Charlie Kirk's Memorial Would've Been Better In The Original German
Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman break down how Charlie Kirk’s Glendale “memorial” morphed into a full-blown Authoritarian Christian Nationalist pep rally: Stephen Miller’s “I am the storm” theatrics, Tucker Carlson’s martyr-making dog whistles, and Donald Trump turning grief into a campaign stump behind bulletproof glass. They unpack Trump’s bizarre (and impeachable) direct message to Attorney General Pam Bondi, and discuss reporting that Tom Homan accepted $50,000 in a restaurant to-go bag during an FBI sting because of course he did.
Support the show by signing up to our Patreon and get access to the full Weekender episode each Friday as well as special Live Shows and our community discord: http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
These shows in this era are completely jam-packed.
Just to give a preview, Tom Homan taking $50,000 in bribes from the FBI is our our it's it's in the D block today.
So you're gonna want to hang around for it.
A reminder for everybody who's listening to this, head over to patreon.com slash Mutt Greg Podcast, support the show, become a patron, gain access to the weekend editions on Friday.
Nick, um, before we get into any of this stuff, obviously we have to talk about the memorial service and everything around it.
How are you doing?
Because I am I'm beat down.
Like what is going on right now is literally just beating the shit out of me.
How about you?
Yeah, well, I I was trying to sort of reflect a little bit um on why, why it felt that way all weekend long, didn't even really want to do much.
He's gonna hunkered down.
And uh I'm kind of wondering if like not that we've talked a little bit about this notion of a civil war, and I'll have more ideas about that in a little bit.
But um, you know, I think it's perhaps it is the anger in the Mitriol response uh amidst a right wing call for uh, you know, uh religiosity to come bring us together, like among amongst all of that, there's all these other terrible uh conflicting feelings that are coming out of that that just make it feel dizzying, I suppose is the word.
It does.
And you know, as someone who grew up in an extremist evangelical environment, and on top of that, for years has been talking about if you took MAGA Christian nationalism and added in uh militarism, if you got those three together in a room and they finally coalesced in the way that we've all been fearing they would, it would get really bad.
And so for me, uh first of all, Nick, I uh having like followed this stuff for a long time and having sort of like connected the dots about where all this stuff could go.
This memorial service on Sunday and a lot of the stuff that you and I are going to talk about today, um, it it really was like a waking nightmare for me.
Waking nightmare.
A waking nightmare.
Like walking around living my life, turning this thing on and being like, holy shit, this is what we're dealing with.
For those who uh I I hope the people listening didn't actually watch this thing unless you're the type of political sicko who wants to like really be abreast of this and really really be on top of it.
Charlie Kirk's memorial was held in Glendale, Arizona, where tens of thousands of supporters gathered for fireworks and revelry and music.
And on top of that, some of the most disgusting and dangerous speeches that I have heard from the modern right-wing mainstream Republican uh environment in a long time.
Uh Nick, we're gonna start here, unfortunately, with Stephen Miller.
Um, and I I think if you really want to understand what this thing was like, uh, you have to go straight to the source.
The storm whispers to the warrior that you cannot withstand my strength.
Our lineage and our legacy hails back to Athens, to Rome, to Philadelphia, to Monticello.
Our ancestors built the cities, they produced the art and architecture, they built the industry.
Erica stands on the shoulders of thousands of years of warriors, of women who raised up families, raised up city, raised up industry, raised up civilization, who pulled us out of the caves and the darkness into the light.
Yeah, Nick, uh, I I don't know.
I thought the original version in German and black and white sort of carried a little bit more heft and weight, but watching this second rate goebels wannabe use this opportunity to uh test out his chops, it's uh pretty nauseating.
Nauseating.
Uh, you know, uh the the this notion of the storm, I am the storm is literally paraphrased right from a Goebbels speech, and it's also a QAnon uh you know, uh um trigger as well.
So uh here we do, here we are.
Um, you know, and you can hear it from his voice, and you know, it's weird, is it he has no expression on his face.
If you're watching on YouTube, go ahead, you'll see it uh there, where um he can project and he can he can portray a lot of the anger and disgust that they're looking forward.
I was trying to tap into for the base.
Um, but there's nothing on his face.
And so it's really disarming in a way to see that happen, uh, the way he can he can perform this.
And um, again, you know, the whole thing, this whole Sunday uh, you know, dedication to Kirk's life ended up either being a toxic mix of political rally and like religiosity as well and manipulation of things.
Um, but nothing really about the words that people wanted to pretend they were there about in terms of anything about you know, we had a notion of forgiveness for a second from the from Erica Kirk.
Um, but so much of this ended up being, I mean, they had pyrotechnics going on when they introduced her.
