.
And I have to assume that you and our listeners and myself, certainly out in the world, you see people under pressure.
You see people who are cracking, who are obviously having a really hard time, particularly as not just authoritarianism comes about, but austerity continues to get worse.
You brought up the idea of becoming famous.
Like in the United States of America, the quote unquote American dream has collapsed, which has left people sort of chasing notoriety or success in any way that they possibly can, which makes people more and more extreme and more and more desperate.
it.
And it is concerning because a lot of things are sort of pushing to a head here.
Either you can take this interesting step back where you're like, ah, it's just, okay, it'll happen, and then it'll kind of dissipate again, and we'll get back to normalcy for X amount of time, 10 years, whatever it's going to be, and then have these waves, right?
Or you can look at it as the leadership of our culture, like you referenced, is what's sort of germinating a lot of this.
That leadership is influencing a lot of this.
And we'd be naive to say that it's not, you know, that Trump is not influencing a lot of the violence that we're seeing.
So until that goes away and we get different leadership and more reasoned and emotionally intelligent people in charge.
I can see this, yes, becoming one of those dystopian movies where you are huddled into your house and everything's locked and you have to have your own arms to protect yourself.
Well, what do you do whenever all of it is pushed is dehumanization?
People being disappeared, put in prisons, people being killed, you name it.
Like, that has an effect.
And now we have to move towards another one of these things that does exactly what we're talking about, Nick.
And so if you look at what happened last week on Twitter, and I think this is an incredibly instructive thing, Grok, which I hate saying that out loud, it's the artificial intelligence that is Elon Musk's Twitter ex-artificial intelligence, started responding to everything.
With conversations and misinformation revolving around white genocide, replacement theory, particularly regarding South Africa, which people might not remember this, but Elon Musk is from South Africa, grew up during the apartheid, and now we have this situation in which the United States is welcoming a bunch of quote-unquote abused white Africaners over into the United States.
And it becomes obvious, Nick, that Musk put his finger on the scale in terms of And it just so happened that they put too much spice in the sauce, and we got pure unbridled misinformation and white supremacist language and ideology.
Oh, this is the whole point of what Musk did to take over Twitter.
He wanted to make this into a weapon for the right.
And we've already seen him do this to push his own agenda and his own account in a ridiculous way.
And it's funny that Grok is honest, right?
They haven't been able to figure out how to make Grok lie and not say that they've been manipulated artificially to answer these things.
And that's fascinating because, again, it also came up under the idea of...
Oh, I guess it's the same idea, but under white genocide as well.
I was reading something about the Holocaust where it was going to start putting doubt on the Holocaust numbers.
Wait, Nick, I thought Elon Musk was the best friend that Israel and the Jews had.
That's shocking to me.
How did that possibly happen?
Right.
Well, you know, he went and he visited, you know, a concentration camp and then somehow that changed his whole mind, right?
After spreading anti-Semitic conspiracy theories for forever.
Yeah.
Right.
Right.
Listen, you know, he is now hanging out in Saudi Arabia with Trump and doing all these things.
It's clear that whoever wants to pay him and give him a good deal, he's in that same way as Trump.
Because again, I think there's some doubts.
I know he's got a lot of money on paper.
But if that was really the case, why is he having the United States government like force Starlink contracts on tiny little countries?
It's very strange to me.
Well, and he's over in Saudi Arabia and basically everywhere outside the United States before this present moment.
Musk has operated like every other tech oligarch which is using the tools and persuasion at his disposal to increase authoritarian surveillance but also censorship and changing of how things work.
And this goes back to what I've been talking about when it comes to AI, which, you know, you and I, before we started recording, we were talking about the useful applications of it, but not relying on it for all information, because what does this reveal, Nick?
It reveals that the people who program it and control it can go ahead and change the entire sort of trajectory of history.
As a result, particularly in this moment of radicalization, and if you go over to X, all you will see is dehumanization, misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories, and white supremacist rhetoric.
You can take a space like that or take a tool like that and basically just pump as much raw poisonous sewage into the culture as you possibly can.
So then all of a sudden, something like apartheid and something like white genocide theory, all of that, it just sort of becomes the norm.
