Weekly Roundup: Trump’s Hitler Admiration and Tucker Carlson's Creepy Speech
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As the 2024 elections approach, Brad and Dan discuss Tucker Carlson's remarks at Trump events, portraying him as an authoritative figure, and explores the media's hesitance to endorse Kamala Harris. The episode examines Trump's metaphorical portrayal as a punitive father, the influence of wealthy elites like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk on media and democracy, and recent alarming voter suppression incidents. The conversation also highlights John Kelly's revelations about Trump and the implications for a potential second term. They conclude by emphasizing the importance of staying motivated in the final days before the election and the potential for Kamala Harris to make history.
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Axis Mundy Axis Mundy The 2024 elections are upon us, y'all.
And no matter what happens, there's going to be a lot to process and a next chapter to prepare for.
That's why we're holding two live events in order to help you stay informed about what's happening and to get ready for what's coming.
On November 21st, we're holding an event with Americans United for Separation of Church and State at the University of Southern California.
We have an illustrious group of leaders and scholars, including Andrew Seidel, Rachel Lazar, Kyate Joshi, Diane Winston, and Dan Miller.
We're going to talk about what happened and prepare for what's next.
On November 22nd, we'll be talking about Christian extremism and the 2024 elections at the San Diego Convention Center.
Matt Taylor will be giving opening remarks, and we'll have a roundtable with familiar faces like Leah Payne and Lloyd Barba, not to mention me and Dan, and a few others.
Tickets are available now and you can find everything in the show notes.
You can also watch online if you can't be in LA or San Diego.
November 21 and November 22.
Two chances to be with us at Straight White American Jesus and a number of other great scholars and leaders.
Join us in person or online.
If you allow your two-year-old to smear the contents of his diapers on the wall of your living room and you do nothing about it, if you allow your 14-year-old to light a joint at the breakfast table, If you allow your hormone-addled 15-year-old daughter to, like, slam the door of her bedroom and give you the finger, you're gonna get more of it.
And those kids are gonna wind up in rehab.
It's not good for you, and it's not good for them.
No!
There has to be a point at which dad comes home.
And he's pissed!
Dad is pissed!
He's not vengeful.
He loves his children.
Disobedient as they may be, he loves them.
Because they're his children.
They live in his house.
But he's very disappointed in their behavior.
And he's going to have to let them know.
He's going to have to get to your room right now and think about what you did.
And when dad gets home, you know what he says?
You've been a bad girl.
You've been a bad little girl and you're getting a vigorous spanking right now.
And no, it's not going to hurt me more than it hurts you.
No, it's not.
I'm not going to lie.
It's going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me.
And you earned this.
That's Tucker Carlson speaking this week at a Trump event.
Articulating the big daddy patriarchal politics that pervades Trumpism, and the MAGA movement.
Today we break down how this fits seamlessly and grotesquely into the revelations of Trump's affinity for Hitler's generals and the labeling of Trump as a fascist by his former chief of staff John Kelly.
We then take a look at how media outlets such as the Washington Post and LA Times controlled by billionaires Have failed to endorse a candidate, namely Kamala Harris, out of fear of retribution during a Trump second term.
All of this portends what Trump's presidency might look like and brings renewed fears of fascism in America.
But take heart, we see reasons for hope, reasons for light, and reasons that this will not be our future.
I'm Brad Onishi, and this is the Straight White American Jesus Weekly Roundup.
Amen.
Welcome to Stray White American Jesus.
Hello, Dan.
Good to see you.
I got to see you in person, and now I see you online.
It's like, what a week.
What a week.
It has been an interesting week.
I am Dan Miller, Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College, since I sometimes forget to say that.
Yeah, it was nice to be in person, although I've got to say the gravelly early morning Brad Onishi voice is pretty cool.
And yeah, it's been interesting.
I cast my ballot today.
I did my mail-in ballot and dropped it in the box, and so that feels pretty good.
So I've done my very, very, very small part to hopefully turn the election around.
It'll all hang on my ballot in Massachusetts, such a contested state that I live in.
We were at a podcast summit at BYU, which is probably surprising to some of you.
We were invited, I don't know what it was, Dan, maybe six months ago.
It was like March, April, something like that.
It was good.
We met a lot of folks who are podcasting and doing things around religion.
It was a little something to be at BYU. I think both Dan and I had various thoughts about that, and I'm sure some of you listening have various thoughts about that.
The people there were very nice.
The hospitality could not have been better.
So it was good.
There's just a lot of stories.
Maybe someday you'll get those stories.
This is why, Brad, people should come to our live events, come hang out afterward, and they can say, hey, tell BYU stories.
And that's the real thing that'll bring an election.
However that turns out, they'll be really interested in the BYU stories.
Perfect segue, Dan.
I'm glad we planned that.
Nothing but smooth, Brad.
Yeah, that was good.
Hey, folks.
So, come hang out with us on November 21st in Los Angeles.
We have tickets available, and we'd love to see you.
Dan and I will be there with Julie Ingersoll, who just confirmed, so that's great if you know Julie.
And Andrew Seidel, Rachel Lazar, Kiaty Joshi.
We'll have a book signing and a reception ahead of the event.
We'll hang out afterward and tell BYU stories.
And Dan will tell everyone his playlist and updated metal, you know, concert tour itinerary.
It's going to be really good.
The next night we'll be in San Diego.
And so that's November 22nd, Friday at the convention center.
Again, tickets are available.
We'd love to see you.
Look, no matter what happens this election, folks, there's going to be a lot to process.
And these are nights where we want to do that.
We want to process what's going on, prepare for what's next.
So get there and make sure we get to see you.
For some reason you can't afford it or something's going on, send us an email and we'll try to just make it happen.
Okay?
So reach out and we just want to see you there.
All right, Dan.
This week is actually a momentous week.
We are 10 or 11 days from the election.
And once again, we just have, I think, just perhaps this week has given us the fullest view of Of what the Trump campaign is about, what a Trump presidency would look like, and how it's all taking shape as people kind of anticipate what that would look like.
