Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman unpack a wild weekend where millions protested authoritarianism under the banner of “No Kings,” and Trump responded by posting an AI video of himself as a crowned fighter pilot literally defecating on Americans. They break down what that grotesque image says about power, humiliation, and a party that calls it “satire.” Plus: the GOP’s shutdown strategy, live artillery fired over I-5, and how all this adds up to a monarchy in everything but name.
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I'm here with my friend, my co-host, Nick Housman.
We are going to talk about the protest.
And yes, we're going to talk about the video, all of that stuff.
But before we do, how are you doing, my friend?
I'm I'm doing.
I'm hanging in there.
Uh, had a really nice weekend.
We was uh, you know, as we saw on the Discord, if you're part of the Patreon, uh, we were uh I was out at the uh No Kings in LA.
And um it was it was good.
And we'll have to talk a little bit about it because I'm kind of curious your take on some of the um I guess how they how they made it, uh how they made the vibe uh out there while we were there and what that means in terms of how we're supposed to feel uh during these kind of protests.
Yeah, there's a lot to go over.
And by the way, I mean you buried the lead, you were wearing a nice little sun hat.
You were protecting yourself in Los Angeles.
Yeah, I didn't know that that was gonna be uh of notes.
It drove the people crazy.
They loved your hat.
Okay, well, yeah.
I mean, listen, it was hot as uh as something out there.
Hot hot as fuck.
Yeah, and yeah, I needed I needed to have shade, you know.
Yeah, you know, I I I I appreciated it.
I I thought you looked tremendous out there protesting fascism.
And if you want to see pictures of things like Nick at a pro videos, yeah, actual videos of Nick Halselman at a protest, head over to Patreon.com slash muckright podcast, support the show, gain access to the weekender episodes on Fridays, as well as access to our Discord where the Microeg community talks, shares, and marvels over Nick's headwear, because why wouldn't they?
I will accept the Marvel.
There's Marveling to be had.
Well, speaking of the No Kings protest, Nick, um Saturday in the second round of No Kings protests.
Um it it appears from estimates that this was an even larger day of protest.
Estimates have put it, over seven million Americans showed up, which by the way, I I will admit when I'm wrong.
I had said when we were previewing this that I thought that maybe there would be less people showing up.
It looks like more people did.
Over 2,000 cities had this from the biggest uh biggest cities to the smallest towns.
Um, of course, we're going to talk about this disgusting AI video that Trump shared.
We'll get to that in a second.
But I think it's important to talk about the No Kings protest, what it represents, what we can take from it.
You were there.
What what are your thoughts on it?
What were your reactions?
Like how what did you walk away with, Nick?
Oh, well, you know, the first thing was this is much bigger than the first one uh in downtown LA.
And plus there were dozens across the city.
There's so many around that had tens of thousands of people as well.
But uh this one had to have had six figures of people.
And it was a march that was much longer than normal, where they led us through a number of blocks all the way around that it circled back in front of to the uh in front of the uh uh the um where we have our all of our people run the country the city called City Hall.
Thank you.
Um and so it was really kind of interesting.
Well, the thing I was gonna bring up though was they had a truck with a band that was playing music, guant onera and all sorts of other stuff like that, which everyone was kind of enjoying and having a good time.
And part of me felt like I think we're supposed to be mad and we're supposed to let people know how angry we are.
That's why we're all here, even though there is that sense of community that we're trying to find.
So what do you think about that?
You know, when we're when they when these things do turn into some sort of like a party more than uh uh than a protest.
Yeah, I and I'm glad you brought that up.
I, you know, I had watched that video of you walking by that truck with the the band performing.
And there's a lot going on there.
You know, one one thing that has started to develop.
Um, we we touched on it very, very briefly uh last week.
We talked about the new proliferation of all these frog costumes and inflated animal costumes.
You have bands that are playing, people are having a good time.
I personally I think that you do have to mix the anger with a little bit of joy in order to remind people that there's something worth fighting for and also to build like sort of a collective experience.
But at the same time, and and again, I I I totally recognize this as my job.
My job is to sort of give both sides of this, like how this is both positive and also how it troubles me.
And it does because I I worry about as I Said last week on the weekender, I worry about this serving as catharsis.
I worry about this being an opportunity in a really bad situation for people to get together with other people and let off some steam as opposed to building something in opposition to it.
I have concerns about that.
I'm I'm happy to get into this more in a second, but what was your feeling having experienced that?
And that is fascinating because right, if you let off steam, then it kind of dissipates into the future.
We don't continue to have the focus that we need to get real change.
Um, you know, I I think if people were probably focused on the notion that we didn't want to have anything violent happen, because that just feeds into the narrative that we've been hearing all week long, which might be some sort of weird genius by the GOP to somehow convince us of that, even though I don't want to see anybody any violence or any destruction of property necessarily.
