Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman dive into the new Epstein email tranche, from Trump’s scramble to sic “his” DOJ on Clinton and Summers to the media’s polite amnesia about who looked the other way. They connect the dots on fixers, blackmail, and a culture of impunity, then pivot to what the fallout means for MAGA’s coalition and why shame no longer moves the needle. Plus, Marjorie Taylor Greene’s sudden “civility” turn, Jamie Raskin’s ridiculous big-tent pitch, and Ted Cruz telegraphing a 2028 run.
Support the show by signing up to our Patreon and get access to the full Weekender episode each Friday as well as special Live Shows and access to our community discord: http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast
The Epstein Tranche Blows Open
02:00 – 06:00
Why This Story Has Real Legs
06:00 – 12:30
Power Protects Power
12:30 – 18:45
MTG’s Sudden Pivot
18:45 – 26:30
Cruz 2028 and the Post-Trump GOP
26:30 – End
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The boys, the boys, everyone, they're back in town.
Nick Hausman, how are you doing, buddy?
I'm good.
I'm good.
I'm feeling good.
I am just trying to stay a little bit warm in the frigid climate of Los Angeles.
We've reached that point in the season where Los Angeles is cold.
Let me get 65.
A high of 64.
It's 63 right now, though.
Cats and dogs, Jared.
Cats and dogs.
Wait, moisture from the heavens?
Yeah.
And, you know, it's not supposed to rain in Southern California as the song is told.
As the song tells us.
Well, I hope that you stay warm, my friend.
And I hope that everybody out there is staying warm and safe.
We got to get into all kinds of things.
I'm so glad to be back and not recording in a car.
That is nice.
Unfortunately, we have a lot of things to discuss when it comes to fascism and corruption in modern America.
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And by the way, big ups to Nick Houseman, my partner, for doing the weekender last week with a tremendous interview.
Tremendous interview.
Yeah, I've gotten some good feedback so far of John Kavanaugh, who is running for Congress in Nebraska, which is a key state.
I think you probably agree that it's a place where there's a burgeoning movement, I think, even.
There's stuff that can be done in states like Nebraska, but big ups for that.
Patreon.com slash Mutt Craigpodcast.
Also, by the way, special shows, free shows, the community, all that good stuff.
We need your support now more than ever.
Nick, we talked for a few minutes on Thursday for the weekender.
That was when the tranche of Jeffrey Epstein emails were released by the Oversight Committee.
Since then, it's been wild and woolly.
All kinds of things have been happening, but we start with Donald Trump panicking and telling his Department of Justice, and I say that with intention, his Department of Justice to investigate Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, other Democrats, other liberal-leaning institutions related to Epstein.
The DOJ has since referred the matter to a judge in Manhattan.
Meanwhile, he has screamed that he wants the Epstein files released.
He's told Congress to vote for it.
Nick, last time I checked, a vote is not necessary.
He could simply make that happen as rumors continue to swirl that all mentions of him and other Republicans will be redacted.
When we talked on Thursday night, Nick, we talked about how massive of a thing this deal was.
It feels like it is only gaining momentum.
There are a lot of questions about where this is going.
But the moment that I saw that he was trying to sick the DOJ on Clinton and Summers and other liberal leaning people and institutions, it felt like for me, like the panic was growing.
I wonder what your opinion is on this.
And I've got other insights when it comes to these guys and who he's going after, but I wondered what your reaction was.
Sure.
I mean, you know, I can picture the image of, you know, when the zombies are being dragged back down into the ground, into the cemetery, and they're just reaching for anything and anybody else they could grab and bring with them on the way down.
And that's sort of what this feels like to some degree.
So, you know, the only problem we have with all of this is that, yes, they could have easily scrubbed all of this.
And so there won't be anything.
So why are they acting this way if they have done that?
Right.
That's the one thing that's interesting to me because I'm convinced that whatever was in there, and don't forget, Bondi had already been on record telling the press that she had video.
Now, if they lose the video now or do the um, what did they have with the secretary was able to reach across her desk and press erase while her foot's on the thing?
You know, I'm sorry, this is a old poll, but uh, what was Nixon's secretary's name?
Remember?
Oh, man, tough ask today.
Yeah, I know that was tough.
Anyway, the 18 minutes that were missing from the from the tapes in the Nixon White House were the result of somebody having to be so flexible, like plastic man, to be able to press the both buttons at the same time to erase this.
So that would have to happen again this time if they're going to pretend that like all of a sudden all those videos are gone and nothing related to Trump is in any of these things.
So either way, it feels like, yes, it will continue to get worse, as we've already seen, because even these emails and the circumstantial evidence that we're getting out of this is pretty damning.
I look at this and, you know, this is, man, I, you know, I was trying to remember this yesterday.
I was on the road for a little while.
This is what?
Maybe the fourth or fifth major Epstein reveal during this administration.
