Yeah, This Ain’t Workin’: Dems Keep Folding to Authoritarians
Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman unpack a jaw-dropping Trump admission—governing off TV images and staff spin—and how that fantasy politics becomes policy: talk of sending “full force” into blue cities, a rebranding of domestic terror to target dissent, and an FBI focus that ignores the deadliest threats. They contrast right-wing violence with the media’s left-is-rising narrative, dig into how grifters launder fear into power, and roast Democratic leadership for meeting authoritarian tactics with mushy pressers as a shutdown looms. Plus: Portland reality vs. propaganda, why “security” is the fig leaf for crackdowns, and what real pushback should look like.
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I'm here with my friend, my compatriot, Nick Housman.
Nick, how are you doing, bud?
I'm good.
I'm going fresh off of a high school reunion weekend.
Oh, yeah.
How was your high school reunion?
That's right.
It was nice.
It was nice.
I hadn't been in one in in uh 20 years, maybe.
And uh it was it was nice to see some people and uh and have a drink or two.
I I and then by way in Chicago in the most beautiful weather.
Oh and uh just you know, I I was dodging murder and bullets the whole time, Jared, but um ended up uh it was uh cities, Chicago.
What a what a hellhole.
What a what a you know, an absolute war it is out there.
That toddl in town.
I tell you.
All right, everybody, we uh speak, we gotta talk about all of these delusions and all of these fears.
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Nick, speaking of uh delusional ideas about what's happening in the United States of America, we begin with a development over the weekend.
Uh, President Trump had said that he was sending military to Portland and authorized quote unquote full force.
Then he gave an interview to MBC in which he was challenged on this decision in order to invade Portland.
And he said, quote, I spoke to the governor.
She was very nice, but I said, Well, wait a minute.
Am I watching things on television that are different from what's happening?
My people tell me different.
Um, this it we have a bunch of big stories to talk about, but I don't think, Nick, that I've ever seen a single quote from Donald Trump really distill down the essence of what is going on in this country.
Um, you you were in Portland recently.
I know you wanted to talk about that a little bit, but I do think that this exposes it's it's one of those moments that's sort of ready-made for our podcast, which is to take current events and to give them a larger context.
I thought this is one of the most telling things that we've heard from Donald Trump in a very, very long time.
Well, at first I kind of thought, oh, guys, like dementia, like he doesn't know what he's watching on TV.
Like that's like that's what I felt like for a second there.
And then I started to wonder, you know, there was a meme back in the first uh early on in the first administration, someone had written a little blurb about how he sits and watches Fox News for six or seven hours a day, and then he requests he wants to see the the ape show.
And they're like, I don't know what you're talking about.
You know, the one with the apes, you know, and like and so they they they created this this notion that he wants to watch gorillas running around in the in whatever and it was totally a lie, but it was so it made so much sense.
It's like, yeah, of course he probably that's what he wants.
You know, it's the apes that are fighting, he wants to watch it.
So and then I'm starting to think, well, what if they're kind of doing something similar to there where in order to prop him up and get him angry about stuff, they're showing him footage that isn't what's really going on in Portland.
Maybe it's old footage from like BLM protests or something like that, uh, or something during you know, uh COVID.
What do you think that's possible that he's not even seeing the actual footage that we're all now seeing?
Well, I want to talk a little bit about that, and I also want to get into the historical uh context, but I think the more important thing is is kind of what you just asked, which is you know, Nick, there's a there's this old, I I almost said proverb, it's not a proverb.
It's just sort of like an old sort of political understanding, which is that if you have a king or you have like a uh quote unquote strong leader, that when you go to them, instead of like trying to really go against them, you try and massage their opinions.
You kind of give them a couple of options on things, and then you lead them very quietly to the option you want.
And I think one of the things that's happening here, and it speaks to something you and I've been talking about a lot, which is Donald Trump is an absolute buffoon.
He is falling apart.
He's not intellectually curious, he's not actually informed, but he is surrounded by very serious people who have a lot of designs on what's going on and where they want to take this country.
And what you just said, I think is important, which is you have a president who actually doesn't know what's going on in this country.
He is living in a fantasy of what he believes is happening in the country, and that I think is reflective of a larger problem that I wanted to get into today.
This is happening because the United States of America has reached a point in which everyone can live in their own individual Fantasy.
And basically the entire economy is built around that.
And this starts back during market segmentation, right?
Like, so for instance, you're an NBA guy.
They have an NBA channel.
You can just go watch the NBA literally.
Doesn't matter if they're not even playing games right now.
You can watch all the you can go on YouTube, you know, and watch B-ball breakdown.
You can go watch any number of things if it's your jam.
As that market segmentation happened, whether it's cable news, cable television, now it's turned into social media.
Everyone can live in whatever reality they want.
And it's sort of a mad dash over who can like get the most control and power in order to like, you know, basically make their reality real.
This, I think is wild.
It is maybe the first president, probably since at least Ronald Reagan.
There were some ones before them.
This is a president who is lost in his own violent fantasies.
And that now has led to a the potential federal takeover of Portland, uh takeover of Washington, DC, a takeover of Chicago, Illinois.
And you can speak to both of those.
You said you were in Chicago, you've been in Portland recently.
You've you you live in Los Angeles that supposedly is all on fire and it required all of this.