So we're going to talk about Jeff Bezos, the Washington Post and the LA Times not endorsing Harris for fear of retribution for Trump.
We're going to talk about Trump's Hitler comments filtered through Woodward and filtered through John Kelly, etc.
But let's start here, Dan, and this will set the stage thematically.
You all might think this is a weird place to start, but let's start here.
Tucker Carlson was at a Trump event and gave some comments about a Trump presidency and how he understands that Trump presidency.
And you all heard those at the top.
They are cringy.
They are gross.
But Dan, break those down for us and tell us what they mean.
Yeah, so, as you say, I see a connection here, and I'm going to land the plane on this, but as you say, people have heard this cringy.
You know, we talked, I don't know how many episodes back, about weird, quirky versus weird, creepy.
This is weird, creepy.
And, of course, you know, what Carlson said is that Trump, coming back to the presidency, if he wins it, he'll be like, you know, the angry parent, and he says, you know, the pissed parent coming back and punishing the kids and all this sort of stuff.
And here's what I think is weird about this.
There are several things that stand out to me that are notable about what he said.
The first is this vision of Trump as a vindictive parent, and I think there are multiple levels to this.
First, that he's coming to punish.
He's coming to punish perceived wrongdoing.
It's explicitly patriarchal and paternalistic.
And I say that, some might be the obvious, like, well, yeah, he's saying that he's a parent.
Of course it's paternalistic.
But I bring that up because I think that it's easy for supporters of Trump and others to dismiss him or even hear people say, well, you know, it's just a metaphor.
It's just a metaphor.
Why do you always press on that?
But my question, as you know and as listeners know, is always, yeah, but why that metaphor?
It's like, why that one?
Why not, I don't know, a returning conqueror or something else?
And part of the reason that I bring this up is those notions of both patriarchy and paternalism.
As the leader of a kind of parent The people that the leader is supposed to lead or stand over as children who may be wayward and so forth, that's part of authoritarianism.
That is a part of a lot of types of authoritarian government.
That is a part of populism.
That's a part of nationalism.
And we're going to come back to that because I think that that expresses something that comes out in the discussions we've heard this week about Trump as a fascist, Trump affirming Hitler and Hitler did some good things and Hitler's generals and all that sort of stuff.
I'm going to come back to that, but I also want to say that this also shows the vision of what this supposed parental or patriarchal love looks like.
Carlson said in there, he's not vengeful, he loves his children, disobedient as they may be, but then he comes back in with the spanking and whatever.
People who listen to It's in the Code know the last episode I talked about this vision of God as God's love and the flip side always being wrath.
Or punishment and emotions of fear and all this kind of stuff.
You've got the same thing here.
This is the parental vision of somebody who will physically hurt those that he supposedly loves.
That physical harm is an aspect of love.
And I know that that can be touchy for folks.
Some of us grew up in a generation when spanking was just a common thing.
It's what people did, but it's not now.
And pediatricians and others say that it's a bad thing to do, and that's why.
But I think it shows this, that legitimation of violence is an act of love.
And I think that that's built into this metaphor.
I think that's what we see when people are upset about women wanting authority over their own bodies.
That's what we see when people don't like queer folk in the public space or when they don't want people of color protesting, that their act of violence is really an act of love.
They are somehow preserving society and so forth.
I think it's also telling, you know, the toddler example.
He says that it's like, you know, the two examples he gives are weird.
They're like the toddler smearing their diaper on the wall or the, again, the hormonal 15-year-old girl, you know, making a rude gesture.
Brad, you've got a toddler.
I've had toddlers.
Lots of our listeners have had toddlers.
Some of us have had teens, have teens, will have teens.
We probably all were teens at one point.
If there are any preteens listening, good on you.
Thank you for sticking it out.
But most of us have been there.
I don't know that...
Vengeance is the first emotion that comes to mind when we think of having to correct our children.
I don't know that violence is the first thing that comes to mind.
I think of things like having to sit down and try to talk to them, or yeah, give them a timeout, or screen break, or grounding, or any number of different things.
If they're old enough, maybe you talk out why the rude gesture was hurtful, or if they're young enough, maybe you explain why it's rude.
All of those kind of things, but none of that's there for Tucker Carlson.
None of that is there in this Trump vision.
It's vengeance.
It's punishment.
And I'm punishing you because I love you.
I'm hurting you because I love you.
I'm hurting you because it's for your own good.
We know that those are the legitimations that are used.
And I think also why it goes to spanking girls, that's the creepy, sort of weird part of this.
It's not just about disciplining kids.
It's not just physical punishment.
It's specifically punishment against girls.
I think this models everything about the patriarchy and paternalism At the heart of the Trump vision of the world.
And so why do I bring all that up?
I bring it up.
It's creepy.
It's Tucker Carlson.
We don't like Tucker Carlson.
It fits Trump's brand.
All of that sort of stuff.
But for me, it marches right into Trump as fascist.
Because, as I say, this is part of fascism.
Fascism is a form of authoritarian government that is built on things like patriarchy, certain conceptions of hyper-masculinity, threats of punishment, legitimations of punishment as being for the good of you who I rule or the country or the people.
Or whatever.
So we can go into some more on the fascist stuff.
I want to pause and see if you had additional thoughts about Tucker Carlson, what he said, why he said it, all of that fun stuff that we get when we talk about Tucker Carlson.
Yeah, I think this is why we are talking about Tucker first and why that's going to lead us into what a lot of folks have heard this week, which is the The comments from John Kelly about Trump being a fascist and others coming out to say that Trump is a fascist and lots of discussions on cable news about Trump is a fascist.
So let me just address Tucker.
First, the gendered aspect of this is super creepy.
You hit it on the head.
This is weird.
This is quirky.
This is...
I've got to back up.
This is creepy weird, not quirky weird.
Just real quick, he gives the example of a 15-year-old hormonal...
I got the always labeling girls as hormonal, whatever.
