Speaker 1: It could happen. Here is the podcast that this is
Speaker 1: right now, would you guys? When do you guys? Solo
Speaker 1: intro this podcast? James Stout Mia Wong do y'all? Uh
Speaker 1: do y'all just like shout a tonally? Ever? Have you
Speaker 1: have y'all tried that yet?
Speaker 2: I haven't.
Speaker 3: I struggled with the intro. I just say hello everyone, Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know James. Nope, No, that's your try, that's your
Speaker 1: that's your East Coast Ivy League elitism. Uh coming through.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's correct for it.
Speaker 3: Ever since I was born in Boston, I had, yeah,
Speaker 3: growing up on a different side of the tracks to yourself,
Speaker 3: also from Boston, New course.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right, yes, uh.
Speaker 2: In trade tracks in Boston.
Speaker 1: I'm sure I'm not allowed currently to do the accent.
Speaker 3: Because Sophie for legal reasons.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I uh yeah, yeah, she's got some dirt
Speaker 1: on me. Anyway, we are a podcast asked about things
Speaker 1: falling apart, and you know what would make things fall
Speaker 1: apart worse than they already are is if Donald Trump
Speaker 1: won a second term. So today, true, we're going to
Speaker 1: talk partly about that, and we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: the indictments against him. That's the big news, right, the
Speaker 1: most recent big political news. Unless he's been indicted again
Speaker 1: by the time this episode drops, not impossible.
Speaker 2: Send another one ready to draw up.
Speaker 1: But from my last kind, I think he's at like
Speaker 1: seventy eight charges felony charges at the moment, So honestly,
Speaker 1: he might get to triple digits. It's not he's not
Speaker 1: all that far.
Speaker 2: There's stuff like I didn't realize. Well, I guess I
Speaker 2: knew intellectually that you could you could be charged with
Speaker 2: conspiracy to do something and then also doing it, but
Speaker 2: I don't think I know, Yeah, Like I don't think
Speaker 2: I've ever seen a politician charged with both conspiracy and
Speaker 2: the actual doing of the thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I hope at some point, assuming you know, we continue
Speaker 1: to have some thing that resembles freedom of speech, we'll
Speaker 1: get a good book about like how the whole process
Speaker 1: of them had, like figuring out how and when and
Speaker 1: weather to actually like go after him. I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: we're talking about both, like the FEDS and the DA
Speaker 1: in New York, But I am interested in both of
Speaker 1: those stories because there has to be there have to
Speaker 1: have been some real interesting conversations. But yeah, we are
Speaker 1: right now, we're looking at him. He's about to be
Speaker 1: arraigned as we talk about this, for inciting an insurrection
Speaker 1: at the capitol. So that's pretty cool. Mia, you wanted
Speaker 1: to to start us off here.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, yeah, And I think this is okay.
Speaker 2: So this is an interesting indictment in that, like it
Speaker 2: somehow took them about two years to like actually do
Speaker 2: the indictment. That's like, hey, it's illegal to try to
Speaker 2: overthrow the government point installing yourself as president.
Speaker 1: And in fairness, they don't have a lot of experience
Speaker 1: charging people with that one.
Speaker 2: Well, and we should actually mention they should Bush. Well,
Speaker 2: here's the thing, Bush Bush. Actually we're gonna talk about
Speaker 2: this more later. But like Bush actually got away with
Speaker 2: this right, Like the last time a court ruled on
Speaker 2: whether a president can use the courts to instalve themselves
Speaker 2: as president, the Supreme Court was like, yeah, that's fine,
Speaker 2: that's like no problem, Like, yeah, it's fine, you could
Speaker 2: you can have a mob show up and disrupt the
Speaker 2: counting process and it's fine. But Trump like fucked up
Speaker 2: and didn't do it the way you're supposed to. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and you know there's something sort of I don't know.
Speaker 2: So there's something I was thinking about while I was
Speaker 2: reading this, which is like the English languish, doesn't I
Speaker 2: think part of the issue here is like we don't
Speaker 2: I don't know. The English language doesn't even like have
Speaker 2: a good word for like the kind of coup that
Speaker 2: Trump was doing. Like there's a Spanish word which is
Speaker 2: auto goulpe, which is like yeah, Spanish, Jam's got a
Speaker 2: great one in English and translates the self coup, and
Speaker 2: we're just like, ah, we're done. It's like no, No,
Speaker 2: that sucks. That time sucks.
Speaker 1: It's really I wish I had a better than Trump
Speaker 1: voice because then I could do on a golpe.
Speaker 2: What is that is that?
Speaker 1: Like a like like at seven eleven the big sixty
Speaker 1: four rounds Diet Coach get But I can't do it.
Speaker 1: I can't do a good Trump. So that wasn't as
Speaker 1: funny as it should have. Anyway, whatever, please continue with.
Speaker 2: We had it, so you know, I think, you know,
Speaker 2: I think it's worth kind of thinking a little bit,
Speaker 2: and we're gonna sort of come back to this as
Speaker 2: we go through this case, but I think it's worth
Speaker 2: remembering that again, like everything Trump is doing in This
Speaker 2: is based off of like is it is based off
Speaker 2: of the sort of Bush thing into in two thousand
Speaker 2: where he had a bunch of well, okay, so a
Speaker 2: bunch of Bush's political operatives like stormed one of the
Speaker 2: one of the places that was doing the recount in
Speaker 2: Florida and stopped them from counting the votes and then
Speaker 2: they just delayed and long enough that he was able
Speaker 2: to get appointed.
Speaker 1: Now the Brooks Brothers riot Roger Stone was a major
Speaker 1: part of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we've we've done this, you know, we talked
Speaker 2: about this on the show like the end of last year.
Speaker 2: But but again, so the reason this worked though, right,
Speaker 2: is that Bush made really really sure that there was
Speaker 2: like a sound legal case sort of behind this entire
Speaker 2: thing he made. He made really sure to like go
Speaker 2: through all of the proper like checks and balances and
Speaker 2: like blah blah blah blah. But Trump just like didn't
Speaker 2: do this. And the result of this is that Jack Smith,
Speaker 2: like finally two years later, Jack Smith, who's this guy?
Speaker 2: He was, he was appointed by Merrick Garland to like
Speaker 2: take over these two Justice Department cases about Trump has
Speaker 2: just indicted him with this stuff he has so he's
Speaker 2: been charged with with three counts of criminal conspiracy, and
Speaker 2: I think is accounted obstruction. So I'm going to go
Speaker 2: through what he's actually been charged.
Speaker 1: I want to note something real quick, which is that
Speaker 1: another reason why it worked for Bush and it didn't
Speaker 1: for Trump is that with Bush, it was legitimately the
Speaker 1: election came down to Florida, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like it was.
Speaker 1: It was extremely close. It was really just a couple
Speaker 1: of counties in Florida. With Trump, he was not trying
Speaker 1: to just sort of like jink jink part of a state.
Speaker 1: It was like it was like Biden had a commanding lead. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: It was a big dub for Uncle Joe.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And and you know, so yeah, like obviously, like
Speaker 2: Trump like just fails at this spectacularly, and the law
Speaker 2: is finally coming after him. They so they're charging him
Speaker 2: with conspiracy to defraud the United States, which again is
Speaker 2: the thing I didn't know you could do.
Speaker 3: And Lon Semstrong got that, didn't he did?
Speaker 2: He?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, because USPS was his sponsor, so he was
Speaker 3: defrauding the federal government.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the don't yeah, don't don't. Don't you post out.
Speaker 1: Trump's the first guy who's not rad to get charged
Speaker 1: with that.
Speaker 2: Sorry James, Okay, I didn't. I didn't. Yeah, sorry everyone,
Speaker 2: I'm out. So this this one is, this is specifically
Speaker 2: like impairing the election, like impairing like the the the
Speaker 2: votes of the presidential election. The first one is mostly
Speaker 2: we'll talk about this more in a bit, like the
Speaker 2: illegitimate electors thing that he did. The second one is
Speaker 2: just him being charged for They finally found a thing
Speaker 2: the charge him for doing January sixth, which was they
Speaker 2: charged him with like conspiracy to obstruct an official preceding,
Speaker 2: and then they got him also with obstruction obstructing the
Speaker 2: official proceeding, which again seems like a kind of like
Speaker 2: this is, I don't know, it's not quite getting out
Speaker 2: the pope for tax evasion, but like you'd think they'd
Speaker 2: have something like more.