But there's just no sense of what uh what's appropriate, solemnity, you know, um seriousness.
They're none of these things exist there, and it's um it just provides uh I just sad, it's sad to see this and to see what people consider appropriate for a uh for a uh a commemoration.
You know what it made me think about, Nick?
It made me think about, and and I'll get to the Erica Kirk forgiveness thing here in just a second.
It made me think about a lot of the funerals I've been to, and I'm sure you have as well.
Occasionally somebody will make a joke at a funeral, and it sort of breaks the tension a little bit, and maybe even it helps you remember the person who's involved.
But if you go to a funeral and you start talking about the people who did this and how they're going to be visited with vengeance and force and anger, I would be in the audience feeling like, oh, this is a lynch mob.
Yeah, that's what this is.
It's trying to whip people up into a frenzy to go outside and then go down maybe to the jail where the person who did it is being held, and then basically use mob justice in order to kill them and make an example out of them.
And what I realized watching this entire thing, first of all, you're exactly right when it comes to Stephen Miller.
The man, this snivelling worm, doesn't have gravitas.
All he has is pure hatred and a penchant for cribbing and uh, you know, stealing the words of past fascist.
That was one of the most fascist addresses I've ever heard, and thank God he doesn't have any charisma, or else we might be in some real trouble.
But we'll we'll talk about all of the sort of I don't even know what to call them.
Faux pas doesn't even begin to cover it.
Like this was not a memorial service.
This was a revival for Christian nationalism and Magg extremism to come together, get on the same page, and to take Charlie Kirk, turn him into a martyr, and to take advantage of it.
And, you know, if you you look at this, Nick, I I I read the Washington Post at a editorial today, which was like Erica Kirk showed us the right way, and that's the direction we're going to go in.
She got on stage and said that she forgave her husband's killer, which fine, but that is not what happened at this thing.
This was literally a fascist rally.
And and Nick, you I've I've been studying this stuff for over a decade now.
And let me tell you something.
I have not seen a pure distillation of mainstream Republican fascism than I did in this entire thing.
And you're about ready to play a clip here of Tucker Carlson.
And by the way, this was just an all-star game of American fascists.
And listen, yeah, it's a murderers row, literally.
And think about how it's being framed as a moment of forgiveness and healing.
And then, you know, listen to this type of horse shit.
Ultimately, he was a Christian evangelist.
And it actually reminds me of my favorite story ever.
So it's about 2,000 years ago.
Okay, and this is his favorite story, Joe.
I want to point that out.
His favorite story.
Jerusalem, and Jesus shows up and he starts talking about the people in power.
And he starts doing the worst thing that you can do, which is telling the truth about people, and they hate it.
And they just go bonkers.
They hate it and they become obsessed with making him stop.
This guy's got to stop talking.
We've got to shut this guy up.
And I can just sort of picture the scene in a lamp lit room with a bunch of guys sitting around eating hummus, thinking about what do we do about this guy telling the truth about us?
We must make him stop talking.
And there's always One guy with the bright idea, and I can just hear him say, I've got an idea, why don't we just kill him?
That'll shut him up.
That'll fix the problem.
Nick, I I've I've I've seen this clip.
I watched this speech, and uh just watching it again um really got to me.
Um, but before we dive into the deeper ramifications and what was happening here, um, do you as uh as a specialist here at the MuckGrake podcast, do you want do you want to maybe shed a little bit of light on what Tucker Carlson was saying between the lines here?
Yeah, well, let me first ask you how many uh Romans you think were sitting around that time eating hummus instant garden.
Not not a lot, not a lot.
Not a lot, right?
So now we're trying to figure out and if I if I'm not mistaken, and as far as I could tell, it's not my uh Bible, but uh the Romans were the ones that put him up on the cross and decided to kill Jesus.
Is that that's the right thing?
Well, if you pay if you pay attention to the official accounts, they were doing it because the Jews who betrayed Jesus gave him to the Romans.
They didn't even particularly want to do it.
They were almost pushed into doing it, which by the way, shaped the entirety of what happened once Christianity merged with Roman power and then went over to take over the world, is because of the story you just told.
Right.
And so now we gotta try and figure out exactly why he wants to tell this story at a memorial for someone who was assassinated uh politically uh in front of everybody and all these cameras.
And so um, you know, the idea that he would then do this, and then with that snittling laugh, which indicates uh alien life form, something wrong with them.
I don't know what it is.
Um it's just it was it was beyond the pale in my mind.
I I couldn't believe.
And then people were laughing and people were cheering and people were excited to hear this part of the story because again, the the what you said was exactly right.