All you have to do, instead of going out and talking to people and defending it in public and having to have debates about it, you just basically press a couple of buttons, and the next thing you know, it's an uninterrupted stream of this stuff.
It's one of the most insidious inventions and processes that I think I've ever seen, and people need to wrap their heads around the fact that what's been done around the world already is now coming home to America, and we're now swimming in it.
Well, especially when the company's being run by a guy who's addicted to the platform and has the emotional maturity of an eight-year-old.
By the way, I love that he's now bragging that he's never been to therapy.
Shocking.
And it was like, if there was ever one person that would have benefited from even the littlest bit of therapy, he would be a child for that.
And instead, because he was getting dunked on a lot when people would ask Rock about certain questions about life and death situations, and it was always very liberal in his responses.
And I'm sure he's looking at that and in his fragile psyche saying, oh my goodness, we're going to have to force this to be changed and force it down people's throats.
I don't like Stanley Spadowski in the UHF movie with the fire hose pointing at the little kid and saying, open wide, and then splashing with the hose.
So there's no question that that influence.
And, you know, on the basketball side, we're in the middle of the playoffs, right?
And I'm dealing with this kind of stuff.
And the emotional fragility that you have to deal with on a day-to-day basis, people who are that willing to take the energy and time to engage in such negative and awful ways, there's definitely a parallel to what's going on, not only politically, but then it has to.
There's no doubt in my mind that it falls over into the real life.
Oh, no, it absolutely does.
The biggest mistake that we made was believing that the digital world was somehow or another disconnected from the real world.
That's what everybody told us for the longest time.
I remember, Nick, back in 2016, this was around the time where you and I got to know each other a little bit.
It was when I was starting to report on Trumpism and these rallies and things.
I would have people, like, you know, trying to break into my home or threatening me in person, and I would have to explain that it started from an online space.
And even then, I was told by, you know, law enforcement, like, oh, that's just the online world.
And that attitude has been there since the beginnings of the Internet, but you can't disconnect these things.
The experience with media, it doesn't matter if it's television or radio, which was one of the main components of fascism and Nazism gaining power, like, you can't look at those things in a vacuum.
As if they don't affect us mentally, emotionally, and affect the real world.
And so these types of things, again, Nick, I want to say we're very lucky that these people are just absolutely terrible at what they do.
We're so lucky that they're so transparent and that Elon Musk couldn't even manipulate his own platform and artificial intelligence without it becoming obvious what he was trying to do, which is He, quite frankly, is a straight-up apartheid relic who wants to recreate that and wants to champion it.
We're so lucky that he couldn't even hide it, that it couldn't even be something that had plausible deniability behind it.
It had to be, like, one of the most obvious actions that has ever happened.
Sure.
I think it's also fair to say that you don't anonymously post shitpost things as a...
From ideas that don't actually exist in your brain.
That's right.
Yes.
This is what you get to say you really feel, right?
So, of course, it comes out in real life.
What do you feel about the guys like this guy, Tizzy, who will out in docs?
Have you ever seen this guy on TikTok or whatever?
No, luckily, I haven't.
The heavyset guy with the beard.
Horrible stuff.
Karen activity, whatever.
And he will break it down, explain why it's horrible.
And he's right.
And then says, find her.
Find him.
Tell me who it is.
And they out them and they lose their job, the whole thing.
What do you make of that?
Like this other section of police that's trying to make people act better.
What do you make of that?
Well, I mean, you know, first things first, something that you brought up that I want to touch on.
We talked about this guy who tried to destroy this reproductive clinic.
There is a long history of young people trying to sort of like...
I don't know how else to put it, Nick, like flirting around with dangerous things, right?
Like, you know, it's like you go into like a, I don't know, a middle school bathroom or a high school bathroom, and maybe you might see where one of the kids might have like made some sort of like, you know, like drawn a swastika or written something ugly in there, right?
There's a long history of people doing that.
We now have entire systems that are based on like...
You know, accelerating that, of basically like getting them into these ideas and sort of like making them marinate in it and being like, no, no, no, no, you don't have to move away from that.
That can be an essential component of you.
And when you keep moving down those steps, first of all, it can lead to tragedies such as what we were talking about with these mass shooters who keep finding each other and sort of encouraging each other, right?
