GOP: Let’s Solve These Problems By Making Them Worse
Together at last! Co-hosts Nick Hauselman and Jared Yates Sexton break down Donald Trump’s stunning move to seize control of Washington, D.C.’s police force despite the city’s crime rate hitting a three-decade low. The guys unpack the dangerous authoritarian precedent, the looming threat to other cities, and why Democrats are failing to push for D.C. statehood. Then, they turn to Trump’s upcoming Alaska meeting with Vladimir Putin, where the “deal” on Ukraine sounds more like carving up a real estate portfolio than ending a war. Plus: Tariffs on semiconductors, China’s rise, and why America is sliding toward the worst of both Russia and China’s systems.
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The boys, I'm glad to tell you are officially back in town.
Yes, we sound optimal, I think, and we are going to say optimal things today.
I think that's a high bar that we need to clear now.
Okay.
Whether or not we're saying optimal things, I mean, that's a different conversation, but I'm glad to hear you and not be in a car and not be like in the middle of nowhere trying somehow to make things work.
That's a relief.
Yeah, much more preferable to do it this way.
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Nick, what do we have to talk about today?
I assume nothing's going on in the world.
I assume that everything is in great standing.
We feel good about it.
There are no power grabs, no weirdness, nothing.
Great.
Cue the music.
You know, stay safe, everybody.
We're done.
All right.
That's the show.
Well, first we have to talk about, I can't, you know, it's each new iteration of this bullshit, Nick.
It's, it's, it's, again, shocking, but also not surprising.
It's been building now for a while.
The right wing has been talking about Washington, D.C. and about the need to federalize it.
There was a recent incident, again, can't believe we talk about this, in which big balls of Doge infamy apparently got into a little bit of a scuffle.
Since then, there's been a call to federalize Washington, D.C., which Donald Trump as president is now doing, taking over the D.C. police force, bringing in the National Guard, federal troops, you name it.
There's a lot more to talk about it.
But here is the president of the United States.
Yeah, announcing it and making it official.
I'm announcing a historic action to rescue our nation's capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam, and squalor, and worse.
This is Liberation Day in D.C., and we're going to take our capital back.
We're taking it back under the authorities vested in me as the president of the United States.
I'm officially invoking Section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act.
You know what that is?
And placing the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department under direct federal control, and you'll be meeting the people that will be directly involved with that.
Very good people, but they're tough and they know what's happening.
They've done it before.
In addition, I'm deploying the National Guard to help reestablish law, order, and public safety in Washington, D.C. And they're going to be allowed to do their job properly.
And you people are victims of it too.
You know, you're reporters, and I understand a lot of you tend to be on the liberal side, but you don't want to get you don't want to get mugged and raped and shot and killed.
And you all know people and friends of yours that that happened.
And so you can be anything you want, but you want to have safety in the streets.
You want to be able to leave your apartment or your house.
Our extremely well and healthy president of the United States of America, Nick.
You know, we have to paint a picture here because behind him is the cabinet.
You have Hegseth and you have half of Bergham's face, which is fine with me.
But Pam Bondi is over his left shoulder immediately over his left shoulder with Cash Patel next to him.
And this is the separation of the Department of Justice from the White House that had been expected, had been the norm for very good reasons for the entire history of our country until now.
So this blurring of the lines between like how he's going to be able to federalize the government, the police force in D.C., it speaks volumes to how we're already in an authoritarian regime.
Absolutely.
And Nick, let me give you a pop quiz.
I mean, this is about restoring law, order, and safety in Washington, D.C., the nation's capital.
If you had to guess, Nick, the crime rate in Washington, D.C., is it higher than it's been in a while or is it lower than it's been in a while?
Oh, well, Jared, you know, you want to look at it that way.
I mean, yeah, so what if it's lower?
There's more than one crime happening in the day and more than one is one too many.
Nick, it's not just lower.
It is at its lowest point in 30 years.
Three decades.
That's right.
30-year low in terms of crime.
And I'm sure some people are like, man, I kind of feel like I've seen this movie before.
Your neck of the woods in Los Angeles, when there were some protests that were revolving around this ICE raid over at Home Depot, and they turned LA into a staging ground for federal troops.
And they created a problem where there was no problem and said that it was a hellscape and it needed to be reclaimed and it was Liberation Day.
They're now doing it again with Washington, D.C. And by the way, they are also announcing plans that this isn't just going to be in Washington, D.C. That's right.
Anybody who is listening to this who happens to live in a city in a so-called blue state or anywhere the Democrats are quote unquote under control, guess what?
It's coming to a neighborhood near you.
And we're going to have the same thing here.
But then I'm going to look at New York in a little while.
Let's do this.
Let's do this together.
Let's see.
It's going to go pretty quickly.
And if we need to, we're going to do the same thing in Chicago, which is a disaster.
