Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman open with brisket talk, then carve into a darker holiday menu. First up, CBS pulls a reported 60 Minutes segment on El Salvador’s CECOT prison after Barry Weiss rides in to “center” the narrative. Then it’s over to TPUSA’s AmericaFest, where Vice President J.D. Vance serves up a white grievance stocking stuffer as conservative influencers snipe at each other for clicks and control. Finally, they wade through the latest Epstein document dump, where the redactions are doing more heavy lifting than the DOJ, and close on why Democratic incumbents already fear 2026 primaries. No Weekender this Friday for the holiday, the year-end show returns next week.
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
Welcome to a holiday edition of the Mutt Greg Podcast from JerDH Sexton.
I'm here with my friend, my co-conspirator, Nick Houseman.
How you doing, bud?
I'm good.
Happy holidays.
How's Hanukkah going?
Hanukkah is over.
It was great.
Is Hanukkah over?
Oh my God.
I feel terrible.
Hanukkah's over.
We had a big one, big thing last night.
I think it was the eighth, seventh, eighth, whatever it is, you know, eight nights.
Nonetheless, terrific brisket that I cooked by using my old school recipe, which is I'm lucky that the immigrants were allowed into the country at the time to then bring these recipes with them.
That's lovely.
I'm so happy that you got.
I was just saying before we started recording, I've heard so much about this brisket for so long.
Storied.
It's not, and you got to be careful because if you come from a certain part of the country, your version of brisket ain't anything like what I'm talking about.
Brisket's all over the place, but I welcome all of them and we welcome you to this edition.
I hope wherever you are, whatever you're doing, whatever holiday you're celebrating, that it is wonderful.
I want to say thank you to everybody.
It has been a weird year.
It has been a tough first year of the second Trump administration.
All of you are so, so appreciated.
We are going to take Christmas off.
So there will not be a weekender on Friday.
We will be back with the year-end edition of the Mutt Greg podcast next week.
In the meantime, head over to patreon.com slash Mutt Gregpodcast in order to support the show, keep us ad-free, editorially independent, and continuing to grow.
Also, you gain access to the weekender episodes that we do have, specials, live shows, the Discord community, all that good stuff.
Nick, there's a lot to talk about before we take our holiday break.
We are recording this on Monday, December 22nd.
Yesterday, Sunday, December 21st, 60 Minutes aired a, how do I put this?
A very strange little notice that a story was originally slotted to be aired.
It was an investigation into the CCOT concentration camp in El Salvador, and it was being pulled.
And the notice was strange.
Didn't really mention why that had happened, said that maybe it would air at a future date.
And since then, all hell has broken loose.
And by the way, Nick, I think you and me and everybody listening to this, we knew immediately why it wasn't being aired.
And we knew who it was that pulled the plug on that particular segment.
Were you shocked at all to hear that Barry Weiss was the one who pulled the plug on this thing?
Shocked, Jared.
Shocked.
Hamling going on.
Yes.
I choose to believe the reporting that has subsequently come out and probably in a sort of a, you know, anonymous leak thing from the CBS reporters that it was because it was very much damning to the Trump administration.
The other reason why I choose to believe that is because any type of reporting on this subject would be basically guaranteeing some sort of negative portrayal of what the administration did.
There's no other way that you could color that, those facts and how they've unfolded.
So this is really, really frightening.
We already were scared about the fact that he had been able to sue ABC and they would just settle real easily.
And then the other things are getting in the way of like mergers that are now causing editorial oversight from the administration.
And then Trump himself has already kind of boasted that this was going to happen.
And so I think that this is all where we're leading to.
And this is probably just the tip of the iceberg if they continue to be able to do this.
Yeah.
So a couple of the things that have come out, Sharon Alfonse, a veteran reporter for 60 Minutes.
And by the way, like you don't just go out and mention this unless you're extremely pissed off, has said that this particular segment was screened five times, that they made sure that everything was in place, legal made sure it was ready to go, and that Barry Weiss came in for political reasons and sidelined it.
The rumors are that she wanted Stephen Miller to comment on it and that she was going to contact him personally.
And by the way, if you have Stephen Miller's cell phone number, your phone should just destroy itself.
The moment you hit save on a contact name, Stephen Miller, your phone should just die.
And also, she had a problem with calling the people who had been thrown in this concentration camp migrants because they were in the country illegally, which means, Nick, of course, that she wanted them to be called illegal immigrants.
Now, the thing about this.
I'm sorry.
She didn't want to go with the word immigrants, though.
Probably we know exactly what she probably wanted to say.
Yes.
And I want to say there's a couple of things that are missing in the coverage of this story, because the larger thing, of course, is the idea that things are going to be censored under fascism.
And of course they are.
That's what Barry Weiss is there to do.
But here's the wild thing about it, Nick.
They could have aired that segment on Seacot, and everyone could have known about the horrors of Seacot.
