JJ Sexton and Nick Hausman dissect the Super Bowl’s cultural divide—Bad Bunny’s immersive spectacle vs. Turning Point USA’s joyless, pre-recorded right-wing "flare"—before exposing Ring’s AI-powered "Search Party" as a dystopian panopticon, normalizing Minority Report-style surveillance under corporate guise. They link this to political authoritarianism, Epstein files’ potential leaks (despite DOJ obstruction), and figures like Thomas Massey (91% Trump-aligned) and Steve Bannon’s alleged pandemic predictions, questioning whether Second Amendment absolutists ignore current government overreach. The episode frames cultural exclusion, tech-enabled control, and systemic corruption as a unified threat to democracy, culminating in a 2026 midterm "bloodbath" warning. [Automatically generated summary]
I'm JJ Sexton here, as always, with my friend, my co-conspirator, Nick Hausman.
How are you doing, bud?
I'm okay.
I'm doing fine.
How are you doing?
It's Monday, February 9th, the day after the Super Bowl.
Aren't you still feeling the electricity?
Aren't you still jazzed after that amazing game?
Yeah, I mean, I got home and I just fell asleep by like 9 p.m.
I don't know.
And by the way, I started to nod off during the game and it was going to be a major faux pas.
Nick, I was like the sleepy bear tea mascot during that game.
I was so bored by it.
The commercials were terrible.
We got to talk about one of those commercials here in a minute, but like that, that was an atrocious performance that I, and listen, this is my job.
This is my corner.
This is my lane.
This was the appropriate Super Bowl, the appropriate ads, the appropriate halftime show, all of it for the decline of the American Empire.
Like it, you could not script this thing better.
I don't know about you, but like every time, every commercial that came on was like, is this AI?
Is this AI?
Oh, of course it's AI.
Everyone, and even the ones that were not AI was like slop, non-AI slop.
It was really something to behold in terms of that.
And so, yeah, we are now at that point.
And it's we got to talk about all this stuff, but Nick, you just put your finger directly on it because the experience of watching a commercial where it's like, oh, here's a really popular pop tune that everybody wants to sing along with.
And like, you're getting comfortable and you're like, oh, I don't know what this ad is about.
And then you're like, oh, is this going to involve?
Oh, yeah.
Of course.
I got too comfortable.
That's, yeah.
I mean, I was watching a thing I thought was for coffee and then it turned into, I don't even know what it is.
I forgot what it was.
I didn't even know what it was.
It was a coffee commercial that ended up being something completely unrelated.
Maybe it was the shot that makes you thin.
I don't know.
Something like that.
Awful, awful, awful times.
Awful times in the United States of America, but we're glad that you are here.
We're going to do a special Q ⁇ A mailbag episode on for Friday's episode.
So everyone, if you are a patron, all you got to do is head over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
We want to hear from our patrons for that show.
We want to hear your questions, the topics that you want to discuss.
Now, we will be recording this on Thursday, which means that we need you to get these into us by Thursday morning at the latest.
You can email us at muckrakepodcast at gmail.com or if you want to leave a voicemail, head over to speakpipe.com slash muckrake podcast.
I think that's the URL.
That's that's we'll go that route.
We'll post something on the Patreon, but get those in by Thursday and then Friday's episode will be a subscriber mailback.
That's good.
Can't wait.
All right, everybody.
By the way, really great questions, by the way.
Oh, yeah.
That's the other thing about it is I always enjoy, whether it's on here or it's on my sub stack or whatever, I always enjoy the questions because they make me talk about things that maybe I've been thinking about or maybe I haven't even thought about.
Like that, you know, you can get in your own lane.
Really, really good for the intellect and keeps you on your toes.
Well, speaking of, we have to get into the story of the hour coming from the Super Bowl, which is, you know, as much of a monoculture as the United States of America has anymore.
And this year, we talked about it on the weekender last Friday.
We talked about this strange sort of split and schism that was going to take place with the halftime show.
So we need to talk about the fallout from that.
Listen, I'm not really a bad bunny guy.
Hell of a performance.
And listen, I'm not a person who like goes, yeah, the thing that everybody likes is really cool.
I usually crap on it.
Let's be honest.
It was incredible.
And in a second, we have to talk about exactly how bad the Turning Point USA alternative was.
We'll get into that in a second.
But Nick, it's amazing to see people trying to criticize one of the best halftime performances in Super Bowl history, an absolute masterclass in how to do this thing, turn it into spectacle, turn it into an experience.
And they still can't handle it.
They still have to call it terrible.
They can't even admit that something was a triumph that it was.
And this for me, I don't know if there's a better Warshock to be had in these times.
Yeah, great point.
And I think the choreography and the way they were able to pull this off during a halftime show in a football arena on grass, no less, like to be able to build this set, basically, they were like on a soundstage that was flown in in four minutes and then flown right back out was incredible.
It didn't really necessarily matter that I didn't know.
And I speak Spanish to some degree, but this was way too fast, very hard unless you knew the words, like what they were saying.
But I was a little surprised they didn't do subtitles.
And they probably, that was probably on purpose, right?
Like we want people to sort of exist in this authentic environment where this is what the music is.
And we're not going to let you read and be distracted from that.
You know what I mean?
Well, and I think what you're bringing up is a really important part of all of this.
And, you know, when I've talked to people, how do I say this?
I come from a background where there's a lot of people who do not know that they're actually racist.
You know what I mean?
Like they think that they're tolerant and they're open.
And meanwhile, they're really holding on to some latent racism, right?
Some latent white supremacy.
And the whole idea here and what happened, I don't need to know what's being said.
