bjbj Hey, everybody, I'm Jared Jayd Sexton. I'm sick. How are you doing, Nick? Well, I'm Nick Halsman and I'm not sick, but I feel terrible that you have to go through this. I'm okay. I'm going to bring it today because we have a lot of stuff to talk about, Nick. We recorded just to get people up to speed. We recorded the weekend or last Thursday. I think it was Thursday afternoon. It comes out on Friday. Then Thursday night after we recorded literally all hell broke loose. I guess so. I mean, what is hell? What is time? What is, you know, what is hell when it's constant health care? It's kind of doesn't even doesn't even seem like a blip anymore at this point. It's a lot. And so we're going to catch up on some of that stuff. We have a breaking news story that we have to get to, but a reminder for everybody go over to patreon.com/markregpodcast, support the show gain access, not just to the weekend or on Fridays, but also exclusive post event analysis. We have a VP debate coming up. And I for one am quite interested in seeing Tim Waltz debate, Jamie Vance, for a variety of reasons. Yeah. I mean, again, does any of this move in needle anyway, maybe a little bit in the margins? You never know. I'll, you know, take what you get, but political sickos want to get together after these things, which is why you need to go over to patreon.com/markregpodcast. Yeah. For sure. Because it's a great time, a great conversation, great community. And I for one would have to imagine that if, if I had predicted that Kamala Harris would win the debate robustly over Trump, then I, or how strongly I have to now predict that walls will just walk over to Vance personally is someone who absolutely loath J.D. Vance. And somehow or another Nick has come to loathe him even more since he was named as the BP candidate. I for one am incredibly excited about getting on, on here with you and our community and our audience and celebrating just an absolute shit kicking. I think that's what's coming. I think so. But then again, I, I have this vision of like, you know, Vance in the most heinous way in cases in a, in a way that will like, you know, make, make points that like, that he thinks is making points and it'll just be gross. And it will be gross. And by the way, like the only way that J.D. Vance can do anything is in a loathsome way. So I mean, like that's a, that's a sound prediction. For sure. So this one might even more fiercely contested in terms of who wins, you know, than the last one, even with Trump going to the spin room himself, the ultimate, what's that called when you like self-flagellation? Is that what it is? Yes. Yes. It is, it is a straight up masochistic enterprise. And that's what we saw. By the way, and just to assure everyone, we are going to get to Mark Robinson, we are going to get to Christopher Rufo. We're going to get to Matt Gates and Olivia Nuzzi. These are absolutely things that we're going to touch on. But actually today, Nick, we have breaking news that we have to talk about in the wake of the attacks in Lebanon, in which Israel exploded pagers and communication devices, killing dozens of people and wounding thousands. And then a leadership strike that took out God knows how many leaders within the Hezbollah organization. Israel has now hit over 300 targets in Lebanon. We're now hearing rumors of full-scale invasions. People within the government and the war cabinet are talking about establishing a no-go death zone. And if that sounds familiar, it's what's happened in Gaza. It sounds like that might possibly happen in Lebanon with a full-scale invasion. The United States has moved troops into the area anticipating all this happening. We have heard from the Biden administration now. We'll get to that in just a second. This is a major escalation. You and I, Nick, the entire time that this thing has been going on, not only have we been criticizing the wanton brutality, but we've been saying that a regional war is the absolute worst-case scenario here for a variety of reasons. It appears that this situation is growing and escalating by the minute, and it feels bad. It does. It makes you wonder, like, why would they want to expand the war in the middle of a conflict they're already dealing with in Gaza and add another front to all of this? We're talking about, like, five fronts now. Yeah, and it could be the entire surrounding and the entire country. One answer could be, well, maybe they feel like the Gaza thing is wrapping up, and it's sort of they're going to stop that part of it. But then the other answer is that Netanyahu will not, there will not be any calls for a new election to get him out of there while they're actively involved in a war. And so you have to question whether or not this is his motivation, is he'll continue to start wars with anybody else in the area, too. So stay in power. That's really what it kind of feels like at this point, and I talk to people in Israel who I think feel the same way. They certainly feel like they're handcuffed because they're in the middle of the war where the government simply can't handle running an election at the same time. Yeah, I mean, we've talked about this. I think that is one of the only pieces of analysis that you can have in the face of this thing. I, for one, I'm frustrated by a variety of things. One, Nick, is it's obvious that the War on Terror is the playbook here. It's the idea that you say that you are facing evil, you're facing terrorists, you have to take it out wherever it is. As a result, you have carte blanche to basically do whatever you want to do. Meanwhile, Israel is a client state of the United States of America. And what are we hearing from Joe Biden? The actual quote is, quote, we're going to do everything we can to keep another war from breaking up. Well, what are we doing? Like, where's that taking place? I would love to hear. There are a variety of US connected things here. First of all, the Biden administration has utterly failed in this. There is no solution there. I mean, for all of the leaks to the press about the pressure and displeasure from all this, it's not doing anything. Israel is doing whatever it wants with the weapons and the money from the United States in order to do it. On top of that, you and I and everyone listening knows that Benjamin Netanyahu, he wants to help Donald Trump win the American election. He has every desire to do that because they are both authoritarians. They travel with one another. This is most definitely, if this front opens up, like it seems that it's going to is going to affect the US election, it's going to change balance of power and the way things are coordinated. This is one of the few Achilles heels of the Harris campaign heading into November. And like you said, Benjamin Netanyahu's entire not just political survival, but also legal survival depends on this thing continuing. So as a result, it feels like this is going to happen. There's not any real pressure that's taking place in terms of trying to wind it down. And it feels like this is a juggernaut with a ton of momentum behind it that not really anybody at this point is willing to lift a finger or to actually do anything to make it stop. It feels like this is happening. It feels like this is where we're going. And for the record, I don't think it's a coincidence, Nick, that they're already using language that they've used when it's come to Gaza in terms of talking about civilian infrastructure being used to house weapons. Of course, it is. And then on top of it, we we're hearing about this no go does zone. Like it feels like the tragedy that has taken place in Gaza is now being franchised out. And it feels like that's where this whole thing is going. And there is no way, no shape, no form in which this is good for anybody outside of Benjamin Netanyahu and the people who surround