Is that about right?
Yeah, absolutely.
And each one of them feels like it starts to gain more and more momentum and heft.
And I think there's a couple of reasons for that, Nick.
That's because there's not just smoke here.
There's fire.
And one of the reasons why this like gains so much momentum is because Donald Trump appears to be caught dead to rights in this.
And the story continues to grow and it continues to ripple out.
It's like being on like a frozen lake and you see like a crack start and then you see another crack start.
And there's not a lot that you can do to keep the ice from falling in, right?
At this point, it's literally desperation.
And there is a point with these types of stories that they reach terminal velocity, right?
Where all of a sudden it's like you cannot put, you know, the snake back into the peanut brittle can.
It gets out.
And in this matter, it feels like they kind of have a choice here.
Yeah, they can go after Clinton.
And by the way, I'm sure you are with me on this.
We've said this publicly multiple times.
If Bill Clinton is guilty of doing these things, take it easy, man.
You deserve to go to prison and you deserve everything that happens to you.
And we'll get to Larry Summers in a second.
And I would love to see that guy behind bars.
And every other one of these people, whether it's an academic or a scientist or a university person or a finance person, if you were involved in this disgusting shit, best of luck.
I hope you get somewhere where maybe like Delaine Maxwell, you can get a puppy because you deserve to be behind bars.
So, okay, if he wants to go after Clinton, he wants to go after all these people.
I personally, I think if Clinton actually does get investigated for this, there's going to be an awful lot of talk and discovery that's going to involve Donald Trump.
So that's not really a strategy that's going to work.
Let's say he catches them dead to rights and they get held responsible.
This story doesn't go away.
It only develops from there.
This is a frantic, desperate attempt to change the subject and focus of this, which, by the way, we saw back in 2016 when the Access Hollywood video came out and he brought all the accusers of Bill Clinton to the debate.
And I don't know that that necessarily worked, except for our media is absolutely putrid.
And maybe that changed the subject.
I'm not sure.
I don't see how this thing can be put back into the bottle.
So then you have a question.
Is Trump going to beat this or outlast it or maybe die before it comes to a head?
I don't know, maybe, but there's no ability at this point to convince the vast majority of the American population that Donald Trump didn't commit these crimes and he isn't implicated in it.
So you have to look at this as a desperate move, but I don't know what good the move can do at this point.
Fair enough.
I do think that the interesting part about this is that by trying to get an investigation going again, which they'd already closed, this is going to be the cover they're going to need to not be able to release the files saying that's an ongoing investigation, right?
Now, Trump is sort of heading that off early by saying that he wants them released, but then it also lets him say, well, what do you want?
Pam Bondi said we can't release them.
We can't release him.
But the other thing, and by the way, there's no need to wait till tomorrow for this vote.
And then the Senate needs to approve the vote to pass this law.
Donald Trump can release these anytime he wants.
Wow.
Now, he can also veto that bill when it becomes potential for law, which is another one of those things where he might just do and hope people forget.
And it's a real interesting dilemma.
And you're right.
Nothing really puts this thing to bed.
And clearly, of all the things that he deserves to be prosecuted for, like, this is the one that has more legs than anyone else by far and continues to come back like a zombie.
And, you know, I even asked John Kavanaugh in my interview last week about it because he's in the midst of talking to a lot of people who are MAGA about the effect this might have.
Will this even do anything to people who are, you know, die-hard supporters?
And I think he felt like on the margins, yeah, people should go back to the interview, but on the margins, which is again, he lives in the margins, right?
We're talking about thousands of votes here and there change everything.
And, but wait a minute, shit.
I'm talking about him getting votes.
Well, and by the way, we'll talk at some point about the 2028 election today, unfortunately, because one of our reoccurring despised characters, you know, is reappearing in a little bit.
But what you're saying at this point, it is true because this is the issue that the MAGA coalition is so contradictory.
And I've tried to explain this to people who want to believe it's one homogenized group.
Nick, the QAnon conspiracy theory, and I'm writing an article on this for my sub stack right now.
The QAnon group got it right to an extent because that's where conspiracies start.
They start with a nugget of truth and then they move away.
Go on.
Is there a group of powerful people in this country who engage in not just crimes, but the abuse and exploitation of young people?
Yes, there are.
And we've seen signs of this in the past.
They have it backward because these people didn't get into power in order to do these things.
They got into power so they feel like they can do these things.
So what happens with that is that you have millions of Donald Trump supporters that got behind him because they were absolutely cooked and marinated and fried in conspiracy theories about a cabal of abusers.
And when this stuff starts to come up, Nick, they are primed.
Their antenna are absolutely scanning the airwaves constantly for any type of proof.
It doesn't matter that Fox News isn't talking about this.
Guess what?
Those people don't watch Fox News.
Those people are online.
And do you know what drives clicks at this point?