We have a mayor there who's totally incompetent.
He's an incompetent man.
And we have an incompetent governor there.
Pritzker's an incompetent.
His family threw him out of the business and he ran for governor.
And now I understand he wants to be president, but I noticed he lost a little weight.
So maybe he has a chance.
You know, you never know what happens.
But Pritzker's a gross incompetent guy, thrown out of the family business.
But when I look at Chicago.
I mean, again, our incredibly healthy, well president of the United States of America.
Nick, to hear it and to see the way that it is operated, it's almost like the president of the United States of America is using the federal government and the powers and the forces that belong to it to go into Democrat-controlled areas and cities and basically hold them under siege at this point.
It almost feels that way.
Yeah, it's also notable that Pritzker, who, you know, may or may not run for president.
He's been tipping his toe for a while now.
You know, the Pritzker family in Chicago, having grown up in Chicago, is, you know, they're not the equivalent of Trump in terms of how they do business, but they are certainly in terms of size and wealth along, maybe even bigger than what the Trump organization is.
And so you can tell if that's really what's getting his goat here on this end.
And then for him to try and even comment on his appearance or his weight, as if that is some sort of barometer for running for office.
And I've even brought that up in the past too, but like, you know, from him of all people who, you know, is not hasn't.
It's so stupid.
And that's the, we've talked about it at length, Nick.
The thing about this is it's not only an incredibly dangerous time, it's incredibly stupid.
Like watching this takeover of Washington, D.C., and we got to talk about D.C. in general.
Like if Democrats or anybody with a conscience right now isn't talking about statehood for Washington, D.C., which is long overdue, long, long overdue.
If they're not talking about that, they are being negligent in their responsibility and in their conscience.
Because what is happening here is he's taking advantage of their vulnerability, but also it's taking advantage of multiple other facets, Nick, because a large part of this is going to be focused on the unhoused population, which is a national disgrace.
And it's not just something the Republicans have done.
This has also been enabled by the Democrats.
This has also been one of the things where it's like, well, just get rid of them.
We don't want to look at them.
We don't want to deal with the crisis.
We don't want to take care of people.
And so what you're actually seeing here is a taking advantage of all these situations, including D.C.'s vulnerability, the housing crisis in this country, but it's also being ladled in with the most insulting stupidity that you could ever imagine, which makes this whole thing that much harder to swallow, the actual specifics of it and also how absolutely asinine all of this shit is.
I know, but it's all, you know, that all speaks to me, but what speaks me even louder is, you know, he had this thing.
I know it's a Stephen Miller thing where he's reading and he doesn't read well.
And he had the phrase bloodshed, bedlam, and squalor.
And it's just, we know what he's doing.
He is invoking what Nixon did as the silent majority play on racist tropes of like these cities being overrun by non-white people.
And like we have to somehow, you know, we have to tamp this down, put this down.
And when you describe it like that, especially in light of the numbers that you already gave us in terms of how far crime is down in 30 years, there is no emergency.
There is no sense of this.
Somebody called him up on his personal iPhone and said, oh, a cousin's brother's friend of mine got mugged on the street in DC.
Okay.
And then he's calling up Jean Piro and she's starting to go on up there half sheet to the wind.
Wait, what's that phrase?
Are you half sheet to the wind?
Four sheets to the wind.
Four sheets to the wind.
She might be two, but whatever.
You know, talking about how she can't prosecute anybody because of all the laws on the books that don't allow you to prosecute anybody.
So it's, and it still works, I think, right, Jared?
Those dog whistles still work to enough people that he's able to feel like he's making a point.
Oh, absolutely.
And I mean, that's at the heart of all of this is that the driving factor and really appeal in all of this is that the MAGA cult, the ones who are the true believers, the Adderants, the Acolytes, you name it, in Middle America and in the South, those people are so afraid of urban areas and they've created their own idea of what's happening in these cities and how lawless they are and how dangerous they are.
And they've lived in this alternate reality that doesn't look at statistics.
They're not in the city, so they don't even know what's going on there.
It's not like they live there.
They have allowed this to sort of fester to the point where not only can they take advantage of the vulnerabilities, but it actually gives the ability for this authoritarian overreach.
And now we're moving to the point where a centralized, aggressive authoritarian government can start using these resources and its tools to start overriding not just municipalities, but to actually start like creating more or less an occupation of American cities.
And it just so happens that it's politically motivated and it's politically targeted and specific.
So what do we have here?
We have a bunch of fantasies that aren't real.
We have a completely addled president who does not understand anything, but it's making it possible for the next step in the authoritarian overreach to actually come into culmination.
And what we're missing is autonomy in these cities because the city structure, the controlling local politicians do not want this at all and have virtually no power to stop them.
In LA, we saw this where they had the cosplay.
I mean, listen, I'm not saying cosplay because it's National Guard and these are real soldiers, but they had nothing to do.
