Instruments of Evil

Meet your Girl Danielle Moody, recording from the Home Bunker. Folks, as I've been saying all week long, I'm just taking a few days of respite to recharge with friends, and I am leaving you with amazing interviews that we have banked so that you miss absolutely nothing from the craziness that is happening and has been going on since Donald Trump's Morilago resort was searched by the FBI, not rated, like his dumbass has been saying for the last several days.

You know what's funny is that right now you have Republicans out on social media talking about they need to defund the FBI and they need to defund the Department of Justice, which is really funny given the fact that when black and brown people talk about defunding the police, you know, for killing us and then having no accountability, responsibility because of qualified immunity, we're called what are we called terrorists, Antifa agitators, not patriots. They want to defund

these agencies for going after their white supremacist king. When we talk about defunding the police, it is about reorienting our resources into communities right that have systemic issues because of white supremacy and what we've been doing to them, like defunding public education in areas that are highly populated with black and brown people, not having sidewalks, not having sanitation pickup, not having anything that would remotely resemble any

of these gated communities that these fucking Republicans live in. So I find it so fascinating and fucking hypocritical that right now you see all of these people talking about defund this and defund that. Why because their king right is being investigated by everybody and their mother because he's

a fucking criminal. But when we're talking about unarmed and innocent black people not being able to sleep in their own fucking bed, drive in their cars, walk to the park, play in a park, you know, sit, or exist anywhere without the white police state coming for them, then we're

the problem. I just need for the media to do their fucking job and maybe call out the hypocrisy right now and say that when white people are enraged, it's because they don't want to be held to account, because they want to have absolutely no responsibility whatsoever for their actions. When black people are asking for the state and the government to be held accountable for their crimes against us.

Somehow we're the problem, folks. Coming up next my conversation with our friend Kurt Bardella to unpack all the insanity that Republicans are swirling in right now as they leap to the opportunity to defend Donald Trump against what we have no idea because as of this recording, Donald Trump has refused to release the contents of his warrant. Now,

they continue to say that it was a raid. They continue to say that something is amiss and something is awry, and Kevin McCarthy is telling Merritt Garland, you need to hold onto your papers and just wait till I get the gavel back. But guess what, Donald Trump and his lawyers know exactly what the Feds came and took from our lago. They know exactly what the contents of that Warren entails, but they're not releasing it, and the question is why. So we'll get to this and more with

our friend Kurt Vardella. Coming up next. Hey, I'm David Plots of Slaves political gabfest. As another election season accelerates, it can be tricky to sort through all the noise and the news. Each week on The Gapfest, John Dickerson, Emily Bathlona and I decipher the headlines, break down the races, and tell you what issues really matter. We do not always agree, We definitely do not always agree, but we always deliver thoughtful debate and we always have a good time.

So subscribe to Slate's Political Gapfest, new episodes every Thursday. Hey there, I want to tell you about another podcast I think you'll love. The Brown Girl's Guide to Politics, hosted by a Shanty Gooler, the president of Emerge BGG, is the one stop shop for women of color who want to hear and talk about the world of politics.

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The LA Times and other places. MSNBC contributor Kurt Bardella, ex Republican, to get into the mind the crazy, crazy mind Kurt of your former flock. Um, I want to start off with getting your reactions to the FBI search, not raid, but legal warrant did search of Trump's Mara Lago residence. How did it? How did it hit you? Well,

I mean, obviously it was a surprise. Um, you know, it really what struck me, and it's somewhat predictable, but it's also very revealing the the overreaction from Trump from the right room propagandists. If I were an innocent person and something like this happened, I would be bending over backwards to make sure that everyone understood that this wasn't a raid, that this wasn't knocking down doors, windbreakers, people in tactical gear, you know, like you see in the movies.