And the truth is that the reality on the ground and the objective reality, it completely splits in contrast what what reality these people are living in.
Well, it also helps to confirm the reality that they want to live in, right?
Absolutely.
It's easy to convince someone that Portland is burning down because there was a moment at time in a very short period of about a while back where there was a lot of uh conflict between protesters and police.
And it was, you know, it's not large by any means, even then, but it was violent.
And there's a Portland, Portland was popping off.
Yeah.
For sure.
Yeah.
You know, what the only problem I have with that is when they get into the law and order argument, all that stuff is that it really starts to ignore why people are so upset that they're willing to risk being arrested and you know, being in situations like this.
I mean, it's a it's drawn out of a real need to make a statement against what this government is doing.
And so rather than even have any reflection of what that is, it is we will must put these people down, whatever.
Now, it's a ironic that if you look at something like January 6th, you know, that that's very similar, very similar motivation, at least.
And uh, and yet these people, those people are martyrs and those people are are our patriots, you know, who are voicing what they want to hear.
So, you know, anything you can hear, uh Portland, uh liberal, well, then uh you know, that everything must be terrible there.
And there was a time downtown when, you know, it was crime ridden and it was an issue with homelessness.
And you walk around now and you will see people who are walking around sort of muttering themselves and clearly having some issues that need with that need help, um, you know, in a very small little area, and the rest of the city is just the just the most beautiful place they're going to be ever, with the you know, the most nicest people and then and the businesses that are running and everything like that.
So it's like if if you're already hell bent on trying to like I always talk about these the right wingers who are having they're just firing the trigger, just definitely looking around the place for bullets to shove in the gun while they're firing.
All you gotta do is throw something out there like that, and they'll grab it and they'll take hold of it and then build it into something even worse than it is now.
Well, and it's created this alternate reality.
And you're right, like Portland, you know, whether it was BLM or a little bit beyond that, there is a revolutionary spirit in Portland, Oregon, you know, and and there is in Seattle.
I mean, like you, you know, that little corner has this, and there are geographic and sort of like sociological, you know, uh social political reasons for that.
We don't need to get into all of it, but like the it is forever cemented in their mind that they're eventually going to have to bring these certain cities, you know, into order.
And for Trump, you know, it it really works in a way that I think it works for uh a lot of other people, which is oh, these people are out of control.
Oh, obviously it's because they have Democrats there, and as a result, there's a political war, which uh basically the segment is a lead into what else we have to talk about, which is what happens whenever those fantasies metastasize, and eventually you have state power to act on those fantasies.
A really good example of this that everybody understands is that the Nazis were absolutely obsessed with Jewish people carrying out a conspiracy.
They gain state power, they use state power to go after those people, right?
Even though it had nothing to do with the actual reality of the situation.
And in this case, it's one of those weird moments, Nick.
I I think as Trump is declining, we're hearing things that we we talk all the time about how the mask has fallen.
This is what happens after the mask falls, and all of a sudden people start saying things, you know, that maybe they would have like held to themselves and maybe he doesn't have control over.
But this really is a Rosetta Stone situation here.
You hear this and you understand, oh, this is the actual motivation behind this and what is being used by the very serious people who have anti-democratic, authoritarian, fascistic leanings and ideologies.
It's it's where those two things come together, almost like two fronts creating a storm.
For sure.
And it's always under the guise of security, right?
Or making people more safe.
But the problem is, and you know, if you're in Oregon, you don't have to get very far at all out of Portland to be in a world of white nationalists, white supremacy nationalist, you know, uh militias, which are sort of the root of what the domestic terrorism like to deal with in America really is.
Big chunk of that, yeah.
Barry and Hyde in the mid in the midst of we had, you know, a shooting or uh in Michigan, you know, this weekend with a guy who I you know clearly Well, Nick, well, uh, first of all, there were five mass shootings this weekend.
Five.
And two of them, there was the shooting in Grand Blanc, Michigan, which left five dead, eight injured.
This was a Mormon church that this guy rammed with this truck and then started shooting people and setting fires.
You had one in Southport, uh, North Carolina with three dead, six injured.
This was a boat bar that got shot up.
Both of those, by the way, those major shootings were carried out by veterans of the Iraq war.
Both of them had right wing leanings.
And yet at the same time, the administration says that there's a quote unquote left-wing domestic terrorism problem, which we'll talk more about in just a second.
And we're also hearing from the media that left-wing terrorism is on the rise, and that type of stuff just doesn't get put in sort of the context of what's going on.
But yeah, I just wanted to give that information there.
Absolutely.
And so it actually makes us a lot less safe because suddenly the FBI is not uh uh, you know, uh focusing on those kind of groups.
And then here we are.
And you know, you can hide behind the thing about mental health crises and with the which is clearly what's going on, especially when you're suffering from PTSD having fought for our country.
But then you're if you're gonna make guns easy to get, that's that's part of the solution that they would need to be able to fix that.
And then uh they would need to have much more of a robust response to veterans and able to help them uh avoid this.
And then also it's they're all there's undoubtedly they're triggered by the rhetoric from Trump.
You know, so if if we're gonna try and quote unquote get by with so many guns in this country and people who have mental health issues, well, then we can't have our leaders triggering them.
You know what I mean?
