Jerry J. Sexton and Nick Kaufman dissect the US economic downturn, linking rising diesel prices to a failed Iran nuclear deal rejected by Trump before his China trip with Elon Musk. They critique neoliberal institutions for ignoring historical failures while Democrats struggle against gerrymandering in states like Alabama and Texas. The hosts satirize Pastor John Mark Burns' golden Trump statue as modern idolatry, comparing it to the Golden Calf and early Christian iconoclasm. Ultimately, they call for seizing Trump's properties, revoking tax exemptions, and prosecuting corporate corruption involving water theft and chemical dumping to dismantle his legacy. [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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Institutional Control of America00:14:41
Hey, everybody.
Welcome to the Muckrake Podcast.
I'm Jerry J. Sexton.
I'm here with my friend Nick Kaufman.
We're doing it again, man.
We can't help ourselves.
Can't stop, won't stop.
Here we are.
I thought for a second you were starting my basketball show with the hey.
No, I don't know.
I just wanted to elongate it for a second.
I don't know.
I wanted to hold on to that feeling.
I know, but I wasn't getting all the energy behind it either.
It was sort of like singing happy birthday to Lundberg.
It's strange, man.
It feels like, you know, we've Recorded these past few episodes, like I've been getting hot in these episodes.
Like, I feel this thing.
I was telling, I think I said it on here, and I think I said it in a conversation with Danielle Moody.
Like, I had a feeling that 2026 was going to be a year of rage, but something has shifted for me where I look at these motherfuckers and the shit that they're trying to pull and the damage they're trying to do.
And so I'm just, I'm pissed about it.
You know what I mean?
So it was like, I think the energy was there.
I was trying not to just start it off by screaming.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, no, we want to build.
That's what you want to do.
You want to start out.
We want to build.
And don't worry, everybody.
There is plenty to get mad about today because, listen, this bullshit doesn't stop.
A reminder head over to patreon.comslash monkrag podcast, become a patron, support the show.
We are not corporate cronies and stooges.
We are independent.
We need your help to continue and to continue growing.
You also get the Weekender on Fridays.
And we're already talking about what we're doing on Friday.
These are jam packed episodes every single time.
Head over to patreon.comslash monkrag podcast.
Nick, um, I got a little bit of bad news to report.
The one page piece proposal that was probably written like one of my old freshman students typing something up before coming to, you know, writing 101 class.
Iran didn't accept it.
It was sent back to President Trump, who called it, quote, unacceptable and called their counter proposal, quote, a piece of garbage.
Meanwhile, as this is happening, Donald Trump is preparing to go to China to meet with Xi Jinping to basically beg for them to help America get out of this mess.
And, Nick, Here's great news.
Who's going along with them?
That's right, the big guns, Elon Musk and Tim Cook, actual powerful people in this country.
That's right, it's not just going to be the figurehead, Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, the economic conditions that you and I keep talking about and warning people about, that's right, everybody, they're getting worse.
How are you feeling about this?
It feels bad.
You know, I will say my trip to Trader Joe's was not as bad as I was anticipating it.
Oh, that's good news.
Good snacks at Trader Joe's, everybody.
Yeah, yeah.
And so, you know, four full bags and it was like 120 bucks.
Or something like that.
I'm like, okay, it's not.
I was expecting worse.
Nick, I texted you.
We're recording this on Monday.
I texted you on Sunday because I keep track of these indicators.
Diesel in one of the most influential and heavy shipping corridors in the country, my home state of Indiana, it reached $7 yesterday.
And if you want to know an indicator that Trader Joe's price tag is going to go up, there you go.
So, yes, this thing is not going to get solved anytime soon.
And the pain is just starting.
I've got a better indicator, I think, with Costco, and they're tracking the sales there.
Oh, God.
Costco's through the roof, man.
Yeah.
And so when you start seeing less and less buying of meat, apparently that's a really good indicator.
And they're seeing it just like they saw during the pandemic, just like they've seen in 2008.
And, you know, most of the people at Costco are well off and have money to spend.
And when they are the ones who are not literally, they're foregoing beef for chicken or foregoing chicken for that, you know, whatever they're doing that's not chicken, that's a really interesting and bad sign.
You got to refinance your house and take out a payday loan to buy a pound of meat right now.
I mean, it's tough out there.
But again, this peace proposal falls through.
Trump heading to China to try and solve this thing.
It feels, and I don't know if you're feeling this, the screws are starting to tighten, right?
It's getting up to like put up or shut up time.
As I've told people in my analysis, it looks like if this is not solved by the beginning of June, that we could watch some really apocalyptic consequences start to emerge.
And again, as we talked about when this war started and when the Trump administration found themselves in a Unmanageable spot.
The hope is going to come down to the possibility that China will bail us out, which would be terrible anyway, politically, culturally, economically, you name it.
But I don't, I'm looking at this and I'm always looking for the possible off ramps and negotiations and all of that.
There is absolutely no reason for Xi to bail out the United States in this situation.
Oh, absolutely not.
And the thing about Cook and Musk going along is that it just reeks of a, they're handing out, they're going to try and do business while they're there.
That's right.
And they're going to probably try and use the business they're going to sign to somehow then help or get China to then intervene and somehow get Iran to capitulate or something.
That's not how this is supposed to work.
We also know that Trump would probably demand some sort of percentage of whatever this deal is.
And it's like that's how far we've gotten in that end.
And we know that China doesn't necessarily want a war in that region because they rely on Iran for a lot of their energy.
So they would like it to be stable.
So there is already some amount of.