Speaker 1: Powerful throw the government, attempting to make yourself a dictator, bonapartism.
Speaker 1: Well it's not really bonapartism, but yeah.
Speaker 3: Like seditions, right there, sedition that's a second choice, yeah,
Speaker 3: right choice.
Speaker 2: They they gut him on obstruction. Okay, sure, I don't know,
Speaker 2: Like this is I feel like our our I don't know,
Speaker 2: our legal system seems to be sort of woefully unprepared
Speaker 2: for this.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, it's not. Again, in fairness, everyone has before.
Speaker 1: Trump was willing to play the game, right like we are, Like,
Speaker 1: obviously George W. Bush stole the fucking election, no argument there,
Speaker 1: so did Nixon. But they did it with enough plausible deniability,
Speaker 1: right that the elite were that there was not there
Speaker 1: was not a fear among the quote unquote deep state
Speaker 1: or you know, the people the elites in this country
Speaker 1: that like this would obviously be someone overthrowing the government, right,
Speaker 1: And Nixon's case, fucking LBJ like basically refused to go
Speaker 1: after him for breaking the law and extended the Vietnam
Speaker 1: War and committing treason because it would be bad in
Speaker 1: his view for the country. Horrible mistake obviously. And with
Speaker 1: George W. Bush, you know, he had he had the
Speaker 1: court on his side, and it like so there was
Speaker 1: there was enough plausible deniability that, you know, it was
Speaker 1: not like it is with Trump where he was just
Speaker 1: like I'm gonna have a mob, yeah, like a capital
Speaker 1: you know, cat.
Speaker 2: You know, I was thinking about this, like the last
Speaker 2: time someone actually did something like this, I think it
Speaker 2: was the Corrupt Bargain in like eighteen seventy three, were
Speaker 2: just like like they there was this argument or the
Speaker 2: like Wilmington, Yeah, well I mean I mean like yeah,
Speaker 2: but like like on on on the presidential level of
Speaker 2: like literally someone like like Ruthero Behayes famously, like they
Speaker 2: had basically this incredible thing where like both parties were
Speaker 2: like they couldn't decide who was supposed to count the
Speaker 2: votes and which whichever like part of the two parties
Speaker 2: counted the votes was going to declare it they won
Speaker 2: the that they won the election. And so they worked
Speaker 2: out this like incredibly basically they worked out this compromise
Speaker 2: where like the Republicans got Rutherford Behayes like in office,
Speaker 2: but they also ended reconstruction. But that but and that
Speaker 2: that that was a period that was long ago enough
Speaker 2: that like you could do that shit without like involving
Speaker 2: the courts or involving this sort of like massive state apparatus.
Speaker 2: And you kind of like can't, I don't know, you
Speaker 2: can't outside of like Illinois, you can't really be that
Speaker 2: corrupt anymore.
Speaker 3: You have to sort of like the reason Sandvea Goes
Speaker 3: called en run by the sea Maya.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, look, you have to you have to respect
Speaker 1: you know, local culture with these kinds of things and Illinois,
Speaker 1: it would actually be like an act of genocide to
Speaker 1: try to make Illinois politics not incredibly Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean right, that's the destruction of a people.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Like like one of the most hated political figures
Speaker 2: in like the entire history of Illinois was this like
Speaker 2: state senator who went down for corruption, but went down
Speaker 2: for like one hundred dollars of corruption and despise like
Speaker 2: one of the most hated political figures in Illinois because
Speaker 2: he only went down for you only did one hundred
Speaker 2: dollars of crimes, whereas like our current governor did like
Speaker 2: a bunch of really funny fraud and everyone loves him
Speaker 2: because it's hilarious where he like he like he like
Speaker 2: took all of the bathrooms out of one of his
Speaker 2: houses so it wouldn't be classified the house.
Speaker 3: That's kind of That's that's the guy you want in
Speaker 3: judge your legatives.
Speaker 1: When he sees a loophole, that's the guy. If we
Speaker 1: ever have a corruption Olympics, that's our only chance at
Speaker 1: beating the Russians. Iis is gonna be our dream team.
Speaker 2: Like Prinsker is the least corrupt governor I've had in
Speaker 2: my lifetime. This is the least corrupt guy. He is, like,
Speaker 2: like he is corrupt, but like yeah, it's I don't know,
Speaker 2: always something amazing. We should probably get back to this stuff.
Speaker 2: And so the last thing he got was they got
Speaker 2: him of like conspiracy against rights, so like a conspiracy
Speaker 2: against the right to vote and have your vote counted,
Speaker 2: which sure, yeah, do a bad thing to do.
Speaker 1: I think conspiracy.
Speaker 2: I mean it's not good, like all of the things
Speaker 2: that he like they're accusing of, like he pretty he
Speaker 2: clearly did. Yeah. Yeah. So I want to also talk
Speaker 2: about the way this has been being talked about in
Speaker 2: the media because one of the things is happening here,
Speaker 2: and this is this is sort of a trend with
Speaker 2: all forms of like things that are in the written language,
Speaker 2: is that everyone only reads the first like maybe one
Speaker 2: chapter or like especially the first couple of pages of
Speaker 2: something from any like written document. So this is why
Speaker 2: like all the like you know, the like abandon all
Speaker 2: hope you you enter here from Dante's Inferno. That's that's
Speaker 2: that's the reason, that's the line everyone knows because it's
Speaker 2: in like the first couple of chapters and in this one,
Speaker 2: with this case, The thing that everyone got to was
Speaker 2: there's this very early part in the indictment where the
Speaker 2: guy's like, well, yeah, so like it is legal to
Speaker 2: like lie about the election, like you have the free
Speaker 2: speech right to do that. But then also Trump knowingly
Speaker 2: lied about the election and use it to try to
Speaker 2: like fraud do fraud. And everyone's getting really hung up
Speaker 2: on this thing about like trying to like the court
Speaker 2: having to prove that he knew he was lying, which
Speaker 2: is kind of like an incidental thing to the act
Speaker 2: actual like like the actual stuff he's getting charged for.
Speaker 2: We'll get into it, but like like it's not just
Speaker 2: that he was lying, that he was like actively trying
Speaker 2: to get a bunch of state officials to appoint him. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but but this is this has led to some just
Speaker 2: like absolutely hilarious shit from Republicans who are like, none
Speaker 2: of you can prove that Trump knew he was lying,
Speaker 2: Like there's there's no way to know Trump is Trump
Speaker 2: is so Trump that like you can't you can't, you
Speaker 2: can't convict him lying because he maybe maybe you just
Speaker 2: didn't know.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, guys, that may not be the defense
Speaker 1: you think it is. No, this motherfucker is so dumb.
Speaker 1: You can't like this guy didn't even know if he's
Speaker 1: full of shit?
Speaker 2: So good.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like arguing that somebody who shoots two
Speaker 1: or three people to death is not guilty because he
Speaker 1: had his eyes closed, was pulling the trigger, he didn't
Speaker 1: know where he was shooting.
Speaker 2: That's not a crime. The other one, the only one
Speaker 2: they'd been pulling, is the old like he didn't know
Speaker 2: it was illegal, which.
Speaker 1: I or that is absolutely not how the law works.
Speaker 1: But this is you know who that not how the
Speaker 1: law works, by.
Speaker 2: The way, This is this how you can tell that
Speaker 2: like none of these people have ever like had to
Speaker 2: deal with the legal system at all ever except for Baby,
Speaker 2: Like I don't know, like what are two of these
Speaker 2: guys like probably caught weird charges for like unregulated securities
Speaker 2: selling or some shit, but like no whom amongst us?
Speaker 2: You know? Yeah yeah, but yeah, so so the Republican
Speaker 2: side of it's been very funny. Okay, So before we
Speaker 2: get into what like specific things they're going after Trump for,
Speaker 2: I want to like talk about what his actual what
Speaker 2: Trump's actual plan was, because I think a lot of
Speaker 2: it's kind of been forgotten. So the first plan and
Speaker 2: this is the part that is that's not actually in
Speaker 2: this trial at all, right, like not really like there's
Speaker 2: his initial plan to steal the election was that. Okay.