And by the way, while we keep hearing is, I mean, we're up to dozens of known deaths at this point in U.S. detention.
We don't even know the full extent of it.
Do you think that this segment would have affected Donald Trump's popularity one iota?
You know, that's an interesting question.
CBS does seem to still have a bit of a you're skewing, you know, demographic.
Would it cause his popularity to fall from 36, 37%?
Yeah, no, probably not.
And primarily because of the hatred that they fomented so much that it doesn't really move the needle now because anybody watching that who's already sort of in the Trump camp camp will always will be watching it as if these are people who are all broken the laws.
Would it lead, would it lead to an investigation?
Would it lead to an impeachment proceeding?
Yeah, normally for sure, but certainly not with Pam Bondi in front of Zen charts at the Department of Justice.
Okay, so this segment could have aired last night on Sunday and nothing would have happened, correct?
Yeah, and it would have probably been forgotten after a couple of days.
Yes, exactly.
And so what happened here is that Barry Weiss absolutely nuked a story on behalf of the administration that wouldn't have hurt the administration, just did it for the shits and the giggles, the S's and the G's, as I like to say.
And the other part about this, Nick, it's not that she is establishing CBS News as a conservative news network.
She's establishing it as a rightward-leaning bastion of liberalism.
This is supposed to be where the middle is now.
That's what Barry Weiss has done her entire life, her entire career.
It's the only reason she's in charge of CBS.
She is not qualified to do it.
She is not capable of doing it.
The only reason is because she creates the veneer and the facade of being the middle ground.
That's what the free press is.
That's what her career is.
That's what she's trying to make CBS.
And now we're trying to say that the liberal position, the middle ground in this country is to not talk about what the fascists are doing and how they're hurting people.
And that's the wildly offensive and dangerous thing that's taking place here.
But don't you think that there's a direct thumb on the scale from Trump, like to Barry Weiss?
I feel like there's a, I think, I think she's doing that to curry favor.
You know, I think the more frightening thing is that she's doing it without him saying a word to her.
I, I, I'm going to choose, okay, another one of these choose to believe.
I think I'm going to choose to believe that there is pressure on her from Ellison and from Trump all together in this.
Think it's scarier and more truthful to say that she's doing this on her own accord.
Okay.
I mean, I think that even if they had told her to, she wouldn't even had an oh, she wouldn't have even have hesitated.
No, no.
So, so either way, we're kind of saying almost a similar thing in out of different ways, but I mean, I think that's the reason why she was there.
She was had gone through the ringer of the left-wing people, you know, trying to cancel her.
And now she's out of that, you know, crucible in this notion of, you know, we have to, we have to go the other way and, you know, and somehow present Trump in these positive lights.
I think that that's clearly what was going on because once you let Stephen Miller, and by the way, they asked for Stephen Miller or they asked her for whoever, you know, from the White House to comment on this.
And again, that would not have hurt them or it probably would have helped them.
They asked the White House for comment and the White House said no comment.
Yeah.
Now she was like, well, we need comment from the White House.
That's not how any of this works.
Well, you have to remember, like, you know, these kind of segments take, I would say they probably take like maybe six or five or six months to do.
Yeah, depending on the segment.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because remember, we've been dealing with Seacott.
This is an old story, right?
And the fact that they probably covered it in the past a little bit, but like their big expose coming out, like, this is this is a long time coming.
And by the way, rightfully so, because it does take time to produce these things properly and research them correctly and get the right responses and get the right reactions from everybody and give everybody a chance.
So then the question becomes, well, when did they ask the administration?
Was it like before Barry Weiss took over?
Probably around the time that she took over is when this whole thing started.
Because then again, how did this whole thing slip this far along before she was able to then the day before they air it pull it?
The chances are that this thing was in production before she got there.
That is the possibility.
But them not commenting on it, that's more of a you problem and less of a me problem.
And on top of that, I want to bring it back around to what I was saying in the beginning.
It wouldn't matter.
Yeah.
It literally wouldn't matter.
60 Minutes could have an expose about people dying in Seacott, being put to death.
Yeah, people would talk about it on Blue Sky.
Yeah, some people would make some noise about it.
And by the way, I'm not saying that this segment shouldn't be aired, right?
I'm not saying that we shouldn't know exactly what 60 Minutes was going to report.
We should.
I'm talking more about the decision to censor it.
And the decision to censor it is so shallow and it's so instinctive in this case that what you just said is correct, which is it was basically a story that was going to come out that very likely was put together before she was in charge of in 60 minutes and CBS News.
And reflexively, she came in and was like, no, we're not going to do that.
We need to do this.
And that leftover piece of journalism had to be interfered with.
Here's a good question for you.
Are you ready?
In the past, and we can't ignore the fact that 60 Minutes was the gold standard for the gold standard of TV journalism.
Yes.
And you probably know where I'm going with this.
In the past, when they've done these kind of things and blown stories wide open, did those have an effect on the electorate, on the polls?