And if I want to know what's being said, I should go learn the language, right?
If I want to be included in that, meanwhile, white people, white Americans have for so long expected everything to be on their terms that everybody around them has to speak their language.
And funnily enough, Nick, it's something that happens when Americans go on vacation.
They expect the countries that they're visiting to also cater to them and speak to them in a way that they understand.
I didn't need to know what was being said.
You know why?
Because the vibes were fucking great.
That's all I have to tell you is that I can look into a culture.
And again, like, I'm not Puerto Rican.
Like, I don't need a halftime show to just be about me.
That would be boring as hell.
It's the whole idea that stuff can exist that isn't catered towards you, which is the problem that all these manga assholes have.
The entire world needs to be catered to them.
And even then, that's not enough, right?
They need more and more and more.
But so many of the visuals that they incorporated on purpose that were trying to capture life in Puerto Rico are American, distinctly United States American, right?
And you start to realize, you know, and it's all cliche, but like how much influence we have from all around the world.
Like nothing is American here.
Hot dogs are not American, right?
That's for those who are from Germany or whatever, right?
Like that's the thing about this is everything's been taken from somewhere else anyway.
And when you forget that, then you get into what we're talking about, other white supremacy stuff.
It's just really just, you know, it's not intellectually honest.
And you live your life that way, which is really, really frustrating.
But the one thing I would say is if I was there, I might have had a hard time.
You really couldn't get a handle on what was happening.
You needed to have watched the screen while in the stadium because of, you know, the way they built up the stage.
But I don't even know if that mattered because it would have been fun to sort of be in there and hear it and then be with everybody who's there absorbing it as well.
How about though, one of the big criticisms, because you mentioned that a little bit was, you know, the sexification and these kids are being exposed to this kind of stuff.
And I'm like, where have I heard this before?
I'm like, oh, yeah.
There was a guy named Elvis that they complained about, right?
Who danced too sexy and that was too much for everybody, right?
It's like, can we, I can't believe that 80 years later, we're still in the same fucking conversation.
Well, and we're not even just in the same conversation.
The conversation actually has higher stakes now.
Because in the past, like Elvis would shake his hips and they wouldn't show it, or maybe they would go destroy his records.
Now we're talking about people being killed in the streets, right?
And by the way, that took place in the 1960s and 1970s as well.
It just so happens that there is a much more sort of a fascist hold on power at this point.
And I want to, I want to make a point, Nick, that I think has been lost in all of this.
And, you know, sometimes we like to give a pop culture reference in order to give a little bit of an idea of what we're talking about.
It reminds me of the episode of The Office, which is one of the Christmas parties where there's a Christmas party that's going on that people are having a lot of fun.
And then there's Angela, who has a lame ass Christmas party where no one's having fun, right?
It's oppressive.
They're unhappy.
They're looking at the people over there having fun at their party.
What did people miss out on who didn't watch this?
There was so much joy and entertainment in that halftime show.
And what are they doing?
They're keeping themselves from being happy, right?
They have a stick so far up their asses that they can't dance.
They can't be joyful.
They have to live this really unhappy life.
And Nick, do you, you know, and everyone listening and watching this show right now knows that I watched the Turning Point USA halftime show as soon as the Lombardi trophy was handed over to the Seattle Seahawks.
I could have broken the sound barrier rushing over to see what happened.
And for people who didn't watch it, Nick, let me give you a quick summary of this thing.
Turning Point USA has all of the money in the fucking world, right?
I mean, they have ungodly amounts of money.
They can afford to pay whatever they want.
They can put together whatever it is that they want.
This thing was so poorly produced.
And I mean, in terms of acoustics, in terms of lighting, in terms of the cameras.
It was on a sound stage.
It was pre-recorded.
Everybody feels if something's pre-recorded versus something live and vibrant and healthy and living.
Meanwhile, Nick, there were maybe like two dozen, maybe 30 fake fans who were in the shadows, who were paid to be there.
You never saw them.
They were just in the shadows constantly.
Every time one of the acts would finish a performance, it would go to black and then open back up to their next performance.
It was so obviously taped.
And here's my point in all of it.
And by the way, Kid Rock, Kid Rock couldn't even bother to lip sync to the backing track that he was doing, the headliner and all of this shit.
Nick, it was joyless.
It was sexless.
It was, it was misery.
It was what happens when the right is given the keys to the car.
They can't live and they cannot be happy and they cannot have joy.
Everything that they do is self-destructive and harmful to the people around them.
It's incredible, like the contrast between these things.
The energy I got from the clips I saw were sort of like a massive chip on their shoulder.
Like, this is in your face.
We're so angry.
We're going to show you, you know, what we're really, really about.
And then what they were singing about wasn't great either.
A lot of these lyrics are indicative of the pain that these white people are stuck in and need help with.
By the way, this reminds me of, do you know the guy that that instigator that went to Minneapolis got the shit kicked out of him and had to get rescued by some random person driving a car?
Did you see this little news thing about it?
Because he was picked up by a trans woman who was the nicest person in the world to rescue him and get him out of there.
They exchanged numbers and like her biggest takeaway from all of that was get some therapy.
Literally, that's helped.
Yeah, that's what you needed to tell them.
Nick, Brantley Gilbert was the first performer in this.
And you want to talk about a right-wing chud, right?
Okay.
Nick, his per I, I, I don't know how to describe what it makes me feel like to see shit like this because it's, I don't know, I, it's almost like a flare being shot up.
You know what I mean?
Like it's, it's, it's such, there's so much import to this.
Brantley Gilbert, who's like singing about drinking and getting in trouble and bad relationships, all this.