Speaker 2: So one of the things that happened in twenty sixteen
Speaker 2: was that like absentee voters like over like not a woman,
Speaker 2: absentee voters like swung enormously Democrat, right, And that was
Speaker 2: one of the things Trump had been using to prove
Speaker 2: there was like voter fraud or whatever. And then you know,
Speaker 2: COVID happened, and so Trump had this, like you know,
Speaker 2: had had a plan which was like on a what
Speaker 2: He's like, okay, so on election night, it's going to
Speaker 2: look like I won because they're only going to have counted,
Speaker 2: like they're only gonna have counted the votes that were
Speaker 2: like done in person, and those are overwhelmingly Trump. And
Speaker 2: I remember like that night, like having to tell all
Speaker 2: my friends, like no, no, no, these are not the
Speaker 2: real results. This is this is this is just the
Speaker 2: in person votes. The absente votes are coming.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And his initial plan was to try to just like
Speaker 2: declare victory that night, basically try to declare victory immediately
Speaker 2: and then get everyone to stop counting and that didn't work,
Speaker 2: Like even like even Fox News would have eventually like
Speaker 2: stopped playing along with it, Like this got to make
Speaker 2: a huge trouble with Trump because they like called Arizona.
Speaker 1: Yeah he's still pissed that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now and again like this this didn't work, so
Speaker 2: they didn't like he's not being tried for that, even
Speaker 2: though that was also very blatantly steal the election. What
Speaker 2: they are charging him for was so after after, so
Speaker 2: there was like that stuff, and there was all these
Speaker 2: like stop the vote mobs that kept showing up in places, yes,
Speaker 2: stop the count right, yeah, yeah, it's it's not the count,
Speaker 2: but then also in some places they are like we
Speaker 2: need to count more and yeah, yeah, it was like
Speaker 2: it was a it was a whole thing. But you
Speaker 2: know what, once that fails, right, Trump and his coup
Speaker 2: plotters are like legal people are just sort of like
Speaker 2: freestyling it. And that's the part where you get to
Speaker 2: the actual conspiracies that he's being charged with here. But
Speaker 2: before before we get to those conspiracies, do you know
Speaker 2: what else is a conspiracy?
Speaker 3: The existence of products and services which you think will
Speaker 3: improve your life.
Speaker 2: How cheap they are, that's the conspiracy they've lowered the
Speaker 2: price so much it is illegal of all products and services.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's defacial news. Incredible news. We're back and uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I've got some good news for you. We are all
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Speaker 2: This is probably less illegal than anything we're talking about
Speaker 2: right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, almost certainly. Look, it's not against the law to
Speaker 1: sell cigarettes that that you don't pay taxes on. I
Speaker 1: think we can all agree that that's fine.
Speaker 2: Actually, no, you can use that apt I think you
Speaker 2: legally can do that if you're selling it in an airport.
Speaker 1: If you're selling it in an airport, yeah, if it's
Speaker 1: duty free, right, And I, because I have such a
Speaker 1: childlike imagination, the whole world is really my airport. Ergo,
Speaker 1: we can always sell tax free cigarettes here at cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media.
Speaker 3: That's why we have the small plane that takes off
Speaker 3: from Rob's house every day. It's like a remote control plane.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right from a text, it technically counts.
Speaker 1: And we are also allowed to run those those Joe
Speaker 1: camel ads again, so you know, everybody who's nineties nostalgic,
Speaker 1: there you go once who made it all? Right?
Speaker 2: So the first conspiracy thing that he's getting charged with
Speaker 2: is the like fake electors thing. He also has like
Speaker 2: six unnamed co conspirators, and we know we probably know
Speaker 2: who like five of them are. So the first one,
Speaker 2: obviously is Rudy Giuliotti, who is having the time of
Speaker 2: his life question Mark he is he is like he
Speaker 2: is melting so funny TV like it's The second one
Speaker 2: is probably John Eastman. And this is interesting because Eastman
Speaker 2: is the guy who he's like the legal mind behind
Speaker 2: in January sixth. He's the guy who like thinks that
Speaker 2: he's found a loophole in the law that allows like
Speaker 2: the vice president to refuse to certify the election. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and so this is I don't want to make something
Speaker 2: clear at the outset, like he does not have like
Speaker 2: Pence does not have the power to do this.
Speaker 1: You're not allowed to do that.
Speaker 2: No, no, like you can't do this right, like, like
Speaker 2: this is if Pence had gone along with this, that
Speaker 2: would have been a coup, right like that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I call this a coup.
Speaker 1: Like there's not a clause in the constitution that says
Speaker 1: unless this guy doesn't want to have an election. This
Speaker 1: is not.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: It's seemed like admiralty flag ta legal conspiracy that yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: guaranteed it came from Reddit before he found it.
Speaker 2: That's it's some it's some real bullshit like this somehow again,
Speaker 2: this is the legal basis for what they were trying
Speaker 2: to do in January sixth I I don't know. Words
Speaker 2: words fail me, Like tragedy is farce of the Brooks
Speaker 2: Brothers riot, I guess, but like this is like farst
Speaker 2: number three at I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think the first one. The first one was Nixon
Speaker 1: extending the Vietnam War in order to uh win his election.
Speaker 1: The farce was the Brooks Brothers riot. And now we're
Speaker 1: at like lead poisoning, brain damage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like this is this is this is Marks failed
Speaker 2: to consider that you could have a third or fourth farce,
Speaker 2: like he only got to one. So speaking speaking of farce,
Speaker 2: so the third the third cookes Buwag is probably Sidney Powell,
Speaker 2: who apparently the last I heard about Sidney Powell, He's
Speaker 2: currently like owns a bed and breakfast and spends all
Speaker 2: of his time talking with his guest about the Trump administration.
Speaker 2: So things are going great for Sidney Powell, who is
Speaker 2: on a.
Speaker 3: Trump's more or less what I would like him to do. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean he can just keep sticking to doing that.
Speaker 2: Yeah great. Yeah. So the fourth guy is Jeffrey Clark,
Speaker 2: who doesn't really matter. The fifth guy I just want
Speaker 2: to like, Okay, so I I partially there's only like
Speaker 2: only really Giuliani Eastman in Powell matter. But the fifth
Speaker 2: guy is named Kenneth Chelsea Bro, which.
Speaker 1: Okay, now you're fucking with us. Now, that's not a name.
Speaker 1: That's not a name.
Speaker 2: I got nothing. I don't know, Like that is not
Speaker 2: a name they have like dug up members of like
Speaker 2: the old Chela arisocracy that like I I got, I
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I've never never been this angry in my life. That's
Speaker 1: not a naked ship now, like that's that.
Speaker 3: Okay, it's not Cheese Bro, It's Chelsea Brow.
Speaker 2: His name, no idea. It's it's c H E. S E.
Speaker 2: Bro chesa Brow.
Speaker 1: I don't know, there's no version of how you outside
Speaker 1: of Boston. I know is he bro.
Speaker 2: Okay, so we should also she's really that's so bad?
Speaker 3: Yeah no, I know a guy from Central California with
Speaker 3: that name.
Speaker 2: That is that is viscerally upsetting. Okay, So just speaking
Speaker 2: of viscerally upsetting. So we should remind everyone how we
Speaker 2: should mind everyone how American elections work, because it's it's
Speaker 2: really one of the worst systems anyone's ever developed. So okay, So, like,
Speaker 2: as as most people probably know, you don't directly elect
Speaker 2: the president. What you do instead is each each state
Speaker 2: like you vote, well, okay, so sorry, let's run this up.
Speaker 2: Each state selects electors. Now, there's nothing in the constitution
Speaker 2: that says you have to select electors by like voting
Speaker 2: for them. It's just that every state chose to do that.
Speaker 2: There's like a whole crank theory of Republican like the
Speaker 2: egal jurisprudence where they're trying to use that to be
Speaker 2: able to just like not basically not have normal elections.
Speaker 2: But you know, so because this is like dog shit, right,
Speaker 2: like it's it's bad for a number of reasons. The
Speaker 2: first obvious one is that like this means you the
Speaker 2: US does not have one person, one vote at all,
Speaker 2: Like the entire American political system is just a giant
Speaker 2: violation of differences of one person, one vote because people's
Speaker 2: votes are just worth more than others because of the electors.