Uh that said, we understand that generally when you want to make your point and you are and we're truly angry about what's going on in the uh in the country and the way it's run, sometimes, you know, damage to the uh, you know, establishment of, you know, of where the money counts is is helpful, you know.
Uh so either way, I it definitely felt like uh we we got done.
And I remember, you know, the GOP's uh the New York Post or whoever was trying to rip on the New York uh protest because everybody just sort of left when it was over all at the same time.
Like clearly this must be see how this is a fake protest and just people, but I'm like, I gotta tell you, when the protest is over, it people leave.
And that is not an interesting uh thing that's worth even reporting on.
So uh I don't know.
I I just worry that you're like what you're saying is that we didn't have, we didn't quite channel enough of the energy we needed to uh, even though the success of it could be also measured by how much the right has had to react to it, which I think is a really big part of it, and that they heard it and that they were aware of it and whoever they wanted to say about it, as we'll get to in a second, uh you know, the the voices were heard.
Yeah, I I think that's something, you know, it it is important to have a mass protest in order to change the paradigm.
Like you have to talk about it, even though places like the New York Times didn't really talk about it, right?
Because they are, of course, you know, messengers and uh, you know, errand boys for you know, the the wealth class.
Like they are not interested.
They they gave more coverage to the Tea Party, which tells you everything that you need to know.
The Tea Party, like in comparison to what happened here, like had a very, very small footprint.
And I think when it comes to this, Nick, I I don't have the the concerns about damage to property.
I don't, I I and I look at all of this, and and this is a hard thing as an as an analyst who sees where this thing is going, like the idea of violence or sort of like an angry sort of reaction to it, it makes sense to have an angry reaction to this.
Like we are being abused, we are being oppressed, and it's getting worse.
So I I do have concerns.
Like I looking at something like the inflatable animals, right?
Is it good to show absurdity in the face of this stuff and to, you know, sort of say, oh, we're Antifa, we're we're an international terrorist organization.
Here's a frog that's going to dance in the street.
I understand that messaging.
And I think it's important that it is starting to spread.
People are like, oh, this is going to become a symbol.
But it also becomes a product to purchase.
Do you know what I mean?
And it's a product that you wear and it says, oh, you you know what's going on here.
You saw this online, so now you're going to do it.
I get worried about the misdirection of energies.
And I haven't seen anything from the people who organize the No Kings protest.
I haven't seen anything in terms of an effort to point it somewhere.
I haven't seen any effort to create an agenda, any effort to message around it, only to create the spectacle.
If you come back from the future and you told me that these mass protests would eventually lead to a movement, I would be thrilled.
I don't see it yet.
That was my problem going into the protest this weekend, is I have not seen the momentum going in a direction.
Yes, they are growing in terms of size, but I do not see the direction or the focus or the alternative that it could possibly have.
That's what causes me concern, Is that this is people going out on a Saturday, expressing their frustration and then going back to their regular lives on Sunday.
Right.
Yeah, I you know, it at the very least, if we want to kind of get a measurement of how many MAGA are there and how many people are against MAGA out there.
And are we really part of a movement or is this like a you know, is it really a tiny fraction of the country?
Is it growing?
Um, you know, I like that you you brought up uh the Tea Party stuff because that started as a movement where they were marching and they tried to have rallies.
And yes, if you go back and look at the footage there, it is frightened.
Really, really small, which also reminds me of like so Ted Cruz was having some weird um press conference uh uh on Saturday, I think it was, or Sunday or a Friday, and uh this woman decided to stand up to him and interrupt him.
And he said, Listen, if you want to have your own rally, then you can go ahead and do that.
Well, guess what?
The next day she did, and when you see the panning of how many people showed up for her thing compared to like Ted Cruz and no one was there, it was it's really a big statement about where we are.
The country is fed up, his approval ratings are low, are historically low, and it's that it's hard to do even for someone like him.
So, you know, the the question then starts to coalesce around like this is supposed to show up in the voting, and that's gonna be the next really, really big concern.
And that might have to be the next uh it won't have to be a no kings rally, it's gonna have to be some sort of rally about how the free and fair elections.
Well, and that's what I'm saying is I I I think that the mind naturally jumps to oh my God, we're in the majority, which is true.
You know, the vast majority of Americans, like 70 to 80 percent, have a broad consensus on what needs to happen in this country.
But then you have the problem, Nick, which is neither the Republican or the Democratic Party represent the will of that mass majority.
And both of them are fighting about other things, carrying out unpopular policies, and never actually speak to what people want.
So where does it go from there?
And uh part of me was also very pissed off to see a bunch of Democrats showing up at this stuff.
Like I what are they doing?
Right?
They're going out and saying we're you know, out in front of this stuff.
