Together at last! Co-hosts Nick Hauselman and Jared Yates Sexton are reunited (and it feels so good). In this episode of the Muckrake Podcast, Nick and Jared break down newly surfaced evidence related to Jeffrey Epstein, raising fresh questions about who knew what — and when. They explore the disturbing use of torture tactics by DHS and ICE, and how the government is increasingly targeting political opponents through arrests and surveillance. The crisis in Gaza continues to escalate, and the hosts analyze Israel’s ongoing actions and global fallout. Finally, they examine the sudden cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s show and what it reveals about the current state of media and comedy in a time of rising authoritarianism.
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We have me, Nick Hausman, your co-host, along with Jared Y.H. Sexton, who is finally available to talk with me.
And I am available to talk with him.
And Jared, I know you're on the road, but it's still great to hear your voice.
It's so good to talk to you.
The reports are true, everybody.
The boys are in fact back in town, even though not literally back in town, but in the muckrake town.
And I'll take it.
I'm so happy to be back.
Thank you for holding down the fort.
I had to do it before and it's lonely business, but I appreciate you and I'm so excited to get back to work.
Oh, I know.
Well, yeah, thanks for holding it down as well.
Doing one-man shows is always an amazing feat that only a few people are able to do and you are definitely atop that list.
So I'm, but again, to be able to be here, I feel like I need to whisper, the boys are back if we want to continue this reference.
But forgive me, Then Lizzie, but nonetheless, Jared, we have a lot to talk about in this episode.
We have more Epstein evidence and hint hint.
I'm sure there'll be even more the next time we speak.
We have arresting our political enemies, which is what we had completely predicted for years.
DHS slash ICE torture going on, and that is now being documented.
We have Israel and Gaza, more atrocities being committed.
And then Stephen Colbert was canceled over the weekend.
So a lot of things to talk about.
So I guess we should try and get into what everyone wants to hear, I suppose, which is the more about the Epstein case.
Yay.
Yeah.
Also, by the way, a reminder for everyone, head over to patreon.com slash muckraigpodcast, subscribe, become a patron, gain access to the weekender show, support us.
We appreciate it so much.
Nick, I've been traveling a lot and doing a lot of work and stuff, and I've been keeping track of the, it feels weird calling it the Epstein scandal because it's larger than just a presidential scandal.
Like it's a massive, massive thing that has political ramifications, ramifications for MAGA, all of it.
It's one of the most sordid, disgusting things that you could ever imagine.
And it feels, I don't know how you've been looking at this thing, and we can talk about what the revelations have been and what's been leaking out, but it feels very, very large.
And it doesn't feel like this is being shaken off necessarily.
It feels like it's gaining momentum.
It's hurting the right-wing world.
There's been some things that I've been seeing in terms of like where this stuff is going.
But I think it is very obvious at this point for anyone who's willing to look at it that Donald Trump had a relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
Obviously, they were best friends for roughly a decade or more.
And on top of that, like, I mean, all indications are at this point that he engaged in some of the worst human activity you could ever imagine.
And this thing, I'm so glad it's not just slipping away because this is actually important shit.
I mean, you say best friends.
I think disgusting brothers would probably fit more aptly.
And I think what's really, really frustrating to me about all of this, and if you look at how even the criminal cases against him and Jelaine Maswell were couched, they were really able to eliminate anybody else being connected to this.
So can you imagine somehow that Epstein is involved in some sort of trafficking ring of underage girls?
And only for him, he's the only one that was participating.
He's the only one in thousands and thousands of hours of video and all these documents.
And so that was pretty much, I think, the state of our criminal justice in this country, is that if you are wealthy enough and you are powerful enough, there are ways, no matter what side of the aisle you're on, that you can then just sort of be removed from criminal cases that are clearly implicating people.
You know, Nick, in the way you're describing it, the way that it's working, it reminds me of something in the intelligence community.
And I think there's a reason for that, which I'll talk about in just a second, called limited hangout.
And it's this idea that agents and spies are out in the world.
They're doing their things, committing abuses, carrying out coups, whatever it is.
And there's a system of redundancies that are set up to protect everyone from suffering repercussions.
And in some cases, that starts to break down.
And I think there's a reason for that, which is that Epstein and Maxwell and this whole group have all of these connections within the intelligence communities and in these circles of power.
And I think what we're watching right now is the breakdown of limited hangout where that information starts to get out of control.
Okay, fair enough.
I mean, that all makes sense to me.
And I think that we didn't, we're not surprised.
We're not shocked, I suppose.
But I think what we, I talked about this earlier last week, it was that the MAGA people had to have known that Trump would be in all these papers and all these Epstein files.
And yet they were clamoring for them to be released.
And so I've gotten to the point now where I was assuming that deep in the back of their minds, they would just assume, oh, they're just going to scrub the Trump stuff.
And so we'll have to deal with it.
They're going to get rid of it anyway because we don't want that to be in there.
And then we'll be able to attack Clinton and Obama and all the Hollywood elites that clearly have been to the island, all those different things that they must have thought.
Well, and that was the basis of the QAnon conspiracy theory, which was like a temporary workaround for them.
And I think that they were in denial about it because Trump, and I was thinking about this the other day, it wasn't that he promised necessarily he was going to open the Epstein files.
And even if he did, he never meant it.
And eventually this stuff was going to reach a fever pitch where they got in power and all of a sudden they had control over these operations.
And in the second Trump administration, Nick, they have more incompetence.
And that incompetence has allowed that to sort of break out in a way that it didn't before.
And quite frankly, I don't know that you can suppress this.
Like, if you really look at it, I don't know how we have a conversation right now that Epstein died.
Like, I don't know that you can rule out that Trump played a role in him dying.
And you have people around him at this point who have so many contradictions in their media careers and in their griffs.
And on top of that, they're not good at their job.
So this thing starts to break container.
I agree.
