Jerry J. Sexton analyzes the escalating Iran war, triggered by Donald Trump's failed May 4th Strait of Hormuz escort attempt involving 15,000 troops and resulting missile strikes. He argues capitalist incentives make conflict inevitable while warning of an $81.3 billion monthly energy cost surge causing corporate collapses like Spirit Airlines. Sexton critiques the decline of Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire as a symptom of shifting right-wing funding and exposes Ezra Klein's "Abundance" ideology as billionaire-funded neoliberalism threatening democratic processes, ultimately predicting a broader economic crisis where oligarchic wealth dominates the collapsing middle class. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Welcome to the Weekender00:02:46
Hey, everybody.
Welcome to the Muckrake Podcast.
I'm Jerry J. Sexton.
It's not the weekender.
You don't have your calendar all mixed up.
Nick is out and about running around, so I'm helming the desk, and it's been that kind of day.
Cheers.
Oh, man.
This moment.
I don't even know if there's any other way to put it.
This fucking moment.
We've got a full show today.
Hopefully, you'll.
Hang out, keep me company.
We have to talk about the developments in the war with Iran, as well as the escalating economic consequences of all of that.
There's been a lot of movement all over the place that we have to discuss.
On top of that, actually, good news.
Who knew?
Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire is laying people off like gangbusters at this point.
So we need to discuss that, the larger implications.
And I regret to inform you.
That there is a neoliberal, I guess at this point it would be neo neoliberal because the Democratic Party is already neoliberal.
But, uh, man, the abundance folks, they're angling to take over the party even more.
So, we'll get into all of that and more here in just a minute.
A reminder head over to patreon.comslash muckrakepodcast.
Listen, this supports the show, and things are tough.
I mean, even Ben Shapiro out there who has been swimming in billionaire money his entire life, he's struggling.
We're independent media.
We have absolutely no corporate backing, no commercials, none of that stuff.
We need your help.
We need your support.
And also, by the way, you get to listen to The Weekender every Friday.
Extra show.
And on top of that, specials, question and answer segments you name it.
It's a pretty good deal.
And it helps the show make sure that we continue to grow and move forward.
Also, if you haven't already, tell your friends.
Hopefully, they're looking for something to listen to.
That doesn't lie to them and it doesn't sugarcoat what's going on.
While I'm on the subject, by the way, best of luck to the Knowledge Fight Boys.
They're not necessarily friends of the pod, but I want to believe that they are spiritual friends of the pod.
Best of luck to Dan and Jordan as they move on to other projects.
I'm certainly sad about it and disappointed, but things change.
So, best of luck to the Knowledge Fight guys.
Meanwhile, patreon.comslash mycrackpodcast if you want to become a patron and support.
This show.
All right.
Inevitable Strait of Hormuz Crisis00:05:07
So let's go ahead and start with the developments in the war with Iran.
This has been a story that we've been on trying to give context and background to.
As I keep saying, there are no circumstances really in which this conflict is going to stop or that it's not going to have flare ups and it's not going to have larger ramifications.
Donald Trump had told everyone that he was going to start using the U.S. military to escort ships out of the Strait of Hormuz.
Starting today, Monday, May 4th, as I'm recording this.
And it's not going well.
It's not going great.
Multiple ships have reportedly been fired upon.
The U.S. military estimated, by the way, 15,000 troops being involved in this operation, which is likely doomed to fail.
They've been fired on.
Apparently, multiple boats that belong to Iran have been either fired on or destroyed.
The UAE has claimed that Iran has hit them with a missile strike.
And Israel is just champing at the bit to get this thing back going on and being a live war.
They've already been striking Lebanon, breaking that ceasefire.
So here we are.
We're in a pretty precarious position.
And a lot of the reasons that this is happening, and I want to give proper context, as is always.
My goal.
For Donald Trump and the people around him, the stated political goal or the believed political goal is to try and salvage something out of November's midterms.
Obviously, the economic picture is darkening.
We'll talk more about that in just a second.
That's the material reasoning that a lot of people are coalescing around simply because they don't want to talk about the capitalist incentives and forces that are causing these things.
