Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman break down one of the largest protest days in American history and why the media refuses to treat it like the political earthquake it is. They dive into the horrifying assassination in Minnesota—and the MAGA disinformation machine that followed—before turning to the chaos erupting in the Middle East. Plus: ICE is starving detainees, and Trump is throwing parades. Good times.
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I'm Jared J. Sexton, here with my friend, my pal, my co-host, my cohort, Nick Hausman.
How are you doing, Nick?
I'm doing.
I'm doing well, Jared.
Thanks for asking.
Bringing that energy.
I love it.
That enthusiasm, that excitement that this show depends on.
Woo!
I am ready.
No, we have a lot of great stuff to talk about, for sure.
There is a lot to talk about.
Some good, some bad.
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patreon.com slash muckrake podcast.
Nick, we are going to start with the No Kings protest on Saturday, It is estimated to be the largest one-day protest in American history.
took place in over 2,000 cities.
Nick, this was a massive, massive thing, and we're going to dissect this thing both in terms of what happened, what it means, some of the uglier parts of it, as well as the reaction and the coverage and where we go from here.
But to begin, I know that you went to one of these.
I did as well.
What was your personal sort of reaction?
How did you feel going to one of these protests?
Well, it was interesting because it's a dichotomy between where we had gone on last weekend downtown in L.A., which somehow all the...
So somehow, I don't know if that was connected.
They were like, hey, Nick's gone.
I don't know what happened.
But anyway, we missed a lot of that, what happened.
But at the very least, the feelings that you could garner from downtown protests compared to where I went yesterday or on Saturday in Beverly Hills was palpable.
It was frustrating.
So we shan't go to Beverly Hills again to protest.
Imagine, I'm waiting for everybody to be rolling their eyes.
Oh, Beverly Hills.
It pretty much was exactly what you'd think in terms of going to this little park.
It was pretty much designed so that anybody who's driving by is going to see you and you're going to see them and you're going to wave the sign so they see you when you're driving by.
And it just felt like we were all there to be seen versus anybody there for sort of a common purpose.
It was very strange, very off-putting to me.
Sorry, Beverly Hills, but it just didn't have the right feeling of a protest.
They didn't bring it.
They didn't bring it.
And, you know, there was probably a thousand people there.
So it was like, you know, it was sort of a lot of people.
But, you know, and then you had your group of 10, you know, 20-something, 20-year-old males showing up in a group who were pro-Trump, trying to, you know, muck things up, I guess.
And it was all for show.
And it was kind of silly.
It was what it was.
Well, I went to mine in my undisclosed city in a so-called red state, and the city showed up.
It was upwards of 10,000 people.
I mean, just blocks and blocks.
And on top of that, people driving through, honking like maniacs.
It was a beautiful, beautiful protest.
The police stood down, which meant that there wasn't conflict.
Shocker of shockers.
If the police and National Guard don't show up and cause some, there won't be.
And, you know, it was really a sight to see.
It was a combination of things, Nick.
It was, on one hand, watching the mutual aid that was there.
people walking around handing out masks, handing out water, handing out free food, watching all of the sort of organs of actual collective action coming together.
And on top of that, Watching the different groups who show up at these things and watching them come together, because this wasn't a pro-Democratic Party rally, it was an anti-authoritarian, small-D Democratic rally.
Watching, you know, liberals, progressive, leftists, anarchists, socialists, communists come together in one space, it really hit a note that I think that these protests hit at the national level, which is – And there is something growing in this country.
It's what I expected all along, the equal and opposite reaction to this thing that I felt very inspired and very emboldened by.
And watching it come together, all it does for a person is make them feel like, number one, they're not alone.
Number two, they're not powerless.
And number three, what if we did this?
You know what I mean?
Like, we all got together on a Saturday and we said in one unified voice, we're tired of this shit.
We don't want to live like this.
If we're able to do this more than just a protest on Saturday, you really can change the world.
And I think that's one of the reasons why these things are so powerful.
They can't be the end point.
They have to be something that, like, spurs this thing on and leads to organizing and something beyond it.
And it's my hope from what we saw, hundreds of thousands of people in certain cities coming together and saying, again, in a unified voice, we're tired of this shit and we're not going to live like this.
Oh, I know.
And in places like Wyoming and Idaho and all.
All sorts of places that you would not expect in good numbers.
And I was also struck by how often I saw reports interviewing people who it was their first time at a protest.
And that was also very, very exciting to see as well.
So that's the kind of galvanizing event that could get people out to the vote.
And again, we have to rely on the fact that the voting is going to be free and fair.
And that's the whole other level of concern for me going into the midterms.
Well, and if it's not free and fair, That's the point.
If there aren't going to be free and fair elections, if we can't count on that, then we have the numbers and you have to cultivate that desire and that will to say, if you're going to take this from us, we're going to do something about it.
Well, the other thing I wanted to say about, you know, the fact that it's really great to hear that the police stood down and sort of allowed the protests to happen.
I mean, Beverly Hills, the police were standing with us.
You know, they were just kind of chilling.
It was easy for them.
But we're seeing a lot more of the, like the downtown LA, more violence and really aggressive police behavior.
And I was thinking about this because And so what that dynamic ends up creating, and my worry is it's going to make it worse, is that the LAPD is going to say to themselves, we don't need these people.
And the chief has said that for sure.
And so they're going to make sure.
That everybody knows that they don't need the National Guard or they don't need the Marines.
And what that means is they're going to be much more aggressive.
They're going to be much more violent to the people to show that they have control over the situation.
And that's really, really a frustrating thing, too, and probably a byproduct of maybe what Trump wanted anyway.
Right?
He just wants footage of people getting trampled on by the horses, right?