Pressure on them to try and help, I suppose, or intervene without needing to then throw in this other stuff.
So when I hear you or I receive the reporting saying that like Musk and Cook are going, that just almost sounds like they're just kind of like, oh, can I go?
Let me help.
I had some experience with this.
And they just, they're just simply self dealing.
It feels to me.
So personally, again, as an analyst and a communicator, Nick, I'm working on some stuff to try and explain deeper political bases, like who it is that actually controls politics and how the power of the presidency has been more or less captured by, you know, corporate goons.
I personally, this fell into my lap.
This is the best possible example of what actual politics are.
It's the equivalent of working at a branch for a franchise or like a regional company, and you have your middle manager, and then things get to the point where the shit hits the fan and like the big boss comes in.
These are the big bosses.
These are the people who actually control power in this country.
And both Musk and Cook have worked hand in hand with China in order to increase their authoritarianism while also, of course, getting cheaper products and getting a share of their market.
This is a case where, quite frankly, and this is the frightening thing of having an oligarchical class that does not have nationalist ties, who have an international base.
They're going over there probably to try and help Trump beg for an end to this war before the shit hits the fan, particularly with our economy.
But, Nick, they've got more to lose with China than they do if the United States of America struggles, which is really telling in this entire situation that this is how power actually works.
And this is where we have gotten to where these oligarchs are more powerful than the president of the United States of America, who's going to prostrate himself in front of Xi.
Please, please, please, President Xi, get us out of this fucking mess that we can't get out of.
It is not just a transference of power, but underneath that, at the deeper material level, it is showing where power actually resides at this point.
And that's with the oligarchical class and with the growing hegemon superpower, which is trying to take over the American order.
Yeah, and I love how you say that he's now playing with the real big boys.
People that are, you know, Xi Jinping and leaders of Iran, even whoever left, those are serious people, right?
These people have their wits about them and they mean what they say.
And I just wonder if Trump, you know, Trump has always been, he's been famous for creating the reality he wants it, wants to be around him.
And before he became completely dementia riddled or whatever is going on with him now, you know, you kind of thought, okay, he really does believe, or he said it so many times, he's convinced himself.
Do you think that he truly believes?
The absolute nonsense that he's saying now about the ward, how it's going and what's going on, or is this some sort of just the last few marbles of rattling around in his head?
I mean, I, you know, this is one of those situations we should have a meter, you know what I mean?
Like, we were talking before we started this, we were talking about our fandom of the Chicago Cubs back in the 1980s.
The Cubs had a shortstop named Sean Dunstan, and there would be a Seanometer in the stands that would show what his batting average was, which by the way, it was usually not that great, which is weird to think about now.
We should have a brain Trump ometer because I think it moves in and out.
And the other thing here with Musk and Cook and all of these oligarchs who basically control all government functions at this point and all power and all economics, they understand that all they have to do is just kind of kiss Trump's ass.
All they have to do is treat him like he's very, very important and he's in charge.
Meanwhile, in my mind, and you and I, a lot of the times, we like to picture things through like movie lenses.
In the movie, it's them in the room with the door shut and Donald Trump outside waiting.
You know, and some Chinese like middle manager basically like talking to him about how important he is and, you know, his newest golf club.
That's what we're talking about at this.
Well, you know what I'm picturing?
I'm picturing like Rubio in there, like massaging Trump's shoulders, like, okay, get ready, you're prepared.
We're going to have this great meeting.
We're going to let Xi Jinping know exactly where you're coming from.
And when the door opens, Musk and Cook are already laughing and, you know, high fiving him and whatever.
And then as Trump's walking in, thinking he's the first guy to get in the room or whatever, right?
And yeah, all of that.
And they've already signed a major deal with the Chinese government.
Yeah, you're right.
Oh, yeah, come on in, Donald.
You know, have a seat.
Now, the other thing I think that's interesting is that, you know, you can't lie the way Trump wants to lie when you have other countries involved who have a say in this thing.
It's one thing if you can somehow, and how they've done it is, you know, by controlling media as much as they can and controlling business, they can create these realities.
They can lie about all these numbers.
They've taken over all the different bureaus that, you know, with the statistics of things.
But if you're going to try and lie about what's going on, like in Iran, well, guess what?
Iran's going to show you.
Evidence that you're lying.
Iran has all of the leverage at this point.
Yeah.
They're in control.
I mean, literally, Donald Trump, as we keep talking about, this is one of the few situations that he's found himself in going back to COVID where he can't bullshit his way out of it.
Iran will not let him leave.
It's like an old cartoon where the two characters are tussling and there's like a big dust cloud and one of the characters tries to leave, but a hand comes out and pulls them back in.
And so he's in between that.
Israel now wants to escalate strikes and also go after Iranian uranium.
Like, there is nothing here.
And by the way, Nick, I'm glad we're on this subject because I wanted to point out very quickly, and you sent this to me, this article that I was actually reading it when you texted it to me.
It's in our old friends at The Atlantic who are, Nick, I don't want to get off on a tangent.
They are doing an incredible job of embarrassing themselves right now.
Just some of the worst drivel you could ever imagine.
So, Robert Kagan came in, he dropped off from his latest shift at Brookings Institute, you know, licking boot leather for an article called Checkmate in Iran Washington Can't Reverse or Control the Consequences of Losing This War.
This was published this past weekend.
Nick, first of all, as an analyst who's been on this thing and who's been talking to you about this, I believe we said all of this over a month ago.
It wasn't hard to realize very quickly.
But what we're actually watching is that the liberal, neoliberal, neoconservative, that whole hive mind that basically talks to all politicians in the country and tells them what to believe, they are finally coming around to the fact that Iran has won this war.
