Chapo Trap House - 728 - Mighty Men (5/1/23)

Episode Date: May 2, 2023

We plan out what builds we’re going with using items from King Charles’ upcoming coronation. Then, we compare and contrast visions of masculinity within the Republican party using the models presented by Donald Trump and Josh Hawley, and start forecasting what the Trump v. Biden match-up might look like. Plus, we’ve got new Epstein revelations, and an update on a classic bit of William F. Buckley lore. New merch now available here: https://represent.com/store/chapo-trap-house Hell on Earth: The Original Podcast Soundtrack now available here: https://chapotraphouse.bandcamp.com/album/hell-on-earth-original-podcast-soundtrack

Hello, babies. It's Monday, May 1. It's Chapo. Let's go. Happy May Day to everyone. It's the holiday that we're working on. So I hope you're being a lazy, money-grubbing socialist. Well, we're working hard to give you a podcast on today's The Socialist Holiday. But I'd like to start today's episode by giving the flowers to, as the kids say, Matt and Chris, congratulating them on their wonderful run of Hell on Earth. I would say the best history podcast of all time. But seriously, you guys knocked it out of the park. Amazing, amazing work on Hell on Earth. I really enjoyed the whole series. And Charles Austin's We Didn't Start the Fire 17th Century Edition, which was fantastic.

Yes. Thank you to Catherine for having that idea, because it ended up being pretty good. It was a great way to put a cap on a otherwise also great series. So thanks, everybody, for listening. Matt and Chris will return for more history podcasting in the future. Absolutely. Right. Well, I mean, we've got to start this week talking about an upcoming historical event that's sure to be remembered in the animals of recorded history. The whole world has coronation fever. That's right. On May 6th, Prince Charles becomes King Charles. And I don't know about you guys, but I have been obsessed with all of the details about

the bizarre crown jewels that are all part of this, this wacky little pageant that all like Felix, they all sound like covenant technology. Like they all sound like some of the arbiter has to like unearth the ring world. Yeah. There are there are like seven swords. They're all they're all being assigned to people who, you know, are lords or dukes or ladies, the sort of temporal justice, which definitely sounds like something the arbiter uses. A time sword. It cuts through time. Well, we know where they got that idea.

Yeah. Lucha for being ripped off. So yeah, actually, I found in the telegraph, I have a full list of all of the King Charles III coronation regalia. And it says here at the heart of the king's coronation will be ancient and invaluable jewel encrusted regalia from swords to crowns, much of which has been used for more than a thousand years. And I just like to go through them with you guys right now. And I would like us to, all right, there are there are four different sort of categories of regalia, each with their own powers and ceremony associated with them. But I'd like us to go through all this regalia. And I just

want to like choose one from each category to be your loadout for like your starting character, you know, you're going to start this campaign, you know, like what kind of build are you guys running on this King Charles III coronation, beginning with the procession, which includes the mace. You guys remember the mace, of course. Yeah, classic. Great, great mall style weapon. Yeah, it's a blunt, it does blunt damage. Then we got the sword of spiritual justice. I think that, you know, if you're running a faith build, you'd be hard pressed to find

a better weapon. Yeah, that's a good one for clerics. Yeah. The St. Edward staff, you know, that's sort of, you know, intelligent magic base build, the sword of mercy, the sort of temporal justice and the sort of state, you know, I think sort of mercy more of a more of a dex build, sort of temporal justice, maybe a dex strength hybrid and then sort of state probably just pretty much straight up strength. Then for the anointing, there are two very important items. There's the ampula, which is like a golden looks like a golden goose of some kind, literally looks like a golden bird of a duck

of some kind. And then the coronation spoon, which looks like a butt plug. I don't know what either of those are used for. You know, it's like sword, sword, sword, sword, sword, spoon. Well, okay. Okay, like that. These are like your right handed weapon are going to be the mace to the sort of state. And then in the anointing ceremony, there's the ampula and coronation spoon, which are like, I don't know, like provide buffs for your character or some kind. Well, usually an item, an item like a spoon that you can't equip as a weapon, usually

that's like, it's part of a quest or you use it to you, you have to use it to get into some other part of the map. So we might see that later on. I know that King Charles has said he has a 10 year plan. He's going to be king for 10 years and then step down and then it's, it's William time, you know, it's William and Kate's time. So presumably he, I don't know, maybe he'll use that to kill himself. I don't know. Then there is the investiture part of the ceremony, which comes after the anointing. And some of the items that you will encounter in the investiture part of the map include spurs, another sword, this time it's the jeweled sword of offering. Then you've got armills,

which look like sort of gold, sort of cuffs or bracelets of some kind. Then just the classic orb, you know, you can't have an orb without an orb. Then you've got the sovereign's ring and the sovereign's scepter with cross and scepter with dove. Now that's one item. That may sound like two items, but you get with the sovereign's scepter, you get both a cross and a scepter with a dove. So I think they're going to have to nerf that one in the next patch. Do they all make this from Elizabeth's soul? They transposed it. Yes, because I didn't hear about any of this stuff before. Presumably they made it from her.

And then finally, the crowning part of the ceremony. There will be the St. Edward's crown, the queen consort's ring, the queen Mary's crown, the imperial state crown, and the queen's consort's scepter with cross and rod with dove. Again, that's one item. I don't know what's going on here. It's so funny how they do all this, and then the only other time we see them use the sword is when they give, like, they're like, Alton, John, you're a knight now. Yeah, that's all you could do with the sword as a monarch at this point is dub a people shit. That's it.