Speaker 2: The second thing that's really bad, right is again like
Speaker 2: those individual electors can technically vote like however they want to,
Speaker 2: So you could you could be an elector who's posted
Speaker 2: to vote for someone and then vote for someone else.
Speaker 2: It's actually happened. Although I'm not mattering, but like one
Speaker 2: of Gore's electors I think defected to what's his name,
Speaker 2: the third guy who ran I can't remember his.
Speaker 3: Name, someone in twenty six the guy, yeah, someone did
Speaker 3: in twenty sixteen as well, I think rogue election. Yeah,
Speaker 3: there's a little bit of like, I know, this is
Speaker 3: a good time. I was going to talk about different
Speaker 3: procedural and substantive democracy. I could talk about it now
Speaker 3: or later, but I think it relates to what you're
Speaker 3: talking about.
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, do it now.
Speaker 3: But what out Yeah there were there were ten in
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen. Wow face spotted Egle is the one I'm
Speaker 3: thinking of someone voted for face spotted eagle. But yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: So one thing I wanted to talk about, like with
Speaker 3: relation to what you're saying here, is like the difference
Speaker 3: between procedural and substantive democracy, because I think it's really
Speaker 3: important when we're looking at like what's happening in the US.
Speaker 3: So when we talk about like a lot of this
Speaker 3: language comes from the like nineteen nineties obsession with transitions
Speaker 3: to democracy that happened a lot in political science, right,
Speaker 3: like and history to an extent, where we were looking
Speaker 3: at these like post Soviet countries and post colonial countries
Speaker 3: and as they moved towards this like what's considered a
Speaker 3: democracy in the kind of neoliberal frame, we talked about
Speaker 3: procedural and substantive democracy. So procedural democracy are things which
Speaker 3: have the institutions and procedures in place. You vote, there
Speaker 3: are elections, the ballots are cast, and that results in
Speaker 3: this case, the elector is going to electoral college and
Speaker 3: the electoral college to delive as a president. And then
Speaker 3: substantive democracy is where people have a substantive say, a
Speaker 3: means of deciding who is in charge, right, who runs
Speaker 3: a state and the US is moving further and further
Speaker 3: from substantive democracy.
Speaker 2: Like it's been.
Speaker 3: Interesting to see people bringing that like because of course
Speaker 3: that nineteen nineties discourse was centered heavily in the US
Speaker 3: right as like the paragon of democratic virtue, and then
Speaker 3: it was used to condescend to other countries and be like, oh,
Speaker 3: you're not a fully consolidated democracy. At them, Lindzen Stepan.
Speaker 3: If people want to look up Linds and step Kind,
Speaker 3: if they're reboard, they can. But they talk about like
Speaker 3: a consolidated democracy being one where democracy is the only
Speaker 3: game in town. And all of this stuff was heavily
Speaker 3: based on kind of aspiring to be the US right
Speaker 3: countries in Africa East when you're perspiring to be an
Speaker 3: American democracy. And it's very funny now to see that
Speaker 3: the US doesn't fit most definitions a substantive democracy or
Speaker 3: a consolidated one, like it's not the only game in
Speaker 3: town for millions of Americans anymore.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: It's highly amusing.
Speaker 1: My other amusings what I would call it absolutely James.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny. It's just funny. Nothing that will happen,
Speaker 3: it's fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah. My other favorite example of like those of like
Speaker 2: how bullshit those like democracy theorists were was like every
Speaker 2: single one of those people the moment that Zapetas the
Speaker 2: uprising happened, just like immediately shut the fuck up and
Speaker 2: never mentioned it ever, Like it just does not come
Speaker 2: up like the thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean a lot of the like, yeah, a
Speaker 3: lot of them really had a lot of them also
Speaker 3: were like too busy looking at things, and like in Spain, right,
Speaker 3: people looked at Spain's quote unquote transition as one of
Speaker 3: the earlier models and then went on to model things
Speaker 3: off Spain. Spain is at best an incomplete transition now right,
Speaker 3: people paying attention to the most recent elections will maybe
Speaker 3: have noticed this, Like Spain is, Spain is not a
Speaker 3: country where democracies any game in town. Right, they had
Speaker 3: an attempted to coup in nineteen eighty one, and so
Speaker 3: like then they're kind of looking backwards off something because
Speaker 3: Spain was satisfactorly democratic for them that it said he
Speaker 3: wasn't for a lot of Spanish people.
Speaker 2: So yeah, not a big fan.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I don't know about you guys, but I
Speaker 1: think there's nothing wrong with the way we did side
Speaker 1: things of democracies.
Speaker 3: God gave it on the tablets to some old white
Speaker 3: men they had slaves, and that that is good.
Speaker 1: Great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been funny also watching those people trying to
Speaker 2: like actually go back and look at like at what
Speaker 2: point the US became like a democracy in any real sense,
Speaker 2: And it's like, really, like, if you're gonna do this seriously,
Speaker 2: you cannot argue that it was a democracy until like
Speaker 2: after Jim Crow, so like really like the sixties and
Speaker 2: even then, so like I don't know, like there's been
Speaker 2: a lot of attempts to sort of make the stuff work.
Speaker 2: But then also you have all of this bullshit where
Speaker 2: again like because because it's based on this elector shit,
Speaker 2: you can like this is how Trump was able to
Speaker 2: like to try to do all this very weird stuff.
Speaker 2: And this is the sort of you know, this is
Speaker 2: the part where we get into like Trump's second plan,
Speaker 2: which his plan, and this is the one he's actually
Speaker 2: getting charged for. So his thing was he was trying
Speaker 2: to get states to just like ignore the popular vote
Speaker 2: and decertified. So there's this process where like there's a
Speaker 2: day on which like the electors that do the electoral
Speaker 2: votes are like certified. And so his he was he
Speaker 2: was trying to do a couple of things before that.
Speaker 2: He was trying to like get the actual electors like
Speaker 2: not certified and then have like another set of electors
Speaker 2: and pointed that would vote for him, and then that
Speaker 2: didn't work, and so he was trying to get so
Speaker 2: like on that same day, there were also a bunch
Speaker 2: of slates of electors that like like did like a
Speaker 2: fake appointment thing, basically like trying to claim they were
Speaker 2: the real electors in a bunch of states. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And this one was funny too because like some of
Speaker 2: the people who were like who like were on these
Speaker 2: slates like didn't know that they weren't the real electors,
Speaker 2: Like they had just been told that they were the
Speaker 2: real so they like unwittingly were like part of this
Speaker 2: coup attempt. And so the indictment, So that's the second part,
Speaker 2: and so that also was kind of falling apart, And
Speaker 2: so then we get to the sort of third thing,
Speaker 2: which is this entire effort to get Mike Pence to
Speaker 2: not certify the election or so that this trit version
Speaker 2: of one was that he doesn't certify the election at all,
Speaker 2: and the second version of conspiracy was like so there
Speaker 2: were these states set up where Trump had put like
Speaker 2: a second slate of electors, and the plan was to
Speaker 2: like have those are like contested states, and so the
Speaker 2: plan was to have Pence say that, like none of
Speaker 2: those states had actually vowdly selected electors, so their votes
Speaker 2: don't matter, and then just like say that Trump won
Speaker 2: the election, and none of this makes anything. And the
Speaker 2: reason this is like incomprehensible is like none of this
Speaker 2: makes any sense, right, Like this is all just gibberish bullshit. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but but into this mess drops Danny Quail. Now I
Speaker 2: think everyone, so you two know who Daddy Quail is.
Speaker 2: I I'm realizing I was running into people when I
Speaker 2: when I've been talking about this sort of story I'm
Speaker 2: about to tell who don't know who Danny Quayle is.
Speaker 2: And I I feel I have a moral obligation to
Speaker 2: introduce this guy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, give the man his full name here, James Danforth Quail. God,
Speaker 3: I didn't know his name was dan fourth Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: oh yeah, no determinism and its finest.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So Quail, I think, is probably most famous for she
Speaker 2: was stee j W. Bush's vice president, right, And so okay,
Speaker 2: so I want to tell the actual full So the
Speaker 2: common version of the story that happens is that he
Speaker 2: doesn't know he didn't know how his pew potato, and
Speaker 2: that's true, but the actual story is so much funnier
Speaker 2: than that. So okay, Quail is so okay, Quail is
Speaker 2: is Georgie's Bush's vice president. Right, It's nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 2: like the like they're on They're like starting to go
Speaker 2: into election season, yea. And Quail goes to like this
Speaker 2: spelling bee that's happening in this elementary school to like
Speaker 2: promote some random.