Like that's really one of the bigger reasons why we've had this sort of decorum idea from politicians for a long time.
I think, right?
This is definitely a new era in the way that we they certainly speak, um, particularly from the right.
And we can do that analysis if you want on the political side of the right-wing politicians versus left-wing politicians, especially out of the Charlie Kirk stuff, too.
And so that's what's more concerning is that they're making it a lot more unsafe with what they're saying, what their reaction is, and that they're probably doing it as part of the feature, not a bug, so that they can then complete can finish this takeover that they've started.
That's exactly right.
And you know, it's one of those things.
What you just started touching on, I think is extremely important here, which is these events that took place, these awful tragedies.
And by the way, I I know I speak for you and I say this.
I'm so fucking tired of this.
I'm so fucking tired of like somebody saying, How about that shooting?
And you have to ask which one.
Right.
Like it's incredible.
And and meanwhile, all of the elements of these, it is so telling if you actually look at it with a constructive eye, what's going on?
We live in a country that is absolutely terrified of the future.
They don't know what's going on, they don't know what's true, they're afraid of what's coming.
America is in decline, their lives are getting worse.
On top of that, we don't take care of mental health in this country.
We're not proactive.
We're not even reactive, honestly.
We're just all losing our minds.
Meanwhile, we haven't dealt with the gun problem, which makes it more likely that people who are suffering through those things are then going to use that.
We also have a national mythology of the good guy with the gun taking matters into his own hands and amplifying his power.
But then you add in what we just talked about.
We just talked about these alternate realities that make money for a ton of People.
They, I mean, like these fears and these terrors and that triggering, activating stuff you're talking about, that is the main driver of our economy now.
It's everything.
And on top of that, it's also now translated into total political power.
So you can't look at these events in some sort of a vacuum, which they showed the Republican Party, even though they're wrong about the Kirk assassination, why it happened and what the reasons were and all of it.
They showed that they can look at an event and say, oh, there are reasons that this happened, right?
And now we're supposed to look at this stuff and be like, well, we can't learn anything from this.
All by the way, I didn't even mention the Iraq war.
How many people did we traumatize for a war that shouldn't have happened in the first place?
And I don't just mean people who had to go to war.
People had to go and commit atrocities.
People who had to go commit crimes against humanity or see crimes against humanity.
All of those things come together.
And if we're not addressing them, we're only assuring that they're going to get worse.
But instead of actually addressing them, what do we get, Nick?
We get an executive order, the countering domestic terrorism and uh organizing political violence uh order, which says that it's not organic.
It's a culmination of sophisticated, organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats, and violence intended to silence opposing speech, limit political activity, change or direct policy outcomes and present the and prevent the functioning of a democratic society.
So that alternate reality then creates a quote unquote solution, which helps make it worse and never actually starts to address the problems that we have that make us actually unsafe.
Absolutely.
I mean, really, really well said.
And they don't even need this doesn't need to be a Reichstag fighter kind of thing where they have to produce events.
They can simply uh dismantle the things that might help us prevent them and then produce them after they happen.
And by the way, yeah, I it doesn't seem possible to to to ignore not acknowledge that they're doing their rhetoric on purpose.
They are retroding thinking, gosh, it'd be great if we get a few more of these out there and we can continue to clamp down then, right?
Which is again, um, you know, it it's it feels as if there's a lot less of a focus on keeping people safe.
They don't really care about the people of the United States.
If the people die, they die, right?
And it kind of lends credence to like what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania.
It was like, you know, whatever happened on that one, that was very strange.
People really did die in that in that extent of gunfire.
And if you look at what how they've behaved since and even before that anyway, they don't care, they don't care about human lives and what happens if it benefits them politically.
So here we are.
It really is frightening.
And there's no question that that we're completely unsafe the way the FBI has been managing all these things.
And uh there doesn't seem to be any end in sight because nobody seems to want to acknowledge that what the right is saying about all these things is is really problematic and what this uh declaration that they have, as nebulous as it is, opens up all manner of um NGO or any kind of uh uh good intention uh community service can now be deemed a terrorist group.
Literally anything.
And again, we've talked about what the word terrorist does.
I want to give an example, by the way.
Uh, and this goes to you know how this whole thing has worked.
Nick, I spend way too much time listening to Alex Jones because speaking of Trump saying, like, am I seeing something that's not true on TV and people are telling me things?
Alex Jones is another one of those whose mask has fallen off and he just says things that are very revealing.
They give you context.
And you know, one of the things that's happened with it, I I've watched him, you know, give his audience basically the framing of their nightmares, right?
Immigrants are going to come take their houses, they're going to, you know, assault their wives, they're going to take everything that they have.
Eventually, you know, the new world order is going to take over, they're going to kill everyone, and they're, you know, just going to create hell on earth.
He gives people those fears.
And we've we've seen multiple people who have carried out violence, who have carried out attacks, all of that, who, you know, they've listened to Alex Jones, shocker of shockers.
And what he says in every situation is this preventative measure.
And so as he's talking about this, Nick, he's also saying, well, I think the New World Order and the deep state are going to carry out domestic terrorist attacks.
They're going to go out and shoot black people, they're going to kill immigrants, all this stuff.
And what is he doing, Nick?