Like I would be saying, like, this was a planned search, something that we were made aware of a day ago, and there's and we are fully cooperating and there's nothing to see here. Instead, what we saw was this complete overreaction, science fiction response, to the point where there were people who are insinuating that evidence was planted by the FBI. That's like, we don't even know what they came for yet, but they've already said that stuff was planted, right, I mean,

they are acting guilty. They are acting in a way where they know that the law enforcement agencies have the goods on them. And so when that's the case and you think they have you dead to rights, you start attacking, you start deflecting, you start inventing alternative, alternate realities. And that's exactly what guilty people do. And I think that Republicans are really putting themselves out there. I mean, here's

what we know about Donald Trump over the years. Because a sociopathic, pathological liar, nothing he says is ever truthful. So as bad as we know that it is, it's almost certainly worse. As a political party. Why in the world would you put yourself on the line for some of that is almost certainly lying about something, lying to you about it, and the report parties put themselves Additionally, they're going to be left ful of the bad goods

here when this thing detonates all over them. You know, the funny thing is current, you know, when people are pontificating and making jokes and memes about what could possibly be in Donald Trump's safe But the part that is actually really no laughing matter is that I personally believe that Donald Trump has the goods, the dossiers on everybody, that that is something that he has been compiling for

quite some time. And so the reaction from Republicans to me is so unhinged, right, And I'm like, why do people react this way at a fear right at of fear of your dirty laundry being aired out? And so what they are doing is taking a page from Trump's election playbook, and before we even know anything, everything's been planted.

They need to be defunded, right, And what I find so insulting is that you know, when black and brown people and allies enter into the streets in twenty twenty, after the murder of George Floyd, before we had a vaccine, at the height of the pandemic, to say that black lives matter, to say that we need to defund the police as a way to recirculate monies into communities that have been systemically um uh bankrupted, right defunded by their

public schools and their health infrastructure and their sanitation infrastructure, and all of these things. We get called antifa. We get called we get you know, told that we are unpatriotic. Right. All we wanted to all Colin Kaepernick ever wanted to do was take a need to bring attention to the

abuses of the state. But to these white supremacist Republicans, it's like the hypocrisy doesn't even land with them, right, Like to me, it's so baffling that then they can call for the defunding of the police all because there was a search put out on their king, Like does that Like, honestly, how do you even part and parcel because you have been in the Republican Party, you worked and with the Lincoln Project, right, so so never Trumpers, like, how do you make sense of like Kevin McCarthy may

making a social media a tweet a threat to the USAG. I just don't even get it. You know, it's very clear to me that if you're a person of color in this country, Republicans believe that law enforcement has the right to do whatever they want to legal or not even taking your own line, But the minute that law enforcement is focused on a white person, especially a white person of privilege, law enforce should be defined. Let's call

it what it is. This is just outright racism, and and I think but people oftentimes, especially the media, tends to overlook because it's uncomfortable for them to confront this. Everything the Republican Party done does has to be viewed through the lens of racism, because that's really the single largest, most defining quality of being a Republican in twenty twenty two.

You know, it's really something like, on one the hand, you got Republicans investigating Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Biden racially trying to delegitimize a citizenship of Barack Obama. And they were fine and comfortable using the instruments of power of oversight, authority of subpoenas to have hearings to make Hillary Clinton testify for eleven hours in front of their Knado report,

the Bengazi Select Committee. But the minute that the shoe is on the other foot, and the minute that it's actually legitimate inquiries, current commissions, not which one's not implicitly motivated investigations, which Kevin Burkey admitted, Benghazi was all about the minute that the shoes on the other foot. All

of a sudden, they don't believe in congresional authority. All of a sudden they believe that things are faked subpoenas and take depositions, and they rail and its closed door proceedings, and they give the executive branch led by Donald Trump, a free pass and make it policy that it's okay to five checks and balances in America. Now as they think that they might be within the reach power again, they rediscover their passionate zeal for oversight. They rediscover congressional authority.