They have, they have, they have.
All of the advantage.
There's absolutely no reason for them to sue for peace.
So, what we're actually watching weirdly is a cultural and political waking up to the actual circumstances, which is so funny, Nick, because you brought up whether or not Trump was lying to himself.
And Trump absolutely is diminished and his brain is turning into pudding every single day.
But he's not alone in thinking that this thing was salvageable, that the United States could somehow or another win this.
And by the way, these people like Kagan, including The Atlantic, including The New York Times, What were we told at the beginning of this war on the first day?
Oh, we don't support Donald Trump, but this is an incredible opportunity to remake the Middle East, which gave me flashbacks to a very certain point in my time, a very traumatic point in my life.
And what we're seeing now is this awakening horror.
It's like snapping awake while you're in a car and you're about to hit another car, you know?
And what we're watching is the realization we don't have any play here.
We're being drugged further and further by multiple proxies.
We tried something the other day.
The Saudis said, Hey, you need to knock that off.
We knocked it off.
Israel keeps escalating and keeping this thing going.
Are they going to drag us further?
I don't know.
But Iran isn't going to go along.
They're not going to play ball.
There's no reason for it.
And now, again, we talked about this.
There's no reason at this point for China to help us.
None.
Not a single goddamn reason for China to help the United States in this situation.
Not one.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, it's truly frightening because there's a mention of Vietnam.
In this article, um, and you're talking about this awakening, but they still don't even realize what the implications that Vietnam laid out for us, Nick.
Okay, I'm so glad you brought this up.
Can we talk about that?
Because people listen, I'm not telling anybody to read the Atlantic, don't do it.
It's wait, wait, I had no idea that the Atlantic was should be viewed this way.
There are some pieces within the Atlantic that are very good, but otherwise, it is a neoliberal, neoconservative.
Institutional sort of America should control things.
And also, basically, the Atlantic exists at this point as an organ for pushing think tanks and institutes, is what they are at this point.
Neoliberal Atlantic Agenda00:05:03
I'm glad you brought this up because all this morning I went off into a fugue state, Nick.
They had multiple articles this morning that compared Iran to Vietnam and said, and I'm quoting almost verbatim, that the loss of the war in Vietnam did not have.
Consequences and that we were able to ignore it and it didn't change anything, which is fucking insane.
Had they understood what happened in Vietnam, we probably wouldn't go into Iran at this point.
Amen.
The article in the Atlantic we were reading about this would have been written in 1975.
Nick, I'm going to read this.
I'm so glad you brought this up.
This is why you were the best co host and conversation partner.
This is from Kagan's article about Iran The defeats in Vietnam and Afghanistan were costly, but did not do lasting damage to America's overall position in the world.
Because they were far from the main theaters of global competition.
What in the fuck are you talking about?
What in the living hell are you talking about?
The guy must have been born after the 70s.
That must be why.
Is that what it is?
I don't think Robert Kagan knew.
I don't know when he was born, but it might have been yesterday.
And that's the problem here, man.
I'm so glad we're talking about this.
If this is the slop that needs to be fed to politicians, this is what they want.
Sorry, you want to know how old he was in 75?
Give it to me 68, 78.
He was in the late teens.
That's old enough to know better, man.
And they, so this is the slop that they feed up politicians.
Because they don't want to interrupt the military industrial hegemonic project.
You don't have to learn from any of that.
Everything's great.
America is good.
And what we're dealing with right now, and what this crisis, not just in Iran, but the economic and global crisis that's going to erupt from this, these people are going to have to wake up from a fugue state.
And they're going to refuse to, which is why politically we can't wait on these parties to somehow or another save us.
This is the shit that they're constantly being fed.
The guy who wrote this, And everybody else at Brookings, everybody else at these major policy institutes and think tanks, Nick, they're paid by the same fucking people who pay the politicians and keep them in a matrix like gel womb to keep them from realizing that they shouldn't do things like invade Iran and that there are issues when you do this shit and it fails.
And sometimes even if you succeed.
I'm picturing you trying to wake these people up while they're sleeping upside down during the day because they can't go out in sunlight.
I mean, these are the people that watch Handmaid's Tale as a comedy.
And by the way, Nick, the thing that makes me fucking insane oh, I did not plan on talking about all this, but I'm glad that we are because it's been in my head all day.
You'll notice you read these articles and you listen to their talks and you listen to their speeches and you read their books.
They never talk about humans.
They never talk about how many fucking people they kill.
They never talk about famine.
They never talk about displaced refugees.
They don't talk about people that.
They'll talk about humane interventions, but it's to go in and steal resources and to plunge people into enslavement and cheap labor and to steal all of their shit and prop up authoritarians and dictators.
You're exactly right.
These are fucking vampires, fucking vampires who shouldn't be able to go outside without being spit on.
And what are we at now?
We're at the fine, it's always blowback.
It's always the comeuppance.
It's always the chickens coming home to roost because they refuse to learn from fucking history.
And but what when they jut their chin out and they puff their chest, and what do they say to us?
National security, and they don't realize that all the things that you just described in terms of murdering people across the globe that is what ends up threatening our national security.
Like, that's it.
So, um, yeah, it's it's um, I don't know, is it possible to cleave off 10% of those people and that's enough?
We need to kind of move in another direction, maybe, maybe that's all we need.
I think the majority of the people who write slop like this are unsalvageable.
There's nothing to do with them.
This Lanyard Think Tank Institute class, you can't teach them.
They're being paid way too much money.
