Donald Trump just welcomed Vladimir Putin to American soil and rolled out the red carpet—literally clapping as the war criminal strutted into Alaska.. Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman break down what really went down at the summit, why Trump is parroting Putin’s talking points on mail-in voting, and how this all points to an accelerating authoritarian project. Plus: federal troops occupy D.C., ICE violence escalates, and MSNBC rebrands to… “MS Now.”
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I'm Darius Sexton here with my friend Nick Halsman.
Nick, how are you?
I'm good.
I'm good.
I'm feeling better today and that's all that matters day by day.
Day by day.
Hell of a mantra.
Mantra, mantra, mantra.
Mantra.
Yeah, really.
And it's, you know, listen, it could be cliche, but it, you know, there is some a lot of merit to the no-show.
I love it.
No, one foot in front of the other.
It's the only thing we can do, right, man?
Or to even quote one of the great Yahoo!
songs of all time, minute by minute.
Wow.
All right.
Well, now that that's in everybody's head, we want to welcome you to the show or reminder head over to patreon.com slash Montcreig podcast support the show and also gain access to the weekender edition on friday listen this news doesn't stop it doesn't stop it's it's two full shows every week on top of that you get to join the community discord you get live shows uh special events all of that good stuff nick i wish we could talk about good stuff i wish that that's where we could start this episode but unfortunately Last Friday,
the President of the United States of America, Donald Trump welcomed war criminal, genocidal maniac, dictator, Vladimir Putin to American soil in Alaska.
The two of them shared a very romantic lounge in the presidential limo for hours.
There's all kinds of bullshit around this.
Trump was trying to get a deal made.
He left apparently very infatuated with Vladimir Putin, not shocked at all by that.
As we're recording this on Monday, Vladimir Zelensky and a whole gaggle of European leaders have come to the White House to, I don't know, try and repair some of the damage done, try and get some type of a deal made.
It appears from leaks around this and people who are in the know that Trump was ready to hand over the whole kit and caboodle over to Putin.
Nick, here we are.
How are you feeling?
You feeling proud to be an American?
Are you waving the flag?
Are you outside playing Lee Greenwood?
What's going on?
Yeah, right.
Let's get Greenwood into the honor in the Kennedy Center.
You know, that's a lot.
That's a, that's a, I don't even know.
That noodle folds around a couple different times here.
So let's start maybe with the summit in Alaska, of which Trump has continued to say he was in Russia.
So I don't even think it's to mention at this point.
I think he must, you know, he's trying to honor, you know, Putin's, you know, because they used to own it or something.
At any rate, even Fox News was sort of giving Trump shade over this, right?
During the press conference, Putin gets to speak first, you know, even little things like that.
Have you heard a little conspiracy stuff about how like Levitt ran out Ashton looking?
Ashton, I think, is pale, right?
Like the blood run on her face.
Is that my correct?
Yeah, I mean, she's pretty pale anyway, but yeah.
That's true.
That's true.
So they said she was Ashton and something happened and then they had to run out and then run back in.
And then there are all sorts of interesting, you know, ideas.
You haven't heard any about any of those?
No, no, I haven't.
I mean, I've been paying attention to sort of the geopolitical sort of murmurs and waves from it.
Caroline Levitt's facial expression at the summit.
Yeah, that didn't come up on my radar.
All right.
Fair enough.
Fair enough.
And I'm feeling that what you're trying, I think you feel like you're giving me some shade too.
No, I'm not giving you shade.
I just, listen, I'll be honest with you.
Caroline Levitt is one of those people.
And I think any Trump press secretary, it has to happen.
I'm just like, I'm not going to pay attention to this person.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, no, no shade.
No shade.
So they're thinking like, you know, something obviously happened because there's a very long meeting in my mind.
Three hours is a long time.
Cancel the lunch, though.
And we know why we know what they were going to eat for lunch, Jared?
Yeah, because our government can't take care of their documents and left a bunch of notes in a photocopier.
Yeah.
I mean, in the printer in the lounge, not the lounge, the business center of the fucking hotel.
And by the way, there was some stuff in there.
There were phone numbers of higher-ups in our government in there.
That's not good.
Probably have to change the numbers now.
No, it's all bad.
And listen, on this note, I...
Number one, this is one of the reasons you don't want Donald Trump to be president of the United States of America.
Not only is he incapable and he's incompetent, but he's completely susceptible to flattery.
And on top of that, he happens to really like some sordid company, including predators and also dictators.
I've never seen this man more comfortable than when he's hanging out with a predator or he's hanging out with a murderous dictator.
Game recognizes game, Nick.
And his interactions with Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong-un, whoever it is, it's where he lights up.
And Vladimir Putin has his number like nobody's business for a variety of reasons.
And we're going to have to talk more about this because we might have some real domestic consequences of this meeting.
But he went in there.
He has no control over this situation.
Russia has been allowed to run completely roughshot over all of this.
And now, as I said, Europe has had to come over for an emergency meeting with Trump, with Volodymyr Zelensky.