Ken McCarthy right now, at this very second, is in defiance of a congressional subpoena from the Jannery sixth Committee. You don't get to defy aggressuoa on one hand and then say you're going to use them on other people, you know, in a couple of months. That's just not how it work. You don't get to have it both ways. And this is my big frustration with the media is that when they talk about these things and they cover Jim Jordan's threats and Kevin McCarthy's threats, they failed to

include that context. They failed to include all the ways in which these Republicans have completely shipped on a congressional oversight and taken our wrecking ball to checks and balances, and now somehow they want to use them for their

own politically motivated means. You know, it's just, But what's wild to me is that to your point, like the media never calls this shit out right, Like the media is never liked you know, Remember Republicans when you know, were interviewing Hillary Clinton for eleven hours, Remember when that came up with nothing, right? Remember when you wasted taxpayers

dollars right, and it came up with nothing. I just I don't understand the disconnect of not being able to hold Republicans accountable, but when Democrats are in power, it's like the media goes through everything that the Biden administration is doing with a fine tooth calm, and I'm like, it's absurd at this point, and that you know, the other point about the Republican Party being a white supremacist party is that again, we continue, I believe, to legitimize

them as if they are a normal Republican party. When you had Marjorie Taylor Green on Twitter calling for friggin violence because Donald Trump's home was searched and she's still in Congress. Yeah yeah, well I even remember it was less than a week ago that the Republican Party faithful congregated in Texas and gave a standing ovation to an authoritarian presence via the Prime Minister of Hungary. Let mean,

this is who they are. I keep thinking to myself, how much how much more does the media need to see before they start identifying the Republican Party as the racist autocrat want to be dictatorial, want to be racist? That they are, because I mean, they're not trying to hide it anymore. They broadcast it every single day, whether it's Marjorie Taylor Green, whether it's Ted Cruz, whether it's

Round Santis. It's not just Donald Trump. It's the entirety now of the Republican Party establishment that has been overrun by this lunacy. And you have these weapons, great idiots running around tweeting these insane things, fomenting violence, fomenting very dangerous and disturbing potential scenarios. You know, these people they're they're waiting for the order to start locking and loading. And we know after January sixth that this is an

empty rheoric. This isn't just Machi's mode behind the screen on the Internet. That these are people who have the means, the arms, and the desire to incite mayhem in violence and bloodshed on people who look like you, and I like,

this isn't hypothetical anymore, you know. And I'm so glad that you brought this up because this is something else that I believed was said multiple times on the air, but almost in a casual way, right, which was that the fear that Donald Trump was going to once again direct his white supremacist militia to attack the government because he was his home was searched. You had all of the tweets, lock and load. When does the shooting start?

I mean all I mean it was crazy. And the thing for me is that if it were people that look like us that we're tweeting that shit, you think that we would have still been casually sitting in our living room on our laptops or on our phones. No, you would have been picked up, snatched up by the FBI and question and looked at as a terrorist, as

a threat to these United States. And so I'm wondering, Kurt, what do you like, do you think that violence at this point in this country, with how hopped up the Republicans are on their lies, on their hate, on their vitriol. I mean, I have never seen a more rage filled group of people than some of the clips I saw at a seapack right then some of the clips of

people talking at sea packs. So do you feel at this point that violence is inevitable, that it is just something that is on the horizon, but that it is we are going to get to that place. Yeah. I felt that the minute that the repultan Perty made the conscious decision to become apologists for domestic terrorists, that that was the ball game. Um, you know, you cannot have a peaceful coexistence when there are people who are you know,

handling up domestic terrorists as patriots, as victims. Marjorie Taylor Green on one knee at sepack. The cosplay was crazy. Yeah. And all that does is send the message to the people who subscribe to this radical, extreme ideology that violence is an acceptable form of expression, that their leaders want them to shoot all of us, that their leaders will want them to to to hang Mike Pence and perpetray bloodshed on anyone that stands in the way, including cops

by the way. Um, you know, I very much worried what elections are going to be like going forward, because the Republican Party has done everything they can to take a rock invall to the peaceful transition of power. And I don't know what happens in this country when election rolls around and some of these white supremases start shooting up precincts in voting areas that have a higher concentration

of people of color. I don't know what happens to our process when it gets held hostage by these instruments of evil coming for all of us while the Whome Party eggs them on, while the prom Party says it's okay, Well, the Home Party says we love you and that you're heroes. And I don't think that Democrats or the media is particularly ready for that scenario, which is kind of mind bodiling to me after what we lived throughout January sixth.