It's anybody who can show that they're a quote unquote independent thinker.
And they're like, hey, I think there's something going on with this Donald Trump shit.
That's why the Nick Fuentes of the world are getting ahead.
That's why the Tucker Carlsons of the world are getting ahead.
What we're talking about is that it's not just at the fringes.
There is a massive amount of cognitive dissonance fighting right now that's taking place within MAGA.
And it doesn't help that the guy at the head of the personality cult.
And by the way, I use the word cult intentionally because what is it you always see in every documentary or book about a cult?
At some point or another, the cult leader gets accused of abusing people and exploiting people.
And what happens?
Slivers of the cult start going away, right?
It always reaches that sort of a mass.
This story is not going away.
And the reason it's not going away is because there is fire where this smoke is.
And there's no ability whatsoever to snuff it out because people have been primed to look for this stuff.
Right.
Well, the cult also usually ends up where people just die.
They just die for that.
That's right.
You know, that's the other part of it.
So either you get away or you're dead.
And that definitely looks like we're on that trajectory now.
You can recognize this.
I wanted to tap into what you mentioned about like this cabal of wealthy people because it directly relates to Epstein, who is a part of a big group of people in this world that get to get away, like for the most part, with anything they want to do because they're wealthy.
And I just read this really interesting article in the jacobin.com about how he was in the wealth management business, basically.
And this is how he was able to built Les Wexner out of his entire fortune to be able to do whatever he wanted to do.
I think Les was also a client on both ends.
But he would pretend, Epstein would pretend to be able to protect wealthy clients' money from taxes, right?
So it's basically a tax evasion business, but that was what was funding his ability to traffic in young girls.
Because remember, you need to have a lot of money to be able to do this.
Because if you're, let's say, a young teenage girl who has not been around wealth, one of the ways you're going to convince them to be part of this thing is they walk into this house of immense wealth, right?
You have to be able to show this and it legitimizes you in some other extra way that will help convince these girls.
And so, or, you know, put them in situations where they can traffic them.
So all of this thing is tied together with all the entire way that capitalism works.
It's 100%.
And I will say, it's not just like the display of wealth.
It's the understanding, and it's a correct understanding that if you get to that level of power, and to borrow a phrase from Donald Trump and the Access Hollywood thing, they let you do it, right?
And it's not that they let you do it.
It's that if you reach a certain point of wealth or power in this country, it is intuitively and completely understood that you can get away with almost anything that you want to get away with.
And so as a result, you start to intimidate people and you basically terrorize them.
And that isn't just what Epstein did.
That's what Donald Trump has done his entire career.
That's what the wealthy and the powerful have always done.
And I'm glad you brought this up because that's what's happening in the story, Nick.
And again, I'm trying to write this article about it right now.
And I'll go ahead and try and work it out in public because I'm talking about it.
It's the salaciousness of the Epstein thing is why people can't let it go, right?
It's how big and sordid and disgusting and wretched it is, right?
But the true story and the reason why we're in the crisis we're in, and it goes hand in hand, is because this country has become so corrupted and the institutions of power and influence have become so corrupted that this type of shit is what happens.
There's a reason why, if you look back on the Roman Empire, the leadership of that time period were decadent and depraved.
And it's because when there isn't a balance of things, when tens of trillions of dollars have been redistributed from the working and middle classes, and you start to create this oligarchical class that gets away with everything.
They can't lose.
They can't be prosecuted.
They can't lose elections.
Whoever wins, they're in charge and things continue to be rigged for them.
there becomes this sense of no consequences whatsoever.
And that sense of no consequences, you start to look for places where you can push it, right?
Where you can try and do more and more things.
And you brought up Epstein and the tax evasion.
He wasn't even good at this shit.
Like he was given money under the auspices of tax evasion and finance protection.
In fact, the system was so rigged that you didn't even need an Epstein.
You could use that as cover to give Epstein money, hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars in order to fund this thing.
And the whole point here, and I just want to bring something up very quickly while we're on it.
Larry Summers, who isn't getting a lot of attention on this, is the perfect avatar for this.
And for those who don't know, Larry Summers is an absolutely disgraced economist who is still advising the Democratic Party.
He is the main economic figure within the Democratic Party.
He's in these emails.
The Harvard Crimson revealed what was actually happening, asking Epstein for advice on how to go after a mentee romantically while Epstein is getting ready to die in prison.
And Larry Summers has failed time and time again.
Neoliberal economists like Larry Summers have failed over and over again.
They're wrong about everything.
And yet they continue ending up in these administrations and these roles.
And so as a result, if you just continue doing this, and Donald Trump is another perfect avatar of this, one of the worst businessmen America has ever seen.
And yet he continued to get richer and richer and richer and more bulletproof and eventually the president of the United States of America.
Things have been so rigged that they have had, they've become so corrupted that things like this are bound to happen.
