Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman dig into Trump’s 2025 National Security Strategy, a 33 page blueprint that reads less like a sober policy document and more like a crypto fascist love letter to white nationalist demographics, spheres of influence, and an American retreat from the postwar liberal order. They break down what it means for NATO, Europe, Russia, China, and why no one in their right mind should ever again trust the United States as a “steady partner” when policy swings on whatever enriches one deeply corrupt old man and his oligarch friends.
From there, the guys wade into the Netflix grab for Warner Bros and the rival Ellison–Kushner–Saudi play, talking about how tech money, oil money, and propaganda ambitions are fusing into one giant content machine that cares a lot about control and very little about art. Then it is on to FIFA inventing a fake “Peace Prize” to flatter Trump, the Queller pardon that turned into an open air quid pro quo tantrum, and Marjorie Taylor Greene’s sad little image rehab tour on 60 Minutes.
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I'm Jerry Dave Sexton here with my friend, my co-host, Nick Hausman.
Nick, how you doing, bud?
I'm great.
I'm doing well.
And everything really is fine.
I'm feeling good today.
So I'm happy to be here with you, Jared.
He came in hot.
Was it too hot?
Did I say that?
It was a lot, but no, I appreciate it.
I'm not there energy-wise, so I'll take yours.
Okay, good.
I'm here to raise all boats.
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I'm the tide.
You are the sizzle in the tide, and that's the way it should be.
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Nick, we start today with the 2025 National Security Strategy, a 33-page document.
This is something that is released every year that talks about the priorities coming out of the White House and out of the presidency.
It has all of the geopolitical strategies and focuses.
This year, really interesting, Nick.
It is anti-European, anti-liberal order, pro-Russia, pro-it doesn't say white families, but my God, if you read between the lines, it is most definitely talking about white families being part of our national security and how population change around the world is a security threat.
Nick, I study a lot of crypto fascism.
I study a lot of crypto-Nazism, and this is one of the most blatantly crypto-fascist crypto-Nazi documents that I have ever laid eyes on.
Wow.
So when you're saying crypto, are you saying crypto, like as in they folded some crypto stuff into that?
Because I don't know, as in hidden, as in like there's just barely a veneer hiding the overtly fascistic and overtly Nazi.
I mean, barely then.
Barely.
Because it's pretty out in the open.
This must sound a lot like what a national security, you know, briefing would be in, I don't know, like 1790, 1800s, right?
I feel like this was a moment where they wanted to divide up the world and kind of colonialize everybody.
And it seems to me that what the alignment is going to be forming is some version of it's Russia, China, and the United States getting to kind of divide up everything, including Europe.
But they want to kind of make Europe into some sort of a, you know, whatever they can use for parts and, you know, treat them as a sort of third world country.
Is that how I feel to you?
Well, you know what's wild about it?
I've read a lot of national security strategies because this is often where the bullshit is stripped out and you actually see where the emphasis and the priorities actually lie.
You know, if you want to understand America at the end of the 20th century going into 9-11 and then beyond with the Iraq war and all of that, go back and look at those national security strategies because they really lay out how it is that we ended up at that point.
Looking at this, Nick, this is a radical departure.
You know, it speaks of a Trump corollary, almost, you know, sort of echoing the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which basically carved up the Western hemisphere for the United States of America.
And if you actually pay attention to U.S. geopolitical strategy in the very recent past, Nick, it was world domination.
It was America defining all of globalism, all of neoliberal capitalism, all of the resources, no rivals, any of that.
This is a retreat and it is a retreat into a spheres of influence type situation where if you came back from the future and told me that we signed a treaty with China and Russia to basically be along an Axis power with them at this point, I would not be shocked.
That is how averted it is in this strategy.
Yes, Pax Americana is dead.
And we, you know, because I didn't mind necessarily if it was benevolent, our decision to be, you know, our far-reaching across the world.
There was this notion that we were going to be the police for democracy across the world.
And there were moments when we were, you know, you could argue it worked or we were a peacekeeping force like World War II, perhaps you could argue.
But now it definitely feels like our retreat from, you know, and maintaining our focus in this hemisphere, to me indicates, well, that's because we're just going to let Russia pillage and whatever they want to do for whatever resources they can get there.
