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Oct. 28, 2024 - Straight White American Jesus
29:37
5 Clips from Trump's Neo-Nazi Rally in New York City

Los Angeles Event: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1027970416187?aff=oddtdtcreator San Diego Event: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1030505227877?aff=oddtdtcreator Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus content most Mondays, bonus episodes every month, ad-free listening, access to the entire 700-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/ In this episode, Brad scrutinizes the unsettling rhetoric at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, featuring Sid Rosenberg, Stephen Miller, and Tony Hinchcliffe. The discussion addresses open racism, xenophobia, and ethno-nationalism, and their alignment with Trump's broader campaign strategy. Key topics include Trump's divisive remarks on ethnic demographics, potential election interference hinted at through statements about 'secrets' with the Speaker of the House, and mass deportation policies suggested by Mike Johnson. Additionally, the episode breaks down the Electoral Count Reform Act's implications, stressing the importance of vigilance against efforts to undermine electoral integrity. Linktree: https://linktr.ee/StraightWhiteJC Order Brad's book: https://bookshop.org/a/95982/9781506482163 Check out BetterHelp and use my code SWA for a great deal: www.betterhelp.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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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, Kiyoti 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.
They'll have a roundtable with familiar faces like Leah Payne and Lloyd Barber, 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 L.A. 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.
Listen to me from Jerusalem.
They really do this like all of you listen to me, all of you.
I get back and they go, Sid, you want to speak at this MSG thing?
I go, sure.
Out of character for me to speak at a Nazi rally.
I was just in Israel, but I took the gig.
That's Sid Rosenberg speaking at Madison Square Garden at the Trump rally, October 27th.
The radio personality says it out loud.
It's a Nazi rally.
He went on to say that Hillary Clinton is a sick son of a bitch and that the Democratic Party is filled with degenerates.
The Trump rally, as many of you know by now, was perhaps the worst display of racism and ethno-nationalism from Trump and MAGA Nation, and that's saying a lot.
Today I break down not only some of the most noteworthy and disgusting comments, but the code involved and what it's saying to those following along at home, those who are voting for Trump and those who are ready to take action for Trump if the election is not called for him.
I'm Brad Onishi, and this is Straight White American Jesus.
All right, y'all.
We had something else planned today, but the Trump rally was so noteworthy that I just thought we needed to get to it.
You heard at the top Sid Rosenberg saying that not like him to appear at a Nazi rally.
Ha ha ha.
And whether or not that was a slip of the tongue was really telling.
Here he is saying it out loud.
And no one afterward that I've seen from the Trump campaign has denounced that.
Nobody came out and said, oh, we can't believe he said that.
Yeah.
This, of course, the whole event recalled the 1939 rally at Madison Square Garden, where Nazis gathered.
And there's a whole Trump family history with that rally.
But nonetheless, this felt like a redo, like a replication.
And for me, I think one of the reasons that folks thought that is that this is not a swing state.
He's not going to win New York.
Why are you gathering there nine days before the election?
Well, it's to gather those who are the who's who of MAGA Nation, to revel in the intimacy of being around the super activated, willing to do anything for you disciples that you've created in this ethno-nationalist racist movement.
And we saw all of that come out at this rally, even for a Trump gathering, a Trump event.
This was disgusting.
And so I think for Trump, this was one last hurrah before the election.
I think it was a signal to those that if he doesn't win, that they should be ready to take action for him.
It was also, I think, for Trump, an October surprise.
He did it to himself.
This is going to be one of the last things voters remember before they go to the polls.
Now I know a lot of people have voted.
A lot of people have already decided.
But as we'll get to, there's key demographics that were called out here that I think are going to use this as the thing that maybe helps them decide or motivates them to vote at all.
So we'll get into that here in a minute.
I want to start with a clip from Stephen Miller, the Trump administration member who is perhaps the most xenophobic man on the planet and the one leading the charge for mass deportation in our country if and when Trump is re-elected.
The cartels are gone.
The criminal migrants are gone.
The gangs are gone.
America is for Americans and Americans only.
One man, and that man, ladies and gentlemen, that man took a bullet for you.
He took a bullet for democracy.
Let's decode this.
A number of people have already noted this.
It's worth saying it out loud.
Germany is for Germans only was something the Nazi regime said over and over again.
It was something you would hear from Nazi propagandists.
Germany is for Germans only.
So, Miller here says America is for Americans only.
I want you to imagine a future.
The gangs are gone, the cartels are gone, and America is for Americans only.
There's a couple things to say here.
One...
This is code.
Only certain folks fit into that definition of American when he says it.