Again, there was no ability for this ceasefire to remain.
Iran has absolutely no reason to actually negotiate with the United States of America, considering one, they don't trust the American regime.
But on top of that, they have everything to gain from this continuing to go on, including being a regional and by proxy world power.
They have grown in stature and influence and control.
So Iran isn't going to accept, they were the things that people have been saying is that.
The regime was going to try and bribe Iran into announcing a stalemate or even a loss, I guess, to try and save face for the Trump administration.
Absolutely no reason for them to do that.
Meanwhile, we are quickly approaching zero hour of this economic crisis.
The effects and the consequences are already being felt around the country.
But a lot of analysis now shows that this needs taken care of by the end of May, before we move into June.
And if that is not the case, an entire slew, an avalanche of new awful consequences will emerge at that point.
Iran used that fact to issue an ultimatum to the Trump administration that they wanted a permanent ceasefire or peace finished.
Within a month's time, they knew that that was a leverage point.
They knew that they could turn the screws on the United States because they have every understanding of the economic conditions and consequences and fallout, which they are immune from because they haven't been a part of the larger globalist capitalist project.
And now we're seeing the almost inevitable consequences of all of this.
There was always going to be more belligerence, there was always going to be more.
Fighting.
It was going to happen likely through a bunch of different flashpoints.
What's taking place in the Strait of Hormuz today is not just predictable, it's inevitable under these current circumstances.
The United States was trying some sort of a smaller move instead of landing troops on the ground or an all out assault within the Strait.
They had to kind of poke the trap a little bit to see what would happen.
So now we're having live fire in the Strait of Hormuz, an escalation.
So to speak, and it's not going to work.
I would be very, very shocked if there is any progress that emerges from this.
And because that's the case, it's then going to present yet another bad set of options.
Airline Bailout and Skyrocketing Prices00:03:49
There are no good options here.
None.
To actually achieve something, the United States of America would have to take responsibility, apologize for attacking Iran, and accept a lost war, which is simply something the United States of America, particularly at the current moment and under the current regime, can't do.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump is undoubtedly fielding one call after another from corporate CEOs, billionaire benefactors, the people who are the real stakeholders of the American economy, and they're looking at the numbers.
We're already starting to see the fallout.
And in this way, we're watching some of the more vulnerable and some of the more precarious entities start to really feel the pain.
We're already hearing about thousands of people being laid off from corporations.
There are not jobs.
For those people to end up in and transfer over to.
The middle class system, the middle class economy has been utterly devastated.
And we just simply haven't seen the obituary yet.
We haven't glimpsed the tombstone or the declaration.
The floor has fallen out.
So these corporations are laying off thousands upon thousands of people.
And while that happens, the more precarious corporations are going to fold.
We're already starting to see sort of the beginning tremors.
Of a larger earthquake that will certainly shake the United States of America and the global economy.
We reported, God, what was it?
Was it last week or the week before that Spirit Airlines, that bane of any traveler's existence, going to the Trump administration looking for a multi billion dollar bailout?
It was bandied about that maybe the government would buy an interest in the airline and eventually decided against it.
So now Spirit Airlines.
Is no more.
It's gone.
The first airline has gone out of business.
And it's not shocking that it's spirit.
It was always operating on a razor thin margin.
And now a set of circumstances have emerged that has destroyed this airline.
We're also hearing that JetBlue is struggling and could possibly ask for a bailout or possibly go out of business.
Along with Frontier and a couple of other airlines, they are still lobbying.
To try and get a bailout from the administration.
Based on what happened with Spirit, I don't know that that bailout is coming.
Meanwhile, the larger airlines are struggling themselves.
They're probably going to cut a shit ton of flights.
You're going to see prices skyrocket before this thing is over.
And they're already pricing in the cost of jet fuel, which is going to become prohibitively expensive.
Undoubtedly, because diesel fuel is also part of this giant mess, we're going to start seeing.
Probably not the big box stores in the beginning, the big giant franchises and chains.
We might see some smaller ones start to struggle, as well as some transport companies.
Those will probably, at some point or another, start really shaking the Richter scale.
For you and me, last week was the week that the pain started to really settle in.