Speaker 1: I horrible idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah and so so kid. He asked this kid to
Speaker 2: spell potato and the kid walks up and the kid
Speaker 2: spells pano correctly. This kid is like eight right, this
Speaker 2: is like it is like mighty so and then I
Speaker 2: Quail looks at it and looks at the Apparently they
Speaker 2: had a card that was spelled wrong. But Quail doesn't
Speaker 2: realize that the card is spelled wrong, so he goes
Speaker 2: to the board. He looks at the kid and goes,
Speaker 2: but you need to have someone to card and this
Speaker 2: kid is just baffled because she spelled the hito correctly.
Speaker 1: Are you talking about the vice President of the United
Speaker 1: That kid's an anarchist.
Speaker 2: Now, like, there's there's no way someone did all follow
Speaker 2: up with him. Apparently he like he's like a small
Speaker 2: business owner or something, and he just tell us the
Speaker 2: story all the time. Very funny, but okay, this was
Speaker 2: a period of American history like this, like is one
Speaker 2: of the reasons that George H. W. Bush didn't win
Speaker 2: re election Like this broke twelve unbroken years of Republicans
Speaker 2: winning every single election.
Speaker 3: Based he does seem like a plant. Like I don't
Speaker 3: know if you've got some of his other ridiculous Oh
Speaker 3: I'm gona.
Speaker 2: Of this quote. Okay, so less you think Quail just
Speaker 2: had like one flub, Like, no, she's just like this.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna read a couple of So there's like a
Speaker 2: bunch of people who spent a bunch of time extensively
Speaker 2: documenting Dan Quayle quotes because that's what you did on
Speaker 2: the internet in the nineties. Yeah, okay, the Holocaust was
Speaker 2: an obscene period in our nation's history, I mean this
Speaker 2: century's history. But we all lived in this century. I
Speaker 2: didn't live in this century.
Speaker 1: I feel like I want to diagram that one, Like what, Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: cocaine was really kicking in.
Speaker 2: You know, she has this kind of in this same
Speaker 2: way that Trump has, like this cant in which he
Speaker 2: does all of his incorportensiable things, Like Quail also has
Speaker 2: a can't like. He does this kind of thing where
Speaker 2: he does the like he says a sentence and then
Speaker 2: he says, I mean something else, I mean something else,
Speaker 2: and it does none of them follows from the other one,
Speaker 2: so he does one of the other famous ones. Hawaii
Speaker 2: has always been a pivotal a pivotal role in the Pacific.
Speaker 2: It is in the Pacific. It is a part of
Speaker 2: the United States. That is an island that is right there.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: Fuck, that's very famously he went on to write large
Speaker 1: portions of Wikipedia, so that that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2: It's so good. Yeah, quails are in.
Speaker 3: Wikipedia calls him an intellectual lightweight and incompetent individual Wells,
Speaker 3: which is not untrue.
Speaker 1: Pretty hard to argue about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Mars is essentially in the same orbit. Mars is
Speaker 2: somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important.
Speaker 2: We have seen pictures where their canals, we believe and water.
Speaker 2: If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If
Speaker 2: oxygen means we can breathe.
Speaker 1: Oh good, Okay, Wow, there's a lot of science coming
Speaker 1: out of that statements.
Speaker 2: Man was vice president of the United States. We have
Speaker 2: a firm commitment to NATO. We are a part of NATO.
Speaker 2: We have a firm commitment to Europe. We are a
Speaker 2: part of Europe.
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, he's so good. Well now you see, Maya,
Speaker 1: you just you you were not you are not up
Speaker 1: on your your geographic history because the mountain ranges in
Speaker 1: Scotland are the same mountain range as the Appellachians, so
Speaker 1: technically we are in Europe.
Speaker 2: In many ways. Damn, I've been styled on by Dan Quayle.
Speaker 2: There you go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, now okay, other
Speaker 2: than the fact that it's really funny, you like, why
Speaker 2: why am I talking about Danny Quayle, And the answer
Speaker 2: is that. Okay. So remember Trump needs for his like
Speaker 2: completely nonsense thing to like even kind of go to
Speaker 2: the next step of failing. He needs to convince Mike
Speaker 2: Pence and not certify the election. And Pence is like
Speaker 2: legitimately going back and forward on this. He's like he's
Speaker 2: having this like moral dilemma and like he like wants
Speaker 2: to do it, but he's he's having problems making decisions,
Speaker 2: and so he calls his old friend Danny Quail. And
Speaker 2: I think this is a really fascinating moment of sort
Speaker 2: of you know, like this, I think it's really fascinating
Speaker 2: indication of like how off the rails everything has gotten
Speaker 2: since we released in twenty sixteen, but like twenty twenty
Speaker 2: sort of just like accelerates the magnitude of this, which
Speaker 2: is that like Quail is like the human symbol of
Speaker 2: the decrepitness of American politics in the eighties and nineties, right,
Speaker 2: like this is a guy who makes like senile regular
Speaker 2: look like a genius, and in twenty twenty and twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one, like Pence is supposed to be one of
Speaker 2: the like quote unquote adults in the room in twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: and Pence goes to Quail and is like, what I
Speaker 2: need to do this coup? Like I don't have a
Speaker 2: choice of under so much pressure, And Danny Quail, the
Speaker 2: man who can't spell potato, instantly is like, no, what
Speaker 2: are you talking about, Like you can't do this coup,
Speaker 2: like obviously can't do this, and and Pence Pence just.
Speaker 4: Like argues with him.
Speaker 2: He's like no, no, Like he keeps arguing with him,
Speaker 2: like no, I have to do what I have to
Speaker 2: do it, and Quails like what are you talking about?
Speaker 2: Like of course you can't like not certify the election,
Speaker 2: Like what what are you doing? And this actually works
Speaker 2: and this convinces Pence not to actually certify the election,
Speaker 2: and so you know, we we have reached a point
Speaker 2: in history where like you can make an argument I
Speaker 2: don't think it's correct, but you can make an argument
Speaker 2: that Danny fucking Quail saved the American Republic.
Speaker 3: They say, just from two Republican presidents.
Speaker 2: I just I don't know. I can't get over this.
Speaker 2: It's just like Danny Quail is the voice of reason
Speaker 2: and moderation and like, oh god, I don't know this country.
Speaker 3: It's bizarre.
Speaker 2: The whole thing is is bizarre. Yeah, it's it's bleak.
Speaker 2: We should do it, ad Brick, I don't have a
Speaker 2: pivot there.
Speaker 1: Speaking of auto golpe gulp down these products automatic magic cool.
Speaker 4: And we are back to a bit more fraud.
Speaker 2: So okay, the other thing is being yeah, this is
Speaker 2: actually wait, this is actually fraud. No, I guess this
Speaker 2: is the fraud one it's still a technically a fraud one.
Speaker 1: So that's part of it at least.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So so we've reached the like third and fourth indictments.
Speaker 2: It's actually really funny if you go read the thing,
Speaker 2: all of the actual texts of the indictment with the
Speaker 2: evidence and stuff is all under the first indictment, and
Speaker 2: then the second, third, and fourth ones are like, yeah,
Speaker 2: go refer to ex paragraphs as like the first one.
Speaker 2: So there's the second, third, and fourth like charges are
Speaker 2: like like one paragraph long. But basically this is about
Speaker 2: the January sixth stuff. They spend much time listening like
Speaker 2: all of the random stuff that Trump said about the
Speaker 2: election that was not true. They also have a very
Speaker 2: funny list of all of the people who told him
Speaker 2: that like this stuff wasn't true, which includes Mike Pence,
Speaker 2: the leadership of the Justice Department, the Director of National Intelligence,
Speaker 2: the head of SISA, which is the Department of Homeland
Speaker 2: Security Cybersecurity Agency, a bunch of White House attorneys like
Speaker 2: his own staff, and all of his politicians was backing.