This was a stirring of hatred.
This is a way, and that was again, that was what was so soul killing all weekend was how quickly they wanted to then um ramp up all manner of like they've been waiting for the four years since Biden had been uh elected president to sort of, you know, this is their sledgehammer moment, the Reichstag fire, all these things in one.
Um we'll have to talk about Kimmel in a second, because I think that he just ended up being uh a bystander in all this, and this happened to be him.
But um, to use this whole trope about the Jews are sort of in control of media, they're the ones who are getting all this stuff and then stirring it up in the violence.
We've already heard about Soros and they want to go after him and declare a lot of these groups uh illegal.
Um it just made it it was like the chef's kiss of uh of uh white nationalist Christian, you know, uh authoritarianism.
So I want to get into what's happening with Tucker and why he did this particular thing.
But before we do, before we get into the historical and the current socio-political thing that's happening here, Nick, what you just brought up in terms of the tone of this, I think is actually really important.
And I think it's something that like this podcast allows us to really drill down on.
We talked about after Kirk's assassination, how the right wing was maneuvering and fighting with one and over uh one another over how to capitalize off of this thing.
And by the way, for the record, Nick, you've been doing this with me for years.
Am I uh do am I like really really happy giving like mainstream neoliberals like props at all?
Do I ever give them like any sort of like really good daps?
Do you ever I mean some maybe sometimes I don't know?
We'll occasionally do something, right?
You know what I'll give them credit for?
If one of their colleagues or one of their friends was murdered, if they held an event to commemorate them, they wouldn't show up and try and capitalize on it, at least not so openly, right?
They would come out with a solemn tone tone.
They would give a speech that would be more about the person and more about trying to heal or whatever.
This thing revealed the animating energy behind the right, which is that you have a bunch of very, very selfish, capitalistic, narcissistic motherfuckers who cannot help themselves.
I mean, like that tone from Tucker, like that is one of the best examples, and what we'll talk about with Trump in a minute of them not actually caring about who they're there to quote unquote honor.
They're all there to do something, laughing about their friend getting killed or behaving like this because he got killed.
It reveals something about them that there's something gone.
There's there's a humanity that's missing.
And the reason that Tucker gave this, I I guess you would call it a speech, is because Tucker is currently making a shit ton of money by appealing to neo-Nazi groiper types.
And basically, he is the person who is making money off subscribers and and products and all this stuff by talking about the Jews in Israel without totally going over the Niagara Falls like a Nick Fuentes.
He'll hint hint, nudge nudge.
But what you just watched there was an attempt to say very, very quietly, right?
Very very cryptically to say that Charlie Kirk was killed by a Jewish conspiracy.
And that has been constant in the far anti-Semitic right.
And what Tucker just did right there was to try and mainstream that and try and dog whistle as many people as humanly possible.
Well, let me ask you this, Jared.
I don't know if you look at the rundown of the entire uh memorial.
Uh, anybody else from Charlie Kirk's family speak?
Uh no, just Erica Kirk.
Yeah.
So, you know, it was like, why was RFK Jr. speaking?
Like it was so obvious that they were going to just manipulate this into a political rally uh and vent on vengeance than anything else that was supposed to commemorate this person's life, and what they are trying to now shape the life of because uh it is it is scary what they tried to now make him become.
They're turning him into their version of Martin Luther King.
Yep.
I remember I I referenced him a coup a couple episodes ago, and I only in the sense of like popularity and influence, because with the social media, he might even have more influence than Martin Luther King did then.
But I I don't think I necessarily recognize at that moment that they were going to now turn him into their generation's version of that.
Uh this is their generation's JFK.
Like, that's what's going on here.
Um, but it never in a more cynical way, where it's so obvious what they're trying to do with this, um, and the fact that they wouldn't even have anybody that really knew him per se.
I I even want to bring this up.
Van Jones um came on uh came on CNN to discuss a message that Kurt Kirk had just sent to him before right before he got uh, or they found out he they sent it to him before he was murdered, uh before uh Kirk was murdered.
And it was a really reconciliatory tone.
He really wanted to connect.
And apparently they know they had been in odds with each other for a long time.
Um, so I'm gonna choose to believe that Kirk was probably sincere in the really nice things he was saying about to Van Jones, which then indicates clearly to me that a lot of this is just for the money.
It's just a grift.
What he was saying and the inflammatory things, and we've already covered a lot of it, uh it was just for the money.
That's all that's all it was for.
And you know, and I'm actually giving him credit now to think that maybe deep down he had some sort of uh moral code and religiosity that would help him be a better person, but what but makes it all the more worse when he's willing to go out in public and lead people and influence people with all the other shit he was saying.