Nick, his, his mic stand, it's not a mic stand.
It's big, strong chain links.
And then the mic that he's singing into has brass knuckles on it.
Oh, God.
Oh, God.
And here's the thing, Nick.
If you're not part of the right-wing chuddery and you see this, you're like, oh, this guy's sad.
Yeah.
Kid Rock is sad, right?
And so it, it, Trump is sad.
All these people looking at Christy Noam is sad, you know?
And you watch this and you're like, oh, my God, unless you are in this like ecosystem, like you just look at it and you're like, this makes me feel very unhappy.
This makes me very uncomfortable.
And it's anybody who's ever been around these people, they know what that feeling is.
You feel pity for them.
And meanwhile, they're hurting you.
Yeah.
And then, you know, meanwhile, they're boasting, I think, 5 million viewers, but the indication was that they was paid bots for a lot of it.
There's probably a million people that watched it.
Can I tell you what's funny about that?
Actually, how many people in terms have watched it?
So when I went to watch it, Nick, so Turning Point USA put all their money into.
Oh, oh, I forgot to mention very quickly.
When they showed pictures of Charlie Kirk, there was not a single picture of Charlie Kirk that didn't include Erica Kirk.
Like it was like, Nick, it was what I must, what I imagine must have happened in the Soviet Union when Lenin died and Stalin took over.
It was just like one picture of Stalin with Lenin after another, you know, handing the baton.
But in the midst of it, so Turning Point USA puts all of this money into putting on this alternate, alternate halftime show.
Every right-wing influencer from the biggest one to the smallest one pirated the stream.
They all showed it, pirated it to take away from Turning Point USA because they don't care about each other.
Failed Influencers' Revenge00:02:48
They'll get their hits wherever they can.
So we'll never know how many of them, how many people watch this thing because of that.
But on top of that, how many bots were made to do it?
So like, you'll never even know.
It has no cultural cachet outside of sitcos like me who watched it for research.
Yeah.
And it was embarrassing to see like the audio aspects you said.
There's this which indicated maybe, because if it was pre-recorded, yeah, then they were lips.
They could have fixed any kind of lip sheet.
Even there's a duo playing, you know, classical instruments that had played at Charlie Kirk's Memorial.
That wasn't synced to the point where maybe they didn't even know the song.
It was weird.
There were some questions there.
Yes, just shockingly, not shockingly, poorly produced overall.
They can't get the kind of talent you would want to have to come up with the ideas.
And who's left are the people that want to like set off sparklers all over the place?
It's like so horrible.
And it's tacky would be upset with using the word tacky to describe it because it was beyond that.
These motherfuckers can't get enough of sparklers.
They just, it's everything.
But that's the, you, you said they can't get, they could hire all of the people that they need to produce these things.
But Nick, you have to have vision.
Like, that's the problem is what's incredible about this is that the Turning Points USA halftime show, it looked as good and sounded as good as they could have made it.
Yeah.
That's, that's the issue is that it's always failures who want more power and more leverage and more influence who don't deserve it.
It's a bunch of people who have failed who hate that they have failed.
And meanwhile, the one guy we know that didn't watch it, certainly didn't watch it live was Donald Trump.
Trump didn't even watch it.
Right.
And we know this because he had a very concise or a very detail-oriented post against it that he clearly had watched it.
But did you happen to see the footage at Mar-a-Lago of them watching the Super Bowl where they were watching Bad Bunny and not 20 points?
So I did not see that footage until after I watched the halftime show.
And here's the thing.
As I was watching the halftime show, Nick, you know what kept ringing around in my head as I watched Brantley Gilbert performing or whatever the hell these people's names are?
Trump would hate all these people.
Yeah.
He would loathe all of them.
He doesn't like this music.
Do you know what Trump's favorite music is?
Actually, do you know this?
Do you know what Trump's favorite music is?
Isn't it like Queen and that kind of thing?
No, it's like Phantom of the Opera sound.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, gosh.
Like, he doesn't, he doesn't want to listen to Chud Country.
Yeah.
I will tell you, he would probably have no problem watching all the dancers on.
Finding Lost Pups00:05:58
Oh, sure.
But that's the whole point is that Trump loathes the people who worship him.
Again, we've talked about it.
He's the type of narcissist that like he hates himself.
So anybody who loves him, he thinks they're dupes and stupid.
So of course he didn't watch their halftime show.
He wanted to watch the show that pissed him off.
Yeah.
You know the reason why they didn't put it on though?
Because I have no doubt that the audio visual guy at Mar-a-Lago has no idea how to go from a TV stream on the screen to internet.
I swear to God, they probably had no idea how to do that.
And by the way, if you want to put all this into context, Nick, that was where they launched the invasion of Venezuela, the capturing of Maduro, and the takeover of a sovereign nation.
And they probably had no idea how to do this.
All right.
Speaking of authoritarianism, Nick, there was an ad that I want to play and I want to talk about on this show.
Man, the commercials this year were such garbage.
This one, though, there were a couple of them that have to do with AI and tech and all that that were pretty bad, including one with one of the Himsworth that was talking about AI crushing us and murdering us.
I don't know who thought that was a good idea.
This is an ad from the surveillance doorbell company, Ring.
And we'll talk about it after we watch it.
This, in my opinion, it might be one of the most consequential and insidious commercials that has ever been produced.
And we'll talk about why here in just a second.
This is Milo Petzer family.
But every year, 10 million go missing.
And the way we look for them hasn't changed in years.
Until now, one post of a dog's photo in the Ring App starts outdoor cameras looking for a match.
Search party from Ring uses AI to help families find lost dogs.