God knows what's happening in there.
And he's already basically telling them that he's on Putin's side, which is something that we all knew.
We all intuited all along.
And just before we get to that, what happened to happening today, remember, Trump goes into the meeting with Putin saying that he'd be very upset if they don't have a ceasefire in that day, which is again, he continues to do this where he will promise or he'll expect certain things.
like he said the war would be over in a day after it becomes president.
And here we are six months later, or no, I'm sorry, eight months later, what is time.
And so same thing here where they said, okay, fine, no ceasefire.
How angry is Trump?
And they had to now sit there and try and spin that where it was like, you know, here's the point of it when you have summits like those, they're supposed to be concessions that are granted, like even before you have the meeting, before you welcome someone and spend millions of dollars to do a fucking flyby over their guests.
Millions, they had to ship the, or they had to fly the stealth bomber from Missouri to Alaska, costs millions to do um and so and they laid out the red carpet for this guy i'm sure everyone now has seen this work trump is clapping for putin um and i think most people, it looked like even the Republicans were upset about that and the whole spectacle of it, which is amazing.
And so there's some sort of ice breaking on that end.
But culminating in the fact that the Europeans all want to come to have Zelensky's back, considering what happened the last time Zelensky sat next to Trump in the Oval Office.
And let's not forget that.
I mean, in one of the more embarrassing moments in the White House and in modern history, Trump didn't just dress down Zelensky.
I mean, he verbally assaulted.
of Vladimir Zelensky.
And what we've seen here, the pageantry around welcoming Putin, who again should spend the rest of his natural life either in The Hague or be executed.
That's literally what should happen to Vladimir Putin if there was any justice in the world.
Trump brought him in without any concessions.
And Nick, I don't know if you've seen this since their meeting.
I mean, and before the meeting, he had pushed his forces further and further into Ukraine, trying to break their front lines.
On top of that, after their meeting, we've seen more death.
in Ukraine, more and more attacks that are taking place.
This guy knows that he is in the main position here.
He knows that he has the president of the United States of America wrapped around his finger.
He knows that not only does that give him some, you know, leeway when it comes to NATO, but also the alliance between Europe and the United States of America?
Like you could not design a worse situation for this war as we're trying to reach some sort of conclusion.
And it's not enough, Nick, that he's already basically promised Vladimir Putin.
all of the territory that he's conquered, mineral rights possibly from the United States of America.
It sounds like more and more concessions are being considered, giving him more and more territory.
Like this situation is dire.
And it's not just dire because of what's happening with the Ukrainians who are dying, but it's also.
in showing that we are more than happy to work with dictators and warmongers.
I mean, you couldn't create a bigger flashing green light for this shit.
And it's time to go back to 2016 again, where Andrew Weisman has a book, which came out a while ago, but it popped up on my feed, talking about a section where they had uncovered emails between Manafort and Konstantin Kalimnik, who is Putin's left-hand man, with a deal that dealt with taking over the Donbass region of Ukraine that allows Russia to have a straight line autonomous region down to through Crimea to the Black Sea, which is extremely important for shipping and for their economy.
and with Trump's approval, that was all part of the deal here.
They wanted to make sure Trump was okay with that and they can do that.
So this has been in the works the whole time in conjunction alongside with what Trump knew about this.
So the only thing that's different now is that I'm not so sure that they only want the eastern edge of Ukraine to get down to the Black Sea, right?
It doesn't kind of feel like now they're just like, fuck it, we'll take over the whole country now and it'll be better.
Well, okay.
So here's the thing.
I don't like to get into the mind of Vladimir Putin, but occasionally you have to in order to understand this stuff.
Nick, if you're going to go in and you're going to attack them and then on the other.
side of it for peace negotiations, you're going to get everything you want and more.
Why would you ever stop?
Like really?
Like why?
Okay, let's take a ceasefire or a peace treaty for a while.
You wait around, you replenish your ranks, you get more weaponry, you train some more people, you go in again.
As long as someone like Donald Trump is president.
you just keep going or you move into another country.
I don't know why anybody in the world right now is even hesitating to invade their neighbors.
And I mean, we've seen that everyone from, you know, Russia to Israel and God knows China's out there, you know, looking at Taiwan.
Like, why wouldn't you at this point?
Really?
I mean, it's just a blank check and they're handing it over to Vladimir Putin.
And quite frankly, like, we deserve whatever we get after this because they are just rolling out the literal red carpet at this point.
And it doesn't even stop with Ukraine.
We're going to get into some things later about how Trump is echoing Putin on other fronts on the national side.
But I thought it would be worth, I've been, you know, kind of yelling out at the.
into the void for a little while about this stuff.
The Ukrainian kids have been taken by Russia, been literally kidnapped into Russia like we had seen Americans do with Native American kids back in the day, but when we were fighting the Revolutionary War before or after that.
So the point being that finally, finally, we have somebody who's speaking up from the European section here and asking Trump about it.
I want you to hear what he said about it when they asked him about the children.
Every single child has to go back to its family.
