SPEAKER_03 0:00

I am feeling a full-on 19th-century God is dead sadness. I am deep in an existential hole where James Talerico used to be.

SPEAKER_04 0:10

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, where is your autocratic despair on a scale of one to ten this week?

SPEAKER_03 0:52

Well, last week, if I recall correctly, I was at a three or a four. I'm definitely higher this week. I think I'm gonna go 4.5. I've been treating this not like a Richter scale, you know, it's like logarithmic. A four is way worse than a three. It's more worse than a three than a three is worse than a two. What would you say is driving that? Well, we're gonna talk about it, you know. Um uh I think we're gonna talk about it probably quite extensively. Might have lost some faith. A light might have gone out in the wilderness. The beacons have been snuffed with some other sad fantasy metaphors.

SPEAKER_04 1:31

This show is a very pro-James Tal Rico show. One of the load-bearing segments on this show was a segment called Tal Rico Talk, where Dr. Craig and I decide that this Texas legislator that's running for Senate named James Tal Rico is a totem of a better future.

SPEAKER_03 1:48

And we were early adopters of Mr.

SPEAKER_04 1:50

Tal Rico, Reverend Taller Rico. Because we thought that he could be this blank slate for all of our hopes and dreams. We knew we were putting James Tal Rico into a position that he couldn't win by doing that, but we both thought that he would do a pretty good job, so far, so good, on Tal Rico. Dr. Craig and I, we've contended that the United States has a Talo Rico-shaped hole in it, whether it knows it or not. We need someone like James Talarico. We're sorely lacking. The premise of the bit was that we were going to be hilariously ridiculously delusional about James Tal Rico. This week, James Talarico has removed the guild from the lily, so to speak. If he's your new sneakers, they've got their first scuff. Dr. Craig and I have a segment on this show called Talarico Talk. And in it we posit that the United States has a Talo Rico-shaped hole in it, whether it knows it or not. We are sorely lacking anyone in a leadership position to have a decent amount of integrity, a consistency of values. Basically, somebody that you can be proud of. We have decided as a show to become full fanboys for James Tal Rico, not in his Senate campaign, but for the U.S. presidency in 2028. We really do believe that James Tal Rico is capable of becoming the first Democrat senator in Texas since 1988. And if he's able to pull that off, he's going to be the front runner for the presidential. The nerds at Cook Political moved the race towards the tallywack, bumped it up a notch, went from likely Republican to leans Republican. Pretty good. And the big one was that even the man who got Kent Paxton acquitted, Paxton's own impeachment lawyer, Dan Codgel, he got rizzed up all the way over to the Tal Rico side, defected, endorsed a guy on his own podcast. Paxton is cooked terminally by every metric. The vibes for Tal Rico were immaculate. I was this close to writing the whole segment as a victory lap. And then I watched the podcast. Dan Cudgel's podcast. There were several politicians that were on. Paxton's Own Lord across the aisle. Best Tal Rico talk moment, I think, that we had. And in the same interview, the same sit-down, the same afternoon, Dan Cudgel asked Tal Rico about the attacks. The idea that he's too liberal for Texas, that he's, quote, pro-sex surgery for minors. Gave Tal Rico a real good opportunity to let people know where he stands on transgender issues, which he's been pretty right on so far as Dr. Craig and I are concerned. Yeah. Instead, Tal Rico answered the question very specifically in saying, quote, just to correct you, I oppose gender reassignment surgery for minors, unquote. No butt, no context, no fight, just concession. I need you to understand why that one sentence landed the way that it did, because this isn't some guy with the fuzzy wrecker cleaning it up. Tal Rico is a man who stood on the floor of the Texas house in 2021 and said about trans kids, quote, they are God's children made in his own image. There's nothing wrong with them, nothing at all. They are perfect, they are beautiful, they are sacred, unquote. This is the man who looked into the camera and told trans kids directly, I love you. You are loved beyond measure. This is the man who called this care life-saving, who voted against a band, who, when asked what he loved outside of family and friends, said, the trans children. He didn't hold a careful position on the topic. He made trans dignity a signature. He built part of who he is on it. And then on this podcast, to a friendly host, he set a piece of it down to make a problem go away. This motherfucker is trying to thread the needle on us.

