— Hey, everybody. Welcome to the weekend tradition of a quick podcast and journey of Sexton Feeling Much Better. How are you doing, Nick Houseman? — Well, I'm good. Now that you say you're feeling better, that's always a good thing. — You know what, though? I played hurt on Tuesday's episode. You couldn't tell. I had people originally out saying, "I couldn't even tell you were sick." And you know what? It was like the Jordan flu game on this, and... — Well, yeah, now we have to litigate whether that was really the flu that he was suffering. — Well, that is a whole different story altogether. — Yeah, but either way, I'm glad that you're feeling well. I'm actually feeling well. I'm sugar-free and caffeine-free and ready to go. — All right. The boys are ready to do business, and thank God they are, because we have a whole slate of things to get to. A reminder, not only do you need to go to patreon.com/munkregpodcast in order to listen to the weekend or show, which you already listen to the preview every week, we see the numbers. But guess what, everybody? Next week, Tuesday night, we are going to have the one and only vice presidential nominee debate. We're going to go live immediately after that, give you analysis, you won't get anywhere else. And by the way, I fully expect this to be a bloodbath of my mortal enemy JD Vance, which I am looking forward to. So you're going to want to join us for that. — Please do, and you get a whole host of benefits as well in terms of Discord, and other live shows, and the whole Friday weekend or episode, you know you want to hear the rest of it when you're out there. I personally, if I love a podcast, if a podcast is part of my week, it's part of what I enjoy, I go ahead and I subscribe to that podcast. I want more, I need more, and you need more, patreon.com/munkregpodcast. Nick, we have to start with, I'm sorry, I'm so giddy over this story, and also repulsed. I've just been walking around singing in New York, concrete jungles where dreams are made of as the mayor comes out, whatever Looney Tunes thing that he wants to present to the world. That's right, everybody. The mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, not friend of the pod, has been indicted on federal charges of bribery, conspiracy, fraud, and acting as an undeclared foreign agent on behalf of the nation of Turkey. This stems from apparently, as the indictment shows, that he received over $100,000 in campaign donations from the nation of Turkey, which is, let me check my notes, highly illegal, and also God knows how much in the way of travel, luxury accommodations and favors. Nick, this, it couldn't have happened to a better guy. I'll just say that. Yeah, I mean, he hit the ground running with some, I mean, listen, he probably had New Yorkers best interested hard. He wanted to make sure they were eating properly, and he would go out and say weird stuff about that. But it's been a mess, I think, from the beginning. And so we have no problem pointing this out for whatever part of your part you're part of. And it's kind of scary because that's not even the biggest infractions. I know the travel stuff is weird. The fact that Turkey of all those countries in the world is interesting, and we'll get into that in a minute. Why? But I think the donations was another big one. Are you aware that in New York, there is a program for candidates who run from mayor that they can, the city will match eight times the amount of a donation up to $250 from regular New Yorkers? Are you aware of this plan? I am, and you know why it's in place? So bullshit like this doesn't happen. Yeah, they wanted like regular New Yorkers to contribute and be part of the process. And instead, he had these wealthy people do straw votes, which was like basically people who are not New Yorkers, giving them money for giving the actual New Yorkers money to funnel through to the thing. It's unclear how much he raised in that, but it's probably a lot of zeros after the after the one. Yeah, we have no idea. And by the way, the rumors around this are that this was not limited to his dalliances with Turkey. And if we start to actually take, and by the way, what you said is key. I have said this from the very beginning of this podcast. You cannot become so enamored with a political party that when a member of that party does something like inherently and obviously wrong, that you can't call them out on this. Eric Adams has sucked. And he has sucked since he first came on the political scene. He is a corporate crony. He is a law enforcement stooge. He has hurt the city of New York over and over. He says the most ridiculous shit imaginable. He's incredibly offensive and dangerous. And Nick, when you actually take a look at this indictment and let's let's even get rid of the idea that other nations have influenced him or that other who knows how much money he got from Turkey, who even knows how much money he might have personally got from Turkey. Look at this on its face. A hundred thousand dollars, which, you know, a hundred thousand dollars is a lot to me, but to a mayoral campaign in New York City, it's not a lot of money. And what did Turkey get on behalf of this? They got constant propaganda from the mayor of New York who could barely go a couple of minutes without talking about Turkey and aggrandizing them. They also were able to call in a favor to make him allegedly pressure the New York fire department to approve the opening of a Turkish consulate. This was back in 2021 to go ahead and pass it, despite the fact that this thing for all intents and purposes is apparently a fire trap that could have killed thousands of people, might still kill thousands of people. And why did they do it, Nick? So it could be done by the time that the president of Turkey, Erdogan, came to New York City and got a photo op with it and got to brag about the expanding of power of Turkey. And what did they find? They found an absolute willing receptacle for this corruption in Eric Adams. And by the way, we should be thanking our stars that this guy was found out to be the corrupt piece of garbage that he is. This is the type of stuff that we should be rooting out. Well, the alleged piece of garbage. I wonder if you asked him now whether he would have been willing to pressure the fire department like he did, because as far as I could tell, this probably was the breaking point where they finally put the screws into him on the investigation, because whoever was threatened with their job to approve that fire thing. And by the way, it's kind of important, right? Fire safety is pretty important. Kind of important, a little bit important. So if you're going to force somebody in the fire