Now, I'm assuming you've heard about the birthday card because, again, I have no doubt that we'll have more and more evidence coming out that will connect Trump more closely to Epstein, which is going to be a terrible thing for the White House to deal with.
But we have this birthday card that it was a typed out dialogue between them.
And then obviously he signed the drawing that he had drawn of a naked lady and his signature becomes the part of her anatomy.
Do you agree that the Wall Street Journal would never have published this if they didn't have it dead to rights?
Never in a thousand years.
And I do want to say, by the way, because you brought this up, how repulsive are these people?
That's the other thing about it is it's just this absolutely disgusting group of people that can't help themselves.
And now you're seeing that he's threatening to sue Rupert Murdoch, who played a singular role in getting him in power in the first place.
And so you're starting to see a breakdown of all these things.
And I want to remind people, there are constant battles for power.
And Trump has been used as a figurehead and as a puppet and as a lever in some instances.
But that doesn't mean that everybody behind him, including members of the wealth and oligarchical classes, whether it's Rupert Murdoch or Elon Musk, they're going to continue to use this, especially.
And we haven't even talked about this.
Trump's health is in decline.
He is theoretically in his last term in office.
They are going to try and take over.
And so there are all these internal battles.
So I have no doubt that more stuff is going to come out.
Oh, yeah.
And, you know, you're right.
We haven't mentioned that he's got a chronic venous disease, whatever it is that leads to a lot of swelling.
He's at stage three at this point.
Or congestive heart failure, if you're paying attention, but that's a different conversation.
Yeah.
You know, well, I think it's the McDonald's disease, if you will, if that maybe that's the new term they're going to have for it.
So it really is the most frustrating thing about all of this.
And again, I think you and I are both surprised that this is the thing that has stayed longer than any other scandal associated with him, right?
I think we've broken whatever record there was for that.
You'd have guys like Nick Fuentes, and I apologize, Jared, when you weren't on the show last week, I actually had to put him on the show and have a sound bite from him.
But it was so damning what he was speaking for and the amount of people, the sheer amount of people he influences that it's quite possible that this is going to be a thing that will linger and hurt Trump to some degree.
How much is it going to hurt?
I guess is the big question.
Well, yeah, and I'm glad you brought up Quintes because the reason why this thing has stuck around longer is because MAGA isn't actually like the MAGA cult isn't actually about politics.
Most of them don't actually care about the political agenda.
They care about the catharsis and the worldview that's given to them.
And then meanwhile, you have a bunch of other different special components of MAGA that have very real agendas.
And what I've started to notice is that some of the people, they only cared about things like Epstein and discovering who the, you know, quote unquote elite pedophiles were.
And then I'm starting to see in my research, and I've been keeping an eye on this even though I've been traveling, you're starting to see the fascists and neo-Nazis, like Nick Fuentez, they see an opening.
And you're starting to see a more mainstreaming of neo-Nazi fascistic ideologies.
And meanwhile, you're starting to see other people like Elon Musk and other parts of this sort of ramshackle coalition that are seeing their opening to start moving away from MAGA as it has been as a figurehead into their own political projects.
And so this thing has continued to exist because what it says about the worldview and on top of that, how obvious Trump and the people around him have been about trying to hide this thing, it is allowing some more sort of friction and infighting with all these different groups, which is why this thing will not go away.
I mean, absolutely fascinating, which I think also leads to the thing that we are always worried about was that someone else is going to come and fill this void and someone who's a better than Trump at all these things, right?
It hasn't happened.
You know, we've seen people try, but you're also seeing, you know, people dipping the toe into the criticism of Trump or perhaps maybe positioning themselves to be in a little bit more of a spotlight here.
And that leads us to people like Tulsi Galbert out of the blue coming out of here and all of a sudden trying to, I mean, I hear, I think they're writing a fine line between dealing with the Epstein thing and then trying to create enough of a distraction by announcing, you know, random criminal prosecutions of political enemies.
And so Gabbert goes on and tries to tell everybody that she has evidence that people like Obama need to be in prison or need to be criminally charged.
Yeah, and that whole thing, I think it's a combination of things.
One, I do think that there are some distraction elements to it.
It's like, you know, the fireworks factory is on fire.
So you go over across the street and set another building on fire and see if people pay attention to it.
And it does reframe it, which is, oh, here's the conspiratory you need to pay attention to.
And what you just said about who will emerge from this, like what I'm keeping an eye on is not just how the communications around it are changing and who is picking what side to go down.
I'm waiting for someone within the Republican Party leadership to start breaking from Trump and say, you know, this project has done what it's supposed to do.
Of course, they'd be bullshitting, but to go ahead and say, well, now all of a sudden we need to understand that Trump is part of this larger cabal.
And so if that were to happen, and it feels like it's possible at this point, that's when we'll know that not only is this escaped containment, but we're starting to see the disillusion of this sort of vanguard fascism and maybe the transformation into something else.
For sure.
Well, let's listen to, we have Tulsa Gabbard on Mario Bartaroma's show, and she talks a little bit about what they have in mind for some of these political enemies of Trump.
And I want to get to that right now because I've heard talk of a criminal referral.
Are you referring this in a criminal matter.
We are referring all of the documents that we have uncovered to the Department of Justice and the FBI for a criminal referral.
Yeah.
And do you believe that we will see prosecutions?
I mean, our audience wants to know where this story goes from here.
Will we ever see anyone held accountable for this incredible lie on the American people?
I will do all that I can.
And we have whistleblowers, actually, Maria, coming forward now after we release these documents because there are people who were around, who were working within the intelligence community at this time, who were so disgusted by what happened.
We're starting to see some of them come out of the woodwork here because they too, like you and I and the American people, want to see justice delivered.
I just want to point out that the notion that like all of a sudden the whistleblowers on this are coming out of the woodwork five years later is insane.
But then it makes perfect sense.
You have a fracturing of your base, of all the people who are completely dedicated to Trump.