Speaker 2: He's like every single person was like this is not real,
Speaker 2: and Trump was like no, no, no, hold on, we
Speaker 2: can still win the election. You know, Okay. So there's
Speaker 2: like that stuff, and then there's the stuff that like
Speaker 2: he like specifically did to like try to pressure these
Speaker 2: state politicians into like certifying him as president. So like
Speaker 2: they he had a bunch of calls and like his
Speaker 2: like staff people had a bunch of calls. We were
Speaker 2: like they tried to get like that the Speaker of
Speaker 2: the House in Arizona to do this by saying they're
Speaker 2: voting fraud. And the Speaker of the House was like, Okay,
Speaker 2: there's no we haven't found any fraud. I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 2: gonna read from the thing co conspirator to you concluded
Speaker 2: that he quote didn't know enough about the facts on
Speaker 2: the ground in Arizona, but nonetheless told the Speaker of
Speaker 2: the House to decertify and quote let the court sort
Speaker 2: it out. Sort it out. So again, this is this
Speaker 2: is this is the Roger Stone strategy, but done like yes,
Speaker 2: so unbelievably poorly. Yeah. Yeah, So and there's a bunch
Speaker 2: of sort of like lists. There's like all this list
Speaker 2: of like this like Trump does like identical stuff in
Speaker 2: like Michigan and Pennsylvania. There's like that phone call in
Speaker 2: Georgia he gets in trouble for some from Wisconsin. There's
Speaker 2: another thing he tried to do, which I actually hadn't
Speaker 2: heard about this one. I don't know. It's either I
Speaker 2: just forgot it or I just never ran into it,
Speaker 2: where he was trying to like use Justice Department letterhead
Speaker 2: and like the signature of the acting Attorney General to
Speaker 2: like send the fate, like pretend to send a letter
Speaker 2: from the Justice Departments to a bunch of states to
Speaker 2: tell them there was fraud and get them to like.
Speaker 3: Amazing, Yeah, since I'm sick and I can't come to school. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And the funny thing is the problem is that.
Speaker 1: They so they try to there's a lot that's funny
Speaker 1: about that. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna see it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we gotta plaralize that fucker.
Speaker 2: It's so good. And the scheme falls apart because again
Speaker 2: the guy Trump appoints it as the acting Attorney General
Speaker 2: is like, no, like, you cannot just department, and they
Speaker 2: keep trying to argue with him, and it keeps not working.
Speaker 2: And this is where we get to another part of
Speaker 2: this whole thing that I this has been getting a
Speaker 2: lot of press attention and it's interesting, but I think
Speaker 2: there's more to the story that people haven't been talking about,
Speaker 2: which is so the guy who's probably Jeffrey Clark, like
Speaker 2: gets into an argument with the Deputy White House Council
Speaker 2: and the w White House Council is you know, is
Speaker 2: telling is telling Jeffrey Clark, who thinks one of Trumps
Speaker 2: lawyers is telling him like like Trump can't stay in office,
Speaker 2: Like there's no version of this where Trump stays in
Speaker 2: office after like January twentieth, and he says, quote, they
Speaker 2: would be right, it's in every major American city. And
Speaker 2: then the guy who's probably Clark says, quote, well, Deputy
Speaker 2: White House Counsel, that's why there's an insurrection Act. And
Speaker 2: this is where we need to get to another a
Speaker 2: couple of interesting parts of the story.
Speaker 1: One, you know, one clear, when you're saying that's why
Speaker 1: we have an insurrection Act, you're saying we can just
Speaker 1: shoot those people, yeah, in the streets, Like that is
Speaker 1: what that statement means. Yeah, and that is what the
Speaker 1: stakes were. Everybody was out in the streets in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty was aware of this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and yeah, you know, this is the thing I
Speaker 2: kind of want to talk about, which is that like
Speaker 2: part of the reason this coup fails is that so
Speaker 2: Trump is talking about doing the Insurrection Act twice in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty. Well, I guess once in twenty twenty. I
Speaker 2: think this might have been the second time. I've been
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, but like in that last year, she
Speaker 2: tries to use the Insurrection Act against the uprising in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, and his like his chief of staff like
Speaker 2: like a bunch of like a bunch of generals, and
Speaker 2: his own chief of staff like tell them the fuck off.
Speaker 2: And that's like part of the reason why this didn't happen,
Speaker 2: which which is interesting because like I don't know, like
Speaker 2: there there have been, like there have been times where
Speaker 2: the US Army like has been deployed against like riots
Speaker 2: like this, right, like this this happened in the nineties.
Speaker 2: But in this situation, the army just like absolutely completely
Speaker 2: refuse to play ball. And we've we've gotten some really
Speaker 2: kind of interesting So the other thing that's happening here
Speaker 2: is like just the complete hollowing out of journalism as
Speaker 2: an institution where all of these people know all of
Speaker 2: the all these journalists like know a bunch of incredibly
Speaker 2: important stuff and they won't tell anyone because they they're
Speaker 2: saving it for their books, yep. And you know, and
Speaker 2: it's like among the things that we sort of learned
Speaker 2: in this period is like there there's basically this like
Speaker 2: I don't know what you call it, Like you could
Speaker 2: either call it like a quad um for it basically,
Speaker 2: or you could call it like a national unity government
Speaker 2: which is in power for two weeks basically where Pelosi Miley,
Speaker 2: who uh the chief of Staff who is a general
Speaker 2: like Mike Pence, Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell basically are
Speaker 2: like running the government for two weeks because they've successfully
Speaker 2: put together this counter coup where like the military has
Speaker 2: refused to like go along with Trump like trying to
Speaker 2: overthrow the government. And this is very deeply I don't know,
Speaker 2: there's some very deeply interesting stuff here where there's there's
Speaker 2: a there's a book called Iolone Can Fix It, which
Speaker 2: a couple of journalists are coming out with and there's
Speaker 2: some interesting quotes from it from specifically General Mike Miley,
Speaker 2: who's like the chairman of the Joint chiefs of Staff,
Speaker 2: who was appointed by Trump. By the way, this this
Speaker 2: is this is an important thing because like Trump, there's
Speaker 2: like seven guys who are like absolute ghouls, like Mike Pompeo,
Speaker 2: like Cia ghoul who are just like look at this
Speaker 2: coup and are like no, and Miley stuff is wild.
Speaker 2: Like Miley directly can like in meetings, is comparing Trump
Speaker 2: to Hitler. He says, quote, Yeah, this is a Reichstag moment.
Speaker 2: Miley told aids the Gospel of the Fearer, like and.
Speaker 1: There's there's a I talked about this a little bit
Speaker 1: ahead of earlier. There are some unconfirmed reports that Miley
Speaker 1: and a number of other like US military high ranking officers,
Speaker 1: basically had like a book club, and one of the
Speaker 1: books they went through in twenty twenty was a book
Speaker 1: about the Nazis' rise to power in Germany. I kind
Speaker 1: of suspect it might have been Death of a Democracy
Speaker 1: because that was big at the time. But it would
Speaker 1: make sense because he's talking in substantial detail about like
Speaker 1: he's very you can tell he's very focused in this
Speaker 1: period on Nazis taking over the government, Like he talks
Speaker 1: about it a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I'm gonna read a couple other quotes from him.
Speaker 2: He has this thing where I think I think he's
Speaker 2: talking about payoh. Here where he's talking about like this coup,
Speaker 2: and he says they may try, but they're not going
Speaker 2: to fucking succeed. He told them, you can't do this
Speaker 2: without the military. You can't do this without the CIA
Speaker 2: and the FBI. We're the guys with the guns. And
Speaker 2: he's right about this. And this is a really crucial
Speaker 2: thing that Trump fucks up about how to do a
Speaker 2: fascist coup is that you can't actually, like fascist coups
Speaker 2: don't work without the at least passive acquiescence of the state.
