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Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman dig into a grim week of authoritarian chest-thumping and reality-warping. They start with the Dallas ICE detention-center shooting—three immigrants shot, one killed—and the head-spinning “evidence” rollout amplified by Kash Patel. From there it’s J.D. Vance’s sanctimony about “violent rhetoric,” the broader strategy of blaming critics while expanding state power, and why this phase feels less like politics and more like a permission structure for repression.
They break down the reported moves to indict James Comey, the DOJ’s Soros-as-crime-boss fishing expedition, and open talk of targeting Letitia James—not “accountability,” just payback. Then: Trump’s UN ramble (renewables are a “joke,” Christianity “most persecuted,” escalator conspiracies) and his whiplash turn on Ukraine/Russia, plus NATO stress tests, Pete Hegseth’s generals’ confab, and why World War III talk is suddenly louder.
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Hey everybody, welcome to the weekend or edition of Craig Podcast from Jerry D8 Sexton.
Nick, uh, we're here, we're doing the weekender.
I I'm gonna I'm gonna be laid back in this one.
I assume nothing is going on that is problematic.
I'm ready for like a real chill episode with my buddy.
Oh, well, that's right.
No, and you know, in case anyone's wondering and hasn't heard our show before, I'm Nick Houselman, the co-host of the Muckray Podcast as well.
So, Jared, uh, I'm I did not use your full name, my apologies.
I I was trying to be cash.
I was trying to be casual.
But you know, you never know if there's people who haven't heard the show yet.
I well, maybe maybe there are Nick Halselman, uh, my partner in crime, my compatriot, my co-conspirator.
And if they want to hear the full version of this, where should they go?
If they want to hear the full version of this, then go to Patreon.com/slash Muttcrake Podcast, become a patron, listen to the entire show, gain access to special shows, our Discord, all of that good stuff.
Also, Nick, just for the record, if we end up in a gulag, I hope we get to hang out.
I I said before in our in our special, you know, um Discord chat.
Like, I'm probably gonna go to hell for the St. Peter thing I said last week, and you know, I hope that you're with me there, it'll make it a little bit better.
Well, we can we can we can dream and hope.
Well, everybody, speaking of hell, uh, we've had another incident since we uh recorded on Wednesday.
There was a shooting at an ICE detention center in Dallas.
Uh three immigrants were shot, one was killed.
And Nick, in the wake of that shooting, um, which all evidence, and I'll I'll talk more about the the suspect who ended up uh killing himself.
Um, what we have seen is that the administration has been uh leaking for themselves.
Um, I I guess you would call that head of the FBI, Cash Patel, uh, tweeted out a picture of bullets with anti-ICE, literally anti-ICE written on one of the shell casings in what appeared to be ballpoint pen.
Um, there have been supposed materials that have shown up that read like a confession letter that also read like maybe they were written up by um, you know, somebody at the FBI who is uh at a desk.
Um, this whole thing, first of all, I do not want to undermine the tragedy of it that three people were shot, including one killed immigrants who were being held in a concentration camp.
Uh yeah, this this whole thing, it stinks to high heaven.
It does.
It's pretty much on brand.
Um, and we have to be very worried because you know, we talk about like Charlie Kirk assassination and this kind of thing.
Uh, just giving them the pretext to nebulously go after whoever they want to go after.
And and this is no this general sense of like liberals, the left, democrats, you know, Democrats as a party, the Democratic Party is now being, you know, under the focus of investigations and and probably gonna be targeted as well.
And I said this in the last episode, I'm not sure I didn't even as clearly as I wanted to, but you know, the Democrats and Progressives and Liberals tend to want to have uh equity and make it equitable for everybody and everybody can have a uh a voice.
And the Republicans now just want to win.
They want to defeat uh the crush, crush it, get rid of it, have it not be around anymore.
Uh, and the only concerning thing, or one of the concerning things is that uh there are people who seem to be on board with this.