And so this is actually a symptom of the larger issue in this country.
It's not even just about Epstein or Trump or any of these people.
It is indicative of a larger cultural, political, economic, and social rot.
And that also touches a little bit upon the Trump rot in the sense that no one is ever out of his circle.
You know, and we've seen this before.
We saw with, oh my goodness, who was his mana for it?
You know, he was fired, but then, you know, he was back in the circle pretty quickly after that.
And Lewandowski, you know, people kind of come and go, Roger Stone.
And it kind of feels like there is indications in these emails that Epstein was in contact with Trump at some point way after he said he had a following out and then kicked him out of his club or refused to let him ask his club and all that stuff.
So this very well could be part of that as well, where this is that what they're afraid of is they're going to realize that they started it up again or something where they had connections and clearly Trump did not realize or did not hold whatever Epstein was guilty of against him, basically.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, the emails show that Donald Trump spent Thanksgiving with Epstein after he was elected.
I mean, it does not end.
And it really, you know, I don't know if you saw this, Nick.
Did you see this article in the New York Times that was like the Epstein emails reveal a New York of the past?
Oh, go ahead.
And it was basically talking about the clubby atmosphere of New York in which all the wealthy and powerful people were always rubbing elbows and getting together at parties and doing all this stuff.
And by the way, that article in the framing was disgusting, but it is also, it tells us something, which is that is a world in which these people, they see themselves as different from us.
They see themselves as built from something different, that they deserve everything that they have.
Many of them came from wealthy backgrounds anyway, right?
And they were given everything.
They were given all the nepotistic sort of head starts and advantages, which it isn't just at the oligarchical level.
It goes all the way down to the middle class level at this point, but that's a different conversation.
They screw each other.
They ruin each other.
They have feuds.
They have fights.
They fight it out in the tabloids.
All of this stuff.
And they're still meeting and spending time with each other and doing things and going up to, oh, what's the place?
The beach resort.
Yeah, Long Island.
Long Island.
No, like Martha's Vineyard.
Martha's Vineyard.
Where, you know, they're still trafficking in the same circles because they see their game as a game within a game.
There's the larger political and social and economic game, but then there's this group of people that are always connected and they're always doing these things.
And there's a reason why, and people don't talk about it very much.
Who is at Trump's wedding to Melania?
Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton.
There are pictures of them talking to each other and laughing.
And then they have this big giant thing.
And what does that say to us, Nick?
It says something which we've been avoiding for a very long time that you and I have talked about.
It's professional wrestling.
You go out in the ring, you fight each other, you go back behind the curtain and you're sharing a beer.
And what does that say to you and me and the people listening here?
It is a game that is being played outside of us.
We have no control over it.
We have no ability to make choices.
All of the choices are all heading in the exact same direction.
And what this reveals and what you brought up, I think, very, very well, is that these people, they can have feuds, they can have falling outs or whatever.
They're always on the same side because there is class solidarity and they are part of a different group of people.
And they have rigged things so much that they can have their petty feuds and their fights and their falling outs.
But what really matters is they maintain power, they maintain wealth.
And you and I and all the people listening to this are the people who suffer.
For sure.
But we do now get a chance to figure out whether this new feud between Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene is a, what are the two people?
What are the two roles you play in the wrestling?
You are a heel in a face.
Heel in a face.
We got to figure out which ones the heel in space or if it really is real, what's going on.
Well, and I'm glad, by the way, best in the business, what a wonderful segue.
Because we have to talk about this because in the middle of the fallout from the Epstein emails being released, we have had a complete eruption in this like sort of simmering feud between Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Green.
Marjorie Taylor Greene now, for the past month or so, since the government shutdown started, has started making this sort of weird turn.
She's on CNN more than Wolf Blitzer.
Right.
So everyone's just like, what's Marjorie Taylor Greene up to?
Oh my God, I can't believe I'm in league with her.
Trump goes after her, takes away his support, says he's going to primarily, all of this stuff.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, meanwhile, goes on State of the Union this weekend.
And Nick, here is the representative from Georgia.
You posted on X that President Trump is, with his comments, fueling a, quote, hotbed of threats against you.
Obviously, any threats to your safety are completely unacceptable.
But we have seen these kinds of attacks or criticism from the president at other people.
It's not new.
And with respect, I haven't heard you speak out about it until it was directed at you.
Dana, I think that's fair criticism.
And I would like to say humbly, I'm sorry for taking part in the toxic politics.
It's very bad for our country.
And it's been something I've thought about a lot, especially since Charlie Kirk was assassinated, is that I'm only responsible for myself and my own words and actions.
And I am going, I am committed and I've been working on this a lot lately to put down the knives in politics.
I really just want to see people be kind to one another and we need to figure out a new path forward that is focused on the American people because as Americans, no matter what side of the aisle we're on, we have far more in common than we have differences.
All right.