Speaker 2: Like if the state triest, if the army tries to
Speaker 2: stop you, your coup is not going to work, right like,
Speaker 2: unless you're someone like Franco who like has control of
Speaker 2: a huge portion of the army, if you try to
Speaker 2: do one of these sort of weird paramilitary things and
Speaker 2: the army just says no, like you're screwed. And this, this,
Speaker 2: I think was always part of trump sort of problem,
Speaker 2: was that, like, you know, if he'd sort of spent
Speaker 2: his time consolidating the kind of like fascist institutions the
Speaker 2: neo cons set up, right like, if he'd spent his time,
Speaker 2: like you know, actually like actually developing loyalty in the FBI,
Speaker 2: and the CIA and like going through and like turning
Speaker 2: Department Homeland Security, like you know, into like an even
Speaker 2: more fascist organization. He might have been able to do this,
Speaker 2: but like at the very end, like you have Miley
Speaker 2: saying this is this is on h right, this is
Speaker 2: on exercises right before the inauguration. He says, quote, here's
Speaker 2: the deal, guys, these guys are the Notre Nazis. They're
Speaker 2: bugalou boys, they're proud boys. These are the same people
Speaker 2: we fought in Woodwar too. Miley told them everyone in
Speaker 2: this room, whether you're a cop, whether you're a soldier,
Speaker 2: we're going to stop these guys to make sure we
Speaker 2: have a peaceful transfer of power. We're gonna put a
Speaker 2: steel ring around the city and the Nazis aren't getting in, Like.
Speaker 1: You know what credit where That's a pretty cool thing
Speaker 1: to get to have said.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so something like some basically him and zookep. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's like like all of like suddenly, like the all
Speaker 2: of like the senior command of the American Army suddenly
Speaker 2: turned into like nineteen forty two American generals.
Speaker 1: It's like, I don't know, I guess again, I try
Speaker 1: to say this, I try to bring this up a
Speaker 1: lot to like more radical folks when you if you
Speaker 1: want to get a lot of like the centrist lib
Speaker 1: types on your side, you could do a lot worse
Speaker 1: than Hearkening back to that whole World War two thing,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of propaganda invested in getting guys like
Speaker 1: Millie to want to feel like that.
Speaker 2: So and in this case it works.
Speaker 3: Out for it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, apparently don't know, Live Live, Antifa has poor has
Speaker 2: pulled one out.
Speaker 1: I guess it's certainly better than if the head of
Speaker 1: the military had been like, I guess I'm fine with this,
Speaker 1: so yeah, whatever, I don't know. Yeah, I have no
Speaker 1: complaints are his performance in that specific moment, uh, other
Speaker 1: than that they did actually get in so you know whatever,
Speaker 1: Like that was.
Speaker 2: When they were drilling for the inauguration.
Speaker 3: When they stuffed the capital with National God soldiers like
Speaker 3: a sausage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was just I guess it worked.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 2: My other conclusion from this though, is when when you
Speaker 2: have reached the position of like you're you're trying to
Speaker 2: figure like your top generals are trying to figure out
Speaker 2: who has enough guns to figure out whether a coup
Speaker 2: can happen like things are things are not good. This
Speaker 2: is a this is a a bad sign TM for.
Speaker 1: No, it's it's good, like as nice as it is
Speaker 1: to here that Milly understood the stakes, which is good.
Speaker 1: It's good that he understood the stakes given his position.
Speaker 1: It's not good that like so much came down to
Speaker 1: the fact that a couple dudes didn't suck in this
Speaker 1: specific way. Like, that's not a great sign for stability
Speaker 1: of democracy. Yeah, because no one voted for Miley, like right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's unsettling. Yeah, the whole democratic system was more or
Speaker 1: less of the edge of failing. And a dude who
Speaker 1: was good at war step ten and was like, here, okay,
Speaker 1: we can't I don't want to do this.
Speaker 2: One of those things, right, we know what this looks like.
Speaker 2: With Bush, We're like, if you actually know how to
Speaker 2: press the buttons of the system, right, you can't do this.
Speaker 2: But Trump just like didn't have enough control of the
Speaker 2: state apparatus and tried to sort of replicate it with
Speaker 2: true viles, and that just didn't work. Trump's problems here
Speaker 2: are twofold. One of them is that he is not
Speaker 2: capable of loyalty to anyone or anything else.
Speaker 1: Whereas a guy like George W. Bush, which means he's
Speaker 1: capable of getting teams together who are willing to take
Speaker 1: some of like who are willing to go out on
Speaker 1: a limb for him to some extent. And Bush also
Speaker 1: is system loyal. Now that doesn't mean he's not willing
Speaker 1: to fuck with the system for his own benefit, but
Speaker 1: he has a vested interest in the system continuing more
Speaker 1: or less the way that it has right as opposed
Speaker 1: to breaking it specifically forever for his own like power.
Speaker 1: You know, he was not a guy who was interested
Speaker 1: in staying in office for it. I don't say this
Speaker 1: to defend the man. He killed hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 1: people minimum, But because he was willing, he had a
Speaker 1: degree of loyalty to the system as it was seen
Speaker 1: by most people. There was not this kind of rebellion
Speaker 1: from sort of within it, right like, in fact, that
Speaker 1: deep state was largely sympathetic with him. They were willing
Speaker 1: to go with like the fucking around with the election
Speaker 1: as long as, you know, the broader structures that had
Speaker 1: given them a place to exert power and influence remained intact.
Speaker 1: And Trump was basically saying, if Millie had gone with this.
Speaker 1: If everyone had gone with this, what you are accepting
Speaker 1: is that nothing matters but this guy's opinion, right, there's
Speaker 1: not actually any sort of power in the system that
Speaker 1: you have risen to the top of. There's not any
Speaker 1: sort of power in these unelected structures within the system
Speaker 1: that you clearly think are important because they are how
Speaker 1: you why like where you have seen success right like?
Speaker 1: And frankly, you know people aren't willing to do that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. And also you're fighting against a lot
Speaker 1: of people who want to whatever fucked up things they
Speaker 1: are willing to do. They have a lot emotionally invested
Speaker 1: in the idea that they serve a democracy. Now is
Speaker 1: that a morally flawless idea? Are they always? In fact? Like? No,
Speaker 1: of course not like everyone. They're hypocrites to certain extents,
Speaker 1: But you can't push them that far like Bush pushed
Speaker 1: them about as far as you can push people like that,
Speaker 1: right this. Trump didn't have any respect for making it,
Speaker 1: for dressing it up right, and he didn't have any
Speaker 1: respect for the thing that they were a part of,
Speaker 1: and so of course a lot of them didn't go
Speaker 1: with him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think this gets back to something I've
Speaker 2: talked about a bit with with what what the neocons
Speaker 2: were doing, which that the neocons are about like the
Speaker 2: state of exception, right, they're about this, like you know,
Speaker 2: we've had the war, we now have the war on terror.
Speaker 2: We've had nine to eleven. And that means the countries
Speaker 2: in this state were like, we have the power to
Speaker 2: be like the people inside the system who are outbound
Speaker 2: by it, you could do whatever you want. And like
Speaker 2: that is descriptively right, like this is you know, both
Speaker 2: Carl Schmidt, the like Nazi jurists like that that was
Speaker 2: explicitly like his model of how you do fascism, right,
Speaker 2: and it's also like something you know, but but the
Speaker 2: thing is again like that's a very different thing than
Speaker 2: what Trump was doing, right, Like Trump wasn't doing like
Speaker 2: Trump wasn't doing this thing where he like you know,
Speaker 2: uses the apparatus of the state. He was he was
Speaker 2: doing a different, like different kind of one of them.
Speaker 1: This is what a lot of people don't understand about
Speaker 1: the Nazis is that whin Hitler took power and for
Speaker 1: the first half to two thirds of his time in power,
Speaker 1: he was very much concerned about the military and constantly
Speaker 1: making exceptions and altering and moderating aspects of his policy
Speaker 1: in order to keep the military on his side. And
Speaker 1: that continued, depending on kind of where you want to
Speaker 1: put it, either up until the Anschlusser, up until the
Speaker 1: invasion of Poland. Really to a significant extent he would
Speaker 1: whereas Trump did not. Again, there's no sort of he
Speaker 1: has no sort of respect. And I'm not saying like
Speaker 1: you should have respect for the military, but I'm saying
Speaker 1: that because he did not like power. Yeah, the fact
Speaker 1: that he did not, or the FBI for that matter,
Speaker 1: is one of the reasons why this didn't work for him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this was always kind of a problem that
Speaker 2: he has ideologically, which is like one of the things
Speaker 2: that makes it popular is he was running like against
Speaker 2: the deep state, right and like yeah, like yeah, like
Speaker 2: I know lots of people you like, I don't like
Speaker 2: the intelligence Agency's, Like the intelligence's can fuck off. The
Speaker 2: fact that like the fact that the intelligence agency's finally
Speaker 2: found a coup they wouldn't support, Like it's not as
Speaker 2: something they're good, but the pretended Yeah. But like the
Speaker 2: problem with this is like Trump is you know, he
Speaker 2: wins the primary like very explicitly by running against a
Speaker 2: lot of the like like by Nay running against neo conservatives,
Speaker 2: you can argue the extent to which he actually broke
Speaker 2: with it in terms of like appointing like Gena, he
Speaker 2: puts a bunch of neo Kon Grugles like back in power, right,
Speaker 2: but like like nominally he's running against that specific thing.
