Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman break down Donald Trump’s demanded “Thanksgiving peace plan” for Ukraine, a proposal that hands Vladimir Putin everything he wants while threatening to cut off all U.S. aid if Zelensky refuses. They dig into the geopolitical fallout, the long history of American foreign policy blunders that led here, and why this deal rewards invasion, kidnapping, and aggression.
From there, the guys unpack Marjorie Taylor Greene’s surprise resignation, what her dramatic letter really reveals about the state of MAGA, and why the movement is fracturing just as Trump’s grip tightens. Then it is on to Zahra Mamdani’s surreal visit to the White House, where Trump immediately melted under flattery and exposed just how easily he can be manipulated.
Finally, they examine the collapse of DOGE, the catastrophic damage done to federal agencies, global aid, and U.S. data systems, and why the fallout will haunt the country for years.
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
Thanksgiving Politics & Family Minefields
00:00:01 – 00:03:30
Trump’s “Peace Plan” And Ukraine’s Betrayal
00:03:30 – 00:17:20
Marjorie Taylor Greene Quits… And What It Really Means
00:17:20 – 00:27:08
Mamdani Rolls Trump In The Oval Office
00:27:08 – 00:43:06
The Fall of DOGE And The Damage It Leaves Behind
00:43:06 – End
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
I'm looking forward to the Thanksgiving festivities this week.
I hope you are too.
Oh, I am.
I am as well.
That sounded very official.
Yes.
Well, you know, it sounded like a PR release.
Politics, family.
Gridlock.
Oh, no.
Thank you.
My family, I think most of them have seen the light.
I think it's what we call it.
Okay.
I like that.
That's good.
I wish you and our listeners a lot of luck this Thanksgiving.
Are you the guy who would bring it up knowing that someone is on the other side?
No, I'm a really like nice guy in social situations, familial situations.
But if somebody brings it up, I will try to bridge the divide, so to speak.
I will try and find common ground.
And if they don't want to go that direction, I will, you know, ground their bones into dust.
So you supported Joe Biden this whole time?
Yeah, that's the thing.
This has been a devil's advocate situation the entire time.
I take particular pleasure sometimes in getting those conversations when you're like, oh, okay, we're going to go there and this is going to be interesting.
So I enjoy the conversations as research.
I'll say that.
I enjoy hearing the way that information filters through people and seeing which headlines and which sort of talking points sort of make their way through.
I enjoy that.
And at the same time, I like to see where the weaknesses are, where the inroads can be made, where I can say, hey, did you not know this?
And also, by the way, if you move beyond like the blue-red paradigm, look where we're on the same page.
Most of the times it works unless somebody wants to be belligerent.
And then that's a different conversation.
For sure, for sure.
My other favorite discovery is when you find a fellow traveler, if you will.
And a lot of times it centers around some sort of conspiracy, which, you know, it's a little bit exciting.
Oh, like, you know, do you want to get nuts?
Let's get nuts, you know?
And this is exciting to fan those.
I will say that's always an exciting moment when you find out like what really gets people going, like where their passions are and the things that they want to talk about.
And I'm like, yeah, absolutely.
Let's ride.
Let's see what happens here.
So we'll see how that plays out.
Yeah.
And I just hope everybody has a good Thanksgiving holiday.
We will be back with a weekender edition on Friday.
A reminder, head over to patreon.com slash muttrakepodcast in order to gain full access to the weekender episodes, which you're already listening to the previews for.
We need your help.
We need your support.
We are independent media.
We don't have ads.
We're editorially independent.
We need your help.
Patreon.com slash Muckrakepodcast.
And our weekender, it's this week is going to be a movie.
And I think we'll take delighted pleasure in seeing people try to do it.
Yeah.
If you haven't heard one of our movie deep dives, what we do is we go, we watch a movie.
Not together.
I wish we watched it together.
We found out multiple times.
Why haven't we watched a movie together?
We could do that.
We could sync, right?
You could have a watch party on Netflix or something.
Yeah, but I'm all over the place time-wise.
That's true too.
Me too.
Yeah, I have a hard time doing that.
But, you know, we will watch a movie, which we both are major cinephiles and we've both studied, you know, screenwriting and directing and all that stuff.
And then we get into the political and socioeconomic and historical sort of context for that.
So come back around on Friday.
Head over to patreon.com slash muckcraigpodcast.
Nick, speaking of Thanksgiving, there has been a stated deadline by President Donald Trump towards Vladimir Zelensky that he wants a peace plan signed by Thanksgiving.
That peace plan, you guessed it, everybody.
It gives Russia literally everything it wants.
Right now, officials from all the countries are negotiating this in Geneva.
I look at this thing, this major human tragedy, Nick.
And I look at the fact that the writing was on the wall the moment that Donald Trump was elected to a second term, that it was always going to end up becoming some sort of a settlement that would side towards Russia.
And here we are.
It looks like this thing is close to the finish line, if not necessarily, you know, right over the finish line at this point.
But if Zelensky doesn't agree to this, supposedly the U.S. is going to cut off all aid, and that would leave Ukraine basically shit out of luck at this point.
After this long, long road, Nick, how are you feeling about this?
And why is it awful?
I think I enjoyed the peace plan much, much better in the original Russian that it was written in, because we already saw this where they realized they were using language that was clearly Russian, and they probably chat GPT a translation for it.
So this is a really bad problem, I think, for Trump.