They're living way too well and they're way too comfortable.
And again, the best job in the world, Nick, is to tell wealthy people what they want to hear.
That's it.
These people make six figures, seven figures.
They're flown around the world to go talk to these corporate fucks and do this.
And meanwhile, what you brought up, whether or not Trump believes this, whatever Cook and Musk are able to do, whether or not China's like, fine, we'll take pity on you.
The consequences of all of this are going to be visited upon you and me and the people listening to this and the people who don't even know it's coming yet.
Wealthy Think Tank Comfort00:16:19
Meanwhile, we're going to keep getting this.
Unless we change something, there's going to be an invasion of Cuba.
There's going to be an invasion of Greenland.
We're going to go in here.
We're going to do this.
We'll have another war with Iran.
We'll have another fucking war with Iraq if we want to.
So until we finally get these people away from the levers of power and demand something humane and sustainable and rational, like this shit is.
Oh, I god, I'm so glad you brought this up.
That Vietnam thing, I could have spit fire, I was so pissed off, Jared.
You know, he Trump was quoted today as saying they want to take over Venezuela.
Oh, sure, why not make it the 51st state?
Let's go, yeah, you know.
And again, this is what fuels my uh fear and the conspiracy it rattled, you know, um, dystopian future fear that like there's a reason, Jared, why they're hoarding all this because it's just blasphemy to think that like in 2026, we're still fighting wars over oil.
It doesn't make any sense to me that we are still stuck there.
But sometimes I wonder, like, yes, this is because they want to power these generators that will not, nothing else in the ensuing whatever is going to happen.
I don't know.
But either way, I'm not going to make it in this dystopian future.
I'll tell you that right now.
I'm going to make it, but man, if I go down, we'll see.
By the way, Nick, no worries.
These same motherfuckers who are putting out these.
Nick, I'm sorry.
I can't even get off of it very quickly.
The second article that I read today.
Nick, it said, oh, there should be no worries.
This was the China has all the cards thing.
This was another article in the Atlantic by another Brookings fuck.
You know what it said?
It said, we should take confidence from the fact that America has rebounded totally from things like the Vietnam War and Watergate.
Like, these things didn't have an effect.
They just happened and then we moved on.
Okay, never mind.
These same fucks, they are flooding corporate media right now, Nick, and they know who's going to bring us into the future.
They know who's going to save the Republican Party, who's going to save the Republic.
And I know, I know that the name is already on everyone's lips.
I don't even need to say it, Nick.
We all know who the future is.
And that is.
Marco Rubio?
That's right.
Over the weekend, there appeared multiple articles talking about.
Oh, God, I can't believe I have to say this out loud.
Marco Mintum.
That's right.
They've even made up a name, Marco Mintum.
That's right.
These glossy tongue baths for Secretary of State Marco Rubio are appearing in corporate media everywhere.
Are you sold?
Do you think Marco Rubio is the future?
Is he going to moderate the Republican Party, Nick?
Don't worry about it.
He's going to save MAGA.
He's probably the future, right?
Jared, the only word I want to hear after someone says the word Marco is polo.
That's all I want to hear.
I liked it much better.
I would hire people to go to these rallies when they introduce them, when they say Marco, they just yell polo.
Oh, wow.
You might as well have your eyes closed and not know where you are floating in the body of water because that's the problem.
Can we just, can we just, can we just, you and I, we're both writers, we're both creatives.
You know, in another world, you and I are kicking up our feet at an ad agency talking about how to sell like a new, probably protein, probably some new protein.
That's what it would be, right?
Some AI protein company, I'm sure.
How terrible is Marco Minto?
Like, we can't even get into the full politics yet.
How terrible.
Of a phrase is Marco Mentum.
That's bad, man.
Are you getting the impression that he coined it?
He wants, hey, call me Mark.
Yeah, use Marco Mentum.
So here's what it is.
And this is why I wanted to talk about this today.
Nick, do you know how stories like this, and you ever notice they just all pop up at once?
It's strange, isn't it?
Like you're just sitting there one day and it's trying to make fetch happen, you know?
And you're like, why am I getting all these stories about Marco Rubio?
It's because Marco Rubio and the people around him are trying to take advantage of how dysfunctional Donald Trump looks, how JD Vance is battling the Trump administration and on his own thing, and how Trump has basically worn to Rubio in one of his weird daddy son issues.
And Rubio's team in 2026, Nick, there are still, hypothetically, two and a half years left of this fucking presidency.
They're already like, oh, this is the right time to try and pitch Marco Rubio to the corporate media and the neoliberals and neoconservatives.
That's how this happens.
This was a communication strategy, and we saw it this weekend.
And it, much like Marco Rubio giving the official reply to the State of the Union, it left us thirsty and with him face planted on the fucking ground.
You know, it's funny because when you name yourself, that's why I was kind of asking if who gets to decide that.
Because remember, Kobe said, You're going to call me the Black Mamba from now on, right?
And Kobe was able to stick, he was good enough to back it up.
Do you remember this guy that played in the Lakers alongside Kobe named Sasha Vujicic?
Oh, I do.
Because he tried to get his name to be The Machine.
And they tried to, they're like, Yeah, okay, sure, Sasha.
Yeah, right.
We'll use that.
And I just feel like it's the same kind of energy here.
Where Rubio is going to learn.
I mean, I'm going to feel, I probably, I hate to say it, I might actually feel bad for Rubio when it finally all shakes out and he is by himself sitting on a couch.
First of all, it's the equivalent of me being like hanging out with you in LA and being like, I think I want you to start calling me Nighthawk.
