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Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman go over the events that led to Donald Trump's political photo op on one of the most sacred places in the United States - Section 60 at Arlington National Cemetery. They then turn to listener questions which sparked an incredible discussion based on the smart observations of the audience.
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I'm not going to say what I remember now having thought about Oasis again having professional memory what I thought about them back then but you enjoy your reunion I think maybe I don't really want to know how you got in girls I didn't even do the full Liam nasal I'm so happy Nick I I'm happy that you're happy chair I woke up I woke up in the middle of the night I opened myself to possibilities I opened myself for joy and to be pleasantly surprised and I was rewarded that's great I mean as you know I have you know different maybe different opinion as a musician but still again nothing makes me happier than to see you happy it is one of the best things to happen to me in a while just needed to start off with that by the way welcome to the weekend or everybody I'm Josie at Sexton here thank housemen is so good to be back on a regular recording schedule wish we were hanging out but we are hanging out this is a special episode we're going to talk a little bit about this absolute disaster it took place at the Arlington National Cemetery Trump campaign and then we have a big ol mailbag Nick big ol mailbag that gets into everything we are going to have so many conversations that I'm so glad people sent questions because it opens up new avenues of inquiry and I'm looking forward to it oh absolutely mailbags are always awesome hearing from everybody with the awesome questions I am looking forward to it but we can't get there yet unfortunately we have something to talk about even more important maybe than that well we do and before we even get to that people need to go over to patreon.com/mongragpodcast in order to become patrons to listen to the weekend or not just this week but all weeks including our exclusive coverage such as our exclusive coverage of the Democratic National Convention our support is growing we are growing we're getting better patreon.com/mongragpodcast I think people want to do it they do they do and then again you'd be part of the mailbag and you'd be part of our discussion on discord and everywhere else is really is and you would have been part of our live coverage after every night of the DNC which was terrific so absolutely and Nick I just I get people reaching out constantly they say Jared I've wanted to do this for a while I drug my feet I did it what took me so long patreon.com/mongragpodcast real fast Nick there is going to be a story that we are going to cover when we get around to the Tuesday episode we're recording this on Thursday which means that Dana Bash of CNN is going to be interviewing Kamala Harris and Tim Waltz for their first joint interview I'm going to be watching that I assume you're going to be watching that we will cover it on Tuesday's episode yeah when is it again when they're doing it I think it's tonight which is Thursday night which is doesn't matter anything to anybody listening to us right they'll have already heard it okay great we will have already heard it yes yes I will stand by stand by wait what was it he said stand by and stand stand by stand stand down and stand by yeah hoo what a piece of shit that guy is speaking of Donald Trump Nick um this is a you know if Donald Trump wasn't Donald Trump and he hadn't done everything that he'd already done this story would be massive and gigantic but he is Donald Trump and he has done what he's done uh the Donald Trump campaign crew took a little detour over to Arlington National Cemetery this week which for people who aren't paying attention or don't know anything Arlington is hallowed ground you should not be going there to film uh campaign content it's disgusting but uh someone tried matter of fact a couple of people tried to get Trump and uh his his little lackeys to not film content there there was apparently an altercation it depends on who you listen to is either one or two employees who felt like they were assaulted by members of Trump's crew since then Nick the content has been released and on top of that the people who were assaulted here and violated here trying to defend hallowed ground um those people have come out and said I would press charges but it would literally put me in the crosshairs and put me and my family in danger this is as as about as gross of a story in all of its different ways as you can possibly get when you're describing the people that try to stop them from taking the video and the photos you're talking about military members I believe right there well it's unclear if the staff who intervened they they like eventually Trump filmed himself in front like a green berets uh uh cemetery spot in Arlington without permission from the family because of course you got to do that you got to violate someone's dignity uh but I'm not sure we're not sure if the people who were involved if the staff members were actually military members I thought maintenance really something like that but either way and so I'm trying to picture the whole thing because remember what we what's come out so far is that they made a clear way ahead of time first of all apparently the families wanted to invite Trump and I think that they were sort of pushing back on that knowing what would happen in terms of granted permission for him to go and they finally oh did you see that Mike Johnson had to intervene to make that happen no this was a daily lease article I