And uh that's there certainly are, and there are people who are going to get hurt and people who are going to be killed, and I think there's a larger political thing to talk about here.
Um, I I want to start again because I think it's important.
Three people were shot, one was killed.
They were all immigrants who have been disappeared in this country and herded into a concentration camp.
And watching them die, and and by the way, we haven't even talked about the fact that there's like 1200 immigrants that were disappeared down into Florida.
No one knows, no one has any idea where they are.
No one has any answer for where they are.
This is what have happens in a culture that dehumanizes people and brutalizes people.
That should not be lost in all this.
This is a tragedy.
When it comes to the larger political ramifications, and and Nick is about to play a clip from our esteemed vice president of the United States of America, JD Vance.
What you're getting ready to hear was the vice president of the United States of America talking about this incident before any real information had come out besides uh some some rumors and conjecture.
And I think that is the most disgusting thing.
The very people who keep us safe ought to be honored and protected and praised by Democrats and Republicans alike.
It is time to stop the rhetorical assault on law enforcement.
Because here's what happens.
Because here's what happens when Democrats, like Gavin Newsom did say that these people are part of an authoritarian government.
When the left wing media lies about what they're doing, when they lie about who they're arresting, when they lie about the actual job of law enforcement, what they're doing is encouraging crazy people to go and commit violence.
You don't have to agree with my immigration policies.
You don't have to agree with Donald Trump's immigration policies.
But if your political rhetoric encourages violence against our law enforcement, you can go straight to hell and you have no place in the political conversation of the United States of America.
Well, it's good to know that he wants to uh get rid of this violent rhetoric.
That's that's great.
First of all, he can go fuck himself.
Uh second of all, this is also very rich coming from the guy who vilified immigrants uh that that were his constituents and put them in danger, like repeatedly in order to win political points and create some sort of a maelstrom.
It's also incredible to hear Republicans, and and quite frankly, it's gaslighting, it's gaslighting and it is blaming people who have been abused for their abuse.
This whole game that they have played, and we haven't even gotten into the quote unquote evidence of the thing yet.
But this whole sort of idea that somehow or another, ICE, which is a secret police force, which is disappearing people, brutalizing people, have just killed someone and have put people in a place where uh people have died, people have been tortured, people have been starved.
This idea that calling them what they are somehow or another puts them in danger and creates a violent environment.
I I again, the only thing I can say to him is go fuck yourself.
Right, right.
I mean, especially because I I would argue that the the dawn of this era of rhetoric that he's criticizing or going after was invented by Trump.
He was the guy that broke a lot of the norms that you're like, you're not supposed to talk about law enforcement this way.
You're not supposed to talk about other, you know, fellow uh, you know, political politicians this way.
And certainly we don't need to play that greatest hits of Trump just going off and on an every different version of the Democratic Party, calling them fascists, calling them all all manner of violent rhetoric as well.
Um, and it's just suppression, is what it is.
And you're right, like the idea that you can't call out the bad behavior uh is where we're at.
A lot of this whole thing is uh surrounding this.
The the Republicans and the and conservatives just simply want to be able to wallow in their bad behavior without any kind of repercussion for that.
And that's sort of you know, uh the where we're where we're getting to a trouble here.
Yeah, and I mean, that has been the animating influence of American culture for a while now, which are which is that the people with power who are hurting others are now demanding that the way that they're hurting people not be called out.
I mean, what have we seen?
It's everything from the Supreme Court taking away people's rights and talking about how rhetoric, you know, undermining their legitimacy is awful and dangerous.
We've seen it from rich people who just want to be worshipped, they don't want any sort of criticism that comes along with their power and their wealth.
And by the way, Nick, like this this phenomenon, it isn't really new.
I mean, go back to the Oklahoma City bombing in the 1990s, it was fomented by a Republican party in the NRA, which was calling Bill Clinton of all people, you know, like a dictator with an army of jackbooted fascist thugs.