So that is Marjorie Taylor Greene on State of the Union.
And now we're going to hear from Jamie Raskin, who had some interesting things to say about Marjorie Taylor Greene.
And then we'll get more into what we think is going on here.
Let me just say a couple more things, you great Florida Democrats.
One of them is we are a big tent.
We must be a huge, vast tent.
I say this is a party that's got room for Marjorie Taylor Greene if she wants to come over.
We got room for anybody who wants to stand up for the Constitution and for the Bill of Rights today.
One of my colleagues who left from South Carolina, Trey Gowdy, said to me on the way out, he said, you know, Raskin, you're not a bad guy.
The problem with you is you're a liberal.
I said, you're damn right.
I'm a liberal.
The heart of that word is liberty.
And I'm a progressive is the heart of that word is progress.
But my favorite thing to call myself today is a conservative because I want to conserve the land, the air, the water, the climate system, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the National Labor Relations Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Voting Rights Act, Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act.
Everything that party of authoritarians wants to destroy is everything we're going to conserve and defend in America.
We are the party of the conservatives, the liberals, and the progressives.
All the patriots today are in the party of democracy.
Wow.
Cool, cool.
Nick, I need a moment to compose myself.
I'm sorry, there's a lot of brain math that I need to do in that statement.
What in the hell do you think is going on here?
Okay, I think that, well, it's telling in my mind, and you know about me and like conspiracy theories, that Marjorie Taylor Greene makes this turn kind of out of the Charlie Kirk assassination.
And if you want to look at that, and what she referenced in that soundbite, if you want to look at that, was there a moment of reckoning where she is worried that they're going to take her out, which is something interesting.
I'm not sure she's on the top of that list, but either it's that or she knows that Donald Trump is going to die sooner than later and knows that this is a chance to kind of get back into the mainstream, whatever, I suppose.
It's hard to fathom that she's done this.
And by the way, we mentioned this a few weeks ago, too.
This is not just overnight.
This has been happening and she keeps sounding more and more rational, right?
Like it's disarming.
I would say that disarming is maybe not the word.
I would say alarming.
Alarming?
Okay.
Would be more of the word I would choose.
First of all, that Raskin soundbite, when we're done and I get out of my chair that I sit in, I might not be able to walk.
You'd be able to fall in the mirror.
No, I mean fall down because I feel insane.
That's a great question, though.
And off the top of his head, it sucks.
It sucks shit.
And like to sit there and be like, we're the party of liberals and progressives and conservatives.
The hell out of here.
And for anyone who's just like, oh my god, i'm so happy Marjorie Taylor Green's going to join the party man I, I don't want anything to do with the Democratic Party anymore.
I'll be honest with you.
They have so ruined anything that was real about this party to the extent that it's just like, okay, do I want to be in the party of Rick Wilson, Bill Crystal and Marjorie Taylor Green and Liz Cheney and Dick Cheney, like and right at that point, what is the party right?
Oh, it's the party that is trying to be the new conservative party of the moment.
The Marjorie Taylor Green thing and also, by the way, one thing that we didn't mention in this Trump in, in addition to calling her a traitor, called her Marjorie Taylor Brown and then had to explain that he meant that grass becomes brown when it's not taken care of.
And it's like, okay man, best of luck.
Which brings us to the subject that you brought up, which is that Donald Trump will die, and the question at this point and the next segment.
We'll get into it as well.
I think a lot of people are seeing the writing on the wall, which is that MAGA as a political force is very likely spent, which means that something has to come after it.
And the question?
At this point, Donald Trump is decaying in plain sight.
He has been revealed as very likely a not just a serial rapist corrupt fascist, but also a child abuser, like a human trafficker.
So those things are coming to the forefront.
Meanwhile, MAGA was built on lying about what Trump wanted to do in the first place.
It was wrapped in populist anger and what did it do?
It only worked with the wealth and oligarchical classes.
So all of those things are coming to the forefront.
Maybe he'll, maybe he'll be alive to run in 2028.
We'll talk about that in a minute.
I don't know, but a lot of people are having to make a lot of choices right now about what they want to do with their political brand, and it feels to me a lot like Bill Crystal or Rick Wilson or any of these Republicans who looked around and they were like, oh I, I need to know where my next paycheck comes from and i'm not welcome over here, or i'm not able to fit in over here.
I think that she is the ultimate opportunist.
I don't think she had a change of heart.
I don't think that she suddenly came to her senses.
The, the person who's yelling about Jewish Space Lasers, is not going to come to their senses.
This is an opportunist in the same way.
By the way, brought up Tucker Carlson the same man Nick, who worked at CNN, Msnbc and worked at FOX NEWS and now has his own thing.
Like it's just a bunch of people who are scurrying like rats and everybody who says Marjorie Taylor Green is welcome in the Democratic Party or she's quote unquote making sense.