This should be one of our main priorities also in these negotiations to make sure that the children come back to Ukraine, to their families.
Thank you.
And we did.
I was just thinking we're here for a different reason, but we just a couple of weeks ago made the largest trade deal in history.
And congratulations.
That's great.
Thank you very much, Isma.
What do you do with that?
What do you do with that?
For real, what do you do with that?
You should stop him again and say, don't congratulate me for whatever else you're talking about from before that.
And acknowledge that that has to be the number one thing that they have to deal with first, which is still not come up.
I have not heard Trump ask about it or identified anything about that at all as if he would care anyway.
He keeps saying how he doesn't want people dying and these soldiers.
And he constantly includes the Russian soldiers as well.
Again, this is the both sides thing, right?
Both sides are both fighting.
They're both dying.
It's like, no, the Russians were the.
ones who started this war.
They're the ones causing all of this bloodshed.
I just want to point out the obvious here, which is one of the main.
thrusts of the MAGA movement was the idea that Donald Trump was going to protect children and the idea that, you know, the QAnon conspiracy theory, and of course, you know, he's out there paling around with Jeffrey Epstein.
And now, like all of this, this idea, or that he's going to make sure that, you know, kids stay with their families.
Meanwhile, they're being separated, families are being deported and being disappeared into concentration camps.
And here, he doesn't give a shit.
He doesn't even begin like, there's.
not even, and this is the thing that's really hard in studying Donald Trump and like understanding MAGA and like spending so much time like watching this guy and reading every speech that he's ever given.
Nick, there's not even a glimmer of humanity in him, which is why he feels so good with Putin is because there's not like he doesn't, he doesn't even begin to give a shit about any of these kids.
Like he can't even be bothered to give a shit.
And, you know, on top of that, I also feel like because it's so damning to Putin that he can't acknowledge it.
He cannot possibly bring up anything, acknowledge anything that would be that.
that would be that criminalizing to his pal.
You know what I mean?
I think that's also a big part of it because he recognizes I think it's almost like he recognizes how bad it is.
And this has to sort of use that power or positive thinking bullshit that he does and just ignore it.
And this it doesn't exist if I don't acknowledge it.
So, you know, to show you how unserious he was, Jared, I figure we share another clip here, because, again, this is supposed to be a meeting between Zelensky, Trump, the European leaders as well, to figure out how to end this bloodshed, how to end this horrible war that was needless.
And he can't stay on track.
Trump can't.
And so as a result, we get this little soundbite here where they're talking about basically in the context of how the Constitution works in Ukraine during wartime.
And this is Trump's response.
So you say during the war, you can't have elections.
So let me just say three and a half years from now.
So you mean if we happen to be in a war with somebody, no more elections.
I wonder what the fake news is.
Yeah.
now that was Zelensky laughing and I'm yeah I don't care for Zelensky laughing there but um yeah yeah that that's what he does this is what he does this is you know this is not a serious person this is not someone who will be able to negotiate any of these things well and and just before we get into this,
because this has been a major push in the last few hours, Nick, what we talk about when we talk about Trump having fascist instincts and dictatorial ambitions and sort of, you know, a part of him that is really, really attracted to that.
You or I, like if we heard someone talking about that, like, oh, we could just have those people killed or, oh, we could just bypass all of that.
There would at least be a moment for us in which we would be repulsed by it.
And we'd be like, wait, wait, what are you talking about here?
Trump naturally leans towards that.
That is where he is most comfortable.
The idea he is.
so anti-democratic that the idea of having to hold elections is just repulsive to him.
And that moment, it's chilling.
That's a literally a chilling moment that I know is going to get passed off as some kind of joke.
And people are going to say people are overreacting.
But like he keeps revealing who he is.
Oh, you want chilling, Jared?
You haven't even scratched the surface of chilling.
You know, this is maybe a hair on your neck.
I'm talking about every hair or all of your body with this next clip because what Trump also can't stop doing is echoing exactly the talking points that Putin gives him.
If that is not the smoking gun here, then I don't know what is.
We've never had an American president echo word for word what, and then by the way, he's even acknowledged it.
He said that Putin told me that when we talk about mail-in ballots, that is what's going to, you know, that's the most corrupt part of the whole election process.
It's like, you know, he can't do that.
Like that should be disqualifying enough.
But here, let me play this for you because you can hear what he's saying out of his own mouth.
You pushed out on social media.
Brian, go first.
You pushed out on social media about doing away with mail-in ballots and potentially electronic voting machines.
Can you expand on that?
Well, that's a very off topic.
Just really quickly, mail-in ballots are corrupt.
Mail-in ballots, you can never have a real democracy with mail-in ballots.
And we, as a Republican party, are going to do everything possible that we get rid of mail-in ballots.
We're going to start with an executive order that's being written right now by the best lawyers in the country to end mail-in ballots because they're corrupt.
You know that we're the only country in the world, I believe, I may be wrong, but just about the only country in the world that uses it.