They literally were just standing around.
And then meanwhile, we talked about this before.
It inspires the LAPD to act irrationally to prove that they don't need any other help.
And I guarantee that will happen in New York as well and probably DC.
So that is really what's so frightening about this whole thing and that there weren't guardrails in place because nobody figured that we would have somebody like this.
And if we did, they'd get impeached.
Like, isn't this an impeachable offense?
Wouldn't this be the thing that they're so scared about at this point?
Why don't they want to rig Texas so they can stop this from happening?
But then again, the whole impeachment thing isn't necessarily a real fear either because they know that the Republicans in the Senate will simply kick it to the curb, not even acknowledge it.
Well, and you know, I think there's multiple things that are happening.
Again, we have to focus on one thing and then focus on another and bring it into a larger context.
Like for Trump and the people around him, yes, they are absolutely worried about losing control in these very specific things.
They're worried about things like impeachment.
But what is actually occurring here with these troops going into urban areas and starting to go into opponents territories and start to take control.
That isn't even just about Trump.
That's something that we've seen start to build over the years.
I mean, it goes back to law enforcement getting the leftover weapons of the war on terror, right?
Which is as income inequality and intentional scarcity.
And by the way, like the gap between the haves and have-nots grow, you have to start creating these sort of mechanisms to protect property and the wealthy and the interest of capitalism.
So these things were going to happen in some way, shape or form.
It was a matter of how they happened and it was a matter of whether or not they went quicker or slower.
And the peccadillos that you're talking about right now, that's what enables them to move faster.
That's what enables them to click into place in a more reckless way that leads to more damage.
It shouldn't happen either way.
But we've been watching this sort of thing escalate for a while.
And now the brakes are off because of the peccadillos and the worries that you were just talking about.
Exactly.
And if you were ever going to try and bring a case against the president for violating any type of law, he is officially immune from that.
And it's official, at least no doubt the Supreme Court would consider this as official duties.
And so we have a real constitutional crisis here.
And I think it's putting everybody ill at ease.
And certainly the anxiety that I'm feeling day to day just sort of revolves around all of this because again, there's no guardrail.
There's nothing to slow him down this time.
And I hate to say it's impressive, but certainly in the eight months he's been doing this or whatever, it's really almost less, it's truly remarkable how far he's gotten.
No, it is because all of these things were laid out for him and all of the conditions were perfect for an authoritarian takeover, which again is what capitalism wants at this point.
It's what it requires.
I mean, the next thing we're going to talk about is another one of these actors in all of this with like Vladimir Putin.
And what you see is that the conditions have been ripe for these things to take off.
And there's a reason why he won another term of a residency, why he's been able to do all of these things.
And now you're starting to see, again, the pieces lock into place that have been prepared and that eventually where this was all going to lead.
So again, going back to it, the reason why this is able to happen in the time that it is is because the conditions were ripe and this was the, this was the person.
This was the vehicle that could go ahead and make those things occur.
And taking over a place like Washington, D.C. And I don't want to wear this out, Nick.
This is another giant red flag.
Like this really, really is.
I mean, your city, Los Angeles, was kind of the staging ground for this.
It was kind of the place where they tried it out and they wanted to see what was possible and what they could get away with.
And now that they've sort of seen it and AB tested it and saw what was possible and where the pushback was, basically they're franchising it now.
And I have no doubt that this is going to be in the long-term future of all these places because, again, the conditions and the individual and the administration are most definitely in lockstep on those.
I mean, it's quite possible they order National Guard or other federal troops or other armed services to go in these cities and somebody will say no.
Like one of the commanders will say, we're not going to do that.
That's against the Constitution, right?
But nothing happened in LA.
And so when the precedent is set there, you can easily see them saying, well, geez, it happened in LA.
They did it.
So who am I to say no now?
Never mind the fact that nobody in that branch of the armed services are trained in this kind of law enforcement.
And so you're going to have to imagine the very real fear of something tragically going wrong is there, just like we're seeing with ICE, who, you know, these people are not trained.
They're thrown out there in the streets very quickly.
And we're seeing all manner of authoritarian, you know, Nazi Gestapo tactics that clearly would not be tolerated in any other kind of normal situation where you're training officers to find people who are here illegally, you know, who are violating some sort of law that they feel like is worth deporting for.
Yeah.
And I mean, that's these are all different sort of avenues for the same thing.
Like, you know, Nick, we've been doing this for a while.
We've talked a lot, you know, when it comes to like the unhoused population.
We've talked about how this, and I about said how it's been handled, but it's more about how it hasn't been handled.
You know what I mean?
Like how it's just been allowed to occur.
Yeah.
And everybody's familiar at this point.
Like what, you know, the story everyone talks about is like San Francisco.
And the tech companies talked about this a lot because San Francisco is important in that sort of community.