Do we know?
I mean, 60 minutes is 60 minutes has affected politics and culture multiple times.
I mean, one of the reasons why the United States and smoking have parted ways is 60 minutes.
I mean, like, that's a, that's like a very, very large effect on the culture.
I mean, they, they have affected things for sure.
Yeah, I agree.
I would also argue 60 Minutes potentially could have changed the election of 2008 with their coverage of Sarah Palin.
Yeah.
Okay.
Those interviews.
I mean, I think that very well could have had an effect.
I mean, 60 Minutes has affected culture for sure.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, if we're doing a Sarah Palin, then we have to point to Sarah Nay Live.
But either way, I'm thinking that I think that that is true.
And so I'm trying to picture somebody watching that and realizing the images and hearing, because what was in this segment were people who actually had gotten out of Seacot, having been there for several months and describing it in detail.
Those are compelling moments and those are the best moments that CBS usually has.
And on the margins in elections that will be as close as they're going to be, if hundreds of people or thousands of people decide, oh, I can't, I didn't realize this, right?
Is it possible that you're going to have people out there in the Trump side who just didn't realize how bad Seacott was until they see that interview?
That's an interesting question.
Are they tuning in for 60 minutes?
Another interesting question.
Are they adjusting their MAGA hats and they're like, come on in?
Well, you know, Trump wanted to sort of say, we're going to bring back 60 Minutes to its glory days.
That's what he said, which seems to directly indicate that he wants the thumb on the scale.
The funny thing is, is that the glory days of CBS means he's out and he's impeached and he's gone because that's what they would be doing right now and releasing these things.
Yes.
And there's a tribunal that's figuring out what the hell has gone on.
Yeah.
And by the way, I just want to say the other important part about this, and I always like to make a note of it when we talk about these stories.
This story is important because it's the first of many stories.
Because this isn't going to be the last time this happens at CBS.
It's not going to be the last time it happens.
I mean, it's happened elsewhere before, but this is one of the more overt sort of like moments where in a couple of years, if things don't figure themselves out and if we don't fight our way out of this mess, we're going to look back and be like, oh, yeah, that was the start of a really terrible trend.
Speaking of terrible trends, Nick, yeah, go ahead.
Well, I'm just thinking there's a possibility that it is the last one because no one's going to be doing any of these anymore.
Nobody's going to be doing them anymore.
Yeah.
And we could just be living in like a steel curtain type situation.
I don't think that that's crazy to say either.
I think that could be like.
No, no.
Nick, we've talked about it.
I mean, even before this administration got in office, we talked about the fact that we were probably moving into an America where we weren't going to be able to trust facts, figures, and reports anymore.
And this, I mean, and we could, we could be going into that dark night for sure.
It's picture ABC News wants to do a deep dive into the fact that they didn't use or they didn't have a lot of data for the last economic report that somehow indicates that there isn't any inflation anymore.
And then you look at the numbers and there'sn't, there's just simply nothing there during the shutdown.
You know, would they want to do it?
Or would they say in the newsroom, I think it's going to get yanked anyway, or we're going to lose our jobs if we do.
Or we're going to get sued for millions or billions of dollars and we're going to have to deal with that from the president of the United States of America.
Yeah.
So that's a very reasonable, you know, explanation.
Things are really bad.
Among the journalists stuff.
I don't mean when it became, although you would probably be able to attest to this better, you never really could make a ton of money as a journalist working for a paper.
No, It was a labor of love for the most part.
And so I believe that as they've starved all the papers and they've starved all that kind of revenue source, whatever, and then less and less people are doing it, that's what we're doing.
Yeah, no, and what was left was all the people whose families could afford to supplement their income and they could live in New York and live what they saw as sort of a romantic, antiquated life and become minor celebrities, whether it was on social media or cable TV.
Yeah.
And then as a result, you don't get the Woodward and Burns game kind of stuff.
I got to tell you, this sort of corporate consolidation and monopolization, Nick, we got to start going after these people.
Like we have to start taking their money and we have to start taking their assets away.
It's time for some doors to get knocked on in the middle of the night and for people to have conversations.
Like this is bad.
Uh, who's knocking on the door?
Oh, we're knocking on the door.
We're asking them to come have a conversation about how things are working.
Okay, now i'm I mean literally, like i'm talking about like, as a society redistributing wealth in a way.
I'm not, i'm not, i'm not threatening, i'm saying like we need to, we need to figure out an equitable, equitable way things got out of hand yeah yeah, and I just want to figure out a way where we can have more people who can do that kind of deep research and expose a lot of these things without getting killed.
Amen Brother, all right.
Uh, in in other disturbing news um, another Epstein tranch was released over the weekend.
Nick, would you believe that 90 of the materials were redacted by the Department OF Justice, and what got leaked were a bunch of uh pictures that uh showed people like Bill Clinton and Bill Gates and Woody Allen and Noam Chomsky by the way, Noam Chomsky, as a leftist, that's a hard one, him.