department to lie about whether or not a building is up to code, you know, they're probably going to be a little bit more free willing willing to, you know, talk to the authorities about this and let them know that this is going on. I have a feeling this was probably the fulcrum of the whole thing. So I would imagine he probably wouldn't have done this if he could go back in time and continue to just in the background, take his trips and maybe get some, you know, funnel some money through his campaign. But either way, I mean, it's discussing its taxpayers money. He's going to be forced to pay it back, at least on the campaign side. So, you know, what's going on in New York? Can they can't they can't they elect the mayor or anybody who's not corrupt? Well, I mean, anybody who's listening in New York understands that almost every public official is somehow or another corrupt or on the take or something along those lines is a long, long cycle of this. But I do think, Nick, and this is the important thing to talk about before we get into the response of this and what's obviously happening with Adams and his, I guess I would call it a communication strategy. I'm going to give him more credit than he deserves on that. Nick, this is what is happening right now in what I wrote about on my subsec. It's an era of corruption and what we need to understand. And Donald Trump is the most obvious avatar of this, right? Not only has he thrown America overboard over and over and over again on behalf of Russia, Saudi Arabia, even China, he lined his pockets with his presidency. He allowed open corruption and bribery through his properties. Every nation in the world knew that they could curry favor with him for this. His son-in-law Jared Kushner, we have no idea how many billions of dollars he's gotten from Middle Eastern countries on because of the proximity of power that he has. But also you've got Senator Bob Menendez, who basically betrayed the United States of America for a few gold bars and a little bit of cash. What has happened is that neoliberalism has brought in an era of sociopathic greed in which these people are going to enrich themselves at all costs. They're not worried about their constituents, but also Nick, what's important here? What you just said about Turkey having influence in the United States, right? They bought a mayor. They bought the mayor of New York City. And people say, how in the hell is this happening in America? Nick, am I correct in saying that this has happened around the world on behalf of the United States? Absolutely. It's happened around the world. It always boomerangs back around. And every time we talk about Saudi Arabia, we talk about the fact that they're now just throwing money around like crazy buying everything from politicians to economic institutions to sporting teams and leagues, what we started by going ahead and installing all these like tinpot dictators and authoritarians in order to carry out the business of globalism, it's always going to boomerang back around. There's no escaping this and the blowback and the consequences when you start doing this stuff. For sure. And obviously, a lot of people have talked on the other side. They know that he deleted messages. Well, you know, he did that. Well, because you have the other, you have the other side who received the message. And when they confiscated his phone last year, they realized those messages were not there anymore. And that's just a pretty big admission of something. Well, have you heard his excuse? Have you heard what he cooked up? And this is really, really telling. I don't know if people know this, but like, if I'm just going to give some free legal advice to everyone listening to this. If you have face ID on your cell phone, take it off. Don't have it because authorities can use that to compel your phone to be unlocked. Eric Adams in true boss fashion has now claimed he can't unlock his phone for the federal authorities because he changed his passcode and forgot it. And who knows, like what goes on in the mind of a man, whether or not he actually quote unquote forgot it. It's an incredible boss move that he has carried out. But I have a wild suspicion that they have investigated everybody that Eric Adams has ever met at this point. And I have a wild suspicion that they're going to get to these messages whether he remembers this passcode or not. Oh, absolutely. And, you know, it's you seem to think that there might be some more countries involved in this influence. I have heard rumors of upwards of five or six countries. Wow. Well, I mean, quite frankly, do you do you think that like if Turkey was able to get to this guy that there weren't other foreign actors who were attempting to as well? And do you think that his morality kept him from doing it? No, I was supposed to once you dip your toe. It's hard to get back out of it. I mean, once you wet your beak, once you wet, once you wet your beak, you know, and he's law enforcement. That's the other thing, right? Oh, law enforcement never commits crimes, Nick. Yeah, that's in New York. I said, well, I would I would love to hear what Adams has to say for himself immediately after we learned of this indictment. I assume it's a measured appropriate response. My fellow New Yorkers, it is now my belief that the federal government intends to charge me with crimes. If so, these charges will be entirely false based on lies. But they would not be surprising. I always knew that if I stood my ground for all of you, that I would be a target and a target I became for months, leaks and rumors have been aimed at me in an attempt to undermine my credibility and paint me as guilty. Just this past week, they searched the home of our new police commissioner looking for documents from 20 years ago, just one week after he joined my administration. Enough, I would fight these injustices with every ounce of my strength and my spirit. I don't know, Nick, that seems very familiar, somehow another in the tone, the rhetoric and the positioning and add to that that he has intimated that maybe he was targeted because he opposed Joe Biden's immigration policies, which let me check my notes are the policies of the Republican Party and were written by the Republican Party and then submarine by the Republican Party. But that's neither here nor there. This is so Trumpian that it's unbelievable. And I think it gives us a Rosetta stone to what happens with powerful people when they are finally confronted with the consequences of their actions. 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/muckrakepodcast and subscribe for lots more additional content, including 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.