You know, one of the things that is being said to is that, you know, what a terrible week for all of this Marilogo business to happen because Democrats finally had a series of legislative wins. I disagree, Kurt, because I think that there is an opportunity for the Biden administration and Democrats to be like, we continue to work

for the American people. All of this is transpiring, and we've passed this, this, this, and this, because our intelligence agencies and the Department of Justice are not supposed to work in tandem. They are separate entities. And so we're able to still deliver for the American people because Republicans pushback has been Democrats are preoccupied with Donald Trump and not doing anything for the American people. So what do you think that the messaging should be. Do you see

it as an opportunity or is it an obstacle? Yeah, I think it's I think it's challenging again. And this is where the Republican argument that this was a floodping motivated Biden led raid on one of the slow adversaries, false Department. President Biden has been in the midst of the best few weeks he has had in this presidency. After a year of Democrats in disarray, a year of our own base protesting our own White House, all in goddamn time, much to my complete and utter annoyance, we

finally strung together. You know, this amazing streak of successes, historical level successes. I mean, we got a bipartisan gun built them, which has nothing that has been done in twenty years. Okay, even if it's not everything you want. It's something which at this point is better than nothing. We got infrastructure. We got the Chips Act pass to revitalize American manufacturing. We got something done for veterans, even in spite of Republican opposition, which I still don't to

this day quite understand. We got uh you know, or you know, we got this uh Inflation Reduction Act that we're that we're about to get across the finish line. Gas prices have been going down every day for almost sixty days now. You know, by the way, we caught a freaking terrorist of who was one of the masterminds of nine to eleven, all the while I didn't with battle ing COVID like this has been one of the

most productive administrations in the United States history. When Biden signing some of those laws, uh you know, some of those biose laws yesterday, it was like the fourth story of the night because of Donald Trump. Donald Trump has a unique way of sucking up the option on an everything, and at this exact moment in time, that's where the

last thing that we wanted to have happened. On the day that Biden was going to sign these things in the law and talked about Democrats delivering and getting things done in spite of United Republican opposition to things like lowering the cost of insulin. What the hell kind of

pro life party does that, you know? Not to mention the overarching conversations about abortion and women's rights in America, like all of those things now have completely been swept down to story four or five or six or not even being covered right now at the second. And I think that's that's a loss for the American people as well as for Democrats. Hopefully as time goes on, we'll

be able to get back on that message. But the reason why Republicans are leading so hard into this because they spent the last two weeks trying to explain why they were on the opposide of veterans, why they were on the side of China, why they're ok with the ten year old being great, being forced to give birth to a baby that no one should ever have to

even comtemplate. And now they talk twenty four seven about the deep state and the FBI and the dj and all these things that they've really spent the last five years. Do you and I see when you go back all the way to the Buller pro this is familiar territory for them. That's why they're so excited to be talking about this, because they don't because they knew they were losing, only told us things were going in the wrong direction. For Republicans, comrectional Democrats on the jenera belot went up

over the last three weeks. Now they get to try to distract. And I mean, ask any media producer, what would you rather cover an FBI rate or legislation and it will be the FBI rate, hands down every day. Last questions for you, Kurt are on mid term elections. NBC's Shaquille Brewster had been down in Wisconsin talking with voters on the street there Republicans and them saying, you know, does it matter Donald Trump's endorsement, like you, does your