But you know, no kings, am I right?
No heroes.
You know listen, you know me, I I tend to try and look at people from all different perspectives and put their shoes on.
You know well, i'm not putting Noam Chomsky's shoes on.
I don't know where they've been, but meanwhile, like they did such a bad job of redacting these things that, first of all uh, it was obvious the places where Donald Trump was including one picture that involved pictures of Donald Trump that they then had to take out of rotation in the middle of it without much of an explanation.
I mean, they bullshitted their way through it.
Um, this is a big giant mess and this story keeps getting more and more disgusting and the crimes keep growing with every one of these releases.
I, I looked through this, I did my due diligence.
It makes me sick and, speaking of people who should get knocks on the door in the middle of the night, there are so many people involved in this who need to go to jail, and that includes the president of the United States Of America and his administration.
That's covering for him absolutely, but again, don't forget about that uh, absolute immunity that he has on the refusal duties.
But um I, you know, we here.
Here's one thing I thought that caught my eye and i've seen the screenshots where there's already been.
You know, a bunch of these documents have already been released in different iterations over the years, and so they already had one that was released that had Trump's name in it and this one on friday that got dropped had had that redacted.
They redacted Donald Trump's name, and that tells you that what we'd already heard about reporting from months and months ago where they were simply on our taxpayer dime going through all these different um, you know, papers and documents and removing his name or, you know, blotting it out so we can't see it all to benefit him.
Um, you know, Bill Clinton comes out.
There's some pictures of him in a, in a pool, you know and, and it looks really not great per se, but the pool is at some, you know uh public, uh hotel, like when the real sleuths are coming out and they have to show these things.
And then Bill Clinton himself comes out and says we need a lot more transparency, transparency than this.
He should probably file a lawsuit like a defamation just for even what they're trying to insinuate on this kind of stuff.
Because again, And there's no transparency at all.
It won't go away with them doing this.
Well, I don't think Bill Clinton's going to file a defamation lawsuit because it would be proven that he's not being defamed, that he has probably committed untold amounts of crime.
Well, I don't know.
Well, I mean, maybe these pictures are cherry-picked.
And I do understand people are like, oh, this is a picture of Bill Clinton, Michael Jackson, and Diana Ross.
And this is actually, you know, like Michael Jackson and Diana Ross's kids.
I get all that.
I don't care about Bill Clinton.
I think it's very likely that he has committed crimes that he should go to jail for.
I think anybody who committed crimes in this case should go to jail.
I do.
And quite frankly, you know what, Nick, I would love to figure out how much public money was spent redacting Donald Trump's name from the Epstein files.
Like, would I like to find out exactly what's in the Epstein files?
Absolutely, I would.
But the cherry on top for me would be to figure out how much money of our money was spent going through and blacking out Donald Trump's name from the Epstein files.
Well, they did all this around when they brought the bloggers in.
They had those folders that they were handing out.
Binders, yes.
It had very little in them.
I think that was the moment.
And by the way, I hope they don't have to pay overtime because that's really more taxpayer money because it sounds like, and the reporting was like that.
They were going 24-7 with agents going through it because they thought they were going to have to release him a lot quicker than they actually did.
That was the moment when they were going through and having to black out all of the Trump's references.
There's no question.
And probably other, you know, high-profile Republicans.
And so, and then probably, by the way, putting them aside so that when they want to control those Republicans, they can use that as blackmail as well.
And then making sure that any of the left-wing people are the ones who are going to be exposed to all of this.
Meanwhile, they're still releasing names that they weren't supposed to of victims who are now demanding.
And by the way, I saw a demand letter of it, certainly wasn't money, but that should also be a multi-million dollar suit.
There should be some severe monetary damages going on on these things.
I'm still not quite seeing it.
Not only just from the Epstein stuff, from these people who are citizens who are being detained and deported.
Those are all should be tens of millions of dollars of having to pay these people who have gone through that ordeal.
And it's not happening.
I don't know exactly why.
And perhaps it's because normally, like we said earlier, the Department of Justice would be spearheading these cases when they realize that there's corruption inside of the government.
That's what they're supposed to be handling.
And guess what?
The call is coming from inside the house.
The call is coming from inside the house, which is authoritarianism and fascism is when organized crime takes over the controls of government.
And that's what's happened.
These people need to go to jail.
I don't, you know, Nick, I wrote an article about this where I was like, you know, if we're going to move forward in any way, shape, or form, like these people are literally going to have to go to prison to show that when you break the law, there are consequences.
And the pushback was so crazy.
It's like, we don't do that.
We don't call for the imprisonment of political rivals.
When have these people committed enough crimes to go to jail?
Like Donald Trump, I mean, the amount of crimes that we've seen Donald Trump commit, it's incredible.
And I'm not even talking, like as a private citizen, but as president of the United States of America, I would be shocked to find one member of his administration who hasn't committed crimes that deserve imprisonment at this point.