I think that we're realizing that whatever resources that were around the world, we could probably mine them in South America as well.
And that would probably include like Africa.
And so this now this new focus on that is partly because they want to just, you know, strip whatever they can get from South American countries, but also it allows China and it allows Russia to have their own playgrounds as well.
We're not going to be the police anymore for democracy.
I think that's sort of the overall thing that screams to me.
And what really kind of is bizarre about this whole thing in a macro sense is that every four years, every eight years, we just always, we switch people in the White House.
And so we have to imagine, let's just say a Democratic president gets elected in 2028.
Well, the entire thing changes and we're going right back to the way we were, right?
I'll say a couple things.
First, to answer your question about, you know, if a Democrat gets elected or, you know, another Republican or if, you know, who knows at this point electorally.
Yeah, the strategy will change, but who is going to trust this country?
Like in the deals that they've made with the United States of America, America's currency was consistency.
It wasn't that, you know, we were benevolent.
It was that you knew what you were getting.
We were a safe investment.
We were a safe handshake deal.
And at this point, all of that has been ripped up.
And while we're on the subject, Nick, I want to make it clear to people, I don't think it's a bad thing that America is moving back from being the quote unquote world's benevolent policeman.
I don't think that that's necessarily a bad thing.
I think it's something that needed to happen.
I think the problem here is that it's happening in order to aid two authoritarian countries in order for them to ascend and have more power, which you have to ask a lot of questions.
You have to ask so many different questions at this point because, Nick, we don't know what Trump is getting out of any of this.
We don't know the people around him, everyone from Tulsi, Gabbard, below.
Like we have no idea.
Is Trump being enriched to do this?
Is he being blackmailed to do this?
We have literally no idea.
We've seen proof that these things take place.
We know that he, you know, has taken bribes.
We'll talk more about that in a little bit.
So what exactly is this and where does it originate from?
And that to me seems more like self-destruction and selling this country out than it does, much like when we talked about tariffs, creating some sort of a change from a system that needed to change.
This feels bad.
I don't know how else to say it.
This feels really bad.
Oh, yeah.
And let's just talk about NATO for a second, if we can, because again, when I mentioned World War II, I did that because we had to form NATO as a bloc against Russian incursion across Europe, right?
and any kind of expanding their their what they're doing now like in ukraine for instance and why they probably wouldn't stop there um in this doctrine um what was interesting was they now demanding that nato countries spend at least uh five percent of their gdp on defense for nato uh it had been traditionally two percent of which they already kind of struggled to get closer to although trump you know if you want to say to his credit has gotten them to spend more since he came into office in 2016.
But 5% could be devastating to some of these countries.
And it's almost like a take it or leave.
And if you're not going to get anywhere near there, we're completely out is really what it kind of sounds like.
And it's an alarm, I think, that every European country has now heard and realizes what this means.
And it's concerning because the last time they didn't have that kind of full-throated support of the United States is World War II breaks out.
And so, and certainly the Nazis and Germany didn't seem to be concerned too much in the very beginning with the United States getting involved, right?
And they had a year and a half before that really happened.
So this is the problem where, you know, once that begins and that slope starts, you know, suddenly, yes, we're not, we're isolationists who aren't going to be there for anybody.
Never mind the fact that like, you know, how many people have died from even something as simple as USAID being dismantled, right?
Across the board.
It's that mindset that they've now, you know, established.
And if somebody else takes over, you're right.
One issue could very well be like, well, gee, look how much it saved us that we got rid of all these programs, whether or not it helped anybody or help people survive.
The bottom line is we save all this money.
So why would we go back to doing that and helping anybody?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, that was the mindset in the United States of America going into World War I and then World War II.
I mean, that's one of the hidden histories of all of this is that people look at it as if we were like, you know, the heroes in these two situations.
And in both of them, our isolationism, our racism, our self-dealing, our, you know, self-narcissism, like all of that, like, you know, really hurt a lot of people.
And now that, you know, the American empire is in decline, we have this absolute fool in charge, this reckless, corrupt, dangerous, like unwell person.
And I, I, I honestly, man, I don't, I can't imagine a worse situation.
I cannot imagine a worse person to be in charge at a more consequential time.
