(keyboard clicking) - Yeah, it's the regular weekender, but I'm still cracking up over here. I'm Jared Yeats, Jackson. I'm here with my returning partner, Nick Halsman. We are now broadcasting live to our patrons, and this episode will be released tomorrow. And Nick, we have to talk about not just the first day of the Republican National Convention, which is roughly in the books now. We have to talk about Trump's VP candidate, which, yeah, can't wait to talk about that. More developing stories that are taking place. There is a lot happening right now. Nick, how are you? Welcome back from vacation. - Thank you very much. Just in case you want to be part of the live chat, it's over on YouTube. I put the link in the comments below, the Patreon link, so you can see that in the Patreon post. Some of you guys are already commenting, so we'll make sure to monitor that for any questions as well. But I don't know. I was having some weird, my lips were getting numb. I was having weird feelings, having to sit through that. I switched over to C-Span because the other networks were just talking for a while and weren't showing speakers. That was probably worse because then you really got to see everybody and what the whole lineup was like. So this is not good. Nothing is good. Nothing has been good since Saturday afternoon. I'll tell you that. - Yeah, and, matter of fact, go ahead and set the table. Nick, I made a list here of what has happened in the last few weeks. Are you ready? - Yes, are your lips okay? - What's the word I'm looking for? I need you to do it where we don't pile it on. Don't make it seem like it's so many things on the list. - Oh yeah, okay, that's great. Yeah, I'll make sure and do that. Are your lips okay? Are you preparing them? Can you get them in a state where they're all right? - Mm-hmm. - There we go, wonderful. In the past few weeks, Nick, the Supreme Court of the United States, the stolen Supreme Court of the United States, gutted the Chevron precedent, and gutted the administrative state, leaving it on life support, if that. They also granted conditional presidential immunity, which they kind of get to decide and hand over to whoever they want. Joe Biden suffered an incredible debate disaster. The Democratic Party has been involved in a slow and occasionally rapidly moving intraparty war that continues even to this evening. Trump survived an assassination attempt on Saturday that has sent our media into an absolute insane tailspin. The Democratic Party has absolutely failed to meet the moment, shocker of shockers. This morning, his confidential document case was dismissed by a hand-picked judge, and JD Vance, one of the most dangerous and worst people in all of American politics, was chosen as Trump's vice presidential nominee. More on why that is so bad here in just a second. Nick, I'm just gonna go ahead and throw this out there. Not good, bad, bad, all the way around. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm actually even getting down to the granular, like, the feelings of the people who are there and what they're trying to express as the individual speakers go one after another. And it's just a different world, a different reality that I don't recognize, and I don't think a lot of people do. Certainly not people listen to this show would recognize. The JD Vance thing is interesting. He's a bit of, I guess, the Bizarro Jared Yates section, wouldn't you say, sort of. He is one of my main nemeses in all of life, yeah. Yeah, he was gone round after round after round, and now he is the vice presidential nominee for the Republican Party and the Arab parent for the entire MAGA movement. It's weird how life works. It is, and it should be, you know, at least if people are a little bit, we're wondering exactly why I look at that way, is that he made his name running a book about sort of the mindset of people living in the Appalachian Mountains. And that's being kind. He wrote a book blaming poor people for being poor that gave conservatives and centrist liberals permission to never ever help them in any way, shape or form. He is a class trader. He sold out his family, everybody he ever knew, and he did it to make a fortune, to gain political power, and to get cozy up with one of the most fascistic tech billionaire oligarchs that we could find, who is now teaming up with Elon Musk to bankroll a super PAC that is going to basically pay for Donald Trump's entire campaign moving forward. Not great. By the way, it's fascinating that he is, I guess the price to get Trump back on Twitter, X is 41, a cool 41 million a month, it sounds like, right? 'Cause it's exactly what he's trying to do, right? Trump has not gone back on X. He has not been tweeting. He's desperate to get that. So yeah, I'm sure he thinks it'll help the business. And he's willing to do every can. And the fact that he said that Trump was the toughest president we've had, I think maybe since Roosevelt. I don't know. I really feel like this guy shouldn't be commenting on the history of our country. - No, and now he not only is commenting on it, he is joining with every tech fascist that he can possibly bring into a big bundling campaign. Let's talk about JD Vance as a vice presidential nominee. Number one, incredibly dangerous. What does he believe? He believes that tech overlords the people who control him and have used him as a puppet, paid for his entire campaign and made him who he is. He believes that they should be completely unfettered by government control. And by the way, as a president for that, the tech overlords will help a burgeoning authoritarian government to do whatever they want, including to surveil their own people, probably carry out security, and Nick to control culture and discourse all the way around. If that sounds bad to you, it should sound bad. So what happened immediately? And Nick, I wanna point out how this all took place. JD Vance, a 39 year old first term senator, an absolute piece of shit who is hated within the Republican party, and basically anybody who has been within 10 feet of family. What has happened is that immediately, after he was announced as the VP, this new thing called America Pack pops up. Elon Musk promises that he's going to donate over $45 million. I'll say that again, $45 million a month. And Nick, wouldn't you know it, Palantir, which is, let me check my notes. Oh, that's Peter Teal. They're also going to go ahead and bankroll this pack. So in case you're wondering, the vice presidential nomination with Donald Trump was bought and sold to the highest bidder. And basically Donald Trump, because he is a venal disgusting man, handed over the keys. And by the way, he's an old man too, Nick. He doesn't take care of himself. God knows if he can last another four years as president. Also, a piece of free professional advice to you, Donald Trump, after surviving an assassination attempt. If JD Vance is your vice president, stay away from any open windows and high floors. Maybe you should employ somebody to taste your food. And I'm not being hyperbolic. That pick was sold. And now JD Vance is the heir apparent to not only the leadership of the Republican party, but the MAGA movement that you and I've been talking about for the past few years, wondering who was going to take it over. Turns out it's not Ron DeSantis, it's going to be JD Vance. So, great. - Oh, I wonder how Dan Crenshaw feels, 'cause he was the guy, the military guy with the beard, who I think would have felt like he should have been in this