There's no leadership, there's no direction, there's no sort of attempt to encapsulate this in some sort of uh an actual movement.
So that does concern me, and it feels very much to me like we're living in a pseudo reality, is what it is.
Like we go out, we do this, it shows that there's more of us than them, but then the next day it's like they just continue what they're doing.
And yeah, people are fighting in the streets, but that's in the cities where the shit is going down.
So, like, can there be more?
There has to be more than this.
Well, and I'm waiting to see what that is and whether it's going to develop.
Well, we know we had a uh a frank discussion uh in the middle of the protest about why we didn't have any of our politicians marching or speaking at these things.
Now, am I to understand that you you said you you don't think that they should be?
Well, if they're going to be, it needs to represent something.
Like the Democratic Party is creating a faux resistance.
They're saying that it's wrong and they're saying that they oppose it, but they're not actually opposing it.
Like they're they're they're creating the the sort of symbolic resistance while not actually fighting for this thing.
So when they start to show up, and you know, real fast, Nick, the Tea Party, the Tea Party was successful, and by the way, it was synthetic.
It was made, you know, it was created and directed and funded by the wealth class.
Right.
It was successful because it forced the GOP to become more extreme with them.
That's that's what happened there.
And they had to face a choice, which is we either work with this developing movement or we risk being primaried.
I don't see any of that happening here.
And that happened very quick with the Tea Party because it was directed and because it had an end goal.
Right.
And it's exactly why the right will accuse the left of sponsoring these things and because it's what they did.
It's how that's how they operate.
Um I I just don't understand um how we don't have like Senator Padilla or Schiff or any of those people or any of our congressmen coming down and speaking and and leading.
It would be just a win-win for uh for them politically.
And I think you're right, that maybe even more of a coordination across the when you have something like this across the country to have everybody go to speak.
And I don't Give a crap if they're gonna say, oh, it could be a security thing.
They could figure that out.
Uh, but they would need, I mean, we had politicians marching with Martin Luther King in the streets during his marches, right?
And that was a very powerful statement.
And I don't see why they wouldn't be wanting to try and tap into that, even just the the look of that.
We've seen it very little, but um, we need more of that.
And and if it's coordinated, great, but either way, someone should be the first to do that.
Just like we saw well, Padilla was a guy who got arrested for trying to get in the way of ICE agents, uh, I believe it was uh last couple months ago.
We need more of all of that, all these sort of dramatic moments standing up to the people uh on the right.
Well, you did have Democrats showing up.
I mean, Schumer showed up to one.
Fetterman showed up to one and got booed mercilessly.
And I would imagine if you took a poll of the people who were there whenever Schumer or Fetterman were there, 80%, if not 90% or more of the people in the crowd would want them replaced.
You know, but it's the symbolic thing of getting in front of it and making it seem like this is somehow or another a movement that is democratic party based when in fact this is a populist anti-establishment movement, or it's supposed to be.
And if it's not, I don't know what to say about that.
Because if it's not, and if it's not going to develop in this, my analysis says then that is actually taking energy that would need to go elsewhere and sort of letting it work itself out as opposed to metastasizing into something else.
Well, what about this?
So, like during the George Floyd protests, we were uh coalescing about around a very specific issue of police brutality, right?
I don't know if that exists right now.
I don't know if there was one singular moment, a singular issue everyone's thinking was focused on.
Now, for instance, I didn't think I saw one sign that talked about the government shutdown.
I don't think I saw that.
I don't know, and I don't know if that was even close to the top of the list here.
But again, what exactly are what are we doing?
Why are we protesting at this point, right?
There's so many things, and Trump has done this on purpose to flood the zone, that it's hard to kind of figure out how to coalesce and find that one thing that can inspire everybody to rally up and join in this movement.
Well, let me ask you some questions because I think you just brought up a very important issue.
Okay, so Democratic Party, right?
Which is currently the quote unquote opposition party, quote unquote resistance party.
What have you heard put forward by the Democratic Party to reform anything that's going on?
Nothing.
Have you heard is it part of the National Democratic Party to, I don't know, even reform the Supreme Court?
No, not at all.
Is there we someone's mentioned maybe 13 justices, right?
We've heard that.
You oh, 13 just congratulations, everyone.
But like there's been literally nothing that has been proposed by the Democratic Party.
There's the issue, which is if that was an actual resistance party, you would be floating like in in other countries, you know, you have like shadow secretaries, people who go out who don't have power to say this is what we would do.
The Democratic Party's not doing that because they don't know who they are.
They only know that they want the checks to keep clearing.
They only know that they want to keep the groups quiet.
They don't want to add to like the the anti-establishment attitude in the country.
When it comes to that, that means that the people have to start coming up with an agenda, right?
That means that the people need to start demanding things.