I think they're going to find some MAGA people who might even be upset about this to some degree, even though a lot of them just want to be done, right?
Just please pull the plug on the whole thing.
Let's be done with it.
And I actually get that argument, right, to some degree.
I understand why people would want to just sort of not have to invest a lot of money in other countries when things are going so poorly here, for instance.
But it is devastating to hear what's going to happen.
And then again, I'm not so sure that it means it's the complete and utter destruction of Ukraine, right?
Because it's like they'll still have, you know, sort of European backing.
And there might be ways.
And then if they can hold out a little bit longer, let's just say, and then, you know, a Democrat gets back in the White House and maybe then it starts up again, which is another one of those problematic things for our foreign policy when you rotate people out of the White House every four years.
So all I can hope for is that they can continue this good fight that they've had, the Ukrainians, and somehow, you know, outlast the Russians.
So the terms of this deal, Ukraine would have to cede territory.
They would also have to shrink their military, and there would be an agreement that no NATO troops would ever be in place in Ukraine.
More or less, this is giving Vladimir Putin literally everything that he wants at a moment for the record in which he is increasingly vulnerable.
There are reports that they're not going to be able to pay their military, that their funds are running out in all of this.
He is incredibly weakened because he invaded Ukraine.
And this is more or less, it equals out to a bailout.
And we knew what was going to happen if Donald Trump won.
We knew that the America first people and the allegiance with Russia was eventually going to lead to some sort of a settlement on Putin's terms.
And here you have basically a situation in which the aggressor, the invader, the warmonger, is going to be rewarded for having been the aggressor and the warmonger.
And you said it, you said it best, Nick, right there, where you said, we don't even know if this is going to be the end of this thing.
I mean, every settlement or peace plan that this fool has put in place has basically been violated.
I mean, Gaza is still being destroyed on an almost daily basis.
And I would not be shocked if this is just a pause in order for Russia to sort of build itself back up, not only to threaten Ukraine, but to threaten other nations in the area, which everybody knows is on the menu for Vladimir Putin and is part of the long game here, whether or not it's in a World War III scenario or a showdown between Russia and the United States.
But this basically is an abdication by the president of the United States of America.
And it is rewarding Vladimir Putin for having invaded Ukraine.
And I have a hard time thinking of something more disgusting.
Oh, you know, the other thing I forgot to mention is that the top line was any agreement that does not require Russia to return kids that they kidnapped in order to reprogram them from Ukraine, it has to be a non-starter.
I'm shocked that that wasn't.
I mean, listen, I'm not shocked because we know that Zelensky had nothing to do with his Russia plan anyway.
Right.
So like, of course, there's not going to be anything for Ukraine to have on their side in this agreement.
And just in case you were wondering, like, I just wanted to know, like, the language that we'd seen in this thing was that it's expected to it is expected that Russia will not invade neighboring countries and Navy will not expand further.
So when you see that kind of phrasing, that's Russian phrasing, right?
And they knew that that, and that might be where some of these die-hard Republicans who were willing to stay with Trump would sort of realize he's just a stooge.
But certainly the kidnapping of kids is a real huge one.
I cannot believe that that wasn't, they couldn't even throw them a bone on that one, which you think would at least they put it in there.
But it also goes back to the sanctions that Obama had put on the Russians when they originally went into Crimea.
And, you know, what we did see in the first administration for Trump was that they slowly were eroding those sanctions.
So we also realized that the sanctions were so damaging to Russia that they were willing to sabotage the election of 2016, right?
I would argue that that was the big reason why they wanted to get involved in the election there, was to get Trump in there so they can get rid of the sanctions.
So the fact that those sanctions are probably as weak as they probably could possibly be now anyway, with Trump back in the White House, no one's probably enforcing those.
But now you're right, they're going to end up being rewarded with a lot more land, a lot more resources, and again, no assurances they're going to do anything just to stay in their lane.
And that's why Zelensky would never be willing to do any of these agreements until there were assurances and they had enough defense to deter them from doing this.
And that's really what we don't see anything in this agreement.
And, you know, you just opened up the door.
Let's take the long view on this thing.
Vladimir Putin would not be in power if it wasn't for the United States of America in the very beginning.
It was decided going from Boris Yeltsin at the end of the Soviet Union into capitalist neoliberal Russia.
It was decided that Vladimir Putin was the type of like, you know, trustworthy agent who was going to be able to do business and make sure that the United States of America could open a market in Russia and also, you know, basically have a free reign over any sort of resources or exports that Russia would want.
And they kept inviting him to the, you know, the G8 summits.
They would shake his hand and they would say something on TV about they could see into his soul.
I mean, it was one president after another.
And what's funny about it, Nick, you brought up these sanctions and they did originally hurt Russia, but they didn't hurt Russia to the point where Vladimir Putin's grip on power was actually endangered.
And eventually what happened?
He went ahead and you said it yourself.
He invaded Crimea under Obama.
Then years later, he invades Ukraine under Trump.
Well, I guess it was under Biden.
That's where that was.
And the sanctions that got put forward there, they did nothing.
And you know why they did nothing?
Because Vladimir Putin and the oligarchs were able to get their blood money into the worldwide economy.
They became one of the load-bearing parts of that.
And then whenever they did a show of putting sanctions onto them, Nick, China at that point had been allowed to grow to the point where they could create basically a heart bypass.
And they would say, don't worry, Russia, we're going to take care of you.