SPEAKER_03 5:38

Yeah. Um, frankly, folks, I'm I'm actually mad. I very rarely get angry. I actually very rarely get angry. I'm more of the disappointed parent than the angry parent. I don't have children, I'm just talking about vibes here. I'm the one to be like, oh yeah, you know, we all knew that this politician was a shithead. We can't be surprised that they're behaving in this way. I've always been the one to say we have to expect all these terrible things to happen or whatever. And uh frankly, I, you know, I I I was doing, I was actually doing what we said we were gonna do on this show. I was thinking about Taller Rico in a different way. I was actually getting hopeful about him in a way that people had been hopeful, say about Obama. I'm farther left than he is, but he seemed like the sort of candidate who might be able to do some stuff and also had broadly policies that that I thought were close to mine. But what he did on Monday, just as Nick told you, is like an actual betrayal. And I'm not talking about betraying me, although I also feel betrayed, but that's not the problem here, right? The problem is that this is a politician, a sitting politician. He does hold office in the state of Texas. And somebody who is the nominee for the Democrats for the Senate, somebody that the Democratic Party in Texas wants to be one of, I don't know, maybe like 150 of the most powerful people in the country outside the executive branch and Supreme Court and stuff like that. The abandoned people, the abandoned children. Now, if you're a listener who is not trans or does not have or care for or know a trans minor, or you know, you're not involved in this, it might sound like this isn't as big of a deal as we and many other observers are making it, right? Like you might hear this dog whistle, gender reassignment surgery. You hear surgery, you hear that, and you're like, oh, okay, well, yeah, like children aren't allowed to do other XYZ things with their bodies. They're not allowed to get tattoos or piercings, and so they shouldn't be allowed to do these other things either, right? That is you falling for the trap. You have fallen for the trap. That is the purpose of this rhetoric. It is supposed to make you believe that certain kinds of care, which are medically sound, safe, procedures that have been shown to not just help people, but literally save their lives, in that they drastically reduce rates of suicide and self-harm for trans youth. That is you falling for the trap. What one would have hoped from Talarico would be to say, hey, first of all, gender reassignment surgery is extremely rare, rare to the point of non-existence for minors. If you're talking about top surgery, that does happen in some limited cases. Um, however, as far as I'm aware, it doesn't happen more often than it does for cisgender people, because people need top surgery for many reasons, for other medically required reasons.

SPEAKER_04 8:46

Under 18 boys that have grown breasts. Yes, that happens. Their gender reaffirming care is having the breast tissue removed.

SPEAKER_03 8:54

Precisely. Or somebody who develops cancer or somebody who's been injured, any number of reasons. A person might have some sort of gender reassignment surgery when they are under 18. There are lots of reasons. All of those words, even the words that I'm using right now, that is partly us having collectively fallen into this trap. Gender reassignment surgery. First of all, we're not talking about gender here. We're talking about physical sexual characteristics. Gender is something that a person is or behaves or does or speaks or enacts. Whereas typically in the, and you know, it's more complicated than this too, but like, you know, if we're talking about the binary between gender and sex, typically sex is what refers to the body, and gender is what refers to the mind, the heart, the soul, behavior. Oh, that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_04 9:41

Could you repeat that, Craig, the difference between sex and gender? I admit I do confuse the two myself.

SPEAKER_03 9:46

Totally. This is stuff that theorists who deal with gender and sexuality talk about quite a lot. And it's somewhat more complicated than this, but but you know, like a rough and ready definition would be that sex is the body and gender is the mind, the heart, the soul, your behavior, who you are inside. It's more complicated than that, right? Because there are many people who are trans but don't have surgery to change what their body is, and so their body is just as male or female as they have, that is still a male or female body. A sort of rough and ready definition, especially when we are talking about changing a person's body, it's a helpful thing to grab onto. It's a helpful little scaffold to put on. When it comes to like actual surgical intervention to change a person's body, trans youth do not get this particularly more than other people do. There are lots of times when the medical community intervenes on a person's body for reasons of gender. As Nick pointed out before, this happens with gynecomastia. If a person who is a man develops breasts, oftentimes those are removed. Sometimes this happens non-consensually to intersex children who have part of their genitals removed, possibly when they're an infant. This is something we already do, but that's not what Talerico was talking about. That's not what this question was about. This question was about Gen Z trans kids. That's what it's about.

SPEAKER_04 11:09

Most of the gender-affirming care for people under the age of 18 is just the administration of hormones. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 11:16

Usually these are called puberty blockers. And again, this is just normal stuff. This is just fully normal stuff that medical professionals use all the time and not just for or even primarily for trans kids. They use them for all sorts of other reasons, like kids who have some sort of pretty serious hormonal imbalance, or a person who is a cisgendered woman who is getting an extremely strong period, or it's it's super early, or something like that, you know, like all sorts of reasons. People get these drugs, these hormones administered to them by medical professionals for medical reasons. I think that the thing that people are balking on is A, that children can know who they are, and B, that it's a society we should honor that knowledge. And frankly, I thought better of Talarico. I thought he was on board with that. And I thought that that's what he meant when he said that he loved these people. Now I don't know what he meant. To me, it looks like he's threading the needle.

SPEAKER_04 12:14

That's what he's trying to do. We thought better of him. I'm not as woke as Dr. Craig is. I'm Midwestern woke. When it comes to these kinds of things, I think that the government shouldn't get involved. I think that it's up to the doctors and the parents and the child themselves to do what they think is the best course of action. I know they don't do that stuff willy-nilly. To me, a gender reassignment surgery for a minor would be like, you know, those oldie time is born a boy, but his penis got mangled somehow and is and the birthing, so they snipped him up and made him a girl. I don't want that to happen.