I haven't heard anything come out of the like no kings, sure.
I don't want a king, you don't want a king, other people don't want a king.
We currently have, and we'll talk more about it in a second, a president who desires monarchical power, and that's how things are working.
So what does that mean?
What policy proposal is there?
What reform proposal is there?
I haven't heard anything.
I haven't heard a single person put forward anything besides vocalizing an opposition to what's currently happening now.
But what are they for?
Nothing's been said.
Are do you do you feel like anything has been said?
No, not really.
You know, I mean, I know that we don't want ICE to continue doing what they're doing.
Sure.
Uh, but that's not necessarily a policy issue as much as well.
By the way, you can introduce plenty of policy to prevent this and abolish.
By the way, you just brought up something very important.
Have you heard the Democratic Party adopt the policy of abolishing ICE?
No, not at all.
Crazy, right?
And by the way, going back to the George Floyd protest, what was what was the policy ask from the George Floyd protest?
Well, what they were trying to assign them was uh defund the police.
Is that what you mean?
Re move money from the police back into the community, correct?
Yeah.
Okay.
And how'd the Democratic Party do with that?
They fucking shit their pants because they thought that they would be accused of being weak on crime.
They they they got up from kneeling in their Kentacloths and ran as far away as humanly possible.
There's none of that here.
Like even that reaction back then, and and I will say, you know, Nick, now that we're talking about it, the the George Floyd protest, it wasn't just Floyd's murder and it wasn't just police brutality.
It was the pandemic, it was growing inequality, it was this growing fascist threat that wasn't being taken care of.
Even that, that was an organic movement.
And it feels like now the anger and the frustration and the desire for change that like fueled the George Floyd protest has now been bottled up, right?
It's now in a really easily holdable container of well, we'll just go out on a on on this Saturday and we'll say what we need to do, and then we'll go back home.
That's the exact opposite of what actual sort of organic protests do.
If I were an authoritarian, I would encourage this.
I would say, great, we're gonna make it into a party and they're not gonna be angry about it.
They're gonna feel like they're doing something, and I can continue going about my business and not have to worry about it, right?
That's if I I could I'm so glad you said that because that's where my mind keeps going.
Is I know the Republicans are like painting this as an extremist thing.
I know, and we're gonna talk about that video in just a second.
I know what they're saying about it, but each time this happens, wouldn't they be relieved that something else didn't happen?
That there was just one Saturday that they got a little bit of bad press, and then a couple of days later, nobody talked about anything.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now, again, the Democrats are so worried about you know the BLM protests, and there's all the looting and whatever, and then they're they mixing the flex offline crime.
Well, I I guess we we've asked this question all the time, which is um, is it a legitimate fear if you're a politician to be labeled as someone who is uh anti-police or you know, not strong on crime?
Is that that's a probably we could agree it's you know you don't want to be labeled that way, right?
Yeah.
But guess what?
They're going to label that no matter what you do.
Regardless.
Yeah.
So you might as well do something and not be afraid to wring your hands and not do anything about it because they're gonna accuse you of that anyway.
And that's that's what they don't understand.
You know what suddenly just occurred to me, and I haven't thought about this in a very long time.
When I was writing the Midnight Kingdom, and I was like researching like the like the feudal era.
There, there were all of these um festivals, Nick.
You know, it's like your crops are done, and like you go out and you get drunk and you eat a bunch of food, you listen to a bunch of music, you dance.
During those festivals, it was customary to make fun of the king, to make fun of the lords and the nobles, and like you had people dress up as them.
That's the you know, the whole gesture idea.
You had little plays where they got humiliated.
Like it lets you blow off steam while you didn't have recourse.
Right.
Right?
That way you weren't going to go topple the king.
You weren't going to go topple the noble or the baron.
You got the experience of what it would be like, and you got it out of your system at these festivals.
And I don't think this is intentional, right?
I don't think that like somebody was like researching this, but it has the same energy to it.
You go out, you you have, I assume you saw at your protest, people who were dressed up as Trump, or they had like big ugly caricatures of him, or they had signs that made fun of him and all of this stuff.
Like you go out and you get that sort of ceremonial humiliation of the power, but you're not actually stopping the power.
Yeah, it feels more like you're doing the pageantry of it.
Exactly, exactly.
And and uh that humiliation will come up a little later we're talking about certain politicians too, who seem to enjoy it.
Um they they certainly do.
And by the way, speaking of the the reaction to this, we we have to talk about the fact the president of the United States of America, Nick, shared an AI generated video of of himself, Donald Trump wearing a crown,
flying a fighter jet that said King Donald Trump on the side, flying over the No Kings protest across the United States of America and dropping excrement on American citizens as they protested him.
I I want to talk about the reaction to it in just a second, but I think it's important that we talk about the effect of seeing this, how unbecoming this is.