This was when gas prices started going up as the administration made it clear to their corporate backers and all of the traders and speculators that.
Iran and the situation with Iran was not going to end anytime soon andor cleanly.
The manipulation of the market, Trump's still trying.
Emerging Energy Emergency00:06:55
He still posted something on Sunday night trying to manipulate the Monday markets, but that's kind of run thin at this point.
So the prices, they're going up and they're going to continue to go up in gas stations and stores.
To put this into perspective, on Friday last week, Americans spent $125 million more on gas than they did the previous Friday.
The reports are starting to come in that in the last month, Americans spent $81.3 billion more on gas and energy.
That is not the type of spending that this economy can weather whatsoever.
As I've talked about previously on the show, we already saw the indicators blinking red that American credit was saturated to the point of an emergency.
On top of that, people weren't just losing out on their mortgages.
They were also not able to pay their utilities.
The fact that people are struggling to pay those bills before any of this took place, unreal.
The housing market has stagnated for the most part.
We've been watching speculation and the stock market go up and up because it is divorced from the actual lived material conditions of Americans.
And as a result, Property values and house values have gone up.
No one's able to afford them now.
So we have a situation in which the middle class, which was always the driver of this economy before we turned to historic spending from the oligarchical and wealth classes, which now account for not just the vast majority of consumer spending in the United States of America, but almost the totality of spending and consumerism in the United States of America.
We've now watched that.
White collar middle class collapse in real time in a way that nobody wants to admit yet.
It's likely only a matter of time until you start reading articles about an emerging emergency.
And again, I think it is despicable and awful not only that this is happening, but that it's not being covered and people are not being honest about what's going on.
We're dealing with a confidence game from corporate media in the United States of America.
They're trying not to spook people.
They're trying not to speak into existence what is already coming into existence.
Again, just because I find it necessary to level with you, I think it's going to be hard.
I do.
I was talking earlier on a live stream that I did at Dispatches from a Collapsing State.
I got asked a question from a mailbag about what I think people should do, and I want to go ahead and communicate it to you as well in case you weren't able to see that live stream.
I'm stocking up on food.
I'm not hoarding.
I'm not doomsday prepping.
I'm simply keeping about a month's worth of supplies at the ready.
That is already becoming extremely expensive, but that is what's happening.
And as of right now, I would advise that people do the same.
Stock up on medicines.
They are going to explode in price before this thing is over.
If you have necessities, make sure that you have those.
I don't know exactly what shape everything is going to take.
I don't know how much we're going to see it on store shelves.
I don't know.
That we're going to have limited supplies.
But everything about what's happening right now tells me that we likely will.
On top of that, there's an emergency within US farming.
They are lowering their expectations of yields as fertilizer has skyrocketed in prices.
So, I think shortages are a real likelihood.
As well, I've started to talk to my neighbors.
I've started to organize with them, discussing the resources we have, the skills we have, trying to get into place community aid before everything goes to hell.
I would advise you to do the same.
And maybe you don't have neighbors you can talk to.
Find people in your neighborhoods, find people in your communities.
Or at least talk to the people who are close to you.
Have honest, mature conversations about what is taking place right now because we're heading somewhere very, very quickly.
And I hope and I pray that it won't be as bad as I'm making it out to be.
I hope I'm dead wrong on this thing.
But what we are already seeing in terms of indicators, it's a rough road ahead.
And I want to reiterate, as I always do, that this is a frightening prospect.
I get that.
And I'm not trying to freak people out.
I'm actually very optimistic.
I'm very hopeful.
I think this is a decrepit, sclerotic, abusive, oppressive, exploitative system.
I am hoping that through this pain, we can recognize that this has never worked for us.
It has always hurt us, it has always taken advantage of us.
And I'm hoping that it reinvigorates the feeling of interdependency between all of us and brings to the forefront something that has been true.
This is an awful, awful fucking system.
And hopefully, through this pain, we will be able to recognize something better.
But again, all of the indicators are flashing red.
All of the signs are pointing in one direction.
This war, it's not going to simply go away, lest there is some kind of miracle.