We're going to go ahead and supplement whatever you're going to lose from the United States of America.
So now we've reached the point we have another president who's in here who's going to go ahead and reward Vladimir Putin for invading Ukraine.
It is a giant tragedy.
And it's not just a tragedy of the Ukrainians who have died, the Russians who have died on top of that, the children who have been disappeared, the people who have suffered, the people who've suffered trauma.
It's the Russian people who have had to live under this regime for decades now.
This is a massive failure of American foreign policy.
And if you actually look at how bad this is, Nick, for years, the official United States foreign policy was to keep this war going as long as possible in order to grind against Russia, use up their resources, kill as many people as humanly possible, and to create an economic impact that never actually came to bear totally.
This is an abject failure.
And I'm just saying this, the same way as we talked about what happened with Israel and Gaza, it is yet another indictment of American foreign policy, the long game that they have played, and also further proof that the United States of America as a global superpower is becoming more and more impotent with every passing day.
Wow.
Okay, so much to discuss Reno PAC right there.
You could argue that they wanted to avoid a nuclear war with Russia.
So they were going to give them just enough to kind of have that thing that you described, which would be a prolonged war like we saw in Afghanistan and eventually would lead to, you know, I guess they would hope the same results.
You don't, you know, is it, I guess your point would be that it would simply be at the cost of so many lives that that would be a preposterous solution.
Well, I mean, where are we?
I mean, Putin is going to gain territory and resources, you name it.
Ukraine has been weakened and also betrayed by the United States of America.
And on top of that, Nick, we're in more danger of nuclear war than we have been since the Cold War.
I mean, the whole point here is that the foreign policy program that we've been on post-World War II has been absolutely disastrous.
And we have to take a look at the people who have run this and say, guess what?
They have exhausted any and all good faith that we have in them, period.
Yeah.
And that'll connect to Joe's.
We talk about them later as well in terms of the only good foreign policy we did have at some point.
But the interesting thing about this is there's an Epstein connection to a little bit of this.
Well, yeah, Epstein's been advising Russia.
Well, before he was killed, he was advising Russia on how to blackmail and manipulate Donald Trump, for sure.
Yeah.
Well, but I even think that like the fallout between Trump and Epstein wasn't really about, you know, Epstein doing all these horrible things with these young girls.
It was about a piece of land that they each wanted to buy in some, you know, some mansion that was going for a really good price.
And they each were, I think, competing for it.
And Trump slid in there and took it from him as far as I've seen from this reporting.
And that house that he bought for, you know, 20 million or whatever it was, a few years later, he sells to a Russian oligarch for like 10 or 20 times the value.
And that is another example of them being able to launder a lot of the Russian money.
And that's sure that's not the only way because Trump would sell all manner of condos in his building in New York the same way.
So all of that, that circumventing of what Obama thought would have been a really great way to punish them with the sanctions they were getting around it the entire time.
And Trump keeps touting that these tariffs are what he's imposing are ending wars, right?
So it would make sense that he would be a lot tougher on Russia to stop this war, right?
But clearly he doesn't, he understands that A, he has not stopped any of these wars that he keeps touting anyway, right?
And then B, that's not, you know, this is the way to the better way to do it would be sanctions, which in some respects are like tariffs.
And he has no conception of any of those things and really how they're supposed to work.
No, he has no idea what he's doing.
And by the way, you just hit on something that we haven't talked about at length, but is, again, one of the load-bearing parts of the worldwide economy.
New York, London, you name it, all of these countries that have quote unquote opposed Vladimir Putin and Russia.
They're like apartments and condos and all of these places that have these giant markups.
Washington, D.C. is part of this too.
It is Russian cash and it's blood money that is trickling in from the oligarchs and their related people who go in and basically create a legalized bribe.
And it's been happening for forever.
And the entire point is you can't take down someone like the Vladimir Putin.
Vladimir Putin and Russia and Xi Jinping in China, they have done an almost flawless job of using America's weaknesses against itself, which is greed and corruption.
They were allowed into the global economic system and they used it to their own advantage.
The fact that we are now facing down a global crisis against the alliance between China and Russia, honestly, we brought it on ourselves.
We created this mess in the first place.
And now you have a situation where all of these ghosts of the past, and if people who have listened to this podcast, if they take one lesson away from everything that we've talked about, Nick, it's that almost everything that happens on a global scale and on a giant geopolitical scale in this era, almost everything is a consequence of a failure or a mistake that America made, and then they have to deal with it later.
That's it.
You know, I'm going to have to ask you now, right, Jared?
I know exactly where this is going.
Anyone's listening to this program for any amount of time, they'll know what's coming, which is, Jared, why do you hate America?
On that note, everybody, Marjorie Taylor Greene has announced that she is going to resign from Congress on January 5th.
To pull back the curtain, this was one of those things that on a random Friday night, as I was heading out to get a drink, I got a DM from my friend Nick Houselman, and I literally exclaimed in front of strangers, holy shit.
And so Marjorie Taylor Green's announcement of her resignation, she blames it on the debt crisis in the United States of America, the fact that the elites are not taking care of normal people, Trump's attacks on her, a lack of loyalty on his part, Mike Johnson's chenure as Speaker of the House and the Epstein files.
She also included in her resignation letter.
I'm going to read a couple of lines from this.
She says, if I'm cast aside by MAGA Inc., which is very important, MAGA Inc. and replaced by neocons, big pharma, big tech, military, industrial war complex, foreign leaders and the elite donor class that can't even relate to real Americans, then many common Americans have been cast aside and replaced as well.
