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The right-wing power play marches on as co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss: JD Vance plans to meet with heads of the DOJ Pam Bondi and Kash Patel to plot out the Epstein coup as Ghislaine Maxwell is quietly moved to a lower-security prison in Texas. Meanwhile, it appears key parts of the U.S. Constitution are being edited out on a Congressional website. We dig into this digital sleight of hand and what it might mean. Plus: Senator John Cornyn and the FBI seem to be escalating pressure on Texas Democrats, and new tariffs are coming online with serious economic consequences.
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Welcome to the Weekend Edition of Lecrick Podcast.
I'm Jared H. Sexton.
I'm sitting out in the middle of nowhere.
I'm looking at a deer.
A deer's looking at me.
I'm here with Nick Houselman in spirit.
How are you doing, buddy?
I'm doing well.
I'm doing well.
Fresh off of another appearance at the LA Chargers training camp, which is always an interesting experience.
You try now for the team?
Oh, I would not even dare run on the field, much less try out.
Did you ever play football?
Did you ever even step foot on a football field?
I mean, we used to play like tag in high school in a pretty, you know, competitive way, but I never ever got anywhere near pads, helmet, nothing like that.
It was awful.
I was just talking about this about a week ago.
Like, I still regret playing football.
Like, some of my most quote unquote, like, favorite days of high school, and I'm still paying for it.
But yeah, the idea of you playing with the Chargers, that gave me a little thrill.
Yeah, you know, but at least you have, you know, you don't seem to be suffering from ill effects of like CTE.
So just be thankful.
I don't have CTE, but I have like old injuries.
Like I kind of have like a place in my shoulder that never healed correctly or clavicle or whatever.
Well, this could easily turn into a scene from Jaws when they're comparing history.
So we won't have to.
We do not have to do that.
No, but we do need to talk about some things today, starting off with the JD Vance Epstein Summit.
This is what they're calling it, about Delaine Maxwell and how she's being transferred to a little less secure prison.
The Constitution is being edited before our eyes.
Thank God for the Wayback Machine.
John Cornyn and the FBI are moving in on Texas Dems who are trying to hide out in Illinois, my home state.
And then the tariffs are coming online, Jared.
So we have a lot of things to go through.
And let's start with this notion that it seems already clear what's going to happen.
The only question I guess I have in my mind is how are the people on the right going to ultimately react to what's going to clearly happen?
Yeah, it's something, man.
Before we get going, I want to remind people, you might be listening to the preview of this show.
Go over to patreon.com slash my crick podcast.
It supports the show.
It gets you the entire weekend or edition.
You're already listening to the previews.
Like hang out with your friends, Jared and Nick, a little bit longer.
Like go patreon.com slash montcraigpodcast.
But yeah, Nick, you know, the reports have been bubbling up, and it's been strange because I haven't had any access to anything, virtually no access to like the internet and the news.
And even I knew that the vice president of the United States of America was going to meet with Pam Bondi and Cash Patel and God knows who else to discuss what's going on with the Epstein files.
This little creepy asshole, Vance, has been lurking in the shadows since he joined the MAGA ticket, hanging out with Rupert Murdoch before they went after Trump for Epstein.
It feels so strange, man, to like probably be more aware as political observers and analysts of what's going on than the president of the United States is probably aware of how much danger he's in.
That is a very strange feeling.
Yeah, danger is a good word for this because again, we keep saying that, you know, these Epstein files are either going to be cleansed to the point of unreliable or there's simply not going to be notes that he took extemporaneously that says Donald Trump, you know, raped a 13-year-old girl.
Like there just simply won't be that in there anyway.
But I do feel like there's enough there that would confirm how close they really were.
And I have to imagine that that's one of the biggest things they're afraid of.
There could also be a lot of bank transactions that they're seeing that perhaps the Democrats can get their hands on anyway, of a lot of money being transferred between these two, which would also be a really hard explanation, right?
I don't know how Trump would get away with if there was, you know, hundreds of or whatever, like tens of transactions, lots of money.
How else would he explain that other than like they were best friends, they were hanging out a lot, they were doing visits together, all sorts of things that he's denied this whole time.
Yeah, you know, there it's just like Venmo and your friend because you got appetizers together.
Oh, God.
You know, like that, that's what that is.
And, you know, It's really something, man, you know, the way this thing has evolved and still stuck around.
And right now, I kind of feel like we're in this weird throwing shit at the wall and seeing if it can keep people from paying attention.
But it's obvious.
Vance, Bondi, Patel, a whole other group of people obviously read the writing on the wall and they understand that this scandal is not just out of control, but that there is a serious, serious threat to the presidency of Donald Trump.
Vance is bringing together the group.
You know, some people were theorizing that it was about getting their story straight.
There's no getting a story straight.
The story is what the story is.
The question now is whether or not it has gotten to a point and it's escalated in terms of danger and putting the Trump presidency in danger that Vance, who's scurrying behind the scenes like the little rat that he is, is trying to figure out how to capitalize on this thing.
And he's got the people in the room.
Bondi and Patel both know what's up if they have any idea of what's going on.
So to get in a room with them and talk about things, I don't think it's wild conjecture to think that something like the 25th Amendment's being discussed, you know, as long as it's, you know, not being deleted out of the Constitution, which we'll talk about later.