He's creating the context where people who take him seriously would go out and carry out acts of domestic terrorism and then laying the foundation so that he can say, oh, this is a false flag.
Oh, it wasn't actually the people who listen to me.
It's not actually the people who who, you know, trust me.
It's not the people who take all this seriously.
It's actually just another false flag, which gives him the out for when one of those things happens, he can simply say, oh, it was a deep state plot.
And what is that?
What that is is telling people what they want to hear.
At any given point, and by the way, if if like actually there would have been uh, like let's say, for instance, from the Charlie Kirk thing, right?
Let's say that there was actual trustworthy evidence that someone on the left had done this for ideological reasons.
You and I would have come on the air and we would have talked about that, correct?
Correct.
We would have been like, okay, what's going on here?
What can we glean from that?
And by the way, would we have had a conversation about violence, the the right or wrong of violence?
We would have talked about that, right?
Yeah, condemned it, everything, a whole thing.
Exactly.
So if that is what a person does if they're like awake or they're actually sort of thinking about things, on the other side of it, and again, this is what drives the economy, and this is why things are so bad right now.
So much of the economy is based on enabling.
It's based on telling people what you think is exactly right.
And that by the way, is one of the reasons why AI works the way it does, why the psychosis of it takes place.
Oh, you're absolutely right.
You don't need to think about this, which is the driving impulse of MAGA.
It is the idea that you don't ever need to think about things.
You don't ever need to consider how you feel or how you act or what you do.
Everyone out there is awful and they're trying to get after you.
You need to like buckle down and triple down and quadruple down.
And so what is happening is that we're all being cooked.
And the things that we need to actually look in the mirror and ask ourselves about those things, it's not allowed to do that.
There's an entire economy that is driven around telling you never ever ask a second question and never engage in actual reflection.
And that only increases radicalization over time.
Really, really well said.
And there's the idea here is like, are you being duped or are you willingly accept things?
Those two things go together.
Right, right.
Every time it's like at some point the line completely gets blurred and it almost doesn't even matter anymore, right?
It doesn't, you just simply want what you need that you believe to continue to be verified.
Now, looking at this uh presidential brief or uh proclamation they made about domestic terrorism, they list you know these consequential events that have happened that have led them to crack down on these groups.
And if you look at the list, it's things like Justice Kavanaugh being threatened, you know, when he was being uh confirmed, uh, riots in LA and Portland, um, ICE officers who are being, you know, targeted or doxxed, uh, and then what we had with the in the Dallas.
But like, if you do a list, and you don't have to do uh, you know, set too many criteria about this about what the most important and consequential uh domestic terrorism acts we've had in the last 10 years are those aren't them.
Those aren't them.
And what they are are January 6th, Tree of Life synagogue, like a lot of things, and they all uh how about uh what happened in Minnesota with the politicians?
All of those things are political violence, all motivated by the right, and they are completely whitewashed that stuff to the end of the street.
And we also know that the FBI is not even um uh focusing on these groups like they used to be.
I used to think I had in the back of my mind, like, gosh, it's really a dangerous place out there, but they'll break it up.
You know, they're gonna, they're gonna track some people down, they'll get the gun before the guy gets it, he's got mental health issues, whatever.
You kind of hope that there's a little bit of a safety net there, but I think it's pretty clear by now that like the FBI does not prioritize that at all.
And that's another reason why you know this country is completely unsafe now.
And and to make it clear, what you're talking about is the natural progression of a an increasingly authoritarian society.
So one of the things that happens is okay, so you're tracking violence.
There was like this article, I want to say it was in the Atlantic, and it had this graph that said that you know, left-wing uh if anybody saw it, it showed right-wing political violence way up at the top of the scale and left-wing violence at the bottom, and then they move because they stop keeping track of right-wing domestic violence.
And what actually occurs here, Nick is that eventually that type of domestic terrorism, it becomes the state.
And when the state owns the monopoly over violence, you no longer count it because the state's out there terrorizing people, whether it's in Portland, Chicago, Washington, everywhere, or you know, chasing people down the street and disappearing them or shooting people down in cold blood.
What eventually happens is when the right takes over the reins of government in an environment like this, it's no longer domestic terrorism.
It's the actions of the state.
And so it gets all strange and weirded out.
So eventually we're not even having a conversation about what's actually going on.
We're actually chasing phantoms, is what happens.
Well, getting back to like whether people are willing to accept this or just being duped, that graph that you're talking about, if the MDOA hasn't seen it, and you can picture this, you'd see the rectangles that measure the right wing uh terrorist acts are, you know, very tall.
And on the very chart, on the for each year, there is a little orange uh rectangle that's much, much smaller across every year.
Now, the orange rectangle of year or year got gets a little bit bigger.
So there's there's evidence that there is an increase of left-wing activity, but it dwarfs uh it is dwarfed by the white rectangles, which are the right wing stuff.
But if you look at it and you don't know how to read graphs properly, and you think that you you'd almost think that the left-wing stuff is way higher than the right wing because they place it on top of each of those rectangles.
If you can picture that, it's not a great way to do it.
We've seen Fox News F this up all over the place all the time, where they will, and probably on purpose, right?
To sort of to fool people.
But uh another example of that where that's an easy one, people are just going to shrug and be like, oh my God, I can I couldn't realize that the left wing is doing way more of these than the right when it's simply just because of the way they decided to organize that graph.