SPEAKER_03 12:51

This is definitely a give them an inch situation. And by them I mean conservatives, people who are opposed to the rights and safety of trans people. The purpose of this rhetoric is to make you, the person who's listening to this rhetoric, question whether or not trans people should be protected, should have these dispensations. It's supposed to make it seem reasonable for the government to say, no, your doctor is wrong, your parents are wrong, you are wrong about who you are, and we are going to make sure that that is enforced. That's its purpose.

SPEAKER_04 13:32

That's what it's for. What he said was, I oppose gender reassignment surgeries for mine. The broad implication of that is that um the right in reporting is hearing, he's against child sex changes. A bit of a rhetorical trick. He's sort of collapsing surgery, hormones, blockers, and social transition all into one thing. Tal Rico didn't say that, but he didn't correct it. He allowed the narrow phrasing to let a broad impression stand. That's slippery. Now the statement does go against his own record. He voted against a band. He called this care life-saving. When he says I oppose at minimum, if it's a shift in emphasis and arguably a reversal. If Cal Rico is doing a narrow, loyally dodged, like conceding the rarest, least offensible sounding sliver surgery in minors, while quietly keeping his actual position intact, does that neutralize an attack? He's got a record and he's saying this. So he has made a calculation that this is worth conceding for the greater good.

SPEAKER_03 14:42

This is what is really getting me about this. I mean, well, that's not true. What's really getting me about this is that he is putting trans children at risk of suicide and bullying and self-harm and self-hatred and all sorts of other terrible things that we as a society simply don't. We just like we actually just don't need to do this. We don't need to do this to children anymore. We have better tools and technologies. What the fuck is wrong with us is basically one of my positions here. That's what I'm primarily feeling. It's like you are putting children at risk. But the second thing that I'm feeling is like you're putting children at risk, and you know that.

SPEAKER_04 15:36

He knows better. Oh, you're right. He does know better. He absolutely does know better.

SPEAKER_03 15:41

This isn't like, okay, well, this is where he started, and we can help him move him to a better position. No, he had a better position that he knew and seemed to believe. There's the aspect of it where it's like, okay, well, you're putting people at risk. You know you're putting people at risk. You're clearly doing it because you think that you can like triangulate somehow, that you can like talk to people who are conservative about gender or who don't like trans people or whatever. They've gotten got by this propaganda. But rather than saying, hey folks, you got got. You don't need to get got, instead of saying that, he isn't standing by his convictions. That is the other aspect of this that is just like really getting to me.

SPEAKER_04 16:26

That's why the guild's off the lily, because he he betrayed us, even though we put him on a pedestal that we admitted that he could never maintain. Yes. We admit in the Tal Rico talk segment that we're setting him up to fail. We knew this was gonna happen. This is the first time that he's disappointed us. Yes. This is a big one for me. On the whole, Dr. Craig, James Tal Rico, feeling this way as he does, willing to say this kind of stuff in public, still a million times better as a senator than Ken Paxton, correct? No, of course. He's massively better than Paxton.

SPEAKER_03 17:01

This isn't, I mean if we're talking about like the two big name Democratic Senate races happening right now in the United States, uh, we got Taller Rico Paxton, and then we got Grand Platiner in Maine. Those are the two big ones. If you were talking to me about like, okay, well, like, what do you want the image of the Democratic Party to be like in 2028, 2030? Do you want it to be Graham Platiner or James Tallerico? My answer is still Taller Rico. But prior to that, I was earnestly hopeful about Taler Rico being able to show conservative Americans a way to experience to feel love and care towards people who who our society very very intentionally, very openly hates and hurts. I was hopeful about bringing that that kind of earnest act like actual love of people who who our society really hates. I was very hopeful about bringing that into the national spotlight. But the thing is, you know, it's like, okay, this is the first that I'm aware of, and it's possible that people who, you know, are Texans and who had the pulse on James Talarico years ago. It's possible that they would be like, nah, you guys, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He's done this before. I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 18:28

I got on the Talo Rico train, you know, approximately four months ago, right? Yeah, and you want to find out as little as you can about him, uh, specifically for moments like this. Initially, yeah. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 18:39

Yes, initially, yes. This guy's an empty box, an empty signifier. Um, now he's filling it up. But my primary experience, in addition to being angry at him for putting people at risk that he knows he's putting at risk, is that he's not showing the courage of his own convictions. He's not being courageous. He's not saying the things that he believes.

SPEAKER_04 19:02

He's not being the man that we think he is. We think that he's the kind of guy that will stand up for this regardless of what it costs him politically. Yes. The mere attempt to try to thread the needle on us is beneath our concept of James Talrigo.

SPEAKER_03 19:18

You know, this is something that I feel a lot with Gavin Newsome, governor of California, running for president in 2028, probable front runner for the Democratic nomination for president in 2028. Gavin Newsom was the mayor of San Francisco when homosexual marriage was legal in California, but not legal federally. Gavin Newsom, in his power as the mayor, presided over mass gay weddings with hundreds of people. When Gavin Newsom gets on whatever podcasts, his own podcasts or whatever, and says, like, yeah, you know, like, I don't think that trans children should be able to play sports in their own gender bracket. I don't think they should be allowed to do that. Does he think that that's gonna like carve out a little slice that there are gonna be people out there who are like, well, you know, like you were the mayor of San Francisco and presided over mass gay weddings. But you hate trans children, so I'm fine with that. Who is this person?

