This is a preview of our regular Weekender show released in full every Friday on our Patreon at patreon.com/muckrakepodcast Please support the show by subscribing and unlocking special content as well as access to our discord and live shows.
Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman ring in 2026 with resolutions, sugar hangovers, and a hard look at how a viral YouTube stunt and JD Vance’s megaphone spiraled into a federal freeze on Minnesota child-care funds. They break down the racist scapegoating of Somali communities, which plays right into the right’s conspiracy theories, and why this is political retribution dressed up as oversight. Then it’s the latest Epstein revelations implicating Mar-a-Lago’s spa pipeline and how it connects to Trump even more deeply before focuing on the Supreme Court's refusal to bless federal troop deployments that might turn into a roadmap for even more law-breaking. "What We're Watching" looks at the Stranger Things finale and why nostalgia is starting to feel like content slurry.
Welcome to the weekender edition of the Mutt Craig podcast.
I'm Jerry J. Sexton here, Nick Houseman.
How you doing, bud?
How's 2026 treating you already?
Well, I'm a little sluggish, I got to say, but all I could keep saying to myself is that 2026 must be better than 2025.
Has to be better.
It must.
It has to be.
It will, whatever you want to say.
No choice in the matter, the damn thing.
It has to be better.
We got a full show.
Before we get going, I think because it's the weekender, because we're recording this on Thursday, January 1st, I think, Nick, it would behoove us to share to the audience.
What are we doing in the new year?
How are we trying to grow?
How are we trying to better ourselves?
What are our resolutions in 2026?
It's a really great question.
It's something that we should all do, probably like every day.
Ideally, yeah.
Yeah, just check in every day and figure out what the resolution is going to be.
It's exhausting to do, which is why we dissociate through large portions of our lives.
Yeah, that's right.
But it's a good thing to do.
Yes.
Sure.
Well, you know, the current feeling I have notwithstanding, I'm thinking that maybe I should, you know, drink and do drugs more than I do, which is really very little now.
I think that might make me a happier person.
What do you think, Jared?
Well, to pull the curtain back, we were talking, you know, and it is the weekender.
You're hungover from New Year's Eve festivities.
I'm a little sluggish, like a wet sponge.
And it's funny because regular listeners of the show, California Corner with, you know, all of the fasts and the shakes and the all of that, the getting off sugar, all of that.
It's really incredible that we're sitting here and you're the one that's hungover on New Year's Time.
And by the way, that reminds me, I had a donut for dessert.
Oh, no.
That might be why I feel this way.
Worse than anything I drank.
It's raining cats and dogs in LA right now.
Is it raining cats and dogs?
Is it not in your neck of the woods?
No, we just went for a walk.
It was nice.
It's not raining.
Oh, okay.
See, I'm getting jacked up for the Rose Bowl and Indiana playing in the Rose Bowl.
And it's a mess in Pasadena.
I guess I misunderstood.
Oh, interesting.
Could be.
Microclimate over there for sure.
Microclimate.
But okay, so drinking and drugs.
And you had said you might need to drink more.
Yeah, that might make me a happier person.
But I'll get the other one that's even more solid would be I'm going to stay off Twitter on like, I'm going to pick a day of the week, like Tuesdays.
I like that.
That's a good idea.
I like that, Nick.
I know you want to civilize the masses.
You want to change some minds, change some hearts.
I think staying off, I would argue you should probably just stay off Twitter in general, but one day, that's a good start.
Yeah, I'll start with one day and we'll go from there.
Okay.
What are your resolutions?
You know, I'm trying to not take the things for granted that bring me joy.
I really don't.
I brought up dissociation.
I don't want to spend weeks at a time just sort of like trying to survive.
I'd much rather be thriving.
On top of that, you know, it's stuff like that.
I've been, man, I've been spending this morning looking at like dumb phones, like phones that don't have like social media and don't have web browsers and stuff and like thinking about, you know, sort of weaning off of that and less vices and, you know, just that sort of stuff, like just sort of taking stock is what I want to do.
That's really great.
The year ended tough.
And I would like to, I would like to, I'd like to spring into this with a little bit more joy and intentionality.
Which I'll go back to saying that maybe you need to drink and do more drugs too.
I mean, listen, that's, I still can't believe that that's how we started this call.
You were like, I think I need to drink more.
I don't want to even make light of that because it's a serious thing, but like sometimes I feel that way.
I really feel like maybe if I could just, you know, and that's the, you know, there are some benefits of relaxation and clearing the mind, all those different things.
You got to de-stress a little bit.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
And you can get there.
And you, the listener right now, you can get there as well.
And again, we are so grateful.
We've been doing this for years now and we're entering into this new year.
God knows what it's going to bring.
We certainly have a lot of stories that we have to talk about, which we have a fight ahead of us.
And that is where our attention must go now.
But thank you for hanging out and supporting us.
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Well, Nick, we start in the state of Minnesota and there are, man, there's weird shit happening here.
So a YouTube right-wing personality, Nick Shirley, who, who, Nick, checking notes, what do you think he was doing on January 6th, 2021?
Oh, I think he might have been at the Capitol.
Was that maybe checking out the sites?
Nick Shirley posted a video on YouTube in which he went to several childcare facilities in Minnesota, supposedly unearthing massive amounts of fraud in terms of funding of child care facilities.
Of course, Nick, he was harassing Somali people because why not?
This thing went viral, including JD Vance reposting it and sending as many followers to it.
This has resulted in the Trump administration freezing all federal child care funding to the state of Minnesota.
This story is a convergence of a lot of dumb shit that has been happening in right-wing politics.
I've been watching it with morbid and infuriating fascination.
How are you feeling about this that an entire state can lose funding because somebody posts something on YouTube?
I mean, can you hear me shaking my head would be the needing to say.
It's so on brand, it's painful, Jared.
And so let's not forget that there was a massive fraud scheme that was exposed out of COVID.
And the person in charge of this fraud did not look like, you know, it's not from Somalia.
What did he look like by any chance?
I believe it's a woman who looks like more like you and I than anybody from Somalia.
And, you know, were there a few people who are from Somalia also involved in this and maybe pleaded guilty?
Yes.
And was all of this done under the Democratic oversight?
You know, yes.
So fraud happens.
It sucks.
It really does.
But this was discovered by, you know, under Biden administration, under Wall's, you know, administration, and they took care of it.
So to then play upon that, this might sound familiar.
I know this must be like what they always do.
And you're going to tell me another example of this, where it's like they take the nugget of something that we've been heard of that has nothing to do with what's going on now.
And let's try and apply the sheen to something and to a community that we don't like.
That would be easy to gin up.
And this is really how transparent it is, how they're just trying to gin up the anger over racism.
And that's where we are.
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