Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman break down the stunning news that Ghislaine Maxwell secretly met with the DOJ, potentially signaling cooperation that could implicate more powerful figures. Meanwhile, Donald Trump spirals publicly during a disastrous appearance in Scotland. Lastly, they dive into the disturbing new executive order aimed at institutionalizing citizens against their will, raising urgent questions about civil liberties and government overreach.
To support the show and gain full access to bonus content, head over to patreon.com/muckrakepodcast and become a patron today.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
I'm Jared Dave Sexton here with my friend, my compatriot, Nick Houseman.
Nick, how are you doing, bud?
I'm fine.
I'm fine.
How are you, Jared?
It's hot.
Oh.
It's hot.
I went for a run yesterday, and I stopped in a stranger's yard, and I was like, I think this is where I meet my demise.
Ooh.
What are we talking here?
What number?
What temperature?
Well, I believe yesterday it was like 98.
Ooh.
And it was awful.
Absolutely brutal.
I'm holding on.
I'm barely holding on in these times, Nick.
These summers were not meant for me.
Oh, well, we know we didn't talk about me being in Japan for over two weeks, but 93, 94 and really humid, which was a real issue.
So I was there.
I've been there.
I know what you're feeling.
And yes, it makes you feel like you just want to go inside.
You literally just want to like go from standing straight up to like melting into the ground.
Yeah, it's taxing.
And, you know, we end up watching the entire Marvel universe because we couldn't handle it.
I mean, that is not the coping strategy that I chose, but going to Japan and watching the Marvel Universe, I mean, it sounds like something.
Everybody, we got a full show today.
Just a reminder, head on over to patreon.com slash montcrakepodcast.
You gain access to the weekender episode on Fridays, access to the Discord, special shows, mailbags, all those things.
More and more people are doing this, and I keep hearing from people that they're so glad that they finally took the plunge.
Patreon.com slash monthcraigpodcast.
But Nick, we got way too much to talk about all the time.
A lot to talk about in this episode.
And as a recap, we are going to talk about Ghillane Maxwell met with the DOJ over the weekend, had a little bit of an interruption of her prison sentence to have a couple of talks for a few hours each.
Oh, and might go to the Supreme Court.
Can't beat it.
Yeah, she'll get all gussied up and get to go in the front of the Supreme Court.
You know, by the way, not a bad way to break up the monotony of prison.
Listen, if I was in prison, I'd want to go to the Supreme Court too.
That's the only time I'd want to go to the Supreme Court.
Put on a dress, put a makeup on.
Now, Trump is unraveling as he speaks in Scotland, which is another interesting thing with all sorts of things.
Now, I think I've noticed that a lot of these reporters are just simply not following up.
They're just going to let him talk and to prove their point.
And it's frightening.
We have a shift in Gaza as well with the coverage of Trump contradicting Netanyahu now, which is interesting because the tipping point tends to be how this is covered in the news.
And so we'll have interesting things to talk about there.
And then an executive order that forces citizens into long-term institutional settings for humane treatment, Jerry.
That doesn't sound problematic at all, Nick.
That doesn't concern me whatsoever.
Oh, well, it should.
Let me just say that.
It should concern everybody.
And certainly humane treatment is doing a lot of work there and institutional setting as well.
Anytime you find yourself carrying something out and you have to tell people that it will involve humane treatment, something went wrong somewhere.
Yeah.
And guess what?
It'll allow us to bring your friend and mine back into the show and discuss Ronald Reagan a little bit.
So looking forward to that part.
Can't wait.
But as a result, we have to now talk about Ghelane Maxwell a little bit more.
There's been a lot more revelations.
We didn't even touch upon some of the things that had happened in the last show.
So she's going to get a pardon.
I don't know what's going to happen here.
For those who haven't been keeping track, because it's an absolute deluge of information constantly.
Delaine Maxwell, the accomplice and person who is helping Jeffrey Epstein traffic women for absolutely the most nefarious purposes ever, who's currently in prison, met with the Department of Justice, received limited immunity during those days of questioning.
All signs are pointing to the possibility of her appearing before Congress and giving Donald Trump some type of a cover during this Epstein scandal.
On top of that, it's now coming out that she is planning with her lawyers to go in front of the Supreme Court to try and get her sentence overturned on the technicality.
Nick, it is a strange thing to watch the most guilty and dangerous and awful people come together and find each other for their shared purposes.
And on top of that, we talked about this last week, an active cover-up with the presidency that we know is going on.
We knew it was going on before it was exposed.
And now you add to it the possibility that Jeffrey Epstein isn't in this world, according to all reports.
Ghelaine Maxwell, his closest associate and accomplice, is now in a position where Donald Trump might be navigating something where she might give him cover and try and help him out of this.