them. Yeah, but I mean, it is worth noting that Hezbollah does embed in civilian areas. And then Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. And I don't think there's any tears shed if they were, you know, it's certain Hezbollah members are killed. I don't care. I don't care if you're engaged in a war with another like group of people like you, you buy the ticket, you take the ride, I get that it's when you start killing civilians left and right, which Israel shows a complete willingness and eagerness to do. That's when I take issue. Yeah, and right, which is why the Patriot thing becomes a problematic thing because it was so haphazard in the sense that anybody could have been next to them near them. Could have gotten the pager. I don't know how they were to guarantee that every single person was a, you can't, this Hezbollah member, right? That's the problem is like, you can't guarantee that governments are probably not really supposed to engage in kind of mission impossible kind of stuff. So terrorism, but yes. And it's an interesting proxy for Iran, which is really what we're talking about here when you're talking about a war, because obviously Lebanon is a small country to the north of Israel that doesn't offer, you know, like has a lot of kind of like controls the country, even though they're part of the government. So they're like legitimate in that country, but you know, they don't have any kind of ability to fight back against Israel per se has has balled us back by Iran. So the question now is, is Iran going to use this as a proxy war? Or is Iran going to end up stepping in and becoming the directly attacking Israel with a million man army? And I don't know, potentially nuclear weapons on their, on their side. There was this kid, Nick, back when I was in elementary school, there was this kid, this little, little shit. And him and his little shit friends used to like, you know, try and bug me, right? And they would follow me home from school a lot of the times. And one of them, the little shit I'm talking about, he would like to talk to him. Hmm. You're not going to dox him? I'm not going to dox him. But he would, he would, he would push and push and push and he wanted me to fight. He wanted me to fight. He wanted me to fight. And you know what, Nick, eventually at some point, I'd knock the living shit out of him. I, I, and quite frankly, let's go ahead and point something out. Israel has been trying to draw Iran into a war. That has happened now for months, if not years. This has been a constant thing. We saw the back and forth between Iran and Israel. We saw the telegraph attacks that were taking place. Well, meanwhile, they were, you know, striking Iran and taking out leadership and assassinating people. The question is once more, and I hate to say this, is Iran going to go ahead and turn around and, and it is real? And if they do, the United States of America is going to have absolutely no choice whatsoever. And by the way, we both know that there is a considerable group within the United States across party lines throughout the military industrial complex. And what do they want, Nick? They want to go to war with Iran and they have wanted to go to war with Iran for a very long time. The question, and I hate that it keeps coming back to this, is as we wait on the edges of our seats and we wonder what's going to happen here, whether or not this thing is going to escalate into something larger. And it's been that way since October 7th, we're going on two years of this shit. And now we're waiting on it again. And there is no control. The Biden administration has been an abysmal failure on this front. And I, I, for one, I, I approached this with incredible trepidation and sadness. For sure. And you know what? It's worth from the timing of all this, because Netanyahu knows that Biden really can't say anything or do anything before the election, right? Well, Biden can't say anything anyway. I mean, he could not be reached for comment more. He's, I think they started dipping their toe in the spring. And they were a little bit about saying we're not going to give you more weapons. And I think that was the progress that they had the ability to do that. And it was starting to slow down. But now there's just simply, you know, on a purely cynical political level here, you know, they can't risk losing any people who would support Israel for votes, which is horrible to think about that. People are going to die because of that. And, you know, I have to imagine that there must be some neo-con thinking that Israel in Iran could get into a war. Israel could win. And they somehow end the, the control, the religious control over that country. Because you remember before '79, Iran was a European country, basically, and with an open society, a beautiful place. And I have to think that they must be saying themselves, gosh, we can return it to that and have a flourishing democracy and have a friend to Israel instead. I just want to remind everybody that before that takeover, that it was run by an iron fist that was put in place by the United States and the CIA. Like once again, everything that we talk about are chickens coming home to roost from United States, like interference with things. I also want to point out, like, and we're not doing a segment on this today, but I want to put a marker out there and I want to say I am extremely disappointed by the Harris campaign as of late. Like, we don't have time to get into all of it. Talking about shooting people breaking into our house while laughing with Oprah, that sucks. Then next thing, you know, Nick, I don't know if you saw this, speaking at a fundraiser with a bunch of crypto bros, telling them that she's definitely going to push crypto and she's definitely going to push AI and all of that. Like this right wing sort of flirtation that is happening with it, that also guarantees, and for the record, the fact that she hasn't come out to defend Haitians in Springfield and all I've seen in communications are just let it fade away. Don't worry about it. While all of these people are being being put in harm's way and the threat of violence is growing, I think that is contemptible. And to go ahead off of that, what we're talking about right now, I don't expect Biden to do anything in this because he's the most like lame duck lame duck we've ever seen. I don't see Kamala Harris risking this right wing flirtation to come out and criticize Israel. So as a result, what's happening? We're behind the able. Like we don't have anybody in this country who was actually advocating for something to be done here with any sort of influence or power. And as a result, while this thing grows, I don't see much opportunity for someone to really pump the brakes and actually make sure that this thing doesn't escalate out of control. We just have to hope that the participants show some sort of hesitance. We know Israel isn't going to. I'm not. I don't love hoping that Iran is going to show hesitance, right? Even though like that's what's happened. So it is a bad situation that I think we're going to spend a lot of time watching unfold without question. And I like to say like, oh, this is not unprecedented where you see, you know, things popping up across the world during this time knowing that the United States will probably be somewhat feckless because they're so worried about these elections. But I think that isn't always the case because these elections haven't been this close, right? Somebody, one of the end and said like, it's the closest election we've had in 60 years, you know, even though I feel like she's got a three point something lead, but whatever he's looking at, I guess, national average, whatever he's looking at, was indicating that. And certainly we know it's going to be close, right? Electoral College versions