SPEAKER_00 0:04

The man said, and this is a quote, uh, he was like, Yeah, whenever I get bedroom thoughts, I go to the kitchen and I eat a whole potato, and that usually calms me down. That's a phrase that just lives in my mind forever. Mr. Talarico, you do not have to keep eating those potatoes.

SPEAKER_02 0:22

He said that he would eat a whole potato. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Is it possible that he said, I'll eat a hole in a potato when I have sexual thoughts?

SPEAKER_02 0:30

Because that seems like a more the sad realization that now when someone mentions a golden statue of Donald Trump, you have to ask, which one?

SPEAKER_00 0:43

The creeping concern that people on the left are getting too friendly with somebody like Marjorie Taylor Green.

SPEAKER_02 0:51

Now that is Autocratic Despair. This is Autocratic Despair, the podcast. I'm Nick Mortensen, a comedian and father of three from Green Bay, Wisconsin. Each week on the Autocratic Despair Podcast, I stare into the abyss with my friend, Dr. Craig Johnson, PhD in global fascism, lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of 2025's most important book, How to Talk to Your Son About Fascism. Dr. Craig, on a scale of one to ten, where did you rate your autocratic despair this week?

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Ooh, I think that we're down to a 3.5. I don't know if we're using 0.5s. I think we're using 0.5s. 3.5 is where I'm at right now. Peter Magyar was uh installed as the new Prime Minister of Hungary. That's pretty good. That's some good news. Orban is out in Hungary. He's been out before. He's been in the opposition before, but he might be out for good this time. He was a real important piece of glue keeping the international right wing together, and with him gone, things are better. Uh then again, of course, in the United States, we're no longer a democracy. No, I take it back. I take it back. We're at 4.5. 4.5. We're at 4.5 because of the redistricting business in Virginia. Uh that's why we're at 4.5.

SPEAKER_02 2:17

I know I'm supposed to be concerned, and I'm likely not as concerned as I should be, given the facts of the matter. I guess I don't really understand. I have a certain expectation that something like this happens. You get a report, you sort of read up on it. Ah, it doesn't really quite work out the way that it was said.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

The basic takeaway is that in a bunch of states in the United States, they have been doing redistricting. And for those of you unfamiliar with the term, it's when the state government redraws the lines in the congressional districts for the United States House of Representatives. So each state has multiple representatives. Well, a couple of them only have one. The ones that we're talking about, they have more than one. And they have districts which are drawn on a map by the state governments. Since the 1960s in the US, the federal government has had something of a say in how those lines are drawn, specifically because they need to be, or at least until like a couple weeks ago, they needed to be drawn in a way that didn't promote racial discrimination. And specifically, they were supposed to be drawn in a way to provide a few districts in which racial minorities were the majority, especially in states that have very large racial minorities, specifically the US South. So this is places like Mississippi, Alabama, Kentucky, Virginia, Louisiana, et cetera. In those states, there would be districts where specifically black people were the majority, because black people are a very large part of the population of that state. And the idea was, well, we need to make some districts where those people are the majority so that they can have some representation in Congress. Recently, the Supreme Court of the United States said that that is illegal, that it's racist and illegal to make districts where uh black people are the majority. And so the response in the Republican-controlled states in the US South is to re-carve out those districts in the middle of an election in order to eliminate districts where black people are the majority, which would mean that almost certainly a Democrat would win in that district. This is happening in the middle of an election, right? Like it's an election year, and these districts are being redrawn now. Specifically, what's been going on is that these redistricting efforts are happening. They've passed, they've happened in states that are redistricting in favor of the Republicans, but those redistricting efforts have been blocked in states where the redistricting is happening in favor of the Democrats, specifically Virginia. This means that there is a there's a concerted effort that that has succeeded to try to offset any losses that the Republicans will have in the House because of the extreme unpopularity of Donald Trump and the Republican Party right now. So they're redrawing the map in order to give Republicans an advantage in Congress. And they're preventing Democrats from redrawing the map in a way to balance that out in places where the Democrats control the state legislature, like Virginia.

SPEAKER_02 5:23

So the safe assumption for everybody is that if if you have a majority black district, then you'll have a Democrat representative. Almost certainly. Let's say there's a white Democrat going against a black Republican in a mostly black district.

SPEAKER_00 5:38

Who's more likely to win? Oh, that's a good question. I don't know. There are only a couple of black Republicans in Congressman, in Congress right now. I think there's like two or three. And I think one of them just lost his seat. In the majority of these cases, we're talking about we're talking about good old boys, Southern conservative whites, taking these places, these districts. Now, I'm from Illinois. I am extremely familiar with gerrymandering, and I don't think that gerrymandering is good. Clearly, it's bad. But it's also potentially the only way that the Democrats have of having any representation in the federal government until the 2028 presidential election. That chance is being stolen right now. It's being taken away from them by state Supreme Courts and by the U.S. Supreme Court, many of which are controlled by the Republicans.

SPEAKER_02 6:24

So this is just the biggest move in a while to push everything in a direct. Like they're not quite stealing votes, they're just making it harder and harder for people to vote.

SPEAKER_00 6:34

Yeah, exactly. They're not they're not exactly cheating. They are changing the rules of the game in the middle of the game. Calvin ball is what they call it. Yeah, exactly. This is full on Calvin ball. I'm gonna take my ball and go home. It would be good for you to bump it up a half a point on the despair ometer. I think that that's reasonable. The conclusion of democracy as such in the United States, I think that that's uh the Voting Rights Act has only was, it doesn't exist anymore. It was only in force in the United States for about 60 years and uh now it's over.