And whatever we had talked about last time, you know, pales in comparison.
There's a lot more footage of that now, of people who are just getting stomped on by these horses and hit with the sticks.
And it looks like something out of the Planet of the Apes movie.
It's awful.
And I mean, the darker side of this from the protest, of course, there was a protester shot and killed in Salt Lake City.
A person showed up with a gun and they were accidentally shot.
We also have multiple people who were hit by cars in Virginia and San Francisco and I think a couple of other places.
On top of that, you know, as Trump was having his pathetic military parade, my God, how sad was that?
There was the split screen.
Which is what he wanted, of Los Angeles, where it was a peaceful protest.
There was absolutely no skirmishes with the police or the National Guard that ended up with, you know, the less lethal rounds with the gas, with more and more violence.
We're also seeing Marines have begun arresting American citizens on American soil.
And on top of that, Trump has responded to all of this by saying that he is going to go after Democratic-controlled cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York City.
What happened on Saturday, there actually was violence.
There actually was pushback by authoritarian regimes.
But on top of it, I think we saw the beginnings of what lies in front of us, which is we were all able to go out.
And I don't know how you felt about it, Nick.
I prepared for the worst.
I knew when I went out on Saturday that there was a possibility that things were going to get very hairy.
I've said it before.
I'm a veteran of multiple riots and police violence, all of that.
I went prepared for that, but because the police stood down, it didn't happen.
And now the question is that now that we've had this historic show up of democratic energy, are we going to see more of that?
And what I know about authoritarian regimes tells me that, yes, it's inevitable that we are going to see much more state violence in response to this, particularly when you see millions of people out in the streets.
Let me ask you this, because you mentioned the parade, too, which was a sad commentary, and the way they were trying to frame the pictures to make it look like there were a lot more people than there were there.
But I was thinking about it because, you know, we saw...
They were forced to be out there.
And as I understand it, for most of the other armies that do do these things, they have these battalions that that's their job.
Like, they are the ones who are going to march out and look, you know, like professional soldiers, whatever they are.
And they know how to march in unison.
None of these soldiers really seem to have that down.
They weren't sort of like in perfect rows.
They weren't, the feet weren't going together a lot of the time.
Do you think that was on purpose?
Do you think that was a little bit of an FU from the army?
No, I don't.
I understand because we're in this period where, again, with like palace intrigue and like the removal away from power, we're looking for little signs constantly.
What's Melania doing?
What are the troops doing?
I don't look into that.
I think that they got forced into a parade that they didn't want to do.
And then they got put on the ground and there were God knows how many soldiers who had to march in front of them.
I don't think that that was a subtle sign to the populace that they weren't in line with Trump.
I understand where that comes from.
I have seen a lot of people who have served who say, we learn how to do that from the first week that we joined the army.
It just seems very strange that they weren't giving us that part.
Have you ever tried to walk off beat?
Or, like, keep a beat the wrong way.
To do it on purpose is really hard.
And if you're trained like that, I imagine it's probably pretty hard.
I thought that this was, I think that this was more about how poorly planned this thing was and how nobody really wanted to be there.
Like, I mean, by the end of it, Trump didn't even want to be there.
I mean, like, the administration didn't want to be there.
Well, did you also, did you see the drone presentation?
Yeah.
Unfortunately.
In case you didn't, it was like, I think, three soldiers who were kind of walking around and one was holding up a drone like Musk was when he was playing with that little spaceship thing, like literally holding up like it's flying.
By the way, you know, if anybody who had understood anything about this and pageantry or whatever, you could have had the drones do something really cool.
Like, they could have flown through and hovered and whatever.
Even if this thing wouldn't have been a disaster, I mean, like, the bottom line is it shouldn't have happened.
You know what I mean?
Like, this never, ever should have happened.
And I think it also, you can't ask for better optics.
I think Trump wanted this display of strength in front of these protests and also to show that he, you know, the commander-in-chief with all the strength.
And it failed.
It absolutely failed.
And I want to ask you, Nick, after these protests and after this military parade, I know this is going to surprise you, and I know it's going to shock our listeners.
I've been really, really frustrated and pissed off with the coverage of all of this.
What do you feel like the discourse around these things have been?
Do you feel like it rose to the moment and accurately portrayed what happened?
At the parade?
Oh, not the parade.
The protest and the parade.
Both.
You know, I think that the protest coverage was a lot better than it had been in terms of like this volume and, you know, of content in a way, because it does feel like a lot of the other protests just simply were not covered that well.
And so all that's starting to come up again.
And that's obviously what sells, right?
Like, that's, when you have those clashes, that's what the news loves to be able to air, right?
And it plays into the Trump's part.
So that's going to be a weird line here.
But I do feel like throughout the day, we were monitoring it, and it felt like there was pretty reasonable, good coverage of, like, what was going on and capturing the moment, like you described it, as many people we've ever had coming together in a common purpose to prove that, you know, it's a small minority of people that want to support what he's about.
I think there's something to learn from the coverage of this.
Yes, they had to show up because 5 to 6 million people showed up in the streets.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Because it was that large in over 2,000 cities.
They had to talk about it.
But there's something missing here, which is, Nick, you and I, we're oldsters.
Let's admit it.
We're trudging through the years.
Wrong in the tooth.
15 years ago, you and I watched the coverage of the Tea Party, correct?
Yeah.
And do you remember that you would get like a few hundred people or maybe a thousand people in a place and it was exhaustive news coverage that was just like, Barack Obama has to reconsider his agenda right now.
Look at this uprising of the people.
You know, it's funny.
Now I'm trying to dig through my memory banks.
I mean, I remember seeing the paltry, you know, images.