And when I try and wrap my head around who thinks that this is a good idea or that any of this serves any purpose that is not nefarious, my mind shuts down for a while.
There isn't any other explanation.
That's the key because she had a robust defense in trial to get out of this and she couldn't defend herself and she was found guilty.
So the idea they're going to come at this and say, well, the whole prosecution was wrong isn't based on any merits.
This is not about law or legality.
It was proven that she was the one who was the point person for Epstein finding these victims.
What they're trying to argue, by the way, is that in the original 2008 plea deal that he got, the DOJ had agreed not to prosecute four people.
Those four people apparently have not been revealed who they are, but I did find one bit of reporting.
New York Post probably, I don't know if we can accept what they report, but this is where I saw it, said that she was not one of those four, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me because obviously if he wants to get out of this and protect the people who are going to incriminate him, she would have to be one of those four.
By the way, the other, you know, if you want to know who they might also be, it's probably other women that he used to help recruit victims, which it's just, it's so horrible.
It's so insidious.
You know, because you have to imagine there are probably even street smart young, you know, teenage girls in Florida who would be suspicious if a man had come up to them and said, hey, we'll give you money and you come work for us or do whatever.
But they used women.
And I got to tell you, that to me resonates in a much more profoundly worse way.
Well, and I mean, it goes back To the fact that Ghelane Maxwell is a monster, an absolute monster of a person who went along with this and deserves to spend the rest of her natural life in jail.
And I believe that, even though I'm an opponent of the carceral state, like to look at this situation and now see where Donald Trump, who is trying to protect himself, and we talked about it last week, Nick, this is a person who has avoided consequences his entire life.
He is now in this desperate situation where he's trying to hold together the MAGA coalition.
He's trying to keep his presidency alive and more or less trying to run from the consequences of his actions, which is what these people always do.
Now thinking that Maxwell might, through this, figure out, and by the way, you brought up a pardon.
The idea that he would pardon her, like, and we talk all the time, Nick, I always say I'm not really surprised by anything Donald Trump does, but the audacity of that to see that happen in order to try and extricate himself out of this mess, that boggles the mind.
It really, truly does.
And now we're looking at the potential where Glaime Ashwell might go in front of the Supreme Court and we're going to see whether or not the authoritarian Republican complex that has created this entire mess, whether or not they're going to get on the same page and whether or not we should expect the same 6-3 ruling that we've seen in the past with these kinds of things.
Or maybe John Roberts will say no and whatever, because he is who he is.
But to even start to wrestle with how this thing is coming together, it's so daunting.
You know what I mean?
Oh, absolutely.
Well, the other thing, the reason why they're doing this is, okay, here's what's really dangerous about the situation is you have a desperate person in Trump who's trying to keep his name out of this and rise above the things that he crimes he committed.
But you also have Delaney Massell who wants to get out of prison and get this exonerated.
So they're both going to be doing shit that's going to be heinous.
Now, there's only one reason why her lawyers would want to cast any amount of doubt, even if it's procedurally on the events that got her into prison.
And that is that precursor setup to then saying, Trump then saying, we have to give her a pardon because the whole thing was corrupt.
The whole process that they did, they used to put her in prison.
No matter the fact that they were able to prove in a court of law beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was the co-conspiracy of the Jeffrey Epsom.
Can we for the moment just to, and this is something that I actually think we've done a lot in the past and it's had, I think, actual benefits of us doing.
Can we just sort of like game this out, Nick?
So, okay.
So what's supposed to happen, right, is that Ghelaine Maxwell will go in front of Congress.
She will have more or less made a shadow deal with Donald Trump's administration that in exchange, and I cannot believe we're talking about this, in exchange for coming out and saying that Donald Trump had nothing to do with these crimes, she would either have some sort of a pardon or some sort of a hearing with the Supreme Court.
Let's say that she does go in front of Congress and does that.
Will anybody who supports him, who is currently like suspicious of this, will anybody buy that?
And what's more, if he would pardon her or if she were to have this court, this case overturned by the Supreme Court, like, do you see any scenario where people would accept this and it wouldn't create a larger uproar and a larger problem?
Because looking at it, like, I don't see how any of these things work.
And maybe I'm being naive here, but it doesn't feel like any of these strategies.
It feels like, and we'll talk more about this in a second.
It feels like Trump is just reacting wildly.
And I don't see how none of these things are actually plans.
None of them seem like they would come to fruition.
Is there anything you see in that line that you yourself think that could possibly work in this regard?
Because I don't.
So you mean to ask me, would anybody on the right, at least, accept if Trump said that there is a problem with the thing and I have to give her a part of it?