position. He's still in Congress by the way, right? - Yeah, for the time being. - It's amazing because we haven't heard he has not done anything in the news in a long time. I'm sure this was his space you wanted to be involved with, but Vance was that guy a little bit in terms of what we were worried about about someone who, you know, tries to sound intelligent, right? And tries to lay out these sort of, you know, very straightforward arguments about why these things in the platform are would be good for America. But if you know what you're listening to, you realize it's vapid and completely corrupt. - Well, can we talk about what that platform is? Just so people know, because we don't want to say that he's just an extremist and not give examples. Nick, he wants to basically in divorce as we know it. He wants to make sure that women are more or less turned into breeding mayors because they're not going to have an abortion if JD Vance has his way. He is definitely for a nationwide abortion ban with absolutely no exceptions. On top of that, like he has suggested that women should stay in abusive marriages because it's good for them, it's good for the husband, it's good for the children. On top of that, he spreads white replacement theory. On top of that, Nick, he believes that tech oligarchs should rule absolutely everything. He believes that we should have a theocratic system of control. He believes that maybe we should get rid of democracy or at least maybe if there's a household with a bunch of children, maybe the parents should have extra votes for those children. That is one way that the Republican party, I assume could win a popular vote if it's rigged. The list goes on and on and on. He has talked consistently about an American Caesar who needs to come in and destroy democracy in order to save America from a liberal democracy. It is literally the worst case scenario when it comes from an ideological standpoint. - Yeah, I agree. Now they're also trying to walk back a lot of the abortion stuff that he has been on the record of saying. I mean, heck, they're trying to walk back although horrible things said about Trump, which I would imagine will be played endlessly on Luke of JD Vance Comparing Trump to Hitler. Which, by the way, good for you way to nail that perfectly when you were busy saying that before you were, I suppose, bought and sold by the tech oligarchs and anybody else who, this is all about business, it feels like, right? This is all about somehow to create a better environment tax-wise so these really rich guys can make more money. It's right, it's sort of what the end result here is on all this with the-- - This is even worse than that. This is taking the old Republican platform of tax cuts for the wealthy and adding to it the next step in the authoritarian playbook, which is controlling literally everything. And what is JD Vance and everybody around him, everything tank, every institute, every group, every affiliation that JD Vance has surrounded himself with in the past six years, Nick. What do all of them say? We have the tools because of tech and social media. If we can seize those tools, if we can push those tools, if we can control those tools, if we can bring tech over to our side, we can finally control the nation in a way that we have never done before. So it's the next evolution. And by the way, what we haven't mentioned yet, Nick, we've talked for the past couple of years about the civil war within the Republican party going from Mitch McConnell to what comes next. That's done. That's over, ring the bell, throw in the towel, it's over. The Republican party now doesn't just belong to MAGA Republicanism. It belongs to fascistic, post-liberal democracy Republicanism. - You know, I was lucky enough to turn on Fox during all this and see JD Vance be your friend and mine, Sean Hannity. I know we know that Fox News is not news and I know that they've even admitted it in private and public, whatever. It really had been a little while since I'd seen Hannity just, you know, off the cuff. It really is horrible. Every little editorial aside that he throws in there, it's not a serious program. But it was fascinating to see, like, even like how they're trying to pivot to criticize Biden for Israel and how he's not supporting Israel. And I even heard, like, people in my family who are gonna be one issue voters on Israel in this election and that's why they're gonna vote for Trump as if Biden hasn't been giving them every weapon and every bomb they request, you know, on command. It's just ridiculous. And then they were trying to frame this all and this is what Vance was saying about Iran and capitulating Iran. So of course he can reference how Trump took us on money out and look how strong he was and, you know, who would not have gone into Ukraine if he was president. It's, some of the old hits are coming back, right? And we're gonna see these guys come up, trot these things out too. And you can't forget how he categorized women who were getting abortions 'cause he thought that they considered their pregnancies inconvenienced. And he has to walk that back. And then while also spreading the lie that Democrats want, you know, pro-life Christians to pay for abortions in the 39th week. It's literally, that's gonna be the thing you'll have to see, you'll see it going on from now on, that it's gonna be taxpayer-funded abortions in the 39th week that people who are, you know, pro-life Christians are gonna be paying for it. That's what they're gonna be saying. - Well, and let's even take some of the things that JD Vance has advocated and argued for that might not even sound batshit insane, okay? So one of the things, another thing that you and I have talked about is that we are re-industrializing America. We've seen the end of globalism as it worked. We're seeing now a push for re-industrialization in America. And Nick, what have I said every time that we've talked about this? I've said America is going to re-industrialize because of the new Cold War and the decline of globalism. And I've said there's going to be a major debate. And the major debate is, are we going to pay the people who work in those factories, in the industry, or are they going to be exploited and we're going to create a new class of exploited workers in this country? Guess what JD Vance talks about all the time? Industrialization. And guess what else he talks about all the time? The demographic population cliff, which means we need to make women have a bunch of babies and we're not going to take care of them. So I guess they're going to have to work in the factories and they're not going to have to like really struggle for anything. That's happening, right? Like it's the exact type of stuff that always gets offered up because as I always say, the right knows that there's a problem, right? The right knows that something is wrong. I was actually, Nick, just a quick aside, I was on an interview today on this British television show. And I cannot believe how disgusting the guy across from me was in the things that he said, how he comported it himself. He was obviously an Alexander Dugan acolyte. He is on board with someone like a JD Vance. And you know what's crazy about it, Nick? Every other question I had to say, I agree with him about his diagnosis about what has happened. The right and the left understand that something is wrong and something needs to be done. It is the bizarro mirror version of me. And if you, if I resonate with you and my solutions resonate