I'm just going to throw this out there.
If you're a dad spanking your 15-year-old daughter...
Jesus.
Yeah, exactly.
Super effing weird.
I mean, come on, man.
So I'm just going to throw that out.
No, no, but everything you said about violence and retribution as a parenting style is so telling.
I mean, that is so telling in terms of how you view the family, how you view love, how you view control and authority and power.
There's no communication.
There's no explanation.
There's no reconciliation.
So I think that's one.
The gendered aspect of this is so disgusting.
And so let's just hover on it.
It shows you this widespread understanding of women and girls as needing punishment and correction because they are dangerous when they're free and autonomous.
That there's nothing more scary For misogynists like Carlson or Trump than a woman who is free, who is autonomous, who has a choice over how to live her life, on what to say, on what to do, how her body is...
Whatever she wants to do with her body, her sexuality, her gender expression, their gender expression, and so on and so on and so on.
Whoever it is, that person is terrifying because they can't be controlled.
They can't be...
Just kept in line.
They overstep boundaries.
And so the hormonal 15-year-old is the example, of course it is, that Tucker Carlson goes into.
The 15-year-old girl who's probably going through puberty and is now becoming someone who's going to be an adult, someone who's going to have an adult body, someone who's going to go through the changes that lead to having an adult sexual life.
When you're 15, 16, 17, those awful years where you're changing and life is confusing and you're going from kid to grown-up, but you're not a grown-up and you're certainly not an adult.
Of course that's who Tucker Carlson chose.
Of course.
Like, there's so many folks in our Discord who've talked about various...
Being young...
Being girls, 15.
Young women, 17, 18.
And their relationship with their dad changing.
Because, like, they went from girl to, like, woman.
And in that whole period, their, like, very authoritarian dad didn't know what to do with them now.
Because they were, like, a grown-up with, like...
A grown-up manifestation of themselves in the world and their body and so on.
And so, of course this is who he chose.
It's disgusting.
Okay, that's one.
Number two, I am in Spokane at the moment.
That's why we're doing this on Saturday, not Friday.
And when I go to places like Spokane, I talk about Christian nationalism.
And one of the things I share with people are all of the examples of Christian nationalists loving dictators in Caesar.
I make the case that there is an open argument being made by Christian nationalists for a dictatorship, for a Caesar, for an autocracy, whatever.
And I can show you all those receipts.
And if you've seen me speak, you know that that's what I talk about.
But one of the things that those folks say is that, why do we need a Caesar, Dan?
Why do we need a dictator?
Because we're degenerates.
Because you know what?
We the people, the American people, aren't adults.
We're not the adults you sit down and talk to because we disagree.
No.
The American electorate, according to folks who think we need a Caesar...
Are degenerates?
Kind of like that 15-year-old who won't listen.
So we're not another...
It's not like, Dan, you and I disagreed and we talked it out.
We expressed why we disagreed.
I expressed how you hurt me.
You expressed how I hurt you.
We talk about why it was rude.
We talk about why my feelings were hurt or why you felt like you were dismissed.
All those things you might do with an adult who you respect and the relationship that you care about right now.
You know what?
You just spank them because they're degenerates.
They're not actual full adults with a voice.
You see what I'm saying?
When you think of the people in your country as the 15-year-old, as the child, you're justifying not letting their vote, their voice, and their power dictate who has control because who would ever let the 15-year-old have control of the house?
Who would ever let the 3-year-old have control of the house?
You wouldn't do that.
That's why we need daddy.
One last thing.
I interviewed Chelsea Eben, The Radical Mind, about Paul Weirich.
And Chelsea Eben wrote a great book, The Radical Mind.
And we talked in that interview explicitly about how Project 2025 and the Trump presidency is all about Big Daddy politics.
Their approach, Project 2025, is simply this.
If we just had a Big Daddy who had all full control over the federal government, he could put everyone in line.
Well, guess what?
Tucker Carlson just came.
Said it out loud.
He wants big daddy politics.
Chelsea, I've been tweeting it out the other day.
We said it on our interview.
Her book is all about that.
It's all out there for the—if you haven't listened to those episodes about Paul Weirich and the radical Catholic mind, check them out.
But it's all there.
Back to you.
Yeah, so just briefly, because we could go all day on Carlson, but two pieces of this.
Number one, this is how men have always tried to dismiss women.
Every time a woman has a firm opinion, oh, it's just PMS. Just blame it on her biology so we don't have to take her seriously.
You can go back in prior centuries and look at, you know, the language of the hysterical woman, that, you know, female hysteria and how you can dismiss it and so forth.
And it's just the extension of that to the population as a whole, as you say.
Okay, so...
Let's then shift to somebody labeling Trump a fascist and sort of circle around here.
This week, Trump's ex-White House chief of staff, John Kelly, said, among other things, that Trump, quote, falls into the general definition, end quote, of a fascist.
We've said the same thing for years.
I've written about this.
You've talked and written about this.
This is something we've said.
But in his interview with the New York Times, Kelly laid out a definition.
He didn't just say he's a fascist.
He said, you know, here's what I think fascism is.
And so this is his definition.
And it's not bad.
It's a pretty good definition.
He said, it's a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement that Characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy.
End quote.
That's a lot.
That's everything Tucker Carlson just expressed.
What Tucker Carlson was giving voice to is fascism in the flesh.
It's fascism as it plays out.
People don't wake up one day, most of them, and say, you know what?
I'm going to look for a political ideology.
I'm going to study political ideologies.
I'm going to find the one that feels right to me.
I'm going to start believing it and living my life in accordance.
They feel political ideologies.
All the big daddy politics, that vision of society, the society of the big authoritarian father coming in and disciplining unruly children, that is the vision of a natural social hierarchy that Kelly is describing.
That model of disciplinarian is the authoritarian writ small.
The father in the family is the authoritarian.
The man in the church is the spiritual leader, the authoritarian.
It's part of the reason why the evangelicals like the Catholics so much now, the radical Catholics.