Yeah, no, and and by the way, part of that, it's graphs are graphs and the readings of those are what they are.
But it's also like a lack of uh uh reading comprehension, a lack of critical thinking.
But what you also brought up, and you've said it a couple times now, and I think it's important.
You you know what happened during the Cold War?
And people have seen uh movies like The Manchurian candidate, right?
There was a real fear post-World War II that communists were brainwashing people, that they were capturing them, that they were feeding them so much propaganda and breaking them down and then getting them to believe crazy things.
You know that you have no idea how much money are the US government spent trying to study this and also trying to then learn how to brainwash people, right?
Through projects like MK Ultra.
You know what we found out, Nick?
We found out that people aren't going to believe what they don't want to believe.
People are going to believe the things that they want to believe.
And so having this cottage industry, it's not only a lack of reading comprehension, it's the fact that like the people who believe this want to believe that the left is dangerous.
They want to believe that major cities are hell holes that are, you know, basically uh ongoing firefights.
They want to believe that because they need those places to be crushed for their own political projects and for their own reality to move forward.
And all of this, you know, Nick, it's people talk about like dictators hypnotizing their populations.
No, they just tell the populations what they want to hear.
And and they they and then they give them like a sense of enabling power and membership and all of that.
It is simply a process that we don't, we don't actually deal with.
We don't actually discuss what's going on.
We just pretend like all of this is just sort of naturally occurring, right?
And or that it just happens out of nowhere, but it takes place over time.
It's conscious and unconscious decisions.
And as a result, you get to the point where you're exactly right.
This executive order and everything the Trump administration has done post-Charlie Kirk is more or less just finding reasons to do what they want to do, which is to crush political oppositions at all costs.
And that's what's going on.
Right.
And so just to comment on the politicians and where we've gone from, I mean, we I think we all remember what happened when John McCain was having a uh town hall, and this woman who was from the deep, deep uh fabric of the frontier of the United States, you know, tried to call uh Barack Obama a an Arab.
And he had no, no, no, he's not an Arab.
He's I mean, which by the way, it shouldn't be an insult anyway.
But he corrected her and he tried to say insist that he was a good man and he just the differences in ideologies.
Probably the last time we've ever heard from you know the from the right, any kind of uh uh pushback on something like that.
And so it's like where the question I have, you know, for you, Jerry would be like, well, where do they learn what they want to believe?
Well, I mean, that that depends.
It's mostly where they come from, you know, it's mostly the environments that they grew up in.
It's family traditions, and I hate to tell people this, but like hatred is a family tradition that gets passed out.
And basically, people get taught to hate and fear, and then the communities are like that.
And in some cases, Nick, I I was studying what was this?
This would have been seven, eight years ago.
I was studying like right wing extremism.
Like I'm I'm talking about white nationalists, I'm talking about neo-Nazis, all of that.
You know what a lot of them actually joined for?
They joined for camaraderie.
Yeah, they they they basically, you know, and and by the way, like I I think it's more understandable for people when it happens in like a prison.
You you've heard these stories where someone goes to prison, they're really frightened, and so they join like the Aryan Brotherhood, right?
In order to feel like a mode of protection in prison.
But it's the same thing with like gangs.
It's not that people go in and they're like, I want to do these things.
They they don't feel like that they have anybody around them.
They don't feel like they have any sort of agency, and then they're like sort of offered some type of power.
So these interactions that we have with our family, with our communities, with our environments, with the people around us, also in terms of how we handle the fear and we handle the pressure.
Sometimes it's easier for people to go this route.
And that's and and again, Fox News, uh, you know, uh the Daily Caller, which we we have to talk about at some point.
It doesn't matter what it is, these these right wing publications and these right wing platforms and these right-wing personalities and influencers, all they're doing is tapping into these inherent sort of things.
It's not that people were born with them, it's that these things were woven into them, starting from you know, the their earliest days.
But that that's the entire human existence, is what we're trying to find.
We're trying to find that camaraderie, and everybody in those groups knows how to manipulate people, right?
And it doesn't, we're not even gonna limit this to just gangs or to white nationalists.
You're talking about madrasas, you're talking about churches, you're talking about synagogues.
Everybody, politicians, they're all doing this to manipulate people that somehow do what they're bidding.
Well, Nick, I mean, you've you've read books and watched movies about cults, correct?
I have.
Okay.
Have you ever watched or read something about a cult in which they talked to the people involved, and uh a single person didn't tell a story about like how they were they ran away from home at an early age or they came from a situation where they weren't taken care of.
Have you ever heard anybody talk about that in in a way that didn't mention something like that?
I I mean, yeah, I would say, yeah, the vast majority are some version of that.
Yeah.
Or a lot of times they'll even use, you know, the promise of you know, sexual stuff, you know, that seems to be a big one as well, where that seems to be thing where it's and that all goes together.
It's just this idea of bringing people in.
So as a result, it like it it manipulates the desire to be part of something.
Right.
And by the way, sometimes it is good, right?
Like there are there are groups that you know you can join and that they will we will help society, right?
But sure fine line.
And oftentimes, you know, we've seen those cults where it starts that way and then it can quickly turns uh you know uh sinister pretty quickly.