Yeah.
You know?
Yeah.
Start calling me Ace.
You know?
And it's this thing where I hate to break it to anybody out there.
You know, this ain't Hulkamania.
This ain't going to catch on.
People aren't going to be tearing their t shirts and, you know, talking about Marco Rubio.
He sucks.
I've watched Marco Rubio run for president before.
I've gone to Marco Rubio events.
This ain't working.
And Magda is not going to want Marco fucking Rubio.
They're going to go more extreme.
They're not going to suddenly move back towards neoconservatism.
This isn't going to happen.
But it's also, I think, really telling.
They jumped on this fast, didn't they?
Like, really, they rolled this thing out, not just.
Early, but deathly early, which speaks to his lack of political instincts.
But also, are we going to be treated to two and a half years of Vance and Rubio fighting over the legacy of MAGA?
And also, by the way, how terrible would that be if that's what we have to deal with?
Well, the answer is yes.
And it's rooted in the cold, sweaty desperation that this party exists in on a day to day basis.
And if you want to doubt that they live in that, just look at who the president is.
Like, this is why they're desperate.
And if you want more evidence, Look at what they're doing with the congressional districts because you know what, that's not even on the rundown.
But I kind of feel like we need to talk about it just for a second so we can.
Oh, it's on the rundown.
What are you talking about?
That's the next segment.
It is.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
What it listen.
Oh, you're right.
We gotta talk about that.
Okay, and what am I gonna do?
Um, well, I just want to say one more thing because that was a really good segue.
It was, yeah, that was a really good segue.
I have one last point to make going back to corporate media, Nick.
People need to understand when they see this.
When they're pushing Rubio, when they're pushing Gavin Newsom.
My God, they're trying to push Rahm Emanuel right now.
What are they doing?
They will line up behind anybody.
Marco Rubio has been the cause of God knows how many deaths at this point.
I mean, he has been in an administration that has starved hundreds of thousands, moving very, very quickly to millions of people, has caused a war that was unjustified and illegal, has kidnapped a leader of another nation, and has his eyes set on invading fucking Cuba.
And by the way, has helped mastermind a blockade.
I don't know how many people have fucking died because of this asshole.
But they're more than happy to push them forward because they're still stuck in that brain space that we were talking about, where they think that politics are going to get back to usual.
And because, quite frankly, there's no other way to put it, they're access whores.
If you are a politician and you're not a leftist and you're not talking about getting people health care or housing or food, or you're not actually concerned about human rights, if you call these people, they will break the sonic.
Barrier getting one of their reporters to pal around with you and talk about, oh, he's been using rap lyrics lately and he's having a great time.
He DJed at a wedding the other day.
They will launder any genocidal, murderous, authoritarian, fascistic fuck.
And this is why you shouldn't trust these people and you never should have.
Now, yeah, but it gets worse really quickly because Marco Rubio also had a soundbite earlier this week trying to insist that the War Powers Act is not legal, it's not binding.
And this is the duty of the administration that they will say the things that we kind of always suspected from all the other presidents since it was passed in the 70s.
But people would pay a little fealty to this.
It's a fucking law, Jared, by the way.
It was passed by Congress in response to Vietnam, to get back to that.
And the War Powers Act member is supposed to limit the president without getting approval from Congress.
They cannot get into a war.
And here we are anyway.
So it's even more like here's a guy who's trying to rationalize these things too, as if he's a good guy.
That's really what's troubling.
We're definitely going to go to Congress because we're good guys.
We feel like we'll definitely keep them in the loop, whatever.
Meanwhile, they're not.
They're blocking satellite imagery.
We don't even know what the devastation looks like on our basis because the satellites are being blocked by the Trump administration.
But meanwhile, the Iranians are releasing that stuff.
I'm actually waiting for the AI video, which has been dumping on Trump left and right.
They get the piece of paper of the offer, the thing to end the war.
And they're just they start urinating on it, like that would be the AI video that they're going to create, like Legos, Lego urination.
Oh man, I've spent longer trying to figure out what appetizer to order at a restaurant than Iran considered this piece proposal.
And I've eaten with you before, it's hard, it's hard to pick.
You only got one shot, it's like Eminem in a rap battle, you've only got one shot to get the right appetizer.
Also, to bring this whole thing around, Nick, you brought up the War Powers Act and the legal war.
I mean, at least Vietnam didn't have any consequences.
Yeah.
Thank goodness for that.
We rebounded.
Thank God Watergate didn't have any consequences and Iraq didn't have any consequences.
All right.
Nick already segued perfectly and I had to jump all over it, even though it was the perfect segue because I'm fucking hot.
I started off trying to modulate.
I'm hot.
Nick, following the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, several states have scrambled to redistrict.
I'm going to read these states off, but I just, before I read these states, Nick, I just want, I just want listeners, if you're sitting somewhere and you're not driving, maybe close your eyes.
If you're driving, just take a second.
I'm going to give you a little bit of blank space.
Because, listen, it's funny.
The Civil Rights Act has been absolutely gutted because racism doesn't exist in America anymore.
Let's give you a quick second in your mind's eye to imagine what states I'm about to read off that have been changing their maps following the Supreme Court decision.
Are you ready?
Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina, Louisiana, that actually delayed their primaries from May to July so that they could go after fucking black representatives.
And by the way, while we're at it, Nick, the Virginia Supreme Court struck down voter approved redistricting.
So is this my turn to get hot?
How, how, okay, like Texas already did it.
Texas already did it.
Mississippi, where are you?
Yeah.
Mississippi, Mississippi, the South is rising again.
