Brad and Dan begin by discussing how Madison Cawthorn's claims about cocaine and orgies sounded like youth group scare tactics.
They then dig into the significance of the texts between Ginni Thomas and Mark Meadows, focusing on the Christian nationalism rife in their conversations, their characterization of Democrats as "evil," and the hope that God would not allow for the fair and free election of Joe Biden to go through. They also point out how this poses a conflict of interest for Clarence Thomas on SCOTUS cases involving January 6 and provide rebuttals to the Uncle Ron claims that criticism of Ginni Thomas is just misogyny.
In the second segment Brad examines Trump's hopes that since Putin is now mad at Biden, Putin might release dirt on the President. For Brad and Dan this shows how the enemy of the people in the minds of MAGA Nation is not a war criminal like Putin, but their political opponents, who are not real Americans.
The episode finishes with a lengthy discussion of the rise of Donald Crow--arguing that Trumpism will outlast Trump through the bundle of policies that are being passed at the state level. Trump himself was very bad at passing legislation. But governors and state legislatures are now putting into law the animus that his platform activated in the MAGA base. In the future, regardless of what happens with Trump and his role in public office, the legacy of Donald Crow will divide the country along lines similar to Jim Crow.
This idea was first put forth by Charles Blow: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/27/opinion/desantis-trump-republican-party.html
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Axis Mundy you you You're listening to an Irreverent Podcast.
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Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, faculty at the University of San Francisco.
Show's hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center, UCSB.
Here today with my esteemed co-host.
Esteemed indeed.
My name is Dan Miller.
I'm Associate Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College.
It's good to see you, Brad.
I hope you're doing all right in, you know, sunny California that's warmer and less rainy than here where I am.
It is less rainy.
We need, we actually need rain.
So it's, we have, we have opposite problems, but Yes, it is warmer, I'm sure, than where you are, so I will take that, at least for today.
Gotta start off by saying, friends, we have a Swag Seminar coming, and that is in May, every Thursday.
It's called Purity, Culture, Race, and Embodiment.
Last week we had Sarah Mosliner guest host with us, and Sarah is the professor for that seminar.
Seminar is going to be all about the kind of history of purity culture and how it has surprising entanglements with racist movements and tropes.
And so if you are somebody who went through purity culture and you want to understand that more clearly, if you're somebody who's suffered at the hands of just purity cultures, kind of restrictions and and oppressions.
And if you're also somebody who wants to understand a broader context of how that links up to racism in this country and beyond.
Well, this is really the place for you.
Sarah is a world expert on purity culture, has written one of the seminal groundbreaking texts on purity culture, and is the head of the After Purity Project.
So, could not think of a better person to run the seminar than.
So, that's happening.
And we're going to have some more announcements soon, I think, about further seminars.
And we're actually getting close to some other big announcements about, Dan, we're going to have Swag Apparel and Swag.
So I have not come up with a good way to describe that.
I called it Swag Swag and my wife's threatened to divorce me.
So we're going to have a little, a little, little, little awkward, right?
A little cumbersome.
Yeah, not so good.
Okay, we're gonna talk about a bunch of things, but you know, Dan, we've been starting heavy.
I've even had some folks write in to me and say like, you guys are tired, you know, you should take a week off, and you're totally right, we are tired.
I don't know about you, I'm feeling a little bit better than I have in a couple weeks, just in terms of energy and like, we're just Making our way here through the school year.
But so this is not a light thing, Dan, but it is, it's just, you know, we have to comment on it.
Madison Cawthorn this week got in trouble with his congressional, you know, father, because he talked about how he had been invited to partake in orgies and cocaine by, you know, certain Republican colleagues.
And, you know, on one hand, he sounded like the boy, Dan, who had left a youth group and like discovered the big, bad world that he'd already been.
I don't know about you, Dan, but when I was in youth group, It just felt very scary to go out into the actual real world because everyone would just be having orgies and doing cocaine all the time.
So, in some sense, I was like, oh yeah, Madison Cawthorn, like he left youth group and look out.
But he also, Dan, referred to, he said, I've seen people do key bumps in front of me.
Now, a key bump, I get what it is.
A key bump is, I gander, right?
Somebody doing a bump of cocaine off of a key.
Here's my argument, Dan.
That's a word that you know what it means when you hear it, but if you were like asking me, somebody who just doesn't do a lot of orgies and cocaine at this point right now, you know, maybe in the future, I don't, I mean, I don't know what, what, what the future looks like for me, but at the moment when I'm going to bed at 830 after reading a French novel and changing diapers, I just, that's not usually what I do.
If you would have been like, Would I have been able to use Key Bump casually?
Probably not.
And so it kind of tells me that maybe Madison Cawthorn is a little more familiar with the cocaine and orgies than Madison Cawthorn let on.
