IHIP News - Merrick Garland FAILED the American People

Episode Date: December 26, 2024

Keeping Merrick Garland was a massive mistake by the Democrats. This episode is sponsored by Betterhelp: Find comfort this December, with Betterhelp. visit https://BetterHelp.com/ihip today to get 10% off your first month. PRE-ORDER OUR NEW BOOK and find live tour dates + more by clicking here: https://linktr.ee/ivehaditpodcast Follow Us: I've Had It Podcast: @Ivehaditpodcast Jennifer Welch: @mizzwelch Angie "Pumps" Sullivan: @pumpspumpspumps Special thanks to @cnraun for the IHIP Theme SongSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to IHIP News. Today we have Josh Welch, my husband, because Pumps is on a very much needed vacation, the holiday season. Welcome to IHIP News, Josh. Thank you. Thank you. Democrat, was born and raised in rural Oklahoma, and has been so frustrated with the Democratic Party, he has stopped watching news and considered changing his registration to independent. And here's part of the reason why. I want to play a clip for Josh and get his feedback. Let me put it this way. Merrick Garland is the greatest failure of an attorney general in the modern era. And I'm being, no joking, very serious.

He was sworn in on March 2021. The first thing he should have done is appointed a special counsel for the investigation of Donald Trump for his involvement on January 6th. That would have changed the tone. Republicans had not coalesced yet around Donald Trump. Trump was at CPAC just two weeks before Garland's sworn in. Talking about maybe running, that was the headlines. That could have ended it because every Republican would have known he's going to get charged soon. And they would have known the Supreme Court wasn't doing anything. So he's going to be a

convicted felon and maybe in jail. And it would have been both of the other Republicans. Maybe, maybe, just maybe they push him away. But what Mayor Garland did, though, by he did not appoint a special counsel to investigate for almost two years, Jack Smith, when Trump says he's running. And what did that do? It normalized Trump for two years. Because we're out there saying Trump attempted a coup. Trump incited a terrorist attack. And everyone else is going, whoa, why isn't he charged yet?

It's two years later. If it was that serious. So what Garland did, he undermined all of our arguments. And Democratic members of Congress wanted to look forward. We we were in covid they wanted to focus on that i kept begging them call for prosecuting donald trump for attempting a coup it is not partisan it is patriotism the man attempted a coup it is unreal that a guy can attempt a coup and set a terrorist attack and now be back in the white house it destroys everything we're told this country's supposed to stand for the rule of law people if you do that how can you even be on the ballot is the question.

And here we are. Josh. Well, it's refreshing to see that other people have these points of view. I think as we were watching this in real time when it happened, 1-6, the insurrection, none of us understood why it was taking so long to get some sort of action for accountability for what happened. And as months went by, a year went by, a year and a half went by, it was clear. I agree completely with that person's perspective. Merrick Garland completely let us down, completely let not just the Democratic Party down, but the American people down for his inability to act. And it's almost like you hear these things like we want to preserve the integrity

of DOJ, or we want to make sure this is neutral, that this is objective. And all those things are true, but flip it. Think if Trump was coming into office after Biden had attempted what we call an insurrection. Think about how fast, how swift in their eyes justice would have been met. And therein lies the big difference, which is you have two parties, each of which is playing by a different set of rules. And that's bad for the Democrats. That's a recipe for disaster. That's what happened. It's very disheartening. I was very upset, very angry. So for like the rural American, I think everybody pretty much when they saw the January 6th. I remember some Republican friends saying, this is terrible. He's gone too far. And then all of a sudden for two years,

it's never really addressed. And you heard people saying on the news, oh, it was just some dust up at the Capitol. And it was a peaceful protest. And then Trump starts going around campaigning and he starts referring to these criminals that are now incarcerated, the majority of them, as hostages. And he's saying that as soon as he gets in on day one, he is going to pardon all of these people that he riled up to go commit this insurrection. And let's remember they were talking about hanging the vice president. And all of this from the very top has gone completely unpunished. Of course, the House Republicans investigated it, but Merrick Garland sat there and twiddled his thumbs.