Where are you?
I know that they don't have much resources and shit's bad down there.
Come on.
Your best friends are getting in the game.
You're missing out.
West Virginia, perhaps?
West Virginia.
Yeah.
Now, here's the thing, though.
And basically, I should just go and cut and paste what I had said when this whole thing started months and months and months ago.
Where the Democrats were going to try and do this democratically while Republicans just forced it through without any repercussions.
Right.
So, just I think it might be fuzzy for people in Virginia or people who are around the country trying to understand what happened in Virginia and why this did this.
There was like a 90 day period that you're supposed to be required to post a piece of paper outside of courthouses to let people know they want to do a special referendum.
Basically, that's the idea, right?
So, they didn't have 90 days.
So, the Democrats figured, you know what, we'll just do this.
We have to get it going because the midterms are coming up.
And I'm sure that when we, oh, and by the way, there's precedent we can argue that the courts cannot interfere before the election.
Okay.
And so they want, and that was true.
They honored that.
Hey, big pat on the back to the legislature of the, or the judicial section of the Virginia state.
But they have to wait till after the election.
And I think the Democrats' calculation, correct me if I'm wrong, is that they said, oh, there's no way that they would overturn the will of the people after they vote.
No, for sure they're going to, you know, they won't hear the case or they'll just have to say, well, they voted.
It was a good vote.
And then we'll have to go on.
That's their calculation.
That's where we're at with the Democratic Party.
They literally, it's the equivalent of someone saying, you know, you hand your wallet over to enough people who approach you on the street saying they're a wallet inspector.
Eventually, one of them is going to be a wallet inspector.
Eventually.
Eventually.
It's Nick.
All I can say about this number one, you don't have an opposition party.
You don't.
Like some of these redistricting things, like, yeah, that's quote unquote hardball or what passes for it right now.
You don't have an opposition party.
They're going to fold like wet paper bags.
And what's more with this redistricting shit?
I said this from the beginning.
Yeah, you might redistrict one or two states, but it's going to set off an arms race.
I mean, the Republicans have always gerrymandered.
That's always been how it is.
They were always going to do this shit, but you can't fix this by just going, oh, we'll do this.
You'll do that.
We'll do this.
One of the things that I'm working on, and I'm trying to talk about this.
More in my own work, I'm trying to piece together what the ideal agenda is that will fix what's going on in this country, what things need to be demanded.
And one of them is a constitutional amendment that ensures fair districting of congressional districts, that makes sure that there is no ability whatsoever to redistrict based on race or gender or party affiliation.
And there's going to have to be some type of a minimum in terms of how these things are put together.
How they're shaded, all of it.
Because this shit, we're now watching.
We're literally watching what happens when you even try to play within the rules because these motherfuckers are not.
Everyone thinks that if you beat them at an election, that they're just going to be like, oh, well done at that election.
We're getting to the point where they're not even going to look at elections.
They're not even going to seat the people who get elected.
These courts are made up specifically with the intent to keep shit like this from being accomplished.
There is no way to win this underneath these current rules.
And it's.
It's unfortunate.
It sucks.
The Virginia thing is infuriating.
What's happening in the South is infuriating, but you can't continue.
We're literally having people beating their brains out against a brick wall.
Broken Election Rules00:04:10
Well, it's like the War Powers Act, then.
They passed that law in the face after having Korea, Vietnam, and having all these, the president having way too much power.
And then the presidents just ignore it.
And so that's the worry.
It's going to happen here, too.
Now, I would love to think that if you can get a bill passed and signed by a president, that would, and here's my six minute abs solution to that is, The square.
That's what it is.
The shape of a square should be the shape of these different districts, maybe a little bit bigger, a little bit smaller, depending on how many people live in that square.
But that's what it should be.
And the idea that they can't figure this out and that the founding fathers weren't more specific either in this whole thing.
Although, again, they didn't want a two party government governance and they didn't anticipate that, right?
They didn't want it.
Well, yeah, because, God, I can't go off on a rant on this one.
They didn't want a two party system.
You weren't allowed to vote on senators, only people with Wealth and property, white men were able to vote.
And by the way, the House of Representatives, Nick, it was designed to be a facade that made you feel as if you were being represented while the Senate ensured that you didn't actually, democracy didn't actually take hold.
So I would sit here, you know, we're having this conversation.
And my God, Democrats, oh, they're so good at expressing disappointment with a court order, but they're going to follow it.
Like, let's fucking think about something else.
How about instead of Congress, instead of the House of Representatives or senators, we draft regular people.
To represent these things?
Or why don't we have a representative body of the people who work in this country and the people who don't have a million dollars?
I don't know, but you're not going to fix this thing using the given rules because the given rules and the given institutions were created to keep you from fixing the fucking problem.
Capitalism and white supremacy, they work together and they'll smile at you until it's time not to smile at you anymore.
It was always a ruse.
As long as they needed it to be a ruse.
And now we're in fuck around and find out time.
So, how about instead of continuing to do the same old shit and then expressing disappointment and hopes and goddamn prayers, try something else?
You know, it's going to lose too.
The Democrats are going to lose seats when the dust settles with all the gerrymandering.
That's what's sad about all of this.
You know, because there was a moment, right, where we thought, okay, if they did it, the Democrats did it properly or whatever, and they made it work, that we would actually gain a bunch of seats.
But I don't think so.
It looks to me like they've now, this has all taken hold.
And, you know, the interesting question is why haven't all the other states kind of gotten on board as well?
I don't know if people have scruples there and they actually have some ethics or not.
I don't know.