with you, JD Vance should scare the living fucking shit out of you because it is every bad decision and every bad pseudo solution that you could ever imagine wrapped up in one of the worst human beings that is walking around on the face of the earth right now. - Yeah, exactly. The best way I like to, you know, to civilize what you're talking about as far as we can sort of agree on sort of top line things is our education system. I think everybody can agree that it's failing our kids. And so that's an interesting way of like, okay, great. But we'll say teachers are gonna be paid more, they need more resources, we need to be able to, you know, prove those things. The other side's gonna say with the burn books, we have to get rid of any kind of mention of slavery, you know what I mean? That's where it gets, it splits so quickly that way. - Nick, or you can hand the school system over to the oligarchs, they'll take care of it. - Oh, yeah, all right. Well, I'll be saying that but the biggest part of their platform, I believe, is getting rid of the Department of Education, which then-- - Yeah, you don't need it. Yeah, absolutely. - Right, it'll destroy. By the way, please remind us all of why public schools were created in the first place in this country. - Well, because we thought it was important for democracy, for everyone to get an education and be able to understand what was going on. And also that we all benefited not just politically and socially and culturally, but also economically. It led to innovations, it led to change. It was considered one of the main platforms and foundations of democracy. There is a reason why they have destroyed it and eradicated it. And I'm telling you, JD Vance and the people he represents, they don't want people going to school. They want people to basically work in a fiefdom where they, like, you know, in a feudalistic system where they work for corporations, they can never leave the corporation. Basically, the corporation decides who they are, what they do, where they go, and how they behave. And that's where they want to go with this thing. That's the entire point of this. - I do, as we're looking at this live really quickly, I wanted to point out, like, who is sitting with Trump in the front row, or whatever row this is, and in what order? Can you see who that is on all the way? - Yeah, it's Mike Johnson and then it's JD Vance, the future leadership of the Republican Party. - Yeah, go down, though, a couple more guys. - Oh, yeah, good old Tucker's there. And by the way, Tucker's into this, too, because he's part of the whole, like, not just the authoritarian white supremacist, you know, neo-fascist click, but also the Elon Musk click, which, by the way, I'm going to say this, I brought up feudalism, Nick. Do you know what tonight was? Tonight was a good old-fashioned royal wedding. You took Donald Trump and MAGA, and you took the neo-fascist of the Elon Musk oligarchical class, and they came together. That's what happened. They joined forces in order to come together and conquer. - Absolutely. I mean, there's an alignment going on, and there's no question, there's a timing that's really fascinating because we didn't even bring up, wait, in your list, when you were going, you have to forgive me if I might have lost focus for a minute, but did you mention what happened today with Eileen Cannon in Florida? - Yeah, I mentioned the documents case being dismissed, which, by the way, he's just, Donald Trump is being given everything, and we need to talk about something, Nick. I think this is the next thing that we need to pivot to. Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt. You and I said on Saturday, when we did our emergency live show, that he shouldn't have been targeted for assassination, you defeat him at the ballot box, you run him out of public life through democracy. Correct? - Correct. - Does that mean that because he survived, and by the way, by a registered Republican who, for all intents and purposes, everything I've seen has an incoherent ideology besides an affection for accelerationism, right? But instead, what are we going to do? We're going to point to comments that Joe Biden made at a closed-door fundraiser. That's how far you have to go to make the case that the Democrats have caused this, and now the Democratic Party has rolled over on their back and shown their belly, and basically said, "Donald Trump's going to win the election. We're not extremists. Just please don't be mad at us." Just one of the worst capitulations that I have seen, and I have watched a lot of Democratic politics. - I mean, it would have been so hard to say, nobody should be assassinated for being a politician, but it doesn't change the truth of what Trump is. Like, we could just sort of continue to understand and underscore what he represents, and then also condemn both of these things at the same time. And you're right, if that's what sort of felt so bad on Saturday, I think what you were tapping into perfectly was that they were going to be able to take advantage of this. - Oh, that happened. - And that was what I had said two months ago. I know, again, we both were acknowledges just not any kind of planned thing. This is just how bad the secret service can be in conjunction with local law enforcement. But I had always been measuring like a guy with a knife who's going to get up there, and Trump is going to karate chop him like William Shatter in an episode "Star Trek," and then "BeHailed as His Hero." But either, the final point stands is that he is being hailed as that hero for whatever deal he made with somebody, high or low, I don't know, he has to be the luckiest guy ever in the history of mankind. So we're going to talk about deals with above or below because the Republican National Convention and the Republican Party have gone full bore with this. God has saved Donald Trump so he couldn't save America. We're going to get into that in just a little bit. What happened on Saturday is another, it's not novel because we've had assassination attempts and assassinations in this country. And I don't care what Joe Biden says, he says, this isn't America, it is America. America was built on violence and political violence. I think it's an absurdity. And I go back to what I've said for years, Nick, which is Joe Biden is not the man for the moment. He gave a speech in the Oval Office, which is every speech that a president would ever give anytime that this would happen. We need more nuance than that. We don't need to, quote unquote, take the temperature down. Do you know what that says to me, Nick? That says that all of the people who are in like the path of this rampaging authoritarian machine, I'm talking about women, people of color, immigrants, poor people, LGBTQ Americans, disabled Americans, people who run insured, teachers, it goes on and on and on. It tells me that the Democratic Party is not serious about protecting those people. It's good for fundraising. It's good for maybe getting people at the polls. Jared Golden of Maine came out and said, "Let's be honest, this isn't a fight "between democracy and authoritarianism, knock it off." Keep telling us what you mean, guys. Keep telling us what it is you believe. So is this the most important election of our lifetime or is it not? Are you going to fight on behalf of the people that you've promised to fight for or are you going to punt the ball and worry about 2028? Because I'm telling you what I'm seeing from the Democratic Party right now, they're