All right. So I guess for me, like, you know, my build here, I think I'm going with the sword of mercy. I'm going to buff that coronation. Well, it's called the sword of mercy, Matt, but it's meant to be ironic. I mean, this was used by the execution lord. I see. It's like, you know, the king's mercy is a swift death, not a long, painful one. Right, exactly. Yeah, not a bird at the stake or something. So yeah, I'm going to buff that with the coronation spoon. And then I'm going to obviously got to take the orb, you know, that gives you plus five stats across the board. And then

I'm going with the imperial state crown just for fashion, just to stunt on hose. Yeah. What I'm doing is, you know, I look at all the these are all legendary weapons and they seem nice. But what I'm actually doing is I'm going I'm going to a it's a hidden wall. I hack it a hidden wall in Buckingham Palace because it's it's it's in a hallway and there's one part of the hallway that doesn't have a painting on it. And that's the hidden wall. And I press R1. I go through that and it leads me to a very special thing, a very special hidden part of the map, Disraeli's tomb. And why do I want to go to Disraeli's tomb?

Because I go there, I go there and I do the gesture Judaic wave. And it's it sends me to fight Benjamin Disraeli in the past. And this is one of the harder fights that you can have. You can see why a lot of people haven't done it. But after I do after I'm able to sort of deep DS Benjamin Disraeli and avoid a lot of his lightning attacks, I'm able to get Benjamin Disraeli's soul. And I could I could transfuse that into Disraeli's staff, which is the most powerful magic catalyst in the entire. Excellent. Yeah. If you're a caster like me, yeah, that's what you want. No, but like what I like about the coronation is that you can run like a caster build a strength build a cleric build. It's very versatile.

That's what there's all these different swords. I mean, the question is, what kind of build will King Charles III be running for Great Britain? Yeah, you know, will he will he surprise everyone? Will he have a secret item like Anthony Eden's lipstick? I mean, so if I'm doing this, do I have am I King Charles or am I me because I'm King Charles? I need something in my rucksack, my bag of holding that will do something about my fingers because if I don't do something about those horrifying blood plantains that he has on the end of his hands, I don't think I'm going to be able to wield the sword or certainly not wear a ring unless it's the size of a fucking like Holston's onion ring

because if you've seen and he doesn't show them anymore in in public images, King Charles's fingers are terrifying. But Matt, you don't understand. I mean, Matt, you haven't you haven't played the coronation game long enough. King Charles is disgusting curled fingers or how you summon other players to to join you in a boss arena. Well, I definitely want the sort of temporal justice. That's the coolest one. You can do time shit. You can be a time cop or a time Lord. I don't know how you can say no to something like that. Give me the ampule, the shape ampule. I bet there's something fun that comes out of there if you rub it or something. And then I'll take. Yeah, I'll

take I'll take the ring because as I said, it must be gigantic sovereign's ring. Yeah, sovereign's ring. Give me that. Yeah, I guess that would be, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know builds. I don't know what you're talking about. You tell me what that you're into. I think you're running a like a strength build, Matt. But, you know, these are all very good items. I want to say they're rare items. And, you know, some of them are a thousand years old. As I saw, like they were like the stone of destiny has has reached the capital. And it was just like, can you knock it off with this shit? This is embarrassing for everybody. You can tell that none of these are actually

imported because the IRA never tried to like blow any of these up or take them. You know, they're running a fucking game on us because it's like at no point like the IRAs, you know, they put bombs all over fucking London at no point where they ever like, oh, yeah, we're going to we're going to put a bomb in the London Stock Exchange and we're going to take we're yeah, we're going to take the galaxy sword or whatever the fuck you have. I did read about the stone of destiny that Scottish Nationalists took it in the 1950s or something.

They stole it. The biggest fucking bullshitters they are. Yeah, that's like that's not really serious about this bullshit that they're instead of kidnapping the goddamn prince kidnapping him. We got your we got your rock. Well, all all British monarchs have been have been anointed on the stone of destiny. Is that all of them? Well, I don't know. I mean, for a while now, for a while now,

you know, because the thing is, most of these August rituals that people now paint so so painstakingly create that they claim that they're coming from this ancient lineage. So, almost all of our traditions were invented in the 19th century, like all the stuff that we take as like eternal features of our ritualized politics, we're all made up by Victorian imperial perverts and that and all to keep their power and like culturally that validated and that's the point of it. It's not that old. I bet most of that shit's from fucking a pound land.

Is that the name they got over there? No, it's not Dollar General, it's Poundland. Pound town. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, yeah, most most things we assign as being super old are like at most like 300 years old.

I bet like all the stuff with America, America is like a fake old country. It's why we have a Senate, you know, the fucking although all the weebs, all the weebs who founded this country were like, oh, let's have Roman columns. Yeah. The fucking the the Windsor's are a fake English dynasty. They're fucking crowds. Yeah. They're literally a bunch of Germans, German, a bunch of German tourists who like want to

sweep stakes. They had literally they couldn't the the the the stewards couldn't stop popping out Catholics and then they bring in that they literally had to like start looking for German cousins to find them the most closely related Protestant. They plucked some rub off of a dung hill and hand over and said, hey, you want to be king of England? He's like, yeah, that's that should be cool. Go for it.

I mean, yeah, there's really like nothing that's actually thousands of years old outside of China because there is a continuance from continuous from the government from the government shown in the movie Hero to Xi Jinping. Yeah. That's the only one. That's the only one. But everything else is like 200, 300 years old, Pacific Jews. They're like, these are these are ancient traditions.

They stretch back 140 years. It's true. Like the outfits they wear are literally Susan ties like what the fuck? Yeah. Yeah. That was no. That was not in Judea or Samaria. No.

There were no fedoras. Nobody was wearing a fedora when they stoned Christ. Yeah. They do that. I don't think that never mind. They were going to stone Mary Magdalene and Jesus stopped them from doing it. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. In my head canner, they just ignored him and just kept fucking helping him. But yeah, no, there is there's nothing that old. Everyone is a Mormon to some extent, you know? Yep. You guys, it's all had to be reforged for the modern era because this stuff all refers to things that are extinct like modes of being and thought and imagination. Like we all we desacralize the world and return it into a market where value is apportioned

through prices. But we still have these modes of thought and they have to be reforged and filled with new bullshit. Wahhabism. That's another one. Yeah. Exactly. Yes.

Exactly. Few centuries here, China and Japan, actually eternal. Yeah. That's true. That's why they're going to take it over. Yeah. That's why they're going to eat and leave no crumbs. Japan, they're already having a positive birth rate again.