Is that the question?
Well, the MAGA acolytes are going to support him no matter what, whether he does anything whatsoever.
The cult members are in.
They have no issue with any of this stuff.
But the people who are like the online right, the Muskites, you name it, the QAnon adherents, the ones who are starting to ask questions about this stuff, are any of them going to see testimony from Ghelain Maxwell and be like, oh yeah, okay, Trump didn't have anything to do with this?
I mean, my original answer is going to be three words, hook, line, and sinker, because yes, but you're right.
The QAnon section, which is not a big enough thing to move an electorate, might have a problem thinking that, oh, yeah, it's everybody but Trump involved, right?
That is something interesting.
But let me share with you a clip we have that did respond.
They're kind of, they were putting their toe in the water about the Epstein stuff directly to him.
And I would predict within the rest of this week, we're going to get more explicit questions about Epstein to Trump.
But here's what he just said when they asked him about Epstein the most recently today.
That was it.
I'm glad I did, if you want to know the truth.
And by the way, I never went to the island.
And Bill Clinton went there supposedly 28 times.
I never went to the island, but Larry Summers, I hear, went there.
He was the head of Harvard and many other people that are very big people.
Nobody ever talks about them.
I never had the privilege of going to his island.
The privilege.
This is what he says.
And by the way, he can't help but tell on himself.
Yeah.
Well, he also said about I wish her well when she was going to prison on the Jonathan Swan interview.
So he's constantly signaling, right, and putting these things out there.
He doesn't recognize what is, or he can't get himself to say how horrible it is that these guys have done anything.
He also later on in this interview or in this press conference described the reason why he broke off with Jeffrey Epstein was because Jeffrey Epstein was hiring people away from Mar-a-Wago.
Great reason why he broke off.
Great reason.
And by the way, and we need to always say this, if Bill Clinton was involved in this, Bill Clinton needs to be held accountable.
I'm not going to lose any sleep over that.
I'm most certainly not going to lose any sleep over Larry Summers being held accountable.
I'm not going to lose any sleep for Bill Gates or all of these like Ivy League people or any of these scientific institutions that relied on this guy and his blood money.
Like I'm not going to lose sleep over any of this.
But what we're seeing is this constant reaction that doesn't have any sort of, I mean, I guess you could call it a strategy, but it's more of a scattershot type thing.
And every time he speaks, you said foot in his mouth, like he cannot help it incriminate himself even further.
Right.
And so, you know, obviously people like us are already, you know, determined where he stands on this and where this is going to go.
And there is this notion of will the political wind sway enough to keep the pressure on him?
Certainly there is a lot of pressure right now.
But I think for sure they'll get Ghelane Maxwell to say that Trump was not part of any of this.
I think that they will are going to release testimony that will indicate that.
That's probably doctored or misleading at best.
And I do feel like that's going to be a big thing.
You're going to hear Mike Johnson come out and defend him and say, hey, because again, there are, I would say a lot of people in the files or that are mentioned are just people who were scientists and people he let Jeffrey Epstein liked to engage and have conversations with.
So it is unfair if anybody gets thrown into that who is not part of this whole thing.
But that said, it seems possible or likely that based on the reams of evidence, it sounds like they still have so much, they'd be able to have at least some people who would understand that, you know, these guys are guilty.
And you know what?
I wouldn't be surprised if Donald Trump is not lying about Clinton.
Like he knows and he knows about, you know, Larry Ellison, I think he's trying to throw on the bus and then Summers.
He probably does know.
Like that might be the most truthful thing he's said in a long time.
You know what's interesting about this and what you just brought up, I think, is a really telling thing.
And it will play into everything that we're talking about in a little bit.
And I had not thought about it until you just said what you just said.
Trump is not informed about anything.
Like he doesn't get his briefings.
He doesn't stay on top of subjects.
One time after another, every time something in the world happens that is of major importance, whether or not it's foreign affairs, economics, even domestic affairs, he has no idea what he's talking about.
He's literally, he's literally just playing jazz all the time, like literally like a kid coming to school without doing their homework.
And what you just brought up, Nick, I think you nailed it sort of from a side angle.
This is the one thing that he seems up on.
This is the one thing that it seems like he has like an active participation in understanding, which just speaks more to exactly what's happening here and what's underneath the surface, which is this is a person who knows that they are within this major, major illegal activity and that they are trying to stay in front of it.
But it's the only thing that he seems to actually even care about in this entire presidency.
Gosh, you know, it blew my mind because, you know, that's it's so right.
He's, it's got like recall.
He's got details.
He's got nuance.
You know, he constantly talks about everything else.
And it is, he loses the thought.
He doesn't have words to describe these things.