But there's another component of it where not only does it encourage people to do it, because, Nick, capitalism has to capitalize on everything.
There has to be a bunch of systems that then reward the people for their worst behavior.
So as a result, they end up becoming lucratively, you know, like wealthy because they're like giving people what it is that the system is now sort of feeding them.
So it creates these weird feeding ecosystems in which, you know, we talked about Nick Fuentes at some point.
Why does Nick Fuentes make the money he makes?
Because he's the one who's willing to be an open neo-Nazi.
Right?
It's segmented marketing.
You keep finding ways to push the envelope, and then the system rewards you.
So people like what you're speaking about, who I would be shocked if someone hasn't suffered actual, literal, real-world harm because of this person.
That person has every reason to follow that within a capitalist system that continually rewards it.
I mean, for what it's worth, somebody had tried to get into Nick Fuentes' where he broadcast from his house and kill him or whatever, and I don't know how high he's living on that hog, by the way.
Oh, no, I think he still lives with his parents, for the record.
Right, okay.
He lives in Chicago.
I recognize that kind of neighborhood.
It wasn't high on the hog, but even still, so there might even be that kind of thing where there's an appearance that they're making a ton of money, and that will want other people to follow Nick Fuentes' role, because I want to make all that money when they don't really make that money.
You know what I mean?
No, it's this giant feeder system where there are the people at the top, and listen, I have to assume Nick Fuentes makes a decent amount of money.
I don't know if he's making a choice or whatever that is, but there's the higher people who...
We see this in sports.
We see it in culture.
We see it in all these different places where there's just sort of like this weird scaffolding up and down and the people continually get into it.
And then, Nick, it's not just that they have their beliefs reinforced as you were talking about.
They have a financial incentive.
Right?
Which is, I'm not going to back away from my opinions.
I'm going to continue to double and triple down.
And things like what we're talking about here with Grok and what's happened on X and within all these spaces.
It not only gives them the financial incentive, it feeds them more and more radicalizing material.
And again, we're lucky that we see it.
I mean, this is a goldmine for someone like myself who studies radicalization, but also, like, this is why you can't have someone like Elon Musk have a monopolization over a public space.
For sure.
And for what it's worth, the Tizzy guy who I just mentioned, the Batman for the left, whatever you want to call him, he was at the DNC.
And it looked like a pretty big VIP to me, able to go in and out of those special areas.
So it exists on the other side as well, however you want to categorize that.
No, I mean, listen, capitalism has its own ideology, but it does it everywhere.
I mean, it's one of the reasons why we have so many liberal grifters, right?
So many liberal conspiracy theorists.
It just feeds that constantly.
You're not going to call them out, are you?
Man, I don't even want to talk about him.
In another bizarre thing, and this is, man, I'm realizing the theme of this episode is weird.
In another really bizarre thing, Julia Ornetto of the Daily Beast has revealed that Secretary of Homeland Security Christy Noem is shopping a reality TV show that is being called The American that will showcase immigrants competing for citizenship, Nick.
They will arrive at Ellis Island.
ICE will participate in the judging of the show.
They'll participate in regional challenges around the country, showcasing America.
They'll win big giant corporate gifts, and eventually the winner will receive a fast-track citizenship There's a lot to talk about here, but Nick, when you heard about this the first time, did you feel like you had a break from reality?
Like, I mean, we follow this stuff so closely that almost nothing can surprise you, but something like this with its audacity and absurdity, like, it really, really showcases exactly how low this can go.
All I thought about was, and the one piece I don't think we mentioned in the Alcatraz thing last week, was it?
Whatever, what is time?
But apparently...
The movie, Escape from Alcatraz, aired.
I don't think we talked about this.
It aired about whatever it was, two hours and ten minutes.
Let's say the running time was two hours.
Two hours and ten minutes before he posts that, that's when it aired.
I think we kind of predicted that, that there was a movie involved here somehow, and that he was going to start talking about Clint Eastwood, but yeah.
They studied the local TV that was, like, wherever he was in Florida where they came on.
So I'm sure he watched it.
So this is like Running Man.
They watched a Running Man movie probably.