Everyone has this idea of San Francisco has been completely, you know, run amok with an unhoused population.
And this idea that all of these cities are now unlivable and they're unsafe.
And eventually at some point, for economic reasons, somebody has to quote unquote do something about the unhoused population.
That doesn't mean getting them houses.
It doesn't mean getting them shelters.
It means getting them out of the picture.
We even saw another step in this lock into place.
I want to say it was three weeks ago when the executive order came out that was about, you know, institutionalizing these people, you know, against their wishes.
And so these things, they have to have some sort of a material reaction.
It just so happens that the need is to take care of the contradictions and the harm of capitalism.
But what we're seeing is that fascistic expression of them.
And that also has to deal with ICE.
You need to go in.
You need to intimidate these people for cheap labor to make sure that they are readily exploitable and that they're creating a legal slavery ring with them.
And so what ends up happening is that over time, as this escalates, instead of dealing with the problem, you're going to figure out a way, and fascism does it, of institutionalizing the quote unquote solution of the problem.
Well, and think of it this way.
They're sitting there in the Oval Office, you know, kicking their legs, their feet up on the desk and, you know, just pontificating about solutions and how we can do these things.
And I'm sure they're thinking, oh, it's just much easier to do it this way, right?
We'll just send a whole bunch of ICE.
We'll just, we don't have to deal with any kind of due process.
We'll get them out of the country.
We'll do all manner of things like that for homeless people as well.
It'd be great.
Well, the thing with it is if you look at the amount of money that they're already allocating, like for ICE, for instance, or for what they want to do with the decree from two weeks ago, it would be infinitely cheaper and easier, or not easier, infinitely cheaper to just take care of them in a humanitarian way and actually do it properly.
And then that would still align with like sort of the goals of capitalism to try and help people, you know, which are somehow underlying there, right?
You know, all the ships will float up the top together.
So there is a notion that like all the things that they're doing that they think are easier, you know, for the bottom line are making it even worse.
I mean, just the notion that we saw how Doge ended up costing billions of dollars.
It didn't save anything.
It went the other way when all is going to be said and done, you know, and reality that, okay, if we're going to get stuck, you know, with all that kind of expense, let's actually use it right.
Right.
Right.
And that's the thing.
It's like fascism is literally going into the funhouse mirror, right?
It's saying we're going to solve these problems, but making them fundamentally worse and figuring out a way to capitalize on them from a political project standpoint, but also an economic standpoint.
And so these things aren't actually being addressed while we're being told another reality is taking place.
In this case, and you nailed it a while ago, Nick, this is going to make situations much, much worse in Washington, D.C., the same way it made things much, much worse in Los Angeles, the same way that ICE has made things much, much worse.
And it's in a different way, but it's also feeding into that alternate reality where, and that's the only place where fascism works is in that alternate reality where they have control over that faux reality.
Yeah.
And if you have people who are following you who also have that same personality trait that can't really admit that they've ever done anything wrong or made a mistake, then there isn't, there's just double, tripling, quadrupling down on all of this.
No matter how much pain you might feel in your life or how much it affects you, you know, with people, they're going to be, I would say 100% of people in America are going to be connected to somebody who got deported, you know, unfairly.
And so no matter all of that, that's clinging to the notion you cannot admit that you made a mistake will continue the support for all of this and make it worse.
And so, you know, it's a great thing.
We're going to solve all the problems by making it worse.
That is their slogan.
That's it.
And speaking of making things worse, we've already sort of alluded to it.
Trump has announced that later in this week that he will be traveling to Alaska to meet with Vladimir Putin to talk about securing a quote unquote peace deal in Ukraine.
All reports around this make it very obvious that he is leaning toward what he has said for a while, which is allowing Putin to keep all of his gains in Ukraine.
Here is Trump talking about that meeting.
But it's very complex because you have lines that are very uneven.
And there'll be some swapping.
There'll be some changes in land.
And the word that they will use is, you know, they make changes.
We're going to change the lines, the battle lines.
Russia's occupied a big portion of Ukraine.
They've occupied some very prime territory.
We're going to try and get some of that territory back for Ukraine.
But they've taken some very prime territory.
They've taken largely ocean.
You know, in real estate, we call it ocean front property.
That's always the most valuable property.
If you're in a lake, a river, or an ocean, it's always the best property.
Well, Ukraine, a lot of people don't know that Ukraine was largely a thousand miles of ocean.
Oh, God.
Other than one small area, Odessa, it's a small area.
There's just a little bit of water left.
So I'm going to go and see the parameters.
Now, I may leave and say good luck.
And that'll be the end.
I may say this, this is not going to be settled.
I mean, there are.
Nick, I hear a lot of dumb shit from this man.
I had not seen this clip before you played it, the oceanfront, waterfront, property diatribe.
That is, that's some of the dumbest shit that I've heard him say in the middle of a serious situation.