Yeah, because of the day after they killed their front prime minister. Yeah. And that's true. That was his big thing. He was also fast fixated on birth rates and he actually is kind of moving the needle as he dies. Sacrifice, not in vain. Well, yeah.

Yeah. His life, it was like the guy who, you know, the orgy doesn't start until he leaves the party. Yes. Well, if the Japanese want along though, they're going to have to get rid of their, their western face because that's the wrong horse. Yeah. Do not stop backing the US.

Okay. Apologize for Nanking and get with the program. I try whatever their plan is. I trust it. They've got the sort of, they've got the actual sort of temporal justice. Exactly. Yeah. The anime sort, they keep underneath the imperial palace.

Like, yeah, do you think that the sort of temporal justice would be even be able to like kill an average sized man? Probably not. The most, the rarest item that, you know, crown watchers say will not be in attendance. It will not be, and part of the investiture is Prince Andrew's black book. Yeah. That's not going to be there. And, you know.

That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. If you give that to an Anglican priest, they'll refuse to teach you spells from it. Well, I bring up Prince Andrew because we got some more, we got some more Epstein news dropped this week about who was in his Rolodex, like after he had served time for soliciting a minor for the purposes of prostitution, he was having meetings with the current head

of the CIA and Noam Chomsky. Those are the big headline polls from that. And Matt, you were absolutely right. Michael Parenti heads are eating on Twitter this week. Oh yeah. Just the old man taking a big L on this one. Yeah. Libertarian socialism.

Ooh. Hit the showers. But I mean, I guess like probably more of note is the current head of the CIA and like. You went to him for like a recommendation or something. Like he was going into the private sector and he wanted like advice from Epstein on how to do the transition. Hmm. Well, you know, he's a guy who knows a lot of stuff.

You know, he knows people as we know, as we've seen. A lot of names in that black book. Actually, we have also a woman named Catherine Rumler, who was a White House counsel under Barack Obama had dozens of meetings with Epstein before becoming a top lawyer at Goldman Sachs. And then we're also finding out a lot about like Jamie Dimon's business dealings with and Goldman's business dealings with Jeffrey Epstein as well recently. But you know, that's a, that's a, you know, it's sort of a minor detour. I mean, the Noam Chomsky thing is funny though.

And like when people were emailing about it, he was just like, who's literally like, there's none of your business. Yeah. Which is good. Yeah. Because you know, I mean, the guy does really respond to every email, but. Yeah. Fucking apparently.

Yeah. Um, this is all, I mean, yeah, this is, this is all interesting. I'm as interested in any of this as anyone else, I guess. But like, it's like, you know, I feel like, what was it like three or four years ago? We found out that Leon Black, the Apollo management guy, this guy is like, I think tens of billions of dollars, a super rich guy, fixture on Wall Street. He gave Epstein hundreds of millions of dollars for what he called tax preparation, which is.

H&R a lot. Like, yeah. I mean, like, let's choose to believe that for a second. Like let's, let's go with that story. He couldn't find anyone else. That was the only guy that was the only fucking guy. And then, you know, there's whisperings of, oh, uh, Glenn Dubin, this other hedge fund guy, maybe he bought his fucking wife from Epstein.

They offered, they offered Epstein a daughter and then it just, it just fucking nothing happens. You know, those are settlements like, uh, JP Morgan, uh, had to do some type of settlement. But it just, it, unfortunately, it just doesn't seem to ever go anywhere. I, I, yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's no one in any position of power to follow up on any of this stuff. You know?

So it just floats out there and you're like, wow, that's pretty weird. And then, uh, you, yeah. Yeah. And then it just, it, it transmores into like whatever it is now where like for half the country, like if you, they now have like, um, their own Epstein flight logs where they say like John Legend was there. I said, like, Akon, Akon was there. The, everyone who's in the 2016 DNC fight song music video is on the Epstein logs.

And it's like, I'm sure some of them, but like some of them are just fucking ridiculous. Like T-Pain is on there. It's a lot of R and B artists on it. Everyone from Obama's hip hop barbecue that didn't create any jobs. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, not a single job has still ever been created. Not a single job created by the hip hop barbecue.

Yeah. If you really, if you see a supposed Epstein flight log that has OG Mako on it, that's, um, that's not the real one. I mean, I guess like just the thing that, uh, and people bring it up is just another example of like how many prominent people were, um, you know, seeking his counsel and company like well after the fact that he'd already been to prison for, uh, teenage prostitution. I mean, it's just, you know, something of note, something, something to keep in mind, I suppose.

But yeah, like this is just, this is just another tidbit that's going to, you know, circle the drains of people's minds and just move along because there's nowhere for it to go. Really. The guy's dead. Yeah, exactly. And anything, I mean, there, there's a bunch of things I really desperately want to know about this as does everyone, like, you know, what was the nature of the renewed prosecution in him?

Was it like, uh, did just some do-gooder in the US attorney's office go, Hey, we should get this guy. And then other forces killed him or was the entire thing just an effort to corral him and snuff him out and then sort of memify all his crimes. So they become less real and become another like ephemeral cultural joke. I don't know. I, and it's, I don't, I don't feel like we're going to really know the answers to these things for another like 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 years, unfortunately.

Yeah. I mean, the only other thing that makes sense is that it was an intentional like closing of like an account or something. Like, you know, somebody else had shown up somewhere else on a board that was in some way competing for with Epstein. I don't know. Some sort of internecine thing. We'll never know.

Probably. I mean, I'm like, they do guys like Epstein, which is to say guys who like run sort of a sexual slash sexual blackmail service. Your Craig expenses. Your Craig expenses, those accounts usually get closing, right? Like those guys don't usually retire in the die of old age. Yeah. That's true.

Yeah. At a certain point. It's like how it's actually, it's very similar to how in the MCU, they would get relatively unknown actors to play their big superheroes because they were relatively cheap. And the, you know, the audience was interested in the character. And then, you know, after two or three movies, they get so big, so famous, they're commanding such big salaries that they just kill them off and create a new generation of superheroes. This is essentially what they do with the child trafficking wings.