And before she says what she is planning on doing, she says, quote, there is no plan to save the world or insane 4D chess game being played.
Nick, what are your reactions to this?
Where do you think this is coming from?
And what do you think about this resignation letter?
Because I found this thing, how do I put this?
Spicy.
Ooh, well, I thought we were going to reference the thing that really caught my ear when I heard her say on her to the camera video.
She said, she's not going to be a battered wife in this scenario.
And I thought that that was so appropriate in terms of describing MAGA itself and how they are in this situation, the battered wife who doesn't.
They're abusers.
That's what they are.
They're abusers.
And we're seeing more reporting in Vanity Affairs or something about how the White House treats all the people in Congress as garbage was the quote.
And it's sad because maybe they're not used to being treated like garbage.
They don't know how to react to that.
And they end up feeling less of themselves and feeling more beholden.
And they need to try and get in the good graces.
I want them to like me kind of thing.
It's powerful.
So I think what she's revealing, right, is this grift that was been going on about what MAGA really, really is in terms of how they don't, none of them have any ideology and really believe any of this.
I'm talking about the politicians themselves.
They're simply using this as a control over the badger wives who represent everybody in this party in the constituency.
So I thought it was a moment of clarity in a way, which makes me kind of feel like this is somewhat sincere, what she's going through.
On top of that, the cynical version would be she looked at the poll numbers and realizes that she's just going to get massively, you know, destroyed either in a primary or in a general election for that seat again.
And, you know, she's not going to win.
So she's going to take her marbles and go home in just enough time to have her pension.
Well, yeah.
And let's not lose out on the fact that she's staying just long enough to get her pension.
Which is not large, by the way.
It's not a huge pension.
It's not like a big payday.
So whatever, but still.
But you still get some perks, you know, that's part of it.
And, you know, we can sit here and analyze why she's doing this.
This is going to be a shocker of shockers, Nick.
I'm telling you, in some way or another, she's going to make money on the other side of this.
I don't know if that means that she's going to get a media job.
I don't know if this means that she's going to maybe she's going to go the route of Rick Wilson and she's going to become like a member of the Lincoln Project or a personality or she's going to lobby or she'll be on a board somewhere.
She'll figure this out.
Don't worry about Marjorie Taylor Greene, folks.
But I think the telling thing in all of this is that there are now rumors that multiple members of the Republican House are going to resign or retire heading into the midterms.
And I think this is for a couple of reasons.
One, it's the lack of popularity.
I think that they know the writing is on the wall that one way or another, they're going to be replaced.
But I think the larger thing here is that Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, is one of the most disastrous speakers of the House that we've ever seen.
He has completely abdicated the power of the House of Representatives, basically shutting it down so that Donald Trump can have a rubber stamp and or just a ghost wing of the government at this point.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, we talked about this a couple of years ago.
She hitched her wagon to Kevin McCarthy.
She decided that she was going to become mainstream Republican with Kevin McCarthy, and that was going to be her route, right?
That's where she was going to gain more and more power in the Republican Party.
That ship has sailed.
And Mike Johnson is basically, you know, sort of the kind of boss that doesn't show up to work.
He still goes ahead and gets the checks.
He still, you know, he'll still sign things every now and then, but he has no power whatsoever.
He is a born toady.
And I think that his failure to actually use the power of the House in any way, shape or form and completely abdicate his responsibility, it opened the door for a lot of Republicans who many of them belong to like the Freedom Caucus.
They don't like what's happening in a lot of this.
Some of them are bootlickers and some of them are bootlickers who, you know, every now and then have a moment of conscience.
I think Marjorie Taylor Greene's defection here, her leaving her post, it signals something, which is that the Republican Party is changing, which is something that you and I talk about a lot.
It's moving away from MAGA and towards something else.
And the question is, what will that something else be?
And I have my own ideas on that.
My analysis says it's going to head towards more overt racism, misogyny, and also neo-Nazism and fascism.
But I think that this is one of those moments you'll look back on, you'll say, oh, okay, that's when the tide was starting to turn.
Well, they asked Trump about it later, and he says, you know, like never, nobody is ever out of Trump's orbit, right?
You get kicked out, you're shunned, whatever.
You come back, you're always welcome back.
They always figure out ways to do that.
So he asked, they asked him about it.
Even said he goes.
Yeah, one day I, I think she should get back into politics, but she's gonna have to sit out for a while.
That was his term, terminology like sports and and that, and that's true to some degree.
So don't be surprised if there will be some sort of like.
You know, even with Musk.
Musk went as far as outing Trump as being in the Epstein files and which he was absolutely spot on.
He, he must have seen them in his doge work or whatever.
Um, and yet here we are, they.
They went to a sporting event.
They're sitting together.
They're, you know we're, they're kind of swirling back around.
They're not, you know, not cut out like they.
Everyone thought and uh, I would not be surprised.
Put write it down here on.
You know, on today, the 24th, we're recording this that Marjorie Taylor Green could very well end up being welcomed back into the Republican Party and the Trump MAGA.
You know movement as well.
You know it's after six months.
I mean I, I think there's a possibility.
I, you know, i've said this before I don't think Marjorie is necessarily a person of principles.