Since launched, more than a dog a day has been reunited with their family.
Be a hero in your neighborhood with Search Party.
Available to everyone for free right now.
JointheNeighborhood at rain.com.
Wait a minute.
What I remember.
Nick, so in this commercial, for those, and by the way, if you want to see it, go over on YouTube.
It's on our channel.
Ring has announced that they are Unrolling a feature where to find and putting really big scare quotes around this to find lost pets that they will activate a panopticon system in which all of the regional and area ring doorbell cameras will be turned on surveillance-wise.
That's right, everybody.
They're slow walking an authoritarian panopticon by saying they're going to find lost pets just to find your lost dog.
However, by the way, if you want to know what music I like compared to like with Trump, that was Nilsson doing without you, one of my all-time favorites.
But crowd pleaser.
Yes.
However, I remember another version of this of this commercial during the Super Bowl yesterday where it's a new family.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
It moves into the neighborhood.
Different ad.
That's not, and they bring the dog back.
Yeah, there were two lost pet commercials.
Do you remember what that was for?
Yes, that was for Redfit, I believe.
Ah, okay.
Because by the way, that one was playing on the heartstrings of like, here is a Hispanic-looking family moving in and being treated like pariahs.
And then somehow the daughter of the Hispanic family finds the dog, and then that breaks the ice, right?
Yeah, I can't, I can't wait for about three years from now where we find out that like Redfin or a company like them has been doing discriminatory practices and put out like giving them their data to the ice to help them yeah, exactly.
I can't, I can't wait, I can't wait for that story to break.
Oh, I know.
Now, yeah, but if ever you had found, like, if you were a Hollywood screenwriter in a development meeting, they wouldn't let you come up with an idea where you say, oh, the ring cameras are going, we're going to, we're going to pretend that it's going to help us find dogs, lost dogs.
That's what we're going to use it for, or tell everybody we're using it for.
I'm shocked that there wasn't a sister ad for Palantir that was like, we're going to help you find lost gerbils using facial recognition technology.
Like, I honestly, it's incredible that they were like, oh, we're going to get so many people to sign up for this Panopticon dystopian surveillance system in order to find pets.
And by the way, I'm a pet person.
If my dog, if I lost my dog, my world would come crashing down.
It makes me sad to even say that out loud.
But the idea that we're all going to sign up for a dystopian surveillance state this way, I cannot believe that this is how they're trying to slow walk this thing.
It's incredible.
Well, especially because Ring is a really popular item here.
People really like the fact that you can kind of stick it right on there and it works beautifully right away out of the box.
The Lord knows if anyone's ever tried to have any manner of doorbell system.
They don't work.
So they already had a great brand.
They didn't need to like get out of the box like this.
You know, that said, I get it.
Like having been in meetings like that, where you're trying to pitch ad campaigns, you know, puppies, like this will be, you know, look at that, that, that, you know, that great shot of the kid grabbing the dog.
So I kind of get it, but it doesn't take more than about 10, you know, before the commercial is even over, you're already picturing what you've been describing.
And that, that's problematic to say the least.
People who aren't watching this on YouTube, the moment where it shows all of the cameras going on in the neighborhood with all of the blue surveillance bubbles, like that for me, that you know what that made me think of, Nick?
It made me think of that feeling sometimes you get when like you're you're watching like a documentary with lions and tigers and shit.
And you're like, oh, that's right.
That's dangerous.
Anne Frank's Anger00:03:50
Yeah.
That is a danger to me.
Right.
Because even like a traditional drone shot, we're showing it right now on YouTube is, you know, you sing a nice neighborhood, you're flying around, you can see the houses.
But when you see them have the blue emanating, you know, coverage and you start to realize they can cover the entire world basically and find anybody they want and tie that into some normal database.
That is the problem.
I wasn't that way until you've got me.
You convinced me that this is look at it, Nick.
Look at that.
That is terrible.
Yeah.
That's awful.
That's awful.
What's the movie, the Tom Cruise movie I always forget the name of?
Minority Report.
Minority Report.
That's, you know, you know what it reminds me of, actually.
And for people who don't know, Fahrenheit 451, incredible, incredible book that just predicted so much shit.
And it's not just in terms of burning books or whatever, like also in terms of like how we would get addicted to social media and how we would sort of like become apathetic as things got worse.
Robot dogs, robot dogs being sent out in order to kill us.
There's also a moment in that, Nick, where Montague, the main character, he's on the run from the police and there's an alert that goes out and it says, everybody go outside and see if you can see the fugitive.
And my God, my God, it is, it's that, but worse.
This is bad news.
I mean, somebody, who was it who came out and just said, you know, what's going on like in Minneapolis is like basically on the way to being like Anne Frank.
These people would turn Anne Frank in.
Right.
I don't know if it was the mayor who said that.
Somebody said that.
And yeah, like you start to realize I had the misfortune of seeing a lot of these posts like that you see on X and then reading the replies.
I like to kind of lurk and look at the replies.
Obviously, a lot of them are bots.
So you can kind of, and you can kind of figure it out pretty quickly, but a lot of these discounts are not.
And they're real people.
And they are, it's probably tapped in that same anger that fuels this turning point halftime show, right?
It's anger.
It's like that's what they're tapping into.
We are angry that they're having a great time.
And the only way I can, you know, justify being in this room with everybody else is like they're all going to, you know, inspire the same anger together and the same chip on our shoulder together.
It's not healthy at all.
I mean, that's, I'm not healthy.
I don't feel like I'm mentally healthy at this point that so many things are weighing on me.
But I do feel like I can only imagine how much worse it's got to be when you have that layer of, what's the word I'm looking for psychologically that they're suffering from?