You don't need to hear the rest of it, but, you know, if you want to go backwards, we're not the only country.
I mean, I think we should hear the rest of it because he credits this.
I mean, we find out exactly where this germ of an idea came from.
Because of what's happened.
Massive fraud all over the place.
The other thing we want change are the machines.
For all of the money they spend, it's approximately 10 times more expensive than paper ballots.
And paper ballots are very sophisticated with the watermark paper and everything else.
We would get secure elections.
We get much faster results.
The machines, I mean, they say we're going to have the results in two weeks.
With paper ballots, you have the results that night.
Most people, many countries use paper ballots.
It's the most secure form.
So between paper ballots, very, very important, paper ballots, and I think maybe even more important, the mail-in voting.
We're going to end mail-in voting.
It's a fraud.
If you have mail-in voting, even Jimmy Carter with his commission, they set it up.
He said the one thing about mail-in voting, you will never have an honest election if you have mail-in.
And it's time that the Republicans get tough and stop it because the Democrats want it.
It's the only way they can get elected because with men and women's sports and with transgender for everybody and open borders and all of the horrible things.
And now the new thing is they love crime.
*sniff*
But I think if I'm not mistaken, correct me if I'm wrong, Jared.
Did he try and make a new point about a minute and a half into this that mail and ballots are really bad?
Considering the fact that he began this whole thing about talking about mail and ballots are really bad.
Do you know, do you follow that?
Oh, no.
I mean, listen, trying to walk through any statement of his is like trying to make your way through the worst carnival house of mirrors you've ever been in.
period yeah and and by the way i i thought this was actually the clip where he basically told everybody that vladimir putin told him that he won the 2020 election and that he only lost it because of the fraud of mail-in ballots.
And so because he, and by the way, Nick, just a quick fact check.
I know you're not a rushologist or a Putinologist.
How many fair elections do you think Vladimir Putin has won?
None, zero.
Yeah.
I don't know, but let's call it none.
I mean, if you want to be charitable, maybe one.
The man has cheated at every election to the point where we've come up with the term managed democracy to explain what he's done.
He got in Donald Trump's ear, told him what he wanted to hear, which was that he won the 2020 election.
And then eventually, what was referenced here, a truth social.
post in which trump came out the president of the united states and said i'm going to lead a movement to get rid of mail and ballots and also while we're at it highly inaccurate very expensive and seriously controversial voting machines big giant rant about this and nick i personally i said it um I want to say it was three episodes ago, maybe four episodes ago.
I've talked about it elsewhere.
People have been asking me about 2026 and 2028 and whether or not Donald Trump would screw with a potential election.
And I said, you know, I expected him to start talking about elections probably in the fall.
I think the month that I gave was November.
It's August.
Yeah.
It's August.
And that scares me because most of the time I'm able to understand exactly when these things are going to happen.
It's accelerating.
And because it's accelerating, we are going to see this not just die on the vine.
They are going to try very, very hard to use federal powers in order to interfere with elections.
And I think we just got our first look at it.
Right.
But they've accelerated because they're realizing how dire it is for the Republican Party and the way the numbers are pointing right now.
It's really, really bad.
All these policies, everything is having a serious effect.
I've seen files.
I feel like it will come back around.
Someone's going to pop up again and we'll have a whole new round of that.
I'm just sort of sensing that in the ether.
But let's not forget that an executive order that can control a state's administering of an election is a real problem, i.e.
like shouldn't be legal at all.
And so we get another opportunity to find out from the Supreme Court whether or not they're just going to be a rubber stand for Trump, because that should not be able to pass.
Now, interestingly enough, remember what they want to do with the Voting Rights Act as they're dismantling it is now giving the states like sort of the more power, but it's really just the states wink, wink that they like, that they know are going to then disenfranchise people of color and other people who they think might vote Democratic candidates more.
But in this term, here they are like, no, no, we're going to take away the state's powers because we feel like it's a real problem.
Not ignoring the fact that he won 2024, you know, as much with mail and ballots as anything else.
Yeah.
And Nick, like we're getting ready to talk about Washington, D.C. here in just a couple of minutes.
This is going to work exactly like their invasion of cities.
Like we're going to see more or less a blank check being delivered to, you know, Republican controlled states to basically rig any election however they want, gerrymander, whatever they want.
And then in the blue states., they're going to claim that there is fraud and that they're cheating at elections and they'll go in there and figure out a way that they can try and rig those things.
I don't know that they'll be successful, but I do know that they're going to try.
And anybody who actually pays attention to this stuff, we've been doing this for going on 10 years, Nick.
Like, actually, I guess it's been 10 years since Trump came down the golden escalator at this point.
We've been doing this shit for 10 years.
And it is very obvious what they are going to do.
They tell you what they're going to do.
And everybody says, ah, they don't really mean it.
Take them, you know, seriously, but not literally.
You name it.
This is, it's exactly where this is going.