And then they sane washed the entire thing. And then people think, oh, it's okay. So what do you think? How much culpability does the Democratic Party have in the participation of sane washing Trump along with corporate media, along with far right wing media? How culpable are the Democrats in letting this go on? Well, I mean, I think most of the blame has to lay upon Democrats. I mean, Republicans are going to continue to do this. They've done this. So that's no secret. The fact that Trump goes around and says things that are just completely untrue, that the media grabs a hold of that, all of that's consistent with what's been happening

for the past two or three years. What's disheartening is the Democrats' position and how they've become somewhat complicit in it. And I think of it in terms of this, that the next time the Democrats want to have some Ivy League-educated intellectual as a talking point to message on their behalf on some issue that's blatantly obvious, whether it's human rights, 1-6, insurrection, they need to think about this. How is this message, how is what we're saying going to resonate in a small town in southeast Louisiana, in a town in northeast Arkansas? How are those people going to perceive it? Because therein lies the biggest frustration for me.

We take these intellectual high roads at the same time we're getting our asses kicked. And there has to be a better way to message. For example, after 1-6, when Joe Biden took took office he could have easily said you know what I'm going to appoint someone to charge Donald Trump to charge anybody that had anything to do with that they tried to commit an act of violence on our Capitol with our elected officials I'm going to be very unapologetic I'm not going to apologize for it that That is my agenda. That's my motive. That didn't happen. So it always seems like right now Trump is saying that I'm going to pardon these hostages.

I'm sorry. I'm going to pardon these criminals. I'm going to call them hostages. They're going to be victims just like I'm a victim. And I'm going to pardon them. And that's what I'm going to do. And I'm not going to apologize for it. Yet when the Democrats get in office, it's like, whoa, whoa, we better, we need to unite the country.

And I think there is this, always this deference to the right wing. And if you think about it deeper, it's a deference to white supremacy and to the patriarchy. It's the silent deference that even progressives go along with. And think about it like this. When Barack Obama won the presidency, and it was, you know, huge electoral mandate. It wasn't even close both times in 2008 and 2012. He was very cognizant as the first black president. I need to govern from the center because I don't want people to then say, oh, look at this radical, angry black man. Again, we deferred to everybody's internalized racism, internalized white supremacy.

And then when Biden gets in, you have all of the shit that had just happened right before where Trump appointed Amy Coney Barrett. And a lot of people on Twitter at the time and in the pundit class were saying, he needs to fix the Supreme Court. He needs to appoint two more judges, et cetera, et cetera. There's been no response, no Democratic response whatsoever to all the shit that Mitch McConnell did with the Supreme Court. And you have the Supreme Court, the wives of Supreme Court justices flying flags as their hobby that are

basically insurrection flags. You have Clarence Thomas, who is wildly corrupt, that has a literal Nazi as a benefactor. He flies around on his PJ and goes around his yacht. The Democrats have done nothing for this, nothing. And then if you hear podcasters and you hear pundits, it's like, a benefactor. He flies around on his PJ and goes around his yacht. The Democrats have done nothing for this, nothing. And then if you hear podcasters and you hear pundits, it's like, Democrats, quit being hard on Democrats. We all need to get together and support each other right now. And it's like, what you're missing is what all of the working class America likes about Trump, whether he's a nut or not, is they feel like he fights for them. And I don't think the Democrats feel like anybody fights for us.

This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Josh, as we both know, being adults is very, very difficult. And I don't think we could have persevered as a couple without our therapists from BetterHelp. I probably use BetterHelp at least one time a week. And what seems to be most efficient about it is that it's available for me to do online via Zoom. And it's become a necessity. Listener, if you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule.

All you have to do is fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist, and you can switch therapists at any time for no additional charge. Find comfort this December with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash I-H-I-P to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash I-H-I-P. But isn't that part of the problem that Democrats sort of stay within their same echo chamber and hear themselves. Like I remember seeing all of these things, criticisms of Trump, and you would see liberal pundits, you know, exclamation point this, that, that, and the whole time they're missing the boat.