vote sway based on that? One man, one white man, made an interesting comment, and he said that he doesn't want any politician anymore. He doesn't want to vote for a politician. He said, I'm tired of politicians. I'm tired of them, you know, telling me one thing and not doing another. And so anyone who is not a politician is who I'm voting for. What do you make of that? Because that was also the thing that Donald Trump rode into power on right aside from being a white supremaist

like I'm a businessman, I alone can fix this. And so what do you make of folks with that kind of thinking that they don't want politicians because it's synonymous with do nothing or liars. I think that I would ask those people, would you want a doctor to operate on you who is a surgeon? Would you want a teacher to teacher who is in credential? Would you want someone to serve in the United States Armed Forces that

hasn't been trained properly to use a weapon. That's what you're asking for when you say you don't want to vote for a quin quote politician. And I get why politician is a bad word. I get why over the years we've seen that both parties frankly make a living off of demonizing career life along politicians. I would say that after the Donald Trump experience, they should force all of us to look back. You know, maybe it's not

the workst idea. The people who sold job is to write laws in America, to actually have experience being legislator. Maybe it's not a bad idea to go back to a time where people like mayors and city council members and state legislators eventually became congressman and senators and governors and ran for president. Maybe maybe political office shouldn't go

to the highest bidder. Maybe it shouldn't go to people who just can cut themselves a ten hundred million dollars check to buy themselves our Maybe it shouldn't go to whoever is whichever billionaires writing the biggest. If you look at the Republican Party apparatus right now, you know, I think I read a stat that over half the money that was raised by the Republican campaign entities came from twenty seven billionaires or something like that. It's like, that's

not good for democracy. I want professionals who want to make it their career to serve in public service to make up the bulk of our elected office. I don't want people who have new idea, what's we don't need more Marjorie Taylor greens In, Lauren Bouvarts or Medacon Copthorns or Met gates Is or Donald Trump's we don't need that. We need people and understand that the majority of people who serve in Congress, they are the they are the people who you never hear about, who just do the job,

who served their constituencies. I think people like you know, my congressman in my net Whoods Don Bayer here in northern Virginia. It's not a flashy guy, I said, a guy you see on Cable US every days. Not a guy who's got a prolific tweeting present. He just does the job, you know. I think people like in San Diego Mike Leavin, you know, been there a couple of years now, came from the biotech world and the climate space. He just does the job. He's not looking for headlines.

That's what we need more the idea that you know, oh, we should just get rid of all the politicians and put in people who have no earthly idea what they're doing. You know what ends up happening, because we saw this happen actually in California when voters implemented term limits, which sonogram every somebody loves. Term limits in a poll always

falls well. But what ended up happening was everybody ended up like basically getting out of office, and freshmen were put in who had no earthly idea of what they were doing and who started running the town lobbyists, the private sector, the people who had access and experience. It was a massive brain dry and all of a sudden, lobbyists, we're literally writing the bills that the legislator with passing. That's where that story ends when you say, let's get

rid of all the professional politicians. And I go back again, if you're comfortable walking into your doctor's office and saying, hey, I want someone to operate, I mean, but not a surgeon, not a career professional. I don't trust them just taking somebody like okay, but don't be shocked when you don't

wake up from the operating table. You know. That's I'm so glad that you use that analogy, Kurt, because you know, just recently Alabama and I believe Arkansas, in this teacher shortage that we are experiencing, which is not actually a shortage. We've just run teachers out of the classroom with gun violence and bullshit curriculum. They have decided to do away with their credentialing for teachers. They'll just put anybody, any breathing, living human being, adult is now qualified to go and

teach your children. And we wonder why America is at the bottom of any you know education indicators, and like what that lack of respect for the teaching profession, how that is going to affect us down the road when you think that just anyone can do the job. So I love that you made that analogy, Kurt Bardella. As always, we appreciate your insights, your quips into the Republican mind. Great to be with you, my fellow Nerd Avenger. Yes, come back and see us again soon and I will

see you on the Nerd Avengers soon again. Appreciate you. That is it for me today. Dear friends on Woke app as always, power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.