I think she's performing principles right now and there is a lot of discussion and I won't get too deep into this because it involves work that I do, but there are a lot of people in this country right now who are fed up with both the Republican and Democratic parties, who are having conversations about the need for a third or a fourth party, and so there is a possibility that she, you know, has either had conversations that are about starting, you know,
a pack or a nonprofit that could lead into some sort of an alternative to the Republican Party.
There are certainly Democrats who have been doing this.
There are certainly socialists and progressives that have been doing this.
So there is a question of what her next move is, but my guess and it is hard doing this it's hard trying to start a third or a fourth party.
It is hard trying to take over a party and move it in a different direction.
My guess is that, whatever the biggest check or payday is that's down the line Marjorie Taylor Green's quote, unquote principles will change depending upon what that check has written on it and, first of all, the book will be coming out and that'll be announced.
Oh, absolutely.
Oh there's, the book's already been written, nick.
Yeah, and there'll be some incendiary stuff in there too, things that probably would have been nice to know before these elections that we've had over the last several years.
So um yeah, don't be surprised to when that happens as well.
So um, she's got a lot of ways to monetize this, without question, and I, i'm intrigued by this notion of like another party.
It's really frustrating to think that she would be someone who could somehow spearhead that um.
But you know, we certainly need change and I and i'm, i'm all for another party to come in and and and try and, you know, shift everything.
If we, if we look back on this time period and by like 2030, we have replaced the Democratic and Republican parties, I think we would be better for it.
I I, I really do.
At this point, I think both of them have reached sort of a terminal wall, but I I I, she's not just doing this out of the kindness of her heart.
This is not who she is.
This has been a giant pr sprint for her and I think and, by the way, the letter that she wrote I, I do take um as somebody who grew up in like, domestically abusive situations.
I don't like the phrase battered wife, I find that pretty repulsive to say something like that.
But other than that the writing of the letter.
There are things in there that you won't even hear a Democrat say.
And that's important, is that at least we know that the discourse is moving in a certain direction.
And yes, neo-Nazis are going to use that.
Socialists are going to use that.
The far right, the far left, they're all going to use that.
But as long as the discourse starts to move in that direction and people start actually comparing notes and realizing that elites are in charge who don't give a shit about you, that tells me that there is a possibility of a better result in the future.
Yeah, for sure.
Speaking of the far left, Zoron Momdani visited the White House on Friday.
And we have a couple of clips from this thing, but for people who haven't been paying attention, Nick, would it be fair to say that it seemed like Donald Trump took a shine to Zoron Momdani?
I mean, the guy ended up dressing like him after he was done.
It was almost like Mr. Ripley, talented Mr. Ripley.
That kind of felt like that in some weird way, but it just goes to show you that it's easy to manipulate this motherfucker in the White House.
It really is.
So here is the first clip.
We have a couple of them here.
Here is the first clip.
And for the people who are not watching on our YouTube channel, how would you describe the look on Donald Trump's face?
Love, like enamorments.
What's the word?
Like total and utter, you know, adoration.
What?
Adoration.
Adoration.
Yes, absolutely.
It's like a weight has been lifted off his shoulders.
He looks like me the first time the new friend is talking with other people and calls me his buddy.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
That's great.
Here he is.
You know, have to follow his lead.
Well, look, I hope they have great leaders.
This is a man that right now I think is focused in New York City.
I really think he has a chance to do a great job.
We're going to help him, but I really think he has a chance to do a great job.
But I'll let you answer that.
You consider yourself the leader of the Democrats.
I think it's more appropriate for him.
I consider myself the next mayor of New York City, and I keep my horizons firmly on New York City.
And I appreciate the meeting with the president, which focused again on the five boroughs and whether New Yorkers could afford to live there.
By the way, being the mayor of New York City is a big deal.
I always said, you know, one of the things I would have loved to be someday is the mayor of New York City, being the mayor of New York, and especially now, because I think you're at really a turning point, one way or the other.
It could go great or it can go in a different direction.
And I think you really have a chance to make it great.
All right.
There is that.
Let's move to the next one to hear more from this love fest between Donald Trump and Zoron Momdani.
Would you feel comfortable living in New York City under eight Momdani in the ministry?
Yeah, I would.
I really would.
Especially after the meeting.
Absolutely.
What makes you comfortable?
We agree on a lot more than I would have thought.
I think he's, I want him to do a great job and we'll help him do a great job.
You know, he may have different views, but in many ways, you know, we were discussing when Bernie Sanders was out of the race, I picked up a lot of his votes and people had no idea because he was strong on not getting ripped off in trade and lots of things that I've practiced and been very successful on.
Tariffs, a lot of things.
Bernie Sanders and I agreed on much more than people thought.
And when he was put out of the race, I think quite unfairly, if you want to know the truth, many of the Bernie Sanders voters voted for me.
And I felt very comfortable, frankly, in seeing that and saying that.
And, you know, it just turned out to be a statistical truth.
But no, I feel very comfortable.
I would feel very, very comfortable being in New York.
And I think much more so after the meeting.
Yes, please.
All right.
And then the clip that has been making the rounds for a while, in case people aren't able to fully hear this question, a reporter follows up and asks Mom Donnie about a former remark that he made about Trump being a fascist.
You've also said in the past that President Trump has engaged in a, quote, attack on our democracy.
You've called him a despot.
Do you still believe President Trump is a threat to the democracy?
Everything that I've said in the past, I continue to believe.
And that's the thing that I think is important in our politics is that we don't shy away from where we have disagreements, but where you understand what it is that brings us to that table.