It's like, oh, it's kind of like when they had the truckers or whatever, they were going to go on that caravan thing, and it's like nobody really showed up.
It's kind of, you know, or like the parade this weekend.
So, but yes, there's no question that the rhetoric coming out of that was like, it had some weird pressure on him.
And, you know, certainly he had to respond to it as well, which is interesting.
Well, and it was as Obama was trying to not only fix the fallout from the 2008 crisis still, but also trying to get us some sort of health care coverage.
That right there was being used.
And again, the Tea Party was a front for the wealth class.
It was an AstroTurf, Koch brother, you know, wealth class created thing.
And what you saw in corporate media was they inflated it.
They made it larger and then used that as a cudgel to keep that reform from happening.
And especially to keep it from going into single payer health care and kept it into what it became.
Well, thank you, Wade.
Fuck Joe Lieberman.
Fuck Joe Lieberman, wherever you are in hell, best of luck.
And if you take a look at this, it's really wild that we just had the single largest protest in American history over one day, and it's not putting pressure on the Trump administration.
It's just being reported as something that happened.
Not that things have to change, but that this thing took place.
And I think that's really important for us to pay attention to rhetorically.
Well, I think I said this in the last podcast, but, you know, we know that Nixon was getting drunk and, like, hearing all the protests, and actually it was affecting him psychically, right?
It really was something that was working.
But granted, it was like a protest every weekend like this for years, right?
Like, as I recall, if I'm recalling correctly.
So that's a little different than what we're having right now.
And I was saying that Trump is not like that.
There's nothing that's going to affect him materially like that.
But I'm not so sure I believe that.
I have to imagine.
Imagine that he's seeing it.
He's hearing what the people are, you know, are sort of saying about him, right?
He can't resist, you know, turning it on and trying to watch it.
Of course, it's filtered through.
Fox News and Newsmax or whatever.
So I'm wondering, I'm kind of at odds with myself here about just how much he does hear of it and how much it might affect him, either in a surface way, ego-wise or policy-wise.
I guess that's the point.
Policy-wise, no way.
Nothing's ever going to change.
It's not going to change the way he does it.
But I think maybe ego, it could be wounding to him.
Yeah, I mean, and he's an incredibly insecure person, so it gets to him.
But I also want to take the focus off of Trump.
It wasn't Barack Obama that saw the Tea Party and was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's hit the brakes on this thing.
It was public and media pressure that came upon the entire political paradigm.
It caused the Republican Party to change and shift more towards what it eventually became with MAGA, right?
It caused the Democrats to moderate and become afraid of any sort of upcoming election and being basically chased out of office.
And it changed the discourse.
That's the larger difference here is that we are able to go out there and put pressure on people.
And yes, there were some Democrats who showed up to these things.
They still haven't fully embraced it.
We still have this need.
And I want to state one more thing.
People need to congratulate themselves for coming out.
People need to congratulate themselves for putting their fates on the line and going out to these protests.
This is the beginning of something.
This isn't the end goal.
Just having one large day of protest doesn't fix this thing.
The corporate media is not going to roll over and help you change the world.
And corporate, you know, wealth class owned politicians are not going to say, well, I've come to my senses.
Let's make this thing better.
This is going to have to be a sustained thing.
And next time, and over the next few times, because we're going to have to do this a lot, it's not going to be just people getting in one space and saying, no, we don't want Donald Trump, we don't want kings.
There's going to have to develop an agenda.
There's going to have to develop an ask.
And that ask is going to be the reform and the progress that you and I have been screaming about for years.
And if this is going to actually become something that changes something and makes it better, it's going to have to develop those sort of components.
Well, one problem with that, though, is that this big tent that we have, or the progressives have, or the left has, or Democrats have, it tends to get infighting of like, what is...
And we don't focus on anything, you know?
And so it's going to take some sort of leadership to figure out how to more narrowly figure out what that ask is going to be.
And I also want to point out that in the time era that you're talking about, when the Tea Party came about and put all that pressure on Obama, he had 66 plus 1 senators.
He had a supermajority in the Senate.
I think we all forgot that, that he had a moment in 08 when there was a rush that blew out of the Bush years.
Could have done so much.
Yeah, and that was Lieberman's problem.
I think Angus King was the independent who, like, caucused with the Democrats.
But, like, they really, you know, and as a result, they wrung their hands and they kowtowed to the Republicans anyway during a lot of that stretch for whatever reason.
Well, and Obama didn't have the instinct to push it either.
That's the other problem with this.
Yeah, he just wanted to keep it together.
Yeah.
But I mean, that is, you know, the point you just brought up, Nick.
When you have a group like the Tea Party that was controlled by a bunch of millionaires and billionaires, the agenda comes from them.
They're the ones who tell the people what to care about and what to push for.
And here it has to emerge organically.
That's the problem.
And that's why it can't just be one protest over one Saturday.
It has to be sustained.
And we have to form coalitions that are going to start having conversations with each other.
And we can't be worried about upsetting people like on the right.
Oh my God, no.
You know, I mean, here's what's weird about how my brain works.
I can remember once playing tennis, right, with doubles.
And I was with a partner, and we were both good.
Playing against people were worse.
And I remember, like, the first play of the game, I just slammed it like it was an easy whatever.
And I kind of felt bad right away.
And then everything fell apart, and we lost.
You know, because it was almost like I felt too bad that we were going to score too easily or whatever.
And it was like we squandered the exact advantage that we had.
And I suppose if we're going to learn anything from what Trump is doing, it would have to be that that has to go away.
And this, you know, listen, consensus is great, but if you have a majority, and we'll never ever, are we ever going to get 67 senators on either side anymore, ever?
Possibly, yeah.