And eventually, like people are like, yeah, okay, we're gonna do war with them.
And now you look at this, and I I really think because I I Nick, one of the one of the through themes of this, and I think any conversation we can have at this moment is that we've sort of entered a new chapter.
It's got elements from the past chapters, right?
It's it's got all of this like victim blaming, it's got the lies, but it's taking it up a notch now because the abuse and the authoritarian overreach is taking it up a notch.
And so we are going to see situations where they are hurting people, disappearing people, even killing people, trampling on rights, and the response is going to be these people over here are out of control because they're criticizing, and as a result, the beatings will continue until morale improves.
Exactly.
I here's my interesting thing I want to get your take on is there's an intentional misunderstanding of a lot of the things they say.
And it's Kimmel is a good example of that, where he has not said anything close to what they're accusing him of saying.
Um, and I would suspect that people who are reasonably intelligent know what he said, heard what he said, and are simply intentionally misum representing what those words were uh regarding Charlie Charlie Kirk's assassin.
And yet they're just it's a drum beat uh ever since he said it of a way that you know, and and it at some point it's becomes fact because they've everyone's saying it enough times on that side.
And that's what's also the most concerning thing to me, because it's like no matter how much the the left wants to mind their speech and wring their hands over what the other people are gonna accuse them of saying, they're going to accuse them of saying this stuff anyway.
And the problem is the the way they're ginning up uh anger and uh and violence toward what they're not really saying is is really what's gonna lead us down a path of some version of you know terrible events uh that resemble, I don't know, perhaps a civil war.
Yeah, I and I'll be honest with you, and this is a conversation for later.
My feeling on where this thing is going has shifted.
Like I'm starting to look at the roads that we are on and the pathways that we are on, and it feels like I've said all along that I knew that there was going to be violence, that there was going to be a loss of life, that there was going to be tragedy, but with every new chapter that we enter into, it becomes readily apparent to me that that is multiplying.
That possibility.
It's it's multiplying almost with every passing day.
And the the point that you just brought up, and we'll actually uh it we'll transition in a second to the quote unquote evidence here.
Nick, I it it really doesn't matter what you give these people.
Like it, I I always reference this because I think it's very telling.
Donald Trump thinks that Fox News is hard on him.
He literally thinks that Fox News where which, by the way, has stalked over half of his administration at this point, which is a propaganda wing.
It was designed to be one and is operated one, one of the most successful propaganda organs that we've ever seen.
He literally thinks that they're too tough on him.
And he goes into North Korea and he goes, Oh, this is the kind of media that I deserve, right?
That will worship me and never criticize me.
And what this reveals, I mean, Nick, the Democratic Party is at best a centrist party.
And at worst, has become a conservative Republican light party.
And what have they done after this election?
The rank and file of the parties, like we need to be more like them.
We need to get rid of these elements over here.
And it doesn't matter what they do, and it doesn't matter how much they move over, it's always going to be offensive that they even exist.
And so what we're actually looking at, it is a persecution complex.
These people are going to believe that people are out to get them, even if they're not.
And Nick, I mean, right now, we haven't even talked about on this show.
There are seven to eight intrafaction wars going on within the right and the media commentators.
We we I mean, like they can't even handle themselves.
And so everything is going to go through that lens.
Even before we found out any information behind this shooting, they automatically assumed, even though three immigrants got shot, they automatically assumed it was about them because everything has to go through the prism of it being about them, period.
Yeah, or I'm or they didn't even have to assume that they're like, great, another opportunity.
That's another opportunity, right?
And and they get back to uh the notion of uh, you know, the Democrats not having uh any ability to do anything about it.
I don't think anybody has to think very hard and long to remember that like Mitch McConnell when they were in the minority in the Senate were able to jump uh gunk up all manner of uh official business, and they were able to have a lot of effect on what's going on in the government.
And you have guys like Jeffries and and um Schumer, like, you know, pretty pleased asking for a meeting that they can have with uh Trump over the continuing resolution uh for the budget.