Why?
Because the Catholic Church is a hierarchical church with a clear, structured order of authority.
And in society, this is what the leader is.
And we could go all kinds of directions.
You could go the Apostle Paul, and the head is the top of the body and orders the body, and Christ orders the church, and the husband orders the family, and here the leader orders the country.
On and on, but it's all there.
The militarism, we've got Trump saying that he's going to turn the military against the enemies within.
That's one of the recent things he's done.
We had Trump saying that he was joking, saying he was only going to be a dictator for the first day or so.
We could walk through that.
We could look at things that Trump has done.
We could look at everything that he said.
We can look at the way that it expresses itself in the stuff that Tucker Carlson says.
And the fact that Trump's at a rally where everybody loves that.
They eat that stuff up.
It's not just Tucker Carlson.
If it was just Tucker Carlson, nobody would be at the rally.
Nobody would be listening.
Nobody would be cheering.
We would not be in a dead heat in a national election.
So, Kelly says he's a fascist.
More to say about this.
As you said, this brings us into, you know, I'm just going to throw it out there.
Maybe if you like Hitler, maybe that makes you a fascist.
If you wish you could be more like Hitler, have people more like Hitler had.
If you're the, yeah, Hitler wasn't so bad, you know, maybe that makes you a fascist.
Kamala Harris this week asked, says he's a fascist.
Mitch McConnell and Mike Johnson jump in on the issue.
A lot of stuff there.
Walk us through the Trump-Hitler connections this week that just feed into so much of what we're talking about.
Let's take a break.
Come right back and get into it.
We'll be right back.
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So this week we learned that Trump expressed to John Kelly, his former chief of staff, that he wanted the generals in the United States military that he wanted the generals in the United States military to be more like Hitler's generals.
And this set off so many things.
This set off, of course, a renewed kind of discussion online and other places about is Trump a fascist and all this stuff.
But John Kelly wasn't the only one, so Meredith McGraw writing at Politico on 1025 says this, More than a dozen former Trump administrative officials on Friday came out in support of former Chief of Staff John Kelly, who went on the record this week to say, The former president fits the definition of a fascist who would govern like a dictator and has no concept of the Constitution.
So, Dan, if we take both of these together, the idea that Trump's a fascist and that he expressed a desire for the American military to be more like Hitler's, we now have a situation where it's not just John Kelly.
We have more than a dozen former Trump administrative officials, and they shared a letter with Politico And have basically said, this tracks.
So let me read a little bit.
The revelations General Kelly brought forward are disturbing and shocking.
But because we know Trump and have worked for and alongside him, we were sadly not surprised by what General Kelly says.
We applaud General Kelly for highlighting in stark details the danger of a second Trump term.
Like General Kelly, we did not take the decision to come forward lightly.
We are all lifelong Republicans who served our country.
However, there are moments in history where it becomes necessary to put country over party.
So you had folks like Kevin Carroll, former senior counselor to Kelly, former Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Matthews, former Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Elizabeth Newman, former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci, Miles Taylor, Stephanie Grisham, on and on and on and on.
Some of those folks you've heard of, some of those folks you haven't.
So, you know, this just kind of tracks, I think, Dan, with everything we're talking about today in terms of Kelly says he's a fascist, and then we get these reports that he wanted the U.S. military to be more like Hitler's.
A couple of thoughts here.
One is, what I said at the top was that this week was a foreshadowing of a second Trump term.
So what is this foreshadow?
What this foreshadows is a military and a DOJ that Trump sees as his personal wing, his personal arm of vengeance, his personal arm of retribution.
And he tried to do this in the first term.
And what we've been maintaining for six months is that the second Trump term will be different because they learned a lot those first four years.
They messed up a lot.
They ran into roadblocks.
Why would you want Project 2025?
Because then you can get rid of any non-loyalists in any government agency who are standing in your way.
And so now we get we realize that the second Trump term is not going to include General Milley or General John Kelly or excuse me or John Kelly.
It's going to include people who are willing to do what he wants.
And so, when it comes to DOJ or military, he sees those as his personal attack arm.
Why?
And Dan, this is why we started with Tucker.
The fascist leader does not see the government and himself as separate.
The fascist leader is the government.
State control is vested in that one fascist leader.
The state is Big Daddy.
Just like you all can imagine it, and unfortunately some of you grew up in homes like this, but everyone else can imagine the kind of home where the authority, the power, whatever goes in the house is just vested in dad.
What dad says goes.
And sometimes the rules change, and you're like, no, you said, but dad's like, who cares?
What matters is what I say, so go do it or else I'll punish you.
The reason we're talking about fascism so much here is because fascism collapses the power of the state and the authority of the state into that one person such that whatever they want, whatever their will is, is what is done.
Now, if you read Project 2025 and the justifications for it, they will say, well, if we can get rid of the administrative state, the will of the people can be done.
And that's a nice way of saying if we put all of the power in Trump's hands, then the will of the people can be done.
But you know what history has shown us, Dan?
Is that when you put all of the power into one person's hands, the will of that one person is done in a violent and oppressive way, and the concern for the majority or for all...
It's never what is manifested.
And so, you know, I want to get into Elon Musk and the LA Times and the Washington Post, but, you know, any last, you know, kind of thoughts on how the Hitler piece and the generals piece fits in with the fascist piece and the big daddy politics piece?
Yeah, so you hit on something.
There's what I would call a deep incarnational logic here.
And if people hear the Christian resonance of that, they should.
I think everything you're saying is there, right?
For the fascists, there's a collapse between the leader and the state, right?
The presidency is not an office that the president holds.
The president is the state.
The president is the office.
That person becomes the office.
You have talked a lot and drawn our attention to the sort of monarchical influence of a lot of these folks, calling for a king, calling for a monarch.
In the medieval period, there was a doctrine that has come to be known as the king's two bodies, the idea that the king, the monarch, had two bodies.
There was his physical body And there was the nation.
The nation was the body of the king.
The king incarnated the body.