What better way to try and bring them back into the fold than to bring up the 2020 election, which will probably cause some sort of mental, you know, I suppose the word is, what's it when you eat ice cream and you get a brain freeze?
Like that might happen to them and they might have to come back based on the fact that they can now cheer for people like Comey and Brennan and Clapper and then Obama prosecuted.
So this story is so fascinating.
And I mean fascinating because obviously we're living in a dreadful time and it's all very terrifying.
But as a political analyst and an analyst of authoritarianism, it's fascinating to me because, Nick, it's this weird situation where they're reacting out of fear and vulnerability, and they're trying to cook up this alternative narrative that they can shift focus on.
Because another one of the components besides taking down the quote unquote pedophile elite cabal was the idea that they were going to take down the deep state.
So they're basically throwing up anything and saying, hey, is this enough?
Is this good enough?
And when authoritarians start to feel vulnerable, sometimes they will start to take wild actions.
And so the question is, are they just kind of doing this to distract people and get the conversation to change?
Or if they get desperate enough, would Trump use his authoritarian powers to actually go out and arrest his political enemies?
And so you sort of have this parallel flow between things starting to fall apart for Trump and the idea that he's going to assert himself and become much more aggressive and, you know, much more authoritarian.
And there is a very distinct possibility that is the direction this could go in.
Oh, I can't agree more.
And then this also then starts to expand.
And now they're going to try and walk back using judicial appointments that they've already captured to walk back certain things like Nintanji Brown Jackson's appointment to the Supreme Court, where Comer went on and set Fox News to try and illustrate this and tell you how serious they are about doing a lot of these things.
And I'm kind of curious to hear your thoughts once we hear this soundbite and then where they're going to go from here.
Mr. Chairman, you mentioned that you're looking at some of the pardons that were done under President Biden and the use of the AutoPen, Dr. Fauci being one of them, talking about whether they were legitimate or not.
Are you also looking into Biden's judicial appointments as well?
Absolutely.
Everything that was signed with the AutoPen, especially in the last year of the Biden presidency, this is when all the books that are being written, all the tell-all interviews that are being recorded from his former disgruntled staffers and staffers who are trying to preserve their reputation for future employment, they're all saying that Joe Biden was in a deep mental decline and that he was protected by a very small inner circle.
We brought a few of those people in the inner circle and asked them simple questions like, were you ever told to lie about the president's health?
And they couldn't answer that question.
They had to plead the fifth to avoid self-incrimination.
This raises an issue whether these pardons, whether these judicial appointments, and whether these executive orders are legal.
I believe that if this investigation keeps going in the way that it's going, that's going to raise serious concerns about whether or not Joe Biden even knew what was going on around him, much less whether he authorized the use of his signature on all this stuff.
Crazy.
Crazy.
But I will say, I wouldn't be doing my job, Nick, if I didn't point out that this type of shit would not be happening.
Well, I mean, it might still be happening, but there'd be less of a chance happening if the staff around Biden hadn't lied and tried to hold on to power the same way we've seen many of these Democratic staffs do this.
That being said, I do think it's a possibility that they will try and remove Brown from the Supreme Court.
I think it's a possibility that they will try to, you know, take these pardons out and then go after these people.
That is in the authoritarian playbook.
And I think people need to understand that this type of stuff, it is bluster, but when you are dealing with authoritarian regimes, bluster very often turns into action.
And so, yes, it is crazy, but it is a situation that was made possible by an abuse of power and corruption, which, again, I do think should be investigated by an actual group of people who mean to get to the bottom of it instead of take advantage of it and be assholes.
But on the other hand, I do still think that there is a possibility that they will go after these people and that they will try to invalidate the entirety of Biden's administration.
I can't agree more with that.
And I just worry about, you're right, like all of a sudden some of these guys prepare such a huge case when all Comer wanted to do was throw some stuff out there, like he always seems to do on these shows.
He doesn't ever really follow through on any of this stuff.
But this is the kind of thing where, you know, maybe there is a little something to this, right?
I mean, I know that we've heard from people who were around Biden who had said he did have good days and he was with it and he was around, you know, and did have understand what was going on, even post the debate.
So it's hard to believe that this is anything more than, again, just trying to distract from what's going on with the Epstein thing that's really hurting him.
But the irony being that the real serious case, which again is covering up people who Are raping underage girls is ultimately going to solidify the authoritarian power they've been craving so much.
Exactly.
And that's the thing about authoritarian regimes, Nick, is that they take advantage of any mistakes and any sort of vulnerabilities.
They use liberal democracy against itself.
And in the case of the Biden administration, there were so many mistakes that were made that have left openings like this.
It doesn't mean that this is correct.
It doesn't mean it's legal.
It doesn't mean that Brown should be removed from the Supreme Court or any of these other things Biden did should be absolutely eradicated.
It was doing business as business was.
It doesn't make it right, but it also shouldn't be taken advantage of like this.
And that desperation that we're talking about, which is literally Donald Trump watching not just his worldview disappear and not just his political projects start to really come into distress, but it's actually, and this is the scary part about it, Nick, and why all of this becomes more possible.
Donald Trump is a lifelong criminal.
He has lied, he has cheated, he has stolen.
And people like that, particularly people at a level of Trump, the only thing that matters to them is avoiding the consequences of their actions.
And so when you are given the power that he has, when you have abused the Constitution and guardrails the way that he has, and you have taken on this authoritarian dictator tone, when you start coming into the full view and focus of the repercussions of your crimes, you become very desperate.
And so quite frankly, we are entering into sort of new territory that is very, very perilous because I would not be shocked if they start flexing their muscles in these way, these ways, because they are desperate.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So yeah, the worse crimes that they've committed, the more authoritarian they move into, again, to do all those things and solidify power.
Speaking of which, we had Emil Bove, who was Trump's personal attorney during his trial in New York, is now advanced to a full vote in the Senate by Republican senators.