Uh fuck it, shut it down.
You know, there's we're this is not a democratic government.
We have no business do dealing with this at all, and it's on you guys.
And guess what's going on though?
The Trump is being able to uh arguably successfully uh pin the sh any kind of shutdown on the Democrats who are not in power right now.
And that's like it's just frightening how they can lose that thread so quickly and become a victim of all this stuff.
It's like they they need to go, even if it's just the packaging and and whatever's going on with their presentation is terrible.
Uh we need somebody much better.
And I know you don't like the person who's doing a better job of it, but um, we need more more of uh of you know what Newsom's doing.
We uh I'm never gonna agree with that.
Nick, I I want to venture into something that I think you and I are uniquely qualified to talk about, which is we the part of this new chapter is just overt lying, just just lying, fabricating.
One of the things I said to you, I want to say it was in February.
I think I said that I was really worried about when they realized that because they had the power and they had all these like administrative like positions that they could just make shit up at any given time, and that would be what they did.
And so, you know, we of course, we we saw these other things, which we'll talk about now.
But when it comes to this shooting, these bullet casings that have the words anti-ice written on them, which is insane that someone would write anti-ice as opposed to something like fuck ice.
Meanwhile, all the evidence points to the person who allegedly did this shooting that they're an online nihilist irony edgelord, which goes back to exactly what I was talking about with Charlie Kirk, how so many people are being cooked online.
Meanwhile, supposedly a letter shows up that is again, it looks like it was written by an FBI intern.
We now have what happened with the Charlie Kirk thing.
I'm looking at you, you've you've been very into ballistics lately.
I'm just letting people know about your obsession.
But on the other hand, all of a sudden these texts show up between the alleged shooter and their roommate maybe partner.
And Nick, those conversations, I've never seen anyone text to one another.
There's like, I have just committed a crime.
Here is how I'm handling the crime.
Here is that.
It what I'm trying to say is we have entered into a zone where reality is so twisted and contorted and trust in the government is so low.
And we've seen it before in American history, and we can talk about that.
This is maddening.
And I don't know how you feel about it.
I feel like you feel very comfortable trying to piece together conspiracy theories and trying to see where something fits or it doesn't.
I've studied historical conspiracy theories.
I've studied like what they are, why they happen, what what it is that like you know sets fire to them.
Living in this time and watching something like this happening, all I can say is it's crazy making.
And I wondered how you felt looking at this because reporting the news, analyzing the news, this is a whole different ball game right now.
Absolutely.
And you know, if you don't know out there, like I'm a bit of an amateur expert of the JFK assassination.
Well, you know what I said?
I had a conversation today with somebody, and I said, nobody I know nobody in the world who has a more in-depth understanding of the actual JFK assassination than Nick Halsman.
I said that today.
Well, thank you.
I mean, I actually started to kind of you know leaf through some of the books again just because I'm bored, I don't know.
But actually, it's probably subconsciously because the biggest frustration you have when you're looking through an assassination like that from 1963 is that it's so distant in the past, and there was so little documentation and was hidden.
This Charlie Kirk thing was filmed by 10 people.
We have all manner of coverage of this.
And by the way, JFK also had, you know, three or four different uh shot uh video or a film of this as well, but it's you know graining hard to see.
So we have like we have actual information we can we could base things off of.
And now I'm getting frustrated, I get really frustrated that I was texting you yesterday a little bit breathlessly because you know, there's other new stuff coming out about the Charlie Kirk stuff that simply does not make sense.
It does not match anywhere near what they said happened, and we're now going to be wondering whether or not uh the shooter is gonna end up surviving prison.
And if he doesn't survive, Jared, if somehow he ends up something happens to him in prison, um man, that's gonna pretty much solidify every conspiracy ever talked about by our government because if they don't keep him alive for a trial and when some of this stuff will come out, I don't know what I'm gonna say.
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