By the way, there's a lot of movies like this.
And then, you know, maybe he's watching Gladiator.
Who knows?
But that's what I thought.
I'm like, okay, he's just watching another movie.
And, you know, the other thing, like, with Musk, when you look at the – you watch – what's the Mars movie with Schwarzenegger?
You know, the – Total Recall.
Total Recall.
One of the cars in that movie looks just like the Tesla Cybertruck.
Oh, I don't doubt that.
And it's like, so, you know, Musk is like, oh, I want that car.
And it's, you know, the Cybertruck's the ugliest thing to see.
So this is the same idea.
I'm sure somebody saw it, somebody talked about it, whatever.
John Voight was talking about it with him, whoever.
And he's like, yeah, let's do that.
Let's get a sponsorship.
We'll make money off of this.
I'll host it, yada, yada.
I'm not even sure Christine only even knows about the pitch, right?
Oh, I think she's absolutely involved in it.
Oh, okay.
I want to say, and this is one of the more frustrating parts of all of this, which is, Nick, how many times have we had talks about whether or not this particular type of American fascism is real and dangerous or if it's a grift?
And the answer is always yes and yes, right?
The components that make up any sort of an authoritarian movement, they are both of the country and also part of a larger ideological sort of trend, right?
The larger ideological trend is that some people are born better than others and they should have everything and have rule over everything and roll back any type of progress.
That's the ideological underpinnings.
That's why all the conspiracy theories are the same.
They just feel a little bit different.
all the proposals, all the actions, why you and I were able to predict exactly what this administration was going to do if it got into power, right?
That's the constant.
The cultural components of the country Of course, American fascism is going to have a reality TV component.
Of course.
That's who we are.
That's what we've become.
And it's the ability to capitalize on those things and make it entertainment.
And I would go so far as to say, if you were to go back to the Third Reich and they would have had mass media in the form of TV, do you think that they wouldn't have had this type of programming?
Of course they would have.
I mean, even the United States of America, when it was so deep in its eugenics craze in the early 20th century, Nick, they had contests constantly of who could have the most and most genetically pure children, right?
And that's something that you see in all these regimes.
It's not even a hop, skip, and a jump over to what Christy Noem is now being involved in.
It's not even a hop.
It's a tiptoe into it.
Of course this is going to have this component.
And yes, it's disgusting.
But why is it disgusting?
Because it reveals the true nature of these people.
Not only are they hateful, and not only are they destructive and murderous, Nick, but they're also venal, and they're also shallow.
And what does Kristi Noem want?
She wants this!
What do we talk all the time about Marjorie Taylor Greene?
She would leave Congress like that if she was offered a show on OANN.
Like, that's the entire reason behind this, is because they are shallow, empty people who are searching for some type of notoriety, much like we were talking earlier about people who were searching for those opportunities, no matter how the tragedy is.
And, of course, it's going to have a component like this.
Can we get into the details of the show?
Because I think it's in...
Unfortunately, I think we should.
Yeah.
Because, first of all, so 12 pre-vetted contestants.
You know what pre-vetted means, right, Jared?
What does that mean?
That means they're going to find him for sure.
Yeah, but that means they're white, right?
Oh, no, no, absolutely.
They would be white.
Yes, I assume the way they would cast this, they would have maybe one person of color, at least.
You know, but yes, they would be primarily white Democrats.
And they still put Ellis Island, okay, a board of assistantship.
They want to have a famous host.
But you know that Noam would have to appear once, you know, an episode to be that fill.
Although I love the idea of Ryan Reynolds being the guy who's going to give them like a...
They really said that Ryan Reynolds would be a part of this.
And make my mistake, I love Ryan Reynolds.
Like, I would love to hang out with that guy.
But, I mean, this is preposterous, especially because we know, like, he would never, you know, anyway.
He would never do this.
Right, like, you're going to get, like, a D-level celebrity to do this, right?
You're going to get, like...
No, you'd be lucky to get Kid Rock.
Yeah, Kid Rock would do this, right.
Kid Rock would do this.
And they're going to travel from state to state aboard a train called The American.
They're going to build a train, I guess, or I guess they'll gussy up a train that already exists.