are wise. So we're now in that we've gotten that point of our democracy where I think going forward, we're always going to have these close races, right? It's always going to be a source of apprehension for everybody in the country. And because these damn campaign starts so early anyway, we're never going to get out of the apprehension. If whoever wins that we like, we won't have very much long of a honeymoon before we have to worry about the next election. And if they don't like it and we're sucking some other horrible reality, then that's going to be even worse. Much like the cycle of gun violence, where we're told now is not the time to talk about politics. I would like for all the people who tell me now is not the time to push for like more progressive, more left wing answers and solutions, I would love to hear from them when the time is, because it is just continuing to roll and roll and roll. Nick, let's get to one of the grossest nights of reports that I have ever seen. This took place last Thursday. Seeing in to start with an investigation found that North Carolina GOP gubernatorial nominee and current lieutenant governor Mark Robinson, who is a piece of shit and always has been, and we'll get more into that in a second, found that he allegedly had a history of posting on a porn forum called Nude Africa. We're not going to get into the specifics. We are not going to read what was on here. We're not going to characterize all of the things that are on here. If you want to go look at it, go look at it. I hope that you haven't, you know, you've already eaten lunch, you're not interested in any of this. They were graphic. They were disturbing. Mark Robinson allegedly called himself a black Nazi. He stated a desire to own slaves. He talked about a sexualization that he had of trans people. Also, by the way, bragged about having, I don't know, house to put this disgusting affair with his wife sister. Meanwhile, Nick, he is obviously saying that this isn't true. The GOP has distanced themselves. Trump held a rally North Carolina and did not mention him by name. This, I don't know about you, and I know that you and I are similar, and I know that you read the excerpts from this and the fragments of this. This was one of the more disturbing caches of reports that I've seen in a really long time. But who writes anything in the comments of porn section? Like, that's not, you know, there's something to comment on. They are people who are just absolutely cooked. I now start scrolling, I guess, and see when people come because I can't believe they're ever ever anything. The people on this porn forum, if people want to understand how bad this is, like, think about the people who would go online and post a bunch of stuff on this stuff. Mark Robinson, allegedly, was the guy that other people in this forum were like, "Hey, man, take it down a notch." Yeah. I mean, you know, listen, the anonymous culture can encourage a lot of interesting voices, right? When you feel like you're just somebody that no one's ever going to know who it is, and if you're looking for engagement or whatever, you could say a lot of stuff. And by the way, it's probably true. Are you satisfied, by the way? It's probably like he believes what he was saying. He wasn't just sort of trolling for anyone to respond. But do you believe, are you satisfied with the methods of identifying that it really was in the CNN news and that sort of thing? I'll say this. And by the way, there's so much to talk about this that we're going to get to, including, like, whether or not these revelations are something we should be surprised about. Also, the psychological psychosexual disaster that is the Republican Party and what they're all about, because that's one of the main things we have to talk about today. I think one of the things that is important to point out, Nick, is this guy who wants to be the governor of North Carolina, is currently the lieutenant governor. He has apparently used the same social media handle everywhere that he goes, which is why they were able to identify this thing. That tells me that not only is this guy unhinged, but that this guy is stupid. And he's no stupid that he has gone ahead and done all of this stuff and left a trail for people like CNN to find it. I don't think it was that hard for them to find it, to be clear. Yeah, I saw a thread from someone who does this and they were identifying like January 6th, the people. And which by the way, when you look at how you read those articles about how they are, able to find people with like image, whatever. A, it's scary, but B, it is impressive what you can do now when you're smart enough to track all these things. So I think I'm satisfied too that yes, it is him. I think the response is indicative of someone who is probably guilty. You know, that's what it sounds like to me. And based on the fact that we would have heard him say in public, you know, by as himself can indicate that too, especially when we were realizing that, listen, Mark Robinson is a black man in the Republican Party. And there are often been times where it seems like there's a grift going on where the Republican Party can embrace someone like that because they feel like that proves that they're not racist, for instance, right? And so I wonder if that is the, you know, the canal that he's swimming on to be able to get as far as he did. I think there's a couple of things that are happening with that. First things first, the GOP really enjoys having people of color around who are more than willing to say that civil rights was a mistake and Martin Luther King was a dangerous person. There's a reason why Trump endorsed this person, pushed this person, talked about him constantly. I think at one point called him Martin Luther King on steroids, which is repulsive. I think it's also one of the reasons why Donald Trump has come to prominence within the Republican Party, Nick, because the things that they're being asked to do on behalf of oligarchs and their think tanks and their institutes, you need people who are shameless. And another part of the story that isn't getting reported very much, and this is something that I only know because like I have a lot of contacts with insiders and stuff, there were rumors about this for years, Nick. Like they, they, they, there were rumors in North Carolina that this guy was a regular in all these like porno shops and like would go in there, not just a couple of times a week, but like five times a week. Like they, they knew that this was a guy who was gettable. Do you know what I mean? Like he would do whatever it was and have absolutely no shame about it. And Nick, I'm going to have you play this in a second. These are quotes from Mark Robinson in his own words back in 2020. And I want to point out what we're finding out about him is that this actually isn't surprising what we're finding out. We have known who this guy is. What we're getting now is background material that sort of brings other things closer and closer to the light. Any odd guy was on stage with Canada so was a few days ago and asked her, what America are we going back to to make America great again? The one where women couldn't vote or black people were swinging from cheap trees. I would say to him if I was standing in front of him, I absolutely want to go back to the America where women couldn't vote. Now this guy and Nick, it's not like these are isolated incidents. This is a guy who has regularly and openly under his own name, not even anonymously. He's posted things on Facebook and social media saying that gay and trans people are filth that there are abominations that women shouldn't be allowed to vote. He said that the Nazis weren't that bad. You know, he called himself a black Nazi on this porn forum, but he said regularly the Nazis weren't all that bad. He's