It forced the Democrats to literally walk out of the hearing because this guy can't even, he won't even admit that there was anything wrong with the January 6th pardons or the fact that it was an insurrection or anything, anything negative that way.
And then I thought it was kind of rich because he uses a quote that there was some sort of weaponization of the political justice system when I think there was weaponization, all right, because it was against direct political corruption.
That's what the justice system is for.
So what do you make of that?
And is that a response that the Democrats, are they learning some things here?
Are they trying to get closer to being what we've been asking them to do?
Nick, if I was a betting man, I would have lost a lot of money betting on Democrats, learning their lessons.
But I think that this man is so repugnant in what he represents, because I think everybody in the political realm understands that he is being prepped to join the Supreme Court at some point.
And what we're actually watching is sort of an evolution.
It's part of the reason why Trump, of course, went after Leonard Leo and the Federalists and all of that shit.
I think that we are starting as he's solidifying and sort of like bringing together his authoritarian power.
I think we're now looking at the possibility that if he remains in power and if he continues to get his way, that we're actually going to see something evolve within the Supreme Court and the judiciary that will actually be even worse than Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh, which is an explicitly fascistic, anti-democratic Supreme Court and judiciary.
And I think that's what's being prepared.
So if the Democrats understand what's going on, and I think some of them do, this type of shit, it has to continue and you can't back away from it because when you go down that road, there's not a lot coming back from it.
That is a frightening possibility here that, and you're right, especially because of the context of Kentache John Brown Jackson, for instance, where if they get her off of the court, that opens up a space.
They can shove Bove in there, having already gone through this process.
I mean, the guy won't even comment on whether or not Trump should be allowed to run for a third term.
And that's what's also a little concerning is because these are really easy questions to answer, even if he doesn't mean it, right?
Like that's the thing that's so frustrating is that they won't even go on record there to say that because I guess there's an audience of one that they're talking to and they got to make sure that he understands what they're for.
You know, I suppose wouldn't Bovi have had this discussion in private and doesn't need to do it publicly, but maybe there's just a signaling that needs to happen.
But I mean, can you imagine that a guy in this situation who is being considered to be a lifetime appointment to a federal judgeship won't even comment on what is so ironclad in the Constitution as far as being able to run again as a president?
Well, and I mean, that's the thing, right?
It's like in our lives, you and I as political observers and probably everyone listening to this, we've seen what the expectation was, which was if you're going up for these positions, including, you know, the federal court or going into the Supreme Court, you at least had to do a dance, you know, you at least had to sort of like gesture at being impartial or holding up, you know, past precedent.
And what's changing now is that they've got a taste of blood and they feel like they don't have to defend anything.
They don't have to answer any questions, period.
They don't even have to put up that sort of facade, which is the dangerous part of not just authoritarianism, but the total Republican capture of our government at this point is that the rules have changed.
And we're now entering into a territory where with the power that they have, they want to push this to the next point, which is where there's no turning back from it.
So that sort of shift, it might seem minor to some people, but it's actually very indicative of where this thing is going.
So, you know, Trump had shared on socials.
And by the way, I'm all for clever, funny AI videos like the Star Wars stormtroopers going around and doing funny things.
But he shared one with Obama sitting next to Trump in the Oval Office and then getting arrested.
But what about the notion of presidential immunity?
They actually got that settled.
It should cover Obama, and yet they're still going to pretend like Obama can now be prosecuted.
So, how does that circle get squared?
Yeah, I know.
There's no doing it.
And I want to say something about the video and then the larger implications.
If people haven't seen this AI video, which is of Trump and Obama meeting in the White House and federal agents coming in, arresting Barack Obama, and then like videos of him in jail as YMCA plays, I know it's disturbing, but I really want to suggest that our listeners and viewers watch it because it is one of the purest, most fascistic and cruel things I've seen.
Like it is really disturbing, and I think it gives insight into who these people are.
And I just want to say, Nick, when this thing started taking shape back in 2016 and now even more so, I've always seen Obama as sort of a red line, which is I've always expected at some point because he was the first black president and because he meant so much to so many people, I have always expected a symbolic, not just attack on him, but the possibility of him being in prison.
And I do think that people need to understand that at some point or another, something like that might take place.
And as a matter of fact, I think Obama understands that as well.
And I think the people around him understand that.
And so this development and the way things are starting to move, it feels like we could very well be in a world in which someone like Barack Obama could be arrested, could be imprisoned, particularly as political symbolism and a seizure of power.
I think that's a possibility as well.
Well, we're about to talk about the movie Superman on Thursday during our weekender show, but I'm curious because there's a little bit of that involved in terms of him surrendering to the authorities.
Does Obama do that?
Will he literally submit to being imprisoned?
Well, I mean, that's a hell of a question, right?
Like, exactly.
God, it's crazy to even think about like the weird like internal implications.
Like, what does a secret service do?
But I don't know.
I mean, really, so many possibilities are up in the air at this point.
But as we move forward, like, I know one thing about authoritarians and dictatorships, which is they make symbols out of arresting political rivals and political enemies, and they do it as a way to crush the sense and crush the spirit of people.
And so as a result, like, again, because we've entered into this realm, because we didn't take care of this in the past and we didn't stop this slide into authoritarianism, this is now a possibility.
And let's remind people who are listening, because they might be kind of wringing their hands right now going, what is they possibly going to prosecute Obama for?
And let's not forget when the 2016 election happened and Trump won surprisingly over Hillary Clinton.
There were a lot of steps taken in that interim between November and January of Trump taking over where there was a lot of red alarms going on.
And a lot of the intelligence community was so concerned about all of the Russian influence that was being, which was already, you know, subsequently confirmed by a bipartisan Senate committee that they were taking steps to make sure that like they couldn't cover this thing up.
It all still seems rational at this point with what you're supposed to do and then have a meeting with the president, the current president, Obama, at that time.