They're going to go and learn about each region's history and culture and then compete in themed contests, ranging from balancing on logs in Hayward, Wisconsin, because, okay, to building and launching a rocket in Florida's Cape Canaveral, which houses a major NASA hub.
Building and launching.
This reminds me, remember the movie Meatballs with Bill Murray?
Yeah, I do.
I did not expect Meatballs to come up today.
Yeah, he pretends to be a counselor for the other, the rival counselor camp, and he has an interview with the news saying, yes, this season all of our campers are going to stalk and kill their own bear, you know, and, like, mystify.
This is what that sounds like.
Who's going to build and launch a fucking rocket?
You know, what the hell is that?
That doesn't work when you're talking about budgets and quick reality TV.
I don't know.
This is insane.
No, it's absolutely insane.
And don't for a second think that they wouldn't use this for propaganda purposes.
Like, this would absolutely be the type of state-sponsored propaganda that Donald Trump has dreamed of.
And yeah, it sucks, and it's cheap, and it's shameless, because that's who these people are.
That is the particular brand of fascism that the United States of America is working itself through at this point.
You know who's going to be the judges?
ICE!
Ice!
Yeah, ice would be the judge.
I mean, that's literally, it's commodifying and sort of like sane washing and absolutely insane apparatus.
Nick, speaking of this fascist project, we unfortunately have to talk about James Comey, who I really wish I never had to talk about again.
I really wish we would never have to talk about James Comey.
The former FBI director posted on social media an image that he said he came across on the beach of a bunch of seashells arranged to say 86-47.
And for anybody listening who has never worked in the service industry, if you say 86 in a restaurant, it means that they're out.
They're gone, not available anymore.
This set off just absolutely hysterical and insane overreactions from the right, from MAGA, saying that James Comey was calling for the assassination of Donald Trump.
I'm going to put this into a little bit of ideological context here in a second, but Nick, have you heard of a dumber quote-unquote controversy in forever?
I know I have.
I mean, just Trump being president is enough of a controversy.
Yeah, I know.
It's up there, right?
But yeah, but it's not, here's what's so nefarious about this, is that now they've got people in charge weighing in wanting him to be jailed.
Right.
Not even like investigated, not even like, you know, charged or anything.
They want him already in jail for this.
That is really the dangerous rhetoric we're talking about this whole time.
I mean, he's being currently investigated for this.
Now, you might not be aware, James Comey is a lawyer.
He knows how these things work.
He knows that what he said specifically in that post would not be, it would get thrown out in the case, in a court of law, right?
I mean, we'll see.
We'll see.
Well, I mean, I still think, and I'm sure that's what he was thinking, right?
He was not dumb.
He's not, he didn't just post that to think, oh, here's some rocks.
By the way, somebody wanted, you know, and what he can also argue is that it's the exact number of days.
On the day he took the picture, it was the exact number of days between then and 9-11, as if it was a commemoration or something of 9-11, right?
But hey.
If you're going to go into a court of law and you're going to argue, that's as logical as anything else, as a number of random shells that he walked by on a beach.
So I have to imagine he had calculated a little bit of this, thinking that, all right, they're not going to be able to get me because I'm a lawyer.
It's so stupid, but I wouldn't be shocked if the investigation continues.
Nick, you are as chronically online as I am.
You've been working with me in studying all of the right-wing fascist extremism and radicalization.
How many times have you seen MAGA call for political violence and the jailing and murder of Democrats and political opponents?
About as many times as I've seen them do the exact same thing.
Right.
So it's been constant, right?
Like, I mean, for the past decade, we have been inundated with calls for the killing.
What I want to point out here is something that happens within the authoritarian cycle, which is they inhabit both the abuser and the victim consistently and simultaneously.
In all of this, what happens is it's the equivalent of someone, like, punching you and saying, punch me back.
And they punch you.
And they say, punch me back.
And they keep punching and punching and punching.
And then if you punch them back, they go crying to somebody saying, I got punched.
Right?
They continually escalate a rhetorical battle between themselves and their political opponents in order to try and encourage what they believe is retaliatory violence.
Right?
In order to say that they are being victimized, they're being focused on.