Because for me, um, this was disturbing on a level that I I don't think that I was prepared for.
Oh, I mean, before the disturbing part hit me, I realized that, you know, there is um is it reporting?
Is it whatever you want to call it that he shits his pants?
He doesn't have the hard time keeping himself, you know, continent.
And so whoever decided to show him basically not able to hold his bowels while he's flying over people.
Like that's my that's what I felt like.
That's the connection I was making, which turned into the uh it was a complete self-own that he wanted to post things like that, which I thought was ridiculous.
So that was my initial feeling, and it you know, it took away any of the other uh uh horrific things that he's trying to apply out of all this, aside from the fact that he's just a fucking troll who is beneath the office of the presidency.
Yeah, I I my mind didn't go there.
I you know, he from the very beginning, there has been a long tradition, Nick, and and there have been exceptions where presidents have basically decried large portions of the population.
You know, it was Nixon did this shit.
Um, you know, even LBJ did it, like would basically criticize the Americans that they didn't see themselves as the um leaders of.
You know, in some cases it's criminals or drug addicts or the poor or whatever it is.
But there's always been this tradition of you become president of the United States of America and you at least pretend to be the leader of the entirety of the country.
I think this was the evolution of hearing from him that he doesn't see Democrats as people, he sees them as, you know, evil enemies.
He he doesn't wish any of them well.
It's been the weird sort of um chorus that's happened, especially since uh the death of Charlie Kirk.
But watching him share that, Nick, we get glimpses into who Trump is and how he feels about us and how he feels about this country.
And I think this, first of all, this AI-generated slop is so disgusting and so stupid.
And it's obvious what it is and where it's coming from and what it's doing.
But seeing him express his disdain and hatred for people, I I think it was uh it was a really jarring thing for me.
Like there's something very disturbing about seeing this.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it it kind of plays into all the whole thing, even like what he's done to the Oval Office, even just the way he's decorating it.
It's just the notion of what he's done to the office itself and how anybody's supposed to, you know, replace him or come after him and and be in that and somehow regain that what he's supposed to be is going to be difficult.
Uh so uh, but you but I do, yeah, we we shouldn't overlook the uh hostility uh that he is portraying because it is, you know, short of you know, committing violence on people, do dropping excrement on people from a plane like that is is uh it's a very hostile, you know, thing that he's trying to say.
And it's not satire, it's not funny, you know.
I I don't I don't see how it's funny.
Not from you know, a president who who, you know, he seems like he'd be much happier doing a two drink minimum, you know, stand-up uh across these tiny little uh clubs across the country, which you know, it seems like he'd be more happy doing that.
And I I don't want to lose the the personal sort of thing about this, Nick.
Like I invite the people listening to this or watching this, think about what it was like to watch that video.
You know what I mean?
Like it literally, it's not just like it's disgusting.
Obviously, it's a disgusting thing.
But watching it, it it's uh it's October.
I've been watching these like, you know, horror movies and you know, sort of like ghost paranormal things.
There's a there's like this cord that gets struck in a human when you see something that is abhorrent.
It's disturbing, right?
And and there's stuff that doesn't feel right, it doesn't look right, it doesn't fit within the parameters of of the world as it's supposed to be.
This thing coming from the president of the United States of America, first of all, the AI generated aspect of it is so disturbing and so upsetting.
But having it be shared by the quote unquote leader of the free world, I want people to sit with that feeling.
Do not become numb to this.
Do not let this become normal.
This is so beyond the pale and so telling about what it is that we're dealing with and and the seriousness of the situation that we're in right now.
I I agree.
Well, let's hear what Mike Johnson said about it because they asked him about this.
And you know, a lot of times they'll cop out and just say, Oh, I didn't see it.
I don't know what you're talking about.
Check on it later, yada yada.
But he actually did uh directly respond to it.
So let's hear what he said.
Peter Johnson, you say that the Democrats had a hate America rally, but what does it say that the president of the United States openly can release a video of him pooping on the American people?
The president uses social media to make a point.
Um you can argue he's probably the most effective person who's ever used social media for that.
Um he is um he he is using uh satire to make a point.
He is not calling for the murder of his political opponents, and that's what these people are doing.
I mean, they're in one of these photos.
I think there's a picture of the president hanging in effigy by a noose on one of these.
I'm trying to now equate people who are marching, regular citizens who have signs to politicians who represent people and are leaders in the communities.
Who clearly have not advocated for anybody being murdered and hadn't been here for this whole time, but somehow that's evidence that the Democratic Party at writ large is some sort of you know terrorist organization.
But uh but we have it's parody, right?
That's what he thinks this is.
Um satire.
Uh I I we've already we've always known how bad the sense of humor is in the GOP, basically.
Uh, this one, this one's you know, breaking new ground.