So um, this is a tough the world's a tough place to live, Jared.
And and you have to navigate this stuff, and that's why we need better leaders.
We we need better leaders.
And speaking of needing better leaders, uh, this is coming out on Tuesday.
We're recording this on Monday.
I don't know if the government's gonna be functioning.
I don't have a clue.
I I really truly don't.
A government shutdown is looming.
Uh, the the deadline is on Tuesday.
There was a plan to meet with the Democrats because shocker of shockers, Nick, the Republicans own all the branches of government, but they can't get it together in order to make this happen.
Uh, Trump uh reportedly is asking to ban all trans health care as a concession from the Democrats.
Uh Senate Majority Leader John Thune has said that all of this totally depends on Democrats.
Um, this seems like it's at loggerheads.
If I had to say what I thought would happen, I have to imagine a continuing resolution.
That's that's what they always end up doing.
They throw one of these things out.
I have no idea where it's going to end up.
What what is your take on this?
I've I've I've got some opinions.
I mean, I I think the Republicans are doing a better job of pinning it on the Democrats right now, which is shocker of shockers.
Yeah, you know, and it's ludicrous.
And I if I I gotta tell you, if I have to see Chuck Schumer wandering around out there behind Sammy Jeffries anymore, I'm gonna lose my shit.
Because they're just not there's nothing they're gonna do to get better at what they what they need to get better at.
They just don't have it.
And I don't even it's not even something I can put my finger on necessarily.
He's not compelling, they're not using the right language, they're not making this clear enough.
Um, I'm trying to even think of what does it mean to like ban transgender health care.
Like, uh does that mean they're gonna make it illegal to I listen, Trump Trump wants what Trump wants.
Right.
That's that's one of the main things.
Right.
And it's just like it's just ridiculous, and that's not going to be legal to do.
And then, you know, but you know, knowing that the Supreme Court, they'll just kick the can down the road and let it be quote unquote illegal for a short amount of time, and then all the damage is done at that point.
And then you have doctors who are afraid to do these things, they just don't know if it's legal or not.
And that's the point.
And then here we are.
So what's going on now on that on that end is uh that that certainly the Democrats should just say, fuck this.
We are not going to uh capitulate at all on this because you're not running a Democratic or a Republic uh uh sorry, what we're calling this now.
Never democrat, it's not democracy, a democratic republic.
Is that what we have to use?
I wait, we listen, there's a lot of words that we could use for that.
Right.
So it's not that, and we're not gonna participate, and you can go figure it out.
I I've been watching this, and of course, it's like how many of these like near shutdowns, how many shutdowns have we seen at this point?
The Democrats seem completely intent on never learning anything.
Never, ever, ever learning anything.
It started for a long time.
Chuck Schumer talking about it, he couldn't wait to talk to Republicans, they were going to figure this out.
Hakeem Jeffries, the exact same thing.
By the way, like Hakeem Jeffries killing it right now, going out and saying that Eric Adams was a wonderful mayor.
I mean, you know, the best mayor who had been corrupted by the nation of Turkey.
And meanwhile, won't even endorse the current Democratic.
We're on Mom Donnie.
Also, for the record, and I'm sure that I'll say this at some point.
I love all the reports that business leaders in New York City have like given up on mom Donnie not getting elected, and now they want to work with him.
Turns out, turns out that if you actually like stick to your guns and your principles, people come around and they will try and work with you.
On the other side of that, you have the Democratic Party who wanted to help keep the government going, had no hard ask.
And what have we heard?
We've heard the possibility that they're going to ask for subsidies for the Affordable Health Care Act.
Online pundits are screaming to call for Robert F. Kennedy's resignation.
That's not going to happen.
They're not going to throw RFK under the bus in order to keep the government going.
That's that's a non-starter.
And I don't know why people think that's what's going to happen.
Quite frankly, the Democrats just let this motherfucker shut down.
They don't have an ask right now.
And quite frankly, it's not a government that works.
It is an oppressive government at this point.
Go back, find some people who have backbones and figure out what you're asking for.
They're not asking, like they have no idea and no discipline how to do this, which just goes to what we've said about Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries for forever now.
They are not up to the task.
Right.
They don't know what they're doing.
They don't understand that these people can't actually be negotiated with, and they're not willing to actually fight.
So I what what's your feeling?
Do you do you think there will be a continuing resolution?
It feels like that's always what happens.
Right.
The last second they kind of figure something out.
And that's that is possible.
I mean, there is a theory that if you let the government shut down in this particular administration, uh, they can increase their authoritarianism and control over it.
I've been trying to do some deep research into figuring out what would the machinations of that be, would that look like?
And it's not necessarily that clear to me uh that that would enable it any more than what they're already doing.
But I uh I certainly think politically you could use that as a cudgel um to beat the the Republicans on, saying they're trying to take over the government as an authoritarian state, and this is why they want to shut it down.
Like that would that would make some pay, I'd imagine with some people.
And by the way, Nick, how many Americans, what percentage of the American public believes that the Trump administration, first of all, is awful, and second of all, they're authoritarian.
It's like around 60 to 70 percent.
Exactly.
Right.
Okay, so now everybody's like, oh, the Republicans are gonna do this, they're gonna change public opinion.
No, what's going to happen if the government shuts down?