done. They're not interested in going after Donald Trump. They're not interested in prosecuting a campaign. I don't think this is going to get fixed at the Democratic National Convention, save for a near miracle. And what we have seen is that they have basically said, "Good job, Trump, you missed that bullet "and we haven't been able to figure the Biden thing out." So I guess we'll figure out the transition. We'll get this thing figured out. That's basically what they've said at this point. - Well, is it safe to say that a lot of times, it's supposed to say this is a normal week where the Republican Party is? - It is not. - If it were, I kind of feel like sometimes there's a sense of, it's not decorum, but the Democrats would be a little quiet this week, right? They kind of be like, "Okay, Google, "get their little bump, we'll kind of wait," whatever, and then we'll come out full bore and next week and whatever. So don't you kind of feel like that's what they're saying, not only in conjunction with the convention, but the fact that there was assassination intent that they have to sort of say, "We can't attack "and we're not going to say anything. "We're sorry that we incited it," or whatever we thought you think we did. Doesn't that what it feels like right now? - Decorum is the word. I talked about this on my sub-stack today. It is this idea that, and I've talked about this and ranted and raved about it, but it needs stated again. The Democratic Party is largely controlled by a bunch of centrist neoliberals. Also, by the way, not shocking that our media is also controlled by a bunch of centrist neoliberals. So what is the conversation, Nick? It's that we need to take the temperature down, we need to chill out, we need to watch it with the rhetoric, which by the way, Nick, what's the rhetoric that the Democratic Party has communicated that led to this? Which by the way, it's a registered Republican who has no ties really to the Democratic Party outside of a $15 donation. What's the Democratic Party said that has initiated violence, Nick? - What are they said? I mean, listen, I'm not gonna argue, Biden had a thing that he said about keeping the crosshairs, right? He had that. He says that Trump is a existential threat to democracy, meaning they're using that kind of stuff, right? - Is that true? - Yes. - Oh, okay. So instead of telling the truth, we should probably just dance around and pretend like it's not true. Nick, if we got into every instance of the Republican Party and the MAGA world, their calls for violence, their discussions of violence and the actual violence that has followed them, including not just January 6th, targeted assassinations, kidnapping attempts. I mean, mass shootings, one after another, and the moment that this happens, and it's a regrettable event, I'm glad that Donald Trump survived it, the moment that this happens, everybody, every single centrist has to be like, oh, we gotta do something to bring the country together. How do you bring a country together, Nick? How do you, we saw an article. It was like, so we're all MAGA now. No, we're not. MAGA is a reprehensible movement that is based on white patriarchal supremacy and cruelty. How am I supposed to find common ground with that? Do you know what I mean? - Yes, I mean, what do you think we've been talking about in our show for the last five years? - The whole time. - Right, like the kind of stretching your head wondering, is there a way to find the common ground? I'm the guy who was like, okay, let's look at what they're saying, let's see if we can figure out. I'm always trying to get into the mindset of that. And I think we, you know, the farther we get here, and we could talk a little bit more about how these speeches were framed tonight, a lot of yelling, which is hilarious, 'cause they'll always sort of, you know, accuse the Democrats of yelling, right? - Can I say, can I do a quick thing real fast, by the way? 'Cause I won't mention this later as we're talking about the convention. Speaking of yelling, I just wanna say a little, little note. At every convention, there is a potential future contender who absolutely ruins their future by giving the worst speech that you ever could have imagined. And we have an early contender for not just this year, but maybe the worst speech in the last 10 years. Glenn Yunken, Glenn Yunken, the governor of Virginia, gave, it sounded like Will Ferrell's character on Saturday Night Live that couldn't modulate his voice. It was so unbelievably putrid, but yes, we will get into those speeches in a little bit. - Well, that's why I brought this up, 'cause if a Yunken speech primarily was, it was so much yelling. I like, you probably would agree with me on this. It's probably because when they hear the words that they're saying out loud, it's like, I have to say louder so I can convince myself that what I'm saying is what I should be thinking. That's literally what it looks like to me from, you know, someone who doesn't believe what they're saying. And it's just remarkable. But I think it's that same torque we've been talking about all this time where there is a, when you actually hear them themselves saying these things out loud, they realize it doesn't work. This doesn't make sense. It isn't what they want it to be. But they've committed, they can't be wrong. They can't admit that they're wrong. So they're just gonna shout it and hope that everyone else shouts it back at them. It's really fascinating. - Well, and that's because the Republican party is the party of reactionary fear. That's all they care about. I mean, the Democratic party is the neurotic party. It is all of the people in the country who think too much about everything. They second guess everything they do. And then they, you know, oftentimes will like shoot themselves in the foot. And that's how that works. And so you have this back and forth that just doesn't work. Nick, on that note, speaking of the Democratic party, there are reports even today, the first day of the Republican National Convention after the Donald Trump assassination attempt that the Democratic party is still trying to pressure Joe Biden to leave the nomination. Apparently Nancy Pelosi has been burning down the phone lines. There are reports, and this is what I told you and what I told the podcast that Barack Obama has played a huge role in all of this without coming forward and being open about it. It does not seem as if there's going to be an open push for Biden to get out except for a few people coming out and saying that he should. What do you think about this? Because watching the Republican National Convention, they are certainly more consolidated than they were in 2016. They have grown closer and closer. Donald Trump is now a literal messiah for them. We'll talk more about that in a moment. But Joe Biden had this interview on NBC tonight that ran counter to the RNC with Lester Holt. And Lester Holt, who is a friendly presence in that room with Biden, peppered him with questions about his age, his acuity, his ability to go forward. Every time Biden speaks, every time he does anything, the entire focus of it is, did he make any mistakes? Is he able to go on? Now we're in this weird pickle where Donald Trump just had this thing happen. All the momentum's with him. How do you see this playing out? Because I've got thoughts, but man, are they scattered. - Which Peanuts character has the cloud that follows over him, wherever he goes? - Is it Pigpen? - Pigpen, okay. You know, it's