taught, we've reported on this, he's talked openly about wanting to kill his enemies. He supported January 6th. On top of that, in the midst of all of the things we're now finding out about him has always said that he's like a conservative Christian valued guy while doing all this stuff. None of this was hidden. This is who this guy is and this is the guy that the GOP nominated put forward as their nominee. They wrap their arms around him and you have to ask yourself, are these revelations somehow or another proving he's different from that or is it simply an extension of what we already knew about this guy? I think that the latter sort of that and you know, I count down to when Trump's gonna say I didn't know the guy. I never knew him. I didn't know him. I didn't endorse him. I don't know him. So, you know, it's just added to the list, you know, guys like George Santos, him, you know, the people that passed like this are seem to be attracted to a certain political party. They are and to go ahead and bring this full circle, another small one because I don't want to talk too much about Christopher Rufo and Robinson's name was found along with Christopher Rufo. Who's the guy who came up with the whole groomer, uh, DEI, all of that bullshit. These guys, their names were found on the email list at Ashley Madison dot com, which, uh, for people who might not know was a website that purported to help people cheat on their spouses. But basically, it was just a big scam website. He's found on there. We're going to talk about Matt Gaetz in just a couple of seconds. God help us. And what we need to discuss very quickly is something that we have noticed. We've talked about in brief, but it's why so many Republicans are constantly getting caught doing the things that they are always saying are out there and that they're dangerous. And it's time that we wrap our heads around the psychological impact and aspects of this. And here's the reason why they're there. We don't talk about this in politics analysis because it's uncomfortable. There have been so many studies done on the right-wing brain, the people who are for authoritarianism and oppression about why they are the way they are. And Nick, here's what it comes down to. And I want to remind everybody that Mark Robinson called himself a black Nazi. You know, he's gone after gay and trans people. And then meanwhile, sexualize them in his comments. He talked about conservative values while talking about having this disgusting relationship with his wife's sister. And here's the reason why. People who end up becoming authoritarians and right-wing demagogues, they hate themselves. They are raised up in oppressive environments, whether it's evangelicalism, religion, patriarchal environments, whatever it is. And they are told at a young age that there's something evil inside of them. And guess what you have to do at that point, Nick? You either embrace who you are and you leave your environment, which means that you might not have a family, you might not have a community, you might not have any of this stuff, or you push it down, you hate yourself, and then you project that hatred on the rest of the world. So the old saying that we hear on social media, every statement is a confession. It's true. This literally is a party that their entire reason for existence is a pursuit of power that hates themselves. And we see this over and over with Donald Trump, with Elon Musk, all of these people, they are projecting on the world the things that they hate about themselves the most. And then they need to destroy that thing. And because they need to destroy that thing, they end up becoming just absolute messes. And then we have to suffer the consequences. It is a mental health crisis on top of a political crisis. I mean, I guess I argue that they don't really push it down because they have to come out. They have to come out. They have to come out, participate in these things that they hate themselves for doing in a vicious cycle. Whereas if they just hadn't been raised to demonize sexuality or different things, then they wouldn't necessarily be in these positions where now they're making decisions for constituents and the things that are going to be that will affect real lives. That's what's sad about this whole thing. And that's kind of the unwell part of the country, which explains probably a lot of the attraction to Donald Trump. A lot of people, a body will hate themselves. Listen, there are things I hate myself sometimes, I suppose. But I don't, yeah, by the way, can we argue that like just because you had an actual mass in the account doesn't necessarily mean that you need it? No, you can make that argument because it doesn't actually, the funniest part about all of this is it's been proven every time there's a leak like this that like it's just a bunch of like horny men who hand over their email addresses and find out that it's a complete scam top to bottom, which is part of the dumb thing. Like Christopher Rufo, the architect of so many of the conspiracy theories that you and I are struggling through and on top of that educators and public leaders and election tallyers, you name it. Like that guy isn't smart enough to not fall for that scam. You know, like he can't repress what's happening with him. And you're right, it always comes forward. It always has to find an extension. So for instance, this night, which was a crazy, crazy night of revelations, we find out not friend of the pod, Florida representative Matt Gaetz, some sworn affidavits came out that, and by the way, a reminder, this idiot who has constantly gone after Democrats saying that they're evil, these peddled QAnon conspiracy theories that human trafficking is happening, that they're taking advantage of young people and abusing them. It's come out of the sworn affidavit that this guy attended a drug fueled sex party in July of 2017, and had a 17 year old girl dropped off by her mom at this party. These are all allegations we can't confirm that they're true, but this is part of a larger litany of allegations against Matt Gaetz, that not only has he exploited women, but oftentimes has maybe even used Venmo accounts for someone to set him up in some really illicit situations. This reminds me, Nick, and I'm sure you've seen it and everybody else held here as we've seen pastors who claim, you know, QAnon conspiracy theories, the children are being abused, they get caught with, you know, abusive content. We see it all the time with politicians. We see it time and time again with all these people who are out there spreading these conspiracy theories law enforcement agents, you name it. And meanwhile, they are the ones who are actually carrying out these abuses. And why? Because they hate the part of themselves that's carrying these things out and they have to find enemies in order to blame it on. You can set your watch by it. If he went to this orgy with a woman who was illegal, does that matter? Well, okay, I'm so glad you asked that. Because here's my, I want to state for the record, I don't care what people are into sexually as long as they're doing it with consenting adults. I, you know, I don't want to sit around King shaming anybody. People would do what they want as long as they're not hurting anybody. If Mark Robinson did this stuff, whatever, if he were a private citizen, that would be fine. If Matt Gates wants to be a private citizen and go to sex parties and do whatever, totally fine. Same for Christopher Rufo. If he wants to go on a website and do this stuff, the problem is when it becomes our problem, right? It's when it turns into oppression and the passing of legislation, the scapegoating and endangering of human beings. When that becomes the public problem, that's when we have to talk about that. Well, let's talk about that because there's an