And this is why it was so easy to predict is they don't want free and fair elections they're not they're not going to continue winning free and fair elections so they have to figure out how to rig them and if and nick is there any doubt for you that if they could figure out a way to rig an election that they would oh they absolutely would absolutely would and the justification is well the democrats already do it so we have to do it they've made it you have to do it yeah yeah So again,
what they're pointing towards here, again, is the only thing I kind of take, Sallicen, is the fact that they are recognizing that they're in a panic because they realize how bad this is and they're going to have to resort to these things.
If they don't reveal the panic outwardly, it's because they are confident that they will be able to get these things passed and pushed through.
Let me ask you this, though.
Do you are you opposed completely to getting rid of machines for for for elections?
I mean, listen, I could listen to I could listen to basically any argument on this.
But you know what I would need, Nick?
I would need to know that I'm dealing with an honest broker.
I would need to know that the person I'm having a conversation with it isn't trying to do something to get one over on me or doesn't.
get one over on democracy.
So yeah, I mean, you can make an argument for that, but I don't trust them to, you know, be trustworthy brokers on this right i mean something tells me that you know the way you do that on certainly on the big precincts you're not going to get results on hand paid content um you know but i we have the hanging chat issue right like that was the back in the day where you know i think what he's talking about is literally when you punch the hole into those cards they shove them in those old counters and then they can quickly tabulate but um you know part of me doesn't mind the idea of maybe getting
rid of uh any kind of machine that could very well be at some point compromised or possibly be compromised but again um i i look at it more like okay that makes it fair because now someone's hand counting it but i see i think what you're indicating is that oh now you have a real chance for someone to be like, eh, I want to, you know, I'll mix up.
I'll just say this, going back to something we kind of touched on for just a second.
Nick, 2020, Joe Biden won the presidential election.
It wasn't stolen.
It wasn't rigged, right?
What did they talk about?
Oh, they brought in fake ballots.
Oh, there was bamboo in the ballots.
Oh, they were coming in after hours unloading ballots.
Nick, you've been in this for long enough.
You've paid attention to enough stuff.
We talk about right-wing conspiracy theories all the time.
If they're running around saying that people are shipping in ballots in the middle of the night, what's likely to happen if they're in control of elections.
They'll do that.
They'll do that.
Yeah.
They'll do that.
Every conspiracy theory and every accusation is a confession.
That's all it is.
It's just a matter of whether or not they have power to do it.
That's all we need to know about it.
You know what it reminds me of a little bit really briefly is, because we didn't talk about my trip to Japan, and that's okay.
We don't have to talk so much about it.
But I went to a place where you had to take off your shoes because they had, you know, these beautiful floors and whatever.
And you put your shoes on the thing, and then you go and 15 minutes later, I come back.
And what do I find?
And by the way, these are brand new HOKAs.
Are you familiar with HOKAs, Jared?
Sure, sure.
Very nice, very expensive.
By the way, great shoes.
I would have to say that the most people who wear them are Americans and it comes up and it's important because when I come back, what is not there are my brand new beautiful black hokas, but these completely trashed, old ass, whatever, different size black hokas sitting there.
And somebody stole my nice new hokas.
Now, we kind of quickly spread out to try and find the person, right?
But here's the beauty of the situation.
He probably thought he said to himself, well, if they catch me, I'll just say, oh, I didn't realize that these were not my shoes.
And I'm sorry, oh, here you go.
And if they don't find me, whatever, then I don't have to say anything.
I get a brand new pair of shoes.
It's a win-win.
And I feel like that's exactly what.
what the Republicans would do with these voting stuff like that where like they can get they can do it and then if they happen to get caught well it's not like they wasn't going to go to prison or jail they're just going to be like oh you know what I didn't realize that I miscounted those and and whoops you know and it happened to you know lead to the right uh what we wanted the outcome to be.
I love, first of all, that you think that they would even say, oh, we messed up.
Like that they would even admit that they messed up.
Number two, you buried the leaf.
Did you find your shoes?
I what?
Did you find your shoes?
Oh, I didn't buried.
No, never.
We didn't.
The guy got away because we didn't, we didn't stand out quick enough from this area to start looking for the guy.
That's a, that's a, that's a tough story.
I love that we just got a deep cut from.
Oh, yes.
And then trying to find size 10 shoes in Japan, man, was not so easy.
And I'm walking around in these slippers that they had to give me, you know, because I had nothing else to wear.
Slippers.
That was nice of them.
That was really nice of them.
That's true.
You know, some American wasn't a Japanese person.
I'll tell you that right now, based on everything I experienced with that culture, had to be an American who sold my HOKAS.
Man, America.
catching strays.
Yeah.
Speaking of, I don't even know what segue I can use here.
I'm still thinking about you running around trying to find your shoes in Japan.
That's something.
We got to talk about Washington, D.C., the nation's..
capital where federal troops have arrived.
Nick, it appears since there's such a massive crime wave that is taking place in Washington, DC, despite the 30-year low in crime, we're watching a lot of federal troops that are just harassing the locals.
Of course, they're rounding up the unhoused population, which could have predicted that, did predict that.