And even if that miracle were to take place, if, say, China came in and brokered a deal between the United States and Iran, we have no idea if that would even solve the problem.
America has been dealt with.
A really bad blow at this point.
We talked just very recently about OPEC being blown up.
I know my ears certainly perked up when I heard that the UAE had been hit by a missile strike.
And immediately my question was where did it come from?
Even if everything were to turn out great in the wash and we were to move forward, the infrastructure needs to be rebuilt, shipping needs to be replenished, there's no guarantee of safety.
It is a mess.
And today, unfortunately, as I'm recording this, and I don't even know if something will happen by the time this episode comes out, today we have already seen the mess getting worse.
In better news, Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire has laid off a score of their employees.
Rumors have it that upwards of half of all employees have been laid off.
Of course, Shapiro and the Daily Wire have been trying to.
Capitalism Reaches Far Right00:14:38
Spend this thing saying they're just restructuring as they build out and they grow.
But I think there's something larger happening here that I want to discuss.
This also happens at the same time.
I don't know if you've heard this.
There are rumors that somebody was able to look at the stats for Tucker Carlson's network and found that there were only roughly 7,000 subscribers.
I can't tell you that I know that that is true.
I'm a Luddite.
I'm going to be lucky.
To navigate the technology that will post this podcast.
But I do think it's part of a larger trend that's taking place.
I've talked very, very often about how so much of the right wing media system is completely and utterly fabricated.
It's AstroTurfed.
Wealthy billionaire donors have been paying these people to carry out propaganda, buying their books, buying their products in order to keep them afloat, and also likely paying for bots to subscribe to their things, to view their things, share their things, you name it.
And I think one of the aspects that this is really, really glaring out to me regarding is that I think some.
Of those streams, and I think some of those propaganda operations they're starting to fall by the wayside, particularly as political conditions change and economic conditions change.
There are, of course, reasons to believe that Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire have been benefiting not just from billionaire benefactors in the United States of America, but likely have been receiving money from foreign influences, whether it's Hungary, Russia, you name it.
There is a possibility that something has shifted here, and that maybe the spaces that we've been paying attention to are starting to shift, and we're going to see a change in terms of the current paradigm that we're enjoying.
To be sarcastic, it's also likely, and I'll touch more on this and the other side of its coin in the next segment.
It's also likely.
That the lurching towards neo Nazism, particularly with an anti Semitic flair on the far right, is also affecting this situation.
Shapiro is and has always been a provocateur and propagandist who is there to try and navigate the two different sides of the Republican faction.
He tries so hard to be the bridge between.
What we would refer to as neoconservatism or conservatism and the new fascist right.
Of course, Shapiro has moved back and forth and flip flopped and hemmed and hawed whenever it came to Donald Trump and MAGA, attempting to try and square out those contradictions.
Those contradictions are becoming more and more glaring, specifically as Donald Trump has become more and more unpopular, even with his base, many of whom are shedding off and they're moving towards what I've been describing as this new fascist, new neo Nazi.
Right, which is marked by anti Semitism, anti democracy, and more and more radicalization.
It just isn't a good investment anymore.
Sure, Ben Shapiro could talk to, I don't know, a few dozen remaining Republicans who are still daydreaming with nostalgia about Mitch McConnell, but that's not really going to do much at this point.
It's probably likely, and by the way, if he is receiving money from Hungary, Or if Hungary had been pumping money into the right wing ecosystem, considering the corruption that they had created under Viktor Orban.
That's one thing.
We could have some revenue streams that are drying up because of political changes, but the political changes here domestically, I think, are being reflected as well.
Doubtlessly, Shapiro is still receiving a ton of money from billionaire benefactors.
There's no doubt about that.
And I'm going to be keeping for a little bit of insight into how my analysis works.
I'm going to be keeping a pretty good eye on subscriber numbers for Shapiro and the people that he still employs.
I want to see if they drop.
I want to see if the interaction drops.
I want to see if the reach drops.
The reach has already dropped, particularly with his support of the genocide in Gaza, the actions of Israel attempting to gain more land, but also in the face of the strike on Iran.
It simply isn't popular.
Nobody wants it.