And I, I, I can't even imagine what it feels like to be one of our former allies in Europe, to watch this.
I can't even imagine what it, what it feels like to wake up one day and suddenly like that this is starting to fall apart like this.
Like this, this was the foundation upon which the post-war world order was built.
And it is effectively gone at this point.
It's effectively gone.
And here's what you got to keep your eye on, because China, when they want to take over Taiwan, would most likely do it sometime between now and before Trump's office, before his four years are over, right?
I mean, if they know what they're doing, probably, yeah.
And that would be the signal, like maybe even out of this, because they're already taking the Russian talking points, right?
Like Russia is literally writing our foreign policy for us and we're just spinning it back out.
And, you know, it was a real, I, Rubio got, you know, some flack for this the other day when they're like, you know, we talked about this.
They use literally, you know, they just Google translated Russian into English and then put it as their own.
You know, it's not that far-fetched to me to assume like, yes, they'll probably have some sort of similar deal with China to make all this stuff work.
And then China would, you know, and by the way, Russia and China are not the kind of people you want to get into an agreement with anyway, because they will change deals in a heartbeat as well.
China could totally be like, great, we'll just do this.
We'll treat Taiwan fine.
And then they'll go and encourage right into Taiwan and take it over.
And then, you know, God forbid, we have to have someone like Trump make a decision about what they're going to do about that.
And the answer to that would be nothing, right?
We would do nothing if they went into Taiwan.
I mean, that is likely what would end up happening.
Yeah.
Again, it's not that the American liberal world order has been successful.
It has been an abysmal failure.
It has brought shame to this country and to the world.
It's caused unbelievable amounts of harm.
But for it to transform like this is wild.
It is a wild thing to see take place.
Speaking of wild things, Nick, this is a story over the past couple of days that has taken a lot of different turns.
Netflix won a bidding war to acquire Warner Brothers Discovery for over $80 billion, including a huge library of some of the most consequential movies and films and all of it that we've ever seen.
Paramount Skydance was in the running for this for a while under the leadership of David Ellison, and they are not taking this lying down.
It appears that Donald Trump and the Trump administration has the ability to approve this purchase or not.
But as he has been lobbying Donald Trump, they have begun a hostile takeover attempt using Jared Kushner and the Saudis, surprise, surprise, to go ahead and try and steal Warner Brothers out from underneath Netflix.
This is a big, giant, weird, complicated story, Nick.
And we need to talk about both the idea of Netflix buying Warner Brothers and the idea of Paramount Skydance stealing Warner Brothers in order to do this, and the fact that Donald Trump is basically sitting around getting bribed and getting his ass kissed in order to do something about it.
Big, giant, weird story.
What are your initial takes on this one?
Yeah.
Well, I mean, the first thing that I was wrapping my head around being out here in LA was that people were really upset about the notion that Netflix is going to take over a major motion picture company, production company.
And so I was wondering why.
Did that mean to be less projects for less jobs?
And it could be that, but there's another level of that is also probably less movies in the theaters, right?
Because Netflix would look at this in that same way described about bottom line that when you're trying to run a, you know, the government like a company, like a, you know, Fortune 500 company.
Well, this is a Fortune 500 company.
And they'll be like, eh, why do we spend all this money to send out all these, you know, copies of these films and have to deal with all that headache in the theater?
They could, we could just deliver people's rights of their houses.
And so, you know, there's nobody who's been as well versed as I am in terms of the action of going to the theater and getting popcorn and enjoying a movie in a movie theater in the audience, right?
But that won't matter to anybody with the bottom line.
And so I think that's a big concern as well out here is that we'll end up seeing the death of movie theaters.
Yeah.
I mean, and that is something that's going on here.
I mean, if you're a firm, a firm like Netflix, and let's make it like very clear what this is.
This is tech taking over the content industry, the entertainment industry.
The money that they got from disrupting the past sort of status quo, they're now using that to gobble up everything.
And that is the same thing that happened with the industrialists in the 20th century.
And eventually it led to fascism, you name it.
In this case, something as simple as going to the movie theater, which is like something that gives life, you know, joy.
It's something that like you can like remember and it like makes life worth living.