It has led to anger and confrontations between the locals and the federal troops.
In many cases, these confrontations have led to the troops being run off, which is fantastic.
We've seen one person being arrested for throwing a sandwich at them.
So there's that.
What's your take so far on the siege of the nation's capital?
Man, oh man.
Now, you mentioned, we brought it up in the last one where you were pointing to how low the crime is or the crime is getting less and less.
And I think the real reason why we mentioned that is that, you know, if you're going to do this, what the extreme measures that he wants to do, it's because crime is going getting worse and worse and worse.
And so if you're seeing the other way, there is no need for that.
A, but B. it doesn't mean there isn't a lot of crime like there it is an issue and people and certainly residents talk about how crime could be a problem but if you look at the map of where the crime occurs and you look at the map of where they're putting these fucking i don't know why i keep swearing today but uh these all these military uh their presence the actual military presence of all their trucks and all their stuff they're like around the the capital and around all the monuments where guess what there's hardly any crime there so now i'm trying to wrap my head around this and
I need your help, Jared, is what is this?
I mean, I suppose performative is one of the words we're going to use.
But like, what is this if it's not like if they aren't really going to go into the areas that they're like they're talking about that do have most of the crime?
It's all performative.
It's all security theater.
It is.
This is something, you know, man, what was it?
Was it two years ago, something like that, that New York City started flooding the subways with cops to the point where there were so many cops that they were like congesting the walkways and they were just sitting around on their phones and and everyone's like oh yeah have some have some people with weapons at the turnstiles which is such horse shit It's basically about changing the culture.
It's about getting people used to seeing federal troops occupying cities.
You know, what you said is exactly right.
They're in the high traffic areas of Washington, D.C., not to stop crime.
They're there to make people feel like this is normal.
That, you know, any city that you go in, it's a projectionction of power.
And what's more, they don't want to go out and fight crime.
They have no desire to do that.
Like that, that would take work.
And, you know, again, it's a 30-year low, so there's not a lot of crime for them to find.
It is simply about communicating to the public that they can do this and they will do this.
And it's supposed to change culture and society gradually as it happens.
Sure.
I really like that point because now they can, if they use them against protesters, it's still like, you know, the, the optics sort of established already that they're already there.
Right.
God forbid it would also have any kind of intimidation factor for voting when the elections start happening, because that could also be part of it, which we've seen.
Sure.
You know, now we're seeing photo ops.
All these tourists are like taking pictures with these soldiers because they're just standing around again, doing nothing.
And again, you know, the worst part about this then is that and Trump obviously heard the criticism because there's reporting now that restaurants are seeing plummeting sales, plummeting reservations.
are not making money because people are now even more afraid to be going out out there.
And they're going to see something happen between these troops and protesters, something's going to happen.
So they're not going out to dinner.
Trump is lying about that, pretending like, oh, it's never been busier.
But we're seeing verified in the first four or five days of this that it's killing the local economy.
And with that, like the troops going into these cities and killing a local economy.
You know, Nick, when this started and when I was starting to wrap my head around it, I called it a cultural revolution, much like what happened in China, which was where they were trying to drive people out of one part of the country into another part of the country.
It literally feels like they're trying to drive people out of cities.
It feels like they are trying to strangle these strongholds, which they see as democratic, you know, blue strongholds.
They're trying to conquer them more or less.
And they're trying to make it so unpleasant and so odious that people will leave.
And I really hardly doubt that there's not some white paper floating around.
I'm sure it's not for public consumption.
This whole, you know, we've talked about it before, California versus Texas, you know, California versus Florida, how a lot of this is being arranged by these right-wing think tanks.
I guarantee you there's a white paper floating around that is talking about targeting cities and trying to push their populations out because no, but why would you want to?
Why would you want to go eat while you're watching the security theater and fascist spectacle?
Why would you want to do that?
Like what does that do for anybody?
Doesn't that just parallel the exact way they're doing the border and trying to keep people from coming to the country by making it so hellish on people who are here that like, and I suppose if you in a vacuum, you'd say it works because there are less people trying to come across the border now.
And I would imagine primarily because of the ICE, you know, junta going through the streets and ripping people out of their cars and they're not going to come.
And that would be their Machiavellian justification for all of this.
It's that's, you know, that's completely unbranded.
Yeah, exactly.
And, you know, with this, we also have to talk, Nick, about ICE out in San Bernardino, out in your neck of the woods, like trying to stop a car.
and breaking their windows, this family asks them for identification.
They don't get any.
They start driving away thinking that they're being attacked.
They start opening fire on the car.
Like we, I just want to say it, and I'm not being hyperbolic here.
We are inching up.
on some real tragedies.
We've already seen people die.
We've already seen people killed.
We already know that people have died in custody and in these concentration camps.
But we're talking about inching up on the line of these assholes, these sons of bitches, opening fire and killing some people.
And we're just incredibly lucky it didn't happen in this case.
Yeah, absolutely.
Now here's the thing.