think I read where um well I guess it's still piecing together but it was legitimate reporting that I had seen that they had pushed back knowing weeks ahead of time that they didn't they weren't going to allow Trump to do this and the families were getting upset and so somebody went to Mike Johnson speaker the house and he intervened and got them to be allowed to be there that was a now b you can do this it's a special thing will allow this to happen but again you cannot film you cannot take pictures yada yada so you can imagine that the Trump administration whoever is behind this said yeah yeah yeah sure no problem you know whatever phone and then he hangs up and then what what do you think the conversation is right immediately after that with Trump in the office I think someone said hey we're not supposed to film there but screw it okay it was that short they didn't even I if there was even a conversation you know what I mean like that's that's how bad this thing is yeah and you know and again I I've been to like even when you're talking like the JFK grave or you know there it's like it is a solemn place you can feel what that means when you're there and for them to take a piss all over everybody like this basically on the grave is is unconscionable why doesn't this there is outrage we've seen some people report some videos and be upset on Twitter but I don't get it maybe there isn't maybe the outrage is there but because it's so a long list of things it just doesn't even feel like it's that outrage anymore well I want to say a few obvious things before we get into the actual analysis here because there are a couple of things to learn from this that I think we should we should hold and remember first things first this is only happening because we have heard a deluge of people who have over and over at different times said that Donald Trump has insulted military members and military members who have died we we've heard it from the people who were there but we don't even need to hear it from the people who were there we heard what he said about John McCain like we know how Donald Trump feels about these people we understand that he doesn't give a shit about anybody besides himself and that also includes the troops and for the record I am of the opinion that the way this country talks about veterans is really repugnant and especially like how politicians talk about them like they talk about the thing you know God protect them take care of them we've seen through their actions how they feel about people who you know join the service and serve which is they don't take care of them they do not give them their just benefits and if there are benefits they go ahead and squeeze it because they don't care about these people they've already juiced all of the usage out of these people we've also heard multiple politicians who have said hey if we take away the economic incentives no one's going to join the military which tells us the people in power literally want to use poor people as cannon fodder so let's you know go ahead and make sure that we know that the next thing about this Nick this for any normal political candidate would be a major scandal it would be disqualifying to an extent there would be conversations all over the place about whether or not Donald Trump's campaign could survive something like this on top of it what would a normal campaign do if something like this would have happened they would have apologized what have they done they've called into question the mental health of the people that they assaulted which is what we need to realize here one is he doesn't care about anybody second of all like the republican party doesn't care about veterans or troops some of the democratic party doesn't either for that matter like it's all a bunch of of rhetoric the next thing that we need to understand is that this is part of the gradual movement that we have been watching and you and I have particularly spent the last few years documenting which is that something like this can happen but it's not even that big of a deal anymore it is a worsening of the the political ecosystem that allows it to continue to slide sometimes imperceptibly and sometimes in huge ways such as this you know and I'm trying to actually think oh that was really well phrased in the context is important especially with what he's done in the past because it's a nice interesting confluence of things it's not just that he is disparaged in the military and people who serve our country but it's also that he doesn't follow any rules like if you tell him not to do something he's pointed then he will do it yeah and so and a part of the thing was I'm looking at I don't think Biden has weighed in on this and if we're talking about condemnation and then it's going to be a possible word like I was like the president should say something about this so wouldn't you say can I ask you a quick question and I don't mean to be flip about this and this you've just brought up a really important topic if you heard Joe Biden say anything about anything you know I saw him at the DNC spoke you know he said something yeah he sure did he came out of whatever cave that he's been in to speak and then immediately returned to that cave yeah and I just want to point out what you and I talked about after that really terrible debate which is hey everybody's talking about the reelection let's also have a little bit of perspective should Joe Biden be president right now I know he's a lame duck right he's been turned into the lamest of lame ducks you're right Biden should condemn this thing but also Biden should be doing a whole lot of things and nothing is happening and that is actually very troubling um I absolutely agree and you know the other thing was so