SPEAKER_02 7:03

Respect to America for taking it in stride. Just another instance where I say, thank goodness that we've got progressive nonprofits out there to let us know where, when, and what to protest. Because this seems like something that you'd march over. But we're playing it cool.

SPEAKER_00 7:20

Yeah, nobody seems to fucking care about this. Democrats are not talking about, I mean, like, I don't know, it's wild. It's just wild that they're not being like, hey, you're stealing the you are in. I mean, the thing is it's too complicated. It's too complicated. People don't understand this crap. It's too inside baseball, like uh saber metrics, right? Really is. They don't get on first base.

SPEAKER_02 7:44

I'm at a six and a half. That um 22-foot-tall gold leaf statue of Donald Trump this week got me. Yeah, I know I'm not supposed to be taking the bait on this stuff, but Jesus Christ. And then to find out this is just the most recent golden statue of Donald Trump. There's others. You know that golden statue of Trump? You'll have to be more specific. Now you really do have to ask which one. Like, please, please tell me which one.

SPEAKER_00 8:08

You mean the golden statue that everybody prayed around? No, but seriously, you have to get more specific, please.

SPEAKER_02 8:13

At the unveiling this past week, there was a pastor named Mark Burns that uh dedicated. Burns is Trump aligned uh from South Carolina, he's an evangelical minister. He's a member of uh Pastors for Trump since 2023. And he's often described as Trump's informal spiritual advisor. Trump does have a formal spiritual advisor named Paula White, who's probably worth an episode all on her own of the Autocratic Despair Podcast. She's a character. Now, Burns led the dedication ceremony, but but there were other religious figures, including a Hasidic rabbi. Trump himself called in by phone, couldn't make it, called in by phone. And Burns held his cell phone up. Burns later on that day came out and answered a few questions that his t-shirt should have already answered for us. He let us know right off the bat that this golden statue of Donald Trump, not idolatry. Don't write in the paper it's idolatry, because it isn't. And that's all there is to it, and you guys should just leave it alone already. It does seem a little like idolatry. These statues are you know, there's there was the first one was just this like three or four foot tall one. An exhibitor would bring it to the CPAC conventions and the turning point USA conventions, and people would stand around it and take selfies. Pedestrian fan engagement, not exactly worshipping it. The second one was just like a seven-foot-tall Trump statue that the guy from a company called Sticker Mule purchased for Trump. I saw that. It was weird. The guy from Sticker Mule is not all there, I think is the generous way to put it. The sticker mule statue is at the golf course that's right outside of Mar-a-Lago. Trump gets to see that just about any time he shows up to golf at Mar-a-Lago. The 22-foot one, unfortunately, for Trump, is sent to the Durral golf course in Miami, which is 75 miles south of Mar-a-Lago. You know that has to hurt. We know Trump. He would rather have the 22-foot tall. For sure, he'd rather have the 22-foot tall. That's the thing. This 22-foot statue, the platform they install is $450,000. It's paid for by a gaggle of crypto bros to promote their meme coin, uh Patriot.

SPEAKER_00 10:20

I mean, if this isn't idolatry, I I truly, actually do not know what it would be.

SPEAKER_02 10:26

It does just seem a little weird. The reason I think I'm letting it bother me is because I'm coming to grips with the idea that he's left this indelible mark on the country. Every now and then I am confronted by the idea that everything he does or has done will make history. Not just from sycophants kissing his ass and saying it is history. It's really history. It makes me feel uneasy. It represents that he's carving out this face in history that I don't think he deserves. So it's got me conflicted. I just want Trump to go away. But I know that's impossible. He's going to be in every history book. I find it slightly comforting to know that history won't be taught in the future the way that I learned it. Maybe there won't be any history at all. I just don't want them glossing over the fact that there is this whole movement to demoralize people for having the audacity to understand something about this is very, very wrong. These statues are not made with public money. So that's good. And they're not being exhibited in a public place. I can avoid these statues simply by not going to one of Trump's golf clubs. And I don't think I would have much business at those golf clubs anyway.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

So maybe it's a good thing that it's all at his golf club. I mean, is he gonna put a statue of himself on top of the triumphant arch he's trying to build? That's gonna be a big arch. It's supposed to be bigger than the Arc de Triumph in Paris. Ah, jeez. I mean, I think it's supposed to be bigger than all the monuments in DC currently, which I thought was illegal. I thought the idea was that you couldn't build anything in DC that was taller than the Washington Monument, which is why there aren't any high rises in DC. Oh, that's interesting. I didn't know that was a rule. I think it's true. Well, because otherwise there would be, right? You know, there'd be skyscrapers, but there aren't any. Sounds about right. When I think about Trump, I think about that episode of Futurama where they go to the beach and they're like the pyramids are there, and like a bunch of other ancient ruins and stuff. And Fry's like, why are these here? And the professor's like, oh yeah, you know, 200 years ago we elected an evil genius as mayor of New York and he moved all this stuff here. And so that's why we have it. I think it's gonna be like that. Oh, yeah, you know, 50 years ago we elected this completely insane evil man as the president, and so now that's why this looks like that. That's why there's a giant gaping hole in the lawn of the White House.

SPEAKER_02 12:44

Second grade classrooms with pictures of all the presidents, and they've got two pictures of Donald Trump. One of them could be the mugshot, though. All these monuments are just a way for him to continue to demoralize us in the future from beyond the grave. I hope that we're able to tear them down. I hope so too. I worry that they're gonna create this nostalgia for the Trump era because he's got sons and grandsons, and I wouldn't be surprised if one of those grandsons has just enough charisma to pull off running for president someday. I'm sure somewhere in Trump's lineage is another presidential candidate.