So who is like, too big for their britches? So there's like a Miles Morales to Jeff. Yeah. Exactly. I've never seen 2099. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

If there, you know, if there is, there's a great PS5 game coming. Yeah. The only question is why was there the, why was it that started with a public prosecution? And that's where you gotta figure it's like some sort of, yeah. Information warfare. The only thing that makes sense. Yeah. Because, yeah, I mean, it is the, you know, something we've referenced time and time again

that like censorship or rather control of information isn't so much, it's not done by censorship or restricting the flow. It's done by deluge. Yep. You just, you just soak the whole zone. And then before you know it, people are like, oh, you know who, you know, who else was on the flights? John Ritter.

He didn't actually die. Yeah. Into the spider network verse. Oh yeah. All right. I want to, I want to bring up now, I have two clips that I'd like to play for you just as sort of a compare and a contrast. And let's begin with Donald Trump talking to Steve Bannon about the premiere of the greatest

musical of all time, Phantom of the Opera. I look at this beautiful letter I get from Andrew Lloyd Webber. Who was big before Phantom, but nothing like Phantom. And he did Jesus Christ Superstar, which was another great one. He did a lot of great things. But he said, because he lived in the building, a Trump Tower, he knew me a little bit. And he said, I'd love to have you as my guest. I'm opening up a musical called The Phantom of the Opera.

And I said, oh, so let's go. So I say on the letter, okay, I'll go. And anyway, we went and it opens with the chandelier of this. You've been there, right? Yes, yes, yes. You agree it's like. The first time I saw it, it shocked me when the chandelier dropped. No, but the whole thing.

The whole thing was okay. It was a great, great musical. He said, but I'm opening a musical called Phantom of the Opera. And I'm saying to myself, all right. You know, I get many letters like that. I still get letters like that, except it's a little hard when they make you put masks on. Do this thing.

I mean, you know, I think Broadway, you still have to, it's brutal. It's brutal. I mean, if you had a brood with you, right now, it just is just. Well, plus the city. What's happened to the city? What's what's happened to the city? It just closed after what, 40 years. This letter is from one from the writing you to opening night.

The reason I want to start with that, it just closed last week. Yeah, no, it did. It did. It was very sad. Because of what's happened to the city. It closed beyond that, but I think it's, you know, you got to have, you got to have a lot of things going right. And they get so politically correct.

But it did close. And I would think it's very hard to open on Broadway, have anything on Broadway. But Phantom was one of the greatest of all. So I go in and I see this music. I said, this thing is unbelievable. It didn't take long because the music is so good. By the time we had intermission, it was like, I said, this thing is incredible. And by the end, you know, with the whole thing, with the gondolas and the candles and the whole

thing coming out and the great music. And we play a lot of that music. I mean, I go to places where we want background music that's beautiful. It's great. Everybody likes it. But you go there and it's opening night for one of the most successful plays, musicals ever. I would say maybe the most, but certainly one of the most.

I love him. I love. We were talking about this. Maybe the best, perhaps we don't know, but maybe it is, it could be. Whereas Trump is really at his best, like he's at his most human when he's sharing, he's sharing his enthusiasm for like one of the three things he actually likes, which are like just declaring bankruptcy, media, gikattiness and gossip and the classic musicals of like the golden era of Broadway, Phantom, the Phantom of the Opera.

And by the way, I love in this clip where Steve Bannon seems to imply the Phantom of the Opera closed down after 40 years because because of the city. Yeah. Phantom of the Opera opened in the 80s. Like is he really saying that crime in New York is worse now than it was in the 80s? No, they're a bunch of hobos on stage. They can't get him off of there because of the city. Well, maybe maybe he means it was like a municipal decision.

Like David Dinkins was like enough. All right, I want to contrast that clip of Donald Trump sharing his enthusiasm for Phantom of the Opera with this next clip of the most Kelvin gemstone-ass shit I've ever seen in my life from Senator Josh Hallway, speaking at some sort of reclaimed masculinity conference this past weekend. The Lord wants to make you a channel of his strength and power in the world. He wants his strength, his power, his righteousness to flow through you and to change the world. That's what it means to be a mighty man of valor.

It doesn't mean you do it in your own strength. All right, that's it. It doesn't mean that you do it in your own righteousness. What the scriptures say, all of our righteousness is as filthy rags before him. That's what it means to be a mighty man of valor. A mighty man of valor. Is that translated for the original Aramaic? I just like, I think the contrast between these two is so funny because it speaks to

the essential bind that the GOP is in with regards to Trump, because what I love is the perfect contrast in these two clips between Donald Trump, who is, I would say, we discussed this on the show before. Donald Trump's sexual orientation is probably ace, but on the spectrum, I think basically heterosexual, but all of his interests are incredibly fruity. He's the straightest man in existence who is the straightest man with the most love for Andrew Lloyd Webber that has ever existed. Then contrast that with not just Josh Hallway, but the entire spate of young, new GOP contenders,

and they're all trying to be the exact opposite as hard as possible. Trump has the authentic interest and personality of a gay man in his 70s, whereas Josh Hallway, it tries as he might, he cannot create the persona of a mighty man of valor. That's a problem for the GOP because it seems like most of the young people in the GOP, they come across as really fruity when they try to be, the more masculine they try to appear, the fruitier they seem, whereas Trump, the fruitier he sounds, the more alpha he comes across. It's brilliant.

Well, yeah, because he owns it, like, yeah, I like torch songs and Andrew Lloyd Webber. He's the guy who had the total, and it all just comes from a narcissism that is pure as a diamond and elevates him above the common run of humanity. He went in front of, as we've said before, because I can never get over it when I think about it. He went in front of a bunch of hooting West Virginia coal miners and did a tight five about how hairspray doesn't work as much as well as it used to. These guys are all deeply insecure about their masculinity and are trying to compensate for

something. As such, they go out on, for more on a limb of trying to assert this stuff and say these phrases and the more you can hear the tremble in their voice. Yeah. We've talked about, like, Ron DeSantis. I don't think really, Ron DeSantis doesn't really have the traditional gay voice. But he does have the annoying bitch voice. Yes.