But this is, I think that the Republicans are going to end up netting, right?
Do you agree with me?
They're going to end up netting five seats, 10 seats?
Real possibility.
Yeah.
I just want to tell one quick historical anecdote, Nick.
And this is, I think, illustrative of what we're dealing with.
Before the Civil War, when the problem of slavery was threatening to tear this country apart, The Democratic Party kept everyone from talking about slavery as an issue.
They had a rule in place, an institutional rule to keep people from debating slavery on the congressional floor.
The Whigs, they were like, fine, we don't want this.
And by the way, if they even tried to talk about it, the Democrats at the time, they would show them knives.
They would bring knives out of their boots and threaten to kill them.
Sometimes they would cane them and nearly brain them on the congressional floor if they pushed the issue.
The Whigs, they played nice, they went along with it.
Eventually, the Republican Party, yes, and we don't need to talk about realignment.
The Republican Party was created to push the issue and fight the Democratic Party over slavery.
Did they stop and say, hey, well done?
No, they fucking seceded.
And because of that, we need to understand this is not a political conflict or schism that is simply going to fix itself.
They're not going to say, well done.
Good job on the last election.
I guess things are going to change.
Slavery and Party Realignment00:08:32
Fucking hell, man.
Like, there's a reason why the Supreme Court is controlled by the body that it is.
They're not going to play by the rules if the rules don't serve them and they're more than happy to break them.
Yeah.
I also feel like they need to be able to find and encourage and incite and motivate more and more progressives just to run so that, in theory, that's the only choices you're going to end up having in these races, right?
Some like that.
Somebody who's very, you know, really interested in making some progression here because otherwise, yeah, it is very frustrating to see.
And I'm seeing a Democratic side, even like a place like Los Angeles, how there is a status quo here in the machine.
In Chicago as well.
That's really frustrating in this quote unquote progressive party of the Democrats, right?
Like, that's.
Oh my God.
California is filthy with it.
I mean, that's one of the reasons you can't trust someone like Gavin Newsom.
I'll just say either the Democratic Party would adapt to the needs of the base or they need to be replaced and go the way of the Whigs.
That's it.
It's one or the other.
Nick, good news though.
This is something that we can celebrate.
Last week, in a beautiful, stunning, moving ceremony, a group of evangelicals led by Pastor John Mark. Burns unveiled a golden statue of Donald Trump at the Trump National Doral Miami.
Listen, I'm an ex evangelical.
These are the stories that I fucking live for.
What's great to me, Nick, it isn't just that they unveiled a false idol and then proceeded to worship it.
This is great.
This actually, this really does it for me.
Pastor John Mark Burns, who did it, posted about the unveiling of the statue.
And at the end of the tweet, Nick, he said, quote, This is not a golden calf.
We worship the Lord Jesus Christ and him alone.
I'm just saying, I think you're protesting a little bit too much and you're revealing maybe a little bit of a guilty conscience there.
Can I just shout out Aaron, Moses' brother, because in 40 days in the middle of the desert, he was able to smelt gold and then actually create what we understand as a cat.
You can recognize it as a calf.
I think that's pretty impressive.
Isn't that?
He didn't have a workshop.
I did ceramics in college.
You can't just do that in the middle of nothing.
I just want to say, I do not believe in the desert God of Judaism or Christianity.
But for me, like just sitting here talking to you, those people were in the fucking wilderness, Nick.
They needed something to party around.
Like, I don't blame them.
Like, I bet that lifted morale pretty good.
Have you ever been the Burning Man?
I mean, that's, you know, the same thing.
I don't know if it's 40 days, but it's, you know, yeah.
I'm just saying that Yahweh should probably be less of a jealous God.
That's all I'm saying, Nick.
Yeah.
I'm fine with that.
I mean, listen, I'm fine with a lot of things.
The Golden Cap, I'm not even sure where I even, you know, what am I supposed to say to this?
What were they trying to say, by the way?
They're just trying to celebrate his legacy.
Is that the idea behind having a statue?
The fact that it was gold is immaterial to the whole thing?
Well, I mean, I don't even think it's actual gold.
I think it's golden, which I mean, is apropos for this asshole.
Wait, would we respond to this the same way if it was just a regular stone statue?
If it was a, okay, this is a great question.
If it was a stone statue, I don't know that we would be covering it, but I think there would still be notes of idol worship.
And what I want to talk about very quickly.
And why I find this incredible.
Two points.
One, he obviously knew that this was a problem.
You know, deep down underneath all of that cognitive dissonance, he knew that he had erected a golden false idol and that he was worshiping it, which I think is, for me, that's invaluable for my analysis and my study that he knew it.
He knew it so much that he had to bring it up.
The second part is this, Nick, and it's something that I'm trying to talk about more and more.
There is something so fucked up.
In the psychology of these people.
And we talked about what's going on with Trump being an Antichrist like figure in the Battle of Armageddon in the Middle East.
They are creating from their subconscious through their actions, they are creating the mythology that they have been taught, which is an incredible thing when you're trying to understand what cults do.
When you understand how cults operate and how they use power, how they use influence, you realize the self destructive tendency within them, that deep psychological wound and drive.
It's then going to create elements and ideas and movements of self destruction.
So, in this way, they worked themselves into a shoot.
They worked themselves into worshiping a false idol, which is really magical and miraculous in terms of its level of fucked up-itness.
Yes.
And I feel like because the appropriate response would have been a protest against it at first.
Yeah.
Like they, that's where they should have been there on the wrong side.
They should be protesting this and they should be against it.