SPEAKER_03 13:17

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

This is how these sorts of movements work. We had Napoleon, then we get Napoleon III. We have Ancaron and his two wives. We have Jared Bolsonaro, his son is running for president. He's running for president. Bolsonaro would be running for president, but he's in jail. Rodrigo Duterte's daughter is running for president. For sure. Baron Trump is gonna run at least for like Senate or for the House or something like that. I don't know that how Baron sounds, though. That's a good point.

SPEAKER_02 13:46

He might be a squeaky voice teen. They've done a lot to just sort of keep him in the background, looming figure. Well, he's tall. He's really tall. He's definitely tall. By not being in the public eye, he actually does capture the imagination a little bit. If it gets to the point where a Trump heir does run for president, I I hope it's Don Jr. Among all of these people, Don Jr., I just have this soft spot in my heart for him.

SPEAKER_00 14:10

You have a sympathetic feeling about him in the same way that you have a sympathetic feeling for like the hapless kind of drunk uncle in an 80s movie.

SPEAKER_02 14:18

Whatever the problem that he needs to get over, I just want him to face it. And I think that by becoming the president of the United States of America, he could exercise a lot of personal demons. That's what I'm looking for in a presidential candidate.

SPEAKER_00 14:31

A growth arc, that's right.

SPEAKER_02 14:36

There's an update on the Prairie Land situation. The judge in this case, Mark Pittman, has denied two of the post-verdict motions. To jog you guys up to speed here, Benjamin Strong's lawyer contended that there was a Brady violation. He said that it wasn't established that the officer that was shot drew his weapon first in the discovery process. Had they known that, they would have used Lieutenant Thomas Gross's drawing his weapon first to cast doubt upon whether Gross was shot by Benson. There wasn't any report of where the bullet entered Gross and from what angle. They didn't do that at all. If they had done that, we found out that the bullet had entered Gross from a lower angle. It might have been from an off-the-ground ricochet, which changes everything. It goes from attempted murder to reckless. Gross was apparently hit. There's no doubt about that. He had to go to the hospital, but he didn't have to stay the night. The second thing that got turned down was a motion for a jury examination to get to the bottom of the documented kerfuffle that happened in the jury room about an hour before the jury read the verdict. The talk of jury corrosion centers around a kerfuffle that was heard to be happening inside the jury's room about an hour before they rendered the verdict. Now, if you remember, when the jury entered the courthouse to render the verdict, two members of the jury, male members, were visibly crying. And that led to some concern about whether the jury was coerced or not. Lawyers for the defendant, Savannah Batten, had formerly asked Judge Pittman to get to the bottom of the ruckus and question the jury about whether or not they felt coerced. Pittman denied that. He won't be doing it. It's no surprise. Pittman's got a close relationship with the Trump administration. He's a Federalist Society founder of Fort Worth. It just wasn't expected he's going to make any rulings that would possibly damage the convictions. Lawyers can still appeal the convictions, but only after sentencing on June 18th. You can bet they will. I want to read the names of the people. Autumn Hill, Zachary Ebbets, Savannah Batten, Megan Morris, Mariselo Rueda, Elizabeth Soto, Inez Soto, and Ben Song. Every week for the last four episodes, I think we've read these names off. I've made a mistake, mea culpa. We were calling one of the defendants Cameron Arnold. Turns out her name is Autumn Hill. We were calling one of the defendants Bradford Morris. Turns out her name is Megan Morris. Both are trans women. It was new information to me, and we've done these updates in the past. I've always referred to them by the names of their charging documents, which were their birthnates. I'm guilty of dead naming them. It's no disrespect intended. Going forward, we'll refer to them by the names they wish to be called. Autumn Hill and Megan Morris. Wherever you want to be called, I'm calling you. To sum it up, 16 people have been federally convicted in the Prairie Land case. Nine by trial, seven just pled guilty. The seven who pled guilty are facing up to 15 years each. The eight who were found guilty at trial are facing up to 60 years each. They got hit with rioting, providing material support to terrorists and explosive charges, the explosives being the fires. One of these people wasn't even at the protest, and he's facing up to 40 years for moving a box of zines between his apartment and another home. Only one of the 19, Ben Song, the alleged shooter, was convicted of attempted murder. There are four people charged with it. Three of them, the jury said, no, that's not an attempted murder. That's good. That matters. That means even the jury that convicted these people on the terrorism charges wasn't willing to call them attempted murders. It's something. The Fifth Circuit appeal will hinge on whether the terrorism support convictions can survive scrutiny.

SPEAKER_00 17:56

The more that I think about this event, the more that it reminds me of how the United States government cracks down on the left and on organizing historically. We've seen this happen many times before, that leftist organizing is specifically targeted for scrutiny and takedown from the United States. One prominent example from history would be the conviction of perennial socialist candidate for president, Eugene Debs, for sedition, for his opposition to the United States' involvement in World War I. But there are a million of these cases. Any protest movement that you look at, there's half a dozen people who got some bullshit charge and ended up in jail for 10 years or 15 years, and like maybe they did something stupid, like they broke a window for a bank for no reason, or you know, whatever, like something like that. But this does seem different. We are now dealing with the United States government that is directly involved with fascist movements. There are people in the United States, uh, including some of the people listening to this podcast, who are involved in opposition to these fascist movements. And that means that based upon this case, you will likely, or at least could be, targeted by the United States government for prosecution for this. And that includes for things that are not violent in any way. Simply disseminating information seems like it is opening you up to prosecution. This is the foundation for how the United States government could or would or will, I mean is, oppressing people along these political lines. Whether or not the Trump administration does more of this, and I'm almost certain that they will do more of it, we know that this means that they've laid the groundwork for it. And that groundwork is probably still going to be there whether or not a Democrat wins in 2028.