I was really shocked by that.
There's a couple of things here to talk about.
Now, just for, you know, does anybody really know where Ukraine is?
I mean, I do, but, you know, there is no ocean that touches Ukraine, but it's a Black Sea.
So I guess we'll give him the benefit of doubt on that one.
But can we say very quickly before we move on from this subject?
Yeah.
Like, are you a military scholar?
I am not.
Are you an economic scholar?
No.
Do you, even though you are not a scholar of those things, understand that positions next to bodies of water are militarily and economically important?
Oh, yes, I understand this.
The president of the United States of America does not understand that.
No.
Let that sink in.
I know that this is like nitpicking a little bit.
The president of the United States of America does not understand general geopolitics, like even the beginnings of it.
Right.
But, you know, it gets worse because he's now comparing a war where thousands upon thousands of people have been slaughtered, kids have been stolen from their families and taken to Russia.
It's one of the horrible thing.
It's now trying to make a connection to like real estate deals and ocean property.
That's Gaza.
Yes.
And that is, that is, that just tells you everything.
Like he doesn't get, he has no capacity to care for anybody anyway.
We know this, but he's like reduced this thing down to some sort of real estate deal, of which he's terrible at also.
That's the other thing, right?
He's terrible at these deals.
He's never been successful in this.
And the only way he's been able to make a fortune is by his friggin' TV show and then by paying off and being as corrupt as possible to the city planners in New York.
So this is not the guy that you should be dealing that should be in the middle of dealing of a negotiation like this.
And then to top it all off, and I think we said this before, I know maybe I did before, was the idea that you're going to have some sort of meeting to try and negotiate the endless war with Putin and Trump and not Zelensky involved and not Ukrainians involved in the same meeting is outrageous to me.
Oh, no, it's unconscionable.
And I mean, it just goes back to exactly what we've seen, you know, going back to Vladimir Zelensky being in the White House and being, you know, attacked by Trump and J.D. Vance.
We've also heard over and over that any sort of a peace plan was going to involve somehow or another Russia keeping some of their gains, especially after Trump blackmailed Ukraine to get their resource rights.
We've already seen that take place.
I also want to point out, because it hasn't come up yet, Vladimir Putin is not just a murderous, genocidal dictator.
He is a wanted man.
There are warrants out for his arrest for crimes against humanity around the world.
He is being asked to step on American soil at the invitation of the president of the United States of America.
And the fact that this isn't some type of an actual summit that isn't trying to make an actual peace, it's trying to, again, carve up Ukraine at the behest of Putin.
And Nick, go ahead and give this more context.
I think it was last week or the week before, what is time, Trump like sent nuclear submarines out around Russia and trying to intimidate Vladimir Putin.
Him and Russian officials have been going back and forth about the possibility of nuclear war.
Like this is such an unstable, chaotic thing that's taking place.
And watching the relationship, and we don't even need to talk about the long, like problematic relationship between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, because there's a lot of meat on that bone.
Like this back and forth, like this is so destabilizing and so crazy making.
And to look at what they're trying to do to re sort of, you know, to reframe what has happened in Ukraine.
And now for Trump to go and talk to Putin and basically have two dictators deciding how to carve out a country, it is so infuriating and so, so maddening.
Well, especially because one of them, one of these dictators, is so inept and so, you know, under the thumb of Putin anyway, due to blackmail or just the fact that you can flatter the guy and get whatever you like out of this, that's the guy you don't want negotiating this no matter what.
Let's say we were in there in good faith negotiating for another country.
You know, we had gone in there.
We'd supplied them arms.
We're trying to protect them.
Let's say it was Afghanistan against the Soviet Union in the late 70s.
Like, okay, maybe there's some notion that America does care about this country.
I mean, I'm rolling my eyes as well, but the context we have with Trump indicates that, yes, they're looking to screw Ukraine as much as possible.
And let's make it clear here.
Zelensky is going to be defiant about any of these deals because A, he wants the children that have been kidnapped returned.
And then B, above all else, he wants ironclad assurances that Putin will not go back to Ukraine and take the rest of it.
Because I think odds are he will do this and he will use this ceasefire or whatever as a way to say as a staging ground and a way to regather and reload and then do it again later.
And so all Zelensky is going to want is some sort of ironclad on paper assurances that he cannot do that.
And if he does, it will trigger the European Union and America again having to come to their aid.
Now, you think he's going to get those two things?
No.
And by the way, Nick, what you just said about him doing it again, are you basing that on conjecture?
No.
Have we seen it?
Yes.
We've seen it.
We've seen this movie.
And to pretend like Vladimir Putin isn't Vladimir Putin, which again, man, it makes me want to just scratch my face.
We all know who Vladimir Putin is because we have seen him in the public eye now for a quarter century.
He has done this over and over.
He is a brutal, ruthless, totalitarian dictator.