People have always said to me, it's going to go away at some point as someone who loves going to the movie theaters.
I'm like, why?
Why is it going away?
And they're like, well, you know, the bottom line and eventually people are going to, I'm like, well, why would it go away?
You know what I mean?
And it's like, ah, it eventually will, which sucks.
And so on one hand, you have the possibility of Netflix.
And by the way, another reason that they would want to buy Warner Brothers, Nick, is to feed their AI so that they can create content and mash all these things up.
And you can put your face on Neo in the Matrix.
And then I guess that, I guess, profit.
Next thing you have is Paramount Skydance, which Ellison, the son of Larry Ellison, is trying to get basically every media conglomerate that he possibly can in order to push right wing and conservative propaganda.
And Kushner and the Saudis are coming in lately.
And we kind of were supposed to talk about this at one point.
They bought EA Sports, the major, you know, sports video game producer.
They're going to go ahead and, you know, Sainwash the Saudis there.
They're going to find every place that they possibly can to push this shit, whether it's CBS or Warner Brothers properties or whatever it is.
So now we have a situation, neither one of these outcomes is great.
Neither one of them is good.
They both suck.
And so as a result, we have moved into this time period of corporate monopolies and trusts that need to be broken up.
They need to be taken down.
This process needs to be rewinded.
And here's where you end, where both choices are absolutely dreadful.
Right.
And I think the underlying thing that makes it really exemplify, because, you know, by the way, if you try and peruse Netflix to watch a movie, for instance, if they suddenly overnight had all the Warner Brothers catalog, that would be better than what it is now.
So I want to throw that out there.
But and also there is this notion that Netflix is kind of nice to the creators in terms of the creative process.
Like they're kind of shitty on how they pay.
They don't do residuals like they used to.
So it's tougher for creators to make money in that sense.
But as far as I understand it, they are pretty good in terms of if we're looking for interesting projects that are going to come out of that.
They might not be the one behemoth that's going to like crush creativity.
Maybe I know you're reacting to that a little bit, but like, you know, Stranger Things comes out of that.
They make movies.
They have made one movie after another, big budget movies that are basically created in such a way as to like give people something to watch while they're on their phones.
Right.
Well, okay, but is that their fault?
I don't know because we're no, it's no, no, no, no.
It's their fault and our fault.
It's both.
Like we have failed creativity and these corporations have failed creativity.
They basically, creativity has been in the middle of everything and it has been collateral damage.
Fair enough.
But Netflix has, you know, their record is probably better than some in terms of meddling as a studio.
That said, they're not interested in making like movies per se.
They want to make episodics because that's where the money is.
They can keep people coming back and paying more for Netflix itself.
So that's a problem.
But I think the bigger underlying thing here is that it's really easy for these competitors who wanted in on this deal to make one phone call to president to gosh to Trump and basically gum up the works very easily where that should not happen.
And we know this happens all the time in every version of the business from tech to Hollywood.
And that's the underlying issue.
I think that sort of used to not happen.
You used to not be able to do this kind of thing, at least as far as I know.
Maybe it was happening in the past too, but that firewall is gone.
And so it's all too easy to do these things and to have graft because we know that in order to make that happen and then to have a counter bid and maybe get a chance to buy this, Trump would have to benefit somehow.
Well, and of course he does because the Ellisons are one of his main benefactors in all of this.
And they've been doing everything that they can to prop him up, everything they can to get him to win the presidency.
And they're gobbling up everything that they possibly can.
I mean, we've seen this from networks to TikTok to apps, you name it.
Like they are all over this thing, gobbling it up like, you know, hungry, hungry hippos.
And they've got a man in the White House who, I mean, he was at the Kennedy Center.
And in between saying that he was going to nominate himself for the Kennedy Center Prize, more on that in just a second.
Between saying that, he was like, oh, this is a very big deal.
I'm going to, I'm definitely going to play a role in this thing.
Well, we know what role he's going to play.
He's going to use his power to enrich himself and enrich his friends and his supporters.
That's it.
There's no surprise in any of this.
And you're not wrong about the analysis of what Netflix would do probably if it bought Warner Brothers.
And we could talk about what Paramount, Skydance, or whatever in the hell they're calling themselves could do.