They're missing the picture here is that what he says, what he does resonates in rural America, resonates in red states. It resonates with normal people. We've missed the boat. To get back to your larger point, again, Democrats are not playing by the same set of rules that Republicans are. So when it comes to nominating Supreme Court justices, or if it comes to charging people that commit federal crimes, we have a system where we want to defer out of deference to other people or to this word that we hear a lot, integrity, or we want to represent the middle. You know, you don't have these same things from Donald Trump.

He clearly says what he's going to do. He's going to pardon all these people that were involved in 1-6. He's going to try to dismantle many of these federal agencies. I mean, he's very clear, very vocal about his agenda. And whether we like it or don't like it, the American people enjoy or they receive this information from someone they perceive to give it without it being manufactured or without it being a soundbite, a political soundbite. And obviously, I don't agree with the content of what he says, but there's a huge swath of people that like that kind of out of the mainstream, inappropriate, to the point position on certain things. It resonates in places. And yet, I think I go back to this

quite a bit, but we have these intellectual points that are all valid. They're all legitimate. They just don't resonate. Like our messaging, the Democrats' messaging is so poor. It's so awful. They won't stand up. They won't take positions. They won't just say, all you have to do is say, you're goddamn right. If I'm elected, I'm going to appoint an attorney general. I'm going to try as fast as I can to convict that man in a federal court so he can never run for office again. Who has a fucking problem with that? If you do, don't vote for me. If you do, that's fine.

But that's my agenda. It's clear. Why not just say that instead of all of this? Well, we got to get the right person in there and then we don't want it to look like it's partisan. When in fact, what they just did was more than partisan. It was to try to overthrow an election. So it's just frustrating. I wanted to denounce my Democratic affiliation after this past election just because I don't subscribe to these softball approach to how they message and how they react and respond. I mean, it's frustrating when you see two people fighting, one's got an assault rifle and the other has a pocket knife.

And it's frustrating to want to tell your side, hey, quit showing up to these fights with a pocket knife. Maybe you need to get an assault rifle. One last question. You were born and raised in rural America. And what do you think it is about Trump that these people like? I think it's unfiltered. I think that's part of it is what he says is unfiltered. And it's, it resonates. I mean, he speaks, I think I read somewhere at a fifth grade level.

And what people don't understand in a town of 1500 or 2000 in rural Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, you know, people get up, they go to work, they watch Fox news. They may watch will of fortune for 30 minutes before Fox news. They live a very simple life and any, any intellectual, any philosophical Ivy league position that's handed to them from Washington, DC or New York City, they're not going to be receptive to. And the people that message that in the Democratic Party

need to understand that. You need to have people that have these same experiences that can get on their levels and talk to them. I think Trump has been effective in doing that. Do you think the race baiting in Trump's language, talking about immigrants, the birtherism, the caravan of immigrants that are coming to rape you, because these towns are still very much segregated, do you think that type of language and cruelty excites rural America, scares them? 100%. type of language and cruelty excites rural America, scares them? A hundred percent. Anything that drives them to have some element of fear about something is going to then in turn cause them to be angry. And so they do a very effective job in messaging all of this immigration bullshit and lies that they spread. You know, so don't confuse whether it's truthful or not.

It's one thing, but don't confuse the fact that it's effective. That's where we get into with Trump. Don't confuse the fact that I think everything he says is bullshit, but it's effective. And if you deny that, then you're denying the very premise in which you're trying to have this debate, this argument about how do we better message against Republicans. I agree. Josh, thanks for joining us. He'll be with us all through the weekend until Pumps gets back.

We'll see you guys tomorrow. It's so entertaining to have the vape. So good. I'm going to go get my phone. I'm going to go get my phone. I'm going to go get my phone. I'm going to go get my phone. I'm going to go get my phone.

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