When do we stop this game?
When is it that we pretend that there are actual consequences for everybody and that everybody is equal under the law when we all know that isn't true?
When we can't even talk about the possibility of some of the most, not some of, the most criminal administration that this country has ever seen.
What point do we say enough is enough.
These need, these people need to be locked away.
It's almost like less about when these people get locked up, because it's more about who is supposed to be doing the locking up, and if it's someone like Pam Bondi, that it ain't gonna happen under Bondi no, so so that's Bandy.
Bondi needs to go to jail right, and so maybe even the supersitting thing beyond that was, we need to change the structure of the government right like, let's put it this way, we I don't even think we're on the rundown, but you know, Trump is now not going to give Fema UH, money to Colorado, having gone through terrible fires over the summer, and there's lots of money they need, and he's simply doing it politically right.
Why is the president, the sole vote who gets to decide if emergency disaster relief gets to, goes to states or not?
Like that doesn't make any sense to me.
And here we are why.
You know why the Department OF Justice is allowed you know because it's some weird gray area to be this tight with the administration and follow their directions, even though you know, we saw, we know the DM that was supposed to be.
As you know, DM that was a public post from Trump to Bondi.
You know, it's all we had a guy.
Remember when um, I wanted the, the days of the, the salad days, when uh Comey didn't even want to shake Trump's hand at a public event because it would look like uh, you know unseemly, you know.
So here we are.
And then it did.
Then the Supreme Court, lets them happen it.
All these things.
We need a radical readjustment re?
Uh, of the structure of our government and how the power is supposed to be.
I couldn't agree more.
There needs to be, and it's more than just electing somebody different.
It's way more than just electing somebody different like it is it's.
It's literally a complete change that we need.
And and I again i've said it over and over you have to use these people as a guidepost.
You have to say, look at the crimes that they've committed, look at the guardrails that they've proven are non-existent.
You have to start there and work your way back.
And in this Epstein stuff it's nick.
You know what the Epstein stuff is.
It's like finding black mold in your house.
You know what I mean and you're like you can't do anything about this besides, take care of it.
You can't live in a house full of black mold.
You got to take care of it.
You have to figure out where it came from and you got to take care of the problem that caused that in the first place.
Yeah, turns out expensive yes, and it's really expensive and it's unpleasant and it's a lot of work.
Speaking of something that I assume was very expensive and a lot of work and unpleasant.
America Fest in Arizona over the weekend.
It was Turning Point.
Usa's conference, uh, White Supremacy, Hoot And Nanny, just a great old time.
Nick, uh Ben Shapiro was there.
He got very sanctimonious.
Sucker Carlson was there.
Erica, uh Kirk, I man, I hope she's doing okay.
She, you know, it's really like she doesn't seem to want to be in public very much.
I assume her grieving is is off the charts.
And luckily the vice president of the United States Of America, he decided to come out.
I mean, what a swell guy this Jd Vance guy is.
Oh, he came out throwing bangers.
He did.
He certainly did.
In the United States of America, you don't have to apologize for being white anymore.
I've said this so many times to Veron.
It's not even what he said.
It's the reaction.
I know full-throated cheering from him.
I can't afford groceries or rent.
But man, I don't have to apologize for being white anymore.
Fantastic, guys.
Yeah, I don't think you ever had to apologize for being white.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure in America that there were a lot of benefits to it.
Nick, I've been following this for a long time, the sort of infighting, where I think the GOP is going.
The Ben Shapiro thing was interesting.
It was going after Candace Owens.
It was going after Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson.
Of course, Tucker Carlson has his own sort of deal.
Nick Fuentes was not invited to America Fest.
This was the big giant thing post-Charlie Kirk's assassination.
It feels to me like there were a lot of signals of where the party is going.
What are your takeaways, whether it's from Vance's disgusting speech, any of the infighting?
What did you make of this?
You know, I would like to think that this is not like a dying movement, but it's not necessarily growing like it probably was with Charlie Kirk involved in it.
So it does feel a little bit like, especially when you have JD Vance, who's not good at this, right?
His performance in this thing was kind of cringe most of the time.
He's trying to be funny and these laugh lines, whatever.
And listen, when you have a crowd like that, almost everything's going to hit, right?
What are those called?
The friendly crowd, I perhaps.
It was a friendly crowd.
And so that was part of it.
But it definitely feels like I bet you if we were in the room, we would smell it, you know, that it's kind of stale and it's starting to be exposed a little bit for what this really is.
That's my hope.
And that's my instinct is telling me when I'm watching this stuff.
What about you?
Well, so here's the thing, Nick.
They're not making a whole lot of new MAGA old and middle-aged fans.
You know what I mean?
It's a lot like real estate.
They're not making a whole lot of real estate anymore.
You know, it's most, most of it's been discovered.
You know, it's a known quantity of how many adults are going to like no one right now.
And I'm sure, Nick, like, have you met a lot of people recently?