For anyone who wants to make it through this period in time, you have to wrap your head around their ability to both be the abuser and the victim at the exact same time.
And this right here is one of the most perfect examples I've ever seen.
Well, the next thing we're going to talk about may be even more of a perfect example of that as well.
Oh, God.
So, Nick, unfortunately, we've got to turn to Donald Trump, who has been doing Donald Trump stuff.
And in this first case, Nick, as tariffs are starting to raise prices and even as some of these major corporations are starting to have leaks in which employees are showing exactly how the tariffs are affecting and raising prices, Donald Trump is now leaning on these corporate leaders to, quote-unquote, eat the tariffs and absorb the cost of his economic plans.
There is a larger idea behind this.
Well, also, the reasoning behind it is, well, they made all this money last year.
So make a little less money now.
I mean, you know what that's called?
That's communism, right?
When the head of a government tells them they have to make less money in the name of, like, you know, expenses and keeping it down for people, that's not capitalism.
But at the very least, he maybe is acknowledging that, yes, these terrorists will be passed along to the consumers in America.
And is that something that we could at least tip our hat towards?
Well, I mean, at least it proves the fact, you know, that anybody paying attention already knew.
I'm glad that you referenced it like that, Nick, because I actually think there's something to learn from this, which is, and I keep saying a lot about what Trump is doing.
It's instructive for people maybe on the left who could gain power.
This is how it should work.
Like, if you were to have a leftist president who was going to change things, they could pressure businesses and corporations to go ahead and absorb some of that stuff and to get in line.
That is sort of the bully pulpit that you can enjoy as president.
So I actually think that Trump telling them that, it's accurate.
Which is, you have made enough money, and we're doing a political project, you're going to get in line.
It just so happens, as I continually point out, Nick, it's the wrong reason for the wrong thing.
And so what we need to learn here is, once more, you should have a president who stands up to these corporations and does these things.
And a lot of them, Nick, are going to get in line because they want the favor of this thing.
They want the continued information, the continued access, and, you know, the continued seat at the table.
So what's actually happening here is that Donald Trump is trying to cover up what it is that he's doing.
But, again, you do need to lean on these people sometimes and to actually play some hardball with them, which, you know, I think any future leader should probably pay attention to.
Right.
Well, and then you can establish the reality and, like, establish the premise of where he exists now, which is great.
I'm so glad he's finally acknowledged that we are paying for it, right?
And even though he doesn't say explicitly that's what he is saying, you can frame it that way and begin to maybe make that work for people because I think that's a compelling thing.
I really wish Amazon hadn't caved and gotten rid of the increased prices based on the tariffs.
That would have been a really nice thing to be able to have.
But Bezos is Bezos, and we know where that's going.
And you could probably argue as a...
If you were a shareholder of Amazon, you would demand that Bezos do whatever the government tells you to do so that the bottom line continues to flow.
You know, we've seen this with the CBS being sued for the Kamala Harris interview, and they're going to capitulate because they want to do a merger, and they can't have the FCC investigating them.
I mean, it's like...
The utmost of corruption.
So this is all insane.
The other part of this is, remember, he's doing this because there'll be some short-term pain, so we'll have a lot more investment in America, right?
We'll have more of these factories.
Everyone's going to go back to work in the factories and lose their arms and be maimed or whatever that happened back then.
But, you know, as part of that, he's, like, trying to announce that there are now 11 massive car factories that are going to be built.
And this is evidence now because of the terrorists.
Guess what, Jared?
Guess who did the deals for these facilities that are going to build cars in America?
I can't wait.
Joe Biden, back in July of 2024, that was when he was announced and he signed the deals to get them to do it.
Did he need any tariffs to make that happen?
No.
No, he did not.
And I'm glad that you put it in that context because that's exactly right.
It's him taking advantage of what other people have done.
In another absolutely unhinged moment, Trump went on Truth Social.
And he posted this, Jim, Nick, quote, how much did Kamala Harris pay Bruce Springsteen for his poor performance during her campaign for president?
Why did he accept that money if he is such a fan of hers?
Isn't that a major and illegal campaign contribution?
What about Beyonce and how much went to Oprah and Bono?
I'm going to call for a major investigation into this matter.