Within contemporary populism, I've written about this, talked about this, we've talked about it here before, you have the same thing so that the populist leader is the embodiment of the people.
So all of those things tie together.
That's what fascism is.
And so we have a kind of fascist populist movement.
And that's why you can vest power in a single person and say it's the will of the people.
Because Donald Trump, as the incarnation of everything MAGA is, is the will of the people.
And we've talked about this.
I won't go into it much.
But whenever populists talk about the people, they don't mean everybody.
They mean the real people, the people who ought to count, the people who ought to have a voice.
So when Trump does things, it came out this week about him denying aid to the state of Washington when he was president because they hadn't supported him and so forth.
I'm ready for things like that, wildfires in California.
I'm ready for Trump to be like, hey, you didn't vote for me.
You are not part of the people, California, because you went blue in the election, so you don't get aid.
So all of those contradictions within a fascist populist framework, they disappear because Trump is the state.
Trump is the people.
And the MAGA world, I think, recognizes that and affirms that.
And that's why there's a sense in which literally nothing he does can throw off their support.
So I think all of that is there.
It's all real, and I know we need to move on, but there's so much there.
And for me, as I say, deep, frankly, Christian resonances with that model of the state.
Yeah, I think that's exactly right.
The King's Two Bodies.
I don't know, Dan.
Maybe we should have an a cappella group or something to see if we can get some people together.
You mean the t-shirts?
I'm sure if I walk around with the King's Two Bodies t-shirt, everybody will jump right on board.
Yeah.
Catch right on.
That's a bestseller.
That's a bestseller.
Okay.
So here's the deal, friends.
I want to do an extended reason for hope this week because I think a lot of this is really tough.
And I think a lot of you are doing something that I'm doing, which is getting really nervous about this election.
So I promise you, give us about 10 more minutes and we're going to do some hope next week.
But I want to stop and just say, look, we've talked today a lot about fascism, what that is, and why someone like John Kelly would call Trump a fascist.
We've looked at Tucker Carlson's logic and how it fits right into how Big Daddy politics is basically fascist politics.
So we've looked into that.
We could go further into fascism.
We could talk about the ways fascism recalls a pastime of glory.
We could recall the ways that fascism draws on white supremacy, on the ways that it really relies on A certain reverence for one leader, so on and so forth.
One of the things, though, that I want to hone in on are the elites getting on board with the fascist regime.
If you've studied Weimar Germany, if you've studied the run-up to the Nazi Party taking power in Germany, you know that there were so many elites who looked at Hitler as a force they could control, as something As someone that they could kind of keep in a useful way for their business purposes.
And I want to just highlight three instances of that from this week that I think are really clear and they show us how this works.
So in his work, Timothy Snyder, the kind of renowned historian and writer on fascism, talks about how You should not obey in advance.
One of the very first points in his writings on fascism is do not obey in advance.
Here's what he writes.
Most of the power authoritarianism is freely given.
In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want and then offer themselves without being asked.
A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.
So, number one, we learned on Friday that the Washington Post editorial board and the newsroom in general was ready and set and happy to endorse Kamala Harris in this election.
The Post has been doing that for a long time.
And they were stopped at the last minute by their owner, Jeff Bezos.
Now, all of the reports are that Bezos is concerned about government contracts.
And all the contracts he has with the federal government, and that if Trump wins and his paper has endorsed Kamala Harris, well, then he will be one of those caught in Trump's crossfire, that he will suffer retribution for this endorsement.
This led, Dan, I mean, the backlash has been swift.
There have been Post reporters and others who've Talked about this.
There's been a resignation at the top of the post.
There has been just a revolt and it's still playing out.
It's very new.
A similar thing happened at the LA Times.
The LA Times was set to endorse Kamala Harris, also owned by a billionaire and also a place that the reporters, the editors were stopped from doing their job by the billionaire editor.
Do not obey in advance.
Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given.
In times like these, individuals think ahead about a more repressive government will want.
Dan, for me, this is the constellation of a bunch of things.
A, this is what happens when our media...
I know a lot of Americans can't imagine the BBC being a good thing because the government seems to control the news.
And I know there's folks in the UK who are critics of the BBC. But the alternative that we're seeing, and I'm not saying it's one or the other, but the alternative that we're seeing right now Is that the Washington Post and the LA Times and some of our other newspapers and outlets and legacy outlets are controlled by the billionaire class who have so much money and vested interest tied up in the government that they are anticipating what's coming and they are afraid of what might happen if Donald Trump wins.
And I don't know, Dan, why would they be afraid?
Like, I don't know.
Let me think here.
Oh, let me just read.
Let's see.
Ah, here it is, Dan.
October 25th.
Just this week.
Hmm.
Trump posting.
Cease and desist.
I, together with many attorneys and legal scholars...
Sorry.
It's just fake.
Trump the intellectual.
The stable genius.
I'm watching the sanctity of the 2024 presidential election very closely because I know better than most the rampant cheating and skullduggery that has taken place by the Democrats in 2020.
It was a disgrace.
Therefore, the 2024 election where votes have just started being cast will be under the closest professional scrutiny.
And when I win, those people that cheated will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, which will include long-term prison sentences so that this depravity of justice does not happen again.
Dan, this is in a week when he also said that 60 Minutes should be taken off the air and its network should be punished because of the things they said about him.
Anticipate what might happen.
Give power away.
Obey in advance.
That's what Timothy Snyder says not to do.
Why?
Because A, the potential fascist leader is already saying, here's what will happen.
I'm going to take retribution.
I'm going to sanction you.
If you are CBS or CNN, I don't care.
If you're Rachel Maddow, I'll come for you.
If you say what I don't like, because I'm the big daddy in the house who controls everything.
B, if you're an elite who has power, excuse me, if you have money and financial interests vested in the government, like Jeff Bezos, like other billionaires, and we're going to get to Elon Musk, Then you're going to obey in advance because you think this will benefit you.
All that matters to you is you.
All that matters to you is the power you have in the government and the money that it can make you.