You're like, I think I got Trump wrong.
I think I've kind of misunderstood him.
Have you met a lot of people like that in the past couple of years?
Yeah, but remember where I live.
But yeah, no, I have not.
I've had a couple of people that have surprised me, but it's for different reasons.
You know, what has happened, one of the reasons why the death of Charlie Kirk was such a big deal is because the only place that the right can gain new adherents are young people.
That's it.
And there are a lot of young people who are facing a future in which they can't afford to do anything, in which they don't feel like they have much power.
They don't have much hope in the future.
And they can be brought over.
To go ahead and pull the curtain back a little bit, I was having an organizing meeting with a leftist group not too long ago.
And the conversation was this.
Basically, it's hungry, hungry hippos for young people right now, right?
Who don't have a political identity yet.
They don't know if they want to go with the Democratic Party.
They've been disappointed by the Democrats, particularly when it comes to Gaza, when it comes to, you know, sort of the allegiance to like Israel.
I mean, Israel's getting ready to bomb Iran again.
Like that, that's getting ready to happen in the next couple of days.
And that opens the door for people like Nick Fuentes and anti-Semitic people to use all these old conspiracy theories.
So there's an opportunity to pick these people up.
Ben Shapiro is not bringing those people on board.
He's not going to like be the youth pastor of Turning Points USA.
Tucker Carlson isn't either.
But guess who can pick up a lot of those people?
Nick Fuentes, the far right and the Nazis and the crypto Nazis and the crypto fascists, they can get young people at this point.
The question is whether or not the donors are going to go along with it, if they're going to move their money from places like Turning Point or if the entire Republican Party is going to wrap its arms around it.
I don't see any way that they go down.
We talked about this not too long ago.
Ted Cruz is not going to be the Republican nominee in 2028.
Right.
That's not happening.
Right.
That just isn't.
It has to go the far right.
There's no other way.
And right now we're going through a lot of those growing pains.
Okay.
And that is fascinating.
And also the disaffection of the youth where, you know, certainly you're young and you're male and the notion that I can't be a toxic masculine person anymore.
So how else do I attract a woman, let's say?
And now, well, here's a group that will let me in and hang out with them and give me some, you know, confidence or whatever.
By the way, that's what Nick Fuentes does as well.
Probably better, right?
Nick Fuentes does that much better than Turning Point USA, which I suspect means that's why they're really threatened by him.
And so listen, if they're going to eat each other alive, awesome.
If we're going to have, you know, Nick or sorry, Candace Owens getting, you know, having, what's his name?
Ben Shapiro going after Candace Owens.
Oh, that's a shame to have to see those people, you know, arguing with each other.
But yeah, I think it's, to me, it just reeks more of a money grab here.
Who can grab this audience and monetize it first?
That's what it feels like to me.
And then hopefully what that means is that it's not a sustaining thing.
I would like to see the turning point, you know, enrollments and all that thing.
Is that still growing?
Do you have any sense of that after?
What I imagine, and you know what's interesting about this, Nick?
I actually think that, and we're very lucky in this regard.
I think the death of Charlie Kirk was a huge opportunity for them to bolster their roles and to bolster their support.
I think they bungled it.
Yeah.
I think they really fucked it up.
I think they really fucked it up in a massive way to the point where like, I don't know if you pay attention to this.
The main thing that Charlie Kirk serves at this point is AI slop.
Like that's that's the vast majority of where his influence and legacy now lives.
Turning point has has fucked it all up.
And they also, by the way, Nick, this thing that happened with Candace Owens, the only reason this is happening is because they have been weird about it and they have been secretive about it.
By the way, Nick, do you know that Charlie Kirk likely has not been buried yet?
I did not know that.
And by the way, I think in case we're not clear, Candace Owens is the one who is having all manner of conspiracy theory about Candace Owens.
Candace Owens is just like, Charlie Kirk might be alive.
I think the Israelis killed him.
I think Macrone killed him.
Macron's trying to kill me.
It goes on and on and on and on.
She doesn't say, I think, as much as she says, I've seen the doctor.
I've seen things.
Right.
So part of it is that Turning Points and the reason why Erica Kirk is so weird is because she's fucking weird.
Yeah.
And because like she is not the person to take over from Charlie Kirk.
So they have bungled that thing.
We're very lucky that that happened.
We're incredibly lucky that Turning Points has always been weird in this way and that that has allowed him like they were setting him up to be a martyr and they could have used that very easily to have transitioned, but there was no plan in place, which has allowed Nick Fuentes, who was kind of breathing down the neck of Charlie Kirk for a long time.
It allowed him to catch up and the anti-Semites and crypto fascists.
And I want to point out very quickly to put a cap on this.
JD Vance is where all these things meet.
That's one of the reasons why he's so dangerous is because he's able to do the evangelical thing, the mainstream Republican thing.
He's able to do the crypto-nazi crypto-fascism thing.