We shouldn't be in an environment of corporate consolidation like this.
We shouldn't be having all of these monopolies continuing to gobble each other up, not just in entertainment where it's bad, but in utilities and in the food space and in this space and in healthcare and you name it, one thing after another, we never should have gotten to this spot.
And letting corporations and monopolies grow and grow and grow to this point was always going to get to the point where you brought up graft, absolutely.
Corruption, favoritism, and also everyone getting screwed in the end, except for the people who are getting more and more money and more and more resources.
Yeah.
And now the interesting thing is as we move forward with technology, you know, someone is going to ultimately make a feature film with their iPhone that is huge.
I mean, people are already doing that, but we probably haven't had a breakout hit like that.
And so there are ways because I think your point is as far as to safeguard the most creative way to get content, like the most creative movies, you have to have competition.
You have to have other places where you can go.
And, you know, if it consolidates enough, then one person gets control of almost the entire industry.
And that's bad, right?
I'm not even, it's not even just innovation.
Like, yeah, I think a lot of people who would make good movies or who would write good books or make good TV shows or good art aren't getting their things made because of corporate consolidation.
I'm also talking about like what is being fed to people.
The Ellisons don't want to buy Warner Brothers because they're interested in making movies.
They want to buy Warner Brothers so that they can use it for propaganda purposes.
They don't have CBS because they care about CBS news being good.
They care about feeding a steady stream of propaganda.
And so we're actually talking about reality capture, how things are experienced by everybody.
And this is stuff that like isn't being asked.
It's always been who's going to win the war for Warner Brothers, which is how they always, you know, really talk about these big giant battles like this instead of why is this such a big deal?
It's not just because it stifles innovation, which it does.
It's not just that it eliminates jobs, which it does, but it's the fact that it allows more and more control over culture and therefore the imaginations and experiences of people.
Well, wait, I want to ask you to go back a long time, Jared, and see if you can remember this.
Remember when corporations thought that to be quote unquote woke was actually a good policy monetarily?
I mean, you know, if this was Wayne Brothers, like it'd be a real buddy.
Yeah, it was roughly a year ago.
Yeah, right.
I mean, the Bud Light fiasco, right?
Now, the Ellisons, though, are believers.
These people are zealots.
So it's not like you could, because somebody who was really progressive could be in this thing and then decide they'll open up the gates and have all manner of interracial couples on every movie they do, whatever, all the stuff that triggers the right, right?
But they aren't going to recognize that in the sense that not only they obviously the bottom line is the golden goose here, but I think they're believers.
They want to turn this country into something of the propaganda you're talking about, right?
That's the other underlying thing that's kind of scary about them in particular.
Yeah, quote unquote wokeness in corporations was never real.
That wasn't their actual principles or ideology.
It was, you know, something that they saw an opportunity to capitalize on and make money.
And at the first moment they could, they threw everybody under the bus immediately.
Like they made it very clear that that was never their actual priority.
Nobody with the money to do these things is interested in actual change.
They're interested in just maintaining what they have or increasing their share over what is out there.
Ellison and the people around him are true believers and they are absolutely dedicated to using any resources and any power and any reach that they're able to accrue to go ahead and change this culture and to change politics as a result of changing that culture.
Yeah.
And by the way, the Saudis are too.
Like we haven't even talked about that.
Like the Saudis are involved in everything.
Like that amount of money that is flooding in in all these different markets, they're not doing this out of the kindness of their hearts because they want to own a movie studio.
Right.
They're just not.
By the way, speaking of groups of people who aren't doing things out of the kindness of their heart, the draw for the World Cup in 2026 was held in the past few days.
FIFA, what an upstanding organization had announced that they were going to award their very first FIFA Peace Prize, Nick.
I was very excited about this.
I tuned in.
I really couldn't wait to see who they were going to give this award to.
And let's see how that first FIFA Peace Prize.
Let's see who it got awarded to.
Please welcome the very first winner of the FIFA Peace Prize, the 45th and 47th President of the United States of America, Mr. Donald J. Trump.
Please.
Mr. President, this is your prize.
This is your peace prize.
There is also a beautiful medal for you that you can wear everywhere you want to go right now.
Okay.
I'm sorry.