And Donald Trump, who, again, going back to like his under saying the word understanding of geopolitics, misunderstanding of it, how much he loves cozying up to dictators, particularly dictators who have supported him and helped him and flatter him and fawn over him, knowing that this guy is going into this situation, knowing that Putin is going to get everything that he wants at this point.
And in order to have a further staging ground, Nick, we know from people within Russia that they have already created plans for not just a future invasion of Ukraine, but an invasion of former Soviet republics.
We already know that there are already plans on the books for them to go to war against NATO because of what has been shown in this conflict.
So to go and sit with him and believe that Donald Trump, who is a buffoon and has no understanding of these things, like what a national embarrassment this is.
And it should, this type of thing, I know it feels quote unquote more normal, but this is absolute insane shit.
I know.
And 20 years ago, Putin, I think, thought he was smarter than he was because he had installed Yanukovych, who was basically a Russian stooge as head of the president of Ukraine.
And that kind of felt like great.
Now we basically have control over Ukraine as it is.
But as what happens, the people stood up to him and threw him out.
And then that's how we got Zelensky, right?
Because they don't want Russia controlling Ukraine like he's convinced himself that he has.
So that is what necessitates him having to attack Ukraine.
Now, remember, Ukraine was really concerned when all that happened and Zelensky takes over.
And they were whispering about needing, you know, protection from NATO, perhaps being part of NATO.
Why are they worried?
Well, they're worried because Putin might invade.
Did Putin invade?
Yes.
Were they right to be worried?
Yes.
So this is why you needed NATO to be involved.
Now, if he has, I am glad insurances from other people to protect Ukraine if he goes back in again.
Isn't that just being in NATO?
Is that the same thing?
I mean, you would think so, but like that has been where.
I mean, you know, it's everywhere that all these things have been dragging their feet.
The status quo doesn't know what to do in this moment.
They're all out of answers and they've tried almost nothing.
Like the old things, it's Nick, it's like trying to reboot a Wi-Fi.
You know what I mean?
It's like, well, you hit the button to turn it off and you turn it back on.
Well, it doesn't work.
Well, I don't know what to do now.
They don't know what to do in this situation.
And they have created such a brittle thing.
And with the decline of the American empire and American influence, it has left such an opening for people like Vladimir Putin to literally do whatever they can, whatever they want to do.
And now we're reaching, I hope we reach the end point of this thing because so many people have died and suffered in this situation.
A peace would be good, but now this piece, I think, stands to show it's almost like putting a sign on the door of like a gas station saying, honor system, don't take anything.
Please pay for whatever you grab.
And it's an open invitation for people like Vladimir Putin and people who operate like him to literally do their worst in every situation and to continue to test these barriers because they're non-existent.
But here's what's weird about all this because you have two things going on at once.
First of all, the lack of power that America now has across the world, right?
Whatever you call it soft power or even the hard power they had that would keep Russia or the Soviet Union from invading other countries was palpable for a long time.
And it's clearly not there anymore.
We are completely a weakened nation that has no influence like it used to.
But then you have someone like Putin in charge of Russia.
And I got to tell you, this is an abject military failure.
What happens, what's going on?
No matter what you want to say, they won the war.
They got enough of the Ukraine that they can declare victory.
This is ridiculous.
Ukraine had no business still being in it, you know, this late in the game without Russia being able to take over the country like they said they were going to do in two or three weeks, whatever that was.
This is a huge testament to how bad and ineffective that is as well.
They are as well.
So this is another reason why there aren't that the script has ended.
There's nothing after that.
We don't know what else to say because you have two things going on that hadn't really been happening in the entire history of our civilization at this point.
And so now it's like, yes, the only answer I have is that the kind of assurances you'd have that Leslinsky would accept would basically be the equivalent of them being in NATO.
So they might as well just put them in NATO anyway.
Well, I mean, now you're just talking sense.
I mean, that's the thing.
It goes around to all these different things and all of these worsening situations that are taking place as the status quo in the American world order falls apart.
Well, really quickly, because are you aware of NATO ever preemptively attacking another entity?
I mean, not offhand, no.
I mean, I'm not aware either.
And it's like, you know, I mean, unless you're a Russian apologist and expanding into the area is somehow or another, you know, aggression, which is what a lot of people argue.
Okay.
I mean, okay, okay, because I'm trying to wrap my head around what Putin sees as a threat, right?
Because even if they move next door to Russia, again, there's never been an incursion, you know, led by NATO as a preemptive strike against another country.
So that fear that they're going to like somehow incur into Russia shouldn't be there.
And yet here we are.
And that's why he went into Ukraine in the first place and wants to creep to the other satellites as well.
So that I've never Been able to kind of square that circle, even though Putin's mind doesn't function like any normal person's anyway, does no?