SPEAKER_04 20:24

It was interesting how the lawyer parsed his words. He said, You're pro-child sex surgery. Cal Rico parsed it back saying he was anti-gender reassignment surgery for mine. I think that you know, there's people that'll say the sort of the ignorant thing. Then he gives us he gives other people, no, he said he was against it, and he's conceding that point, so there's some neutral ground you can meet him on. Obviously, he's calculated the value to that. I'm having a hard time doing any kind of honest framing here. I think it's maybe a more powerful one to say that this probably isn't Tal Rico becoming anti-trans. He's not moving in that direction. Probably not. It's Tal Rico pulling one of the oldest moves in the playbook, which is finding the most sympathetic sounding piece of a marginalized group's rights to visibly concede so that he can claim he's a moderate without technically lying. That's arguably worse than a genuine belief because it's so cynical, so calculated.

SPEAKER_03 21:24

It's phony, it's fake. There's an aspect of that that reads exactly the same as watching him scarf down a plate of barbecue. I feel like voters are desperate. They are desperate, they are hungry, they are thirsty, they are trapped in the desert. And what they want is somebody who fucking believes something. They want conviction, they want courage. They actually want people who believe stuff and want to do stuff because of what they believe.

SPEAKER_04 21:55

What about this? The common criticism against the Democrats is always. Ben, they're not willing to do what it takes to throw off this autocratic menace. Cal Rico here, if nothing else, and he's doing a lot of other things, but at least he's demonstrating that he's willing to do what it takes to throw off the autocratic menace. Which means to him making a cynical calculation to win an election. I don't think this is gonna win him the election, though.

SPEAKER_03 22:28

He's got people, Dr. Craig. I mean, there's consultants I know that those consultants are there telling him that this is the way he can win. Those are the same consultants that told Hillary Clinton how to win in 2016. Those are the same consultants that told Kamala Harris how to win. Those people are wrong. That's my opinion. I think that the Democrats have been on the back foot since fucking 1976. I think we've been on the back foot. I think that it's because it's just so clear. It's just so clear that they don't actually believe in any of the things that they say. The Republicans, with their whole heart and chest puffed out, scream things that are deeply unpopular. Incredibly unpopular stuff they say all the time. But they believe it. They say it with so much confidence. Yes. They have the courage of their convictions. They actually believe what they say. They want it. They're willing to fight for it. They're willing to kill for it. And voters reward them until it turns out that they're reminded that they actually didn't want any of that shit. And then they vote for a Democrat who doesn't believe in anything or does anything or is willing to do anything about anything. As per usual, I know that I'm a millennial and you are sort of on the cusp between millennial and Gen X, but I think that the beating heart of the overlap between our Venn diagrams is probably the Simpsons, is my assumption. Early Simpsons, there's the episode where Bart buys an elephant. Weird episode. In this episode, there is a bit where the elephant gets loose and runs through the Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention. It produced what is, in my opinion, the perennial 90s to present joke about American politics. It runs through these conventions, they're identical except for the banners on the top. The Republican Convention says, we're just plain evil, we hate you. And the Democratic one says, we can't govern, we hate ourselves. It's so good, we just can't govern, is what it says. It's just so perfect. Because like, just like believe in something, please. We know what this man believes, we know what he actually believes. And if you show up in front of people, get on camera and just say, I'm a liar, I'm willing to renege on all that stuff that I believed in the past. I don't think that that works. I don't think it works.

SPEAKER_04 25:04

To our audience, we do video record these conversations. We don't usually put them out. Craig is clearly, metaphorically, out the window and on a ledge right now. I am hopping mad.

SPEAKER_03 25:16

I'm gesticulating, I'm leaning forward, folks. I gotta calm down.

SPEAKER_04 25:24

I'm gonna try to rein you in a little bit here. What does Tal Rico have to do to win you back?

SPEAKER_03 25:29

It's a very good question.

SPEAKER_04 25:31

I know he's trying to win an election. Even though Tal Rico might be not as perfect as we want him to be, and we know he can't be, this is just an example of him grounding us. In a way, Tal Rico's doing us a huge favor because if he kept saying the right things, the more it would hurt. Yeah, the crash would be worse. The come down would be worse if the high was higher.

SPEAKER_03 25:53

That's true.

SPEAKER_04 25:54

He's helping us manage our expectations, which you would expect from a guy like Tal Rico. What a guy. That was a good save. That was really good, man. Folks, the Tal Rico talk segment is like a one, we get a chance to talk about Tal Rico every week, but two, it's an opportunity for us to demonstrate just how easy it is to become radicalized for a delusional belief in a politician. Like self-aware because it feels good. Exactly. That's where the comedy is in Tal Rico talk. It's the entire soul of the bit. One, that we're self-aware, two, that we're dumb enough to believe that self-awareness is going to somehow inoculate us from our path to radicalization. The self-awareness makes all the difference. Exactly. It's a fundamentally different thing than what MAGA went through. Exactly. You can take that check to the bank and cash it. We know what we're doing. Right? We do, Brian. Yeah. That's that's the point of the thing is for me to become so radicalized for Tal Rico that I have an excuse at every turn. And I thought that would be funny, but I've been watching the main subreddit, and I'm not sure that it's funny anymore. We haven't even started talking about Grand Platinum this week. Fuck. You mean Wario? We're talking about Mario here. We're talking about James Tal Rico.