I'm going to stop.
I can't wait.
Yeah.
Nick, I'm not in much of a laughing mood today, and I'm laughing more to keep myself from weeping.
A completely fake award was made up to give to Donald Trump.
Everybody knows it was fake.
Everybody knows that he doesn't even deserve the fake reward.
And on top of that, like it was done in order to barter favors and to get him on the side of FIFA, one of the most corrupt institutions in the world.
How about this?
How does this make you feel?
Well, I'm confused because we already got the World Cup for next year.
It's already done.
So why are they buttering them up more?
I suppose there's more favors they need.
Maybe they need like better seats in certain well-is ICE going to arrest people and deport them?
Well, let me tell you, ICE would be drooling over the possibilities of this event in our country next year.
Yeah.
Okay.
So I want you to imagine for just a second, because this is the territory we're in now.
If this was being hosted in, I don't know, Saudi Arabia, right?
And they gave MBS a peace prize before.
Would you or would you not expect that they were wanting, first of all, slave labor would probably be part of it, right?
Because that's how absolutely awful FIFA is.
But they would also want to make sure that crime was kept low, that they weren't being harassed, the people coming to the country weren't being harassed.
We're in full-on, like feeble dictator mode.
And I also want to point out, I don't know that Trump knows it.
I don't know that Trump understands what happened here.
And everybody in the world knows it.
Everybody in the audience knows it.
Everyone knows exactly what took place.
I don't know that Trump did.
I don't know that he understood exactly what that was.
Oh, he looked like a little kid, you know remember, when he's in the um, in the fire uh truck he's, he's pulling the horn, he's he, he can revert to be a little kid.
And when he picks up that medal, if you didn't watch it on youtube uh, we have the video of it.
Uh he, you know, he he know, he's really excited about it.
Uh, I mean listen, when I was in eighth grade of the basketball team, I won the most improved player award and it kind of listen, I earned that thing.
I worked really, I worked hard, but it does have reek a little bit of that.
Hey, like we got to give this guy something.
Let's just throw him a bone here or whatever.
And that's what it really feels like.
It's like let's just put on the whole thing, but like the pomp and circumstance that they're trying to evoke out of this with the music, and then he comes out on stage and whatever.
It's so vile.
Um, and you're right, there's a lot of logistics i'm sure that are still haven't been worked out yet that they needed.
They need, like you know, to grease the wheels here for for all sorts of stuff and uh, it's so easy to do.
You can only imagine how easy it is for someone like Putin to deal with them and get the language they want into these agreements, for Ukraine, for instance.
When you see how easy it is for FIFA to do this, by the way, we know why.
We know FIFA is really um corrupt because it was exposed.
The original uh corruption was set latter, and you know who was the guy in charge of exposing all that corruption was Christopher Steele, and so if you're wondering why we took him um at his word when he started reporting about the Opple research for Trump in 2016 or 2015 was because he was instrumental in taking down the FIFA um corruption that had existed for years up until then.
FIFA should not exist.
It should be absolutely destroyed, and i'm not surprised whatsoever that they tried to bribe Trump with the most transparently meaningless like piece of award imaginable and and I I said this on social media nick, if you need to understand the moment, look at it this way Donald Trump has spent years trying to lobby for uh, the Nobel Peace Prize, which he doesn't deserve.
He has made it very clear that he wants to be awarded for that.
FIFA created a fake trophy, a fake medal.
They couldn't even like really make a big deal out of it.
Everybody knew that this was horseshit.
Trump, a miserable person, was given something that he deeply, deeply wanted and also couldn't really care about.
Like he probably forgot about this within an hour, which is the entire point here is, he is the most corruptible and least scrupled person that ever could have gotten into that office.
He doesn't even have the self-awareness to know that he's being bribed, which brings us to where we are today, which is we are so much more vulnerable, not just because we have a corrupt grifter in office.
We have a person who doesn't even have the sensibilities to understand that in the moment that he is being corrupt.
Oh I, I know.
And, by the way, this connects directly to the pardon he gave uh Texas uh, uh politician Henry Queller I think it's a good place to bring this up is because he pardons the guy um, who was caught guilty uh, in a long trial, only to find out that Henry Queller is going to rerun again as a Democrat for Congress.