SPEAKER_02 19:44

This parallel catch is the first time that they've ever prosecuted anything based on the fact that they've declared Antifa to be a terrorist organization. There is still some debate about whether Antifa exists as an organization. Craig and I contend that it doesn't. It's just an idea. If you're a member of Antifa, if you're thinking about getting a local chapter started, I suggest an aggressive rebrand. Just call it anti-fascist instead of Antifa, because that that branding is dead.

SPEAKER_03 20:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:13

They're going to slap it on people and charge them with terrorism. You might as well put it to bed.

SPEAKER_00 20:18

There's other ways to express that you're anti-fascist. Yes, the new U.S. anti-terrorism guidelines specifically say that members of Antifa will be treated the same as members of Al-Qaeda. That's a rough way to treat people. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 20:34

All right, it's time for Tal Rico talk, this segment where we go full fanboy for the only politician in America who makes us believe that this isn't all completely hopeless. This country, whether we know it or not, has a Tal Rico-shaped whole. This segment is an exercise in optimism and delusion. We'd like to have the audacity to believe that the future is hopeful, and we've nominated James Tal Rico as a totem for this. The reason we like Tal Rico so much is because this is a volatile relationship that we're having with the president. And Talo Rico has got a lot of stern stepfather energy. Now he's going to provide us with a little stability. Tal Rico is going to make us do the right thing, even if it's the hard thing. He's going to put an effort into setting a good example. He's not looking to replace your dad, but maybe there's a spot in that big old heart for him, too, right? Sport. He's like a guy that can get a little hot under the collar from time to time, but he can emotionally regulate well enough that he never lets on publicly. Tal Rico's got the kind of energy that tells you that he can take a little teasing once in a while, but don't push it. Okay. He seems genuinely sincere. Yeah. Haven't you ever wanted to become emotionally involved in a United States Senate's break? Absolutely. Now is your chance. It's gonna be so much fun.

SPEAKER_00 21:46

Yeah, exactly. There's emotional payoffs to being the fan of a sports team. This is the same business, right? I've always described myself as a political junkie. I'm in an unusual position this year. It's an election year, and it's the World Cup. I mean, come on. A lot of good.

SPEAKER_02 22:00

Stuff going on right now in America. The Autocratic Despair Podcast is not advocating for Tal Rico to win the 2026 Senate race. We're advocating for Tal Rico to become the president in 2028. He will have to win the 2026 Texas Senate race in order to become the president. We've envisioned what life might look like with James Tal Rico as president. It's a future we want to see. There's an election going on in all of our hearts right now. As far as Craig and I are concerned, the only candidate on the ballot is James Calarico. He's also the only political candidate that can expose Christian nationalism for what it truly is. He's our only hope for that. He's the only one that's even talking about Christian nationalism. And we've got to address that problem, ASAP. It's only going to grow. There's no other politician so well equipped to take on the evangelicals. He's a Presbyterian minister. He cannot be out Bible. He rattles them. There are thought leaders among the evangelical church who have publicly wished him dead. They've called him demonic and a fake Christian. On the record, they've done this. Tyrico is exactly what this country needs right now, a blank slate for us to project all of our emotions onto because we got some big feelings about everything that's happened, and we should probably take a beat or two to process everything that's happened. That's exactly what this country needs right now. It doesn't quite know it needs it yet. The United States will be better off if we're led by a milk toast character that's so aggressively decent he runs afoul of evangelical Christianity. It's perfect. He's somebody that you don't need to worry about. There's no right or wrong way to survive this era. You're going to need every coping mechanism you have, the healthy ones, the unhealthy ones. Getting emotionally involved with James Tal Rico is something that we're advocating for you to do. You'll be getting in on them early. Last week was the first episode of this podcast. I made sure to put down a substantial bet on Cowship on James Tal Rico. Oh, really? What'd you bet? How much did you bet? 40,000 contracts that pay off at a dollar. The price of those contracts was 2.8 cents. You can still get in early on Tal Rico. Yeah. With the way that these prediction markets work, you don't necessarily want to keep your money in those contracts until they pay off at a dollar. You will you want the value of the contract to rise to seven cents and then you sell them and you made a 100% profit. Oh, okay. Maybe. James Cal Rico becomes more and more likely to be the president in 2028 as the days go on. I don't think it's a done deal. I just know that if he's able to deliver Texas on behalf of the Democrats, they'll start looking at him to be a president or a vice presidential nomination.

SPEAKER_00 24:32

That's too big of a prize. A vice president, I think, is entirely possible. You can get those for four cents on Calci. I mean, you know, thinking about thinking about like candidates who got nominations and then became the vice president after trajectories like his, that happens, you know. I mean, this is what happened to Spiro Agnew. In like six years, he went from Baltimore City Council to mayor of Baltimore to governor of Maryland to vice president of the United States. If he hadn't resigned before Nixon resigned, he would have become the president, too. It would have been the fastest rise ever in U.S. history.

SPEAKER_02 25:08

Putting our hopes and dreams into a guy that's only served a couple of terms as a Texas state legislator, it's probably unfair to James Talrico. It's probably not rational, but that's the point. This is an exercise in having blind hope for the future. The exercise of having blind hope for the future is an essential component of being an American. It's an essential component of how Trump got elected twice.