Who was watching him as he said this in the front row?
Melania Trump, an immigrant from Slovenia, and Elon Musk, an immigrant from South Africa.
So here's a man who's saying America's for Americans only while two immigrants are watching him.
Now, does he have a problem with them?
I don't think he does.
They're white.
their family's heritage goes back to Europe, Western Europe, Central Europe, etc.
Those aren't the folks he's worried about, is it?
Those aren't the folks he says America, they're not counted as not real Americans, even though they weren't born here, even though they came here.
And we should say that if you look closely at their immigration records, they were not always documented in the ways you're supposed to be.
And so not only were they immigrants, but they're people who were not always here with the right kind of paperwork for the right kind of stay.
I don't, I'm not going to get into that.
I have no interest in that.
What I have an interest in is when he says America is for Americans only, there's code there.
It means certain people.
To me, one of the ways into that code is through J.D. Vance, who, if you remember, when asked about the Haitians, the Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, the large scale communities that have made their way to that city for jobs.
What did J.D. Vance say?
I still consider them illegal.
That's the code.
This is not about paperwork and documentation.
It's about who's considered a real American.
The European immigrant who's a model and eventually marries Donald Trump?
No problem.
Elon Musk from South Africa, an enterprising young businessman?
Sure.
Haitian folks fleeing violence and unrest in their country and coming here because there's jobs and there's a community that needs people to take those jobs.
Nah.
No, they don't count.
They're not the ones we want.
You can see how that works here.
And I could spend another three hours on Stephen Miller, but I want to get to a few other clips.
I think the most lewd comments from the rally came from comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who, I'm going to play the clip for you, and I want to warn you, it's really offensive when it comes to Puerto Rico.
But he said something, and I'm not going to play this clip.
He said something else about all Latino people.
He talked about how Latino folks, in his words, like to have children.
And then he said that they don't pull out and they come inside just like our country.
I apologize for those lewd comments, but that's what he said.
This was all vetted.
This was all planned.
This was in a teleprompter.
This was not a surprise.
He didn't go off script.
The Trump campaign was not caught off guard.
That's what was said at that rally.
And then he said this.
It is absolutely wild times.
It really, really is.
And, you know, there's a lot going on.
Like, I don't know if you guys know this, but there's literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now.
Yeah.
I think it's called Puerto Rico.
Okay.
All right.
Okay.
We're getting there.
So a couple of comments to make here about this.
Number one, it's just openly racist and disgusting.
And yet again, it was vetted and not a surprise.
have tried to distance themselves, especially those Republicans running in states that have large Puerto Rican populations or Latino Latinx populations.
You saw Rick Scott.
You saw some others who have said, oh, this was a little bit out of taste.
Additionally, Puerto Rican superstars like Bad Bunny have already been reposting this.
And other folks who are just huge and so popular worldwide, like Ricky Martin, have posted the clips about his comments about Latinos and so on.
So Ricky Martin, Bad Bunny, others, we're talking about 35, 40 million Instagram followers.
And these things ripple through places like Pennsylvania, places like Florida, places like Georgia that have large and really in terms of votes, important Puerto Rican demographics.
So this is just a very weird closing argument to make if you're a candidate who's trying to win swing And yet, nonetheless, this is what Trump wanted.
This was the fullest expression, nine years of this folks, when we've gotten some of the worst comments about Mexicans being rapists, about Muslim ban and shithole countries.
But this was just like the apotheosis, like put it out on the open.
What do we have to lose?
What are you going to do to us?
And if you tell us we lose, we're not going to accept it.
And we're probably going to do some vile things.
It's absolutely disgusting.
All right.
I don't have time to basically clip the entire rally, but one thing I'll just say, and I'm not going to clip this one, is Mike Johnson got up and Mike Johnson really looked out of place.
We had a bunch of comedians and radio shock jocks and Alina Bhabha, the Trump lawyer, dancing and coming out in what looked like a...
Like a sequined boxer's outfit, like walking down the aisle to get in the ring.
And here's Mike Johnson all buttoned up, Mr.
Evangelical.
And one of the things he said, though, at the rally is that our side reveres the rule of law.
Theirs doesn't.
The other team doesn't.
And it's just so laughable to hear that.
I mean, here's a man stumping for a 34-time felon, a man who tried to pay hush money to someone in order for that person not to talk about how they had sex weeks after his third wife gave birth to his fifth baby, and thus religious voters would still vote for him.
A man who's an adjudicated sexual assault, sexual assaulter, somebody whose university was found to have committed fraud, somebody whose nonprofit was found to be fraudulent.