SPEAKER_03 27:18

A milk toast, chill dude who wants to save people and ride around on dinosaurs, as opposed to a character who literally one of the only things I know about him is that he farts.

SPEAKER_04 27:32

That's one of the only things I know about Platner. We all do, but he does. You feel me? That's really very good. Heavily implied right there in his presentation. Grand Plattner has established a record of consistent lying. So each subsequent lie becomes, yeah, well, we already decided that he's gonna win, and yeah, he's a piece of shit, but I don't need any more information about him being a piece of shit. It all just gets thrown on the pile now. Yeah. This hurts worse. It does. There is no pile for Tal Rico. Precisely. Let's talk to the Tal Rico campaign. We know they're listening. What advice would you give them? How are they gonna win a guy who's obviously going to vote for Tal Rico back over to the side of delusionally enthusiastic about James Tal Rico?

SPEAKER_03 28:20

What can they do? I would want him to talk to trans children and doctors who give gender-affirming care and say this is medicine, this helps people, it is good for our society that people get this care. It helps children, it saves their lives, and it makes them better. That's what I that's what I would need him to say.

SPEAKER_04 28:47

I think I would need him to be honest about the difficulty of betraying your principles for the greater good. I don't know what his schedule is. I don't know if he's still pastoring every Sunday morning in church. I would like to hear his homily on how you can still be yourself despite giving up some essential component of you. How do you remain authentic to the person that you wish to be when the circumstances they conspire on you to make, to have to make a decision that you're not entirely comfortable with for the greater good? I would like to hear that. He wouldn't have to address it to me or to his voters specifically. He could just talk about it in generalities. Maybe something like that.

SPEAKER_03 29:31

That would work for me fine. The gold standard for me is him saying, I want this, this is something that I love and care about. But yeah, it would be also fine if he just got on TV and said that and said, like, I am not a medical doctor, I am not the parent of a trans child, I'm not a trans person. I do not know what is the safest and healthiest option for these folks. They do, they know better than me, and so I listen to them.

SPEAKER_04 29:55

If he does any of these things, other than the weekly sermon about the generalities of selling out, he's gonna be attacked for being wishy-washy.

SPEAKER_03 30:05

Yeah. He has become a flip-flopper.

SPEAKER_04 30:08

If you're at the Tal Rico for Texas campaign, you're trying to figure out a way around this, get a video of him giving a sermon about making the difficult choice to go against your morals for the greater good. I'd like to see what he would put into that. It would be a symbolic apology, I guess, or like a symbolic, you don't know what I'm going through. I'm trying. I'm doing my best, Craig. I'm doing my best, Nick. Hang in there, guys. Your experiment and having blind faith in a politician is a good one, it's a righteous one. Things of this nature.

SPEAKER_03 30:42

If his campaign's actual position is I do not support trans care, then I do not support him as a politician. If I were in Texas, I would hold my nose and vote for him over Ken Paxton. I would. But I would not support him. If this is his position, then I don't support him. I've lost my faith. I'm wandering in the desert. I was already in the desert, I came back. Now I'm back in the desert, but this is the worst one with the devil and stuff.

SPEAKER_04 31:13

This is a key moment, people, for us. Um this is the Kings of Leon's only by the night album. It's a cello. Yes. It's got you somebody on it. Actually, it gets played on the classic rock stations because it absolutely should. But they're lost. They all got haircuts now, they all got kids now. Their hearts not in it anymore. Is that what's happening with Tal Rico right now? I hope not. I hope he can win us back. But we're gonna be maybe a little cautious going forward. I want the Tal Rico campaign to relieve me of the psychic pain that I'm in right now because I'm angry. I'm very angry. I don't think I can write him off. Yeah. But suppose for one second, Tal Rico is in a pack of five potential Democrat nominees, and they've all said something similar or worse. This is the consensus, consultant speak of the Democratic Party to concede this narrow sliver in order to find some common ground and allow the people that want to defect to defect without thinking they're going completely against their moral. It's just so sad.

SPEAKER_03 32:22

Tallerico was supposed to be like, what if Mr. Rogers were running for Senate? This is unequivocally not what Mr. Rogers would do. Mr. Rogers, I mean, there are all sorts of ways to analogise and talk about trans rights. It's a tough one because obviously the parallels aren't exact. But if we think about trans rights as civil rights, they are. We have examples in the history of the United States about people vociferously coming out for civil rights when it hurt them politically, in their career, as media personalities, for all sorts of things. There are people who were and are courageous about these things, even when it is not materially useful for them to do so. Back when pools were segregated, in the Mr. Rogers show, the mail carrier was a black man. In a segment on the show, Mr. Rogers had this black mail carrier character come over when he was cooling his feet in a pool, pretending that it was the summertime. And he invited this man to join him. In many states, that was illegal. Black people and white people bathing together. Illegal.