SPEAKER_03 25:31

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 25:31

If those fuckers can blind hope that man into the presidency two times, then we can blind hope our way into convincing ourselves that we can have a super religious president and that's not going to backfire at all.

SPEAKER_00 25:43

I've often thought, I mean, like seriously, thinking about this as picking the underdog in a sports league and being a fan. There are psychic benefits to this. You have something to think about, you have something to root for, you have somebody to be on the side of. If they lose, you can be like, yeah, okay, I'm not surprised. But if they win, I mean, my God. Think about how good that'll feel. Just like imagine it.

SPEAKER_02 26:07

Uh savor it. When you jump on the Talarico train, I don't want anybody thinking about what might happen in 2036 after he's no longer eligible to become the president. I don't want people thinking we're setting a weird precedent by having a super religious guy become the president. It's likely that we would be, but we're in a real jam right now. We're looking for some triage. James Talarico is that triage. We'll deal with the fact that we now have a super religious president when the problem hits us. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 26:37

Yeah, there should be no consequences to electing an extremely religious president in a country with shrinking religiosity. That should not be an issue. We don't need to think about that one.

SPEAKER_02 26:45

It's not like there's going to be a presidential election in 2036 that'll have six or seven evangelical pastors in it just based on the fact that if you can get your religious guy elected president, we can get ours. That's nothing that is worth thinking about right now.

SPEAKER_00 27:01

No.

SPEAKER_02 27:01

I mean a Catholic priest could run. Don't concern yourself with the implications. Just get in to Talarico with us. It's a fun ride. Tal Rico had a great week. Tal Rico just got a Riz rub from the GOAT. He had a Taco Tuesday of April Proportions this week when Barack Obama rolled into Austin to catch a casual breakfast lunch with Tal Rico and Texas gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinosa. Tal Rico's parents, his sister, and her baby were along for the ride, as Obama put on what was no doubt a clinic when it comes to working the ever been in a room with Barack Obama? It's crazy. I got a letter from him wishing me a happy birthday once. It made my whole week. Oh my God.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

I mean it's it's electric, a century-level political talent.

SPEAKER_02 27:45

Obama is famously stingy when it comes to making physical appearance on behalf of Democrats in Texas. He didn't set foot in Texas to support Beto Aurora when he ran in 2018. He didn't come when Colin Alred was running in 2024 for the Senate. So this is a big deal. Obama doesn't do this. He's famously the most rationed out scarcity pill endorsement in the Democratic Party, but he jumped on a plan for Tal Rico. It's difficult to quantify the level of Riz that was in that room. It's probably Riz getting all over.

SPEAKER_00 28:18

Jesus Christ. Okay, that one got me.

SPEAKER_02 28:22

One of the aspects of the Tal Rico talk segment is I have to introduce whatever he's done for the last week in the most teenage boy, brain rot way possible. We settled upon that dynamic in the first episode of the show when we discussed clavicular. I'm an old man. I'm in my late 40s. Craig is in his late 30s. We have no business talking or being amused by those terms whatsoever.

SPEAKER_00 28:45

That's the dream of Talerico, though, is politics can be young again. He's just good, clean, family fun. 6'7, skibbity.

SPEAKER_02 28:53

So much could go wrong on this, Craig. But the fact is that most people don't know who James Tal Rico is. I checked out Reddit yesterday. His subreddit only has uh 400 members, doesn't even get a post a day. Oh no. If you're getting in on Tal Rico right now, you're getting in super early. You'll learn Tal Rico's name in earnest starting on May 27th, because the there's a runoff to determine Tal Rico's Republican opponent between John Cornran and Ken Paxson on May 26th. When last we caught up with Tal Rico, he was at a commencement. Speaking and debuting his iconic line to appeal to the young Zoomer and Jen Alphas, your disillusion is your superpower. It's a good speech. I watched. He's got to get off book with the speech ASAP and level up the sincerity. The content's there, the performance isn't just yet, it's a work in progress. I don't think his style is doing him any favors. He's a pastor and there's a certain ASMR quality to it. Maybe that's what Zoomers want. It would be a nice change from all the performative bombast to the Trump era. Does have the populism down path. It targets billionaires and corporations instead of immigrants, is the mythical day. Might be a little harder to recognize that that's populism, but it is populism. It's all just shadow boxing until May 26th when we find out the winner of the Republican primary runoff. Then the Taliwacker is going to know exactly who his opponent is, and he's going to get down to business for real. To give you a little preview of this election, uh, it's John Cornry, the sitting senator since 2002, versus Ken Paxton, the current Texas AG. John Corn is a loyal servant of the administration. He's been a consistent vote for Trump to do whatever he wants, but he did vote to certify the 2020 election, and that's not going to be forgotten. Corran also worked with the Democratic senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut on a post-Uvalde gun bill in 2022, and that didn't sit well with his constituency. It led to him being censured by his own state party and to this primary challenge. He's a bog standard Republican, it's best we can hope for. Ken Paxson, on the other hand, is an absolute monster. Oh, yeah. A nightmare. A true nightmare figure. The first day on the job as AG, he had a securities fraud indictment. He dragged it out for a decade and quietly settled, a slap on the wrist. While in the office as the AG, eight Republican members of his own staff went to the FBI to accuse him of bribery. He said he was using his office to help a donor who was renovating his house and covering for him for having an affair. The Texas House impeached him overwhelmingly. James Taurico was a member of the Texas House that impeached him. The Senate acquitted him, so he wasn't removed from office, but his wife did divorce him on biblical grounds. Harsh barley for an evangelical. Paxton in 2020 filed the lawsuit that tried to overturn the 2020 election results in four states that were not Texas, which is a ridiculous thing to do, abusive in office, but he did what he was told. Of course, it was rejected for lack of standing in a single sentence by the Supreme Court, but he still did it. He's exactly what you'd call a piece of shit. He's a grievance conservative. Paxton is, of course, leading Corn in the polling, 59 to 39. Trump has yet to endorse either, but he's definitely looking strongly into it. It doesn't take a genius to know that he's going Paxton. Corn's a loyalist, but Trump didn't make John Cornwan. Cornwan was around a long time before Trump. Paxton, on the other hand, he'll be making. Paxton is a monster, and Trump has an affection for these types of Republicans.