No one's buying it and no one's interested.
So, as a result, we are watching some of this money shift and move.
Now, again, I cannot vouch for people saying that Tucker Carlson's subscriber base is low, but that would.
Figure into the equation that would make sense.
Hardly any of these right wing influencers are actually carrying the sort of subscriber base and/or audience that they purport to.
The gig, the job here, has always been to have these inflated numbers that are being created by right wing benefactors, billionaire benefactors, and then having mainstream liberal media.
Do things like profile Tucker Carlson, which they just did, and more or less laundered him and gave him a platform in order to grant him some legitimacy within centrist corporate liberal circles.
It's a game.
They work with each other.
They are basically on the exact same team, which is carrying out the interests of capitalism.
So as a result, they are going to work with the right.
And if they can't work with more moderate figures, Not that Ben Shapiro is moderate, but in comparison to Tucker Carlson or Nick Fuentes or anybody else like that, they will work with those people.
That was the uniparty that we've been dealing with, particularly since the 1980s and especially since the 1990s.
But what's happening now is that corporate centrist liberal media is now looking to the far right.
And this is a cycle that we've seen over and over and over.
Over again throughout history as fascism and right wing extremism grows.
Again, the main idea here, the main motivation for corporate centrists is to maintain the project of capitalism.
And they'll do that through liberal means.
When you have a democratic party, you have liberal representatives who represent the interest of the free market and capitalism.
And again, scare quotes around free market because there's nothing free about it, it's been rigged.
But They want to work with other liberals, and I'm talking about the classical sense.
I'm talking about people like a Ben Shapiro.
I'm talking about people like a Mitch McConnell.
Even though they have authoritarian leanings, they're still trying to keep the same system going.
Eventually, because of the rigging of the political system and the rigging of the economy, what eventually happens is you start to see populist anger and backlash towards the gatekeepers of the capitalist society.
So, as a result, the people who are being screwed over, and yes, that's you and me, everyone listening to this, likely outside of some of the lanyard class that listens in between hearings on Capitol Hill.
Hi, guys, how's it going?
Eventually, what happens is those of us who are getting screwed, we start getting angry and we start losing trust in institutions and our representative parties.
We start losing trust in capitalism because it no longer exists.
Serves us.
The working class has known that for a while.
They have been completely taken advantage of by far right ideologues and MAGA, which lies to them and then delivers them to the interest of their billionaire wealth class benefactors and oligarchical benefactors.
And they start looking for alternatives.
Eventually, as the rigging gets worse, and because capitalism is not sustainable and it will always boom and bust, but especially when you reach the point in which extraction and exploitation reach such a high level.
The middle class, it starts getting frustrated because all of the promises of middle class life, they start falling by the wayside.
This, of course, is a callback to what we were talking about in the first segment.
When you're not able to go to the right schools, you're not able to show meritocratic energy or function, and you're not able to get the job that allows you to buy a house and a car and raise a family, eventually the middle class starts to collapse inside the working class.
And then the disillusionment and the distrust starts bristling.
That's why you're seeing the loss of faith in institutions, loss of faith in the political parties, and loss of faith in capitalism.
When that occurs, left wing or socialist, if you want to call it that, those energies start to grow in the swelling working class, the dissatisfied class.
And there starts to be rumblings that something needs to change.
When that happens, corporate centrists move to the right.
There's a reason why we get all these articles that are talking to Trump voters at diners, where every article in the New York Times begins by equating quote unquote left wing extremism with right wing extremism.
What they're trying to communicate to the remaining corporate centrist class is that things are getting a little dangerous.
And when things start to get a little dangerous and corporate centrist And this capitalist class and a capitalist serving class, when they start feeling the heat that the vast majority of people want things to change,
and they might be into reform, they might be into changing institutions and systems, they might even be into necessary economic redistribution, which would actually be countering the economic redistribution that took place from the 1980s on to the tune of tens of trillions of dollars that were stolen from us and put in the pockets of the wealthy.
When they start seeing that, they're going to launder the right wing and they're going to start moving further and further to the right.