It's shit, man. Yeah. To that end, I know we've been pretty hard on Mr. DeSantis, but I thought it'd be necessary to maybe give the other side of the case for Ron DeSantis, and I just wanted to share this brief with you. This is from Mark Penn, writing in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, a headline, Don't Count Ron DeSantis Out. This is former Clinton advisor, Mark Penn, making the case for Ron DeSantis.

Let's see. This is their best shot here. Let's take a look at this. He writes, the DeSantis ship is clearly listing and must write itself. I wouldn't normally give advice to a Republican candidate, but someone has to stop Donald Trump from regaining the presidency, and I wouldn't count on President Biden to do it given his low job approval rating and widespread doubts about his fitness. Mr. Trump leads Mr. Biden in the real clear politics polling advantage, or Trump Biden

rematches a risky proposition with the Democrats consolidated around Mr. Biden. The only way to avoid it is through the Republican primary. To get back in the game, Mr. DeSantis has to put cultural issues to the side and run on character, competence, and common sense. He has the strong character of a family man who cares for his wife, a cancer survivor. I would like a candidate who makes maybe the Newt Gingrich-style character of leaving your wife when she has cancer, but I mean like this. No.

I mean, you can see why Mark Penn has been so successful. You really get what he's saying here. It's really smart. Ron DeSantis has to lead with his amazing personality. Yeah. But it's like, what's on his character CV? He took care of his wife when she had cancer. It's like, I mean, that's a good thing to do, don't get me wrong.

That's an act of love and certainly speaks to his character, but it's a low bar to clear. Not leaving your cancer-stricken wife is like, if you're putting that on your character resume, I think it's a little threadbare. He says here, the energetic competence of an accomplished governor and the common sense to campaign on such issues as a balanced budget and a workable immigration system, it's right. It is 1996. Yeah. I know, right?

This is like the Dole campaign. Yeah. Jesus Christ. What do you guys hear? Clearly, Mr. Trump knows Mr. DeSantis is winning older voters and has decided that hitting the governor on social security can erode his base. Mr. DeSantis has to defend himself and prove that Mr. Trump is a big spender who will drive more inflation and increase the national debt and that he fumbled the COVID-19 response

by pushing lockdowns. DeSantis, the only thing that we talked about this, the only area in which Trump could conceivably be vulnerable to a Republican primary voting population is on COVID and the vaccine and lockdowns and the early days when he was for it, but the thing is, in the early days around DeSantis was for all masks and lockdowns too. So DeSantis could go hard on the vaccine, but he was implicated in that too because he was like, they all worked outing it when it first came out. Yeah.

Under the fucking Trump administration, it was the example of them doing a good job. Yeah. DeSantis was bragging about making it so you could get your vaccine in public and shit. No one's, and there are tons of pictures of him wearing a mask, looking like Paddington. No one's in the clear on this. Everyone, every elected Republican outside of like, I don't know, like Thomas Massey or someone, you've got at least some pictures of them in masks. You got them doing something.

It's interesting to imagine what though would have happened if Trump had been president. He'd won in 2020, and then they had to do a vaccination program with the population that was already at that point turning against them among Republicans with how they would have squared that. I think most of them probably would have just eventually been like, that's fine. I think it could have been a real weird stress fracture point in the GOP, but yeah, DeSantis, I don't think can, because he was drawing a contrast with some of his new cycle victories that he had like a year or so ago, but nobody remembers that.

All you're talking about now is a campaign where both sides can show the other one in a mask or talking about lockdowns or vaccines, and so nothing else matters. DeSantis, no matter what he does, he faces the same problem, which is the more people see him, the less they like him. It's an impossible place for him to get out of. I don't think endorsements are really that important, but it does tell me something that he'll go and meet with some fucking legislator or someone, and he won't even have gotten out of the building and the guy instantly endorses Trump.

There's just something so uniquely fucking off-putting and detestable about him. Just no one actually likes him. I am more interested in what the fuck is Josh Hawley doing? Last week, we talked about who is the RFK campaign for, who's the Marian campaign for? What is anything Josh Hawley doing? Who's that for? Because we know this is a guy with presidential ambitions, but what route is that running through?

It feels like it's just the fully internet poison. Yeah, because he has a new book out called Manhood or Reclaiming Manhood or something like that. It might be interesting to read that for the show, I'm sure it's funny as hell, but the conference he was speaking at, it's not just about like, it is totally internet-brained because the problem with manhood is not like, oh, men need to be fathers or pay more attention to their kids or work to support their families. His pitch on reclaiming manhood is just stop jacking off to internet porn.

That's a big part of his pitch here. Pay more attention. Yeah. I was lucky enough to see a promo that he did for the mighty valorous special men of victory rally. The mighty Boston's of victory. He said something like, I'm so excited. This is the biggest men's Christian conference in the world.

So I guess masculinity is going to be his issue, which really that presents its own problems, doesn't it? Yeah. Back to Mark Penn real quick and his pitch for Ron DeSantis, it's like, okay, we talked about the one area on which Trump could conceivably be vulnerable is on COVID, without lockdowns and the vaccine. But then again, anyone running against him would be just as less trusted among the people voting for them and just as guilty as he is, at least by their estimation.

But then I want to go back to the other thing he said about DeSantis needs to stop being a culture warrior and start talking about that Mr. Trump is basically increased the national debt. It's like, Felix, you're right. Oh yeah. I love that. Is this 1992? Oh my God.