And when his response to this was here really quickly on True Social, he goes, Congressman Henry Queller announced that he will be running for Congress again and running as in quotes, I don't know why, in the great city of Texas as a Democrat, continuing to work with the same radical left scum that just weeks before wanted him and his wife to spend the rest of their lives in prison and probably still do.
Such a lack of quote all caps loyalty, something that Texas voters and Henry's daughters will not like.
Oh, well, next time, no more Mr. Nice Guy.
He lays it right out there where clearly when you do these things for them and he does things for you, he expects something in return always.
And he calls out Quellar's daughters.
So you have to imagine the daughters went to him and say, hey, please, here's a million dollars.
Please get him, give him a pardon on this.
And then he freaks out on it because, you know, of course, the guy who got pardoned, as one will do, they'll run again and run again for the Democrats.
I don't know what he expected out of all that, but this is just another level of where, you know, the quick pro quo is disgusting.
Well, I mean, I think a lot about what happened with Eric Adams, a figure, the mayor of New York, who was caught dead to rights, taking favors and bribes from Turkey of all places, caught dead to rights on that.
And in exchange for not the DOJ not prosecuting him, he basically became a hired stooge for the Trump administration.
And by the way, Nick, it wasn't even hidden.
It wasn't even hidden.
Like he went on Fox and Friends and sat next to the borders are who reminded him, Hey, we're going to work together or I'll come see you.
We know what the deal is.
Like didn't even hide it.
And that type of overt corruption, I really hope, and this is one of the things that sticks with me a lot anymore.
I just hope that it's becoming so transparent at this point that everybody knows.
Like Trump's behavior is so transparent.
I've watched a clip that you played of him getting awarded this thing from FIFA.
It's one of the most pathetic things I've ever seen.
Like it really, truly is.
It's that pathetic.
It reminds me of like when a doofy CEO goes up and is like given like CEO of the year by his corporation or something like that, you know, as somebody sings like a song that has like U2 lyrics altered to be about him and his quarter or whatever.
Like it is one of the most pathetic things I've ever laid eyes on.
I hope, I hope, I hope that the transparency is growing with people.
Oh, I mean, I think we're seeing that in the polls right now, and especially in the places where he had made major gains for 2024, it's flipped all the way back around again, in the Hispanic community in particular, which is completely predictable considering what they're doing with ICE.
And so, you know, but again, all these things are worrisome because he's not behaving like he cares about polls.
Ipso facto, he's not behaving like he cares about elections anymore.
And that's the real concern here.
Although, you know, again, in that seat in Texas was huge because, again, it's going to be razor-thin they're trying to make sure they maintain control of Congress so he won't get impeached again and then grind everything to a halt.
And so the fact that he would then, you know, do that is, it's just magnifies how important this issue is.
But again, if the polls were, if the elections were fair, then there's no way that the Republicans are going to may take control of the House, at the very least.
And I would hope the Senate as well.
I mean, if the elections are held and they're free and fair, I don't know what.
I don't know what other direction that they would possibly be.
I really, truly don't.
I don't know.
Speaking of Congress, by the way, retiring Congressperson Marjorie Taylor Greene is out making a, I would say a charm offensive.
I don't, I don't even know what to call it.
I can't pretend on this shit anymore.
But Marjorie Taylor Greene went on 60 Minutes in order to show off her new sort of position and things got a little bit feisty.
It's the most toxic political culture.
And it's not helping the American.
But you contributed to that.
You, you were out there pounding, insulting people.
Wesley, you've contributed to it as well with your own.
Yes, you're accusatory, just like you did just then.
I know you're accusing me, but I'm smart.
You're accusing me.
I am accusing you.
But we don't have to accuse one another.
I want you to respond to what you have done in terms of insulting people, yelling at people, and then saying.
I'd like for you to respond for that.
I don't know.
You can respond.
I've been insulted.
You do and the way you question.
And you're accusing me right now.
Great.
This is awesome.
Love it.
Oh, my goodness.
I mean, I literally thought it was maybe some sort of spinal tap bit because that's how ridiculous that was.
And by the way, we got to give some flowers to Leslie Stahl, right?
