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It’s a Halloween Weekender so co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman start with candy talk, then dive into the Pentagon’s plan for a 23,500-troop National Guard “reaction force” slated to spin up Jan 1 and be fully operational by Apr 1, and what that signals about ballot boxes, civil unrest, and creeping authoritarianism. They hit Trump’s chest-thumping about reviving nuclear testing, the tech-military money pipeline, and why eugenics-flavored rhetoric keeps popping up. Then it’s SNAP benefits triage, emergency funds that won’t cover the full need, and the cruelty baked into the politics. For dessert, Nick’s West Wing binge meets Jared’s analog-horror picks, plus a quick Nightmare on Elm Street rewatch pitch.
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It's the weekender edition of the Muckrake Podcast.
I'm Jerry G. Sexton wishing a happy, spooky day to all the ghouls out there here with my friend Nick Halseman.
How you doing, buddy?
I'm good.
I'm good.
I always like Halloween, believe it or not.
I love Halloween.
Yeah.
I mean, but do you like it because it's a scary thing?
I think that's what you respond to, right?
Well, I mean, I like the fall.
I like the vibes.
I also, I'm going to put this out there because it's the weekender edition.
The United States of America suffers from a deep, deep denial and repression when it comes to the idea of death and mortality.
We would really benefit more from like a day of the dead like other cultures have.
And I think Halloween is the closest that we get to it.
I think we would benefit from that.
Sure.
But, you know, as is the case when we mix capitalism with anything, right?
It's become bastardized.
It doesn't mean anything other than a chance to make.
Oh my God, you just made me think about what an American Day of the Dead would be.
That might be rough now that we're talking about it.
Now that we're talking about it.
Also, by the way, we're recording this on Thursday, October 30th.
Nick, I got a little confession.
I'm a Halloween guy.
I love Halloween.
I get a ton of kids that come to the house.
I'm so excited about it.
Thursday, the day before Halloween, I still haven't bought the candy yet.
Oh, I haven't either.
Crap.
Yeah, we got to buy the candy.
Well, you're going to already, if I ask, you're going to just criticize me, I'm sure, but your candy, what's your go-to candy?
I mean, listen, I make sure that all the fan favorites are there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But it's not even above all else.
Oh, I mean, listen, I'm handing out Kit Hats.
I'm handing out Reese's cups, such old muckrake heads, old muckrakers know that Nick Halselman had never had a Reese's cup before it was before he was made to for this show.
Yeah.
Have you had another one since?
Are you going to have another one?
I have not had another one since.
No.
But would you revisit it maybe tomorrow?
See, see how you're feeling?
No, I guess since I have to go to the store anyway to get some of that stuff, maybe I'll throw one in there and then I can have one.
Give it another shot.
Let's see if you've developed the palate.
Yeah.
Unfortunately, we don't have a ton of trigger tears that come to our house.
Perhaps it's because of the clowns, the fear of clowns walking around, which is, that's a very real fear, but most people have, right?
It is.
Yeah.
It is.
Well, I hope you have some clowns walking around.
It's your scary thing.
Oh, don't like it.
Creepy, creepy Halloween.
Anyway, everybody, I hope you're having a wonderful Halloween.
We have a full show today.
We have a ton of stuff.
I have a wild feeling that we're going to get into the weeds on a couple of these things.
A reminder, head over to patreon.com slash my craig podcast, become a patron, support the show.
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You get the full episode.
You also gain access to things like live shows, which Nick and I are thinking maybe next week.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't have it.
Do you have anything going on Thursday?
Well, Thursday, I'm on a plane late at night, but or in the afternoon.
In the afternoon.
Okay.
Well, we're going to work this thing out.
Yeah.
We're going to kick the tires and light the fires.
But anyway, that's patreon.com slash my craig podcast.
That was not the best live question I've ever asked.
I'm sorry, I had to answer truthfully, unfortunately.
You got to answer truthfully.
All right, we're going to figure this shit out.
Speaking of, I don't know what the segue is here, figuring shit out.
We had reported, I want to say it was maybe a month ago, month and a half ago, that the Pentagon was considering what they called a reactionary force.
Well, those plans have come into fruition.
It has now been reported that the Pentagon is putting together a force of about 23,500 National Guard troops that will be ready for instant deployment anywhere around the United States of America.
That training is about to get underway.
Estimates are that they will be ready for deployment for emergency starting on January 1st and fully operational by April 1st.