And on top of that, he is the favored butcher boy puppet of the tech oligarchs.
So he like that, him coming out and doing this, it was the perfect opportunity for him to show where the genesis of this thing could be.
Absolutely.
And, you know, yeah, I think it also tracks that they would have bungled this, you know, and probably pulls hold on the fact that, you know, this wasn't a conspiracy where it was planned that he knew that Kirk was going to die, right?
Because then that would have been, nobody seemed to know.
If, if they, okay, let's just put our tinfoil hats on.
Yeah.
If they turning points, Erica Kirk all that, if they decided that they needed to kill Charlie Kirk, their plan for what happened after that plan sucked.
Yeah.
Like it was real bad.
You're exactly right.
Like it, it, it really does reveal.
It's like, no, this was just sort of a to borrow to borrow an immortal quote from one of the bards of American literature.
Fuck it.
Let's do it live.
Yeah.
That's what this has been.
Yeah.
And by the way, I wonder if what would cause the downfall or a cleaving of a huge swath of people from this movement out of it would be not that they finally realize, oh, they're espousing some horrible shit.
It is, they're like, oh, shit, they've been monetizing this on us.
And that might be the one realization that actually does something to that, I wonder, which is a little bit sad, but like also whatever it takes.
But I wonder if that ends up being something that has more gravity to them than the fact that what they're saying can be so awful most of the time.
Yeah, it's actually one of the more powerful things of Nick Fuentez that he actually insults the people who follow him.
It's not like the syrupy suite sort of like, you know, like trying to take their wallet.
He's just like, fuck you.
You're going to give me money.
And they're like, yeah, you're right.
We're going to give you our money.
Nick, one last thing before we get out of here.
I just wanted to take a moment.
The stories are starting to pile up.
Democratic incumbents and members of the party, they're starting to complain that they're being primaried going into the 2026 midterms.
If we have midterms, there's one quote from one Democratic lawmaker, very worried about this.
Quote, they're attacking their own.
It's December of 2025.
This is around the point where I kind of figured that we would start seeing some stories like this, and they are starting to come out.
I think 2026 is going to be, in a word, fascinating.
Fascinating is a good word.
I think the concern, and also spoken in that article, is that you end up opening the door to losing the seat.
The Democratic Party itself loses that seat.
Some of these places are pretty so solidly Democrat that the primary isn't going to shift the seat itself.
The numbers, I'm not exactly sure what percentage of those are, but it's probably maybe at least half of those are, you know, it's not going to lose the seat for Democrats.
But this was, this story had your name written all over it.
All over it.
Yes, we need an injection of true progressives into the party.
I had a little bit of, you know, pause where I'm like, ah, please don't let this turn into a thing where they end up putting them in a box in the primary and then they get screwed in the general and then they lose that seat.
Like that, that is a still fear.
I'm still among those people that would wring their hands be like, ah, just put just have Joe Biden run.
And it's terrible because we know how that what that happened when you get to that point.
Can Feinstein run still?
Yeah.
Can we get her?
Can we get her on the ballot somewhere?
Yeah.
Chuck Schumer's running again, isn't he?
I don't know, man.
I mean, they're not really good at what they do and they kind of betray us constantly, but I mean, maybe they could help.
And we're not.
It's fear.
It's feared.
It's trauma.
And I understand it.
You just don't want things to get worse.
Right.
And it makes you conservative.
I just find the thing that I find delicious here.
And you're right.
This is a Jared Gate Sexton special.
Like, I read this and I was just like, I was like, it's like Christmas fudge, Nick.
Just wonderful.
Give me some more.
I just love these assholes, how entitled they are.
They're like, they're coming for us.
Don't you?
It's like, you know what it's like, Nick?
I use this all the time.
It's like professional wrestling when the other guy actually hits somebody and they're like, hey, I don't know if I don't know if somebody talked to you backstage.
That's not what we're doing here, folks.
We're not, wait, you're trying to win a primary?
No.
Wringing his hands.
He's like, I know when they see what my accomplishments have done, they're going to vote for me anyway.
And I started to think, well, they probably should already know what your accomplishments are at this point.
Yes, and they're tired of your bullshit.
Yeah.
And this is a guy, member, who led the impeachment process and was like, oh, this is our savior.
I mean, there's certainly a guy who's like, you know, he's not messing around.
And I'm unaware of any major accomplishments he's had in Congress so far, but he doesn't seem to, and by the way, neither is he, because he's suddenly going to unveil all these things as he begins to run again for the seat again.
So it's, it's not surprising.
This is very much on brand for where we're going.
It's going to be a, it's going to be a jailbreak is what's going to happen.
And actually, I think when you look at parties, particularly established parties like the Democratic and Republican parties, who are so entrenched in power and they're so connected to the structures and the donors, Nick, it's a lot like if you were the warden of a jail, right?
And there was a jailbreak and like hundreds of inmates started running, right?
You can't catch them all.