I think you're giving him too much credit.
Okay, I think it I think it boils down to something.
And and you'll notice there were some articles that came out after Kirk was killed.
One liberal, mainstream liberal after another, was coming out of the woodwork to be like, this was the Charlie Kirk that I met at this event.
We had an off-the-record conversation.
Here are the texts I got from him.
It's much more about the commentariat class.
These group of people who all sort of know each other and they treat each other in this shallow transactional way.
And here's like, did Kirk believe the extreme things that he said?
I absolutely believe that he did he did.
He dedicated his entire life to it.
But let me tell you something.
If Charlie Kirk, like let's say that Van Jones would have talked to CNN and gotten Charlie Kirk a job on CNN as one of the personalities or one of the regular guests, Charlie Kirk still would have peddled the same horse shit, the same racist, misogynistic, nationalist horse shit that he did.
But you know what he would have done?
He would have moderated it a little bit in order to tune it to what CNN wants or how you know what it's looking for for its audience.
The entire point is that they do have sincerely held beliefs.
It just so happens that all of them, including Donald Trump, including Tucker Carlson, who has worked for every network, by the way.
He's worked for every network, which I think like gives him the privilege of getting a free sub on his next visit.
Like basically at this point, it it is a group of people that are both serious about what they're doing, but they're also grifters in the way that they're trying to self-service themselves.
Yeah, okay.
Fair enough.
Fair enough.
And by the way, the other thing that was going on with uh Charlie Kirk is that they're turning him into this martyr that was like the man of steel that his bones literally stopped.
Oh, that's an incredible new thing for sure.
And Jared, I we don't have to belabor it too much.
I went on a deep dive uh on the forensics.
I really did, because a lot of I've watched more interviews with uh Marine uh snipers and uh Navy SEALs than I've cared to admit.
Um they're trying to say, and a member of the Turning Point USA higher up had said he got permission from the doctor and the family to violate HIPAA to discuss the details.
Said if they found the bullet in his body and it had I supposedly uh hit off of his spine and then stopped.
And had you seen the pictures with 30 odd six bullet, and if you haven't by now, it is bigger than my hand.
It's like huge, it's long and it's really thick.
These bullets do not stop when they get hit when they when bones get in the way.
And that's what they're trying to say now.
Is that that's what it did because otherwise some more people would have gotten killed when it went through him and then through the tent behind him and you know, whatever.
Do you know what they're trying to do there?
Just to give it a little bit of context.
Sure.
Well, go ahead.
So here's a weird thing that happens in the evangelical world is that they like to borrow things from Catholicism.
So, like Protestantism and Catholicism have always been, you know, uh at loggerheads.
They've always fought, millions have died because of it.
We don't need to get in all of that.
They love to borrow things from it.
So in this case, Charlie Kirk, Nick, he performed a miracle.
And if you are going to be canonized as a saint in the Catholic Church, you have to perform miracles.
So one of the things that they're doing is this weird synergy between Protestant evangelicalism and Catholicism.
They are trying to say, without realizing that they're saying it, that Charlie Kirk was a saint.
And if evangelicalism or Christian nationalism had saints, they would already be pushing for him to be sainted at this point.
And this brings up another interesting point because the Pope slides into this whole thing.
I don't know if you saw this reporting.
But uh there was a uh the cardinal in New York uh had gone on and on about how he uh Charlie Kirk is the next Saint Paul.
I don't want to put you in the spot.
I don't know who St. Paul, why is he a saint?
Do you know?
Uh I mean, he was like one of the founding members of the church and used, you know, used the gospel to spread.
Okay.
So he's Paul Pauly two times.
Whatever thing.
All right, anyway, Paul.
Say Paul, so I'm I'm gonna go to hell for that one.
But um, so St. Paul, uh, he he compared them directly to that.
The new the new St. Paul, and the Pope is now going to replace that cardinal.
Now, I think that this guy in New York had some other issues that were pretty uh uh let's say um not necessarily uh uh uh open armed to a lot of people in the I I I would I would just say that basically anybody at this point who has reached that level, they have done some unsavory things.
Yeah, and it's at certain ages as well.
You're gonna find a lot, especially if you're around like in the 80s and 70s.
So anyway, the point being that the Pope stepped in and said, okay, we're not gonna tolerate that.
I think maybe he recognized a little bit of what Charlie Kirk stood for because whether or not he said some nice things or reference the Bible, the naked politicization of these things was really apparent no matter what you want to say, right?
And he would be in these uh church uh you know uh settings encouraging people to vote, encouraging people to reject anything on the Democratic side.
Like, you know, that's not really an appropriate thing to be doing in those situations, and at least the Pope recognized that.