It's really embarrassing.
He doesn't even know like the right word for like windmills and all sorts of words like the planes across the United States.
It's, you're right.
It's fascinating how that happens.
Am I wrong?
Or is this the only thing that he's had messaging discipline on in years?
I mean, discipline is an interesting word, but yeah.
Well, you know, listen, when we're talking about Donald Trump, we have to like, you know, leave a little bit of room for squishiness, you know, because obviously he'll take it wherever he wants to go.
But it's literally the only thing that he has shown a real active participation in, in understanding and also trying to keep control of a narrative of.
Well, you also remember like how much time he spends watching Fox News.
I remember those reports were coming out in the first administration.
And they don't even talk about it anymore because they couldn't believe it.
But he just came out at some point recently.
Also, just mentioned how he's like, how he's just watching all this stuff on TV.
And that's the main source of his information.
And we always kept thinking, he's got at his fingertips the most incredible resources for the big, you know, greatest intelligence he would ever need at his fingertips.
And he doesn't use it, can't handle it, doesn't understand it, doesn't have the ability to focus long enough on it.
There's no pictures in the reports.
So this is where he gets his information.
It gets where he gets his, you know, plan of attack.
It's like through, you know, assholes texting him or calling him or him calling them and asking them and then calling into shows.
It's A-B testing on the media.
It's frightening.
It is.
And I want to say two things before I move on to the next part of the show.
And Nick, that's number one is that I am still stunned by how much this is still sticking around.
Like that it and it has to do with their incompetence.
It also has to do, I heard a quote the other day, Nick, and it was, it was somebody talking about why conspiracy theories work.
One is that there's something to the conspiracy theory that keeps people coming around or there's probable doubt, right?
There's something about it that doesn't feel right.
And so you're able to do whatever.
This thing, it's sticking around because of their incompetence, but also because there is something here.
We know it.
The second thing is, I don't care if Maxwell testifies.
I don't care if they release partial testimony, whatever it is.
We will never know the truth until we find out where did all the files, all the videos, all the photographs, where did those go?
And by the way, is anybody being charged with them?
On top of that, where did Epstein get his money from?
Why did he have intelligence ties?
Why does this thing seem like it is an international cooperative affair between multiple intelligence agencies?
Until we get that, you and I, and listen, I don't even know if podcasts are going to be around.
I have to imagine they'll figure something out.
You and I are going to be talking about that like the magic bullet.
We're going to be talking about that like the grassy knoll, unless there's some sort of like a truth and reconciliation commission here.
You know, that brings it up.
I had said in the last episode that the one thing that would have to be concerning for him evidence-wise would be video, because you can doctor anything you want.
You can black out stuff on the on text.
But I realize there is one other thing that could be damning to him, and that is Bank records, like you just mentioned, there's so many different transactions he was doing for billions of dollars across bank accounts that probably can't necessarily be faked as easily or hidden.
And so, if there is an untold amount of money being transferred between them, right?
Because you need money to be able to have a sex trafficking ring going on, who's to say that Trump wasn't just covering expenses or sending him stuff over that or whatever.
Either way, let's just say it was innocent.
I want you to invest something for me.
It just looks, it'll look really bad politically for him if you see millions of dollars being transferred from Trump to Epstein.
Yeah, if that gets revealed, I mean, the entire ship goes down.
And at this point, I would say good riddance to that ship.
That's the way I feel about it.
Anybody involved with this, anybody with ties?
What about this?
You know, Gawain Maskell is still there.
There's also the four people that were named as co-conspirators that are supposed to be prosecuted who can talk to, and you can talk to the victims.
Now, that's going to be interesting because it sounds like a lot of the victims are too scared to talk or were intimidated into dropping cases.
But perhaps as the winds shift, there might be an opening there to get their testimony out in the open.
And by the way, the grand jury testimony was released and reported on in 2024, last year, I believe.
So this call by Trump to release these, you know, the grand jury, the grand jury testimony, which is not supposed to be released, but can be, that already happened.
They did that.
And so a lot of it's already out there swirling.
It's just a question of if they can put enough of this stuff together.
And I do feel like the banking stuff is probably a really great way to follow up on.
Well, speaking of shifting winds, Nick, a lot has been happening with some of the most major and influential stories and situations in the world.
When it comes to the genocide in Gaza, we have started to notice both a difference in how Trump talks about it, how politicians talk about it, how the media reports on it.
And now we have multiple Israeli groups that are using the word genocide.
We also have another situation with Ukraine where all of a sudden Donald Trump is trying to navigate himself clumsily, albeit, what appears to be a changing position on how he views Vladimir Putin's behavior in Ukraine and inability to wind this war down.