that sort of what it is. And like the battle box was the big one, right? Instead of the ballot box, which he said twice. And again, speech impediment, whatever. But it's just soul crushing. Every time he's misspeaks, even though people misspeak all the time, certainly Trump misspeaks more than anybody. But it's done, it's established. We've seen it, we know, we know the background now. And so it's just another example, big or small, of, you know, our concern that he could, he could barely maybe run the country day-to-day much less continue running for president, you know, in November. The Obama thing is interesting, because there's this famous, you know, stand up comedy where the guy is talking about his kids not behaving. And he would sort of threaten them by saying, I brought you into this world and I could take you out. Well, Obama would be the one guy, I would imagine, who would say that, right? He's the guy that got by it in the nomination in 2020. And he could be the guy, if he said it, who would make him step down, right? Like that would be the one, that's probably what would need to happen if it's gonna happen at all. - And listen, I am so annoyed and allergic with great people of history, notions and theories. This person did this and this. This is a direct result of something that Barack Obama did in 2020, in which he arranged for Joe Biden to become the nominee for president. And he didn't talk to Biden about a plan for 2024. He left that gate wide open. It's like that meme, well, well, well, if it's not the consequences of my actions, right? And here we are. Obama does not want to be the bad guy. He, his public image matters so much to him, he doesn't wanna do that. So here we are. And Nick, this is how the situation even feels worse. The entire argument, the entire argument that Joe Biden had to be reelected in 2024 was that he was the person who could beat Donald Trump and that he needed to beat Donald Trump. He can't even argue against Donald Trump right now. He can't even criticize Donald Trump really right now. He has to do this decorum game and God knows how long that's gonna last. They don't have a big agenda. They don't have something that goes counter to Project 2025. You'll notice Project 2025 has completely disappeared from the news cycle in the past few days. They can't talk about that. What are they gonna talk about? Are they gonna run Biden as the candidate that everybody needs to decide to support? When over half of the country and over half of Democrats think that he shouldn't be the nominee, how do you win an election like that? Like it makes no sense whatsoever. - I mean, yeah, I was actually kind of curious about whether or not Biden would even take on the court rulings that are going on. Now, he's not really supposed to because he's a president. You're supposed to sort of influence that. I remember Nixon got in trouble with the Manson case if you remember way back in the day. And everyone freaked out that he even mentions anything about that, which would not, maybe not give him a fair shake in courts. But like, I would think that would also be maybe a rallying cry as all the norms are shattered anyway. You know, we never even brought up the notion just as a quick detour. Are you aware that the Supreme Court two weeks ago ruled in an Indiana case where a guy could be, a public official could be bribed? - It could be bribed. - As long as it's after the work had been done, then it's okay. Like, yeah, I talked and that's the thing I talked to when I've spoken to some lawyers recently. They can't understand this is the one, that's the one case. There's no way the Supreme Court could ever have ruled that way. And here we are as they're inching along. I mean, we all understand why Eileen Cannon did this today, right? It was because Clarence Thomas outlined it in his opinion that no one else supported for the immunity case. This is how corrupt it is. It's like one of my buddies is a defense attorney in Florida who always feels like it's all against him, you know, because he's so hard to get his clients defended. He's like, it is now completely official. I used to feel like, oh, it might be a little bit corrupt. He's like, this is it. It is as corrupt as we can be. We're already in one of those nations that we will be able to criticize and look down upon. Oh, Nick, again, it's like the Simpsons moment where he says the worst day of your life so far. Because I promise you they can get even more corrupt. And that is the thing. We talk about this, we report on it, we do the research, we speak out about this. By the way, a lot of people were pissed off at us in the very beginning when we said that Biden should get out of the race following that debate. People were pissed later on when I was talking about, well, if Biden's in, here's how you got to figure out how to win, it is a no-win situation. It doesn't feel good in any way, shape or form. But we have to talk about it. This is a bad situation. The Democratic Party is not fighting to win right now. They're basically, and you know what the truth is, Nick, and it just occurred to me as we're having this conversation and it hit me upside the head like a frying pan. Do you know what they're doing? They're not actually fighting to get Biden out of there. They're fighting to say I tried to get Biden out of there. They want to say that later on without having to take the flack. They want to say, well, I know that this is bad, but I tried to stop it by getting Biden out of there. There's no plan. There's no plan. And there's absolutely no movement in any direction that makes me feel like there's a plan. And I'm on these calls, I'm on these email threads, I'm in these chats, I'm in these text conversations. There's no plan. And I hate to tell you that, and it sounds terrible, but there isn't, there just is not. - But part of the problem is is that, you know, we heard on one of these channels I was watching at some point was that the private polling that they have, which they won't share, is worse than what we see in the public polling. That said, if you've looked at it closely over the last several days and I was curious what's gonna happen after the assassination incident, it really hasn't moved. You know, I think we were both worried that this was going to be some sort of moment for Trump or he'll take an eight-point lead or something like that, which would probably finish it. If you have an eight-point lead, you know, in mid-way through July, don't ask Hillary about that, but at the very least, generally, you'd say the race would be over, right? So that's interesting, that that hasn't budgeted, which also informs why, if it is that close, why they aren't changing ship right now. They can just sort of say, we've got it built in, we know we have the votes here, really what it comes down to are the three states, we have to really campaign hard in. I don't even know if it's the three, it's a JD Vance pick, it's finally gonna let us settle on which of those states we have to keep our eye on in terms of the 60,000 votes across of them. - Oh my sweet, sweet, sweet Nick Halsman. My good friend Nick Halsman. - You're gonna reach over and pat me on the head. - How many states do you think they are going to be tossups that are gonna determine the election at this point? - Well, you know, 2016 was three and 2020 was, I don't even, you know, whatever it was. It was four or five. Nick, we're looking at 10 to 15 now. The number of states that are starting to move and switch, the polling numbers that I have seen have been nothing short of apocalyptic. Nothing short of apocalyptic. Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan are underwater right now. You can't depend on Georgia, it's gone. Arizona, you can't depend on it's gone. We're now looking at everywhere from New Hampshire, New York has a possibility to be a tossup state. I mean, this could, and I wanna say this because I wanna be honest with people. The conversations I'm having about this conversation, about this larger election situation is this, Nick. The Democratic Party right now, Joe Biden, in order to win this election. Basically, it is going to depend on whether or not the people who have said so far that they will not vote for Joe Biden if those people almost to a person will change their mind. It's an enthusiasm thing. It's making people show up who are absolutely disgusted by some of the things that the Biden administration has done. Everything from Gaza to this current debacle that's playing out, like it is a really, really hard road to election right now. - So you wanna share a screen and look at the polling really quickly by state? - Sure, go ahead. - You know what, I have forgotten to do that recently. I've been looking at the national, which again, is dumb. Don't do that. Look at the states, but, you know, for convenience and ease, we're gonna use this one. I'm not gonna tell you which one is you'll see on the screen, which one is this, but anyway. Here's New York. Do we believe this one? - Nine points in New York state, Nick. - Right, which is not good, right? - Not good. - No, it should be double that, I think, right? Michigan is interesting, is what you mentioned before. He is underwater in Michigan by a point, roughly. - Well, and I would guess that it's more than that. And if Joe Biden's going to win the presidency as is, he would have to win Michigan. - Yeah, fair enough. Wisconsin, down 1.3. - Yeah, you gotta win Wisconsin. - Yeah, and by the way, I have a feeling that the down ballot Democrats are doing a lot better than that. - Oh, they're like double digits ahead of Biden right now. - Yes. - Right, and that, by the way, might be the most damning thing of all, right? If you can't, you can't ride the coattails of the down ballot people, like that's a real problem. People, imagine that. They're going to vote for the Senator who's a Democrat and then Trump. - So I want to talk very, very quickly and put a bow on this thing before we get into the actual convention. And this is this. This Biden thing should have been figured out in the first two days after that debate. It should have been done. That's it. They should have had a communication strategy that would have changed this. They would have had an agenda that changed this. They haven't done any of it. It has continued on and on and on like Groundhog Day from hell. And there is absolutely no movement here whatsoever, which I hate talking about this. And if he's going to stay, stay and figure something else out. You know what I mean? Like go in a direction, get an agenda, figure out a plan. It's not there. - Well, if you're argument, like after those two days and they got to figure it out, you would stop, all this little chatter in the background would cease, right? All of these little leaks and all these little, I hear that, you know, flowsy, right? You wouldn't, that would be not happening if they had figured this out once and for all. - No, you need to come together as a leadership and decide what you're going to do. And then everybody takes their marching orders from that. If you think that there's been a member of Congress or a member of the Senate or a governor who's come outside the Joe Biden should step aside and they haven't checked in with basically their precinct captain or a Barack Obama, you're dead wrong. It's been an ongoing shadow campaign full of footsy and flirting and it just hasn't worked. And they have just let this thing just absolutely keep twisting in the wind. - By the way, I don't think it would be far-fetched to picture if this was the Republican side. You would have seen a couple people take advantage of this and say this wasn't a quick day-to-day to be president right now. I got to take over. You got to pick me, we got to get, you know what I mean? Like, I would think you'd find a couple people who would be willing to do that. And that's the problem is I suppose it would throw the Democratic party into so much turmoil, you know? And the funny thing about Gavin Newsom, for instance, would be that like him and Kamala Harris are, you know, came up together in San Francisco and that would, you know, it's somehow what's to say. They decided we need the good-looking white guy to go, right? We need to be too worried about what the rest of the country's going to say we have to just do this. It's kind of like they did with Biden. That could fracture the party as well. 'Cause Kamala would say, well, I'm the one who should be there and this is my role. I'm ahead of you anyway. All sorts of craziness. - All sorts of, yeah. - Yeah. - Here we are. Speaking of the convention, which we've touched on a little bit, I just want to say I've watched way too many hours of conventions. This one was piss-poor. There is one major story coming out of this and it doesn't involve, well, Marjorie Taylor Greene played her part in it. Ron Johnson played his part in it. Nick, I figured this was going to happen. I knew that it was. I didn't expect Fox News to get in on it, but basically every interview, every speech, every moment of the campaign has been utterly saturated with talk about how Donald Trump is God's chosen leader and that he stepped in and made sure that Donald Trump survived the assassination attempt. That's right, everybody. We have our very own walking, talking, messianic presidential candidate. It's been there all along. Donald Trump constructed a cult of Christianity and power around himself. We've seen it, we've heard it, we've documented it. Nick, it's in full bloom, baby. I've got a couple of quotes here that I just want to give to you very, very quickly. Tim Scott, who's, I hope somebody checks on him. He said, "The devil came to Pennsylvania with a rifle and the American lion got back up and roared." He then immediately moved to inflation, which is fantastic. You had one pastor who said that he prayed over Trump the week before the assassination and that's what protected him. Other people say divine confirmation that this was, quote, biblical. God was holding Trump's hand that day. Another pastor said that God literally moved Trump's head, made him turn his head in Lee Greenwood, who, looking rough, baby, also sound and pretty tough. He ended the night as Donald Trump came out to hang out with his new best friend, Goodest Boy J.D. Vance. Lee Greenwood would not stop talking about how God had saved Donald Trump so he could save America. And he did it for so long that they had to turn his mic down and get on the speaker to announce Donald Trump coming in. - I mean, one thing I was running in my notes watching this is how much religion was being referenced here. We had seen it in 2020 and I probably then was scratching my head saying, "Aren't we supposed to not have this "and that's supposed to be so centric to that?" And it's a natural outcropping, right? And it will continue to get more and more toward tent revival, I'd imagine in the next iteration of the Republican convention. And half the people there probably don't even go to church, have no connection