Because I'm not coming into the Oval Office to make a point or make a stand.
I'm coming in there to deliver for New Yorkers.
And a few weeks ago, I was asked by a reporter three words to describe myself.
I said, New York City.
And that's what animated that conversation.
How do we deliver for the people of New York City?
All right, Nick.
So with all this, and by the way, when Trump was in the White House next to Mamdani, and he was asked if he thought that Trump was a fascist, he said, oh, it's okay.
Go ahead and say yes.
It's just a wild turn of events.
I think that this is more than something that's just gone viral on social media.
I think this says a lot about Donald Trump, our modern politics, Mom Donnie, and what's going on.
What was your reaction to this absolute love-in?
Oh, I mean, it was predictable.
You know, Mondani's a really good politician, and his answer there was really good too, because he didn't have to even, they didn't get a soundbite of him saying he is a despot again or anything like that.
They got, you know, he clearly was like, listen, you're real estate.
I want to find out how we can make real estate work better for people in New York.
Oh, great.
Really, they can hit it off right from there.
So it's not hard to approach these situations as a Democrat going in there.
Now, principally, you might be really upset that this guy was able to do that.
And, you know, you don't want this.
You want Trump to understand that he is a despot and they don't want to deal with this person.
And we want to fight against this guy, right?
But I think it's going to go a long way for New Yorkers to know that Trump wouldn't have been able to anyway, but he was threatening federal dollars would not go to New York anymore from that.
And now it's going to be business as usual, at least for that.
And they're going to get the resources they need from the federal government.
And Lord knows they deserve them because they pay into it as much as anybody else in the country.
So, you know, as far as a political class, if you want to study in a class how to do this, it's exactly what you should do.
And it's exactly how you get any concessions you want from this asshole.
So I'll start with Trump.
First things first, Nick, he is surrounded by some of the most miserable fucks in the United States of America.
Do you know how many hours of his life he has to spend with Stephen Miller?
Like, like has to hear Stephen Miller talk and talk about it, like, you know, extinguishing people, deporting people, like how bad everything is.
Think how bad Katie Miller must then feel.
I mean, Trump is around some of the most miserable people ever.
Trump is a fascist, but also he has this other part of him that like really wants to have fun.
It doesn't last.
You know what I mean?
Like, because he's a miserable person himself.
He is inherently a fascist.
Mamdani went in there and was totally cordial with him and held the company line and basically said, we want the same thing.
We want New York City.
And by the way, Trump's not a deep thinker.
He went in there and was like, we want New York City to prosper and we want the people to be happy.
Donald Trump's entire political project and presentation has been presenting leftist ideas and then leading people to the far right on behalf of the wealth and oligarchical classes.
In that regard, when it comes to the far left and the far right, we talk about this all the time.
The diagnosis is the same.
It's the next level when all of a sudden the cohesion breaks down.
So in this case, he was rolled.
And when it comes to Mamdani, I think one of the things that we need to understand when it comes to democratic socialism or the far left, anytime that you gain power, every extra second of protection that you can have before the capitalist class comes after you, those are invaluable moments.
What he just did was he bought himself a few weeks or a couple of months of cover from the Trump administration.
So he's going to be sworn in on New Year's Day, 2026, and he's going to go after some people.
He's going to go after some very wealthy people in New York City.
He's going to have meetings with those people and he's going to say, hey, we have the same goals and we want to do the same things.
Eventually, he's going to go to war with those people, but he has bought himself time and room in order to start the projects, which again, when you're in the middle of a class conflict, invaluable every second that you can possibly have.
And he didn't sacrifice anything.
No one holds Mamdani accountable for going in and talking to Donald Trump and Trump having hard eyes for him.
And then he went on, you know, meet the press and he was like, yes, I absolutely think that this guy is a major problem and a threat to democracy.
He gave up nothing.
And all he got in return was time and cover.
And he rolled Trump, which shows just how vulnerable Trump is.
Yeah.
And to touch upon what you mentioned about him, like wanting to have fun and his persona, I think when the clip that you were mentioning, when he goes, oh, go ahead, you can call me a fascist.
And he's laughing, it's because it's a grift, right?
The whole thing about what he's doing, how he's behaving, at least in Trump's mind, is like an act into some degree.
I mean, I know people will say, well, of course, he wants to be a desperate.
He wants to be authoritarian.
But I also feel like there's this trolling nature that Trump has clearly.
And that he's like, yeah, yeah, go ahead, call me a fascist.
Cause you and I both know that like, you know, I was a Democrat for a long time and I could go with every way the wind wants to blow and however I feel and every given day.
And that's sort of what we're getting behind the veil in a similar way that like Marjorie Taylor Greene's giving us that same glimpse as well with what she was saying.
So the only hope we have is that more and more people start to realize this, that this is a whole facade.
This is all be a bunch of bullshit that they're just making up and appearing to be not authentic.
And that's what you said this before, where it's the authentic presentation and it has to be real, should eventually gain enough momentum that we can get people who really do care about the government and people in serving as politicians.
Fascists are not inherently anti-socialist.
They're anti-socialist when it comes to who makes the decisions about the socialism.
Fascists are more than fine with socialism if it means using government money to help themselves and their friends.
We've even seen in recent weeks where Trump wants corporations to give the government some control or some profit.
It's a racket.
So what is actually occurring here is that Trump like is looking at this.