Because if your mind functioned like Vladimir Putin's, like you would be in jail, yeah, you know, like instead of like one of the most kind of diadestinely wealthy people in the world, right?
Um, Nick, speaking of a crumbling uh world order, another thing that Donald Trump announced is that he's considering putting a hundred percent tariff on semiconductors.
Um, and this is something that uh it feels minute, but it's actually pretty large.
Here is again our incredibly well-adjusted, healthy president of the United States of America, um, you know, putting a stamp on the world.
I wouldn't make a deal with that, although uh, it's possible I'd make a deal uh a somewhat uh enhanced in a negative way, Blackwell.
In other words, take 30% to 50% off of it, but that's the latest of the greatest in the world.
Nobody has it, they won't have it for five years.
But the H20 is obsolete, you know, it's one of those things, but it still has a market.
So, I said, Listen, I want 20% if I'm going to prove this for you for the country, for our country, for the U.S. I don't want it myself.
You know, every time I say like, uh, like 747, I want, I want, yeah, for the Air Force.
So, I just wanted so when I say I want 20, I want for the country, I only care about the country, I don't care about myself.
I mean, I think that is illustrative of everything, isn't it?
Nick, I got to tell you one of the things about Trump getting older and becoming less and less well, and the things beginning to calcify in worse ways, like his inability to be silent on his worst impulses and plans.
Like, it gets worse every single day.
He could not help himself in that situation, much like what we've seen with the Epstein shit.
And because he obviously hears the criticism about how he's completely self-dealing and he's completely corrupt, and he knows he's he already admitted that they're going to take the plane, he's taking the plane, he's not getting it to the air force after they get it if they ever do get it.
Uh, and here's another example because I've been concerned about the tariffs: where is this money going?
Is there is it really being um accounted for properly?
Does he think that since he's making these deals, it should go to him and he deserves it?
I've certainly heard a lot of people who are working in different businesses who have done lots of skimming off the top because like, well, I did all the extra work, I deserve it.
It's not a big deal.
Come on, it's mine.
So, um, all those things are really, really concerning.
And in case you're wondering, the chip, he's just talking about chips in that scenario where he continues to kick the can down the road on tariffs for China, continues to meddle with it.
And depending on who's talking to him and where, and which crony of his is begging for some relief before they go into effect.
So, again, the tariff situation is the most ridiculous, tumultuous thing we've ever seen.
And the fact that the economy has not created yet is really astounding to me and leads me to believe that it is that manipulated that, you know, nothing is real.
Nothing acts on market forces.
Nothing is actually real.
And I want to, again, there's a zoom in and zoom in over here, looking at both things.
Nick, I got a question for you.
When do you remember first hearing that China as a power in the world might rival the United States in terms of a superpower?
When do you remember first sort of like coming across articles or hearing in conversation those types of things?
When do you remember that?
Oh, boy.
I mean, you know, China has owned our debt for such a long time that that was always sort of the fear that like, yes, they were ultimately going to, you know, have enough control over our economy like that.
But as far as being an economic superpower, it's, you know, recent, you know, I would say, right?
In the last, like, since the last 10 or 15 years, they've really, maybe you can consider them someone like that.
So when China was welcomed into the worldwide trading community and the deal was made basically that America would take advantage of the labor and cheapness from China, it took a little while for it to become clear that that was going to become a problem, right?
And, you know, it's a lot like, and just to put this into context, it's a lot like how we heard about climate change and we heard about it for years, like this is a thing that's going to happen and we really need to do something about it.
And each year you would read like a new article and it'd be like, ah, this is probably something we need to do something about.
And then all of a sudden you reach a point where it's like, holy shit, like we only have so long to deal with this problem before we hit like a really bad moment, right?
When it comes to tariffs, when it comes to things like the semiconductor thing, computers, AI, any of that stuff.
We have arrived in the moment where China has become such a power that it really does challenge us and our dominion over the world.
And these tariffs are basically the creation of this new protectionist racket that goes around with all this, trying to disassemble parts of neoliberal globalism to try and use whatever is left of American control to kind of try and avert the disaster that's been coming for a while.
And when it comes to this thing, when it comes to semiconductor chips, when it comes to all these tariffs, Nick, what you just brought up, the idea that Trump could skim something off of the top and how chaotic these things have been, this goes back to what I was saying earlier, which is these are conditions that are independent of anybody that's in the White House, right?
These are things that you have to deal with.
When you get the wrong person or the wrong administration or the wrong political project that also coincides with it, the answers aren't going to be productive.
The answers are going to be destructive and corrupt.
So this was going to be a problem one way or another.
You know, you go back to even the Biden administration with the CHIPS Act, right?
Like there were things that were trying to be done by other administrations to try and head off this disaster.
It just so happens that now because Trump is the one in charge and this administration is in charge, it's a protectionist racket for him and his wealthy friends.
It's a pump and dump scheme.