Candidates aren't allowed to pay for endorsements, which is what Kamala did under the guise of paying for entertainment.
In addition, this was a very expensive and desperate effort to artificially build up her sparse crowds.
Not legal.
For these unpatriotic entertainers, this was just a corrupt and unlawful way to capitalize on a broken system.
Thank you for attention to this matter.
My God, this man is fucking insane.
Nick, this is one of those things that, like, actually might have some consequences, and I think that it isn't just an asinine sort of a thing.
It sort of, like, portends where all of this is going.
But, yeah, he's going after Springsteen, Bono, Oprah, and Beyoncé.
How about that?
How about that?
Well, we have to explain why he was going after Springsteen, at least, is because Springsteen, while he was over in the UK, had a five-minute impassioned monologue about the problems with authoritarianism, what Trump is doing.
Right?
And unless you think he was off the cuff or he just decided to kind of do it randomly, no, he had a teleprompter for that.
And he spoke very eloquently.
It was very powerful.
And he went to My City of Ruins, I believe, was the song that was going to start playing into it.
So if you haven't been to a Springsteen concert, I can't recommend it more.
It's really one of the most, you know, incredible experiences I've been in.
And I wasn't even a huge, huge fan when I first went.
I've now seen him, I don't know, five times.
But the point of all that, so, you know, of course, Trump is going to...
Hit back, right?
That's all he does, right?
This notion that he was paid by Kamala Harris, there's no evidence of that.
They cover the production costs.
They probably flew him in, and he just performs because he supports her.
There isn't any payment, so there's nothing.
This is all sort of bullshit.
But that said, do you have any doubt that they might actually go into his records, try and dig into something, maybe find some weird tax filing he made a mistake on and try and get him that way?
No, I don't.
I absolutely don't.
And this is another warning shot over the bow.
It's basically saying anybody that participates with the Democratic Party at this point or supports them is going to have the eye of Sauron put on them.
And when you have a DOJ that is completely under control of the President of the United States of America, you've got the IRS, which has been hijacked by Doge and all of these other little authoritarian cronies.
Then on top of it, you've got the FBI that is helmed by a couple of absolutely insane sycophants.
And so all you have to do is make up a conspiracy theory that has something to do with people that you don't like or that run afoul of you, and you can create the situation where you can start to go after them.
So, no, I actually do think there will probably be an investigation into these things.
Even easier, Bruce is outside the country right now doing a tour.
Well, he's going to come back at some point in a few months.
Now, I know that those people at that level can pay to kind of get through customs or whatever.
But there's no doubt in my mind that they could easily say, hey, pull him aside, start to interrogate him, question whatever.
Oh, and by the way, because Doge has now combined every database across every government agency, we now have every record, maybe even his texts.
We know what he's already said, you know, through the NSA.
And you can then really put the screws on to threaten him.
Listen, I'm worried about coming back to the country from Japan in July.
You know, Springsteen, they're going to know he's coming back.
They could easily hassle him, quote-unquote, and make it really unpleasant.
And it's only a question now of when that's going to start happening.
Well, Nick, before we get out of here, we have to talk about something that's been developing over the past few days and has been messing with our discourse a little bit.
On Sunday, it was revealed that former President Joe Biden has prostate cancer that has spread to his bones.
This has followed a week of previews of Jake Tapper's new book, The Original Sin, President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.
The revelations that have come from that book include that Biden not only has had trouble with his mental acuity, he didn't recognize staff.
He didn't recognize famous supporters.
There was apparently a plan for him in his second term to possibly use a wheelchair, and it also reveals a lot of the meticulous work that was done within the administration and within the party to cover up Joe Biden's condition.
We would be remiss if we didn't talk about this, if we didn't address it because this is part of a larger story that is swirling around our politics.
What are your takes on these revelations, including Biden's diagnosis?
You know, one of my things I always like to go back to is when did he have it and when did you know about it?
That kind of questioning.
You know, in my research, which I admitted is not as deep as I would like it to be as of now, but I did look through as much as I could about how long it takes to metastasize to the bone for prostate cancer.
It's not like months.
So the idea that they would not have known about it while it was in office is a little bit hard, a bit of a stretch.