Nick, the reason we're starting the show with this is, you know, sometimes there are signals and you can kind of say, hey, I kind of see where things are going.
This for me is a blinking red light.
Exactly what this administration is planning to put into action, what they're planning to do, where they're planning to take us.
This reactionary force, and again, 23,500 troops that are ready at a moment's notice to go anywhere around the country to deal with quote unquote unrest.
This for me is one of those major milestone markers in terms of authoritarian takeover.
Well, Jared, you're familiar with the history of the United States, right?
I mean, I dabble.
So there's usually a reason why we have civil unrest, right?
And usually there's a focus of the anger, we'll have to say, right, that causes the unrest.
So what is that focus usually on in the history of our country?
I mean, usually that has to do with economic collapse.
That has to do with breakdowns and systems.
It has to do with war, you name it.
Yeah.
And they usually want to point the finger at, you know, who's the one who's usually the object of their ire when they're marching.
Usually it's the people in charge.
Yeah.
And so the people in charge now want to take control, like you described, as an authoritarian.
And the way to do that is they need civil unrest so that they can take control.
And if there isn't, if they're the ones that are needed to cause the civil unrest, you can imagine meetings in the White House or wherever they're meeting thinking we have to actually cause the unrest so we can have the unrest and then we can crack down on the unrest and then take control over the government and the ballot boxes and everything else.
That's a kind of scary thing that I don't know if other administrations had ever wrapped their head around.
Yeah, I mean, the thing now, and this is where the rubber meets the road, Nick.
We've been reporting on this stuff for a while.
We talk a lot about what signals are pointing to.
Most of the time, they end up being what we're pointing to because these fuckers are pretty transparent.
I have to say, on one hand, I look at the calendar and I say, oh, they're having a reaction force that is ready in 2026, which for me is really interesting, considering they've already telegraphed that they have no interest in free and fair elections.
In years past, they've already screwed around with past elections before they were able to gain the power that they have now.
That worries me.
But the other thing that comes from this, Nick, if you start putting the dots together, one, you're having troops that are being put into cities that has its own reactionary cultural revolution, and also normalizing authoritarian overreach and oppression.
But on top of that, there is absolutely no way that this economy that these assholes have now created and that they are more or less demolishing anything that used to work, there is no way that there isn't going to be some lowered standard of living if, and that's best case scenario at this point.
So to look at this on paper, there are three, four, five reasons why this would be necessary.
But you don't create a reactionary force if you don't expect a reaction, period.
Right.
Exactly.
Which is fascinating, right?
It's not the reactionary force in theory would be the unrest happens.
We now need to somehow figure out how to deal with this.
They are creating the reactionary force.
It's not reaction.
It's preactionary.
We have to have a new name for this because that's not what this is.
Someone would call it a pro-actionary force.
Proactionary force, exactly, which is like kind of the whole tale right there.
And we had seen Hegseth get asked about this last week.
Clearly, whoever asked that question knew about this report that was coming out that was verified already.
And he completely, you know, now that we understand how they answer these things and we can kind of pontificate about whether we think we know the answer based on the non-answer we get, well, it was obvious then that he knew exactly what they were talking about, that it was in the works, and that he just sort of punted the darn thing.
And which is why when we expect them to say, no, of course we don't have any reactionary force, you know, whatever.
Short of that, we know that that pretty much confirms what they were asking.
So it is really concerning.
I think the biggest concern right now is that, you know, the guard against politicians, you know, creating the protests or creating the unrest that they want to quell is the ballot box, right?
At some point, if you're going to create that much unrest and people get that upset about it, like you're going to lose in the ballot.
So if they're going to use these responses in an election year, it's no mistaking when the timing of this is all happening.
Again, it just feels to me like they're going to then surround places that are have the area where the ballot is taking place and either they could seize the ballots, right?
And once that happens and the chain of custody is broken in terms of who has those ballots themselves, then you'll never know what the result was.
There is a thing that gets mistaken throughout all of this.
I get asked questions all the time, and people are like, what is Pete Hegseth, Pete Hegseth thinking here?
And the answer is, he's not thinking anything.
And I want to disabuse people of those notions that Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth are coming up with these things and putting pen to paper and doing whatever.
And that opens up the possibility, Nick, that these types of things, they're multifaceted, right?
So like when it comes to like either ICE or federal troops going into cities, people ask, oh, is this intimidation?
Yes.
Is this about getting immigrants?
Yes.
Is it about, you know, carrying out a sort of asymmetrical, you know, urban versus rural civil war type situation?
Yes.
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