Well, let me let me say one thing, and and something you just said made me realize uh you know it's weird how things click into place as we're getting ready to also hear how Donald Trump honored Church I'm I'm putting heavy, heavy quotes around honored Kirk.
You know what I just realized in watching this, and it didn't occur to me until right now.
If it would have been someone besides Charlie Kirk, Charlie Kirk would have been on stage doing the exact same thing.
Okay.
Yeah.
He would have he would have used someone's murder to go ahead and push his agenda too.
So I, you know, I I I guess in a way that sort of squares the circle.
But here's the president of the United States of America, also, by the way, Nick, behind uh bulletproof glass, which is very fun.
Uh but yeah, uh we'll we'll listen to a brief little clip from this, but then uh I'll give you a basic summary of what I saw from the president.
In that private moment on his dying day, we find everything we need to know about who Charlie Kirk truly was.
He was a missionary with a noble spirit and a great, great purpose.
He did not hate his opponents.
He wanted the best for them.
That's where I disagreed with Charlie.
I hate my opponent.
And I don't want the best for them.
I'm Sorry.
I am sorry, Erica.
But now Eric can talk to me and the whole group, and maybe they can convince me that that's not right, but I can't stand my opponent.
Yeah, he's funny.
He's a funny guy, Nick.
Um, you know what?
The Democrats, you know, the liberals with progressives, whatever you want to call the uh that people those people, us, whoever, you know, that we're fighting for everybody, right?
We want sort of equality, we want people to uh be represented.
The other side, these guys want to win.
That's it.
Somebody has to lose, right?
That's that's their whole MO.
We're I and that's probably why it's so successful at this point.
And it's it's putting it really puts uh people who are on the other side a little bit of a disadvantage, is because they're you know, supposedly we would be fighting for him to be able to say that and say whatever Kirk said, and all those things.
They're allowed to say it, that's it's their right, whatever.
Um, and they are the opposite.
They they want to now take whatever we're trying to do and sort of turn it against us and then and then and defeat it.
And uh, I know I don't know.
That's an interesting proposition when you're trying to figure out okay, how do we get out of this?
Yeah, I mean, it it really lays out the groundwork for exactly what you need from you know, some sort of an opposition.
And you know, Trump's speech, I guess you would call it.
Um, Nick, I've watched almost everything that he's ever said in public.
This was a stump speech, is what it was.
He like, I guess, talked a little bit about Charlie Kirk.
He lied about him talking to him.
Would it shock you to hear him say that the last time he talked to Kirk, Kirk said, sir.
Sir, yeah, sir.
Uh, and then you add on to that that he also used Kirk's death to go ahead and frame his policies, saying that Kirk would want him to solve the problem in Chicago.
At one point, he even said, you know, tomorrow we're gonna hold a very special like historic press conference talking about, you know, we figured out where autism comes from, and we know Charlie cared about this, and I'm gonna be so sad not to see him in the front row.
That's where he would have been, even though he wouldn't have been at this thing.
And what happened is that Trump kept using that.
And then at some point, brought Erica Kirk, the widow, out on the stage, posed with her, you know, supposedly consoling her, took her off.
Well, at one point, I think they played God Bless America or uh God bless the USA or whatever.
He sang along with it, he pantomime.
He was having a great time.
He then ushered her off the stage and then posed and vamped for the crowd a little bit.
This was a shocking thing to see from the president of the United States of America.
And I know that we shouldn't be surprised, but to see the lows that this man is capable of, the new lows that he's capable of, it I somehow or another, it still shocks the system every time you see it.
Oh, I I know.
And and and the fact that he couldn't even help himself, because I know they wanted to sort of probably surprise us or you know, call this uh a press conference to talk about the vaccines and autism, which nothing screams, this is Tylenol.
Right.
Well, this nothing screams, this is a vital national importance than scheduling something in one of these kind of press conferences at 4 p.m.
Eastern.
Um, but yes, they're gonna try and say that Tylenol is a cause.
Now you have to understand the only thing that pregnant ladies can take if they have a fever is Tylenol and safely.
And if they have a high fever while they're pregnant, it's really bad uh for the fetus.
It's like the thing that you couldn't, you don't want to risk having.
So now you're gonna end up having, I have no doubt pregnant women who are not gonna take Tylenol, they're having fever issues during their pregnancy, and that's gonna cause all manner of complications for a drug that's been around for for uh a hundred years, over a hundred years.
Uh, they're also trying to say that's there's a a new a uh a drug that is uh in parallel to chemotherapy that they use that's gonna cure autism.
Yep.