Speaker 2: And it turns out that like if if you if
Speaker 2: your appeal is you know, being like a nominally anti
Speaker 2: systemic force, and then you have to try to use
Speaker 2: the as system to stay in power. It's like, well,
Speaker 2: you know this, this happens like now you are getting
Speaker 2: charged by Jack Smith and you have like seventy eight
Speaker 2: counts against you instead of you are now the fearer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of it is you know, first off,
Speaker 1: people want to be able to believe now things about
Speaker 1: themselves and Trump didn't really give them the option of
Speaker 1: doing that. And second of all, people who are achieved
Speaker 1: this kind of level within the system want you to
Speaker 1: treat the system. They've succeeded in this if it matters,
Speaker 1: Like it's that simple. I think in a lot of yas.
Speaker 3: They want I feel validated and valued, And he was
Speaker 3: just like no, fuck you all I'm doing my gu
Speaker 3: and with genuinely shock where people like, well, we ain't coming.
Speaker 1: With you for you're I don't I really feel no
Speaker 1: no desire or no uh no impetus to move with you. Yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: this is a good idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I don't know, we'll we'll, we'll see what
Speaker 2: happens with these indictments. I don't know. I I genuine
Speaker 2: this is the importance. Yeah, this is the one that,
Speaker 2: like all the indictments, this is the one that matters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: We'll, we'll see if this actually substantively plays a role
Speaker 2: in the election. I mean, I I don't think there's
Speaker 2: a possibility that I can cost Trump the primary, like.
Speaker 1: But no, no, no, no, yeah, nothing nothing but like
Speaker 1: a heart attack could do that. But it is I
Speaker 1: will say I had some other stuff prepared that I
Speaker 1: think we'll move to another episode just because of how
Speaker 1: this has gone. But I do want to note I
Speaker 1: want to talk a little bit at the end here
Speaker 1: about is this going to matter like electorally for Trump?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Is this going to have an impact on his chances
Speaker 1: of winning the general? I think we're all agreed it's
Speaker 1: not really worth talking about the primary. He's going to
Speaker 1: win the primary barring and act of God and that's
Speaker 1: where what Yeah, anyway, so there's some infoll on this. Basically,
Speaker 1: on March twenty ninth, he was averaging about forty five
Speaker 1: percent in national primary polls, which I'm bringing up here
Speaker 1: because they help show the impact of the indictment because
Speaker 1: you don't have a lot of national polls from that time,
Speaker 1: a national general election polls. So forty five percent in March.
Speaker 1: After his first set of indictments in April, he was
Speaker 1: up to fifty four percent, So that first set of
Speaker 1: indictments did not harm him, may have helped him consolidate power,
Speaker 1: may have like activated a chunk of his base. The
Speaker 1: second indictment did not work the same way though. After
Speaker 1: June eighth, when it was reported that he was being
Speaker 1: indicted for the classified document shit and obstructing justice and
Speaker 1: getting them back yea, his average support in the primary
Speaker 1: fell not by a massive amount, by a couple of
Speaker 1: percentage points, as did his average net favorable rating. So
Speaker 1: you saw at least a he hit a wall and
Speaker 1: bounced back a little bit, not massive, not a sea change,
Speaker 1: but enough to show that it's not accurate to say
Speaker 1: voters don't care. It's more accurate to say, based on
Speaker 1: what we've seen so far, voters seem to care differently
Speaker 1: about different indictments, and I want to read a quote
Speaker 1: from a five point thirty eight article about his indictment
Speaker 1: poles here. Although we can't prove that all these shifts
Speaker 1: happen because of the indictments, the difference in reaction at
Speaker 1: least suggests that Americans are drawing distinctions between Trump's various
Speaker 1: legal troubles and other polling backs that up. According to
Speaker 1: a Yugov Yahoo News poll from July thirteenth through seventeenth,
Speaker 1: fifty percent of registered voters considered falsifying business records to
Speaker 1: conceal hush money payments to a porn star to be
Speaker 1: a serious crime, but sixty four percent of registered voters
Speaker 1: consider it a serious crime to take highly classified documents
Speaker 1: from the White House and obstruct efforts to retrieve them. Similarly,
Speaker 1: a June twenty second to twenty sixth poll from the
Speaker 1: Associated Press NRC Center for Public Affairs Research found that
Speaker 1: only thirty five percent of US adults thought Trump did
Speaker 1: something illegal when it came to the hush money payments.
Speaker 1: But fifty three percent thought he did something illegal with
Speaker 1: regards to classified documents founded his Maroologu resort in Florida.
Speaker 1: By this logic, this third indictment could be even more
Speaker 1: damaging to Trump than the one involving classified documents. According
Speaker 1: to the same Yuga of Yahoo News poll, sixty nine
Speaker 1: percent of registered voters considered it a serious crime to
Speaker 1: attempt to obstruct the certification of a presidential election, and
Speaker 1: seventy one percent said the same about conspiring to overturn
Speaker 1: the results of a presidential election. So gonna take us
Speaker 1: troubling you low number, but yeah, yeah, I wish it
Speaker 1: way it should be high.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Thing that does suggest that this could do him some damage,
Speaker 1: and especially since all of this is going to keep
Speaker 1: getting litigated, right like fucking people who get who have
Speaker 1: a decent lawyer and get arrested for like a duy
Speaker 1: can drag a court case out.
Speaker 2: For a year. This will be going on during the election.
Speaker 2: It may hurt him.
Speaker 1: You know again, I'm not willing to like say, oh,
Speaker 1: this is going to fuck the election, make it impossible
Speaker 1: from begause, I don't think the data suggests that, but
Speaker 1: it there's I think a pretty good chance that this
Speaker 1: is a net negative for him in terms of you know,
Speaker 1: the election and broadly speaking, you know, we gave the
Speaker 1: Dims a lot of shit for a couple of years
Speaker 1: for not doing enough to actually seriously strike back at
Speaker 1: the Republican authoritarian outreach, and so it would be unfair
Speaker 1: of me to not say it's good that they're doing this,
Speaker 1: Like it's good that he's facing legal trouble for what
Speaker 1: he's done. That's not enough to stop him, that's not
Speaker 1: enough to stop the Republican Party, but it is good
Speaker 1: that this has been done.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, progress. Shame wasn't earlier, should have been earlier.
Speaker 3: You know, h happening during the election is a major
Speaker 3: l in terms of how he can spin this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I think that was probably a strategic error, but.
Speaker 2: Grand juries take forever.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And the other thing that's happens is like there's
Speaker 2: been all of this time for sort of Republican pr
Speaker 2: machine to like spin all of the stuff that happened,
Speaker 2: and we've you know, and I think like part of
Speaker 2: wasn't happening the last three years is like everyone kind
Speaker 2: of just like collectively forgetting what actually happened during twenty
Speaker 2: twenty and how absolutely nuts it was, and everyone sort
Speaker 2: of going back and pretending that like things are sort
Speaker 2: of like normal now, and it's like, no, no, we're
Speaker 2: still we're still living in the eternal twenty twenty and
Speaker 2: everything is still absolutely nuts. But I don't know, It's
Speaker 2: like there's been this incredible sort of like normalization effort,
Speaker 2: both both by Biden and also like by the Republicans
Speaker 2: to make it seemed like this was like a normal
Speaker 2: thing that happened, as opposed to like the immediate wake it,
Speaker 2: where everyone was like what the fuck? So hopefully not
Speaker 2: too little, too late, hopefully this does something. But she'll see.
Speaker 1: Yes, indeed, all right, well everybody, uh you know, I
Speaker 1: guess go back to pay in rent and stuff. Uh,
Speaker 1: I'm sure twenty twenty four will be fine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it wouldn't be any problem.
Speaker 2: There's fifteen more months of this. By the way, it
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Speaker 2: for listening.