Because the right wing fascists, who are above anything else, servants of capitalism and willing to get their hands dirty and bloody in order to push forward the authoritarian intentions of capitalism, particularly when it gets to this point of corporate imperialism, they Are more than happy to welcome the far right into the fold and find common interest.
That's what's occurring right now.
And watching someone like Ben Shapiro start to lose some of his backing and some of his sway, it's one of those indicators.
I don't think it's a surprise that as that happens, you're watching Tucker Carlson get fluffed in the New York Times.
This is the type of shit that happens in these weird moments.
As you and I are finding common cause and looking at a broken, decrepit, sclerotic, exploitive, abusive system.
So, we should revel in the fact that Ben Shapiro's reach is declining.
He's a piece of shit, always has been.
There's so much blood on his hands, it's unbelievable.
But the sad fact is that the energy is moving towards the far right, and the corporate centrists are more than happy to partner with these people.
Because the corporate centrists, it's never been liberalism that they actually cared about.
They cared about liberalism when it was a useful tool.
They cared about liberalism when they were able to control elections, when they were able to control outcomes.
If they were able to control what happened at the ballot box and what happened in the culture, they were more than fine to espouse the wonders of liberal democracy.
But that's always been a smokescreen.
If they need to, they'll embrace authoritarianism.
And what you've been experiencing now for the last decade, if not more, let's just go ahead and contain it to the last decade, what you've been watching.
Is a wringing of the hands and a gnashing of the teeth as corporate centrists, these people who say that they're dedicated to liberal democracy, as they're going through the cognitive dissonance of starting to align with the fascists.
So, as an analyst, one of the things that I'm always looking at is where the money and the capitalist incentives start to move.
Capitalism requires fascism.
When we reach a point like this, it can be quiet authoritarianism as people wave the flag and talk about American benevolence.
But when we reach this stage of extraction and exploitation, it takes an iron fist and a glove.
And so, what they're doing right now is they're preparing themselves to make allies with the fascists.
On a related note, congratulations to the Abundance guys on the one year anniversary of the release of Abundance.
Progressivism Meets Authoritarianism00:09:39
Written, of course, and I'm using those words lightly by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson.
What we've seen over the past couple of days, and I'm trying to give you some insight from my own organizing and nonprofit think tank institute work trying to fight against this shit.
What we've seen over the past couple of days as they've celebrated the release of that rotten neoliberal reheated bullshit, we've seen the emergence.
Of a new effort for the abundance ideology to take over the Democratic Party.
To set the stage a little bit, the Democratic Party has been afloat for a while, adrift, if you will.
I've tried to talk about the different machines that have controlled it.
It went from the Clinton led DLC machine to eventually it was taken over by the Obama guys.
And then in the past few years, the four years of Biden, which people really hoped would be something like a new deal, it started to change that paradigm, even while the Obama people tried to keep hold over everything.
Kamala Harris was not able to not only win the election, but had no machine that was ready to take over.
So there is room at this point for some type of new direction or new plan within the Democratic Party.
Everyone who works in these circles understands this vacuum.
And everyone's kind of looking at each other, like wondering where the next big plan comes from.
It wasn't a shocker that Abundance came out when it did.
It was being prepared as a possible blueprint for Kamala Harris if she were able to win.
And, you know, back when Biden was still in, the possibility that he could carry it out.
But now it's looking for a new champion and to take over the ideology of the Democratic Party.
If you haven't read Abundance, good for you.
This was reheated neoliberalism around the idea of literally changing the idea of progressivism.
And progressivism, for those who aren't aware, began as a movement in the early 20th century that was pushing back against monopolies and trusts, trying to wrest back some power from that age's wealth class, that oligarchical class, and trying to bring it back towards the middle class, the educated and so called enlightened leadership.
It also involved a groundswell of populist.
Progressive communal efforts that basically created a superstructure between citizens on the ground and a larger, supposedly enlightened, middle class technocratic sort of push.
That involves people, though.
That involves people voting and organizing.
The abundance guys don't want that.
My God, that would be awful.
They want to change the idea of progressivism towards.
That technocracy.
They want to get rid of any impediments for unlimited building, extraction, and exploitation with an eye mostly towards tech and construction.