SPEAKER_00 32:14

And as you're noting, the only thing that Trump likes more than loyalty is dependence. When it comes to people like Trump, you see the roster getting shorter and shorter and the people getting worse and worse. We're at the point where Marjorie Taylor Greene, a civilizational embarrassment as a member of the United States federal government, that she has said, ah, Trump is beyond the pale. I don't want to get involved with that anymore. That's an even bigger embarrassment. But the thing is that autocrats, dictators, charismatic leaders, people like Donald Trump, they tend to surround themselves with the creepiest people that you could possibly imagine. And we've already seen this in U.S. politics. Think about the people that were involved in the Nixon administration that have carried over into the Trump era. We got, for example, Roger Stone, who I'll remind you has a giant portrait of Richard Nixon tattooed on his back, and has recently been found to be accepting bribes from a military government in Burma. These people are nightmare people. When it comes to dictators and autocrats in other countries, they just surround themselves with the creepiest guys. I was just learning about one of the oldie time personal friends of Adolf Hitler, whom he allowed to hold horse races as the Germans were being taken over by the Soviets because of their having been chums back in the 20s when they would attack people with riding crops. These people are monsters. And the fact is that just like Trump, what they love more than loyalty is dependence. They like people who have jumped ship from the mainstream and hitched themselves to the wagon, if you'll excuse my mixed metaphor. But what they like even more than that is people who have been holding on to their coattails forever, knowing that they could shake them off at any time if they so chose. Marjorie Taylor Green was originally somebody who was holding on to Trump's coattails and has attempted to dislodge herself from that legacy. But Paxton would be different. Paxton would be a loyalist through and through because he needs Trump. He needs Trump. Even though Trump hasn't endorsed him, the fact that he hasn't endorsed the incumbent senator is damning enough. Trump cannot at this point endorse somebody who doesn't win.

SPEAKER_02 34:32

No. His popularity is on the edge here. This Iran war has hurt him. Massively. So he will eventually go the Paxton route. Because he needs a guy like Paxton. Paxton's winning in the polls, Trump endorsing the losing candidate, and this would be the end for him politically. Paxton is someone Trump will have made. Paxton's got zero shame, which means he'll be great at making national headlines. He can be bombastic enough to try to take Tal Rico down. He'll be running alpha beta tests on what attack lines will work against Tal Rico, and there's no low that Paxton wouldn't stoop to in doing this. He's already made extensive use of AI-generated attack ads for Cornwren, and he's known that guy for 20 years. Tal Rico is one of the Texas legislators that voted to impeach Paxton. Of course he's going to use AI video against Tal Rico. He's not going to pull any punches. They know what sort of threat Tal Rico represents. National Republicans have already used an AI version of Tal Rico and Attack Ads where he was reading his own tweets. And that backfired. The tweets that the AI Tal Rico is reading was making him sound pretty reasonable. Tal Rico even retweeted one where the AI has him quoted as saying, Christ is the immigrant deported without due process. All he did was add an I approve this message tag onto it.

SPEAKER_00 35:47

Got a lot of traction. Bower move. I mean, that's a great message. It's also literally true. And that is specifically what Christ says in the Bible.

SPEAKER_02 35:55

He is so good at getting under the skin of the fakest, most scandalous religious jerks. It should be a real gauntlet for him if he takes on Paxson. But if he makes it out alive, he's minted as the right guy at the right time. It's going to be great theater in the weeks and months ahead, and we'll see just how much that the Texas voters can stomach. It's impossible denying an idea that time has come, and that's what we think Tal Rico is. He's the right man at the right time. It's just one of the fundamental realities of space and time that sometimes the right guy at the right time comes along. Obama was like this. Yes, for sure. So right now, Tal Rico's polling to beat both Cornwren and Paxton within the margin of errors, but at least he's polling better than they are. Now he polls against Paxton way better than he does against Cornwren. He's also got a huge advantage in campaign cash and a growing network of donors. Things are looking real good for him at this moment. That was Tal Rico talk. Each week, Dr. Craig and I talk about James Tao Rico in a way that we definitely shouldn't. And is wrong.

SPEAKER_00 37:04

That is like perhaps if you look at it from the outside, is a little embarrassing for two adult grown men to do. But hey, shaming yourself before the altar of national politics, if that's not what podcasts are for, then you know, I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 37:17

We have no relationship with the Tao Rico campaign or Calci. This is just an exercise to fight against our cynicism about the world. We're betting on a guy unlikely to profoundly let us down, but there are some. Tal Rico is 37 years old. He's not married. That's going to be a problem at some point. Eventually this will come and bite him, for sure. I don't know if Presbyterian ministers have to have a vow of celibacy. Did you know? Tao Rico does seem like the kind of guy that would go for the extra credit.