I mean, in the paradigm that we currently have, no.
But if you have some sort of like a almost revolutionary social movement, yeah, you could.
I mean, that could break the thing wide open.
But what you just brought up is exactly right.
We have to give up on hierarchical power and move towards collaborative power.
And that's not comfortable.
That's not an easy thing to come together and say, what is it that we need?
I think the agenda is pretty obvious.
And in my position, when I organize and, you know, as sort of like being out there and trying to be a leader, I can communicate it.
It doesn't mean that I have to make people do it.
You know what I mean?
Like, I can run my flag up the flagpole and see who salutes it.
But if nobody's going to salute it, there's nothing to do about it.
And in the face of this, we have to give up the things exactly as you're talking about.
But what's the first flag you're flying?
What's the first flag?
I mean, yeah, what is the first thing we have to focus on?
I mean, the first flag that you have to fly is taxing the billionaires and the oligarchs and redistribution of wealth in order to pay for actual programs that are going to help people.
That has to be the start.
Otherwise, nothing else works.
It's like trying to drive a car without gas in it.
You can't do it.
I mean, I suppose the only other thing you could say is we have to stop what ICE is doing.
Oh, yeah, exactly.
And by the way, on that note, everybody, NPR is reporting that detainees in ICE facilities have untreated medical conditions.
And Nick, get this, because this is great.
They're surviving on daily meals of one cup of rice and a glass of water.
And where I'm from, we have an old term for that, and it's called a death camp.
Yeah.
And so if anybody at this point.
I don't want anything to do with them.
It needs to go away.
And I think you're right.
I think that very well might be where you start.
You get rid of the Gestapo that is actually going after people, and then you start fixing the problems when you don't have them on your neck.
That's not a bad point.
Yeah, because I do think, I mean, you're looking for galvanizing moments here, and it's like, okay, taxing the rich is some sort of thing you can find consensus on, but I still think that what we're seeing, I mean, every day, multiple clips of heartbreaking moments of these people being kidnapped, Right.
And I, we got to find a lawyer once come on the show and really walk us through why this is even possibly legal that people who don't identify themselves, Well, it's not.
Okay.
Well, you know, they're like, we don't have to show you anything, whatever, and they're getting in their way.
If you get in my way, I'm going to arrest you for obstruction.
But they're not officers of the law.
Like, it doesn't make any sense.
And, you know, I suppose someone needs to finally get a court case far enough so there's discovery to find out, again, like, who are these people that they're hiring and how are they training them?
Because we know, you know, Stephen Miller is dictating this stuff, and they're going to the Home Depots everywhere across the state now.
In California, it's horrible.
going to churches and there's there's the schools parking lots are pulling people out this is Schools.
And you know what this really is, right?
In their addled mind, and they did this in the first administration, they felt like if we could make life so miserable and so uninhabitable for people who don't have documentation here, then they won't come in the future.
They'll stop coming across the world.
And that's the issue.
Like, they've convinced themselves that that's why they need to make these things so harsh and so horrible and inhumane.
Well, there's a double component of it because they don't want the people to stop coming because they need to rely on them for their labor.
And they've already carved out exceptions for the people who are actually working in this country for the wealth class.
So they want to get rid of some of them in order to create a reign of terror while keeping the other people underfoot.
And what you just brought up, and this is a perfect segue to this awful second story, Nick, we have a rash of people because ICE will not identify itself with people just dressing up as ICE agents, and we've already seen it going out and hurting people and rounding people up.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Allegedly had a list of 70 Democrats that he wanted to kill.
His roommate has confirmed he's a Trump supporter, an avid Infowars Alex Jones fan, a rabid evangelical, who was able to do what he did because he dressed up as a police officer.
And we now have other questions that go from the investigation and the capture of this guy.
We'll get into that in a second.
But what we have here is an escalation of what you and I have been covering for years.
Which is a culture and environment of dehumanization, vilification, and asymmetrical violence.
And so in this case, this terrible, terrible, awful, haunting case, we have all the different components that are coming together of not just Trumpism, of not just MAGA, but what's going on with law enforcement and what's going on in our culture.
It is one of the most stunning and awful stories I've seen in a long time.
Now, Jen, are you happy that they caught him?
Yeah, for sure.
Have you kind of pondered a little bit about how they caught him?
Oh, the whole thing is very strange.
Everything about this is absolutely bizarre, Nick.
And it almost feels like law enforcement is not telling us the entire story, which is what happens at every step along at every one of these things.
And I'm not mistaken, I found his wife with, you know, guns and money and passports the day before in her car.
The reason why I bring it up like that is because I'm sensing that there's some sort of tracking going on across the country that people can now find people like this.
And we're happy about that to some degree, but I think it's the same technology and the same methods they're using to get people, the ICE people are doing to find undocumented immigrants here.
And in some sort of a weird police state.
And I worry that we're probably already under this kind of surveillance that everyone sees in the movies or fears that's going to happen.
And so that also is a little bit concerning to me.
Everyone is now trackable by either their phones or the cameras that are all over the place now.
And we're here.
And now you're combining what Palantir is doing with all the database stuff.
And they're shutting down the borders.
This is the thing where you have to start wondering.
Within another six months, another year, whatever that's going to be, that they're going to end up, you know, having this police state.
Well, a few things here, Nick.
One, I believe that that is true.
But you'll notice that this guy who should have been on, I know, listen, this should almost be like a drinking game of this podcast.
Was he on the radar?
Of course he was on the radar of this.
They still didn't stop him from assassinating a Democratic politician in a state, shooting another one, and going to two other houses, impersonating a law enforcement officer.
It is both the totalitarian, like, apparatus that you're talking about, and also the fact that they have all this technology and they don't stop this shit.