And so you as the elite, as elites have always done throughout history, whether it's Nazi Germany or any other authoritarian or fascist regime, you say, well, it'll be fine for me.
If I obey and I go along, he won't hurt me.
He won't come for me.
It'll be okay.
So when we see what happened here at the Post and at LA Times, we're seeing another foreshadowing of what this regime will look like.
Media outlets terrified.
Billionaire owners saying, don't publish that.
When you think about the collapse of the media, Dan, in places like Soviet Russia, or if you think about the control of the media and Orban's Hungary, this is how it happens.
How do you have a free press if the free press is owned by the billionaire class who's afraid to do anything because they want to stay in the good graces of the supreme leader?
That's a problem.
When I saw what happened at the Washington Post, I just tweeted, this is fascism.
Because if you are a media outlet that is afraid of the Supreme Leader and therefore won't say anything bad about him, Dan, does that sound like a free press?
Does that sound like something other than Soviet Russia?
Orban's Hungary?
Hitler's Germany?
I mean, what is that?
You know, all the things we've heard about all those places over there?
Does that sound like a free press?
When the LA Times and the Washington Post are like, no, don't endorse Kamala Harris because I don't want to make dad mad.
I got more to say, but go ahead.
Yeah, so a few thoughts to pick up there.
Again, I agree with everything that you said.
The Timothy Snyder line is really, really good about obeying in advance.
And number one, the flip side of that is it's never enough.
Appeasing the fascist leader is never enough.
And Trump, this continues to baffle me.
The people who remain loyal or kowtow to Trump As if he's going to follow through on what he says, as if he's—you know, he will turn on anybody in an instant.
So obedience is no guarantee, as those few people who've spoken out against him far too late, in my opinion, you know, can attest.
But I think it's also—it touches on other things.
The stuff about media and the elites is also there.
It also highlights, like, what the hell is going to happen to Jeff Bezos if Trump wins and does something to him?
These people have so much money that they are essentially untouchable.
Yeah, they'll lose some interest in things.
Maybe they'll lose some money.
But at the end of the day, they're billionaires who can sit in their billionaire houses or on their billionaire yachts or go live in another place.
Like, whatever.
The point is they have so many means that they're effectively untouchable as opposed to regular people who live in fear of these regimes coming to power because they will die waiting for an abortion they can't have in an emergency room.
Or they will take their own life because they are not allowed to transition to a gender that affirms themselves.
Or they will lose civil rights because of a stacked Supreme Court and executive actions that will come and everything else that will walk those back.
Like, that's the other piece of it.
The elitist...
Piece of it, the irony to me of the elitists who won't stand up to power because they feel like they have a lot to lose.
But I think for a lot of regular people, like, are you kidding me, man?
I would take your life on my worst day.
Like, you know, on your worst day, I would take that.
Sure.
Okay.
I would take that.
Hey, Jeff Bezos, if you want to give me like a half of like 1% of your net worth, I'd be okay.
I could manage.
And then I won't have to worry about elections because I'll have so much money and so much wealth and so much protection that maybe it won't matter who the president is.
But to regular people, it does.
And there's so much at stake.
And I think it's also the myth of elitism that what's good for elites is good for everybody.
That's a myth that goes as long as there have been elites and different metaphysical options about that.
You go all the way to like Rome or Platonic theory.
You can go into the Middle Ages.
You can go into neoconservative.
It's always the argument that somehow or another, what is best for the elites is somehow the best for the rest of us.
And so that becomes a piece of this as well.
So you talk about their self-interest, which I think in their mind is legitimated as whatever helps me helps the country.
Somehow or another, it's good.
If it's good for Jeff Bezos, it's good for everybody else.
I think that that's another piece of it.
So many layers to this that are just maddening.
There are.
And I want to take a break and come back and talk about another elite, and then we'll go to hope, I promise, friends.
Stay with us.
Be right back.
All right, Dan, let's talk about Elon Musk.
So a couple things came out this week.
I want to start back actually at the New York Times.
So Elon Musk has become maybe the most important Donald Trump surrogate we have in this election.
I mean, not we have, but there is.
And I mean, so here's a whole host of folks at the New York Times, Theodore Schlefter, Maggie Haberman, Ryan Mack, Jonathan Swan, writing about two weeks ago on this.
And I promise I'm going to bring it forward to this week.
Musk has become somebody who relentlessly promotes Mr. Trump's candidacy to everyone he can find.
And that includes his 200 million followers on X and also includes attending and being part of Trump rallies.
Dan, he does this really awkward like star jump thing.
It's like a weird jumping jack kind of thing.
And he keeps doing it.
He keeps doing it.
As early as February, the Times writes, Mr.
Musk was speaking apocalyptically in private about what he considered the crucial need to defeat President Biden.
These days, in private conversations, Musk is obsessive, almost manic about the stakes of the election, the need for Mr.
Trump to win.
He praises his courage under fire.
Mr.
Musk's frenzied engagement reflects his view of this moment in American history.
Now, Dan, the PAC that he has has given something like $140 million at this point.
So once again, I just want to point out what kind of democracy can you have when the richest man in the world can give $140 million?
Elon Musk is running essentially a lottery in Pennsylvania so that if you register to vote, you might win a million dollars, which is being investigated.
And the governor and others are sort of saying, hey, we should probably look into that.
Okay.
He's also suppressing anti-Trump or negative Trump coverage on Twitter.
So Twitter, as we've all known for a long time, is no longer an open and free platform.
It's not a place where you can say things that are negative or critical of Trump and get a fair shake from the algorithm and so on and so forth.
That's what he's doing.
So here we have Trump, the man who basically is living in Pennsylvania in order to, like, stump for Trump in that state.
And he's given $140 million to Trump, to a PAC that's working on the behalf of getting Trump elected.
Like Jeff Bezos, Stan, He has so much money wrapped up in government contracts.
His company has a billion-dollar contract for working with the government on things related to Star...
I'm going to get it wrong.