There are, I mean, I'm sure we're all familiar with the instances where if somebody's in a car and begins to drive away amidst certain members of our community, that it is okay for them to open fire.
That would be the police, right?
The police, they always would say they'd feel threatened and their life was in danger and they're allowed to open fire on someone who's driving quickly like that around them, standing near the car.
So you have to wonder like, who are these ICE agents?
Are they trained by the police?
Are they trying to follow the police training as it is?
Because again, I don't think that the training is good and is sound and is robust at all for these guys they're like throwing them out there they're expanding so quickly um and so that's the other reason i'm going to end up having this and i think that they're going to get off like if that if there is i don't even know if there's going to be any ramifications for this right i had yet to hear any ice agents being taken to task or having to deal with any kind of complaints you know and if they ever were in this instance i have a feeling there'll be they'll they'll just revert to what the police officers are bound to which is yeah the guy started driving his car and i was standing next to the car and
i was under you know i felt like my life was threatened i could yeah i i don't know if they'll face any official repercussions but if they do and i mean they're trending towards it if they kill somebody in cold blood out in public like i i Like, I think the ramifications are going to be very large, but I don't think it will be official repercussions.
Oh, well, the worst one I saw, or not the worst, but they're all terrible.
A guy running full speed, and then they tase him from behind running, and he goes straight down.
And just, I mean, his head hit so hard on the pavement, like that's going to be something that could easily have led to paralysis or worse.
And clearly, you don't have training.
Because as far as I know, when you have someone who's sprinting away from you like that, like you can't, like the training can't possibly say, yes, you can tase a guy who then literally goes limp, you know, full speed and just falls straight flat onto the floor.
That can't possibly be what anybody's training withining, which should be if it is.
And by the way, like this is what happens when you have an army of police and an army of law enforcement goons that see themselves as being wholly protectors of something.
They're an occupying force.
is what they are.
And the way that they're treating people is with not just disrespect, but complete dehumanization.
Nick, last thing very quickly.
It came out today and we have to comment on this.
MSNBC, which has split off from the NBC parent company as there's a bunch of corporate maneuvers that are happening, it has officially.
rebranded as MS Now.
Nick, one of the things that we've talked about pretty regularly is the death of traditional corporate media.
I can't think of a more fitting thing than the supposed leftist, you know, crazy liberal network, MSNBC becoming MS Now.
This, this, this, it's not just silly.
It's actually like, I think, important of something kind of larger.
You know that Chappelle, oh, is it Chappelle?
No, it's KM Peel sketch when they're talking about Gremlins 2.
they're doing the have you seen that scene no where it's like uh there it's a pitch meeting for like ideas for gremlins 2 and it gets crazier and crazier and more ridiculous it's hilarious and then at the very end it says this is all true it's exactly how they the movie unfolds i never saw gremlins 2 but let's just go through this because i i love the you know digging you know putting myself in that scene and figuring out how they got to this point because obviously ms was microsoft nbc was nbc they had merged to create this superpower thing whatever and then this is you know the news station they had so that's why msnbc was that way they got you
know branded for good or for bad right muck ray podcast is our name and that's that's our name we're not we can't you know that's our name that's we're not we're not going anywhere with that one yeah and so you know so someone's like well we really should keep um the ms oh i mean which is like okay they'll remember that because they'll they'll connect that with msnbc it's got it it's got to roll off the tongue a little bit yeah everyone knows the ms and we probably should have it stand for something else right so let's you know here's what they came up with because i don't even know if anybody knows well hold on hold on hold on before you tell
people what this stands for okay let's make it very clear how ms now came about you have to have the ms like you said right and then you had an entire room of experts all of whom are making and by the way i'm putting big quotes around experts who are all making well over six figures, right?
And they basically were like, what's, what, what reflects the news?
What's, what's a word that we can put in with that?
And someone goes, now, because you want your news now.
And they're like, that's fantastic.
But this also sounds terrible.
Maybe like MSNBC stood for Microsoft NBC.
What does this stand for, Nick?
Tell the people at home what MSNOW as an acronym stands for.
Yes.
Well, it stands for.
my source for news, opinion, and the world.
Nailed it, folks.
Yeah.
So it really is MSF and OW.
I cannot believe that that's what they decided to come up with.
They had a clean slate.
Tabula Rosa, Jared.
Whatever they wanted to do, they could completely rebrand because, you know, it's not NBC anymore.
What an opportunity.
And this is what they came up with.
By the way, I had heard they were going to keep the name.
That was supposed to happen, too.
They weren't going to change anything, which made more sense to me anyway.
Unless NBC comes in and says, well, no, it's our property.
You cannot take it or whatever.
But still, this is embarrassing from a a marketing standpoint and by the way we've seen this happen before where it could very well lead to the end of the the channel as it is anyway well i it's i i i i i don't want to be too strong here it's fucking stupid it's real bad that's That's why everyone's dunking on it, obviously.
But Nick, I think what it speaks to is a couple of things.
One, corporations like are so uncreative.
Like they can't, they can't help themselves.