I'm looking at for like Kamala Harris did she respond to this now I don't I can't find exactly what she wanted said but I did see the response that J.D. Vance tells her she can go to hell go to hell and again this is someone who is trying to do some massive cleanup on aisle six because he is actually a military member he knows full well and good that there's no way he should have been anywhere near there with the camera he shouldn't have been anywhere near there so the people that ran the cemetery that run Arlington understand this from the beginning they knew that they were not going to allow him to do this and it required you know a special circumstance that was pressure that they didn't you know they didn't necessarily think they were gonna get um so it is it is so disgusting to me and you know the thing I often think about this is you know I think I'd said this last time or a couple times before like I don't blame Trump for wanting to get out of fighting in Vietnam I don't blame anybody who wouldn't want to get out of fighting for Vietnam and honestly like for me personally I don't think I would be able to volunteer for the armed services because of the risk of having these sets of war which would be too great I really don't know but I mean I don't think I would I don't think I'd tell my son to do it or my daughter like I don't I just don't know and I guess that makes it maybe seem like I don't care about the country enough to be willing to sacrifice my life so it makes me kind of reflect on us which is maybe a good thing maybe we should all reflect a little bit on really where we are and how much we do care about what this country is about and what we're willing to sacrifice but certainly someone who has done that and taken that oath and done that for years we need they need to be called out more we need to have even you know hired top generals they should be condemning this and that would probably be begin the process of of actually having some effects I suppose I'll start by saying that I don't hold it against anybody who didn't go to Vietnam it was an unjust illegal war that was exercised by capital and imperialism and it shouldn't have happened I don't hold that against anybody what I hold against Donald Trump is the way that he has spoken about that to be so glib about it and also show such little care for the people who went and died in his place that's the problem with that I would also go another step further and I would say the larger issue is that we shouldn't have wars wars just shouldn't happen especially the way that they do and especially the way that capitalism leads to these wars do I think that I could fight in a war yeah I think under the right circumstances I could I could do that but that being said I hate how this country does this rhetorical thing where we talk about how much we appreciate these people same way we say that we appreciate teachers the same way we say we appreciate service workers all of that you know there's a lot of performance of it during the pandemic and look how we treat these people you know it literally is a matter of it's we treat it like people who are engaging in these service positions that like it's it's saving us time and it's saving us our safety you know and I think that Donald Trump like a lot of things that he does Nick he has brought a clarity to the situation which is he doesn't really worry about hiding these things and so he makes it obvious what a lot of people feel about it and the fact this isn't going to change any votes it just isn't it's not it's not going to necessarily hurt his numbers those things are mostly baked in at this point and I think that that reveals something very true and very disturbing about America absolutely and then the one other thing that I wanted the the context would be that the reason why we had such a terrible pull out in Afghanistan was because of a deal that Trump had heard and I would argue he did it on purpose because he did it after the election after he lost the election and he was like in an FU to Biden who he knew was going to take over he set up the ground the situation for it to happen the way it did by removing a lot of troops early that he didn't have to do and by seeding to the Taliban's demands and releasing a whole bunch of their prisoners you know and it lists as long the things that he did after he lost you know in that lame situation where you probably shouldn't be doing any kind of troop manipulation and he did it and it all sides point to he did it on purpose to have this moment where he can now criticize Biden for it and then to do this to try and clean up his own image on the military it you know we're beyond whatever we need to be beyond in terms of condemnation and I think you're right the country is just unwell and for the record before we move on to the mailbag just for context those troops should have been out of Afghanistan before Barack Obama failed in that regard in the same way that many presidents failed in that regard simply because it was an uncomfortable awful situation we can argue about whether or not they should have been in Afghanistan in the first place but there are a lot of things that led to Donald Trump again not giving a shit in the way that normal people give a shit that then led to a larger problem than then got exacerbated and now what's he do the same thing he's doing in this Arlington debacle he's blaming it on it you've been listening to the free part of this episode if you'd like to hear the rest of this great conversation head over to patreon.com/muckrake podcasts and subscribe for lots more additional content including a discord server and live shows we'd really appreciate it if you could give it a try we know you'll love it and come back for more