He's not able to do the mental calculations.
You know, like he's not a step ahead of Mamdani.
Mamdani, and again, I've said Mamdani is not just a great communicator and organizer, like he's a really good politician.
He went in there with a game plan.
He knew exactly what he was going to say to Trump and what things were going to work.
And he basically ended up like a turtle on its back.
And he was happy for it.
He's like, scratch my belly.
That's wonderful.
I love this thing.
He isn't able to actually compete with him, which gives the opportunity for someone on the far left, again, that time and room to start creating their project and build momentum behind it.
Like Trump isn't able to, like, he's intuitively a fascist.
He's not intellectually a fascist.
And an intellectual fascist, an ideologue, would be able to go into a meeting and understand you and I are mortal enemies, right?
But an inherent fascist isn't basically, there's no other way to put this, Trump is high on his own supply.
He does not understand the minutia of what's going on.
He simply reacts.
And so when we talk about how the far right like gives you a far left sort of diagnosis of things, he believes that.
But at the same time, he's not able to sort of like work through the contradictions.
And as a result, he's completely vulnerable to manipulation.
And he told us in the speech we shared that, you know, he's president of the United States, right?
That's the highest office you can get in the land.
But he also had this fantasy about being mayor.
Of course he did.
He's jealous.
He's jealous of that guy being mayor.
He wants to be mayor.
I want to be you.
You know, it's basically what he's trying to say.
And he also probably, I want to be young.
I want to be good looking.
I want to be all the things that I probably used to, I realize now I'm not, even though I will tell you I am.
You know, that's such a hell here that he's literally just jealous of this guy, this young kid who like, you know, clearly understands how to manipulate the politics, which is clearly why he's mayor of New York now.
And here's this guy who's supposed to be, you know, sitting in his office at the resolute desk, whatever the desk is he's sitting in.
And he can't hide the fact that he is jealous of that.
It's a childlike idea, which is, you know, Nick, it's like when I was a kid, and I don't know if you had moments like this.
I was like, man, I want to be a professional baseball player, a professional basketball player.
I want to be an astronaut.
I want to be the president.
You know, it's this, this, and this.
It's basically like a Barbie doll that can change positions.
If Donald Trump could hold every office in the United States of America, he would do it happily, right?
Like, because it's not the actual mechanics of it.
He's living in a fantasy world.
I mean, he's president of the United States of America, for God's sakes, and he doesn't understand what's going on.
And he goes out every single day and sits at the resolute desk and doesn't prepare for it and just says whatever it is that he wants.
And quite frankly, the strategy that Mamdani used, you can even hear, right?
We hear leaks from Trump.
He gives the game away constantly because he has absolutely no discipline.
What probably happened was Mamdani was like, we're looking forward to working with you and any help that you can give to New York City, I think will make New York City better.
And Trump's like, oh, yeah, absolutely.
Let's go.
It doesn't matter that he's going to redistribute wealth.
It doesn't matter that he's going to tax the rich.
It was simple enough to just be like, hey, New York City will be a lot better if you help it.
And he was like, oh, absolutely.
I will do that.
It's a child is what it is.
And I'm also sure he said, listen, you know, you're from the Bronx.
Like, I'm from the, I think maybe he's from the Bronx too.
We were outsiders and we had a deal with people who were putting us down.
I'm sure he connected on that level too, because remember, everything goes back to Trump.
Trump can't congratulate him really.
All he could do is talk about the prism of how it makes him feel.
And so it's like, I wanted to be mayor.
I'm going to be able to help them, whatever.
You know, at some point we might, you know, buttheads, but it's, you know, it's okay.
Whatever he was saying, it's always about him.
And that's, again, that's the easiest of manipulated people.
And if Momdani can walk in there and do that, then imagine what Putin has already done.
That's the entire point.
And I'm glad that you put it that way to bring it back to the beginning of this episode.
He is the easiest person in the world to manipulate.
The easiest person in the world to manipulate.
He was manipulated by Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, right?
We're not even talking about Vladimir Putin.
We're not talking about Xi Jinping.
We're not talking about any of these heavyweights.
We're talking about Kim Kardashian and Kanye West.
And like the fact is that this guy has no intellectual or principle sort of grounding.
So basically, if you go in, you offer him a bribe or you say something that sort of pricks at his insecurity, like he'll follow you to the ends of the earth, which brings us back to the larger thing, which is the illusion that he's the strong man, he's the dictator or whatever.
It's a collective delusion.
Like this guy is as pathetic as pathetic comes.
And I just hope, as always, that as Stephen Miller is watching this, as the MAGA faithful are watching this, they think Mom Donnie is the Antichrist.
And to watch it, Nick, if people watch it on YouTube, he was constantly touching him.
He wasn't even just talking to him and like gleaming at him.
He was like touching him and giving him pats and all.
He was so excited to be there with him, which just reveals, again, we're dealing with a child.
Yeah.
That's it.
The comms people should tell him it's not a good look when you're sitting at a desk and you have like somebody standing next to you like that.
And it does it all the time, right?
Musk was like, I know.
It's like, and it might have been awkward to have Trump then stand next to him, but it would be better in terms of visual because it looks, it just makes him look so weak that, you know, someone needs, but, you know, no one's going to tell him because they don't, they don't even understand that.
People at work.
They don't even understand.
You're exactly right.
They don't even understand basic optics.