SPEAKER_04 33:28

Also, the weirdest shit you can ask your mailman to do with you.

SPEAKER_03 33:32

It is, in fact, a very strange thing to ask a male carrier to do.

SPEAKER_04 33:35

Especially if you're a single male that's very fastidious and has a lot of puppet friends.

SPEAKER_03 33:40

Well, I mean, yeah. I think Mr. Rogers is great. I would, I'm into Mr. Rogers.

SPEAKER_04 33:45

He was an adult man with a lot of puppet friends. Okay, Dr. Craig? I mean those are the facts about Fred McPheely Rogers. All right? Those are the facts.

SPEAKER_02 33:53

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not I'm not hearing this. I'm not hearing this. I love Mr. Rogers.

SPEAKER_04 33:58

He was the nicest guy with a lot of puppet friends, but I urge the youth of this country to not let the good interactions they've had with Mr. Rogers in any way over-index their feelings about adults with a lot of puppet relationships. Well, that's good advice. Mr. Rogers is an absolute edge case. On the whole, not a trustworthy bunch.

SPEAKER_03 34:23

That's a good piece of advice. Yes. Your good feelings about Mr. Rogers should not carry over to your Jeff's Dunham's for no reasons.

SPEAKER_04 34:31

Jeff Dunham is a professional ventriloquist. Puppets are his work. That's true. I don't want my kids to be friends with Jeff Dunham for a lot of different reasons, but not the puppetry. He might be able to show my children the art of ventriloquism. Which is an interesting skill. Mr. Rogers just had puppet friends. Nobody knew Mr. Rogers was a puppeteer.

SPEAKER_03 34:50

The difference there is that Mr. Rogers never acted as if the puppets were actually alive. He would always be like, this is make-believe for fun. You know what we need. You need Mr. Rogers, we need Reading Rainbow, we need Julia Child, all PBS all the time. That's my position.

SPEAKER_04 35:13

Well, Tal Rico was essentially done with this, is that he has gone from being a vessel for hope to a politician. If Tal Rico is disappointing us, it's only because we had a sadness inside of us that was looking for any brightness to come through. We had put James Tal Rico in that position from the beginning, but he was filling it so well for so long. This feels unforgivable, but it probably is forgivable. The record that he has with trans rights and trans people, that should speak louder than this calculated political move, right?

SPEAKER_03 35:50

That's an interesting question. It's true that he has a history of this. He has a history of being on the side of trans rights. I would be curious. If he continues to, for example, vote in favor of trans rights, if he continues to support legislation and policies that are in favor of trans rights, I still think that that's a bad move to be openly conceding these things, because that is how the political window moves when you open the concede things. That's how it moves. I still think it's a bad idea. And it would make it impossible for me to support him. It's true that his history is good about these things. And that's what is so confounding about this.

SPEAKER_04 36:28

I'm trying to talk you down here, Dr. Krang. No, no, no. Could you say that you're profoundly disappointed? I am profoundly disappointed. You're still on board, but you're profoundly disappointed. I don't know if I'm on board anymore. You've got to accept there is going to be a disappointment or two. But this is a really, really big one.

SPEAKER_03 36:51

This is a really big one.

SPEAKER_04 36:53

Do you feel like if you stayed on board with it, you'd be somehow betraying your principles when it comes to trans rights? To support a candidate that doesn't match up exactly with your beliefs, but still substantially agrees with what you believe?

SPEAKER_03 37:07

Yes. I mean, that is a betrayal of my principles.

SPEAKER_04 37:11

You know what? Every single Trump voter has faced up to this moment where Trump did something that they could no longer support in good faith, but they were in for a dime. So they might as well be in for a dollar. If you want to say that you can't get down with that, that's I appreciate that level of ethics.

SPEAKER_03 37:28

My position is like I said before, clearly, Telarrico is better than Paxton and has a demonstrably better record on trans rights than Paxton does. If you live in Texas and find it in your heart to be able to hold your nose and cast your vote, that is what I would do. If you can't find that in your heart, I'm not going to tell you what to do. That's what I would do. But going live, broadcasting in front of people and saying, I don't trust doctors, I don't trust parents, I don't trust children, I don't support policies that keep children from killing themselves. Yeah, I don't support. I don't support you if that's your position.

SPEAKER_04 38:06

I don't. If you imagine that everyone else has the same position uh that he's running against, or worse.

SPEAKER_03 38:14

Oh yeah. I mean, like, that's what I'm saying is that if I were given that choice in the voting booth, yeah, I can hold my nose. This is Hillary Clinton's position. I voted for her, but I didn't go out and campaign for Hillary Clinton, you know?

SPEAKER_04 38:28

So if somebody came to you enthusiastically talking about James Talreka, one of the first things that you'd say to them would be like, hold your horses.