I could go on.
It's just laughable.
It's just laughable to talk about the rule of law.
But that's what Mike Johnson decided to do.
Now, let's get to Trump and then we'll close out.
Trump said a couple of things.
He said that Americans who don't support him are enemies and must be dealt with.
They are the enemy from within.
Let's listen.
I know many of them.
It's just this amorphous group of people.
But they're smart and they're vicious.
And we have to defeat them.
And when I say the enemy from within, the other side goes crazy, becomes a sound.
Oh, how can he say?
No, they've done very bad things to this country.
They are indeed the enemy from within.
But this is who we're fighting.
This is just straight up Nazi stuff, period.
This is how, and a lot of folks have noted this already.
You've probably read it.
You've probably heard about it.
But when you talk about your political enemies, your political opponents, your political adversaries as the enemy within, if you talk about a segment of Americans who don't support you, if you talk about people who are Democrats, people who are not on board with your program, if you talk about your former administrative or cabinet if you talk about your former administrative or cabinet members, Mike Pence or John Kelly, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, if you talk about Hillary Clinton, it doesn't matter.
When you start saying that Americans who don't support you are the enemy from within, you're doing a couple of things.
You're saying that they're not fellow Americans who deserve a vote and deserve a voice.
You're saying they're evil.
And you're saying that within the country, they don't count as real Americans.
So let's go back to our first clip.
I'm Philip Deislip.
And I'm Stacey Stukin.
Breath of Fire debuts October 23rd on HBO Max.
It's a docuseries about yoga, cults, abuse, and turning spirituality into big business.
The series focuses on Yogi Bhajan, who in the 1960s immigrated from India to the United States, and on Katie Griggs, a millennial American.
Decades apart, they both built wellness empires based on kundalini yoga.
Each had a huge personality, celebrity followers, and fervent disciples.
They also left behind a legacy of abuse and exploitation.
I'm a journalist, Phillips, and academic.
We served as historical consultants and on-camera experts for the series.
We created Temple of Steel, an unofficial companion podcast to the Breath of Fire docuseries, which premieres on HBO Max, Wednesday, October 23rd.
Join us the morning after each episode airs for context, analysis, and a deeper discussion.
Find Temple of Steel, the unofficial Breath of Fire podcast, anywhere you listen to podcasts.
Rosenberg says this is a Nazi rally.
And then Stephen Miller says America's for Americans only.
But then Trump tells you that all Americans are not real Americans.
That there are some who are in America that are enemies of America.
So when I'm president, I'm totally justified if I want to use violence against them, if I want to use the military against them, if I want to use the Insurrection Act or other measures in order to deploy our armed services on the enemies within our gates, because that's what we need to purify the country.
That's what we need so that our country is no longer sick and no longer full of evil and demons and so on and so forth.
This is full-on Nazi propaganda.
When you start talking about them as vicious and that they have to be defeated, you're not talking about anything else except for saying no matter what happens to them is justified.
That might mean that they lose the election, but it also might mean that they go to jail or lose their businesses, that they're taken off the air, that they're put out of the country.
Now, this, of course, goes right to a plan that Stephen Miller is very fond of and Trump himself has popularized, and that's mass deportation.
The signs were at the RNC. This is a key plank in the plan for the next Trump administration.
But I want you to think about the mechanics of that kind of deportation.
That if you're going to do that, you're either going to have to separate whole families Or you're going to have to send folks who are born in this country with their parents to whatever country you're sending them to.
You're going to have to make really quick judgments about who deserves to be in a camp and await deportation.
And I've said it on the show before, I'll say it again, I'm a Japanese American.
I have family members who've been to camp.
I have family members who are American citizens who were sent to camp with no legal process, no trial, no Nothing except for they were considered the enemy within because they were of Japanese descent and we were at war with the United States.
Some of them, while they were in camp, had family members, husbands or brothers, who were fighting in the U.S. military.
My grandfather fought in the armed services.
Well, he was a code breaker, is what I should say.
He was somebody who trained and used Japanese linguistic skills in order to help break codes for our armed services.
Camp has happened already.
Camp is not a seamless process.
Camp is a process in which people suffer, people are incarcerated, people are not given due process, which families are separated, and which there is generational trauma.
If you are part of the Japanese American community, you know that to this day, 75 years later, Every year, every month, there are memorials, there are celebrations, there are remembrances, there are rituals because of the traumatic nature of camp.
That's what it's called in Japanese America, camp.
You cannot do what they want to do without rippling across generations, separating families, traumatizing whole communities.