And they're trying to turn this into some sort of bizarre, you know, with whatever they dug up as they have access to now and being in power, some sort of communications that indicate that they were out to get Trump and whatever.
And it's just really frustrating that I get we're relitigating 2016 and 2017 at this point.
Yeah.
And, you know, one of the things that I'm really concerned about, and we've seen it a little bit with RFK juniors, HHS, and we've seen it with the suppression of knowledge and all of that and all these studies and all these programs.
The thing that really concerns me, and it's another landmark that I'm waiting for as I observe all of this, is they have the power to fabricate evidence with what they have.
They have the power to create these dossiers and crimes and charges.
They have that possibility yet.
They haven't fully embraced it.
But on that timeline, that authoritarian timeline, that happens.
And I think that that Russia situation, which by the way, Donald Trump had a relationship with Russia.
We can discuss what that was or what it wasn't.
That's fine.
But the idea that they could take this and turn it into a fabricated coup in order to go after certain individuals, that's how this whole thing works.
And as they continue the march toward authoritarianism, the word impressive isn't the right one, but it certainly is something is happening where the efficiency with which they are now going about this and multifaceted approach is something to behold.
The DHS is now being super funded and has more money than the Department of Corrections to build detention centers.
And so we're having places like what Florida is doing with their, what are we calling this, the Alligator Alcatraz.
And of course, when you have things like this, you don't have enough staff.
So you have to sort of throw people who are untrained into these situations.
And we're seeing, is there any other way to categorize the reports other than torture?
No, because that's what this is.
Like, it's never about building concentration camps and then you just hold people there and you treat them well.
And then later on, you let them go or you move on.
It is a natural slide.
And, you know, it starts with dehumanization.
You throw these people into cages as if they're animals.
And then the hatred towards them leads to more and more violence and abuse.
And so what we've probably heard about, and we don't know the half of it, we know people have died.
We know people have been tortured and starved.
That's where it all heads.
That's the direction it goes.
And eventually at some point or another, you hear about this stuff.
And eventually down the line, it turns into straight up extermination and exploitation.
So it's a perfectly natural thing to the point where it doesn't even surprise me.
And I hate to say that, but the logical evolution of all of it is always going to lead to death and suffering.
And that's the only way it goes.
Especially because, you know, what they were elected on was getting all the bad people out, all the criminals, which, you know, just to be clear here, the other past administrations, when you've committed crimes and you're not here legally with legal status, you do get deported.
Like this wasn't the thing that wasn't Happening before.
But we, you know, and I lament that we have to have Homan back on the show again with another sound bite, but it really is important to immerse yourself in what they're saying because, you know, in the simultaneously trying to deal with all their own issues with like Epstein and stuff, they're throwing all this red meat and all these ways of describing what's going on here to justify the act of torture that they're doing, which only not only goes to torturing people, but also to the intimidation factor that silences critics.
And here's what Holman's saying right now about it.
Then I read another story about how most people in ICE detention aren't criminals.
Now the story is how bad were criminals have to be.
I saw a story the other day.
Only 1% of the illegal aliens removed were murderers.
Are you kidding me?
Being in the country illegally is not illegal anymore.
You got committed murder to be deported.
If you look at ICE detention, I'll say it again.
Look at the detention.
Who's in detention?
I look at the numbers this morning.
A majority are criminals who have criminal history.
Who are the rest?
Final order cases who are judged ordered removed.
The others are expedited removal by federal statute demands they be detained.
Throw the media out there.
Let's try telling the truth about the men and women.
What a piece of shit.
What an absolute piece of shit.
It's not even true, by the way.
I don't think his numbers, the vast majority of people are convicted.
It's not true at all.
And we keep hearing more and more reports.
I mean, it's so bad now that there was an 82-year-old man who lost his green card.
He lost his green card.
He went down to get a replacement and they disappeared him, told the family that he was dead, ended up in Guatemala with no ties to that country anyway.
And, you know, how are they going to get him back?
And I mean, Nick, again, because we have to be careful not to lose the human element.
Think about him.
Think about his family and the cruelty and the suffering and the injustice of all of this.
And it takes a toll on not just people, but communities and a country and a culture.
Like all because these assholes just can't help but hurt people and live in these lies.
Like going back to what I was talking about of manufacturing reports and, you know, indictments against Obama or whatever conspiracy theory it's part of, they believe it.
You know, they concoct it and then they end up believing it.
And as a result, an 82-year-old man and his family goes through this.
People are dying.
People are being disappeared and tortured all because these people are lost in these cruel, awful realities.
I mean, it's literally nightmarish.
I know.
And then I saw a report where they're talking about the flight logs to El Salvador, the original flights with like Kilmar.
And there seems to be indication that there are a lot, dozens of more people that were on those flights that have not been reported on.
They don't know where they are, if they're still in El Salvador or not.
And it's just chilling when you combine that with what we're still seeing this at every Home Depot parking lot and every other place they might find anybody that looks suspicious.
They are clearly targeting people who look like they're from a different country, right?
And that's not supposed to be legal, but they are racial profiling.
And so this is all the things that we warned about, we talked about to people.
And the double whammy of trying to be intimidating and silencing the opposition also may serve to denigrate their support because we're hearing more and more even MAGA people who have family members who are being caught up in this, who are now saying, well, I didn't vote for this.
And so this might be the sort of fever break that we've been looking for when you combine it with the Epstein files of all things.
And again, this is the behavior of politicians who don't seem to think that they have to worry about elections going forward.
Yeah.
And the reason for that is because it's morally and humanly repellent.
And if we're lucky, what you just said will come true, which is that hopefully for some people, the fever will break.
Of course, they're occultists that that's not going to happen for.
But Nick, if you study any authoritarian regime, including places like Mexico City or Brazil, there are so many people who are disappeared that we lose total understanding of who they are.
And they just go away and nobody knows what happens to them.