interesting timeline here because as we remember, Kevin McCarthy struggled mightily to get the speaker at the house, the votes, right? How many times do they have to do it? Remember, like it was seven, eight. I know I'm sick, but I still get a sick pleasure from thinking about how McCarthy debased himself in order to become speaker of the house for basically like 10 days and become publicly humiliated and ostracized. Fantastic. The biggest concession he had to make was that Matt Gates said, I will give you the one vote you need mine if you get rid of this ethics investigation into me over these allegations that are now coming out the court papers. Now, he agrees to do that. Now, remember, the order is a little different. The Department of Justice was investigating this starting in 2020. They get his partner, right? And the partner we all thought had flipped and gave plenty of information about Gates as well. There's pictures of him and Gates sifting through IDs. Remember this? They went into the Department of DMV, whatever it was in Florida, and they were essentially defined IDs that they can then get to these underage girls so that they can use it and print on their adults. There's no other reason why they're going through IDs like that, right? Now, you have to remember that Gates also asked for a pardon from Mark Meadows in 2020 before January 6th, January 6th, January 7th, January 6th. But magically, so remember, McCarthy gets a speakership on January 7th, 2023. In February of 2023, the DOJ suddenly drops their investigation. That's interesting. Now, does McCarthy have enough power to go to DOJ and say, hey, whatever, I don't know, but it took until May of 2023 for the ethics committee to reopen the investigation back into him and then get a lot of the flow of information that the DOJ already had. So that's interesting that it's probably what looked to me was that McCarthy did squash the investigation as well as he possibly could for as long as he could, and once McCarthy is out and things kind of die down, there's enough there where they reopen the, at least the House Ethics Committee has reopened the investigation and things are leaking out now. By the way, you know what it brings to mind to me, and I haven't thought about this in a minute, it brings to mind the Dennis Hastert thing, where it turned out that he had abused multiple people on the path to becoming Speaker of the House. And I want to point something out, what we're seeing is not brand new, like the GOP has been absolutely embroiled and boiled in this stuff for decades now. It just so happens that the pursuit of power is what matters. There's no country where Matt Gates should be a representative, where he should be in Congress, none. Like his behavior and the way that he has conducted himself, and I'm not even talking about the allegations. The person that he has been, the way he has behaved, this guy should be out on his ass. He never should have been elected in the first place. But what does the GOP actually value, right? I mean, it's the same for Marjorie Taylor Greene, that whole cadre of, of idiots. Like, what they actually value is that they'll get people in power that will go ahead and rubber stamp all of this stuff. They won't ask questions. They won't have ethical and moral complaints. And meanwhile, this party has just continued to get worse and worse. The rot didn't start with Donald Trump. Donald Trump is a symptom of a larger disease. But when even like you going through that, Nick, sometimes the Matt Gates stuff, the allegations against him grow so disgusting, that like there's a part of my brain speaking of sublimating and repressing. My brain just goes, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. I'm not going to think about this anymore. No. Yeah, man. No, it's just awful. I can't even believe that we're having this conversation that like this is now coming to the forefront along with all this other information. Like it is just, it is a miserable group of people whose entire purpose is to gain power on behalf of wealthy benefactors and make everybody else miserable as it happens. Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's kind of sad that you got to go back to Dennis Hastert because you shouldn't have to go that far back. Does it remind you of, oh, say, Jim Jordan? Oh, Jim Jordan. Absolutely. I mean, it is. And by the way, Nick, you know what I've completely forgot to mention? While they're pushing these QAnon conspiracy theories about exploiting young people, look at how many people now in the Republican party at the state level are looking to roll back the age of consent. Yeah. They're talking about, well, I mean, you know, if a young woman, like a teenager, maybe she should go and have children. It would, you know, she'd be healthier and be able to have more like that. Everything is a confession here. Right. Like it's literally top to bottom. It's rotten. And these, these sort of these symptoms that we're discussing, these are the symptoms that come out when the disease is so far progressed. You know what I mean? That they can't be denied anymore. Yeah. And I think that they probably like people like this. They love them. They have dirt on them, but they can manipulate them because they can threaten to reveal these words are in their, in their past that they are pushing down, right? Sure. And so that's how you get people. Well, we talked about before, but it's how you get people like Lindsey Graham, perhaps. It's how you get a whole host of these people. Yeah. Like it's just, I think I want to reiterate one thing that I've said before, but I want to make it very, very clear. We do not understand how political parties work in this country. We think everybody just gets together and talks about their ideas and their principles. That's not what it is. These parties are expressions of larger feelings within a populace, right? Like the Democratic Party is marked by neurosis. Yeah. They're terrified. They want to make the world better, but they don't want to change things too much. So that sort of makes them feel kind of weird. That's the way the politics end up playing. And then by the way, it helps the professional managerial class and helps the sort of corporate class. Meanwhile, you mean the people listening to this are throwing tomatoes at them saying do something. The Republican Party represents a deep unwellness in the American populace, a bunch of people who have grown up in abusive, exploitative backgrounds who have made sense of those existences by then channeling their hate and unwellness against other people. And what you just brought up, everything from Jim Jordan, or Toma Dennis Haster, Toma Matt Gaise, Toma Mark Robinson, the entire point of it is cruelty. And people get that right. The point is the cruelty, but we also need to talk about why the point is cruelty. It's because they're miserable people who want to make other people miserable. Yeah. Were you in a fraternity? No, I was not. I was not smart enough to avoid that in my early college career. But the other reason why, like you go through something like Hell Week, why are we doing this? Why are we? Because you had to go through it. Yes, because I went through it, and that means you have to go through it. I remember going through it, and I'm still mortified thinking that I participated in one of them, because we had to, because we were the... That's how sports are too. That's exactly how sports play out. Yes. Yeah. And so it's a really vicious cycle here that, and again, even the response to touching upon the value of a healthier mental approach to things, that is met with vitriol and despair and anger and all the issues they have inside are like, come out in that way. So it's almost very hard to break through that. For the same reason, it's hard to break through to someone who's