We see this all the time with mass shootings, assassinations, bombings, attempted mass shootings, attempted bombings.
These people don't get stopped.
And I think to go ahead and draw in what we were talking about at the end of the last segment, Nick, there has to be a massive reformation when it comes to our law enforcement.
And I'm talking about everything from ICE to the police to the FBI, you name it, the DOJ, all of it.
There has to be an investigation into all of this because you look at this story, Nick, none of it makes sense.
None of it makes sense.
It is such a bizarre tragedy.
And to look at the apparatus we have, we have thousands of cops and thousands of National Guard and, you know, hundreds of Marines in the streets of LA who are attacking people who aren't doing anything.
Right?
But we can't stop people from being assassinated at this point.
We can't stop, like, lunatics from going out and doing this shit, even though we know what their politics are.
Like, even though he'd spoken to people about, like, you know, violent sort of tendencies.
You look at this and you look at how MAGA has turned up the environment.
It is a perfect environment for it.
And this isn't a solo type thing.
Everybody's like, oh, this is the first moment of, like, violence and all this.
No, it's not.
All these mass shootings have had right-wing manifestos that have all these conspiracy theories, all the ideology that we're talking about, all these bombings, attempted assassinations, people breaking into Nancy Pelosi's house and trying to beat her husband to death with a hammer, sending things out to media figures, scientists, public officials, whatever it is.
This is an epidemic.
It's a major, major problem, and we can see that the state apparatus has no desire whatsoever to stop this, no desire to be honest with us.
And, by the way, the coverage of it and the response of it does not meet the actual moment.
And I keep saying this.
I don't know.
I hate how many episodes I have to keep saying this, Nick.
We are entering into an era of violence.
In which politicians and public figures are going to be targeted more and more.
And unfortunately, this is the result of the sort of seedlings of fascism.
They create an environment where people like this go out and hurt people, and it's only going to happen more and more until we finally address it.
And then what you're talking about, about the dishonesty, is like a senator like Mike Lee, he continually, you know, and you brought up Paul Pelosi, they continually spread the most vicious, ridiculous lies on purpose, and he's doing the same thing with this, trying to pretend that this person is some sort of left-wing, you know, agent and a Marxist and whatever, and that's why he killed these people and wanted to kill more.
Mike Lee is not a serious person.
He's an asshole.
If I say what I really feel about that guy, I'm worried that someone's going to show up my house and start investigating me.
But just imagine what I'm thinking about this kind of person.
At the very least, he should resign from his office.
He should be censured, right?
Censured and said goodbye to.
I mean, he's a clown, but the clown isn't good enough or it's not strong enough because he's going to convince people that are following him and whatnot that that's the truth.
And now it's forget about trying to convince them what the truth really is because it's already solidified.
So that's what's so gross about this whole thing is that we've gotten to that thing where it's now dunking on people, making fun of people.
These are real lives, right, that we're dealing with here.
And even getting back to the way that they're being treated in these detention centers, you know, disease is spreading through them now.
People are dying there.
We have no idea what is happening in these places.
No.
No.
And I just, I want to point out, I want to pull the curtain back and I want to talk about the process of my analysis, what it has always been, Nick.
It's been taking historical precursors, seeing how history has played out and how events work and how they evolve.
In this case, it's not hard to see the parallels.
You have a situation where authoritarians start to pervert and corrupt a system that's already perverted and corrupted, and eventually they take control of state power.
And what do they do, Nick?
They decide who it is that decides to hurt.
They decide who it is that deserves to die.
And sometimes they'll use state power to hurt them.
Other times, they'll just not deal with the people who will go out and do it on their own.
Like, it's good for an authoritarian regime for its supporters to go out and murder its political opponents.
And they can say, well, oh, this has nothing to do with what Alex Jones is saying.
This has nothing to do with Trump's rhetoric and Republican rhetoric.
These are activating pieces of rhetoric.
The guy who did this undoubtedly thought that he was fighting for the right side, that he did this for the right reasons, and it's because he has been marinated in this culture.
And eventually you just kind of look around and you're like, you know, I think all the time, Nick, about Bill Barr.
Remember whenever during the first Trump administration, he was like, well, if they don't appreciate the cops, maybe the cops won't help them.
Right?
Those places where they're going to allow the resources to help people or not help people.
We've also seen police forces in cities where they felt like they weren't being appreciated or maybe their contracts were a little weird or they were having fights with City Hall, you name it.
They just sort of went on quiet strike.
Like they didn't quit working.
They didn't quit collecting paychecks.
They just stopped showing up to things.
They just stopped doing things.
And now all of a sudden we've arrived at this point where, We should not expect this to be the last political assassination of a Democratic official.
We're only a couple of days removed from a couple of unidentified thugs throwing down a Democratic senator and hog-tying.
I know that feels like a couple of weeks ago.
That was a couple of days ago.
So what happens is it's both the pressure that we're seeing that is the actual action, and it's the inaction.
Right?
So in this situation, I don't know the whole story here.
Nobody does because how much of it is going to be hidden from us, which is what law enforcement has done for forever.
Period.
That's the nature of it.
You know, the other thing about what happens when these things, these assassinations happen is that it ends up being a really big deterrent for anyone who wants to join the process and become a politician to help people.
Right.
And if you're going to, You're going to find that Democrats will have, people will be a lot more afraid to join a Democratic Party.
And that's also part of the point, right?
So the more that they can prop this whole thing up, the more intimidation factor it takes hold.
And then, you know, you're going to get less and less people who want to become part of the process, too.
Listen, if I ever thought about wanting to run for something like that, it's like the first thought of my mind is going to be, am I going to be assassinated or not?