And this idea, more or less, is taking the brakes, the only brakes that are remaining on the regulatory state, which was, again, the prize jewel of the progressive movement in the 20th century.
It was the creation of the idea that the government.
Should step in on behalf of the people in order to pull power back from the wealth and oligarchical classes of the day, the industrialists.
Well, this isn't going over very well.
And there's a reason for that.
Nobody wants to vote for this shit.
No one is interested in giving more power and more wealth and more leeway to the tech oligarchical class.
Again, going back to the Ben Shapiro conversation, most of this has been astroturfed.
The abundance people are simply gorging themselves on billionaire donations of the donor class that wants nothing to do with people like you and me saying things need to actually change.
So, as a result, the abundance guys have all the money in the world that they could ever want.
So much so that imagine this what a coincidence this is.
Around the one year anniversary of the release of abundance, a second Abundance think tank opened.
And wouldn't you know it, it's populated by a bunch of Democratic Party flacks who have background with the Biden people, the Kamala Harris people, the Obama people.
Isn't that weird?
It's really strange.
And by the way, this new think tank, this new institute that is pushing for this shit, what is it called?
It's Inclusive Abundance, I think it is.
They're springing out on their own.
They really don't have anything to do with the main abundance.
People, the original think tank and institute that is paying every single flack that they can find.
It's weird how that just popped out and how they're kind of trading staff and they're trading resources, but they really don't have anything to do.
This is a real movement.
It's incredible the groundswell of people who are calling for abundance to happen.
Completely astroturfed, completely bullshit.
And by the way, I can hear you through the airwaves.
You don't even have to be in the room with me for me to hear this.
I know you're asking who's their champion?
Who's their standard bearer?
Well, folks, I'm glad to tell you that abundance has likely found their man.
And that man, California Governor Gavin Newsom, who has already passed small amounts of legislation, always making sure to throw the word abundance into that legislation.
So, what are we watching right now?
And what am I previewing for you?
I'm previewing the struggle for power that is going to take place over the next couple of years.
If we have free and fair elections, of course.
We are watching.
The coalescing of a group of people who have no interest in democracy.
They have no interest in actual progress as we know it in progressivism or anything even approaching something looking like the left.
After all, they have all their surrogates out talking about how dangerous the left is and how dangerous the groups are, which is their little euphemistic racial slur.
They don't know why black and brown people and women and gay people and trans people have any room in this discussion.
They look around and wonder how they got there.
They are putting their weight and their money and their energy behind Gavin Newsom.
So don't be shocked when Newsom not only announces he's running for president, but he really pushes a platform.
I, man, it would be shocking, wouldn't it, if it's the abundance agenda?
And he talks about how if we just make the right decisions and pass the right legislation, we'll take care of the housing crisis just like that.
I mean, we just have to get rid of all the regulations and all the oversight.
It's kind of disgusting if you really look at it.
Going back to the Supreme Court talk that we had the other day about how they're using reverse racism, racism against white people, as if that exists, they're using that to overturn the Civil Rights Act.
And here they're going to use the idea of progressivism to more or less destroy any of the actual gains and decent gains that progressivism caused in the first place.
Just a little thing to keep an eye on.
It's interesting how this works, where the money pops up, where the incentives are, where the power centers are.
And meanwhile, nobody wants this.
No voter has any interest in any of this shit.
And you look at the bios and the projects these people have been a part of, always things like child tax credits, which, yeah, we can do things like that, but that's also this means testing bullshit.
They're simply reheating the leftovers and trying to feed them to you.
That's it.
And as a result, we have a completely astroturfed, baseless, unsupported agenda that is only being funded by wealthy people.
Many of them were the ones who funded the Republican Party for years and decades.
And now they're moving their money across the aisle.
Because what are they going to do?
They're going to finish their takeover of the Democratic Party.
And so many members of the Democratic Party are waiting for them with open arms.
So, fun thing to keep a look at.
Keep an eye on.
See where that goes.
All right, that's going to do it for this episode of the Muckrake Podcast.
Friday Reminder and Support00:00:30
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I think Nick is going to be ready to record.
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