I mean, misery.
It's self-loathing.
It's, it's, it's antipathy.
I mean, it's, it's the whole thing.
Which is racism.
Yeah.
And that's the thing about it is like, you know, what you just brought up in terms of like Anne Frank.
I say this all the time.
I'll be in like a meeting and someone's like, do you think that we're heading towards, oh shit, what's it called?
The Margaret Atwood.
Help me out here.
Oh, boy.
Oh, hell.
God, come on.
It's where the women are being used.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, oh, my God.
It took that.
That took way too long.
And I always say to people, I'm like, you need to understand the handmaid's tale like isn't even the beginning of it.
There's not a lot of technology in the handmaid's tale.
It's just people being able to find each other.
And you want to talk about something like Anne Frank.
Yes, like the idea holds on because what was that?
It was a story that told us all about what happens when authoritarianism runs the world, right?
Guess what, Nick?
It wouldn't be like hearing a noise in an attic.
Tech And Authoritarianism00:15:47
It would be finding heat signatures.
Yeah.
You know, using tech to do that.
And the whole point of talking about this isn't like, oh my God, Ring is going to take over the world.
It's what we keep saying, Nick, which is we know that this technology exists.
We've seen it used in China.
We've seen glimpses of it being used in the United States of America.
What we're saying is they have this shit and they're already killing people and they're already hurting people and they have already got designs to do this.
Why was the Holocaust so bad?
It was so bad because they had the technology to mass produce the extinction of people.
It's each evolution gets faster and more efficient and more frightening.
And what we're talking about at this point is something the writing has been on the wall for a long time.
And we have lived with it for decades now, thinking, ah, it won't get that bad.
Don't overreact.
Don't worry about this thing.
You're being hysterical.
I mean, I have to believe a lot of those people would watch a movie like The Matrix and think, oh, Neo, he's got to go.
We got to, when are they, when is the government going to find him?
You know, when is that octopus thing going to get through the ship and then everybody, right?
You have to imagine that's there's a subsection of people in America that felt that way watching this.
I don't know if you, did you ever hear the story about Target and prenatal vitamins?
Have you ever heard about this?
Target and prenatal vitamins.
I don't believe I have.
So years ago, there were some people who were getting very upset because they were getting like ads from Target for things like prenatal vitamins.
And then they were finding out that they were either pregnant and didn't know that they were pregnant or they hadn't been buying things for pregnancy.
It so happened that the algorithm at Target knew that they were either about to get pregnant or that they were currently pregnant.
So you take all of that in and all of a sudden you're like, oh, that is creepy.
But Nick, what happens when all of a sudden corporations like Target, which have thrown gay and trans people under the bus because of what is going on in the country, what happens when all of a sudden they're like, hey, government, this house over here is buying more food than they usually do.
They're buying diapers and they haven't had children in a long time.
They're buying a bunch of protein stuff, like protein shakes that they haven't bought before.
My point is, it's not being hysterical.
It's understanding that authoritarians will take advantage of everything that is at their disposal if they are given the chance and if they are not kept from doing it.
You know, it does put a different perspective on like Edward Snowden or like all the people that were blowing, whistleblowing on the NSA and what they were able to do.
We don't really, because you say, well, why weren't we doing, why wasn't the government doing this in the 60s and the 70s?
I mean, they were, right?
There were some versions of this.
Nixon had his list.
I mean, they had ways of doing this, but I guess you get to the point now, it took long enough where it's just too easy at this point.
And again, that's the key.
We don't hear enough of this in terms of the political sphere.
If you're running for office going forward, you have to have a central platform of somehow regaining your privacy and keeping the government out of this.
It has to be something that people will have to realize across the aisle, right?
That should be the rights, you know, reigning thing as well.
They should be able to full-throatedly support that.
Again, they want the Second Amendment to battle a tyrannical government.
And the irony is they don't realize that it is a tyrannical government right now.
But they don't care because the only one they're worried about is a tyrannical government controlled by their opposition.
They want a tyrannical government.
That's the whole point, which is terrible.
Speaking of the opposition, an interesting story is starting to develop where Representative Thomas Massey of Kentucky is having a pretty public feud with Donald Trump.
I mean, we've seen some of these things before, but he's breaking really, really hard.
On top of that, along with Jamie Raskin and possibly a couple of others, Massey and some of his cohorts across the aisle are going to gain access, supposedly, to unredacted Epstein files.
What do you make with this feud?
What do you make about the possibility of the Epstein unredacted stuff being read?
I have my doubts about whether or not they're actually going to gain access, but maybe that's just me.
I mean, it's impressive that Massey is willing to get as far out in the skis as he's doing, but you know that aside from this very narrow subject, he will be able to support Trump and everything else and everything else.
Ways to try and distract to get back to something like that.
But, you know, the traditional reaction to something like this would be, oh, well, then some of the redacted stuff will get leaked because when it gets into the committees like that on the congressional side, you know, someone gets to leak it, right?
Eventually.
So that's good.
We should get some of this redacted stuff out there.
There's simply no way that we've seen millions upon millions of pages.
It's clear now that there were dozens of co-conspirators alongside Epstein that were trafficking young girls.
And the fact that they've continued to protect them is outrageous.
The fact that the Kash Patel was allowed to lie in front of Congress several times about what he had already, what we now know was in there that he had seen is outrageous.
The whole thing, you know, again, if we're looking for ways to bring this country together, this is the one, I guess, where we can all agree, like, right, well, I'll find some right-wingers right now that will have a beer with me and rip the Epstein files to shreds.