SPEAKER_00 37:46

God, I remember. I remember years ago I read an article that was about a married evangelical couple who had not consummated their marriage after about six months of being married, because they were like, well, if it was holy not to have sex before marriage, it's probably even more holy not to have sex after we're married. That's precisely the opposite of most Christian theology. The thing that always sticks in my mind is that the man said, and this is a quote, he was like, Yeah, whenever I get bedroom thoughts, I go to the kitchen and I eat a whole potato. And that usually calms me down. That's a phrase that just lives in my mind forever. Mr. Tallerico, you do not have to keep eating those potatoes.

SPEAKER_02 38:32

He said that he would eat a whole potato. Yes. Is it possible that he said, I'll eat a hole in a potato when I have sexual thoughts?

SPEAKER_00 38:40

Because that seems like a more that might relate to it a little bit more. I don't know. You know, I mean, you know, Freud has something going on right there. You know, there's food, food and sex. But like, you know, the idea that you would equate sex with one potato is like possibly the most damning thing about how sex might go. If it's like, you know, one whole unflavored potato or sexual intercourse. I don't know. Maybe maybe that person isn't the kind of person that you would want to have sex with. I don't know, maybe you would.

SPEAKER_02 39:14

He's definitely not the kind of person I want to eat potatoes with. I can tell you that. Oh no. Dr. Craig, I I want to bring something to you that's been bothering me for a couple weeks. I just want to know if I'm seeing it right. Uh, there's a Democratic congressman from California, the Silicon Valley District. His name is Roe Cannon. He co-chaired Bernie Sanders' 2020 campaign. He's progressive on labor, antitrust, anti-war. On paper, he's a guy I agree with on almost everything. He's out there building his brand. He's going on national TV a lot. He wants to be a national figure. He's a possible 2028 presidential candidate who will get beaten badly by James Towerico. The reason I'm thinking about Cana is that last month on Easter, when um Trump did that uh temporary ceasefire with Iran. By that point, the Trump warrant Iran had killed 13 U.S. service members and more than 2,000 Iranians. Iran had effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz. On Easter Sunday, Trump tweeted out, Tuesday will be power plant day and bridge day, all wrapped up into one. Open the fucking straits, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in hell. When Tuesday, April 7th rolled around, he tweeted, A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. Ominous stuff. I think we know how that all turned out. But in the moment, because it was a ceasefire, Roe Canna made a video about it. He said he was relieved that there was a ceasefire. He said the ceasefire didn't happen because of Congress, which barely made a whimper. It happened because of the American people. Then he specifically credited Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Green, and Anne Coulter for speaking out against the war. Those are some incredibly bad faith actors, and they've proven that time and time again. Tucker Carlson is most likely going to run for president in 2028. His son just left the job as the comms director for J.D. Vance right after Tucker Carlson split with Trump over these threats to Iran. That's a tip-off that Tucker's running against Vance. So Vance didn't want to put his trust in a guy who's going to undermine him, but more than likely, this was a revenge play for Tucker Carlson not backing Trump. Well, he's going to run for president. He might win the election, assuming that we have them. He's got an audience. There's there were 5.3 million people watching Fox News each night when he was on. He doesn't quite have that audience anymore, but he's close. His podcasts get better numbers than uh Joe Rogan. He's really the only person on the far right that can whip people into a frenzy the way that Trump can. That gives him a lot of advantages. To get back to Canna's video, celebrating the ceasefire, in it, Ro Cana called for a broad populist social movement that was, in his words, anti-abstain class, anti-war, pro-working class. Probably would be good right here to describe what we mean when they use the term popul. I hear it bandied about a lot. I hear it a lot about Trump and when people are discussing Bernie Sanders. So what does populism mean exactly, Dr. Craig?

SPEAKER_00 42:11

Populism is one of the hardest terms in modern politics to define. It's really confusing and complicated. There are debates about it. I would say, and this is something that a lot of other scholars would say, populism is different from left-right politics in that it is not about a particular set of policies. You know, it's not about specifically what you want to do. It's more like a posture. It's like an aesthetic.

unknown 42:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 42:35

It's like a vibe. And the vibe of populism is that it is us versus them. And the question is who is the us and who is the them? Okay. Who gets to be inside and who has to be outside? That is the question of populism. But most of the time, the us is whatever the majority racial or ethnic group in the country is, and also some means of cutting across class divides. So saying, like you as a white working class or lower middle class person have more in common in a populist understanding with maybe somebody who is also white, even if they are your class enemy because they are a billionaire or trillionaire. What we're seeing Rokana do is trying to organize populism in a different way that is about an opposition to what he's calling the Epstein class, what back in the wake of Wall Street, uh Occupy Wall Street, people called the 1%. The Epstein class is a disturbing rebranding of the concept of the 1%, connecting it to pedophilia. This is not denying the fact that clearly lots of billionaires were involved in a child sex trafficking ring run by Jeffrey Epstein. That's transparently true. But the point of it being worrisome is that this is related directly to a previous populist push in US history and by his History, I mean, like it happened like 10 years ago. I'm talking about Pizzagate, when people on the right wing had this conspiracy that specifically democratic lawmakers were involved in an international child sex trafficking, right? And they were saying, like, oh, well, it's all these rich people and all these political elites and all these media elites. And when populists say media elites, they mean Jewish people. And when they say business elites, they mean Jewish people. That is the danger of populism. That often people who have historically been left outside of politics, left outside of the political in-group, specifically often Jewish people, are ones who are kicked out uh in that circumstance.

SPEAKER_02 44:39

Populism has like a they and an us. Yeah. So it's a framework, not necessarily a a set of politics. And it does get people involved pretty nicely.