I mean, that's on everybody's mind.
I can't tell you how many potential candidates I've talked to who are thinking about running in 2026 who have said to me, do you think that I would be in danger or my family would be in danger?
And I have to look them in the eyes and say, yeah.
You will be.
And I'm really sorry about that.
And that's something that you have to weigh and something you have to talk to your family about.
And you've got to take precautions.
I mean, it's been that way for years, but a lot of people have been in denial about it.
They don't mean what they're saying.
It's just words.
And, you know, there's a couple of, like, crazies.
No, this is a larger authoritarian, totalitarian, and also terroristic movement.
And it's been this way for years.
We just refused to connect the dots and see where it was all leading.
And now we have to look at it in the face and realize where it is and where it's going.
And where it's going, it almost feels like the decision to enter politics will be a lot similar to the decision to join the army.
Yeah, that's right.
You know, because if you join the armed forces, the possibility of you being sent to war and dying for your country is there.
If you join the army, at least you have, like, state power on your side.
At least you have a fighting chance because you've got the weaponry of the United States military.
Yeah, and you have a weapon in your hand.
Like, you're trained, you're going to be ready.
Like, people who are, the doorbell rings at 2.30 in the morning, and it looks like a cop.
He's got the siren, or the flashing lights on his car to make it look like he's a cop.
I gotta tell you, I ain't opened the door anymore.
Horrific.
Horrific.
You know, I would have to talk through the door, whatever.
I'm not opening it.
I don't care what badge they show me at this point.
And that's the other problem.
How do we get beyond that where we can actually trust what's going on?
If someone's got flashing lights and they try and pull me over and it's not like an official-looking cop car, fuck that.
I'm not pulling over.
I'll drive you.
No, and what's more, like, you shouldn't.
I mean, and it's not just here.
It's been forever.
People have impersonated this stuff.
It speaks more to the amount of power and authority that they have been given.
And that's what I mean by that we need a larger reformation.
Like, we have now seen in Los Angeles, we saw back in 2020 with the BLM protest, our law enforcement is militarized.
It has the weapons that are left over from the war on terror, the capabilities that are left over from the war on terror, and they've become an occupying army.
Period.
And you can't, that's not about, oh, you've got a couple of bad apples.
No, the entire thing needs to be rethought and reformed.
And we had the chance back in 2020, it just so happens that we had a bunch of cowards in the Democratic Party who ran away from it as fast as humanly possible.
But in this regard, like, yeah, people are going to have to, in an authoritarian regime, start rethinking how it is that they interact with these things.
I'm with you.
If one officer shows up at my door in the middle of the night, I'm not answering the damn door.
And what's more, I have to consider, how am I going to protect myself?
That normalcy bias that people are still holding on to, and I think we're different because we've been covering this seriously for years.
I have to imagine the people listening to this are like that as well.
You have to really reconsider how you go through the world.
This thing is not just going to, like, shake off and they're not going to wake up from their bad dream or whatever.
Like, we're in the shit now.
And stuff like this is going to become, unfortunately, pretty regular.
And the guy that was going around who was impersonating a cop, like, he had this mask wearing on over his head.
Awful.
That supposedly, I guess if it's 2.30 in the morning, maybe it looks more real than it does in the pictures that we saw.
But, you know, that was something out of a nightmare movie.
It's awful.
Yeah.
But I think the underlying point of that was that he fully intended, this is not like some crazy person.
Oh, I mean, he was crazy.
Don't get this wrong.
He was crazy.
Fair enough.
But, like, he had planning.
Like, what they're going to end up getting in on for life is that he was a premeditated.
He planned this thing very meticulously.
He had knowledge.
He had organization.
He had, you know, he had enough wherewithal to plan all this for over a long period of time.
But he certainly intended to get away.
He's not the guy that's going to, like, go down and suicide by cop in a blaze of glory or whatever.
He fully intended to terrorize and murder and, you know, create whatever havoc is and then get away.
I want to say something on that note, because no, I mean, absolutely, this person is nuts.
I mean, but Nick, I grew up evangelical.
I've studied, you know, radical evangelicalism in this country.
I've probably listened to more of Alex Jones than anybody in this country outside of the guys who host the podcast Knowledge Fight.
Unfortunately, for my research, I've listened to much of it.
I know we're talking about the First Amendment.
We're talking about people being able to express things and say whatever they want.
If you tune in to enough Alex Jones, it's not just that he's talking about conspiracies.
It's that he is constantly planting the seeds for violence.
He'll say things like, we need to stomp on them and kill them politically.
We need to take them out.
Politically.
These things are codes and signals that whether or not Alex Jones means to do it, the people who listen to him are, again, they're steeped in it, you know?
And when it comes to radical evangelicals, like, if you look around all these bombings, and I mean, we just had what?
The IVF car bomb was, how long ago was that?
Was that like a week and a half ago?
Two weeks?
Right?
Yeah.
And that was another person opposed to this or whatever.
Like, if we actually had our priorities in line, It's pretty obvious who the people are in this country who are causing this violence.
And it's not leftist.
It's not socialist.
It's not anarchist.
It's not Marxist.
It's not communist.
Like, we know who it is who's doing this.
And if we were honest with ourselves, we would be able to actually track this stuff down and stop it before it happens.
But there's a reason why our power structure doesn't want to.
And before Trump was reelected, it was like, oh, white supremacists are one of the biggest threats for violence in this country.
They changed that.
They moved away from that.
The FBI said, no, we're not going to worry about that anymore.
And meanwhile, that's what it is.
It always has been, and this is how it always ends up being.
And I was talking about this earlier this weekend about guys like Joe Rogan who, you know, when they're building their platform, and Alex Jones is a great example of this, he'll talk about any conspiracy he can.