Fuck these people.
I I I there there comes a certain point in this where you know I do this show with Daniel Moody on Wednesdays where you know, we sort of talk about the emotional impact, the psychological impact of living in this.
And like I I can't listen to this shit anymore without feeling what I feel.
Like, I can't just report on this.
I can't just say, oh, here's the reason why this like I'll give you the context all day.
I'll give you the analysis all day long.
But the initial reaction, like for that smug little fuck to stand there and do that and point at signs and completely pretend like any of this is okay, and like Trump sharing that video, like that that that isn't one of the most disturbing things that we've seen in years.
Like for these smug fucks to do this, it pisses me off and fills me with rage.
Like, like millions of Americans came together over the weekend because they're frustrated about what's going on.
We can talk about what it means and where it's going and all that stuff.
For them to just look directly in the camera, and he doesn't even flinch.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, Nick, think about that.
You as a person, me as a person, the people listening to go out and have to say that without a visible reaction.
Can you even imagine?
Can you even imagine standing at a lectern and having to be like, okay, how do we pivot away from the president sharing this disgusting video, showing his contempt?
How do we pivot away from that?
How do we stay to our talking points?
There's something wrong with these people.
There's something definitively wrong with them.
Right.
Well, I mean, there are people that will get off on humiliation.
Now, that is reserved for like the privacy of your own home.
And I have no problem, and I I totally get it.
But we can't have our our politicians in public in front of press humiliating themselves like this is what all that is.
And he did have a moment, like when they asked him about the Epstein files, and he keeps changing his story.
If you if you pay attention to it, it's it is humiliating is the only word I can come up with.
He does kind of glance and look at at one point before he thinks figures answers to have some semblance of, oh, I realize this is going to be a worthless answer.
But this one he doesn't have any problem getting into and and just sort of saying it's a satire and playing it off.
He's been on the news a lot more, getting a lot more of these sound bites the last few weeks.
Maybe by design, it must be something Going on in their in their uh Republican you know strategy sessions, but uh he he there's something going on where he is more than willing to do this and humiliate himself.
And I I don't know what's going on here, but it I I have to imagine that more and more people are seeing through this bullshit.
It's it's contempt and disdain.
I I mean it's it's the exact same thing.
And Nick, I saw it when I was in academia.
I've seen it out in the world.
It's the exact same thing when like a corporate spokesperson goes out and is like, Nestle is troubled by allegations of human trafficking and slave labor and making it's you know confectionary.
We're going to look in like that soul destroying thing.
The only way that that happens is if they look at you and they think that you're not worth it.
Like it's it's literal abuse and disdain and contempt.
And I I for one, this thing, Nick, I I can't look at this without having a reac uh an actual reaction anymore.
Like fuck these people and fuck that little smug fuck.
I I can't listen to it anymore.
Well, while we're talking about him, you know, we really haven't talked a lot or in depth about the shutdown itself and the government and since we're talking about Mike Johnson.
I had this idea or this this frightening thought.
What if the GOP realizes that, hey, we don't have to open the government again?
This is like kind of working.
Things are doing the way we plan, and we can control everything we want to control.
We can figure out how to get some money over there to the traffic controllers and the FBI, whoever we know.
We can figure that out.
I'm sure they can, right?
And we can just kind of exist this way without ever having it.
And then we'll never have to deal with the Democrats.
And then we'll never have to deal with elections, basically, right?
Because I don't have a sense that if you look deeply into the rules, if the government is not open, we probably can't have elections.
Have you have you considered it?
Oh, no, they they they'll figure out another way to get around to uh elections.
But I think you're right in terms of the fact that they're in no rush to do this.
Snap benefits are getting ready to run out.
Like it would delight them to keep you know social programs away from people.
I don't think they're in any rush whatsoever.
They haven't been having conversations, they haven't met with the Democrats, they haven't reached across the aisle in any way, shape, or form.
Like, I think that's true.
I think that we are seeing the the eradication of the government structure in this country.
And I don't think that means the Democrats should just, you know, and and it's a win-win for them.
They keep it shut, they destroy all these things.
The Democrats cave, they get what they want there, and they'll just do it again later.
And and I think that's right.
I I don't I don't think that the normal rules apply anymore.
I think that's the larger issue here.
Is it's not the same quote unquote game that it always was.
It's changed.
Right.
And I what they're proving was, you know, there used to be this thing, oh, we can't let the government shut down.
It'll be catastrophe.
The buildings will collapse.
20 days into this, the longest we've ever had, as far as I know, you know, you can shrug and be like, uh the things kind of are functioning the way they've always functioned.
You know, I know people aren't, you know, there's a paycheck uh delay.
But again, um I just the quickest of quick uh Google searches indicates that you could still have elections because they're run by the local side of things, but there are a lot of things in terms of oversight that the federal government does uh apply to these to make sure that they're fair.