I just lost my place here.
Star X? All right.
SpaceX.
SpaceX, thank you.
Do you think of this Star Jump?
You should call it a Space Jump.
I was, yeah.
We'd be full circle.
It's 6.30 in the morning.
So, SpaceX and Starlink and the whole thing.
Dan, we're talking about over a billion dollars.
So, I just want everyone to think about that.
The man who leads a company with a billion-dollar vested interest, okay, in our government, ours, citizens of the United States, has given $140 million to one candidate.
And you say, well, it's his legal right, whatever.
Okay, maybe.
I mean, we can talk about all that.
That's fine.
Here's what we learned this week.
Wall Street Journal.
Thomas Grove, Warren P. Strobel, Aruna Viswanatha, Gordon Lubold, Sam Schneckner.
Elon Musk, the world's richest man and a linchpin of U.S. space efforts, has been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin since late 2022.
The discussions confirmed by several current and former U.S., European, and Russian officials touch on personal topics, business, and geopolitical tensions.
Putin asked the billionaire to avoid activating his Starlink satellite over Taiwan as a favor to Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Dan, like, what?
What?
So you're telling me the world's richest man, who controls Twitter, has given a hundred and whatever million dollars to a PAC supporting Trump, is in regular contact with Vladimir Putin, somebody who is a geopolitical adversary, who does not support NATO, Who is at war, who is trying to take over and annex Ukraine and make sure it does not exist as an independent state.
You're telling me that he has regular contact with Vladimir Putin.
That they just talk as two buddies talking it out.
Are you serious?
Dan, how can you have a non-fascist government when we don't have a free press?
When the leader is promising retribution, and when the richest man in the world is talking to an autocrat like Putin while supposedly working to get someone elected in the United States.
This is a man who migrated to this country, who is now supposedly an American.
I mean, he is an American.
And he is...
Talking to Vladimir Putin all the time?
Like, how can that be something that leads to anything like open and free society?
Like, you can't have that.
Like, here's Melanie DiRigo on Twitter.
The right-wing billionaire palling around with our enemies, using his social media platform to push their misinformation to interfere in our election, and his money to elect their puppet, shouldn't have national security clearance in government contracts.
Will Stancil.
So basically, Elon Musk is a traitor working with America's enemies.
He's also the main funder and proponent of Donald Trump's campaign.
And he controls a bunch of our communications and national security infrastructure.
And is the richest guy on earth to boot.
Seems bad.
Like, that seems bad.
Here's Sam Stein.
The richest man in the world is one of the biggest political donors in the world and one of the biggest government contractors in the world while owning one of the biggest social media platforms in the world while warning about a cabal of elites ruining the world.
Like, what?
How can you have that?
Now, I got more to say.
I throw it to you.
To me, this is one more example of a foreshadowing of what's to come, of the ways that a second Trump presidency will lead to more intimate and close relations with Putin and other authoritarian leaders.
What do you think?
I think I don't have a lot to add.
I mean, you know, it's everything you said, everything the people on X said, all of that is there and is true.
I say here, and I just laugh, remember when people would try to argue that, yeah, maybe Musk isn't really that right-wing.
Like, he would say things, and people would be like, I think he, you know, I think he's, like, kind of on the right.
I think he, you know, I think he supports Trump.
I don't know if you remember this.
I remember when people were like, well, I don't know.
I think you're reading too much into it, and And he's just, you know, full MAGA guy now.
Yeah, everything you say, everything about money and media, I think, is a piece of this.
Everything about global influence and the role, you know, we talk about, if we want to have broader discussions, the role of the super rich.
And here are not just individuals, but companies, transnational corporations that sort of operate beyond the bounds of any kind of state sovereignty.
I think you have The fascist stuff.
The comments about Hitler, which I didn't even get to mention, like another groping allegation coming into the news this week.
Any one of these things would end any other politician.
Any one of these.
If Kamala Harris came out and did any of these things, it would end her candidacy.
And yet, for Trump, it's just par for the course.
Not only is it par for the course, but again, we're in an election that's in a dead heat.
You know, half of what appear to be likely voters, or as many as—I don't know how much we can trust the polls, but the polls show that there are as many people who support Trump, support this vision of America, as who support his opponent.
I think that that's a really telling point, you know, for all the people that want to say to us still that this is some marginalized thing or that we're overstating it.
I think all these things hinge together and show the significance of this movement.
Alright, so here's some other things that happened this week that really portend what's ahead and how our politics, what's happened.
So, the House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris in North Carolina said that the North Carolina legislature should consider awarding their state's electors to Donald Trump before votes are counted.
Now, there's been backlash from his own party on the stand, but he wants to award the state to Trump before votes are counted.
Sounds like fascism, okay?
We don't even need to have the vote.
I mean, if we're going to do it before votes are counted, we don't even need to have a vote.
Why vote at all?
Just award the state to Trump.
In Arizona, there were ballots damaged after a USB collection box was set ablaze in a Democratic-leading county.
In Texas, a An election official was punched repeatedly in the face after he asked a man to take off his MAGA hat.
So this is the kind of thing that is unleashed.
When people always ask me, are we going to have a civil war?
I say, look, there's these little fires everywhere that show you the ways that democracy dies.
If you're afraid to vote, if you're afraid to be a poll worker, if there's violence at your election site...
If boxes where votes are held are being set on fire, if officials are saying, just give him the election before the votes are counted, those are all little fires everywhere.
Okay.
Dan, I'm going to just go to my reason for hope, because I think that we're in a place where a lot of people are really anxious right now.
And I am putting myself in that camp.
I gave a talk yesterday, and one of the first questions I asked was, like, who's feeling a little anxious?
And it was like, you know, sometimes you ask a question in class, and, like, three people, like, raise their hand, you know?
You know, you ask something in a room of 30 people, 50 people, 100 people, you're like, hey, how about this?
Who's seen this movie?
And, like, eight hands go out.
Who's read that book?
Yesterday, I was like, who's feeling anxious?