Well, first of all, I hope Thomas Massey is clearing out his calendar for summer of 2028, because I have to assume he's going to have a prime time speaking engagement at the Democratic National Convention.
The moment you say, if you're a Republican, you say something about Donald Trump, I mean, the Democratic Party is going to hug you and never let you go.
Well, I mean, he might be available, really available by then.
Yeah, he might be available.
Maybe him and Marjorie Taylor Greene could do a little act for the Democrats.
I'm sure they would eat it up like clapping seals at this point.
Yeah.
You know, Massey, I think, has voted with Donald Trump's interest like 91 or 92% of the time.
And what is happening here, I think, is something that is a little bit interesting, which is heading into the 2026 midterms, whether or not they're going to take place.
I mean, there's even more disturbing shit that's been coming out over the past couple of days in terms of attacking democracy.
I think he understands that like it's going to be a bloodbath if it's a free and fair election.
And the fastest thing that they can do is run away from Donald Trump, that he doesn't hold the sway that he does anymore.
You're going to lose some of your constituents.
But of course, there's going to be a ton of moderates who are going to go ahead and vote for you and see you as being courageous and all of that.
And when it comes to the Epstein stuff, I don't trust anything that is coming out of this Department of Justice.
If people really believe that the DOJ is going to be so afraid of this committee, they don't want to be held in contempt of Congress.
That's all they do.
You know, like I, they'll, they'll slow walk it.
They'll, they'll say, oh, we forgot this batch.
We'll get it to you later.
I mean, this whole thing has just been a wash.
I don't think it's going to like get to the bottom of things.
And any of the teeth that Congress has to enforce like subpoenas and that stuff is enforced by, you guessed it, the Department of Justice.
Sure.
So there's no incentive for them to cooperate with any of the thing.
We did see, interestingly enough, you know, Trump had said some nice things a little bit about Bill Clinton and Hillary as they're about to testify in front of Congress, as if he's trying to signal them, like, be nice to me.
I'll be nice to you right now if you don't say anything about me.
Meanwhile, we have Gillian Maswell in the background, clearly invoking the fifth during her virtual testimony and clearly had they have a deal, right?
They have some sort of clemency deal.
She's not going to implicate Trump and he will get rid of her, the rest of her students that's going to be.
You want to hear my reaction to the idea of Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton testifying in front of Congress about Epstein?
Yeah.
Shut the fuck up and go the fuck away.
Okay.
I don't want to hear a word that they have to say.
You want to know something weird?
You know what occurred to me this past weekend, Nick?
It's really strange.
It's just like top to bottom.
All these people who are in the Epstein files, every single one of them comes forward and they're like, oh, it's a misunderstanding about why I'm in the Epstein files.
I didn't participate in anything.
Did you know anything about what happened?
Nobody's coming out and saying, I'm in the Epstein files.
I didn't do anything, but these people did something.
The Clintons are going to waste your fucking time.
If you think that slick Willie Clinton is going to get up in front of Congress and spill the beans, oh, Hillary Ron Clinton's going to get up there and tell everybody what happened.
No.
What are we doing here?
He always tells the truth under oath.
Right?
Boy, it would have been easier.
That is a joke.
Hold on.
Hold on.
Yeah.
That's an excellent joke that relies on what are we talking?
28 years of context.
And I love it.
I love that for you.
And I'm proud of you for that.
Well, thank you.
Thank you.
Is Hillary gonna be sitting next to him while they're both together up there?
Dude, I don't know.
I don't know.
Listen, I'm old now.
I'm 44 years old.
I'm on my 45th year.
I can't do this shit anymore.
I can't pretend like it's going to be some sort of a blockbuster hearing.
They're going to spill all the secrets, Nick.
They're going to tell us exactly what went on.
No, they're not.
What are we doing here?
Well, yeah, they can't.
He can't, right?
He cannot.
He can't.
Do you know why human beings?
Do you know why human beings can recognize patterns?
Do you know why?
Because when we were in tribes and we were living next to the great rivers of the world, they would flood and they would kill us.
And we had to develop pattern recognition so we would get away from the river before it flooded and killed us.
If people, with the way Americans interact with American politics, was how the tribes of the past interacted, we would not be here because they would have died, because they would have died in a flood because they never would have recognized patterns.
The Clintons are going to save the day by spilling the secrets.
Yes, that's what's going to happen.
Well, meanwhile, we also find out from more of these papers that it seems obvious to me that Epstein and Trump were still in communications way.
Try to thieves.
Guess what?
Guess who his best, guess who Epstein's best friend was at the end?
Bannon.
Steve Bannon.
Steve Bannon, like there's all manner.
I mean, they were planning the pandemic before it happened.
They were all there.
They had their hands in everything.
They had their hands in everything.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Some scary shit, you know, and it reflects, you know, the thing is, is even if you weren't going to the orgies or trafficking in women, you knew about it.
He was by 2008 or 29, whenever, like, he was convicted.
That was it.
Like, you knew not to associate with this guy.
And he had 10 years worth of associations with people after that.
Nick DiPaulo.
Nick DiPaulo, who is one of the dumbest comedians that America has ever produced.
And Nick, that's saying something, because there are some stupid fucking comedians that America has produced.
Nick DiPaulo is one of the stone cold, dumbest comedians that America has ever produced.
And in his email to Epstein that is in the Epstein files, he's like, your reputation is kind of controversial.
LOL.
Nick DiPaulo knew what he was doing.
Right.
Nick DePaulo couldn't find his dick with his hands.
And he knew what Epstein was up to.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's, you know, it's compelling.
Worry, though.
Bill Clinton's gonna go out there and drop a dime on him.