That works against Democrats and only has like a package of a greater indictments of the Democrats. The national debt. Everybody knows that deficits don't matter under Republicans, including more than anyone, Republican voters. Well, I mean, the deficit would be better than the fucking national debt. You might as well just to clear the campaign over now. Like if that's what he's going with, it's fucking over, nothing, nothing, the national

fucking debt. Are you Ron Ball in 2007? What the fuck is this? It's not people in the streets. It's not getting people storming capitals. That's for sure. And like, you know, he's pot committed at this point. He can't just like repurpose himself into being like, I'm for sane national government

and a balanced checkbook. When like the only juice that you've been able to squeeze thus far is about, you know, like a demonized hollering about the gender ideologies. Yeah. Yeah. He can't do that. He can't do any of that. I mean, he's uniquely weak on everything.

And by that, I mean like the only the only the success he's seen, you know, as governor, which is different than running a presidential campaign, obviously, the success he's seen is just, you know, passing all these laws and the assigning statements and executive orders that fit with like whatever conservative issue, cultural issue of the week is. But when people actually see him past the headlines, when national voters see him, he just he doesn't come off as a guy who's necessarily fighting for everyone. He just comes off as completely mean and spiteful. And even the people who have the same like shitty opinions he does, there's he's just

a completely joyless, humorless person with no positive characteristics. He's very nasty. Yeah. It doesn't seem like he's fighting for something. It just seems like this he enjoys doing this because he enjoys inflicting pain on others. Yeah. He's not a happy warrior. Yeah.

Even to even to people who like again, have the exact same positions that is still a fucking turn off. Like Trump isn't necessarily a happy warrior, but there's some there's some like humor there. There's some fun. Yeah. He can bust balls. He chops it up. And as we saw in the Andrew Lloyd Webber clip, yeah, as we just saw it, dude, like he was

so happy. Like that's the only time Trump ever like betrays any feeling of joy or like any human feelings at all is when he's just like when when I saw the chandelier and phantom took my breath away. Um, but like similar to how I think for both Democrats and Republicans, the best way to deal with like COVID on the campaign trail is just to pretend it never happened is just like just don't like don't make an issue at all. And I sort of feel like like, uh, last week we were talking about Nikki Haley trying to

like be like the sort of alternative to Ron DeSantis. And I think it's sort of similar to a wokeness where it's just sort of like if you're a Republican, you can be like, yeah, we're, we're anti woke, but we're not annoying about it. And I think honestly, like that's the appeal of Biden, uh, like, like as a national democratic figure is that he's like, yes, yeah, Jack, I am woke, but I don't know what it even means. I just am woke. I don't know. It's fine.

It's fine without being a trembling, blue haired, uh, social justice maniac. So you don't, cause that is the, that is how they try to scare people. It's like, do you want to be like these people? And you imagine, oh, I could never tell a joke and I'm always tense. And then you watch Joe Biden just roll it in completely suited out of his gourd on some sort of research chemical, uh, glad handing everybody a singing Danny boy. And it's like, hell yeah. I'm woke.

What's the problem? Can't be too rough on the guy. After his reelection as governor, he was asked if he had a mandate. He said, hell no, I'm straight. I'm straight. I'll give you time to think that one through. Yeah. He's a political wokeness.

I am very glad that, uh, we're, we're in this position where Nikki Haley, um, I don't see her winning this cycle. Um, you know, because it would just, it would be kind of, it would kind of be like the Giuliani presidency that people feared. That's what I think it would be like. It would be horrifying. It would be for an adventure after for an adventure. But, um, I wouldn't say I feel bad for her, but it is like, you know, in more normal conditions,

you could see her having a real path here because she, she has, she has identified that exact thing, that, that exact middle ground of wokeness or anti-wokeness versus being annoying and not being annoying. Um, but again, it's not 1996, unfortunately for DeSantis, and it is not 2008 or 2012. So she has no path. Um, I mean, I, the Democratic back bench is horrible. There aren't a lot of high prospects, but holy shit, are there no prospects for the Republicans either?

That's true. That is true. And at the end of this, this party cycle. I hope they just keep running increasingly old candidates against each other. I hope fucking 2032 is Mo Brooks versus Barbara Mikulski. And it's the new most important election of our lifetime. I got one. Uh, Biden doesn't run in 2024, uh, and then we all nominate Dianne Feinstein instead.

Yes. Yes. It's her time. It is her time. Hey, she just got over shingles. So she's ready to go. She took her cone off. She emerged from the Harkonnen goo.

Uh, but, uh, we got bad news. Dianne, Dianne Feinstein has eaten half a box of Franco chocolate. She shit all over the house. Click here to wish Dianne Feinstein a get well soon, donate $3 to Act Blue right now. But you think though, like with Haley and Biden, like the woke mind virus and the COVID virus are like very similar in that like people have like the sides have been chosen, but anyone really still like fominating about either one of them is just exhausting to everyone else.

And it's just like, it's not going to change my like, you're not going to persuade people one way or the other, but the people who are like really invested are like in either being for or against it or, you know, uh, COVID is going to kill us all or the vaccines are killing us all. Or just like whatever. It just the sides have been chosen and most people just like have, it just are exhausted by it. They're just like, they don't want it.

They don't want people to be annoying about it. Yes. One way or the other. Yeah. And it's like, it's a very, it's a, uh, difficult situation because everyone's trapped, uh, in the back draft of these social movements and political parties that are characterized in the middle. If like through their media presentation as this strident, obnoxious, annoying avatar

of everything wrong with your life in the country. And then you're responding to politics defined by the actions of those people, but you don't want to really have to think about it as much as these weirdos do. So you're left trying to like find some compromise where you're voting to hear it, to represent one side or the other. Cause there's no other option, but yes, to have it muffled, like to have somebody who's going to stand between you and it rather than someone who's going to amplify it. And a guy like Biden says, I'm going to stand between you and this noise and I'm not going

to amplify it. And the problem with a guy like DeSantis is he is saying it loud and proud. I am going to amplify this. I'm going to be a resonant, uh, tower for this fucking shit. And you know, for certain people inside the, the cone, they're like, yes, give me more of this please. But, uh, the people who still make up the majority of voters, uh, college educated home owner, not insanely focused on politics to the exclusion of everything else because