I think there are reasons for this without saying that he's had a sudden change of heart or whatever, but these are two major stories that have defined the last few years, our domestic politics, our foreign politics.
And it does feel like these things are beginning to shift somehow.
Absolutely.
And it's worth listening to Trump talking about this because he said this kind of soundbite a couple different times over the last few weeks.
We talked about it, but I wanted to at least share it.
You can hear it in his words of what he, his, we're going to call it frustration.
Trump is frustrated at this point because he thought he could control Putin, which is the biggest funny joke of all time.
But here's what he's saying.
Every time I think it's going to end, he kills people.
Could a meeting help?
And are you considering it?
That's my purpose.
I don't know.
I'm not, you know, I'm not so interested in talking anymore.
He talks.
We have such nice conversations, such respectful and nice conversations.
And then people die the following night with a missile going into a town and hitting, I mean, recently, I guess, a nursing home, but they hit other things.
Whatever they hit, people die.
So, I don't know.
So, Nick, we have been chronicling Donald Trump's relationship with Vladimir Putin.
I mean, my God, I think the first time we ever talked and you interviewed me, we talked about it.
We've been chronicling this for years.
We have paid closer attention to most.
What is your reaction to how he is starting to talk about this?
And also, again, like what's happening with the shift in coverage with Gaza?
Because I think that there is, I think there's a through thread to this that fits into a larger understanding that we need to look at in order to understand our politics.
Trump is so close to getting it, Jared.
He is so close.
He might actually figure out to himself, you know, Putin was going to say all these nice things to me and pump me up and say, don't worry, Donald, I won't stop the war.
And then, you know, he goes and buyers missiles.
He's like, maybe he's just saying nice things to me to get me to hang up the phone and get away from him and not demand anything from him.
I swear to God, like maybe we're getting somewhere with this where he's going to realize.
And man, was that going to be painful?
You know, because he's never been able to understand this.
It's going to be painful to his psyche to realize that Putin can just shrug him off and just say some platitudes and then continue doing whatever he wants to do.
And then basically making Trump into a fool, you know, and that's what Trump might actually be feeling like.
He certainly, when those soundbites were, I will end the war in a day, I'll end the war in two weeks, whatever it is, those will continue to haunt him.
Unfortunately, they won't haunt him like no new taxes that haunted Bush and that kind of stuff.
But this is one of those things too, where there is a big section of his base that doesn't want these wars and wants us to stop funding them.
And by the way, we're hearing Trump even talking about continuing to support Ukraine as well and still send weapons because, again, he knows the EU will continue to do that anyway and be able to keep them in the same stalemate that we're in now.
So first thing, a personal confession.
Nick, I need bifocals.
I need bifocals.
I don't like to admit that, but I spend most of my life now with my glasses off.
I leave them places.
Like I am becoming, you know.
Well, let me just say this.
They're a game changer, Jerry.
I guarantee that they are.
And it's a little bit of vanity that's keeping me from doing it.
But the reason I bring up bifocals is we have to be able to look at two things at once here.
And we do, we have this great man of history idea of how things work.
We're talking about personalities.
This person does this.
This person does that.
Donald Trump, as we cover all the time, is an absolutely incompetent, foolish man.
And a large part of it, we have to look at like how he feels about it.
Donald Trump is president of the United States of America during a point in which the American empire is in decline.
I'm sure that he convinced himself that he would be able to get into office and end what's going on in Gaza and end what's going on in Ukraine and that it would be very simple.
I think what we're seeing from him both in Ukraine And Gaza is, and by the way, a lot of his like tariff stuff and economic stuff, you name it, I think a lot of that has to do with the reality of the situation crashing in with the unreality of Donald Trump.
The sort of like belief that he had that he would be able to put everything to right and he would be able to make America great again.
I think it's a slogan and I think it's a lie, but I think he believes the lie and has believed the lie because of his own personal narcissism.
But at the same time, Nick, I think we have to take a look at a second part of this, which is behind power when we actually take a look at how power works and what affects them.
Why did Donald Trump bomb Iran?
It's because, as we've covered, Nick, he's highly influenceable.
Anybody that he talks to can get to him.
And if they flatter him or they're the last person to talk to him, they can get to him.
There's a neoconservative force within the Trump administration that is at the Pentagon and within the military-industrial complex, you name it.
They were the ones who were pushing for him to go to war with Iran.
He was able to try and make a truce between them and the isolationists that you were talking about.
He is currently viewing, I about said Lenin, but he's currently viewing Putin through the lens of a neoconservative worldview, which also is like really, really in conflict with the people that supports him and want an isolationist stance.
When it comes to all of this, anytime we look at it, we can't just look at it as like, oh, Trump woke up this morning and thought about this.