And it was like, everyone's, like, dislocated their shoulder, raising their hand up so quickly, you know, the entire room.
And I get it, friends.
We're in this place where we're less than two weeks out from the election.
We're getting news like this.
We're getting a nonstop discussion of fascism on our TV. We have a town hall where, you know, CNN and others are like, oh, I don't know if Kamala sealed the deal.
And, you know, you're just, what are you talking about?
We have so much news about this man, Donald Trump, that a groping allegation and a sexual assault allegation didn't even make a ripple in the news cycle.
He's threatening people on his social media campaign, and yet you're saying Harris didn't seal the deal or this or that.
Okay, whatever.
Dan, I'm going to go out on a limb here, and I want to say that I think that There are a lot of Americans.
There are enough Americans.
There are a majority of Americans.
And that includes in places like Pennsylvania and Arizona and Georgia and even Florida that are not going to take the Trump fascist pills this time.
And I think that we're in a place where we might see Harris win decisively.
Now, I say that not because I want you all for the next 10 days.
Say, great, I'm going to take a nap, go down there and go to my tanning station, put some cucumbers on my eyes, and just hang out and watch reruns of Friends or something else, okay?
I say that because I think, Dan, in 10 days, we're going to have our first woman president.
I think we're going to have a president who is Black, a president who is Asian, South Asian.
A president who's married to a Jewish man, a president who brings something we've never had to our country.
And Dan, I want to just go back to something that I know you have hanging in your office, and it stays with me.
And I know you're not the first to have this and all that, but when we recorded in your office a couple years ago, I saw this, and it's something I come back to all the time.
And over your desk, it just says, stare not into the abyss.
And I want to say to every one of you listening right now, do not stare into the abyss.
Because our future is not in the abyss.
I want you to put your head forward and march into the future we want.
And I want you to look around at the people who are working for that and do whatever you need to do in these last 10 days to make that happen.
If you're writing postcards, if you're making phone calls, if you're working on a local election, if you're working on a local ballot initiative.
Dan, I just talked last night To Alicia Abbott, who I've known online for years, and I finally got to meet in person.
And Alicia has knocked on 3,000 doors in order to help Idahoans understand and feel good about open ranked voting in their state and open ranked vote.
What am I trying to say?
Ranked choice voting and open primaries in their state.
Dan, 3,000 doors.
Do you know how inspiring that was?
To hear about what she does after dinner every night or in the afternoons?
How many houses are in your neighborhood?
How many houses are on a block?
And figure out how many blocks it would take to get to 3,000.
I'm not saying you all need to be Alicia.
What I'm saying is our future is not in the abyss.
So do not go there this 10 days.
Don't stare into the news cycle.
Don't stare into the polls or anything else that's telling you it's not looking good or whatever.
Look around and look forward and stay in that space because it's happening.
People are voting.
And my inclination is that this is going to go the way we want, but you can't take your foot off the gas.
You can't just say, oh, good, we're great.
I'm going to go to brunch now and just take it easy.
That is not where to be.
So all gas, no breaks.
We're going to check in in 10 days and we're going to see where we are.
But I know, Dan, that That it's easy to get into a place of despair right now.
I don't think we should be there.
And I think we're going to have something that we want.
That's what I'm feeling right now.
But it's easier for people to get seduced into the doom cycle.
And I want to say, cut it out.
We got 10 days.
Let's do this together.
All right.
How about you?
I want to pick up on, people know me and the weird metaphors, but I live in a place with a lot of snow and things like that.
A mistake people often make is they hit the brake when they should hit the gas.
Think about going through a curve.
You need to hit the gas through the curve.
You accelerate through the curve.
I feel like we're at a curve.
We're at this inflection point, and to just stick with your metaphor, we have to keep our foot on the gas.
I want to just tie in with that.
Another reason for hope that I think ties in is there were some polls out this week.
And, you know, they show that the favorability of Trump and Harris was broadly matched.
That's not a surprise given that, you know, they've got the same numbers of people.
But things that I think are important is Harris was leading by 12 points on who Americans think is more honest.
And she was leading on six points among Americans on the question of who cares about people like you.
That question of sort of empathy and people's perspective of which candidate actually cares about you.
And I think those are real things that can tell us something about how people might vote.
Not just abstract economy stuff, abstract likability stuff.
But who do I think is actually telling the truth and who do I think actually cares about regular people, not just Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or their companies or whatever?
So I think it is a reason to instill hope in exactly the outcome you're describing.
And be really clear as you are, hope doesn't mean complacency.
We've still got 10 days, 11 days to go, so let's go.
But I threw that out there and took hope from that finding as well.
All right, y'all.
November 21st and 22nd is going to be a different place, about a month away.
We want to see you in LA and San Diego, so join us there.
We'd love to see you there.
All the details are in the show notes.
As Dan said, it's a chance not only to hear from great scholars and journalists, but It's a chance to hang out, to debrief, to process, to tell stories, to talk about serious things, to talk about lighthearted things.
And it just feels good to be together.
So whatever's going on, do your best to come down and make it because we'd love to see you.
We'd love to hang out.
We'd love to be with you.
We've got a bunch of things on the horizon in addition to that, and we're going to be announcing some of those soon.
But for now, I'll just say next week, we'll have a great interview.
We'll have us, it's in the code, Spirit and Power and the Weekly Roundup.
Check all of that out.
And I want to say thanks, Dan, for adjusting our schedule this week as I'm in Spokane.
I promised, Dan, when I saw him in Utah, this is the last time.
So we will be back to regular schedule next week.
But thanks for being here.
We'll catch you next time.
Thanks, Brad.
Don't forget, y'all.
Two live events coming in November.
Some straight white American Jesus.
One at the University of Southern California in LA with Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
And then the next night at the San Diego Convention Center.
Tickets are available now and you can find everything in the show notes.
You can also watch online if you can't be in LA or San Diego.
November 21 and November 22.
Two chances to be with us at Straight White American Jesus and a number of other great scholars and leaders.