like on the MAGA and have them see through what they're being grifted on. It's all part of the same thing. Well, and the thing that ends up happening, it's both a conscious and unconscious thing, which is, you know, I'll just give an example, Nick. We see it all the time when it comes up like corporal punishment against children, whether or not they should be spanked or beaten or whatever, or whether or not children should, I don't know, get free school lunches, you know? And people say, I didn't get that. And like, look where I turned down. It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on, because what you actually start to learn when you investigate this stuff is one of the main things we have a question about in this country is whether or not generations should do better than previous generations. And what that says about the people who had to deal with the bullshit, right? Because they tell themselves a story, look at me, I turned out just fine. So as a result, like, they don't really want things to get better. It's an unconscious thing, even though they're like advocating for children. And one of the reasons the GOP doesn't like have actual programs or agendas to help children is because it is the forwarding of the trauma that you just talked about, whether or not you're in a fraternity or you're in sports. I remember, and you said the fraternity thing, I thought about like, what it was like to be a freshman coming into high school. And back when I went to high school, like, there was a day and then months and a year afterwards in which the seniors made your lives miserable, right? They harassed you, they bullied you, you know, they abused you in order to like harden you through a process of socialization. This takes place in families, it takes place in communities. And what's the Republican Party saying? Keep it going, keep it constantly going. And so that's how we end up in a situation like this. I mean, they're saying it's the only way to do it. Like, that's the only way to do it. Yeah, you don't want to be soft and you want to be weak. Yeah. Right. So we can't possibly give kids, you know, meals when they're hungry, school, you know, then they won't ever eat on their own, you know, like, that's, that's what they'll say. And it's, you know, I had the conversation this weekend about it where it's just the richest country in the history of the world and the history of, you know, our civilization. And yet, people are hungry, you know, kids are hungry. Incredible. In poverty. And that's a choice. That's a choice. Yeah, the kids are choosing it. Some horrible choice the kid made when he was three, I was going to say it's a choice that we don't give that, you know, that anybody in this country can be houseless anybody in this country could be hungry, hungry. It's, it's a choice, you know, here's to me as a choice at this point. Nick, another big story that came out and, and this starts off with a little bit of tabloid stuff, but I think there's some analysis that comes from this. It came out the same exact night, which is wild, that New York magazine reporter Olivia Nuzzi, who if you are on social media in Natalie, you've come across Nuzzi and you probably read her profiles of everybody from, you know, Donald Trump to, you know, saying that Joe Biden was not mentally capable anymore, is now on leave from New York magazine after the revelation that she had engaged in an inappropriate sexting relationship with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. This is a very, very weird story that has revealed, I think, a lot about journalism, entrenched power, how all of this stuff works, and quite frankly, it is gross and weird, but I think important to talk about. Right. And we're going to find out at some point, if you were in the inner circles of, you know, journalism and journalists, you know, they might all sort of shrug at a little bit of this because you have to imagine that there have been times every journalist is faced with that possibility of getting a scoop or getting in or getting intoxicated by and falling into an inappropriate relationship with someone they have to be covering or whatever. So, you know, this is not the time to say love works in mysterious ways. It is not. I want to point out with the actual facts of this, and I think there's something to glean from it. This started, apparently, when Nuzzi was chased by New York magazine of profiling RFK Jr., the article, did you read the article that she wrote? Wait, which article? The article on RFK that she published. It's not great. First of all, a large portion of it, and now with the context of what we're talking about, this relationship that she had with him, a large portion of it is spent describing how disgusting his life is, how like he was constantly dealing with a bunch of dogs, their waste, and then getting into his van, which was disgusting, and also so bad that she nearly choked and got sick from it. Which, by the way, tells us why would somebody start a relationship with this guy? And quite frankly, probably because he's a Kennedy, and probably because getting close to power and mystique, particularly Kennedy, is some sort of a cloud-chasing thing. We have seen from Nuzzi, and even though people are standing up to say how brilliant she is, she has a long history of sucking up to everybody from Donald Trump and Coulter, a long history of making racist jokes about Barack Obama, like this is someone who, again, like a Mark Robinson, we had a good view of who she was in public. But she was consistently put forward as the star reporter who was able to get tons of scoops. And Nick, what you just alluded to is something called access journalism. And for people who don't understand this, journalists who are oftentimes able to get these stories, they have to conjure up relationships with subjects. One of the best modern examples is Maggie Haberman. And Maggie Haberman has now won prizes, made incredible amounts of money, and built herself a platform because she was able to cozy up to Donald Trump. She would criticize him, but, you know, they had a friendly back and forth, and she was able to go in and talk to him and get scoops. He certainly leaked to her, people around him leaked her. And the reason is because the media class is incredibly close and cozy with the political class, which is one of the reasons why we have the political and the media class that we have right now. Yeah, and it probably would make sense. If I was a journalist and I needed to get scoops, I would need those relationships, right? Unfortunately, unfortunately. But I suppose then you have to say if you're teaching that class in college, you have to say, but you cannot enter into a romantic relationship. Now, is it clear to you that it was physical at this point and rather than less? It doesn't sound like it. It sounds like it was through text messages. When you read these articles, it vacillates back and forth with what they're admitting to or not. I'm a little confused now. It sounds like maybe they had one night or something to get rid of. I have no idea. These are these are alleged things. All I know is that there was some type of a relationship that and by the way, came to the attention of New York magazine because apparently RFK Jr. was bragging to everybody about this reporter who was doing this type of stuff. It was reckless at best, unethical and corrupt at worst. And by the way, Nick, I really, I want to point out something which is a real problem for me, which is I'm a journalist. And I've been a journalist for nearly the past decade. Like, I didn't plan on doing it, but I ended up becoming a journalist, at least as part of my trade. Nick, all I ever hear is how journalism is this holy temple of objectivity. I have a question for you. Does objectivity actually exist? Not if not to use