The New York Times is gonna run an editorial that says, oh, these sides really need to come together.
CNN's gonna have panels that say that.
It's not actually they're not operating from a point of reality.
Like the public is not going to blame the Democratic Party.
The public, as a matter of fact, overwhelmingly wants the Democratic Party to actually oppose this authoritarian government.
They're dealing with political pundits and they're dealing with corporate moderates who want this to continue.
So all of this talk about being afraid they're going to get blamed for it.
They're literally going into this battle.
They don't just have their hands tied behind their backs.
They tied their hands, which is actually impossible to do.
But somehow or another, the Democratic Party figures out how to do it over and over, as opposed to recognizing that there is a rabid majority of the American public that wants this and would support it.
So it's it's a complete and utter fantasy, which is how Democrats and liberals have been operating now for I mean, my entire life.
Right.
And then they can continue to go out, and they're not going after the uh the uh Trump for the CR.
They're not going after him for you know trying to uh with a sham uh trial for comey.
Uh they're now wanting to investigate Ray, the former FBI director that was appointed by Trump based on, you know, and again, we talked about how either they willingly uh uh uh accepting misinformation or they're being duped.
You know, something like Cash Patel, like it's so clear now, after all the things he's done in a very short amount of time that he's not to be trusted at all with anything.
He's trusted before.
I don't know how he even got confirmed.
He's now trying to say that you know, Ray had sent in 274 FBI agents to it right to incite everybody to have a riot at the Capitol when what we found out was a lot less of those number of people went in after the fact to try and get the crowds out of there and try and get control of the situation again.
And that's been completely um debunked this conspiracy.
And so um again, it's just the layer upon layer they keep letting us know how clear it is that they're trying to have an authoritarian takeover based on misinformation and manipulation of any of the scant evidence that they're trying to use.
Um it's frightening, and again, that that is why the government shutdown like sort of looms in this way where okay, does that mean that Trump's gonna have unfettered control over everything else because of the things that are not uh you know functioning at that moment?
Uh I I don't know.
I really don't know, other than um, you know, and it's not and what should be clear was the the Democratic leadership should have made this a lot clearer to us what they're what the consequences are, and they're not.
I on that note, because I I think this is something we should talk about before we get out of here.
In all of this, Nick.
So you you and I are on social media, we we pay way too close attention to this.
This is part of our jobs.
We see Schumer or Hakeem Jeffries say some bullshit every couple of days, right?
Yeah.
Have you heard anything even approaching like a comprehensive strategy or communication strategy at all over the past eight months?
No, and you know you know who's actually I I hate, I know I always know I get well, we can give her props.
You know who's was pretty good at that, right?
Melosi.
Yeah, used to be.
Yeah, used to be.
She's still a Congress person, right?
I mean, last time I checked.
I haven't heard or seen anything from her, but like they they they can't even it, okay.
So, like, I know that someone is listening to this, undoubtedly a Democratic strategist who listens to the show.
They're like, Trump takes up all the air.
Okay.
Isn't that your failure?
That he's filling a vacuum.
Like the leadership has been so feckless.
They've been such a group of quislings, and their inability to get a message out there, especially when it comes to something like this.
And Nick, it's not just this, it's their colleagues being arrested, thrown down, abused.
Like literally, their constituents being taken away and being disappeared.
They can't break through at all.
So even if you're saying they can't break through and that's a problem, isn't that a sign that something else needs to be done?
Because here we are.
We're we're on the verge of a government shutdown.
The Democratic Party doesn't even have the beginnings of a calm strategy about this.
Nothing.
Well, you know, and you had one guy who was trying to insert himself in there with Gavin Newsom over here in California.
And, you know, I I know you didn't like the methods.
I I was fine with them, but uh just to throw this out there.
You know, his whole thing was they're gonna redistrict uh California to benefit the Democrats, right?
Uh that ballot is in danger right now with the polling.
It's got a slight majority depending on which poll you look at, but that's a lot of time still before that vote comes up.
So, you know, can you imagine if that failed?
That was the centerpiece thing, basically his big you know, thing where he's trying to put himself on the national stage and you know, and ahead of the uh presidential election.
Uh, I'd be very worried if I were Gavin Newsom on that on that uh ballot measure.
It it just none of this is working.
And that's you know, it goes back to the just to wrap this up.
Like, that is the difference between living in an echo chamber in which you never ever consider what you're doing, and when you have to stop and reflect on things.
You're a basketball coach, Nick.
If you go in, and I cannot tell you, I'm I'm a fan of the Indiana Hoosers, so I speak from experience.
I cannot tell you how many games I've seen a strategy be replayed and replayed and replayed, and it just keeps failing.
And guess what happens when they go in at halftime and they're getting their asses handed to them?
They come out and do the exact same thing and they don't change anything.
That isn't a way to do anything.
And it doesn't matter how many people scream, oh, don't criticize the Democrats, you're gonna hurt them, you're gonna help Trump.
You have to question this stuff.
You can't live in this cultish environment and just keep making yourself feel better.
At some point or another, you have to say this shit isn't working, and you have to figure something else out.
Oh, well, we need some sort of much more public uh confrontation uh in Trump's face.
We need if he's out there talking to everybody while he's before he gets on the uh the helicopter.