This is the human toll of this.
This is the actual giant injustice of it.
And so for our sake and the people who are in the crosshairs of this and literally the planet writ large, the thing that we have to hope is that the incompetence of this administration and the cruelty of this administration, when combined with all these things, that eventually we will avoid the absolute worst case scenario, that everything we've been talking about, Nick, it points to what that worst case scenario is.
And that's why we have to avoid it.
You know, the effects on families could be irreversible and could last 100 years.
We've seen this with the effects of slavery, for instance, on families of former slaves, how, you know, a huge section of the population, like never really recovered financially from that ordeal.
And the same thing can happen here.
And even worse is that you take away, let's say, the breadwinner of a family, of a person who's been there for 20, 30 years and is a member of the community.
Well, now all of a sudden that's a bigger tax on our services.
Well, now all of a sudden they need more help and it makes it more expensive is a purely cynical version of what like the Republicans are trying to do in terms of cut costs and all that stuff.
And it ends up backfiring in this way because they're so incompetent with what they're trying to do.
And that's what's so heartbreaking about this.
And I do feel like there's a Republican writ large take on this, that they don't have the capacity to look at individual cases and the effects and how tragic these things are.
You know, they have to look at some sort of bigger picture where they'll always accuse the Democrats of getting maybe bogged down in the individual stuff.
But I got to tell you, it's like, you know, one family being destroyed like this is too many.
Oh, I mean, a single solitary human being going through this is wrong.
And, you know, not to get too deep in the weeds, but what you're bringing up is the relationship between the different sort of stages of capitalism.
The entire idea was that liberal democracy, original quote unquote liberalism, was going to be the best thing for capitalism.
People were going to be able to make choices, do things, go places, sort of follow what they wanted to follow, you name it.
And eventually it gets to this point, late in the stage, where the corruption of it and the hoarding of resources, all of it comes together, where all of a sudden, fascism, it's literally the convergence between political power and capitalism.
And what gets lost in it?
It's exactly what you're talking about, which are the fates of human beings who are no longer seen as human beings.
And what matters more is continuing the hoarding of resources and amassing of power and influence.
And eventually it gets to the point where it eradicates itself.
It doesn't work.
That's the entire point of this is it doesn't actually work.
It's a desperate panic smash and grab.
And that incompetence will inevitably lead to self-destruction.
The question is, how many people are going to suffer before it leads to self-destruction or before we find something else?
And we still have people who are supporting this who are also dedicated to freedom.
And they'll talk all about how freedom is the most important thing.
And that's what liberty is.
We can't have communism.
We can't have any other kind of governance than what we have.
And yet, right in front of their face, I suppose the lack of self-reflection, which I think is a good thing.
You know, part of me actually feels like when you talk and you listen to people who are in that mindset who don't have self-reflection, it must be kind of nice.
It must be an easier way to live, never having to sort of think about your actions and how they affect others and then only how it affects you.
Maybe it makes life simpler.
But I got to tell you, it's what's making this possible is because there's enough people who are still supporting the authoritarian takeover of our government.
What you just said is the absolute essence of all of this, which is the decaying of this culture leading to fascism was all based on solipsism and narcissism and worrying about yourself, not worrying about the fates of others.
And matter of fact, I mean, look at the people who have held this and have controlled it.
They are awful, unhappy, self-destructive people.
And eventually that sort of cascades until it becomes cultural and until it's omnipresent, you can't get away from it.
The entire point is that we have to reignite a sense of interdependence and care and empathy.
That's the antidote to this.
And what you just brought up is a very, very simple but large thing, which is that the reason this is happening is because it's people who aren't considering, who aren't thinking about their own lives very much, except for their own sort of pleasure or denial or whatever it is, comfort, and they're not worried about what's happening to other people.
But the good news here is what you just said, which is there are some people who are looking around and they're like, I don't want people to be treated like this.
Like the starkness of the cruelty and the tragedy and the suffering, eventually to some people, it does bring clarity.
I agree.
And I think that, again, this is interesting where the self-destruction of a government like this due to a lot of factors is it could very well be accelerating.
It could be at a tipping point here where we might think that things aren't going to change for decades based on what they've done, or maybe we're starting to look at some things here that will ultimately lead to the downfall of what's going on.
And it could be repaired quicker than we thought.
So I obviously think the real key ends up being like the midterms, even though we can't follow a historical precedent anymore in this new age.
The idea that Trump would expand his electorate in the midterms after flipping the White House, which does fly in the face of the precedent we've seen for 100 years, that would be really concerning and really indicative of something nefarious going on with the votes, which, you know, I don't know, enough people I've talked to who seem to know things don't feel as concerned because there are bipartisan ways in which these local elections are monitored.
And it would come out if there was a lot of shenanigans for going on.
I'm less comforted by the midterm simply because of what we've been talking about, which is as desperation grows, those authoritarian measures take over.
And just to bring it back around to what we were talking about, you know, we were planning on talking about what's going on in Gaza, where people seeking aid are being mowed down.
I think our best hope is that that type of cruelty, which is taking place in a different form here right now, that more people are going to have concerns.
They're not going to simply accept what the administration and the authoritarians are saying, which is going to put more pressure on things like elections to actually be held, even though I don't think it's a for sure thing.
But the more that you start to see the actual face of this and the more that you start to realize the cruelty and the barbarity of it, those complicated ideas, whether it's Israel and Palestine or Democrats versus Republican, liberalism versus conservatism, those things start to fall away when the starkness of human reality starts to come into clarity.
And it's time to talk about Israel and Gaza for a second as well, because there's a direct connection to that mindset, I think.
First of all, it just seems like it's gone away.
The news sort of covers it.
People don't seem to be paying attention much to it anyway.
We keep hearing reports now repeatedly of humanitarian aid being driven across the border into Gaza.
The trucks are being swarmed by people who desperately need it.
And then bullets are exploding and hitting, killing people.