SPEAKER_03 38:34

Yes. If a canvasser came to me and said this, I would be like, Yeah, I'm gonna vote for him over Ken Paxton, but I hate this about his position. It infuriated me. That is what I would say. I've done political canvassing. Have you done it?

SPEAKER_04 38:46

Fuck no.

SPEAKER_03 38:48

It's deeply unpleasant. It's a terrible experience. I've not enjoyed any minute, like the activity. I would engage with them in the same way that I engage with like telemarketers, right? I've been a telemarketer and it's awful. When I get a call from a telemarketer, I just say, like, hey, I know you're paid on commission. I've been a telemarketer before you're barking up the wrong tree. Good luck. Goodbye. If I get mad at somebody who works at a call center, I take a beat and I say, like, hold on, you're doing your job. I'm not mad at you. I'm mad at your employer, who probably fucking sucks. I've worked at a call center before. I know you can't say that we should stop this conversation. That is the energy that I would bring. If I got to talk to Talerico himself, which would be super interesting, I would ask him about this. I would say, like, where does your conviction lie? What do you actually believe? How does this square with what you've said before? Do you actually experience the agape, the Christian love that you described feeling for your fellow human beings, trans youth who were born in bodies that hurt them psychologically? Do you feel that love and how do you express it? What does that actually mean to you? Are you willing to put yourself on the line for that? Do you really believe this? Or do you not?

SPEAKER_04 40:01

If you're with the Tal Rico campaign, we'd like to do that interview. Absolutely. We're not an interview podcast, but we'll figure it out for Tal Rico. 100%. We might be able to get back on board in the same way. I'm not ready to jump off the Tal Rico train yet. I'm no longer as comfortable in my seat because of this. I feel like this may be something that in a vacuum I would exit. But because of what we've done with Tal Rico, because it's a load-bearing segment of this show, I'm reluctant to do that. I really want to believe in a better future, and I haven't found a better totem for that. I don't know if I'm this is the right thing or this is some greater delusion that's cast itself through my mind. Like I stared too long into the abyss and I become part of the monster. I don't know. Mr. Talerico, you're leaving Dr. Craig and I in a state of absolute existential angst.

SPEAKER_03 41:01

Existential dread is exactly this feeling. I am feeling full-on 19th century God is dead sadness. I am deep in an existential hole where James Tallerico used to be. If you could come on the show and clear that up, we'd appreciate it.

SPEAKER_04 41:23

Then he said a four? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You said a four, and that your scale is logarithmic. So that means a five has to be uh profoundly worse than this.

SPEAKER_03 41:36

Oh, a five is way worse. Oh yeah. I mean, hey, you know, I have not begun to plumb the depths of psychological despair. I study fucking the Nazis, man.

SPEAKER_04 41:45

You make a good point. You make a very good point. Do you feel like we have anything else to say on the Tal Rico topic? I know I'm being kind of measured about it because I really do have this feeling that I don't want to get I don't want to give up the hope. I'm gonna hang on to it for a little while longer. It's gonna be a looser grip. I hope that's not something that leads to ongoing tension between the two of us that'll make for an even better autocratic despair of the podcast. No, no, no, no, I get it. If we continue to do the segment where you and I will diverge, is in that sort of area, which is that's interesting. I think there'd be a good documentation of two different men at one spot taking a different angle, and then me feeling no regret about it because it all works out great, and you kind of like and then eventually I meet James Tarico and he punches me in the stomach and takes my wallet and runs off. I'm just left with this, I should have known all.

SPEAKER_03 42:47

He pulls you in for the politician hug and and whispers into your ear like hail hydra or some shit.

SPEAKER_04 42:56

If only I didn't have such a pathetic desire to love someone as a beacon of hope. If only I hadn't been kicked down so far by autocratic despair that I was making irrational, bad decisions. That's it. That's it though. I think that would make an interesting dynamic because the Town Rico talk segment is a great opportunity for us to talk about Christian nationalism. It might even be nice for you to cross your arms and be like, I'm waiting. As things develop, be like, well, this is good, but then pull it back to like yeah, he did this shit.

SPEAKER_03 43:28

So he's still an interesting foil for Grand Platiner. He's a very interesting foil for Platiner. They're both running in 2028, for sure. They're gonna run.

SPEAKER_04 43:38

Grand Platner's not gonna run, dude. I've been watching it for the last two weeks. All this ticky tack stuff that's coming out about him, this consensus that's forming. This is a slow drip of news. It's called a limited hangout. There's some bad news about him that is unacceptable. Probably have him losing to Suzanne Collins. They've been dripping out this little stuff to inure his voters against the bigger stuff that's coming later. It's very possible. I know who Grant Plattner is. He's a fuck up masquerading as a dumb shit. We can smell our own. And this is what always happens when you play that little game of mutual pretense with the fuck up, where you both are just, ah, he's just a dumb shit. If we don't expect too much from him, he'll be fine. That's who I see Grant Plattner as. I hope I'm wrong, I guess. I don't think I could possibly be. No, I think that that's accurate. I think you might have a stretch of competency that lasts into 2027, maybe. But fuck up's gonna fuck up. And that guy is a classic fuck up. Do you got any more thoughts and like off-air thoughts about the sadness of this? It really is deflating, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 44:53

Oh, it's it's very deflating. It's very actually sad. Um it's uh yeah, it's depressing to like not be able to be happy and excited about him. It actually is.