And so that's a problem, right?
Especially in the context of whatever else was going on mentally with him that was also being covered up.
Do you feel comfortable enough in saying that there was some version of a cover-up of what his mental acuity really was?
Yes, absolutely.
The President of the United States of America has some of the most strenuous tests and medical observance of anybody in the world.
So I will also say, Nick, it's really hard in America.
To chew gum and walk at the same time.
And a lot of people are saying, we don't need to talk about Biden.
He was in the past, all of that.
I do think it is necessary to talk about this because it is...
It's inextricably linked to the Democratic Party and what's wrong with that party.
And what we've talked about with everyone from Feinstein to Fetterman and you name it, this party does need to take a look in the mirror and change itself.
And what happened with Joe Biden as president does need to be addressed, especially as people are moving forward within this authoritarian environment.
That being said, I don't think it should be a distraction for what Donald Trump is doing.
You should be able to still talk about what's going on with authoritarianism and these sort of, like, constitutional overreaches and crimes, but the Democratic Party and the supporters and the people who carried this stuff out, there should be an investigation into it.
You shouldn't be able to do this.
This is a problem that does deserve some attention.
That being said, you should be able to talk about this and look at it while also not getting distracted from what Donald Trump is doing and where we need to go moving forward.
Sure, and it's worth noting that I'm sure there's also been a massive cover-up of Trump's health and his mental health.
Oh, absolutely, no doubt.
So it's not even a Democratic thing in my mind in this situation.
It's a larger existential problem within our politics, yes.
Should someone who's covered this up be prosecuted?
I would say that there were probably some crimes committed here, yeah.
Would the Trump administration be very willing to prosecute somebody?
They would be very willing to do it, and I would not like the Trump administration to prosecute this.
I would like this to actually be handled in a mature and rational way.
Fair enough.
But then again, if there is going to be an administration that's going to go after a Biden person for covering up, and then hopefully in the future protect us from being out of the loop like that, that could be considered a good thing.
But I think the only reason why they might not do it is because they might be worried it'll fold back on themselves, and then they'll realize that there's going to be hell to pay in their own administration.
Remember, he got rushed to Walter Reed, and they never explained any of that.
As well.
And there's a reason why he's the only president who's taken multiple cognitive acuity tests, right?
He boasts about it, but I'm like, you know, I think they're doing it because they have to.
There's a reason for it.
And again, this is a larger existential thing that is not just about the Democratic Party.
It just so happens that we know with the last Democratic president that almost everybody around him carried this out.
And all of the ass-covering that's going on in this book and all the press around it, all the Democrats just being like, well, I didn't see it.
And then, well, I saw it, but I told them they shouldn't do it.
It is something that the party has to look at and has to get past.
I would actually put it, and it's not the same magnitude, obviously, Nick, but it is like with the Iraq War, the Democratic Party helped.
They voted with the Republican Party to get the Iraq War over the finish line.
They helped, you know, with the Patriot Act.
They helped with the surveillance systems, all these constitutional sort of, you know, crossings.
Like, the party does need to move away from where it's been, and it begins with a long, hard look in the mirror.
And unfortunately, you have to be able to do that while also taking care of current circumstances, which is not what America's good at.
Absolutely.
Keep your eye on the reaction by Trump when the book comes out, the more these excerpts come out about how Biden was suffering in terms of mental acuity, because that's going to be revealing in my mind.
If they don't call for immediate investigations or the possibility of criminal charges, that to me says that they can't do it because they know it would fall back on them and they would have to...
It's a lot like the Epstein stuff, isn't it?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, where they are operating very, very aware of their own vulnerabilities of what they've done and what Trump has done.
All right, everybody, that is going to do it for this edition of the Muckrake Podcast.
A reminder, get your questions in.
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Support the show.
Keep us going.
All right, everybody.
If you need us before then, you can find us over on Blue Sky.
Do you hear this thunder?
Yeah, I hear a little bit of that, yeah.
Nick, there are some storms coming through, let me tell you.
I'm getting ready to go check on the situation, is what's getting ready to happen.
You can find us over on Blue Sky, Nick's at Nick Halsman, and I'm at JY Sexton.