Well, I can't wait.
I can't wait.
People nick, people are gonna get sit in front of their tv with popcorn and they're gonna.
They're gonna be wearing their Muller Time shirt while it's on and their Jack Smith for president hat that some hack sold him on twitter, and they're gonna be like oh, it's time baby, the Clintons are gonna take down Epstein and Trump, and then they'll get Super Bowl 60 instead.
Oh Jesus God, Almighty.
Oh, by the way, you ready for this transition?
Pin your ears back, because this transition's got it.
Speaking of Epstein files, there was a doctored email in the whole release that said that Epstein was predicting the beginning of World War III and that that beginning would take place on monday, february 9th which, by the way, is today.
As we are recording this, a force of American military the size that took place with operation Desert Storm is in the Middle East, prepared it looks like to go ahead and attack Iran.
There are so many things that are taking place.
There's so many things that are coming together.
This is disturbing and I uh I, for one, don't like it but Jared, I was told from sources on high that Iran's nuclear capabilities were destroyed.
We went in there, we dropped some bunker bombs and, uh I don't even remember how he described how the skedaddle right, that the, the airplane skedaddled and that's a word that I think he had just learned uh, got out of there after they did it.
Uh, they don't have anything to attack anymore.
Jared, I was told this, and i'm choosing to believe this how it could be that they're ramping up another attack on this poor country.
Well, I mean, at some point or another, you gotta stop dropping, you gotta start dropping bombs.
I guess and that's where we are, and I mean I I don't know how else to say this nick, because this wasn't the segue I used like, at some point you got to wonder about everybody in these files, like why it is that they do the things that they do.
You know, and it, it.
It goes back to what we were talking about I believe it was in the last episode, maybe it was the one before that like, none of these people are operating from a national interest and none of these people are doing things for reasons that are above board.
It has been.
It has been a takeover by the wealth and oligarchical classes, using intelligence agencies, using their, their relationships with world leaders and economic leaders and scientific leaders.
They want to create something new.
That's it, and we're at the end of the American Liberal, Neoliberal world order and they're ready it.
It reminds me a lot I I don't know if i've told this story on the podcast before.
It reminds me a lot of this restaurant that I like to go to for a while and I knew the owner and it started having some economic trouble and god wouldn't you know it.
It burnt down, you know, and it just feels like we're in the burn it down phase of this giant scam.
Is what it feels like I.
I have a question for you, Jared.
Yeah, do you think that?
Uh, Jeffrey Epstein's alive I?
That's a great question.
What Nick I?
I don't know, probably AI, but there's some pictures of a guy there.
Are I that I think those pictures are AI?
But here's the thing, where, where are we at this point?
Jeffrey Epstein Alive?00:04:48
I don't know.
Yeah, I don't know, You know, the amount of time that we lost of the surveillance video of the prison that he was killed in or died in isn't necessarily enough time to kill anybody and then have the guy killer leave, whatever, but it's enough to sneak him out of there.
But do you notice, and you brought up Steve Bannon a while ago.
I've got bad news for everybody.
The zone is sufficiently flooded with shit.
We don't know anything now.
We're talking about the potential of World War III.
We don't even know why it would start.
We don't even have a real reason, Nick.
We don't even have actual reasons for it.
And you bringing up Epstein in the middle of that, it makes sense.
Because what do we know at this point?
We talked about it before.
We're in a basement.
The lights are off.
We haven't been in this room before and we're feeling around to see what's going on.
And the only thing that we know is that everything is fucked and everything is corrupt.
So you get to something like this and you're like, do you think Epstein is alive?
I don't know, baby.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Now, here's more to add to this because, you know, when you're talking about polymarket, and we've talked about this a little bit before, you can place bets.
The only problem is you can't place bets, at least I can't in America, where I am.
It won't let me place bets on only on sports, nothing on politics.
But somebody did.
Somebody put $100,000 down on the U.S. striking Iran by end of day today as we record this at 2% odds, which means they get paid $4 million.
Yep.
This comes true.
It's a lot of money to put down on a thing they didn't know.
And people seem to think that polymarket has these insiders who know this stuff and are just, it's completely, I mean, is it sound that far-fetched to think that people are getting inside information and betting on it?
Nope.
And now you're telling me that Epstein was the guy that knew today was going to happen?
I don't know.
I'll tell you, you want to take this another step forward?
Okay.
You want to get deep?
Nick, there's stuff.
There's stuff that I look at and I research.
And I don't always bring it up on the podcast because it's like specialized shit.
Alexander Dugan.
You've heard that name before, haven't you?
Alexander Dugan, who like is the ideologue behind Putinism and the modern destruction of the neoliberal order, who, by the way, everything that he said has come true and the destruction of the American order has happened exactly the way that he wanted it to.
He posted a few days ago, Nick, he said Monday has the cap, has the possibility of being one of the most meaningful and changing days in modern history.
I don't know.
And by the way, people are going to be listening to this on Tuesday and maybe nothing happened, right?
We're recording about an event that could very well be obsolete by the time people are listening to this.
But here's the thing that happens, Nick.
That same question that you had because you saw a picture that looked like Jeffrey Epstein alive and well in Israel.
Like, I don't think that's real.
But at the same time, I don't know.
Like Alexander Dugan certainly is putting that out there.
And then what do you do?
Is that misinformation?
Is he trying to throw people off the scent?
That polymarket bet that you just mentioned, was that an insider who's trying to take advantage of the thing?
Where are we?
We're peasants.
We're peasants outside of the castle talking about what must be happening inside of the castle.
That's who we are now.
That's the entire point of this takeover of everything.