SPEAKER_04 45:07

It's not great for the podcast either, but you know. No, it's not. That's not the first thing that affects positive energy. I hope that he's able to kind of redeem himself. Yeah. I suspect that he might. And I really do think that he is one of those like Christian guys that really does think about stuff, and I just hope that it doesn't cost him. Our next segment is called Dr. Craig's Fun at Parties. When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail to you. That's an old saw, but it means that we all view reality through the lens of our experiences. Dr. Craig has spent years learning about authoritarianism, writing about authoritarianism, lecturing about autocracy in keeping the public up to date on authoritarian regimes abroad and throughout history, which was a terrible idea for a life path, Dr. Craig.

SPEAKER_03 45:58

Yes, it was awful. It was a deeply foolish errand.

unknown 46:03

Dr.

SPEAKER_04 46:04

Craig has another show. It's called 15 Minutes of Fascism. It's how I came to know him. It's a very dense show that cycles you through a weekly roundup of all things autocracy throughout the country. The button is a great segment about a famous dead Nazi or dead fascist in history called See You in Hell. It's uh one of my favorite shows. And the people that listen to that are highly arudite people. This segment, Dr. Craig is fun at parties, is meant to give you something to text your nephew, who really ought to know more about this stuff, but it just isn't being mentioned anywhere in the 19 hours a week of podcasts that he listens to. I know he can tell you the salient differences between Ibogaine and ayahuasca, so he's capable of learning. It's just that all the podcasts that he listened to are pretty cool with authoritarianism. And the podcasts that talk about authoritarianism being bad aren't that fun to listen to. The Dr. Craig Fun at Parties segment is meant to be the antidote to that. In it, Dr. Craig demonstrates what a world-class buzzkill he is. I am a buzzkill. And how do we do that? I choose a I choose a seemingly innocuous or benign topic that I think has absolutely nothing to do with autocracy, authoritarianism, fascism. And Craig tells me why I am wrong. This is Dr. Craig, is fun at parties. This week, orange soda.

SPEAKER_03 47:23

This one is like a soft book. This one is coach pitch. This is T ball. This is table stakes. Listeners from home are probably screaming into their iPods right now. So, uh, here we go. Orange soda. For those of you unfamiliar with it, we're talking about a soda that arguably tastes kind of like an orange candy. You know, it doesn't really taste like orange itself, like actual orange juice. It's different from like an orange juice or something. Orange soda originated in a bunch of different places. You know, there's French origins to it, there's American origins to it. I like and have always loved orange soda personally.

SPEAKER_04 47:57

I like to mix it with a little iced tea. I call that an Arnold Drummond.

SPEAKER_03 48:02

That is very good, and I like it very much. That makes me happy to hear about, and it is a good name for a drink. But orange soda has a direct and immediate one-step connection to the actual National Socialist German Workers' Party, the Nazi Party. How so? Uh, so here is what it is: Coca-Cola. The American soft drink company, Atlanta the South, becomes massively more popular in the early 1900s, so in the early 20th century. It's getting more popular. Coca-Cola is also getting more popular in Europe, specifically in Germany. Coca-Cola is getting more popular. Its popularity actually skyrockets in the 1930s, after the Nazis have taken power. So from 33 to the beginning of World War II, 39, Coca-Cola is becoming massively more popular in Germany. After the war starts, it becomes way more difficult for them to import the syrup that Coca-Cola is made out of. Coca-Cola is famous for having its proprietary syrup recipe, and you know, you have to import it, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They can't make Coca-Cola anymore. There is a Coca-Cola subsidiary in Germany, which turns out to be run by this guy named Max Keith, who is a Nazi-era German businessman. He decides, as a result of the inability of his company to produce and sell Coca-Cola anymore in Germany, that they are going to invent a new beverage. This beverage, as it turns out, is made out of apple fibers and whey, which comes from cheese. Sounds like a good soda. Yeah, yeah, exactly. He makes this new soda and it is called Fanta. The same Fanta that we know today. Yes, that Fanta was invented by, as far as I can tell, the guy wasn't a member of the Nazi party itself. He was a businessman operating in Nazi Germany, and he was operating under the Nazis throughout the war. He was selling Fanta as the Coca-Cola company of Germany throughout World War II. Kept working there after the war, and that is where Fanta comes from. The Germans wanted Coca-Cola and couldn't get it because of the war.

SPEAKER_04 50:02

So the whole country's just drinking orange soda all the time? What a bunch of dorks. Didn't think I could respect the Nazis less. Do now that I know they were drinking orange soda. Orange soda is not what you drink, it's what you have once in a while. You don't drink orange soda? 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 fascism, available wherever you get your podcast.