I mean, she's been around a long time.
I give her a lot of props.
She's one of the real ones who knows how to do these questions.
Although I wouldn't have characterized the way she did it by like insulting people because she's also spread all manner of conspiracy theory, which really is a lot of the damage I would argue that Marjorie Taylor Greene has done.
And so that's what I would have done in her.
If you notice, it's also edited.
So CBS is still up to their editing stuff.
There's touch there.
I would love to find out what that varawl looks like.
But the fact that she's trying to do that Republican weirdo thing of flipping the tables, and I see this on Twitter all the time on the basketball side, where it's like, no, no, no, you're the one who's doing this.
You're gaslighting me.
And it's like, what are you talking about?
I'm asking you the question.
It's not mean.
That's not insulting.
And here we are.
At long last, can we stop with this Marjorie Taylor Greene bullshit?
Can we please?
It is a rebranding that is going to end up somewhere with the rebranding turning into something that is going to enrich her and hopefully empower her from her perspective.
Right.
Period.
She is not sorry.
She did that on CNN.
And by the way, she knows.
That's the other thing.
She's not the smartest person who's ever been in politics, but she's perceptive.
She knew on CNN that she wasn't going to get pushback the way that Leslie Stahl was going to do.
Leslie Stahl was going to give her an actual interview.
And so she came ready for a fight with Leslie Stahl.
CNN means nothing.
And by the way, while we're on the subject, fuck CNN for starting this thing where Kashi or whatever in the hell it's called, they're going to start letting people bet on current events and what's going on.
Galshi, whatever in the hell it is, awful, awful.
And that's the other thing.
60 minutes is not going to be around very much longer, even in the pale, you know, imitation that it is right now.
Thank God, while Marjorie Taylor Greene was out the door trying to stash her bags with as much cash and capital as possible, that somebody held her to account and held her feet to the fire because she is someone who has done real damage and she deserves to be held accountable for the damage that she has done.
So her inability to accept that and acknowledge that indicates to you that this is all a sham.
This turnaround is all a sham.
It's been a sham from the very beginning.
Yeah.
I mean, I can go with that as well.
And so, and at some point, it's just not worth it, right?
And I don't, I'm not going to doubt that she probably did get death threats and it became kind of serious once she turned against Trump, which is what happens.
And if that's the case, then like I would think that maybe she wasn't getting very many death threats before that from like the left, for instance, which is what the right always is like, dude, we're getting all these death threats.
It's like, okay, maybe, but, you know, all of a sudden when you get them from the right, that's when you take them seriously, right?
Is that what happens?
I don't know.
But, you know, either way, that seat is up for grabs now, I believe, in terms of whether or not a Democrat can win that seat.
And so we'll find out.
But again, there's reports now that there are 20 more GOP congresspeople who are not going to run again.
And so maybe that's the dam that's breaking here.
And we won't get any kind of self-reflection or any kind of meaculpa, but at least we'll have them stepping down.
Well, I mean, the people who want actual power are going to leave the House of Representatives because it has been effectively shut down.
I mean, like it's a front.
I mean, Mike Johnson has basically allowed Donald Trump to shut down the House of Representatives and particularly like any sort of opposition that takes place in the House.
So a lot of them are going to leave.
And a lot of them were going to lose in the first place.
And so they're leaving while the getting is good so they can get better jobs and make more money than, you know, to leave with the stink of getting defeated on them.
But when it comes to her, going back to what we're talking about here, Nick, I don't feel bad for her talking about death threats from the right.
Like she has used those same people.
She has leveled that lens on plenty of other people.
And I haven't heard any sort of like introspection on her part, any sort of self-questioning about how she played a role in that.
Like it's simply, oh, Donald Trump didn't care that I told him I was getting threats after he attacked me.
Okay, well, you didn't care when other people were getting threats against based on what you said about them.
So, no, I don't, I don't trust her.
I don't give her any sort of credit.
I wouldn't trust her for anything.
No.
Fair enough.
Fair enough.
Well, we'll find out what she's going to be up to sooner than later in this point.
It'll make her money and it will gain her power in some way, shape, or form, or it'll tend to.
All right, everybody, that's going to do it for the regular edition of the Mutt Craig podcast.
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