It's impossible.
But when they tell you there's enemies within, that America is for Americans only, that is what they're telling you.
When the speaker before Trump says Puerto Rico is a garbage island in the middle of the ocean, this is what we're going to see if he becomes president again.
And I think with our little secret, we're going to do really well with the house, right?
Our little secret is having a big impact.
He and I have a secret.
We'll tell you what it is when the race is over.
Alright, this is Trump talking about Mike Johnson, and he says they have a little secret.
Now, we don't know what exactly that is, but it is ominous for Trump to be gesturing towards the Speaker of the House and say, we have a secret, we're going to do really well with the House, right?
Our little secret is having a big impact.
this because it really does seem that Trump is gesturing toward, and this is at least one possibility, I don't know for certain, a situation in which there's no certification in the House, and thus the presidential race, the electoral college count is sent back to the states and in the state legislatures, they have a chance to choose the electoral college count is sent back to the states and in the state legislatures, they have a chance to choose the president in the state
Now, I want to say just before your mind gets racing here, that we do have something called the Electoral Count Reform Act, which was passed recently, and it is supposed to prevent something like that from happening, and of course, mitigate what happened in 2020, January 6th.
and the entire plan to subvert the election.
So, one of the things that is part of this law, and I'm reading from a piece at MSNBC by Andy Craig, who's a fellow at the Institute for Humane Studies, is Talks about how the next stage of the process comes when we see these votes are transmitted as required by the 12th Amendment to the President of the Senate, otherwise known as the Vice President, currently Kamala Harris.
This is written a little bit ago.
She will not be the first Vice President to preside over a certification of her own victory or defeat, a task previously carried out by Al Gore, Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush, those who were Vice President, and then subsequently running for President.
But contrary to theories rejected by then-Vice President Mike Pence in 2020, ECRA, the newly passed Electoral Count Reform Act, affirms that the Vice President's role is purely ceremonial and entails no discretion whatsoever.
Instead, the limited range of possible disputes at the electoral count on January 6th must be decided by Congress.
Here, ECRA makes an important change from the old Electoral Count Act.
Previously, only one member of each House of Congress was required to object to electoral votes, sending the matter to debate and vote.
It was under this provision that some Republican members objected to the electoral votes for Joe Biden in 2020, a procedure interrupted by the attack on the Capitol.
Now, objections require the co-sponsorship of at least one-fifth of each House, or 87 representatives together, with at least 20 senators.
None of the objections attempted at the last electoral count would have cleared this threshold.
Lacking enough support, frivolous objections will instead be gaveled down as out of order.
ECRA deliberately pushes most possible disputes over election results into the courts, in particular objections to the identity of the proper electors, based on who actually won each state's popular vote, are to be litigated in advance, with a definitive court ruling then binding on Congress.
This would cover the objections advanced by Donald Trump supporters in the last election, which essentially alleged that the wrong slate of electors had been certified in several swing states.
Another set of objections remains within Congress's purview as required by the Constitution.
These cover whether the votes by otherwise legitimate electors were improper or in the legal term of art regularly given.
This would include, for example, a hypothetical objection to electors' failure to cast their votes on the prescribed day.
So, I think there's a couple things to say here.
I think one of the things that we need to keep an eye on, and I think a lot of people already are, is what's going to happen in the House when it comes to certifying the election.
Is Mike Johnson going to try to clear that bar of 87 representatives in order to basically get to a point where they can vote on whether or not the election should be certified?
Now, he would also need 20 senators.
One of the things that people are afraid of is that if this is sent to the courts, then the Supreme Court, which we've already seen give Trump partial immunity and so on and so forth, will not act or rule or decide in the right way.
All of that to say, I'm not going to go into this.
We'll talk a lot more about this Friday.
That's my plan, at least.
But when he said this to Mike Johnson, it just really gave me the chills.
Now, I got the chills a lot watching this.
But think about it, friends.
We're at a place where we have a newly passed Electoral Count Reform Act because four years ago, We had a violent insurrection at our Capitol that interrupted representatives who were objecting to the certification of the vote.
They have spent four years working to provide a way to get this back to the state legislatures.
We've talked on this show with Matt Taylor and others about the ways that Conspiracy theorists and Christian nationalists are trying to get into the rooms where votes are being counted, are trying to be the decision makers when it comes to some of these things.
This is a thing that I think even if and when Kamala Harris wins and the election is called for her, we will just have to keep watching and eyeing and monitoring because this kind of chicanery is not just on the table, it's part of the plan.
And I think Trump's reference here really proves that point.
I will invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
Think of that.