they have lives, uh, it just, it becomes unappealing. I mean, maybe that changes, you know, conditions get worse, eventually the amplifier is what people want to hear in greater and greater numbers, but for now people want to muffler. People want to damper. Uh, just, uh, what, one more thing here on, uh, uh, big time loser, Mark Penn and, uh, his advice for, uh, Ron DeSantis here, uh, he says here, a swayable Republican voters are internationalists, not isolationists. Mr DeSantis's recent characterization of the Ukraine war as a territorial dispute landed

badly, prompting him to walk it back quickly. According to the Harris poll, DeSantis supporters back Ukraine more than Trump supporters do. 58% of DeSantis supporters consider the US investment of more than $27 billion in Ukraine and justified. Well, okay, that's another reason why he's fucking dead in the water. No, again, oh, oh, oh, we, there's the big, big people of, uh, uh, internationalists out there that don't want to be isolationists anymore. This is, this is all running a program from like 20 fucking years ago.

No one wants to hear about this Ukraine shit either, let alone spend $27 billion on it. This is the college, no college divide that defines the two political parties against each other now reappearing within the Republican party. And who wins that fight? We know because of the way that, uh, uh, delegate votes are apportioned, rural, non-college educated voters are going to have a disproportionate say in who wins a primary. And those people don't give a fuck about Ukraine and don't want to get into it. And Trump is able to double down on that in a way that DeSantis who's got his leash,

you know, to the, to the greater party apparatus can't do. Well, uh, and then I guess just overall, what do we make of the, I mean, it's like, we said, we said the other week, I sort of either of them dying. It's hard to imagine anything other than Trump Biden rematch or 2024. But like, I mean, what, what, what, what, what a handicap, just like what that would look like. I mean, do we think Biden has the inside track here or is he as, as vulnerable as people say he is?

Cause of how old then, you know, but I mean, like he's got, what's his approval rating at now? What is it like? It's like 45, I think. I mean, yeah. 40s. I, there has certainly been, uh, incumbent presidents in far better positions in Biden, but it's hard for me to see him losing at this point.

Uh, I, I don't see Trump or God forbid, uh, you know, the Santas or Nikki Haley or, um, you know, in a designated survivor type incident, Josh Hawley, um, winning, you know, the, um, the Great Lakes States, Pennsylvania, uh, Virginia, I just, I don't see it. It's just, it doesn't look good for them. Yeah. I mean, you can, you can talk about like the real clear polling average, all you want, but I just, I, it's hard for me to see a path for Trump or really any Republican candidate right now.

I do think that Biden is favored here, but I do, it's not, for me, it's not by that much because one, you've got the economic question just up there and they're like, who knows when that shoe is going to drop and what that's going to look like. So you have to factor that in. And then also you have the fact that yeah, Biden is deeply personally unpopular. And then when the Democrats like exceeded expectations in 2022, you can, they did it in spite of him being such a personally unpopular president, representing that party. But if he's the top of the ticket, then his personal, uh, unpopularity is going to, it's

going to resonate more, uh, and like his saving grace would be that he's, would be running either against Trump, who is somebody people have a similar feeling about, uh, by the way, you guys remember how incredibly, uh, cogent and non insane that one debate they had was imagine what that's going to look like four years later, just get your head around that gets the Santas who's just this avatar of a repulsive culture war that we've seen is not going to play well in the upper Midwest. I, yeah, I mean, yeah, I don't, I would not say I would bet my life savings on it. And nor do I, you know, when I say that I think there are very few paths for the Republicans

I see right now, I don't think that means, you know, Biden by five or even four, but I just everything I've seen, I don't know, something, a few things would have to happen. Those few things can happen. I'm just saying right now it's very hard for me to see and yeah, like Biden, all these things are true. Biden is deeply personally unpopular, uh, the economy, it could fuck up his chances any, any fucking day now between now and November next year, you know, he's completely fucking chop horn, uh, and only getting worse.

But the Republican Party itself just seems like a shittier and shittier operation these days. Obviously, this doesn't always matter. I mean, you know, we Trump won a bunch of states that he had, um, on the face like bad organization in 2016, but I just, I don't think that same energy is there. Yeah. That's the question. Yeah.

The question of energy. Trump is going to have a problem that he's no longer a wild card. Like when he won quote unquote, it was because, Hey, let's see what he can do. Well, now we know what he can do. Like it's a known quantity. And now he's just another fucking asshole to see on TV. Yeah. Like that, that's exactly the point.

I was thinking like it's just, you can say that like COVID may have given Biden the boost that he otherwise wouldn't have had to win in 2020 that that may have saved him. And like, you know, like that was, and that was a pretty close election, uh, anyway, but here's the thing, you're right, Matt, Trump is a known quantity now and he's a known loser. Like he's already lost once. So that, that is, that is greatly, uh, diminishes his, his mystique and his intangibles. So I'm like, I think that's the biggest handicap that he has is that he's already lost once and that he had four years as president and he didn't fucking drain the swamp or change

anything or shake things up really. He was just a guy on TV and then lost. Here's the other thing too, though. Um, a high turnout, like a low turnout election completely favors Joe Biden here. Yes. And that's what I'm kind of expecting we'll get a depressed turnout election that no one really gives a shit about. Yeah.

That's what it seems like to me. Yeah. And that's completely favors Biden. Yeah. Because as we said, yeah, like if, if there was a new Trump who could, who could spark like Trump like sparks and like popular consciousness, it'd be a Trump like spectacle, a new thing on the horizon. I could see that that shift towards a non-college educated people of all races moving towards

Republicans. But if it's just Trump again, at some point, everyone gets bored with that. All right. Do you want to, I have a reading series for today's show. Should we close it out with this one? Yeah, hit it. All right. I have to give a shout out and a hat tip to Corpse in Orbit, Michael Judge, from the

Death is Around the, Death is Around the Corner podcast. Here comes Michael Judge. For Here Come to Judge, yeah. Here comes Michael Judge. He shared this one with me and like, it's a doozy because I remember like, I think it was our third episode of the show and I really, when the show took off, in my opinion, is when we did the Ross Douth at Sandling with William F. Buckley article, we're on our way now, Ducky.