Um and I I just have to say that they're they're whether or not it's it seems a little anecdotal whether you can find examples of this actually working or not in terms of for uh for uh something that it's that's help uh that helps cancer.
I I don't know if that's really the case, but they're gonna try and definitely probably say that as well.
So um it really is it's troubling having been around a lot of this uh and knowing what the what vaccines do.
Um it's it's a it's uh it's gonna cause as many problems as anything that Trump will do to the uh constitution.
It's incredible.
Also, before I dive any deeper into this as an autist, I want to say fuck these people.
The idea that this is the most pressing thing possible, that you know, obviously autistic people do not live healthy lives.
Meanwhile, autistic people are one of the things that keep this country going and keep it growing.
Uh yeah, we we we don't know.
The Tylenol thing is so bad shit insane.
This drug that hasn't been proven to do anything, and by the way, you can't really study this stuff very closely.
You can't experiment on pregnant women.
It It happens to be unethical.
But they don't care.
They just want an announcement that they'll be able to, you know, promise.
And by the way, they use Charlie Kirk's dead body in order to promote it.
Like it's, it's, it's insane to watch this stuff take place.
And on the subject of Trump, by the way, Nick, uh, a couple of days ago over on Truth Social, everyone's favorite uh social media site, he posted out of nowhere in a really bizarre message, and we'll talk about the background of this, Pam, which is Pam Bondy.
Pam, I have reviewed over 30 statements and posts saying that essentially the same old story as last time, all talk, no action.
Nothing is being done.
What about Comey, Adam Shifty Schiff, Letitia?
They're all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done.
Then we almost put in a Democrat-supported U.S. attorney in Virginia with a really bad Republican past, awoke Rhino, who's never going to do his job.
That's why two of the worst dim senators pushed him so hard.
He even lied to the media and said he quit and that we had no case.
No, I fired him, and there is a great case.
And many lawyers and legal pundits say so.
Lindsay Halligan is a really good lawyer and likes you a lot.
We can't delay any longer.
It's killing our reputation and credibility.
They impeached me twice and indicted me five times over nothing.
Justice must be served now.
President DJT.
Um, Nick, an interesting message from the president of the United States of America talking to his attorney general who was supposed to be independent from the president.
Um, what what is your take from this?
Because it's this is uh this is so wild and it's it's barely even being covered.
Well, you know, the the there was a report that the DOJ was caught completely off guard by any of this, you know, uh directions that he's giving to Pam Bondi.
Uh you forgot the colon, by the way, it's Pam Colon.
Pam Colon.
Which isn't more than so I am of the mind, I think as most people are, that he meant to send her this direct message, not a public thing to do.
Um, and and God, you know, uh if they're gonna try now to bring any cases against these people, they will simply trot out this uh this memo or this note ever to her and prove that it was uh a completely political uh you know attempt to try and you know her harm his enemies and rooted in nothing, uh, where we already found out that the Virginia Attorney General had nothing to charge Letita James with when they looked into it.
And that's why he I he stepped down.
He beat he beat Trump to it, right?
Um, and the fact that Trump couldn't even handle that much is just indicative of how uh thin skinned that this guy is and and not suitable for the job.
So uh it is um they discontinued.
Now, again, the the question here is is that I don't even know if he necessarily wanted the case.
I think he just likes when people announce investigations on people.
Yeah, that's that's right.
And and Nick, uh, this is one of those stories.
It is so bad shit insane that the president of the United States of America is directing his attorney general to prosecute his his political enemies.
That's insane.
That's that's that's that's literally like that's Nixonian level.
Goodbye, you're done.
Good luck on the helicopter, enjoy your life, sell a few books, try not to go to prison level stuff.
Okay.
So I don't want to take away from that, because that's the large thing here.
But let's also look at something else.
Nick, okay, so let's say this was supposed to be a direct message.
Number one, it's crazy as hell that the president of the United States of America is sending a message in public that he was trying to DM.
That's that's wild.
Number two, okay, aren't they supposed to follow official channels for their communication?
So here you basically have another case of another member of the Trump administration skirting around public records.
Next thing, what the hell is this rhetoric if this is actually a private message from the president?
Like this is so you're telling me that the way that Trump posts on social media is the way that he sends directives to his subordinates?
Really?
So the attorney general of the United States of America gets a message from the president of the United States of America.
It's written like a crazy ass social media post that involves nicknames of his political enemies.
And by the way, at one point, even says this person should have this job.
They like you, trying to somehow or another influence this.
Like, this is one of those peaks behind the curtains that if this Was actually supposed to be a direct message.
That's not only illegal, that's not only unethical, that is telling about what is happening in the halls of power right now.
Like reading this, it makes me feel like I have lost my mind.