So now you can start to realize where the government is shut down, suddenly these uh these uh ballots are not necessarily being over have any oversight at all and could be manipulated.
So uh it's really really concerning, especially because we realize how helpful the government can be, not just to people who are in need, but to the economy itself, how many jobs it does create, right?
And they I think that's what Doge found out in a horrifically inefficient way was that all a lot of those jobs they try to get rid of were actually essential and and and made the government work and made the country work better.
Yeah, and again, I think my prediction when we talked about it was in November or December was when they were going to start kicking in their like anti-midterm election strategy in order to try and dismantle it.
I think we're still on track for that.
Um, I don't think they're in a hurry.
I I don't think that they want to bring the government back.
Speaking of incompetence and grossness, Nick, we had talked last week very, very briefly about there in your state that uh on Saturday during the protest that the military was going to shoot live artillery Over, I believe it's uh Interstate Five.
Yep.
Over Interstate Five, you and I talked about this in the battle between the government and Gavin Newsom of saying that he was going to shut down that interstate in order to protect people.
Guess what, Nick?
A shell shot by the United States military over Interstate Five.
It exploded over the highway.
And it actually actually hurt a vehicle that was involved.
I believe it was in Vance's group.
God knows what would have happened if this stretch of highway wasn't closed down.
We could have very well saw a lot of lives either ended or completely changed with people being maimed by this.
I I have my thoughts on this.
This took place in your state.
We saw this coming a mile away.
And yet here we are.
They they don't care.
And even the reaction uh from the right of this is even worse because you know, a two-piece, a two-inch piece of metal from you know, a thousand feet in the air coming down, and let's say you were driving 65, 70 miles an hour, that would do serious damage to your car, a windshield, all sorts of things.
Or if you happen to be walking by and it didn't hit the the freeway, uh, which is which is one of the main arteries in California itself, and the main way to get between like LA and San Diego, for instance.
So it would, you know, it's you know what it is.
It's like, and and to bring Doge back again, like there were certain things that they were dealing with that you can simply not make a mistake with, like Ebola virus preparation or you know, whatever, like and they got rid of that.
You there's just no margin for error or anything like that.
It can never be that way in the government with that kind of stuff.
This is even more pressing in the kind of thing there simply could never be any kind of mistake like they did here.
And they're lucky that Newsom thought about this a little bit more carefully and realized we should shut this down out of abundance of caution.
And sit, you know, who knows what happened and how they saved the lives, but certainly it just shows how cavalier this uh government is with rules and and safety.
Uh, I think that's exactly what it shows.
There is no thought whatsoever about anything that they do and how it affects people's lives, at least not in a positive way, right?
Everything is either about neutral, we're going to get rich off of this.
Who cares who it hurts?
Or we want to hurt people, right?
Those are the two modes that they they work in.
And there's a word for that, Nick.
It's it's sociopathy.
Like it there, there was no need to do this.
There was that like that's the thing that really, you know, really grinds my gears.
I don't even know whether what other phrase to use.
There was no reason to do this.
It was just another sort of exercise of power and state might that didn't really show anything.
It didn't impress anybody or whatever.
They just wanted to make the big big guns go boom.
That's it.
And it could have killed multiple people.
Yeah, I mean, it literally, and you know, we we talked a little bit earlier and it happened again.
We don't even know how many like innocent Fisher people have been killed outside of Venezuela.
We we don't have a clue.
They they just really like making boats go boom.
That's it.
And so in all of this, what we're dealing with, it's it's it's really hard to wrap your head around because the mind reels from this.
This is not how people are supposed to behave.
This is not how you're supposed to expect society to work.
We have the most incompetent and least thoughtful people imaginable in charge.
And the fact is we keep missing mass tragedy by by a hair.
You know what I mean?
Like whether it's what's going on with air traffic controllers and what's going on with our transportation system, or you know, we uh and we don't miss tragedy all the time.
There's one shooting after another, there's one piece of violence after another, people are being disappeared.
We man, it's like walking through a rainstorm and not getting wet.
You're gonna get wet.
You know, I mean, you might don't you might dodge something every now and then.
There's going to be shit that happens because these people operate the way they do.
There's no other way to put it.
And the worst part about it is I was trying to study the map about where Camp Hendlin is and where they were firing from.
And because in theory, what they're trying to do is intimidate, have a big show.
People, it was a in a remote part, like as you're driving through between like you know, LA and San Diego.
So nobody really probably even saw this display.
It you know what I mean?
There was no reason to do it.
It wasn't any kind of, you know, whatever they intended it to be.
Um, and yet I I I was also a little bit surprised that perhaps somebody uh at that base wouldn't have refused to do this, right?
That would have been a little bit of an interesting thing there, too.