Dan, you got 30 seconds here on this.
I don't know.
What do you think?
Just stick with your youth group metaphor.
I feel like Madison Cawthorn is the kid that would go to youth group and like, you know, sing the songs and stuff.
But everybody's like, didn't didn't I see you like last night at the party after the football playoff game getting like completely trashed?
And you'd be like, no, no, man, I was I was home.
I don't know what you saw.
But yeah, I think there's that.
I will also say.
Growing up in youth group and like, I, you know, basically my images of what quote unquote, like real, like high schoolers and stuff did mostly came from like Beverly Hills, 90210 and stuff.
And it was, it was a little bit of a disappointment when I, when I went out and expected the, the orgies and wild parties and they just, they just really weren't there.
So yeah, I think, I think Madison Cawthorn has a little more, little more to him than, uh, than he, he wants to admit.
Well, and Kevin McCarthy was really upset.
The party that was OK with Trump telling people to drink bleach to cure their COVID is like, no, this is too much.
Got to call him in and, you know, got to got to really set this youngster straight.
And get another one of those stern talking to's that is, you know, kind of the way that they manage things, the GOP now.
Well, if Kevin McCarthy was doing what he was born to do, he'd be, you know, JV baseball coach somewhere who would be calling Madison Cawthorn in to yell at him for missing the sign to steal third.
And so maybe Kevin McCarthy was actually doing something he's good at here for once.
All right, Dan, that's enough foolishness.
We do need to talk about Ginny Thomas and Mark Meadows.
This news kind of broke as we were recording last week.
It might feel like a week old to y'all, but I think it's pretty important.
I think you do too, Dan.
So what happened with this?
Yeah, it did break earlier, but people are still sort of reflecting on it.
So Virginia Thomas goes by Jenny Thomas, is the wife of Supreme Court Justice and famously conservative Justice Clarence Thomas.
And she's a well-known conservative activist, has been involved in lots and lots of different kinds of conservative causes.
And I think it's fair to say has has either gone further and further right in the Trump years or, you know, was sort of always there and was a lot more open about it.
In the Trump years, as we've argued about a lot of GOP folks.
But the point is that her husband's on the court and she's been a really well-known political activist for a long time.
Now, legal ethicists and courts have long ruled, and I think this is fair, that a Supreme Court justice or a judge or somebody like that and a family member or a spouse who has their own businesses or their own political views or whatever, they're separate people.
And you can't You can't just rule one out on the basis of the other and so forth.
So for a long time, people have known.
Actually, I would say for a long time, people have known that Ginny Thomas was a conservative activist.
I think those of us who are not sort of insiders or court watchers or things maybe hadn't known that until a few years ago, and it became more and more visible.
And that's part of that Trumpiness of it, I think, is that just bringing out into the open what was always going on.
But the point is that lots of people have argued that that Clarence Thomas didn't need to like stop being a Supreme Court justice or recuse himself from everything on the court or something like that, just because his wife was a was a notable activist.
The reason I bring all that up is because recently, like that's all been sort of called into question because there have now been revelations about Jenny Thomas that have taken her activism and the relation to the court and specifically her husband's role on the court to new levels.
So it came out a while ago, as you say, a few days ago, it feels like a really long time ago, but it hasn't been that long that she was exchanging texts, lots of texts with Mark Meadows in the White House from early November 2020. lots of texts with Mark Meadows in the White House So around the election till mid-January 2021.
So after the election and after the January 6th events, the attempted insurrection, Arguing and pressing the White House to overturn the results of the election.
And so, why does that matter?
That matters because, number one, it shows that she's involved at really high levels in trying to influence political power.
Number two, it shows that she was directly Sort of involved in some way with January 6th.
And number three, as one outlet that I read a while ago said, she texted like a teenager and left copious, you know, a record of all these communications by texting.
And they've now been subpoenaed by the January 6th committee.
Enter Clarence Thomas and enter the issue with this is that He has not over time recused himself from cases so far about January 6th.
And lots of legal experts and ethicists now say that he should have, that this is different than her normal activism.
And I read a great piece by NPR where they interviewed lots of like legal experts and ethicists and so forth, all of whom had previously argued that Clarence Thomas did not need to recuse himself from cases before SCOTUS because of his wife's activism.
But they all said this is different.
Why?
Well, among other reasons, once upon a time, a court case comes to SCOTUS about subpoenaed demands from Congress.
The Trump administration is fighting it.
SCOTUS basically says you have to hand over these documents.
Some of the subpoenaed documents are the texts by the wife of one of the Supreme Court justices Ruling on the issue.
So the issue is that you are supposed to, under statute and just general ethics guidelines, if you're a judge or a justice in this case, and you have material knowledge of the facts of the case that comes before you on which you would rule, You're supposed to recuse yourself, and Clarence Thomas hasn't.
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