That's how far back.
That's when they had law and order.
They had some tough ones.
Think of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
You hear that, Mr.
Speaker?
Get ready.
This is the last clip of the day that I want to talk about and I think it sums up the entire rally and the entire MAGA movement.
Trump talks about going back to 1798 with the Alien Enemies Act.
We've already talked about immigration, the enemy within, and so on.
There was another speaker who talked about needing to go back to the turn of the century, the 19th century.
So that would be the 1890s, the 1895s, because there were tariffs and there were a lot of things that they took to be kind of a make America great again kind of situation.
We've had nine years of make America great again now, and I've been all over the country talking about it.
A lot of white Christians in this country will tell you that the 1950s were really the time when things were good.
And whenever I talk around the country, I say, look, they're showing you who they are, because that's before the Civil Rights Movement, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, immigration reform.
That's before interracial marriage was protected in the country.
No-fault divorce was instituted before Stonewall, before the Feminine Mystique, before widespread and expansive women's liberation movements, queer liberation movements, and so on.
I could go on and on and on.
So the 1950s, yeah, that's the time we want to go back to.
Nuclear family and one-income household and women staying domestically to play their role.
Yeah, it's terrible.
It's awful, in my opinion.
But we're past that.
We're way past that.
If you want to go back to the 1890s, you're talking about a time before women could vote.
You're talking about a time of widespread lynching.
You're talking about a time of racial segregation, racial violence.
You're talking about a time when Chinese immigrants on the West Coast were being attacked and the Chinese Exclusion Act was basically making it such that those from China and essentially at this moment, anyone from Asia could.
It was very difficult for them to come to the country.
In subsequent years, 1907, there would be, 1906, 1907, there would be other measures that would make it hard for Japanese folks and others.
You're just talking about a time when most Americans did not feel like they had any kind of representation or rights in the country that matched up to white Christian men.
You want to go back to the 1700s?
And that's when we really had law and order.
Well, that's, of course, the time of enslavement.
That's well before there was anything like the Civil War, anything like the 13th or 14th Amendments.
You see what we're getting at here?
Is that for years on this show, we've said Make America Great Again is not about just going back to an idyllic time.
We're way beyond the 1950s.
I've said in talks before, most folks don't want to go back before the 1960s, they want to go back before the 1860s, before the Civil War, before enslavement was outlawed, before everyone was given, well, everyone's the wrong word, but before we had at least moments in our history where more people were given the opportunity to experience freedom, to have suffrage.
This was a really scary rally.
This was gloves off, no pretense, full-on red meat.
And I think in some sense...
It really showed us who they are beyond what anyone could have said in terms of receipts or evidence.
It's just now all on the table now.
When you call Puerto Rico garbage, when you talk about Latino folks and the ways that they were talked about, when you talk about, I mean, I haven't gotten there, but the same comedian talked about and used stereotypes about black people and watermelons and all of this kind of stuff.
When you talk about immigrants, I mean, it doesn't matter.
There is no way to deny what this movement is now.
Period.
And I'll say that I... Was this a message to voters?
Sure.
Does the Trump campaign think they're going to win?
Yes.
Are they preparing to lose?
No.
This is not a situation where they're getting ready...
This is not Michael Dukakis getting ready to lose.
Okay?
But this is a situation too where if they do lose, this is the group.
The people they were speaking to on this evening are the ones that are going to take action.
They're going to be the ones...
Causing social unrest.
The ones in the streets.
The ones at the state capitals.
The ones badgering election workers at their homes and those who are certifying the election.
This was the audience ready to mobilize if things don't go how they want.
So to me, that is something to keep in mind, that Matt Taylor, my colleague and friend and somebody who's been on the show a lot, has said for a year now, no matter what happens on Election Day, we're going to have a rough road ahead.
And I think he's right.
I'm going to encourage you to make a plan to be safe, to figure out what you need to do to protect yourself and your family, and also participate in this process how you want to participate and to help the communities you want to help.
Because if nothing else, this rally showed us that November 5th is one day, but there's going to be a lot of days after that before it is decided, at least socially, who the next president is.
Because there's going to be a lot of people who don't accept the results if it's Kamala Harris.
There may be people celebrating in the streets on November 7th or 8th when the race is called.
There's going to be a lot of people getting ready to do all kinds of things.
And I think we need to be ready for that.
That is what this rally showed me.
Don't forget, y'all.
Two live events coming in November.
Some straight white American Jesus.
One at the University of Southern California and LA with Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
And then the next night at the San Diego Convention Center.
And a number of other great scholars and leaders.
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