If you found somebody in the military who's like, yeah, we're not gonna, this is a waste, and when it's potential for injury is high, we're not gonna do it.
But it tells you something that they can always find, I guess, someone uh on a one of those bases to to follow through and do, no matter what the uh the potential for injury is.
Well, and I think that's also part of this as well.
It's like there's you know, Nick, whether it's like organized crime or even a secret society, one of the ways that they sort of like develop themselves into their final form is they put a lot of people through a lot of things to see who they are and what they're willing to do.
We're sort of in this winnowing out phase where the administration and the people involved are figuring out who will go along with whatever order.
It doesn't matter how stupid it is, it doesn't matter how dangerous it is, it doesn't matter how destructive it is.
Who is going to go ahead and do the thing that is being asked of them?
It doesn't matter how how humiliated they're gonna be by carrying these things out.
Exactly.
And I think I think that's one of the it again, it's hard to wrap your head around it because this isn't the way anything's supposed to work.
And and you start to realize that like they are identifying the people who are willing to carry out some of the worst violence and abuse you could ever imagine.
I mean, that's what's happening with ice.
And as a matter of fact, Nick, I've sort of talked about this a little bit, and I didn't want to be right about it.
It really does seem like the future unemployment plan of the United States of America is for the people who are going to be displaced in the labor force, whether it's an economic downturn or AI taking over jobs, is to put those people in ice, to find the people who are willing to go out and brutalize other Americans or immigrants, figuring, weeding out the ones who would say no, which is what's going on in our military.
What's going on with the Department of Justice?
People who aren't willing to go out and perp walk James Comey, people who aren't willing to fire a shell over, you know, interstate five, people who aren't willing to go into cities and actually harass and brutalize their fellow citizens.
They're figuring out who is going to be part of the team when the next gear kicks in.
Yeah.
I mean, and they're figuring that out too with uh, you know, blowing up boats in the Caribbean.
Uh and we just found out, and as was completely predictable, that you know, this was a Colombian ship with somebody who was a Colombian national who was a fisherman who survived.
Eventually, someone's gonna survive one of these things.
And um, it turns out that this was nothing to do with drugs.
And it just continues to show what we had already thought was there's no evidence of any of this stuff.
And, you know, the weird thing about Venezuela, when you dig into the reporting as well, is that they've targeted Venezuela, not because they're not a major player on the drug trade thing, not Colombia is actually, but not Venezuela.
So you have to wonder like what what is going on here?
Why are they doing this, other than to try and provoke them to attack uh to respond so then they can have a coup, right?
They want to attack Venezuela and replace it, uh the dictator there, Maduro.
Um, but at the at the cost of like some very innocent people just happen to be out on the on the uh on the water when they blow them up.
Again, you know, before we finish this up, Nick, it's the through thread basically of this episode.
Who thinks in their mind it's okay to just randomly destroy, you know, a boat and kill, you know, people without knowing what's going on.
Like they they think that they're you know drug runners.
That's what they think.
That's how they, you know, sort of square the circle for themselves.
But how do you order that?
You know, you don't know.
These are just people with families.
Like and they're just people who went out to fish, and the next thing you know, the might of the United States military is raining down on them.
And what they're doing to Venezuelans, what they're doing to immigrants here in the United States of America, what we've done around the world, whether it was in Gaza or whether it was, you know, basically every country in the world during the the war on terror.
It shows you what they're willing to do.
And they're willing to do that to anybody.
It really doesn't matter who it is.
It just starts with those people who are more vulnerable and it moves inwards.
And plus, it's illegal.
It is illegal.
It's illegal.
No, there's no interpretation necessary because anybody on a ship like that, to be able to be attacked like we're doing, has to be an imminent threat to the United States.
And there is no imminent threat when they're that far away on a boat, unclear what they're going, where they're going.
And a lot of people are trying to say, I'm no fisherman, I'm no expert on boats, but they're saying that a lot of these boats would never make it anywhere near the United States from that distance, having to go through open waters like that.
So this is a real problem where you know he was granted absolute immunity.
Everyone is now uh, you know, drafting behind him underneath this because A, he'll he will not be prosecuted saying it was the official duties of the president, and then he'll just either he'll just pardon anybody underneath that who is in implicated.
And so as a result, no one's even gonna have oversight anymore.
Um, and that is the biggest problem.
And that's what the Democrats getting back to that would need to be figuring out and pitching it or creating policy around is how to have a much more independent department of justice.
Yeah, much more independent uh, you know, areas that have oversight over the government uh over the executive branch.
And that's just the start.
There's so much more to do, which is why I look at something like the protests and say, please come together for something.
All right, Nick, that's gonna do it for this episode of the Muck Creek Podcast.
We'll be back with the weekender edition on Friday.
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