SPEAKER_00 44:49

It works, is the thing. And it might be just like the nature of politics today in the US. To a certain extent, this is just like the question of politics. What is our community and who is in it? That's just kind of what politics is. And so maybe that's just what populism is, is it's just like who is in our community and what is our community. We're just at a time in the United States and US history when the answers to those questions seem unclear. Whereas most people in the US feel like they lived through times pretty recently where that wasn't the case, where that wasn't what they were thinking about. We knew who the community was and we knew who was in it. And now there's questions. People on the extreme right are saying, well, immigrants aren't in the community, and trans people aren't in the community, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Whereas people on the left are saying, of course those people are in our community, in that they are literally physically present in our communities. They they are actually here and B, on a legal level, because the 14th Amendment of the United States, those people are legally in the US's community. But the right is trying to prevent this, trying to stop it. That's what the concern is with somebody like Rokana being like, and now we should make an alliance with, as you said, bad faith actors, you know, people like Coulter or Carlson. Like, you can't trust these people as far as you can throw them, and I don't think I could throw them very far at all. We know that they lie, we know that they throw people under the bus. We know that they have hate deep in their hearts. Why would you work with them on anything? As the internet says, you do not, under any circumstances, got to hand it to them.

SPEAKER_02 46:23

To get back to that Canada video, after he publicly thanked Marjorie Taylor Greene, Marjorie Taylorgreen responded to his video saying she agreed with them and said that they needed a strong populist coalition of the right and the left. It was a weird interaction. He called her voice against the war courageous. He said he was willing to work with people of goodwill from both parties when people took him to task about it. This isn't the first time there's been a crossover event for left and right-wing populism. Steve Bannon went on a podcast hosted by California Governor Gavin Newsom last year and specifically named Canna as one of the best economic populists in the Democratic Party. Bannon said that Canna's economic patriotism is ripping off his own economic nationalism. Canna never rejected that framing. It's quite a feather in his cap, apparently, for a progressive Democrat to get a thumbs up from Steve Bannon. That's the thing that's bothering me. I agree with most of what Rokana is saying on the merits, the anti-war stuff, the economic populism, the Epstein class stuff. So I can't tell if my discomfort is with the coalition he's building or with the fact that the coalition he's building is the one I'm supposed to be in.

SPEAKER_00 47:33

Yeah, that's precisely the thing. And when you think about populism as a set of policies, yeah, you can feel disjointed because it's like, okay, well, this guy's saying a lot of stuff, I agree with, but you still get the feeling. It's like, well, the way he's saying it and who he's saying it with, that's clearly a problem. If he is naive enough or foolish enough or stupid enough to believe that working with fascists, like Steve Bannon is a fascist. The fascist. Yeah, he believes in like civilizational revolutionary right-wing change. He's a fascist. Anne Coulter is kind of adjacent to that. She's more of like a weird neocon dinosaur at this point, but she's a firebrand and an angry, vitriolic person who will just like say shit to get in the news. Tuco Carlson occupies a space somewhere in between those two positions. These are not people that you want to be friends with. You don't need to be. You could work with a majority of Americans who oppose these people. You don't need to be their friends. This is something that I want to say to Rokana and to Gavin Newsom. Uh, Rokanna is not my congressperson, but I live in the Bay Area. I live close to his district. Gavin Newsome is my governor. It's extremely disappointing to see this kind of behavior from heavy hitters in the Democratic Party.

SPEAKER_02 48:51

And they call this sort of the lines the horseshoe theory or the red-brown alliance. Can you explain a little bit more about that?

SPEAKER_00 48:57

The idea of the red-brown alliance, it comes from the names for different militias of communists and fascists back in the early 20th century. Communists, of course, wear red because red is the color of the left and almost always has been almost everywhere in the world. The fact that the right wing of the United States is identified with red is a fluke. Basically, everywhere else the leftist party is the red party. The brown comes from the Nazis, the original paramilitary organization in the Nazi Party, they were the SA. They wore brown shirts, and that's why they're called brown shirts. And sometimes you hear Nazis or fascists called brown shirts. And so a red-brown alliance is an alliance between communists and fascists. And the idea here is that, like, okay, well, back in the early 20th century, these people disagreed on almost everything. But one thing that they did agree on was that they hated mainstream politicians and often mainstream big businesses. And so they might work together in order to fight these things. But the fact is that such an alliance always, always, always breaks bad for the red side of the alliance. Because the fascists immediately, immediately turn on the Reds. They hate them, they hate them more than anybody else, and they know how to do it. They are organized for violence, for a takeover. They consider politics to be a war, and they are prepared to continue it. There are other examples of red-brown alliances through history. Most of them uh are in Europe prior to fascist parties taking over. Uh, there's also one that happened in Bolivia uh in the early 20th century. Uh that one's a sort of weird edge case, but once again, uh the uh the brown shirts, the fascists, ended up purging the Reds and taking over. The Red Brown Alliance is not something you should aspire to.

SPEAKER_02 50:52

So we're watching Rokanna walk extreme liberal progressive types into an ambush.

SPEAKER_00 50:58

Oh, yeah. This is a bear trap that has been set by Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, who I regret to say are some of the leading political minds in the United States in the 21st century. I hate them, I disagree with them massively, but they're incredibly successful. And they're very smart, and they're very good at this, and they've been doing it for decades. This is a trap, and Rokana has taken the bait.

SPEAKER_02 51:25

Stare into the abyss with friends, the Autocratic Despair Podcast with Nick Mortenson and Dr. Craig Johnson. And don't forget Dr. Craig's other podcast, 15 Minutes of Fashion, available wherever you get your podcast.