The people who are in charge of all this stuff, including content and streaming and movies and TV shows, they have taken such a monopolization over content and basically communications that they can't see how wrong they are about stuff.
Like the closest thing I can think about here is when they took HBO and then turned it into Max.
And everyone's like, why would you take something that everybody knows and do this?
There's no reason to do this.
So that lack of creativity is shown through in everything from this to the movies that we get to the content that we get.
They're notoriously bad at this.
And if you don't believe me, go watch regular TV and watch a commercial.
It's god-awful.
Really, really god-awful.
But it speaks to something larger.
We can talk about the creative design decisions here all day long nick Cable news is a dead man walking.
It's done.
That ship is gone.
And by the way, they deserve it.
for the way that they have covered things.
They deserve it for the way that they have operated.
Everyone says, oh, can you believe the lack of trust in these sources?
Yeah, I can.
They make one wrong decision after another.
They have spent the entirety of their lifespans basically poisoning the rhetoric and discussions within the United States of America.
We've talked about it before.
Like we we get more downloads than CNN's streaming service did before someone axed it.
Right.
What has changed is that nobody wants this anymore.
It used to be something that people could believe that they're getting information for.
They got some catharsis for it.
Nobody wants it.
It might come down that the only entity that survives is Fox News as long as their viewers don't die.
And that's really what we're waiting for at this point.
Otherwise, it's in airports and it's in waiting rooms while you're getting your oil changed.
And that's it.
Well, don't forget, someone like Rachel Maddow makes $25 million a year.
They had to cut her salary, by the way, by a significant portion last November, because I can guarantee you right now that whatever money that she makes with advertising in between the breaks, during the commercial breaks of her show, do not come anywhere near covering the cost of $25 million.
I actually, based on the.
the quality of ads, you can tell those ads are not high.
People aren't paying a ton of money for those slots anymore.
And let's just pretend.
the cost to make that show isn't just now a salary.
It's everyone else's salary.
It's a big bloated situation there where we talked about this before where, oh yeah, like Colbert, right?
They cut Colbert because it doesn't make money, even though in my mind, having worked on films and commercials for a long time, doing a studio show with an audience and like, you know, a three-camera setup is the cheapest version of that kind of thing you can do.
And yet you still have to have tons of writers and tons of people operating on cameras and lights and the soundund, everything like that.
It is an expensive venture.
And so ultimately, yeah, I think it's completely bloated the way they end up doing it.
And people now get their news anyway from people like us, you know, and on TikTok and doing, you know, that kind of thing.
So again, it's all outdated.
I'm not so sure, you know, how CNN still does it.
I suppose Fox News is the one, right?
Because they still have such an old population that continues to watch television.
Yeah.
And I mean, CNN is basically a survivor by default at this point.
They're not helping themselves.
They haven't made any good decisions.
Do not get me wrong because it is absolutely completely unwatchable.
But they're sort of the it's like when we bombed iran it's like well i want to put something on my tv to to see you know breaking news and you're like oh great a parade of retired generals and you know natsac specialists great i love this this is wonderful but at this point they are dying And there's a reason why all of these old traditional media platforms, whether they're newspapers or these cable news platforms, Nick, people are leaving them in droves.
And they're starting either their own media, you know, sort of empire or they're joining up in a conglomerate.
The writing is on the wall.
This thing is done.
And I'll just say, I'm glad it's done.
I don't know how you feel about it.
I think cable news has been by far a net negative in American culture and American politics.
It has been a scourge.
And I think that it's time that it goes the way of the dodo.
No offense to the dodo.
I would rather have the dodo than cable news all day long.
But I think that this is an obvious thing that this old era here is on the ash heap of history and good riddance.
I hope it goes.
I mean, I mean, picture picture this thing.
They have a channel and, you know, in the middle of the day they come on the show, you know, Nicole Wallace comes on for two hours and does her thing, right?
Every day at the same time.
And like, it's like you're expected to be there to watch it.
Like nobody consumes it in that manner anyway.
So there really isn't any need to prop up a channel the way they're doing this as it is.
So if you want to have that news, it's like, you can break it up into the bytes everyone wants to consume anyway, which, by the way, apparently it's very bad for the brain, right?
When you start consuming small chunks of information, you lose the ability to focus on things for much longer than a minute or two.
It's like some scientifically thing.
Lord knows I could prove it if you needed to.
And that's a problem as it is, but that's the reality situation, right?
I mean, I don't know how else you do it.
Who's going to sit and watch an hour of news straight?
I mean, I'll sit and read news for an hour straight.
I'm more than happy with that.
I'll consume podcasts, which, by the way, thanks everybody for hanging out for over 40 minutes.
I mean, that's one of the reasons why people like podcasts because it's actually substantial and it actually gives you some time to digest this and sort of roll around in it.
It doesn't make any sense.
really truly doesn't it is such a we salute you and we cannot wait to watch your wonderful content.
All right, everybody, that's going to do it for the Muckrake podcast.
We will be back with the weekender edition on Friday.
