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