All they're doing is giving her real-time feedback that she's going to be able to fleece people and that's the only thing that's happening here.
Okay, fair enough, and you know.
And also starts to present a.
I mean, you had to start.
We're going to talk about this in a second, in terms of what we have to picture the, the Post-Trump Republican Party, is going to be.
And I got to tell you, like the people who are scurrying, I'm not supposed to use that word, but like people are trying to get in positions here to, you know, to fulfill that void is really, really a murderer's row of all time horrible, horribleness.
And, you know, again, even with it with Trump around, it kind of incited people to try and out horrible each other.
And I would imagine that that would even get worse in his absence in that void.
And it just means we're going to hear more from these people.
But I got, I mean, I will tell you that, you know, it's alarming.
It's disarming.
It's all everything in between about this.
And, you know, now we have to spend 30 seconds talking about whether she's sincere or not about any of these points that she's making.
And you run the risk because, you know, there is a risk for her doing this, right?
Like you said, her entire political career is built upon Jewish space lasers.
And when those people who are so full of thorough advertising, you know, behind her hear what she's saying, even if she doesn't mean it, right?
That's a severe risk for her and that district.
Yeah.
And we don't know what's going to happen the next time she's up for reelection.
We don't.
Because she has been an embarrassment to that district.
On top of that, and we're talking about the contradictions, and we'll get to more of that in a second within the Republican Party.
There are some people who only voted for her because she was an iconoclast, because she was a bomb thrower, because she went out and said crazy shit that people read about online.
So is she going to lose those people and gain other people?
I don't know what's going to happen.
And quite frankly, we don't know what's going to happen in this political realignment that we're going through right now.
Going back to the Epstein story from earlier, like Donald Trump is an anti-democratic, fascistic president.
And I know that those people get very desperate and very violent, right?
So then you have the question of, well, he's in his last term.
He can't possibly serve another term.
Meanwhile, they're not acting like they're worried about the next election.
So we have questions there.
But in the perception, in like the regular perception, Nick, am I not wrong in saying that before his first year of his second term is up, he feels like the lamest duck that has ever existed?
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Like it is, it's unreal how much of that energy is there.
Of course, that doesn't mean anything when a fascist can push things through and when capitalism wants him to become more and more fascist.
But in terms of like regular rank and file politics, things are going to get weird.
And it gets weird with people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is the ultimate opportunist who starts doing this shit.
It's the same thing with what's happening with John Fetterman.
John Fetterman has become a rank and file Republican and has been moving further and further to the right as he's trying to like sort of navigate these things.
It's going to become more chaotic.
But for us, people who care about this shit and people who care about gay people and trans people and poor people and black people and immigrants, you have to maintain a coalition with some coherence.
You can't go out there and say that Marjorie Taylor Greene is welcoming your coalition after all this.
Like, I don't even know what she could say to prove that she is.
You know, there's not nothing to do there.
Those people have made their bed.
It's the same reason I said Bill Crystal, Rick Wilson, all the Lincoln Project people, all the Never Trumpers, Dick Cheney, they should not be welcomed in your party because your party ceases to be something.
It just ceases to become a life raft at that point.
I mean, Robert Byrd went from being the KKK to a leader in civil rights.
So people, you know, might be able to change, but I hear you.
I hear you loud and clear.
And the other thing that's interesting is that part of this all centered apparently around her wanting to have a run at the Senate in Georgia.
And Trump, by the way, in a manner of like spiritual or political clarity, understood that that would be a losing proposition, right?
I mean, they must, they all have the same polls.
So he's like, yeah, you can't run.
You're going to lose, we're going to lose.
And we don't want to lose.
And we want to try and regain those seats that we used to have.
So that might have spurred all of this.
And now for her doing what she's done, and it's not that much.
It's a little bit of dipping her toe, right, on the other side, a little bit, whatever.
She's going to lose.
She's not going to win another congressional race in that district.
Is she?
Especially if Trump puts his foot on that scale.
I have no idea.
I have absolutely no idea.
I would say she'd lose if they run somebody else.
And then, you know, she doesn't have the backing of Trump.
And that, I don't know.
I would, I would, I would think that that would be the end, you know, Mass and Cawthorne style.
But at that point, it's just like, you know, it's a Hail Mary.
The clock's running down and you're on the losing end.
I guess you try something.
But even that, Nick, I think that's horseshit.
We need to take the rhetoric down in this country.
No, people are dying.
Yeah.
Hundreds of thousands of people around the world have died because of what this administration has done.
We don't know how many people have died within the country and within our concentration camps that have been built.
Yeah, like it's not time to tamp down the political rhetoric.
All that is, Nick, it's pleasing to liberals who are moving further and further towards conservatism.
That's what they want to hear.
And so as a result, they have shown that they have no political grounding.
They are more than happy to just hear, yeah, everything should calm down.
No, this is not the time for things to calm down.