No, there are so many people behind a president and behind a politician who are constantly jockeying for support.
So right now, we're currently kind of watching a neoconservative period of Donald Trump's presidency because of Ukraine, because of Gaza, and also because of what just happened with Iran.
And this guy, I hate to break it to people.
I don't want to shatter some minds here.
He's not up to it.
He can't do it.
He cannot do this job.
He cannot maintain an actual agenda other than the one that was made for him to start his entire presidency out with.
And meanwhile, we are seeing him flounder in a way that reflects not just the conditions that are going on and, you know, the decline of the empire, but the fact that this is not a person who can do this job.
Here's an interesting counterpoint.
So for all these years, the hundreds of years we've had the republic, you know, presidents have relied on the apparatus around him for information, for decision making, whatever.
There's probably a lot of people in the country, and you and I probably a part of that would say that didn't work that great.
You know, they didn't always, they made terrible decisions and were ill-informed and were manipulated in that way.
So maybe this would be a different way that this is sort of the, maybe the insight into why Trump's supporters support him.
It's because it is different, right?
And the other way doesn't work.
So maybe we'll let all his buddies just text him and let BB just text me and just tell him what to do and flatter him, whatever.
You know what I mean?
I almost feel like we've gotten to that point as well, where it's like, well, let's try that because the other way doesn't work either.
I will give you one thing, which is that this is most certainly different.
This is a, I mean, there have been instances in which stuff like this has worked in this manner, but to have this profoundly incapable and incompetent and corrupted person as president is certainly something different that we are trying presently.
Okay.
Yeah, I agree.
And it's certainly the evidence is there for the taking that we can see doesn't work.
It's awful.
And meanwhile, you can see the ground shifting, which, you know, I try and give context with this stuff.
And, you know, I'm a teacher at heart.
So one of the things that I always try and do is provide scaffolding for understanding of how things happen.
When an empire declines, things get weird.
They get really, really weird, Nick.
And you start to see things shift constantly.
Donald Trump coming in saying, you know, he sided with Putin against Ukraine.
He brings in Zelensky.
Next thing you know, he's pissed at them.
What happened with Iran and Israel?
He comes out and says, they don't know what the fuck they're doing.
That is one of the best expressions of him feeling a lack of power in these situations.
Meanwhile, things like the genocide in Gaza, they start shifting because the conditions on the ground shift.
You now have a situation where the genocide is like nearing completion and you start to see liberals and moderates who have like laundered this thing and lied about it, who are now calling it what it is and giving space for it.
There is a reckoning that takes place with the changing, rapidly deteriorating conditions.
And so things get very weird and they leave you feeling, I don't know, unmoored is the only word I can come to.
It's a very unmooring time with the way these things work.
And it would just be unmooring, but it's also infuriating.
And it makes you almost despair because of how many lives are lost in the meantime.
I agree.
Now, I keep saying this, and I guess I'll just quickly say it again, where what it seems clear with Israel's intent is, is to make conditions so awful that people in Gaza will leave.
And once they leave, they will never allow them to come back.
I mean, if they can, if they're not murdered while they're trying to get their lives or leave.
Because they've seen that there's the dedication to that land and then how they feel about it, you know, rivals, you know, what we saw of Native Americans here.
And so there's this notion of, well, they're going to, well, you can follow the blueprint that the Americans laid back in the day, which was we're going to break them.
You know, we're going to steal their kids.
We're going to do all the things they did here.
And then take over the land and then rely on the fact that 25, 30, 40 years from now, everyone will forget what's going on.
You know, that's what's so frightening about all this.
There's also indications, though, that perhaps there is a final way to have Palestinians reject Hamas outright and maybe ultimately be able to extricate them from Hamas and then somehow come to some other status where they will be able to live there in peace alongside Israel without Hamas there, which is obviously what at least what Israel is playing the game of saying it's really Hamas, right?
They can't be in charge.
We have to get them out.
Needless to say, if that's their goal, they're going about it in an awful, terrible, incompetent way.
So that's the other thing they could be trying to rely on is somehow the conditions get so bad they can somehow cause that break.
But it doesn't seem like it's gone on too long at this point.
And Israel runs the very real risk of having the entire world community turn against them, which then becomes an existential crisis.
It already has.
Okay.
I mean, the public opinion on this has shifted so wildly.
And, you know, to bring forward what you're talking about, like if you were to break into Joe Biden's home tonight and give him sodium penthol, you know, truth serum, I think that he would tell you that he felt like he wasn't able to stop a thing.
He wasn't necessarily interested in like making this thing happen, but at the same time, he wasn't willing to take the risk to make it stop.