But it really does feel like we've reached the rats on a sinking ship stage and people are trying to figure out how to get around this thing or how to take advantage of it.
Yeah, which makes me wonder, you know, there's a little bit of the leak of some stuff over the last couple of days of Rosenstein saying, you know, I think they might actually have some notes or some evidence that he seriously was going to tap the president.
He was going to wiretap the president.
They want to record him for the 25th back in his first administration.
And I just wonder sometimes if that, these are all related.
Like, you know, they're bringing it up now and then it's like, gosh, that's just like what Rosenstein wanted to do.
And then someone heard that and then passed it along.
But Jared, is it safe to say that you have a very profound grasp on contemporary American social history and the political history?
I don't want to pat myself on the back too hard.
I've got a little bit of a sunburn, but I think that's okay.
Yeah.
And I'd like to, you know, put myself in the category of I can hang.
Do you have any sense of the last time we've ever seen the vice president of the United States have some sort of a summit with the top Justice Department officials to discuss a story that directly relates and potentially harms the president of the United States?
I think that's probably when George H.W. Bush was lurking the halls.
Oh, okay.
I mean, I'm thinking like not even Nixon or Agnew was out before he even had a chance, but like, I can't even imagine anything like this, you know, when the mask is because at the very least, the Justice Department used to have this notion that they had to be separate from the White House and you can't have any kind of meetings or crossover.
And it's probably what torpedoed Hillary's, ultimately what torpedoed her campaign in 2016.
Well, I'll tell you, when Poppy Bush was the power behind the power, when the Gipper was in the White House and had no idea what was going on, and by the way, probably ran Iran-Contra with all of his CIA buddies.
I have to imagine that the meetings looked a lot like the Vance meetings.
And this was just the one that we know about.
We also know that he met with Rupert Murdoch.
Who even knows what other meetings he's having?
But yeah, the closest I can think of, and again, the parallels between Reagan and Trump are incredible.
And you have to imagine that at least sometimes those things have taken place.
But the fact that it's so sloppily out there and also the fact that they're not worried about it becoming obvious that they are collaborating with the Department of Justice and they have to at this point because suspect number one in all of this is Donald Trump.
They have to figure out it's probably, and Nick, I would love to hear your thoughts on this.
It has to be a meeting that's like, okay, option one, we figure out how to sweep this under the rug and get rid of the scandal.
Option two, we're talking about how to get the man out of office.
And it feels like those are the only types of discussions that are taking place.
And for the Attorney General of the United States of America to be in the middle of those discussions is absolutely wild.
We're literally talking about the equivalent of a palace coup here.
Well, this actually kind of parallels what I want to talk about with a Ghelane Maxwell interview from the Department of Justice the other day in her prison cell.
Because these conversations aren't, they're not overt.
They don't, I don't think they're going to talk about these things in that explicit manner per se.
Just like, so you can imagine Ghelane is not never going to sort of say, or they're not going to say, well, can we keep Trump out of this?
And then can you make sure you say something that won't hurt, harm him?
She knows what's going on.
They all, they both know through intermediaries and this through the media what the goal is in terms of getting Maxwell like, you know, a pardon ultimately.
And then, by the way, just to make sure that I'll tell you the truth, she could be saying, you know, I'm not sure I really like this prison I'm in, you know, and then those kind of things.
So in the same manner, you have to imagine that they're not going to be overt either and take their chances on saying anything directly about like the 25th Amendment.
They're going to talk about, you know, what they know so far, what Maxwell had said.
I'm sure they're going to, you know, bring him some of the summaries of the interview.
And then they're going to probably say stuff like, I mean, I don't know, like what?
They're going to say, well, geez, like, you know, is there a way out of this?
Is there a way where we can, and they might get as far as saying, you know, can we get the president extricated from this?
And then someone will probably say, yeah, we'll take care of it, Mr. Vice President.
Like, don't worry, right?
Like, isn't it something like that?
I mean, you're actually talking about competent criminals.
That is the question as whether or not they're even able to participate like that.
And, you know, it really is the truth.
Like, what has happened with Ghelane Maxwell in terms of her testimony with the deputy attorney general?
You know, some of the leaks that have come out have said basically that she said, well, I never saw anything that really drew my attention about Donald Trump, which, by the way, if you're Ghelane Maxwell and you worked with Jeffrey Epstein on this criminal, you know, conspiracy, I'm guessing not a lot of things involved with it really, you know, rose your suspicion.
It was an everyday part of life.
But meanwhile, she got a ticket down to Texas to, you know, basically a comfier prison.
But the way that her and her attorney were communicating with the Department of Justice and the Trump administration, it's just like the super PAC thing, Nick, where a candidate wink, wink, can't talk to the head of a super PAC, wink, wink.
And I, you know, that type of communication, these criminals, they know how to do that for the most part.
And I just want to draw attention to something that's getting lost in all of this.
Nick, we are seeing not just a massive historical cover-up, we're seeing a massive historical cover-up in public.
Like, this isn't even like in the dark halls of power or smoke-filled rooms.
Like, we're literally watching this thing play out in like one of the most obvious ways we ever could have imagined.
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