It's frustrating because it's not always easy to trust what the Hamas numbers are that they're releasing.
But at this point, we've heard from enough American doctors who have been over there and seeing and treating the wounds and the dead who are coming into their hospitals that lends enough credibility to indicate that, yes, there's a lot of murder going on by the IDF.
And I don't know what else to make of this because there doesn't seem to be any way to stop this, you know, until either, to me, it feels like what they're trying to do is create such horrendous conditions, and they've already gotten there, that they'll finally be willing to leave.
And then they're going to take over all of Gaza, turn it into a resort, and then hopefully in 25 years or 30 years, people have forgotten what they did.
Well, I mean, that's more or less the plan.
And, you know, what you were saying, Nick, it's we don't even have to debate October 7th anymore and what the violence is there.
Like, I think you can say that like October 7th was a massive tragedy, but it's not just like people being shot at.
Like, they're firing artillery from like battleships and shit.
There are tanks that are doing this.
And when you see a person who is starving, trying to get food and being systematically and intentionally mowed down, all of a sudden that the complicated aspects of it start to melt away.
And I think what's happening in that situation is indicative of what's happening, not just in the United States of America, but around the world, which is we're entering into this new period where these type of tactics are going to become more commonplace.
And this type of barbarity is going to become more commonplace because the hoarding of resources and power is becoming, you know, it's intractable.
There's no way for this to continue the way that it is without that type of violence.
And I think a normal human being who looks at it, they understand the difference between right and wrong.
And for what it's worth, the Israelis are trying to insist that the Hamas is stealing all the resources, not giving it to the people when it comes in.
And they're trying to figure out, you know, to do that.
But obviously, the solution is not what they're doing to fix that.
And so, yeah, I wish that this would become a thing that you'd have an American government that would put pressure on Israel, which is what has happened in the past in theory to make that happen.
By the way, what's also being underreported or not reported at all is what's going on, there's a lot of violence in the West Bank, and there has been for a long time with Israelis who are going vigilante and killing people, and there's no repercussions on that.
So it most likely would only be a matter of time until the West Bank becomes taken over as well.
And then Israel has what they've been, you know, what Netanyahu has been probably dreaming about this whole time is somehow securing the entire borders without any Palestinians there anymore.
And, you know, again, we've seen war-torn countries like this that have people who have been come to America, for instance, as refugees.
And they're happy to come to escape that.
But this is not the situation.
You know, the Palestinians have no desire to leave, go anywhere but their land, and they're not going to freely accept any kind of relocation or whatever Netanyahu thinks he's going to be able to get away with.
Well, and what you just described, also, Nick, like we just had an American citizen killed in that situation, which doesn't even get talked about.
And in Israel, and this is, again, it's not to paint an entire people this way, but there are extremists in every country.
You have groups of people in Israel who have rioted because soldiers who have committed, you know, sex crimes, there have been riots to try and free them and not hold them accountable.
The entire point is that this type of open brutality is becoming more acceptable in this changing paradigm.
And so whatever old sort of paradigms that we have or old precedents that we have, they're falling apart as we're sliding more and more into authoritarian violence.
So the question, you know, you said we need an American government who will change this.
It wasn't the Biden administration.
It's certainly not the Trump administration.
The question is now, can we find leadership and public small D democratic will that will say, you know what, this stuff hasn't worked.
And we have to find somebody who will lead us and fight for us, but also fight for the people who are enduring this type of tragedy.
And they have to not just restore order, but to create a new order that is based on human dignity.
And that is the fight in front of us.
Yeah.
The worry also then is if Nanyahu starts to sense that that's going to happen and there's, you know, in theory, there can be a candidate that emerges that uses this as a primary part of their platform about trying to solve the issue or stop the killing in Gaza.
And that would that would, you know, accelerate what's going on.
Because, you know, what Nanyahu is doing right now, like in theory, they could have a final solution to use an awful term and certainly inappropriately based on the history.
But like they could accelerate all of this if they felt pressure like they were going to get stopped at some point, which is really why Nanyahu has to be forced out.
That's really why I think the biggest issue here that would solve a lot of a big part of this.
And so it's all leading to things.
We're going to see, it's going to get worse.
I don't see it getting any better again, because they still have till 2028 before an American president potentially would be in a position to somehow, you know, put enough pressure to stop them from doing this.
And by then, who knows how far they get.
You know, I am so disgusted by all of this and I have such a hatred for tyrants that I don't mind saying that like Netanyahu being forced out, I don't think is enough.
I think we have a situation where every one of these motherfuckers, whether it's Netanyahu or Donald Trump or the people behind the ICE, you name it, they're going to have to be held accountable.
And things are going to have to happen to make an example out of them so this type of shit won't continue and won't happen in the future.
I don't know, like, I don't have a crystal ball.
I can't look into it and tell you exactly how this is going to play out.
But looking at history, the people who do this shit, most of the time, they get their just desserts.
And so when you look at everything here in Israel, around the world, all of these tyrants, the only hope that I have is that we can put an end to this stuff with the least amount of human tragedy.
But we also have to get serious about it.
And we can't keep kicking the can down the road and pretend that it's just going to solve itself.
I think the place that we're in and the environment we're living in proves that that is true.
Yeah, I agree.
I mean, I certainly think that if Netanyahu is gone, there will probably be a cascade of other guys who are connected to him as well, which I kind of think is all part of it.
But I don't know.
It just frustrates me to think that they're using the American playbook, basically, which would be what we did to Native Americans, and then hope that after X amount of time, they don't teach it in schools.
I don't know.
Like, you know, you're more of an expert on this.
Like, I don't remember.
Did I learn about the Trail of Tears when I was in fourth grade?
Well, you and I have a little bit of an age difference.
I certainly did, but I'll tell you something, Nick.
It was laundered.
Like, I remember in fourth grade, I mean, I come from Indiana, which of course, you Know has a lot of Native American heritage, and you know, it was smiling Native Americans and talking about how we lived in peace.