You know what I mean?
Because it's like, you got to, you got to pick and choose.
The question here is, how much control can the Democratic Party have over the process?
We've seen that they can do it with someone like Joe Biden.
You brought that up.
Pete Buddigig, thank you for your work.
Great, great showing in Iowa.
We're going to need you to drop out and endorse Joe Biden.
How do you think about transportation?
How would you like to oversee America's crumbling infrastructure?
Wonderful.
Hey, Elizabeth Warren, so great to talk to you.
What a race you've run.
Well, not really.
Yeah, we can reupholster your seat in the Senate.
Just we'll figure that out.
We'll make sure to get you that vote.
Just make sure that you endorse Joe Biden in South Carolina.
That's one large race.
You can't do that with all these primaries.
You can't.
You pick and choose which ones of those you're able to sort of stop and put the kibosh on.
And when it comes to this, there's a certain point where the momentum shifts and all of a sudden the party doesn't look the way that it used to look.
I'm not saying that's going to happen in 2026.
I don't even know if the midterms are going to happen in 2026.
But as an analyst and an observer and an organizer, I look at what's setting up for this coming year with the Democratic Party and I am very fascinated by it.
And the fact that they're all, Nick, they're already scared shitless.
These articles don't come out if they're not scared shitless.
And by the way, has there been a time when they should, how do I want to say this?
They should probably feel more emboldened than ever in this moment in time.
Sure, but people expect them to do their jobs.
Wait, you're coming here to the bank and expecting me to hand out money?
What are we doing here?
What do you think happens?
Like, that's the issue.
It's like they want the jobs.
They want the prestige.
They want the donors, but they don't want to actually do what the people expect them.
Like, why are the people expecting us to do the job?
They're asking too many questions around here.
That's the issue.
Although, isn't part of the issue as well that whatever job they are trying to do just isn't really progressive anyway.
And that sort of status quo as it is.
And that's what we're missing too.
Somebody who wants to get legislation that's farther out and pushes these boundaries.
Exactly.
It reminds me of the office, Creed Bratton, a bunch of people coming around here asking questions they don't have any business asking.
Right.
That's what it is.
And by the way, when you see these articles, like Democrats who are up for reelection saying they're fighting their own, they're coming after us.
They're going to make us lose.
Nick, that is a signal to who?
The donors.
Right.
If you don't want to lose me and you want to have to deal with the Zorhan Mamdani, you better give me the donations and they better happen now, which is where the battle is.
When I had John Kevin on, who's running for Congress in Nebraska?
Either I was at the party with him later when they were raising money or on the pod.
You know, the DNC doesn't give money directly to primaries.
They let you fight it out in the beginning.
And then once you win the primary, then they'll start turning on the stickers, right?
Which is an interesting thing because on a local level now, like he's running against someone who had their own money, like his self-funding has a lot of money, hardly any experience at all, which I think is a, especially for Congress, is not a great thing.
And so that's an interesting thing, you know, that he has to deal with, for instance, in that counter race where he can't be like, hey, DNC, like, you know, I'm the guy that's winning the general.
You got to get into money.
They won't, they don't until later.
So it does, yeah, it opens it up to all sorts of manners of other ways where they have to raise that money individually.
And, you know, again, get the, get it all out.
Get that out of my way.
Get it the hell out.
Get it all out.
By the way, I'm very excited for what's getting ready to happen within the Democratic Party.
I don't, I'm not telling you that the insurgents are going to win, but I am telling you, I'm fucking pumped.
Okay.
So it'll push them, even the incumbents to have to move a little bit.
Maybe.
It depends.
And they might have a reaction and become more conservative.
Don't say that.
I'm telling you that it's a weird thing to be so personally invested in things going one way and also being an analyst who is very interested in watching how things work.
Right.
Well, if you're, if you're, listen, if you're encouraged by any of this or what you're seeing and hearing on the ground, then that's good for me.
I'm encouraged by some things.
I'm discouraged by others.
But you know what I am encouraged by, Nick?
You, this show, our listeners, and all of that good stuff.
So in this holiday season, I just want to say again, thank you to everybody.
Reminder, we will not have a weekender.
We will be taking the holiday off.
We'll be back with the regular show on Tuesday.
And that's where we're going to wrap up the year.
Go ahead.
Well, no, I mean, no, we'll probably do like a January 1st episode, right?
I mean, how is it?
Is that what the calendar tells us?
I don't know.
I haven't looked at it.
I don't know.
We'll see what's going on.
I'm all over the place at this point.
Okay.
I'm all aflutter.
We'll get it back.
We will have you land on a branch and we'll figure out.
Okay.
Well, January 1st, the new year is a Thursday.
So we will probably record on New Year's Day, right?
I don't see why not.
Sure.
Yeah, we'll do that.
But we're taking this Friday off.
So everybody, I hope you have a wonderful holiday.
If you need us before then, you can head over to Blue Sky.