with religion at all. But it sounds good, they'll clap, they'll feel the energy in the room. But there's no question that whatever this luck that it seems to be helping him in his legal cases and in the bullet not hitting him, it's easy to interpret that for the people who are already conditioned that way to assume that somebody is protecting him from on high and it's gross because we already thought that they already thought that he was deserving of this position because he was rich, right? And that's how God touched him and that's why he was rich. And now God is such and that's why he didn't get hit by the bullet. And we all know, at least I think everyone in this audience knows how much bullshit that is. But it's an intoxicating brew. - Well, so as an ex-evangelical, I just wanna make a little anecdote here. You know what always pissed me off, Nick? What always pissed me off in those circles, in that community, in my family, was when something good would happen, you would hear that God had willed it and then something bad would happen and you'd hear that it was God's plan, which really makes you wonder about how God prioritizes things. So for instance, I don't know if my husband was in the audience at a Trump rally and a bullet missed Donald Trump because God moved it and it landed in my husband and killed him and left me a widow and my children without their father, I'd be pretty pissed about what this all-powerful God was doing. Why didn't God choose to, I don't know, have it ricochet and go away? It seems like a lot of sense if he's got all the power. It is a self-serving narcissistic ideology is what it is. And I'm not talking about Christianity. I'm talking about how you can take this stuff and move it around and do whatever you want with it as opposed to reckoning with it. The idea that maybe you live in an uncaring universe or there's an omnipotent God who isn't interested in doing something in order to help your favorite political candidate. It's disgusting, it's really, really awful. And what's more Nick is it's dangerous because what has happened at this point is not only have they believed that Donald Trump was a Messiah who is being persecuted, they've now seen an attempt on his life. They put that into their cosmology, into their worldview and now the apocalyptic battle that you and I have talked about, right? They get told constantly. They're gonna put you and your family into camps. You gotta do something about that. Now it's not just that. Now it's, they've tried to kill him, look what they're up to. Obviously they wouldn't hesitate to do this to you. So that cosmology, that worldview, that ideology is, it's going to get a lot more dangerous in the next few days. - What's also worse is hypocrisy because so many people who want to spout out this, these tombs about religion, how important that is, don't behave well for their fellow humans. And, you know, listen, I hate to speak ill of the dead, but like, you know, there is some evidence of the guy, the father and the firefighter who was shot, like had some pretty incendiary things out there in the social media sphere about people that would certainly not be, would not fall under the category of a good Christian. And so it kind of gives people license, right? To behave in a way that can very well be construed as bad, I suppose, racist, you know, you can fill in the blank for a lot of those things. And it's that manipulation of religion that is probably a biggest reason why we wanted to keep that out of politics and try and keep politics sane, but it's over. That ship has sailed. - That ship has sailed. Also speaking of this quote unquote, nude hone of the Republican Party. I've really enjoyed, I don't know if you heard this Nick, that she was making the rounds a little bit. - There was an exclusive interview that Donald Trump gave. I believe it was the Washington Examiner. What a stand-up publication that is. And Trump was talking about what he'd gone through and Nick, he's determined to strike a new tone. He's gonna talk about unity on Thursday. I promise he's gonna show up. He's gonna be a brand new person. Do you remember back during his administration? The word was pivot. Today's the day that he pivots. Today's the day he becomes president. The Republican Party, which all said that there are gonna be about unity. Marjorie Taylor Greene came out and said that the Democrats have brought war. Senator Ron Johnson spoke about the threat of Democrats that they were coming after you. He was asked, he was like, what happened to the unity speech? And he's like, oh, they loaded the wrong speech on the teleprompter. I just kept saying a bunch of stuff and talking about the violence and all of that. Also they had Mark Robinson, who is the North Carolina gubernatorial candidate who said some folks just need killing, which is really interesting now in retrospect. He spoke tonight. I just wanna say, and I know I don't need to say this, and Nick, this isn't for you. This is maybe for, I don't know, maybe there are five people listening to this or watching this who need to hear me say it. Are you ready? - Yeah. - The Republican Party is not going to deescalate. It is not who they are. It is not how they work. It's not how their brain functions. It's not how they go through the world. They cannot deescalate. There is no way that these people are going to take a breath and self introspection. It is going to escalate and escalate and escalate until you make them a political non-entity by defeating them in elections and pushing them out of public life through elections. That's it. - And the escalation occurs because of the desperation. - Because of the desperation, yes, exactly, yes. - It's amazing that this is what kind of probably gave me the most anxiety today is listening to a couple of pundits talking about this. There's a really, there's a very real potential for Trump to win the White House, the Republicans to win the Senate and the House and have control over the Supreme Court, which we should probably go back. Jared, I don't know if I don't want to put you on the spot, but I wonder if, and by the way, to say that anybody had control over the Supreme Court was supposed to be a thing that you didn't say because it didn't really mean that way. And that's an end would appoint somebody and they never really wouldn't necessarily vote the way they thought they would write over time. But I think we can say that for this one. So I don't know if we've ever had a situation like that where the Supreme Court was so fully under the Republican spell and then the Republicans have had control over everything else. - The last time that we saw it was during the Trump administration that they did not hold the Supreme Court. That was the difference. It was still, this was back when everybody was still hoping that that would maybe hold things up. But yeah, they've held control before. The Supreme Court's always leaned conservative, if not corporate and wealth friendly. That's their main function. That is a nightmarish scenario right now. Do you know what I mean? Like that right now, if that were to actually come about, that would be, that's rough. - But let's just get a soft right here. You didn't see, and all the things you watched tonight, 'cause I didn't see it. You didn't see Mitch McConnell, did you? - Oh, I saw Mitch McConnell getting booed mercilessly by the assembled crowd for sure. - Okay, so I'm there and he was ambulatory? - Well, I mean, as far as Mitch McConnell goes, as he was