I mean, there's a question of his motor skills, obviously, because this guy just sits as Jasco Red Desk, whatever.
Like, even if you wanted to show dominance against Mom Donnie, Trump would tower over him if he was standing up.
Yeah.
And so you're exactly right.
They're not even capable of doing those things.
Speaking of people, our final story today who aren't able to do things.
We're at the end of the Department of Government Efficiency.
Doge is officially out of the federal government.
Nick, I'm not going to cry, you know, tears of grief here over this thing.
I think looking back when we get into the future, we will look at the period of Doge during the first year of the second Trump administration as one of the most consequential and damaging programs that we have had in modern history.
How are you feeling about the end of the Doge era?
I mean, the only thing they ended up streamlining was their own existence, right?
Like, it actually makes sense because they ended up wasting much more money than they thought they were trying to save.
And in a perfect world, or maybe not even a perfect world, in a normal world, there would have been investigations into what they were doing and how they were making up numbers, how they were completely misreading spreadsheets, how they were fabricating the impact of what they were doing.
And I think what we might end up discovering out of that was that, you know what, a lot of these, while there's bloat and then there's fat and there's all sorts of stuff going on in the government, it kind of functions for a reason.
And there are programs that are needed when they don't think that they are.
And as a result, yes, I think the damage they did there will far exceed as far as monetary issues.
It far exceeds whatever they thought they were going to save.
But going back to the foreign policy thing we were talking about, I mean, there were some very real things.
USAID did have a lot of soft power going on there that would help people across the world that is now perhaps forever destroyed.
The estimates are 600,000 people have died or will die because of what Doge did with USAID.
And on top of that, you know, the political mistakes that you talked about, geopolitical mistakes, we also have, we'll never know how much data theft there was under Doge, like how much private American data was handed over to not just corporations and the wealthy oligarchs, but potentially used in order to sweeten the pot for getting loans from people like the Saudis, the Russians, the Chinese, you name it.
We have no idea the extent of that.
We also don't know how much AI was thrust into, you know, public computers and systems.
This, you know, as we're watching the economy possibly start to fall apart and AI requires something massive, it might get to the point where like that was sort of a Trojan horse in getting them in.
Then you move, I mean, trillions upon trillions of cost that was perpetrated by Doge, the amount of money that it siphoned away from the American people.
We also have one piece of intentional and unintentional harm.
We had idiots who just got behind the controls of things, didn't understand anything, and just sort of fucked around with the systems.
We don't even know like the extent of that damage.
I mean, aviation might be ruined.
Meteorology, science, you name it, might be ruined in this country because of what Doge actually did.
They have broken systems to the point where we don't know exactly how to repair them or who's going to do it.
We can't even get a consensus to do almost anything with our political classes.
How are they going to repair the damage that Doge did?
This was a massive and consequential program that has absolutely not just stained government, but bilked government and ruined government and hurt God knows how many people.
Not just the people who aren't going to be able to eat because of USAID or the preventable diseases, but the amount of federal workers who have been harassed, who the past year of their lives have been hell because of these people.
Just an absolutely detestable program.
And the further we get away from Doge as an entity, the better.
Yeah.
And we had seen a quote today or this week about when they asked the Office of Management a budget, and they're like, yes, it no longer exists.
It's over.
Now, there was a funny article where Trump's right-hand man he brought in was managing after, sorry, Musk's right-hand man who came in to do this.
After Musk leaves, he continues to be there.
And at one point, they relieve him of his duties and he just keeps showing up and like refused to acknowledge that George Cassanda way, like that he's that he was fired.
And so that came back the very next day.
Somebody needs to ask Musk what his response would be to this figure that you quoted about how many people have suffered and died across the world through their cuts.
And because I think it would be revealing, because I'm sure he would have no compunction to answer that question.
He would say something like, well, why is it on us to, you know, feed other people across the world?
And it's like, because it's the right thing to do.
A, it's the right thing to do.
B, there is a lot of political capital to be had for doing that, you know, and that there is something to say to be said about if all the damaging foreign policy that we do do and all the mistakes that we make, you know, you can kind of maybe mitigate some of that by those programs to some degree, and they're gone.
And the other thing I think about the AI, I don't think it's as much AI what they were using.
I think it was literally Control-F.
You know, they literally were just doing find and then trans, right?
And then find and gay.
Well, no, they installed AI programs within government databases that are basically have taken over a lot of the operations of this shit.
But you're right.
I mean, they basically just went in and took out things.
It reminds me a lot, Nick, of past times where I've had laptops or computers and I didn't know what I was doing and like it reached the point where it wouldn't work anymore.
And I just went around and messed around with it and then basically ruined the computer because I had no idea what I was doing.
That's what Doge was.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, you know, listen, it's good that's gone, but you know, you need another department now to like repair everything.
And again, like we said, if you're going to run on this, if you're going to run for office, it should be on somehow reprotecting all of our private data that's been corrupted.
That's got to be part of the platform.
I will say when it comes to Doge, we'll either look back on this as like a huge stain on this era in which we got very close to something very dangerous, or we'll look at it as the first attempt by the tech oligarchy, the tech fascists to take over our government, which basically laid the foundation for a future.
All right, everybody, we will be back with the weekender on Friday.
That way you can have it, you know, as you're sweating off your Thanksgiving meal and hanging out with your family.
Head over to patreon.com slash mycraigpodcast.
We need your support more than ever.
In the meantime, you can find us over on Blue Sky.