Uh one of the senators wander out there, get in that scrum, and then ask them a question.
Something we need something dramatic and confrontational in the actually actually have to respond to.
I I that that's you know, uh, we don't have enough of that.
You know, even if it's like you know, the local politicians are not doing a bad job of this in terms of you know, uh trying to get in the way of ice.
And you know, we we saw Kate Agubasela in uh in Chicago or in Illinois do that, and she got thrown to the ground, whatever, but it made a good statement and it was able to allow us to get you know more eyes on what's going on.
And and by the way, if you're not paying attention to what ICE is doing right now, it's it gets worse by the day.
Um, and then you know, it the reflection of like Americans and how we feel about ourselves and the reflection that you're talking about is it was was exemplified perfectly in the writer cup, and we're talking about sports, where you have you know, a golf of all things, which is supposed to be a gentleman's sport, if I'm not mistaken, I never played it,
but um you had you had the most ugly version of ugly Americans you can ever imagine, calling these European golfers some of the worst imaginable slurs, you know, and getting kicked out and and just being unruly in the name of the USA, right?
Like that was what they thought they were protecting or or celebrating, and that's the you know, uh clearly a direct result of like you know the way Trump is leading this country.
Well, and and by the way, I I'm a golfer.
I've taken shit for this, I'm a golfer.
I watched as much of the writer cup as humanly possible this weekend.
I was ashamed.
I was absolutely ashamed.
And what was it?
It was bro-ish American like xenophobia and hatred.
And by the way, the writer cup is confrontational.
You you go after the opposing players, but this took a different tone.
And the reason I'm bringing this up is this.
Nick, we we've been to concerts, we've been to movies, we've been to public spaces.
Sometimes you'll be around someone and someone's an asshole.
Yeah.
And they're harassing people, and they're being shitty, right?
And like at first, you're like, oh, this sucks.
I wish that person would shut up.
And then after a while, you're just like, oh God, this is too much.
At some point or another, everyone around is thinking somebody ought to do something about this.
Yeah.
And guess what, Nick?
We're that somebody.
We have to fucking do something about this.
We have to tell people to shut up.
We have to tell people to stop being assholes.
We have to get in the bully space and say, enough is a fucking enough.
And what we're seeing here, I I, you know, I I cover these things and I talk about them, and people want to interview me and ask about this government shutdown.
I'm fucking embarrassed.
Like, I really am.
Like the idea of the Democrats are like, oh no, maybe we should, uh, maybe we shouldn't.
Like, it is it's such a small stakes thing that actually is pretty big that they could do something about it, and they can't even be bothered to show up for it.
But what's the equivalent of going to the usher and say, hey, can you you gotta kick this guy out or whatever?
There is no usher.
The usher is the usher has an armpant on now.
Right.
Okay.
That's the issue.
That's the issue with this.
Meanwhile, like with the writer cup, you they literally the golfers themselves had to be like, get Giaga throw this guy out.
He called me the F or F slur or whatever, get him out of there.
I guess.
You gotta go.
Yeah.
But by the way, then we saw, and by the way, the US got waxed, right?
They got uh, I mean, they they got waxed the first two days, the US came back on the third day.
But yeah, no, no, and it motivated them.
That's another thing.
If you want to talk about metaphors, like like getting treated like that actually motivated them to fight.
Yeah, yeah.
And you either, and that's what we got to deal with.
You either let this stuff destroy you, and you're like, okay, okay, please don't be mean to me, which is what the Democrats are doing, or you say, fuck you, I'm done with this.
Right.
And and by way, it applies perfectly with uh with Malcoloy as he finished the uh successful putt, walking down the green, just pointing the crowd, saying, Fuck you, fuck you, and fuck you, like this each different section of the crowd.
That's what gamers do.
Yeah, yeah.
You just gotta walk it after you do it.
So uh yeah, I agree.
And that that's that's that confrontation.
We need a confrontation uh of Trump.
Now, I would be worried.
Remember when Dick Cheney was walking around uh hurricane Katrina?
You you know what I'm trying to say, and you had some guy who should be in memorialized with a plaque and a statue who said, you know, fuck you, Cheney, something like that, right?
Pretty much what he said.
Uh man, do we need something?
But here's the thing.
If I did that, I probably I would be really tempted if Trump was somehow walking by and I was somewhere nearby.
But I would probably get arrested for some sort of domestic terrorism threat.
Well, I mean, why in the world?
I uh dude, I how in the world at this point is Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffrey still saying they're looking forward to working with Republicans.
Yeah, I don't know.
Like, besides putting your finger in Trump's chest and telling him off, which is what needs to happen.
Instead, you're like, oh, we're looking forward to this this meeting.
I hope it's productive.
Shut up.
Shut up.
How many people need to die?
How many people need to disappear at this point?
Well, there's a script that we they had for all those years, an insert name here, right?
And that's what they're still following.
This weird script.
It's like they're stuck in a in a glitch mode where they can't, they haven't figured out it's 2025.
And um, you know, and again, it's not necessarily that that's clear exactly what you need to do, but we do know what they that ain't working, and it's that.
And it's and it's this, yeah.
This ain't working.
All right, everybody.
That's gonna do it for this episode of the Munk Rick Podcast.
We will be back with the weekender on Friday.
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