Oh, I know.
And then it's just more projection because the only reason why he wants to find some sort of like fraud, mortgage fraud or filing payment, you know, filing issues is because that's what they got him on with Letita James's uh uh case in New York, right?
And uh in the other case, you know, he when he had uh 34 counts of felony counts, it was like he had a uh a robust defense.
He went through a whole trial of jury with his peers, like you know, that was all he had a chance to defend himself, and they simply couldn't, and they didn't because there wasn't anything to defend he was guilty of those things.
So uh the idea now, because we also have more news on this is as part of this projection, which they might not even realize was that we have Tom Holman basically doing exactly what he's trying to accuse everybody else of.
He wants Lisa Cook, who's the on the board of the Fed to be fired because she has she's above reproach in that job.
You can't have any whiff of anything going on with uh any kind of paperwork you might be throwing out about stuff.
Well, I would think that Tom Holman is under at least them the same amount of standards of behavior that they she would be.
Um, and here we have uh, you know, the reporting.
I believe they're reporting.
I choose to believe they're porting because again, you you risk being sued into oblivion if you lie about this stuff, right?
As we're seeing what we I'm not sure we even put a button on Jimmy Kimmel stuff, but um here's here's a guy, Tom Holman, who literally took 50,000 in a Kaba bag.
Do you have Kava where you are?
Listen, I love Kava.
Oh I discovered Kava like about a year ago.
I'm never looking back.
Yeah, the Mediterranean diet, Jared.
It's fantastic.
Kava's, I listen, I give it, I give it a thumbs up.
So I have no problem that we're then getting some free advertising on this whole thing.
But oh, as soon as I heard that Tom Holman took $50,000 from the FBI in a sting operation, which the entire story, by the way, is the DOJ covered it up and got rid of it.
The Border Tsar of America, like had this taken away.
But then when I read further and heard it was in a kava bag, I'm just laying my cards on the table.
I got hungry.
And I'm having Kava sometime in the next week.
I'm just yeah, for sure.
I don't almost went today.
Um, but you know, there if there ever was an admission of guilt, it's receiving $50,000 in a bag uh from a restaurant.
And if I, you know, if we were going to create a uh a screenplay, Jared, and we're gonna we're creating a character like a politician who's dirty and he's corrupt and whatever.
Tom Holman, that's the guy.
He would we would have to cast him literally as himself, and we'd give it, you know, Tom Homan as himself on the screen in the in the TV version of this because that he's around a central casting for like the the guy who's gonna take, and by the way, kind of cheap.
50 grand.
I hope it was a it was the opening salvo that kind of wet his beak a little bit, uh so to say.
So um, you know, because they were talking about a million dollars.
Now, is there an issue with the fact that he wasn't a public official at that moment?
This is what the FBI felt, and they thought that maybe let's wait and see, and then we'll get him completely red-handed.
Um, and will the Trump administration simply um state uh unequivocally that he's not in charge of giving out contracts, um, which seems kind of hard to believe because he's the head of uh his department.
But um that's what they're gonna say.
And guess what?
I I think that's what's where we're gonna end up.
So the background on this for people who haven't read up on it is that before the second Trump administration took office, Homan had taken this $50,000 from the FBI in a sting operation, which they were posing as uh business owners and business executives who were trying to attempt to get Holman to help get contracts with the new Trump administration.
And first of all, you took the words out of my mouth $50,000 for a czar next to the president who is basically overseeing his secret police.
Let's get a fundraiser together.
Yeah, right.
Let's do a GoFundMe.
I think the Monk Rake universe could could go ahead and bribe this guy.
Yeah, I don't think that I don't even think that'd be that much of a pro $50,000.
I mean, let's say an Austin Austin Powers movie, like the bad guy wants it.
That's incredible.
That is, and and we keep seeing this, by the way, Nick.
I mean, you know, when you actually look at it, these people are so openly corrupt and they're so corruptible that they are getting got on the cheap.
And here's what I would ask you, Nick.
If the FBI caught this guy in a sting, then tell me if I'm wrong here.
Tell me if my logic is completely out of left field.
Then that means that the FBI had a reason to believe that Tom Holman was open to being bribed, correct?
Correct.
Do you think that if you took a bribe for the first time and it was a bribe by the undercover FBI, that that was the first bribe that you've ever taken?
I I I don't I don't think so.
Wouldn't it help to find out if the border czar who is in charge of now the world's like fifth largest army, more or less?
A secret police that by the way has one tie after another to the private prison complex and tech security firms.
Wouldn't it be something if the Department of Justice actually figured out who this guy has been involved with, who he might have taken money with, how those contracts would have gotten.