It's an ability to skim off the top.
And it's chaotic because he is chaotic.
So the nature of the quote unquote solutions are to be unsolutions, non-solutions.
I lost the ability to say words.
These are non-solutions that are going to make things worse.
And it just so happens that a lot of these maneuvers were things that were going to happen one way or another.
Well, let's also not forget that he's not legally empowered to impose tariffs and that they're invoking this ridiculous notion of national security threat to then allow him to change the tariffs and wear whatever deals he wants.
Any other normal functioning Congress would never allow this and would repeal anything that he's doing right now, which perhaps that is what they're so afraid of.
And maybe if the Democrats take over the House, they can put a wrench in the tariff plan.
Like otherwise, again, it's still hard to figure out exactly why they're so afraid.
Although, again, by them doing the things they're doing, like the shenanigans in Texas, it at least makes me feel like that the midterms will be free and fair or they're planning on being free and fair.
But it's really astounding to me when you look at this as a, if you ever have goals and you're supposed to be a disciplined person or running the country as a discipline, which is why China operates.
You know, nobody wants to deal with anyone who is as undisciplined as Trump is and as they're behaving right now.
And again, it just seems like it's a matter of time.
Just like you described how China was, it's a matter of time until they're a major player or a dominant player and climate change as well.
As far as I can tell, it's only a matter of time until the economy does follow suit, just like we saw like in the big short, for instance.
Well, yeah, because you can't save this thing.
It's again, to use a metaphor, it's a sinking ship.
And if the ship is sinking, you want somebody who is competent to either try and right the ship or to help people get off the ship safely.
You don't want someone in charge who's not just chaotic and self-serving and wants to take care of themselves, but isn't like, you know, going in and stealing the copper wiring out of the walls.
All of this stuff should have been dealt with a long time ago.
The system that we're dealing with here, neoliberal globalism, never should have been set up in the first place.
It was a mistake.
The American empire following post-World War II, a mistake.
All of these things were mistakes, but once you realized they were mistakes, you needed to deal with them instead of bringing in a crazy ass captain who's going to make things worse.
And we've said it before.
We've had many conversations.
If you were to put together somebody who could make all of this better for China, you couldn't create a person better than Donald Trump.
Like China is reaping the benefits of this.
And by the way, Nick, bringing up Russia and China, America is slowly becoming a hybrid of Russia and China.
Instead of figuring out what it is and where it needs to go, we are bringing together all of the worst elements of Russia and China because of all of those sort of conditions that are in place and all those energies.
Instead of figuring out who it is that we need to be beyond this failed project.
And it's making it way, way more easier for people like Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping and Russia and China to go ahead and seize control of the apparatus as opposed to figuring out where it is that we need to go.
Well, you know, we're getting to the end of the show here.
And I think you just maybe, I don't think I realize perhaps how radical you are, Jared, by basically just throwing out the entire direction of the United States of America since World War II.
Now, let's unpack that for two minutes before we get too late.
So it seems to me like you'd say we were on the right track trying to get out of the depression with what the New Deal was and the FDR was doing.
That was like the path that we were on.
That was really great.
Now, once World War II ends and the Cold War begins is where we started having the wrong turn on the road, right?
I would argue that the wrong turn was in the precipitation of the Cold War.
It was when we started making deals with Nazis and fascists.
And we started like creating the preemptive push for the Cold War.
And we started like going in and killing leftists everywhere and getting rid of like democratic accountability.
And so you end up having a world in which innovation is stifled, different voices are stifled, democracy is controlled.
The United States of America believed it was a benevolent dictatorship, basically, and going around and doing those things.
This has been a project that was always going to lead to this point.
And we've seen it.
We've known it.
It just happened that there wasn't any political will or that there weren't any representatives of it.
And now we've reached the end of that project.
And you have to learn lessons from it.
Or again, you go back to stealing copper wiring out of the walls while you oppress people.
Right.
And I think you learned that if anybody ever got into power who had the same feelings as you do, you probably get assassinated in Dallas in 1963.
And that is also, you're pretty much indicting the Dulles Brothers, as far as I'm concerned.
Well, the Dulles Brothers, I mean, like, we don't have time to get into the whole thing, but like the Dulles Brothers are more or less like great examples of exactly where this country went wrong, where the CIA and capital started, you know, cowboying around the world and turned into an extra legal outside the authority of the United States government.
And you bring all that into fruition and you end up with a sinking ship.
And everything that we've talked about today is the ship is going down.
How are the people reacting to it?
The answer is oppression and grift and corruption and just becoming worse and worse.
And that's what's behind all of these actions.
And as we've been changing names of ports and tearing down statues, I suppose Dulles Airport should also be changed as well.
I couldn't agree more.
Couldn't agree more.
All right, everybody, that's going to do it for this episode of the Mutt Craig podcast.
We will be back with the weekender on Friday.
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