adjectives in your articles. Well, you have to choose words, don't you? You have to choose what to focus on, what to talk about. I mean, we've seen a lot of New York Times articles talking about Gaza that just absolutely been sentences into the quantum realm. The idea that that journalism was ever objective is absolutely absurd. The history of journalism is absolutely rife with power and subjectivity. We've even seen and by the way, a large part of this happened because of Watergate, because the media took down a presidency with the help of a leaker. And they had to be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, we have a lot of power here. And we need to guard it and be careful with it. None of this is objective. There is a viewpoint for all of this stuff. And watching journalists follow over themselves to try and defend Olivia Nuzzi based on an obvious broaching of the supposed ethics, I think is incredibly telling. I have a couple of examples. Virginia Heffernan, who I've talked to, I've worked with, I sometimes agree with her and sometimes disagree with her vehemently. She chalked it up to Nuzzi being 31. We're all wild at 31, which I think is a crazy thing to say for a particularly an established journalist. Ben Smith, who has been around the block many, many times on semaphore, I'm going to read you a couple of paragraphs here. This has been Smith talking about the Nuzzi affair. I had hoped to avoid writing about last week's big media scandal. We were scooped to Max's external regret by Olivia Darcy's excellent new newsletter status after we ignored a Wednesday afternoon evening email from one Anderson Jones. Jones, an anonymous sender with an Iowa IP address who has since gone dark, had a news tip. New York Magazine's Olivia Nuzzi had disclosed a box that she had had a romantic relationship with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. But now that we are in the full fury of American media periods and self righteousness, I'm going to risk my neck on a slightly contrarian view. Reporters have all sorts of compromising relationships with sources. The most compromising of all and the most common is a reporter's fieldy to someone who gives them information. That's the real coin of this realm. Sex barely rates. He then goes on to say, you won't hear many American journalists reckon with this. Some British journalists, naturally, have been texting us to ask what the fuss is all about. If you're not sleeping with someone in a position in power, how are you even a journalist? The advice writer Heather have ripsedly texted me Saturday saying, "The world would be much more exciting with more nuzzies around, but alas, the world is inhabited by anonymously emailing moralists instead." Nick, I don't know what to say to this except for to declare my revulsion and then offer a critique of the media class as it sets. I guess. I mean, poor Ryan, Ryan Lizzo, who was engaged to her and they broke that off when this started. Alleged sex past, Ryan Lizzo, yes. What is he, sex, what? Alleged sex past. I'm unfamiliar with this term. Well, we should move on. Okay, but now I gotta look at that. Okay, for what it's worth, he's 50 or so. So he's significantly older than her as well. So there's something for that. Doesn't matter if I don't want to yuck anyone, Jim, do what you're doing as long as it's consenting adults. And then on top of it, it doesn't run aground of proprietary journalistic ethics or whatever. But if we're talking about connections like that and using your sexual whatever to get in and get tidbits of stuff, is it that far different than using, say, your family members to get tips and information? Well, Nick, I'm glad you approached that subject because a large part of the problem here is that our media class has become an insulated class of individuals. Many of them are, of course, nepo babies. Many of them got their jobs because their parents had jobs and then get them into the industry. On top of that, as we've covered, like, you have to have money to work in journalism now because you don't get paid anything. This goes across a lot of these different forums. And what we're actually seeing, and this is not being reported, and by the way, I mentioned Maggie Haberman a while ago, I don't know if you saw, she gave an interview the other day where she was like, there is a dark and sinister economy of people criticizing the media for saying we haven't covered Trump the right way. Well, that's defensiveness. And you know what I think all of this is born out of? It's class consciousness and class solidarity. It's a group of people who see themselves as part of the same club removed from other people. And as a result, any attack on one of them is going to be an attack on the other. And so as a result, they're going to close ranks, even if it's found out that someone like Olivia Nuzzi engaged in this relationship with an RFK junior. Absolutely. And Haberman, who was what I was talking about because her role at X from the time she was 18 was probably this full and solid as anyone at any veteran reporter. And you know, she probably would be foolish not to take advantage of that. But but here we are. And you know, I want to she surf, does Nuzzi survive this and maintain her position? Probably. I assume she'll have a sub stack or a different job here before too long. She might even get reinstated by a New York magazine. We don't even know. But I think it I think it is a moment to reflect on what our media is and why we're not getting good coverage of what's going on in this country is because it is a closed rank. And as a result, they have they have a perspective that is going to affect their subjectivity and objectivity in every story that they write. So your argument is that that in general, the Woodward and Bernstein mentality has not existed anymore in journalism. Well, I think that past generation, and I think journalism in the past was much more of like sort of a working position. You know, like one of the reasons why that happened besides the fact that they had a contact with Mark felt was because they went into like crime, you know, like, court sessions. And they went into a court session and they're like, wait, wait, wait, wait, what's going on here? Something's weird. And then they ended up chasing it up the tree. And of course, Mark felt had his own professional complaint that led to him becoming, you know, so-called deep throat. But I think that that has changed. And I think journalism has become, as by the way, neoliberalism has pushed down not just opportunities and gotten rid of one journal and newspaper after another and lowered the prices and also raised the prices in places like New York, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. You only are going to have people who have those connections and have that income and that support. So as a result, it's actually mutated into something else. And just so we're making a point out of this, Olivia Nuzzi and other people like her, they're internet stars. Like, they're not just journalists anymore. Maggie Haberman is exactly like this. Like, they have become personalities. You know what I mean? With their own brand. And as those things grow, the entire industry is mutated. And I don't think that people are actually sitting with this because it's a tabloid story. It's got sex. It's got scandal. And so and power. And as a result, we're not actually taking a look. I think what it represents and what it gives us. All right, real fast, Nick, we both wanted to talk about this. Let's go down to the Lone Star state. In Texas, a new poll, actually a couple of new polls have come out that show that representative Colin Allred for the first time is apparently in the lead in his race against Ted Cruz. The lead is within the margin of air, but this represents a sea change that we didn't