Well, I mean, it's, it's taken years, but like we finally have a follow up to that article, courtesy of William F. Buckley, writing in the Houston Chronicle in 2004. So this is like, we're dipping into the archive for this one, but like, just to return to like the classic comedy character, William F. Buckley, a reptile like conservative man with a pinchage for, let's just say, the finer things in life. The headline of this editorial is, what Michael Jackson, what the Michael Jackson case does to us, what the Michael Jackson case does to us. And this is, Buckley is going to share his thoughts on the Michael Jackson case.

So he begins, there is an aspect of the Michael Jackson affair that has been insufficiently explored. Namely, what exactly are we mad about? The general charge is that he has corrupted a young boy. The prosecutor specific claims are that he had Angelo will call him to Neverland, talked him into the same bed used by Michael, perhaps even gave him a whiff of alcohol and then off into a sexual dreamland. Jackson's lawyer says the fantasy is that of the prosecution, that his client extended

his 12-year-old guest nothing more than the warmth and hospitality he gives out as an expression of his nature. Yes, but did he do it? Off to a strong start, he refers to the accuser here as Angelo. I don't know why he has decided to use the name Angelo, but he refers to Angelo quite a bit in this piece. Continuing, he writes, the mystery lies in our society's confusion over sexual misconduct and the causes of it.

Look to Angelo just six years older than he is now. At age 18, he would be free of any interference by the state in his private life, as we like to put it. When he is 18 plus one day, he can hire out to Hollywood studios to do live sex. He can now that the Supreme Court has swept away the cobwebs on that issue, court other relationships with men old and young, though not under 18, even if they can't smoke together in a New York restaurant. Are we beginning to see the contours of Buckley's argument here?

I'm picking it up, it's got sort of a do-it-thou-wilt-shall-be-the-whole-of-the-law vibe to it. Continuing, if what Michael Jackson allegedly did to Angelo is proved, what exactly do we then fear for Angelo as he grows up under the shadow of the sleep in at Michael's? That his senses will have been deranged? It is entirely believable that a pedophile's activity with children menaces them psychologically. But as far less clear is the suspension of any menace attaching to sexual molestation after age 18. Our sex-driven culture is in overdrive, showing no signs of alarm, let alone dismay.

Reports on the Michael Jackson case bring up data on the incidents of child molestation. We learned that in the past 30 years there has been a tenfold increase in such activity. The question that is not being asked is, how is that so? Does this tell us that guardians of the law have been sleeping in the matter of preventing grown men, if that correctly describes Michael Jackson, from debauching boys? We're on our way now, Ducky. We're on our way now. So basically, let us assume what is always safe to assume, that a lot of misconduct always

happens and it is a matter of coincidence whether we uncover it, let alone do anything about it. We learned last week that there are 300,000 prostitutes in Spain. Well, there were 50,000 of them in Rome at the time of St. Augustine. Are we to presume that these prostitutes, male as well as female, set out in their profession because as children they were disoriented, treated like Angelo and neverland? We appeared to be saying in our fulminations against Michael Jackson that he might as well have influenced Angelo toward a life of dissolution, where sexual gratification dominates thought

and act. But we don't speak with fork, but don't we speak with forked tongues? The American Civil Liberties Union stays up all night worrying lest anyone should get in the way of Angelo's sating himself on radio and on television in movies and in books with the sap of degeneracy. But if Michael Jackson did it with Angelo at age 12, he is damned and we are prepared to lead him into prison. If the lawyer could prove that notwithstanding his young appearance, Angelo had actually

turned 18 the week before Neverland, Michael Jackson would be protected by the engines of license and whatever he did. This is, all right, so I think we get his argument here. This would be a barn burner, this would be game over if there were no differences between adults and children. That is the one unfortunate thing in the way of this, but other than that, it's a great argument. Well, he's saying something is either that the sexual debauchery, sexual excess is wrong

regardless and that the age distinction that modern society erects is an arbitrary one meant to obscure that fact by saying, no, it's not good for kids, but it is okay for adults and that is the lie. The reality is it's not good for anybody and it is the state's prerogative to enforce that, not an arbitrary distinction to allow for the efflorescence of degeneracy. It's the state's job to enforce that in fucking Saudi Arabia, sure. That could be his argument, Matt, or just as easily as argument could be good, it could be that it's good for everyone and that age is just a number, as R. Kelly and Aliyah

once said. Well, no, the thing is it's neither good nor bad. It is good or bad depending on who's doing it. It's true of anything. That's the worldview is that there is no good or evil, there is only the contextual right and wrong which is determined by might, by strength, by hierarchy. There's another thread in this article, in this editorial that I think is interesting, which is that can you really debauch in Buckley's words a 12-year-old who has listened to rap

music and seen boobs in movies? Because he seems to be saying that if Michael Jackson did this to a kid who was not aware of our licentious popular culture, then that would be in some way debauching or corrupting and treating them to sup from the sap of degeneracy, as he calls it. But I think he's sort of saying if we can have sex in movies and music, then what Michael Jackson did is we have no right to complain about what Michael Jackson did. Continuing to write, he says, there is something studiously unattractive about the particular depravity of Michael Jackson.

His struggle against aging gives him absolute title to Dorian Gray, the man who tried everything science could come up with to arrest the aging of his face, but it got all bollocksed up so that he now looks like a circus clown halfway through makeup. It wasn't a true sense charming that he thought to distract the world's attention from his problems by jumping on top of an automobile and dancing, his trademark since age six. That didn't stop the fuzz, but the ties were with him, singing their loyalty and devotion, signaling the public's power to relegate Angelo to nothing more than one dance step in the ageless pursuit of pleasure.

William F. Buckley, folks. He's on his way now, Ducky. We're on our way now. All right. I guess we'll wrap it up there for today. Till next time. Bye-bye, guys. Bye-bye.

C-bye everybody.