You now have Trump who's in a situation where, yeah, he's talked about, you know, turning it into like a resort town or whatever, but also he doesn't feel in control of Netanyahu.
He doesn't feel in control of Israel and what they're doing right now.
Meanwhile, over the past couple of days, Nick, Francis Macrone, Macrone over in Paris, like that's so ridiculous.
I was so pissed off thinking about all of this shit.
France just recognized Palestine as a state.
Like, and think about that, Nick.
10 years ago, would France have ever done that outside of what the United States of America wanted?
No.
Conditions are changing so much and the decline of the American Empire is waning.
It's increasing so much that now all of these things are happening.
And what makes it worse, Nick, is that we're more or less on a sinking boat.
And being on a sinking boat would be bad enough.
But having a captain who can't even take control and save what lives are possible, not having that captain and not having that captain for a while for the record, not having that captain who can sort of try and mitigate the disaster, it makes it that much worse.
And I think that's the reality of the situation that we're dealing with is that the conditions are deteriorating so rapidly and we do not have leadership that is capable.
They're in an intractable position.
And so it makes things exponentially worse.
Well, you might reject the premise of this question, but let me ask you this.
Do you think that Israel is extremely lucky that their immediate neighbors around them do not give a shit about the Palestinians?
I mean, I think that what has happened within the Middle East is that you have a ton of fiefdoms that have amassed incredible amounts of wealth and resources and that they are incredibly corrupt and self-dealing.
And so, you know, they can sit around and talk about like, you know, their links and their sort of community and all of that, but I don't think it matters.
And I think that's one of the great tragedies is that the Palestinians have been used as a chess piece by all of these people.
And they have not, there's not been actual concern there.
Otherwise, like literally the only thing we've kind of seen is like, you know, Turkey had a moment where they called into question this stuff.
You know, we saw, you know, the Iran-backed groups that like fought back or whatever.
Like the fact that there hasn't been something else and that there hasn't been more protection of them, I think speaks to a large, large scale inhumane corruption, which shouldn't surprise anybody.
I mean, what did it tell you that there's like more support for Gazans on college campuses in America than there is in Saudi Arabia, for instance, or Iran even.
And that's what it feels like, at least, because no one seems to want to be interested in standing up for them at all or putting pressure on Israel either on that front, necessarily.
So that's another problem that isn't being put on Israel, isn't being put on Nanyahu in terms of pressure.
And then that's why they continue to do this with impunity.
So I'm just shocked.
If you had asked me on October 7th after what the Hamas did to the Israelis, how long would they still be in some sort of a conflict like this?
I would never have told you two years.
It's unbelievable that we're stuck like that still in this situation.
But it kind of makes sense now that you're looking at Biden and you're looking at Trump and the rest of that area.
And it's the same with Ukraine.
I mean, it's all of these flashpoints that an American empire in control, these things would have either not happened or they would have been mitigated and stopped.
And watching them, it's awful.
Speaking of awful things, Nick, we got to talk about this executive order called Ending Crime and Disorder in America's Streets.
This is pushing for, I can't believe I'm talking about this.
It is talking about, quote, shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings for humane treatment through the appropriate use of civil commitment, and it will restore public order.
This is an executive order that is going to forcibly institutionalize individuals who are houseless and desperate and in pain and suffering.
This is, they do a lot of grotesque things, but like seeing something like this, like it goes underneath the radar sometimes, but this is a truly grotesque thing.
Just another version of the incarceral state.
You know, when I keep saying that we didn't win the Civil War, the North didn't, because slavery became something else, right?
They created the sheriffs and they ended up being able to arrest people and basically create their own version of slavery again through that.
This is something sort of similar in that way where, you know, now, here's the thing.
Would mental do people who are homeless need or, you know, help this way?
Many of them, yes.
And so there is some version of the matrix where if you could give the right amount of support, they wouldn't be homeless or you can get them on a path that would get them off of the streets.
Not everybody, but some of them.
But in my mind, the distinctly Republican mindset is we have to just hide these people.
If we're going to have these big events in our streets, we can't have people walking around looking like that.
We have to hide them and put them somewhere.
And that's what it sounds like without any sort of care of how they're treated and whether they will actually, their lives will be improved from this.
I completely agree with one caveat, which is that it's also the democratic orthodoxy.
Like this is everywhere from Gavin Newsom to the fact that this houselessness crisis has been allowed to get to where it's at, which is that nobody in the political elite want to actually address this thing.
None of them are interested in it.
They want to hide them.
They want to institutionalize them.
You name it.
Do many of these people need mental health care?
Absolutely they do.
On top of that, most of the people in this country who are arrested, brutalized by police, thrown into the carceral state, they also need mental health care.