making his tortoise way through the crowd, I mean, he was being mercilessly booed. - Okay, all right. I was just kind of curious, he was there, 'cause I didn't see him and he hasn't had much for presence nationally for a while. And thinking that that could very well be a seat that will be up. But the other problem with that is, is you remember what was going on, is the Democratic governor of Kentucky supposed to be able to appoint a senator. And remember, I think they believe they changed the law in the middle of that. So now he can't. I would like that to be in the right. Just thinking about in terms of like how close it is with the Senate and if they can keep control of it or not. Do you have any, have you paid attention to that at all on those races? - Yeah, I think the Democrats right now, I think that they're going to be okay when it comes to the Senate, at least where things are. But Nick, I have to say this, this is really dispiriting to say, do you know what it depends on? Do you know what the big asterisk is? Whether or not Joe Biden drags them down with his candidacy. That's the problem. That's the actual problem. Again, we've talked about this many times. What do Americans like? They like divided government. They really enjoy having a president of one party and at least one of the houses, if not the other two with the other party. This, even if Donald Trump were to win this election, they would want to do that. The question now is whether or not Joe Biden's candidacy would drag down down ballot races. That's the big question everybody's looking at now. - Yeah, and that's gotta be the thing that also is putting pressure on him to bow out. But the more and more I think about it, the only way that happens is it has to be Obama. But we can't forget that Obama didn't really like Biden, right? Biden had said some horrible things about him originally when he was running in '08. And I think that they begrudgingly put him on the ticket because they felt like that's they needed, you know. - And then they got friendly. Yeah. - Yeah, and okay, I'm not gonna argue that they didn't become close, you know. - But then they fell apart. - Yeah, I mean, basically we're being held hostage by like a dysfunctional relationship. - Yeah, that's exactly how I would put it. And you know, they didn't want him to run in 2016. And he probably thought about it. Now, that said, I believe he was going through the tragedy with his son around. - Yeah, but he never once, Obama never once gave a thought to Joe Biden to succeed in his prospect. Not once, it was Hillary Clinton from the very beginning. - And by the way, part of the reason 'cause very well have been because they were aware that, you know, he wasn't as quick or as sharp as he had been even as late as 2012, 2014, 2015. So this is the dirty little secret here where they finally, you know, again, the 2020 stuff is fascinating to me. I'm not sure I've seen a book that has the insight there to really understand the machinations behind why he said Pete, you're gonna have to go, we'll give you a cabinet position and close our go away. And we got to have this guy do it. I guess it was all around Bernie, right? But even still, it was short-sighted. They probably want to come over after this, after the first term. And it didn't go well in the beginning with for her. And here we are again. - It sucks, man. It sucks real bad. So we are gonna talk again on Thursday. I'm gonna be traveling. That means that we have two more days. We have Tuesday and Wednesday before we record the Thursday podcast. We won't be doing a post-Trump speech on Thursday. We'll get back to that the week after. Nick, what do you expect out of the next two days? Where do you think this convention is gonna go? What are your predictions? - I mean, more yelling, more religiosity, right? We're starting out, you know, people of color, minorities, other people who like they like to show to say, "Look, we are an inclusive party with a little content," or a big tent, you'll see some of that. And that is soul-killing a lot of the time, 'cause it's like it's pre-written speeches that they struggle with how little bit and doesn't work so well. So I would probably see that. I mean, I didn't get a lot of the white supremacist hour, you know, Hootnanny, that I was expecting a little bit from tonight that maybe they'll dip their toe a little bit more as they go further along. You know, they're kind of opening it, let's open it with, you know, it's sound inclusive in the beginning. You know, but again, I think that's what we'll see. I think the religious stuff is really is gonna continue to be laid on thick. - I think the religion stuff, there's no chance that it won't build in fervor. I'm very, very interested to see, first of all, how the religious rhetoric shows up in Donald Trump's speech. I think he's going to embrace this thing. I think he's happy to do it. You know, it makes him uncomfortable, but he's happy to use it as a cudgel. Nick, the thing that I'm gonna be paying the most attention to, and this is, man, I'm gonna hate this. On Wednesday night, when JD Vance addresses the convention as the vice presidential nominee, I want to see what JD Vance shows up. Do you know what I mean? Like, this is a power, hungry individual who changes himself constantly. How is he going to present himself to the country? How is he going to present himself as the heir apparent to MAGA? Where are things going to go? What are they going to do? And I mean, it is really, really fascinating to see what we have in store of us because this goes way beyond 2024. This is something that we might be dealing with for a very long time. - I agree, as I put up some of the great quotes she's had in the past about Donald Trump in a negative light that he won't be able to live down, either, I think, right? - Trump loves that. Trump loves when someone talks shit about him and then they have to come around and kiss his boots. It's his favorite thing in the world. Like, it is a power play. I think that might've been one of the reasons he chose JD Vance. Is that he said all that shit about Trump and now he's coming back around with his hat in hand. I think he loves it. And quite frankly, I gotta tell you, if the Democratic Party does not frame JD Vance as the dangerous extremists that he is, lock up the doors, go home, figure out something else to do for the next four years. 'Cause if they can't do that, Nick, it's basically taking a knee in a football game. It's dribbling out the clock. That's all it is. You know what this is. It's like when you're watching a basketball game and it's like late in the third quarter, one team is up by like 25 or 30. The other team just doesn't have it. Everybody looks dejected. They still throw up a shot every now and then, but they're not trying that hard. Maybe they're trying to pad their own stats, but you know when the will has been crushed. And right now, the Democratic Party feels like it's will has been crushed. - I wish I could argue with you, but I can't. - Man, we deserve so much better. All right, everybody, we will be back with The Weekender on Friday. Thank you so much for everybody who came out for our live show. You all are the best. The absolute best audience that there is out in podcast land, and we appreciate you so, so much. Again, we'll be back on Friday with The Weekender. In the meantime, everybody, you can find Nick and can you hear me estimate you, let me do my best. Be safe. Have a good night. (dramatic music) [BLANK_AUDIO]