He's trying to gain an audience and build that and develop it.
But at some point, you get to a certain size and a certain amount of influence that then, when you decide to bring on, like, certain, you know, guests and stuff, it becomes completely unacceptable.
So, like, Joe Rogan gets the size he is, the influence, and then he has a Holocaust denier on under the guise of, like, just, I want to ask him questions.
I want to hear from different perspectives.
That is when we start to get into a real problem here with, you know, the influence that those people have.
But the other problem is that he knows that those things sell.
That is the business model, right?
So he needs to continue to build this audience, right, and monetize it properly when it gets to a certain size.
So, you know, that's the downfall of what I think Rogan is.
He might have been good at some point when he was building his audience and having good conversations with interesting people, but he's now platforming horrible people with horrible ideas that are dangerous, and I don't even think he understands that.
No, well, I don't know what Joe Rogan understands or doesn't understand, but I also know that studying sectarian violence and genocide, like, a lot of it comes from media, Nick.
I mean, like, when that switch flips, that's where it's at, and it starts there.
You have a lot of unwell people who listen to this and get mobilized.
And what we're dealing with is a mental health crisis.
I mean, a person who would go out and do this, like, Nick, last story for the day.
Unfortunately, we were talking on our last episode about the signals that Israel might be launching attacks on Iran.
On Friday, Israel launched what they are calling a preemptive attack on Iran, hitting nuclear sites and military targets, killing multiple military leaders, multiple nuclear scientists, multiple innocent civilians.
Well, I mean, I think everyone maybe sort of felt like, oh, they have the Iron Dome and, you know, Iran won't be able to hit them with anything much.
I didn't think that.
What's that?
I didn't think that.
Yeah, well, you were wise to not think that.
Well, yeah, because it didn't work.
Iran pulled its punch and telegraphed its punch last time because they were doing us a favor.
Yeah, right.
Exactly.
Along with Trump.
So, you know, there was this weird report that, like, the Knesset was going to vote on whether to dissolve Netanyahu's government on the day that they launched this, which sounded really corrupt in the notion of, well, if you're going to try and dissolve my government and get rid of me, I'm just going to start a war.
Then they're trying to say, well, maybe that was their cover.
Right?
Iran wouldn't be ready because they think that that's what's happening and said we're going to start this war.
I don't understand.
And now the talk today about it is what is the goal here?
Is this to dismantle their nuclear program by, like, killing the scientists that would be involved in that in their apartments?
Or is this regime change?
But let me ask you this, Jared.
Is it interesting to you?
Interesting is the wrong word.
They are precisely bombing apartments in these big buildings.
Literally, like one apartment they can nail.
Why can't they do that in Gaza?
Well, I mean, that's the $64,000 question.
I mean, if you actually look, it's really telling that they're not just straight-up carpet bombing Tehran, isn't it?
I mean, today they hit state, you know, state television, took it out.
Supposedly they're hitting a couple of apartments, but that undoubtedly is killing other people.
It's collapsing buildings, whatever it is.
No, it's just whatever the purpose is.
And the purpose in Gaza is to ethnically cleanse and carry out a genocide and wipe them out.
And what you just brought up in terms of we don't know what Israel wants to do from this, I think we're going to hear it.
Because they have realized there's nothing that's going to stop them.
The United States isn't going to get in their way.
We also still don't know exactly what Donald Trump and America knew about this, whether or not they helped them, gave them intelligence, lulled Iran into a false sense of security.
We have no idea.
What we do know is that the United States isn't going to tell Israel to quit.
They're just not.
And in this case, Nick...
They've already said it was the incapability of doing whatever.
People can talk about Netanyahu doing his legacy.
You know where we are?
The problem here, Nick, and it's much like you and I talking about wondering what Amy Coney Barrett will vote on the Supreme Court, you know, and like that she is now the swing vote.
You know who could possibly make this thing in?
Do you know who we're relying on?
Vladimir fucking Putin.
And the reason is because Vladimir fucking Putin is a close ally with Iran, and who is Israel's number two ally after the United States of America?
Russia.
And so what are we looking at now?
The possibility That's where we are.
And I just want to say again, this is what happens when an American empire declines.
You start having people doing whatever they want.
They start, you know, solving, quote unquote, whatever border disputes and whatever regional conflicts they have.
And America, all we know is that America, like, And now we're watching from the sidelines as another flashpoint emerges that could lead us down a road that none of us want to go down.
This is one of the more, if you were like a political scientist, this is one of the more fascinating eras where you have these very strange bedfellows, right?
And very strange, weird alliances.
because remember, Saudi Arabia is also a partner of Israel and wants to become...
And so you have that, and that's a direct clash in theory with what Russia wants to do in terms of their oil development and distribution.
And so, you know, and by the way, if it's all about oil again, which it kind of feels that way, right?
Oil is controlling a lot of this stuff, and especially here too.
It's just how we can't, we're like stuck in a bad 70s film.
We're stuck in a bad 1910s film.
The Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, who's with who?
Who's with who?
They're entangled here.
It feels like neoliberalism, neoliberal globalism, which was supposed to stop this and keep these types of things from happening.
Like, thank you, Francis Fukuyama, the end of history.
What a perfect dead-on prescription or diagnosis it was.
Now, all of a sudden, it's just like, Who even knows, Nick?
Who has any idea?
I mean, since we started recording this thing, Tehran might have been leveled.
We don't know.
And on top of that, we have weaponry.
I mean, those hypersonic missiles either came from Russia or China.
I mean, we don't have a clue.
There's a lot of damage in Tel Aviv right now.
A lot.
Yeah.