And what we're doing, listen, I haven't done the research yet.
It's on my to-do list.
I guarantee you that one of these private prison creeps that are always profiting off the carceral state, I guarantee you that they've got a whole line of places where they're going to try and shove houseless people and make money off of that.
And it's a gift in kind from the Trump administration.
I guarantee it.
But what we're actually talking about here is an expansion of a police state that has the smiling veneer of helping people.
But we've known since the 1960s, JFK, one of his main things before he was getting ready to die, he wanted to change healthcare or mental health care in this country completely, in large part because of his sister, correct?
It's sister-in-law, yeah, Rosemary Kennedy, wanted to change the thing in totality.
But then, of course, it got juggled around because there wasn't a lot of money to be made in it.
Nobody wanted to think about the long-term consequences of slashing any remnants of mental health care in this country.
And then we arrive at Ronald Wilson Reagan, who just completely got rid of anything that even remained, which created a crisis in and of itself.
This isn't a solution in any way, shape, or form with any sort of humanity.
This is about creating a further police state.
And if people think that they're not going, like they've been going around saying the woke mind virus is, you know, mental health, that it's a mental health problem.
Like this is a very, very broad and serious executive order that's going to hurt a lot of people.
And God knows where it's going to go if it's allowed to continue forward.
I agree.
I mean, you know, a drop in the bucket of what our budget would be could sustain facilities, state of the art, that have complete another oversight by Congress, let's say, to make sure that they're doing what they're supposed to be doing and treating people properly and getting results that way.
If you took a fraction of our law enforcement budget in this country and put it towards mental health, the benefits would be wild.
Yeah.
Now, you also mentioned that a significant amount of people who are homeless need mental health care.
You know who really needs mental health care, Jared?
Well, everybody, but everybody.
Everybody.
NACA certainly needs it.
They're broken.
A lot of people are broken who are, you know, functional in society, right?
We all need it.
We live in an abusive, traumatic, inducing capitalist society.
Like we have to heal if we're going to have something better.
And right now we do not have access to that.
So, you know, I reference ordinary people because it's a great scene in the beginning where they have to hushly in hush tones talk about, oh, someone's getting therapy, whatever.
I think we've progressed, but Jared, you're out there too, more in the, you know, I'm on the coast.
And it's, I have a just a different version of what I think, but like that stigma still exists, doesn't it?
Well, what, what, and this is hard, mental health care, and this is part of a larger conversation.
That stigma does still exist, but the mental health care that we have and the way that mental health care has been approached, it's much more of a middle class type thing.
The white collar people and they're basically, you know, they have an entire therapeutic system and they're, you know, they're outliers.
They're people who are actually dealing with real things and trying to heal and improve.
A lot of it is just trying to make them better workers and get rid of the neuros and anxiety that comes from living in an unhealthy society without addressing it and without changing it.
So the stigma has moved a little bit, but at the same time, it has moved much more towards quote unquote self-help, but it's towards being a better capitalist participant.
Okay.
And then because then you get guys like Joe Rogan, who again, when you get to that level of influence, you have to be a lot more responsible with who you bring on the shows because he'll bring on this person.
They'll talk about how the cause of most depression is because people actually self-reflect.
And if you don't think about your issues, then you're not going to be sad.
And it's like, that is such a broken way of looking at this thing.
And it's heartbreaking when I see that because you get a lot of people nodding along with that and who have no connection to like what they're going.
And by the way, I don't know if I said this in the show or not, but man, it would be really nice.
I would love to not have any self-reflection and just kind of live.
You know what I want to be?
I want to be Patrick Warburton in Seinfeld, who sits on the plane and just stares at the back of the stair straight ahead.
And by the way, Jim.
Just a final point on this.
Yeah, it would probably feel pretty good in the short term, but you know what ends up happening?
You end up becoming president of the United States of America, not having a plan, not knowing what's going on, and reacting wildly and trying to cover up your abuses and crimes.
Like it is a road to self-destruction, and maybe it feels good in the meantime.
I mean, drugs certainly feel good in the meantime.
Addictions certainly feel good in the meantime, but eventually at some point or another, you meet up with those consequences.
And what you just said is exactly right.
The reason why these people do this, the reason why MAGA is the way that it is is because it feels better than actual self-reflection.
All right, everybody, that's going to do it for this episode of the My Craig Podcast.
We will be back with the weekender on Friday.
A reminder, if you haven't already, go over to patreon.com slash MyCraigpodcast.
Become a patron.
Support our show.
Keep us editorially independent.
Ad-free.
Keep us rolling.
Keep us growing.
In the meantime, you can find us over on Blue Sky, Nick's at Nick Houselsman.