even see with Beto or Rourke, one of the most popular Democrats in that state in a long, long time. It looks as if Texas. Well, Cruz, I think, is in actual trouble, but we're also seeing the numbers in the presidential race in Texas start to shift, which is something that we kind of thought might happen over time. And this new lead that Allred apparently seems to have over Ted Cruz, it seems like if it's not important to big time change, that it is a glimpse of what is possible in that state. Yeah, and the next person that tries to belittle me by saying that Texas is on its way towards running blue, like this is more proof that it is turning purple. It could, it could. You cannot ignore the numbers. He's doing really well with women. He's doing well with Hispanics. He's doing well with people of color in general. The only thing that's keeping Cruz afloat are white guys, you know, older white guys. And, you know, it speaks a lot. Interestingly enough, I was looking at one of the polls on one of these websites where like the border was only like the third most important thing behind, you know, the economy and something else. So that was interesting to me as well. We were talking about people in Texas, it's just a border state. He spoke at the DNC, very impressive. So I'm not surprised that he's a good candidate running a good campaign and competing as hard as he can. But man, Beto has really made me, you know, wary of this whole thing again. I don't know if I can go through it again, Jared. Yeah, I think there was a sense, particularly with Beto that something was growing there. But I do want to point out something in this story, which I think is singular and important. How absolutely unlikable and reprehensible Ted Cruz is. Yeah, I do not think that we would be in this situation. If you did not have a Ted Cruz who is a perfect combination of a few things. One is he's just absolutely detestable. Like his personality is the equivalent of rap poison, you know, like just to hear this man talk and to look at him, like makes the soul, it makes the soul recoil. And on top of that, that would be fine for Texas, particularly the people you're talking about, not just older white men, but incredibly wealthy white men, business owners in Texas, the oil industry in Texas. Like that would be enough for them. Nick, he walked out on that state as people died in the winter. He was caught going to Mexico to go on vacation. We've talked about it on this show. He sold basically his soul to have a podcast. And I love this podcast and I love podcasting with you. Like it's one of my great joys and great pleasures that if you are going to compromise your ethics and your standing as a United States senator for a podcast and a bad one at that, best of luck to you. And I think that we might look back on this time period. When you and I are old and gray and we're looking back at this God forsaken political period, Ted Cruz might be one of the more important sort of hinge figures in this time that he's so detestable and he has been so reprehensible as senator from Texas. And just the way that he has navigated the past few years, everything from running for president and licking Trump's boots and then everything we just went over, he might actually single handedly turn Texas purple. And that is, I think like congratulations, Ted, you did it. And as by the way, we've been talking about weird fetishes throughout this show. This guy absolutely loves being humiliated in public. And like that has contributed to a larger environment in which we are having a conversation that Texas might have a democratic senator and could very well be a battleground state going into November. I mean, all I have to do is show tech here's playing basketball and then maybe smash cut to Colin all red playing in the NFL, you know what I mean? Like that would be enough. I would think to really I haven't seen Ted play basketball. Is it is it pretty bad? He played a one on one in a memory talking about public humiliation. He played a one on one against Kimmel. You didn't see that. Oh, I did not know that made that's another thing about him. He loves proximity to like famous people like going on Seth Meyers playing basketball with Jimmy Kimmel. Like he's so desperate and thirsty for being around those people. Yeah, I mean, go, go look at it. You'll see a guy who's just like, it's just bad. It's embarrassing. You mean the scouting report? I don't know if I can handle this. Yeah, I'm a basketball coach, right? So I'm going to have a keener eye, but like he's just out of shade. He has no balance yet. He just he'd look. He's the equivalent of himself as an human on the basketball court. Okay. That's the best way I could point it. That's not what you want to see going into draft night. No, that might be my best line ever had on the show. You don't you don't want to see up on the big screen. You don't want to see it's like he is the basketball equivalent of Ted Cruz as a person and politician. If I'm not mistaken, he ain't even wore cut off no sleeves on his shirt. No, don't do that, man. Don't do that. Yeah, it's not good. What do you think? I mean, like, just this is way too early. Like, I think he's actually in trouble. I if I had to put money on it, I'd say that Cruz retains and stays, but I actually think he's in real trouble. I agree. I agree that he's probably going to retain it. Like, you know, Lindsey Graham was crying the last time because he was going to lose whatever and like he didn't lose. You know, so Ted Cruz, I don't think he's quite ripe yet. But man, that you know, like it Trump won in, you know, in November, but already beat Cruz, I might find to be able to find some sound. Oh, come on. We would be inconsolable. Also, by the way, for a little bit of context, Nick, I don't know if you remember this. Lindsey Graham crying over the possibility of Ted Cruz losing Lindsey Graham literally said in a speech that Ted Cruz could be shot on the floor of the Senate and there wouldn't be enough votes to convict the person who got the trigger. Right. He is that he's got that energy. It's like that energy like you don't want to look over your shoulder. And he's just like, he's like hovering near you, you know, it's like, oh, go away. I'm sure that's what they've actually described in the prints. And I know I read about them. I'm sure. But I just watched the movie creep the other day. Have you ever seen creep? No. Okay. It's it's this movie about a shocker of shocker creep. And like, that's the thing Ted Cruz is a creep. And to go ahead and bring the through line of this episode, that's who the GOP is. They are not only unlikable, but they're off-putting, which is one of the reasons why they're not actually nationally viable party outside of the Electoral College and the construction of the Senate and the House. I want to go back and read articles when he first started running to figure that out. Like how how he got a foothold into this whole thing. Money. I mean, money. It's money and influence. And that's how it ends up happening, unfortunately. All right. Well, I'm gonna remember that for a long time. He was he was the basketball equivalent of Ted Cruz as a person. Yeah, that's basically fantastic. All right, everybody. We some are another we got through that night. That was one night. That was I felt I felt like my beard got whiter over the course of that evening. It was it aged me. We will be back with the Weekender on Friday or minder. Go to patreon.com slash my great podcast and we're getting access to that all the other Weekenders and exclusive post-event analysis that we offer. And by the way, one of the great alternatives to this media class that we're covering today. All right, everybody, if you need us before then you can find Nick. You can hear me. That's me too. Let me know what's next. Be safe.