I I will say, and and Nick again, this is like in the D block of this show.
Yeah.
This is literally it feels like it feels like a lost Indiana Jones movie where Indiana Jones is just moving some sand around and he finds the tip of a pyramid.
You know what I mean?
And then there's uh then there's a flash forward, and you suddenly find the biggest pyramid with God knows what inside of it.
This could have the potential to be just something that like sort of fizzles out and nobody talks about.
It could be one of the biggest public corruption scandals that we've ever heard of.
And it just got the the DOJ just said, uh no, we're done.
He's our guy.
And and for all of it, the Trump organization, Trump administration and MAGA is a giant organized crime family.
That's how they operate, that's what they do.
This is the initiation into it.
You have to be corrupted and you have to be corruptible.
And so, in a way, he passed the test.
And meanwhile, what is happening with our money?
What's happening with our country?
It could be one of the largest scandals that might never even be uncovered.
Uh, I hear you.
I mean how many Kava bags are out there.
I I I'm dying to know.
Not enough Kava bags, in my opinion.
And and he knew enough, he's experienced enough to know that you got to put it in the bag, you know, and then under the table, you gotta hand it to me, and I gotta look around.
I mean, I don't know what the hell that I can't wait to see that hopefully there's video, not just audio.
Um, but that'll come out.
I have no doubt at some point.
I mean, it seems like there's still just enough uh FBI people um who want to treat the country like uh a doc democracy and and maybe a safeguard, be a backstop.
Just enough of those that maybe there's still some people out there who are gonna be like sort of deep throat uh reporters and um and give them some of this stuff because uh when that ends and they were able to root out all that, then we'll never know anything about any of this.
Well, we'll we we could very well never know the full extent of the corruption here.
Yeah, that is a very distinct possibility.
I I sometimes I think about that, Nick.
I think about you know, you go back into the robber baron era, we'll we'll never know the full extent of that.
I mean, not only was it you know, people taking bribes, not only was it these, you know, giant trust, you know, breaking one law after another, but on top of that, like the Supreme Court, the the things they put into place that were completely corrupted, including the idea that corporations are people which laid the foundation later on for Citizens United.
Like we know about that stuff, but the amount that we don't know from that period about what exactly took place, this Trump era, the corruption that is right underneath all of the fascism, Christian nationalism, all of the neo-Naziism that we're talking about.
There, this is like sitting on an ocean of corruption.
I mean, there is I I don't know that there's ever been a parallel to this before.
But here's the thing it opens uh the right up to be able to accuse the FBI of deep state uh chicanery, right?
And here's another example where they're just trying to get us, and it's like, you know, Trump spent the entire uh first uh uh uh administration having to deal with Russia and all this different stuff.
They were trying to try to pin it on him, and here they go.
Now they're trying to do it all over again, and they've already convinced so many people of that that it's easy to sort of say, uh, we can dismiss this.
And it it kind of reminds me of like what's going on with Jimmy Kimmel.
I don't know exactly how much you dove into it from the last episode and I wasn't here, but um, you know, the the thing that was most shocking to me about that was that he didn't even say what they're saying he said, you know, can't right?
Kimball didn't even say that uh the shooter was a MAGA person.
All he said was that the MAGA spent the weekend trying to figure out how to disassociate themselves from him.
That was it.
That's not that inflammatory.
And then they uh by the way, Chevsky's brilliant, brilliant joke about the fourth stage of grief uh being demolition because he goes after they asked Trump about how he felt about Kirk dying, his friend dying, he just went into a whole thing about this new uh uh ballroom they're building, which is getting bigger.
So um, you know, this is really uh one of those things where I feel bad for Kimmel in the sense that it was it just happened to be him that week they were able to kind of glom onto one thing from one of these guys, didn't matter who it was.
Um, and uh bad timing that you know ABC is in the midst of, well, the affiliates are in the midst of trying to do a merger uh at the same time.
So um all of this stuff is um is is truly frightening as it's moving toward a a the anger that they're tapping into is just manipulated in a way that um it's not even reflecting reality.
No, it's not.
I mean, they're having they're having like the biggest manic breakdown that I've ever seen.
And this is something unfortunately we're gonna cover going forward because it's going to affect all of our politics and all of our lives.
All right, everybody, that's gonna do it for this episode of the Mutt Greek Podcast.
We will be back with the weekender on Friday.
Uh, if you need us before then, and oh, by the way, head over to patreon.com slash Mutt Craig Podcast.
Support the show.
Gain the weekender.
You listen to the preview every week.
We need your support, especially as we're under attack and everybody's under attack.
All right, if you need us before then, you can find us on Blue Sky.