And you know who I feel bad for?
And we spend all the time talking about nation states and the so-called great men of history.
You know who I feel bad for, Nick?
The people who were caught in the middle.
The Israelis who didn't ask for this, the Iranians who didn't ask for this, all of the people who were caught between all of these big-time power players who were just trying to go about their lives.
And, like, it gets caught up in the nation-state stuff and the great men stuff.
We don't deserve this as humanity.
We do not deserve to live in a time where these mad men are doing this.
And quite frankly, the larger, We have arrived at a point where everything is on the table.
Because everybody has failed up.
Everything has sort of jammed up.
All these systems are starting to fall apart.
And now it's up for just absolute genocidal madmen to play games of chicken.
And you know what might save us, Nick?
It's a general fear of World War III.
It might be that people don't want to take that step.
They want to avoid it as long as humanly possible.
That mutually assured destruction, which is just madness.
And now we've arrived at another one of those moments.
That's a bad 80s movie.
That's the problem with that.
That's the bad 80s movie.
That's right.
And by the way, I keep sort of pointing out that a lot of this is just the template that America laid out for everybody when we try to take over and massacre untold numbers of Americans.
Now, Jerry, can you help?
Because I have to imagine that those people in this country then were taking their cue from British and what they were doing.
Oh, yeah.
No, no.
We learned our colonial genocide right from the source.
Okay.
We learned it from the British.
We learned it from the Spanish.
All those people who went about and just killed ungodly amounts of people.
Yeah.
And so at some point, like, that's the other problem.
And I'm sure it keeps going back and back.
Oh, yeah.
No, no.
I mean, this is the human disease, for sure.
Yeah, and so that is the problem that we haven't been able to solve as a human race, I suppose.
And it gets sanctioned.
That's the problem, right?
It gets sanctioned with enough time, and that's what Bill Barr and I thought we agreed not to ever say his name again.
I'm sorry it had to happen.
It was a good example.
History is written by the victors, right, or whatever.
And that's the propaganda.
That is true.
I mean, listen, what you and I learned in history in fourth grade is certainly not accurate.
No, no.
What I learned in fourth grade is that the indigenous population welcomed the settlers.
You know what I mean?
Like with big, happy, cartoon, smiling faces.
And what we're dealing with here, I mean, Nick, I don't know where this ends.
Like, what is Iran supposed to do?
Iran, I mean, like, they're just supposed to say, yeah, that's okay, we're just going to get wiped out and the regime's going to go, and suddenly you reach a point where it's like, no, that's not what's going to happen.
And Netanyahu has, my God, how many times have we had to say this when it comes to Gaza, when it comes to all these border skirmishes, you know, and all of a sudden now it's back to it, which is Netanyahu needs this.
Yeah.
And his own political and personal survival depends on this thing happening.
And my God, we're hearing people being like, oh, he's really what he's worried about here is his legacy.
No, he's worried about his neck.
He's worried about going to fucking prison.
Yeah.
Period.
And it's worth pointing out, like, Tehran was a European cosmopolitan city before 1979, and Iran was a very progressive country.
And when the Shah took over, like, it's not clear to me, I suspect there's probably a percentage of people that would like to go back to some normalcy.
Oh, no, it was like that before the Shah took over.
The Shah created an authoritarian regime.
It was the American coup that led to the Shah was back when Iran was actually bustling.
Like, metropolitan, like, country.
And then, yeah, I mean, again, it's all of the mistakes of America's past.
I told it.
But, yes, so the point being that it's been so long since then that I just don't know what that percentage is because, you know, in order to have regime change, you're going to have to have a critical mass of people that want to change overall.
Are you going to have regime change by bombing the nation and galvanizing people to fight against an outside threat?
No, it's sanctions, Jared.
That's what's going to happen.
Oh, yeah, sanctions.
You know, and I just want to point out, Nick, because we haven't brought it up.
There was a fucking nuclear agreement that had already been arranged with these people.
Already.
Already.
And now the guy who tore it up is the one who's supposedly negotiating and has absolutely no control over this thing.
It's like a cartoon where people just keep stepping on rakes.
Yeah, that's what this is.
It's just that it is the most ineffective, incompetent, nepotistic bastards who just keep failing up to this position.
And you look around now and it's everybody.
Yeah, that's the issue.
The leadership in this world at this point, at the end of this era of capitalism, they are a bunch of fail sons who have no capability whatsoever.
And now we're all suffering because of it.
Endless amounts of evidence for this.
Even like with NAFTA was just rechristened another name as if it was anything different.
They're going to probably end up getting the same agreement that Obama had developed with Iran to begin with to stop the nuclear weapon development.
If there's an Iran to sign it.
Right.
Fair enough.
But still, I mean, you know that that would be what it would be.
It would be the same thing.
He's already described it.
He's described what he wants.
It was already in place.
It's working.
You know, the tariffs are going to be right back where they started from the beginning anyway.
You know that that's going to happen.
He'll delay them, he'll talk, whatever, and they'll have the same rates and whatever.
So this is, yeah, and for what?
It's not even like it's an F, it's for, it's racism is what it is.
Do you hear about the Trump Mobile company they're forming now?
Yeah, I don't want to think about Trump Mobile.
Okay, but people are going to actually buy...
Best of luck to them.
Yeah.
All right.
Best of luck to them.
All right, everybody.
I can't talk about Trump Mobile.
I can't do it.
I can't bring myself to cover it.
All right.
I'm okay with that.
I hate it.
I hate it.
Unfortunately, we're going to have to cover it.
Oh, my God.
It's so awful.
All right.
That's going to do it for this episode of the McCrake Podcast.
We'll be back with the Weekender Edition on Friday.
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