This is yet another symptom of the middle of this country moving further and further to the right.
I can't disagree with you on that one.
And then it makes us sort of have to move to the laughable take of, I think there are people out there that kind of want to go back to the way it was.
Is that safe to say?
I mean, 100%.
They are living in absolute toxic denial.
They want to go backwards.
Speaking of going backwards, Nick, Axios has a report out that, oh, God, I got to say his name.
I know.
I knew I was going to.
I wrote it in my notes.
I prepared it for the show.
Rhyming with something, you have to say it.
Axios reports that Texas Senator Ted Cruz is preparing a run for the presidency in 2028 by attacks on Tucker Carlson and by getting closer and closer to pro-Israel groups within the United States of America.
Here is the absolutely repulsive Ted Cruz being asked the question on Fox News.
You might be making some new.
Axios led its morning newsletter with this headline: Scoop Cruz Eyes 2028 run.
Senator Cruz, where are you on that?
You know, reporters are going to write headlines that get clicks and get eyeballs.
I got a job that's representing 31 million Texans and it's fighting every day for 31 million Texans.
And I'll tell you right now, the wins we are getting are historic.
The one big beautiful bill you were talking about just a minute ago, I was blessed to write major portions of that bill.
Raphael Cruz.
Nick, are you excited about this run?
Or are you getting pumped for this thing?
You know, self-awareness has never been a strong suit of anybody in the GOP, certainly on the political side, like who are actually won.
This guy is that guy who everybody has to say when he walks in the room.
No matter what, where you are, whoever, even call him a friend, you're going to do that.
This guy's energy is so bad.
But by the way, I could say that.
I know that people will agree with me on that.
He has won multiple Senate races in Texas.
So I don't even know how I'm, you know, what that means at all either way.
But like he's going to do it again.
And I guess this is the depths of their desperation that they realize, oh, when Trump is finally gone, it'll be back to where we were in 2016.
I can maybe go further.
If he hadn't figured out how unpopular he is on the national stage by now, then I don't know what else to tell him.
Well, we'll get into the 2028 speculation and what we think is going to happen to the GOP moving forward in just a moment.
On the subject of Ted Cruz, a couple of things are true, Nick, and I think that these go hand in hand.
One, Ted Cruz is one of the most narcissistic human beings that American politics has ever seen, which is saying something.
That is a long sordid history.
He has been convinced by his father, by his religion, by the people around him, that he is absolutely destined to not just be president of the United States of America, but to be one of the most transformative figures in American history.
That narcissistic idea is paired with a second thing, Nick, because all narcissism hides a lack of self-worth.
It's a projected sense of self-worth and being driven to things.
What is it we talk about all the time?
I don't know what, I don't know what revs this guy's motor most of the time, but I'll tell you what gets this guy going the most, and that is public humiliation and degradation.
There is nothing that this man loves more than being on the national stage and being rebuked and humiliated.
I would recommend that Ted Cruz goes and sees a therapist.
I don't think it's going to happen.
But do I think that if there's an election in 2028, that this man will run again?
Yes, I do.
And I don't think that there will be any end to the humiliation that he will endure because of that.
On the subject of that, and I want to go ahead and put an asterisk on it.
I can't tell you that there's going to be a free and fair election in 2028.
But I do think it's important for us to talk about, particularly with this Epstein stuff and this feeling that is around Donald Trump at this point.
I can think of probably three or four possibilities of what's going to happen to this party going into 2028.
And this Ted Cruz thing gives us an opportunity to talk about it.
If you had to say, going into 2028, what do you think are the probabilities?
Because I've got my list.
I'm interested in where you see this thing sort of going moving forward.
And I think now the starting pistol has gone off.
Right.
Well, you know, the guy who had to look at is JD Vance.
He's been, you know, the guy who's been positioned by this by Teal to be the successor to him.
And, you know, he's willing to, I got to tell you, he's patient, at least, because there have been moments in this first 10, 11 months of the presidency where he could have been pushing for the 25th and just take over, you know, and then run as an incumbent.
That might still happen, by the way, right?
Plenty of time for that.
But I mean, I don't know of anybody else who would dare try and do that if I'm a guy who's already well positioned to run on these coattails, right?
Like, who else are we going to end up seeing that's going to be?
I'm going to regret asking this, but who else are we talking about?
Well, I think instead of looking at the individuals, it's better to look at the trajectory of a party in the interest.
And we've talked about these fragmented MAGA sort of focuses, right?
So, of course, you've got like cultural MAGA.
You've got this idea of like America first.
There's white nationalism.
There's Christian nationalism.
There's the slavish, you know, devotion to the wealth and oligarchical classes.
The tech fascists are out there.
They're all doing their different things.
Whatever happens.
And by the way, like, I think the betting favorite at this point to be the GOP nominee in 2028 is Donald Trump.