And if it was any other Democratic president doing this, Yeah, they'd be burning, whatever.
They'd be doing something serious in protest.
Nick, do you know when the Christians took over the Roman Empire?
Do you know what one of their first actions was to do?
Well, I remember in your awesome book, they murdered everybody, right?
To kind of convince them to join Christianity.
They murdered a fuck ton of people.
They certainly did that.
They went throughout the empire and destroyed anything that they felt was idolatry.
Much like ISIS or ISIL, they went around on a rampage destroying this, including statues, including shrines of other religions, libraries, information that they believe spit in the face of God.
They went around rampaging.
The ancestors of these people who are now erecting a golden cast statue of Donald Trump were as extremist, fundamentalist as what people now are told to be afraid of when it comes to ISIS and ISIL.
This is incredible.
Like that is full circle, man.
Like that is, that is like some incredible right there, and on brand, on brand as on brand gets by the way, deep Torah knowledge.
There, I could not have figured out who it was that made the calf.
That's very good.
Oh, listen, we studied all about all of that stuff, and uh, I mean, heck, I my kid's name is Moses.
What do you want me to name him?
Aaron, man, out there smelting gold in the wilderness, yeah.
And then, and then Elvis's parents had the temerity to name him the same after that guy with double A.
Oh, no.
You know what?
Sorry, it might be the one A.
It might be it's the biblical spelling of the Aaron.
That's what it is.
I think.
That was one of those great conspiracy theory moments where they were like, his name was misspelled on his grave.
By the way, we mean no harm to any listener or supporter named Aaron.
I think Aaron's a fine name.
I knew a kid named Aaron that I liked very much as a kid.
But yeah, that was a deep pull, man.
I appreciated that.
Well, I'm glad I could be here.
Man, can you imagine how good it felt when they finished that calf?
That had to take so much work, man.
And they were so tired, probably dehydrated.
Yeah, well, actually, what's interesting is a parallel would be okay, you believe deep down this pastor, whatever his name is, it probably has the, there's something.
Grinding in his gears, John Mark Martin.
Yeah, you don't bring this up.
Yeah, you don't bring this up.
I have a feeling Aaron was like, Oh, oh, shit.
Like, I don't think this, I only Moses ain't gonna be happy.
I know that, you know.
And by the way, what do we know?
Moses was not happy.
Yeah, and what did he do?
He destroyed the motherfucker.
Yeah, so why don't we follow that part of the Bible too?
Like, that would be great.
Like, if you, you know, I'm not telling anybody they should do anything, you know, whatever, but like, if you truly follow the Bible, then this is, you know, then the next chapter is what you, you know, we should have happen.
Can I just say, as a way to end this episode on a better note, I just, Nick, can we just take a few seconds to imagine after we crush these motherfuckers, after we scare these motherfuckers out of power, how good is it going to feel to take Trump's name off of everything, to take down every banner with his dumb fucking face, his fucking dumb ballroom, all of the ornaments, all of these fucking statues?
Removing Trump's Tax Exempts00:02:55
Oh my God.
You thought people got excited about the Saddam statue going down.
Oh my God.
Oh, baby.
That's what the Democratic platform needs to be.
That's the thing.
Get somebody out there on a camera saying, you know what we're going to do?
Because of Trump's corruption, we're not only going to take the ill gotten money that he's stolen from the United States of America back, we're going to seize a lot of his properties too.
We're going to take Trump National Doral Miami.
We're going to fucking turn that into some public housing.
And the first thing that we're going to do is we're going to bring down that dumb fucking statue.
Like, what's so hard about that?
What's so fucking hard about that?
Do it.
I don't know.
I guess they're still wringing their hands about whether they should go negative or something.
I don't know.
While we're at it, take away the fucking tax exempt status of this motherfucker.
Like, you're out there erecting statues to a president?
Like, you don't have tax exempt status.
Matter of fact, take away all the tax exempt status.
By the way, we didn't even talk about the reflecting pool that they redid with a no bid contract with a company that didn't have any experience to do this.
And then doubled in price over a week.
Like it is all these things add up.
I mean, it's it's it's Friday.
And apparently, most professionals think that whatever they're doing now that makes it look kind of blue will look swampy, gross green, disgusting pretty quickly.
So we'll find out after.
Find a microphone and say you're going to round up every one of these criminals.
And I'm not just talking about the Trump fucking war criminals, I'm talking about everybody who's engaged in this corruption.
I'm talking about all of the AI monsters who have hurt children and killed people.
I'm talking about all these corporations that have dumped chemicals into everything.
I read the other day, I don't know if you saw this, one of these AI data centers stole, I think it's 300 million gallons of fucking water.
We're going to take all of these pieces of shit.
We're going to drag them out of their homes in the middle of the night.
And you know, these concentration camps that they're making for immigrants?
We're going to throw them in there until we figure out what the fuck to do with them.
That of a microphone and say that.
Also, because I can hear someone saying, oh, I kind of like it's probably a lanyard wearing congressional.
Fucking staffer listening to this podcast, like, oh, I don't know, Jared.
I mostly agree with you.
This seems kind of extreme.
Is that any different from what Trump and these assholes said in public leading up to 2024?
Is that any different?
No.
Wow.
That's a way to finish a pod.
Oh, we're getting out of here.
All right, everybody.
We will be back with the Weekender on Friday.
I was trying not to get hot.
Oh, I don't know.
We'll be back on Friday.
Head over to patreon.com slash muckrake podcast, become a patron, support the show.
In the meantime, I think Blue Sky's been working.
Who even knows?
It's like going into a Walmart that is back on its utility bills.