And there were some unfortunate things because they were violent.
That's the type of thing what you're talking about.
That's the type of shape that that would take.
Yeah, and that is what authoritarians want: they want to control history, they want to control reality, and these things will be sanitized if we allow them to continue and if we continue down this path.
Well, do you want to spend another minute here to talk about Stephen Colbert being canceled?
Yeah, I think we need to address it for sure.
Yeah, I mean, again, it kind of wraps up all the things that we've been talking about because what's interesting, though, is that after Colbert goes on and makes fun of CBS kowtowing to Trump and settling for a mere $16 million over the editing of a Kamala Harris interview, he made fun of them and called it a bribe.
And then lo and behold, a week later, his show, the number one show in that time slot, is canceled.
Make it that way you wish.
What do you think about how that happened?
Well, I'll just say, first of all, I said this in a newsletter article that I published a couple of days ago, a tip of the hat to Stephen Colbert for standing up for what's right.
And I want to point out that $16 million bribe, that's the cost of doing business in an authoritarian world.
Like CBS looked or Paramount, I guess, Paramount looked at it and said, you know what, $16 million is a measly amount of money when you can make billions by not being on the wrong side of the dictator.
Colbert was fired because he spoke up against Paramount.
And that is where the convergence of capitalism and fascism come together is that the corporations, they're not going to mess with their bottom line.
They're more than happy to work with authoritarians and dictators.
And there's a bunch of other shit, Nick, that's just like, well, technically he was losing money.
No, Stephen Colbert and others like him, they exist within a corporate structure to provide synergy.
The reason why it actually makes sense to have a Stephen Colbert is because Paramount owns a bunch of streaming networks.
It owns a bunch of recording contracts.
It has a bunch of personalities and products and franchises that they want to promote.
It's a lot cheaper to have them go on Stephen Colbert than it is to pay for big giant advertising budgets.
So this entire line of reasoning of why it happened is horseshit.
The entire reason is because corporations are inherently inclined to go along with fascism because it serves their bottom line.
And he happened to get in the way.
And also to say that, you know, studio shows like that are the cheapest things to produce.
They're contained on a soundstage and it's easy to film them.
It's all the same every time.
I guess the biggest expense ends up being the salary of the host.
But interestingly enough, we've heard in the recent history of some of these shows being weirdly cut, like one of them, Fallon or whatever, lost their band, you know, like weird stuff that they're trying to influence, you know, and that could just be an intimidation factor on that one.
We also can't ignore that the real thing here is that CBS is involved with Paramount, the overall company trying to get Skydance take it over.
They need government approval.
And so Trump can then, you know, threaten not to give that approval unless they paid the $16 million.
And someone should do a better, a real good job of tracking where that $16 million went.
Does it go right into Trump's pocket?
Probably.
And so that was the other underlying thing that was going on here that made it even more of a bribe.
Yeah.
And I mean, it's an understanding, it's an organized criminal shakedown.
That's how dictators and oligarchs work with each other.
They go back and forth, they screw each other over, they make up and they make money.
And I mean, we're even, and by the way, I didn't know the roots weren't on the tonight show.
That's something.
You know what?
It's one of the bands.
I always get Fallon and then Kimmel sometimes mixed up.
It's one of them.
Forgive me.
Well, I've been traveling.
If that happened, I don't know.
But, you know, we're even seeing it now.
Like in the past couple of days, Trump has announced that he's going to try and mess with the Washington Commanders franchise if they don't bring back their Native American slur nickname.
I mean, that's what ends up happening is when you have a dictator, you essentially have a criminal organized boss who is going to use the powers at their disposal in order to make everybody get in line.
It's a back and forth.
There's friction until eventually they come into convergence.
And that's what we're watching.
We're in the early stages of these things being settled out, which is another reason that we can't let this continue down this path.
Right.
I mean, you know, will Kimmel continue to do what he does?
I don't know.
It's definitely a shot across the bow.
It was Seth Meyer's show, by the way, late night that had their band cut.
You know, again, it's a line item.
It's nothing.
It doesn't, you know, that can't possibly be a thing that would cause them to have to cut.
But nonetheless, that's where we are.
And it's chilling across the board, even if I don't know.
I'm not even sure where late night influence is anymore.
It's not like Carson, but the bottom line is on the margins.
This is another way of authoritarianism to take over.
And it's really concerning.
And, you know, it's not just late night shows.
It's higher ed.
It's the colleges, academies.
It's the war that he's constantly carrying out against corporations.
Like it is all-encompassing.
That's the entire point is that there is no place to get away from this.
It starts at the top.
It starts to work its way down until they control every sector of society from like the highest tower down to the lowliest, which is just about total capitulation, total collaboration.
And that's where this is headed.
If we don't stop it.
Well, Jared, please promise me that you're going to be traveling safe until we get back into your environs of the comfort of your own studio where we can get back.
I can't wait for the weekender to sit with you on a screen.
I can't believe I'm saying that out loud, but I can't wait until I'm back in my little recording area.
We're on screen.
We're doing this thing proper.
I'm so excited to get back to it.
Absolutely.
Well, stay tuned for that.
And don't forget that as part of that show, every Friday is part of our Patreon, which you get a little bit of it for free.
And if you want to hear the whole thing, then it's easy to go to patreon.com slash muckrake podcast and sign up and be part of a community that's really terrific, where we have incredible Discord conversations every day, live shows, all sorts of things.
So stay tuned for that coming up on Friday.
And again, real fast, Nick, just on that note, the reason we're able to Do this is because we are outside of a corporate structure.
We don't have somebody who threatens us, we don't have somebody who's going to take our resources away.
We're able to do this because the people who listen to this believe in us and support us.
So, head over to patreon.com/slash leftwork podcast.
We appreciate it.
It's absolutely necessary in the environment that we're talking about.