And if he's not the candidate, he's the vice presidential candidate and we all understand what's going on.
So he'll either just break the Constitution or he'll figure a workaround with it.
And that, of course, would be JD Vance.
So maybe they'll try and just continue to run the show back and see what happens.
And they'll push these contradictions a little bit further.
Maybe that's what happens.
Maybe you see a neocon sort of like push with people like Marco Rubio who try and reinstate, you know, the Bush ears, get the band back together.
You know, Ted Cruz with the Christian nationalist, and maybe there could be other people who could represent those types of things.
And of course, then you have, I think, the largest group, which Ted Cruz is completely against.
He's building his run on going after Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes and like quote unquote anti-Semitism or whatever.
Like that's one of the most unpopular places to be in American politics right now.
So there's no way to get the nod in that way unless it's fixed.
The next question you have to ask is, will the neo-Nazi growing part of the GOP really make a run at it?
Will they try and pick up the wreckage of what MAGA wasn't able to deliver?
And will they take that wreckage and run with it?
And to look at this, what it reveals to me, Nick, is that the people who are the quote-unquote adults in the room with the GOP, they are so clueless about what's happening within this party.
And they are so clueless about where things are going.
They think they can wait out Trump.
They think the winds are going to change.
People are going to come to their senses.
It reminds me a lot of Joe Biden and the rank and file Democrats, all of them.
The quote unquote adults in the room have no idea what the fuck is going on.
And that leaves the radicals, particularly on the far right with the neo-Nazis and crypto-Nazis.
It leaves them to figure out a route towards something.
Maybe JD Vance can be the one who brings those portions together.
I don't know.
I'm still not sure there's going to be a free and fair election, but I do know the Republican Party is not going to come to its senses and moderate in the near future.
But can't you just change that all you said about the Republican Party and change it to Democratic Party as well?
They don't know what they're doing.
They don't have a fucking clue what they're doing.
Yeah.
And I will tell you this, if somebody in the Democratic Party will run on in a radical way of wiping clean all of this and starting with Trump being the impetus for doing this, that would be as big of a candidate as we've seen in our lifetimes, I think.
You know, I think someone who's going to come along on the Democratic side is just going to be like, oh, let's go back to how it was when we had Biden or Obama in office.
Those are the good years.
That's the problem because it wasn't great then either.
And so Barack Obama and Mitt Romney were not walking through that door.
Oh, God.
Yeah.
So that is not where this thing is heading.
Yeah.
Because as we talk about people who just want to cling to like what it was, maybe it's comfortable back then or whatever.
No, we need major reforms across the entire government.
By the way, which is exactly what like Trump was channeling, right?
And that's what Doge was channeling.
You know, we need all this reform and it really spoke to a lot of people.
And I can guarantee if we can find someone on the left who can come by this in a much more, I guess, intellectual, I don't know if that's the right word, but organized way that actually wants to help people, that would certainly gain a lot more favor from a lot more people and cause a movement.
A hundred percent.
You are not going to see Kamala Harris running against Ted Cruz in 2028.
Clip it out.
Keep that in your file.
If I'm wrong, I will eat all the crow all day long.
You're not seeing Kamala Harris versus Ted Cruz in 2028 if there are free and fair elections.
In fact, I don't think anybody we've said right now will be the person who will represent the Democratic Party in 28.
I agree.
And that's my point is that the people who are supposed to be in charge right now and are supposed to be figuring out, like it is so apparent to everybody else.
And what is not being spoken to right now is the vast majority of the American population.
What they want, what they see is needing to be done, the reforms that need to happen, the changes that need to happen.
Those people are not going to represent that.
They're going to be the voices in the room.
they're like, ah, things are a little bit tough, but let's talk about, you know, marginal, you know, marginal shit.
Let's, let's talk about a couple of tax points here or there.
That's not where this is going.
There's no way it ends there.
I really hope that's true.
My God.
Oh, God.
The Kamal Harris Ted Cruz race.
I just got myself worked up.
I've seen that play before.
It doesn't work.
Yeah, it's really frustrating.
You know, but it just shows you, you know, America is built upon second chances and perseverance and the American dream and all that stuff.
And some people probably take that too much to heart.
I mean, Ted Cruz is one of the most delusional, narcissistic people we've ever seen.
And that said, a guy like that has got the American dream.
He became a freaking senator of all.
Like, he never should have sniffed anything close to that level.
Well, nobody at this point in a position of power should have sniffed any type of power that they have.
That's the thing.
It's just, it's like running a factory that's supposed to produce like popcorn.
And all of a sudden you start opening the bags for quality testing.
You're like, there's only glass in here.
There's not a bag of popcorn to be found.
It's all glass.
Something went wrong.
Something went wrong in the factory.
The settings are wrong at this point.
Oh, my God.
All right.
It was so good to be back in our regular place.
We will be back with the weekender on Friday.
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