You and I, we don't know what a storm is and the storm's coming up over the over the horizon.
And by the way, some people have been sick.
We don't know why those people have been sick.
We've heard rumors that somebody poisoned the drinking water.
We should probably get our pitchforks and go handle those people.
We don't have a fucking clue.
We don't have a fucking clue.
I mean, I can only hope that we are like the peasants in Holy Grail who when King Arthur tries to impose his will saying as the king, and they just have a beautiful treatise on why he possibly, what possible reason would he have any dominion over them?
And he has no answer, which is amazing.
So I can only hope that maybe we have enough sense about us to represent that.
But yes, we're caught out of the loop.
But we are always, this is the men in black.
This is always the things that we've been talking about for hundreds of years about how the world is run.
And I suppose maybe we've gotten the slightest, that room is lit up a little bit more to get a little bit more of a sense of that, but we're no better off.
It's absolutely insane.
And I'll just say one last thing about all this.
We didn't talk about it on the show today, but I think it's very important.
This whole Savannah Guthrie's mom being kidnapped and her having to put commercials or a recorded thing saying, yes, I'll pay you.
Savannah Guthrie's Mom Kidnapped00:03:57
I think it was $6 million in Bitcoin.
One of the most American stories of the modern era that I could ever imagine.
Because Nick, I don't know if you know this.
One of the reasons that the F fucking BI exists is so things like that don't happen.
So that people aren't being kidnapped and then being ransomed off and the people have to go on TV and handle it themselves.
You know why?
Because what happens when you do that?
More people get fucking taken and more people get held hostage.
The FBI is supposed to do it, but you've got Kash Patel.
And by the way, Nick, I'm losing my fucking mind because last time I checked, Kash Patel is a podcaster who's trying to get his girlfriend noticed and get her gigs where she's singing the national anthem at rodeos.
Yeah.
And from a purely cynical standpoint, $8 million of Bitcoin ain't going to be worth $8 million.
It ain't going to be worth it anymore.
By the way, that's a great point, Nick, because she's using Bitcoin, which was created for shit like this.
Yeah.
And that's why Poly I feel like in a second, the blood vessels in my eyes are going to pop.
Well, that's how that's going to cut out and we'll never be able to connect again via the internet.
Well, that's sad.
Well, I know, but I'm just saying like someone's going to realize we can't keep talking to each other because we're not going to be able to do it.
I'm fucking losing it, man.
I'm losing it.
I'm fucking.
Do you know why I know that you can't put a bet on politics in the polymarket in America?
Because I tried to do it.
I was like, fine, I'll put some money down and try and triple my money on Iran getting invaded today.
That's where I am.
I'm like, fuck it, man.
I am like the Roman, you know, in history of the world part one, when they're getting high on the side of the road, the two Roman soldiers, and the guy goes, you care if it falls?
And the guy goes, what?
He goes, the Roman Empire.
He goes, fuck it.
No shit.
That's where I am now.
If I can make money off of this, fuck it.
I'm going to put some money down.
But I can't even do that, Jared.
Maybe I need to.
No, you can't.
No, but I mean, you can go.
Jesus God, this is the thing.
I know.
I know.
It's terrible.
You can look down on me ever.
It's so, it's so, no, it's so fucking insane.
Why don't we just go ahead and legalize bath salts?
Let's just go, man.
Legalize what?
Bath salts that people were getting high on and attacking each other in the streets.
Let's do it.
Let's get, let's get old for Loco out there.
What are we doing?
What is this?
I don't know.
What the fuck is this?
It's, you know, really quickly, because I'm so glad to be able to talk about this out loud.
I'm so glad that this show, we didn't plan on this show ending up here.
No.
But it's like that fucking Dunkin' Donuts commercial.
Like at that point, Nick, it's the equivalent, honestly, of that moment.
And it's, you have you seen Christmas Vacation?
Did you watch it after everybody told you to?
Oh, I forgot to watch it.
Damn it.
There's a point where the elderly aunt, she brings a dish to Christmas and it's jello and there's cat food in it.
And everyone goes, oh, she's not doing great.
Yeah.
What we're dealing with right now is we are being served a big heaping steaming pile of jello with cat food in it.
And maybe some people, Cousin Eddie and it eats it and he's like, oh, it's good.
We're being, we, it's, it's off the tracks.
Yeah.
It's Eddie, isn't that?
Randy Quaid.
He's, Nick is incredible at it.
Really?
Because, you know, Randy Quaid, you know, would be an appropriate person to have on our podcast, maybe at some point.
Well, Randy Quaid is gone off, gone off the rails.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He is what we were talking about earlier in this episode.
Jello With Cat Food00:01:11
So there you go.
I don't know, man.
I don't know, man.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I'm so glad that I get to talk with people like you and Danielle Moody and people who get it because like even trying to process this in a rational way.
I joked last time, last episode.
I'm turning into the Joker.
I'm turning into the Joker.
The new version?
All of them.
Oh, okay.
All of them.
From Caesar Romero all the way up.
I'm him, man.
I can't do this shit.
I can't handle it.
All right.
We got to go.
We could do this for two hours.
That's where we are in all of this.
A reminder, we're going to do a question and answer mailbag on Friday.
We need your questions by Thursday morning.
You can email us at muckrakepodcast at gmail.com or you can go over to speakpipe.com slash muckrake podcast.
A reminder, we're doing this with patrons.
So head over to patreon.com slash muckrake podcast so you can ask your questions, so you can listen to the show.
We need your support more than ever.
Good God almighty.
All right.
If you need us before, then you can find us over on Blue Sky Nick's at Nick Houseman.