2022 Midterm Election Aftermath

We made it! Jay and EJ process the unfolding results of the 2022 US Midterms as the so-called "Red Wave" fizzles out. Has there been a democratic resurgence? This episode explores election ramifications for the House, the Senate, and what might be in store for US politics in 2023. Tune in and get up to speed on the state of play in America's existential struggle against fascism. 

[image by Joshua Sukoff]

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:01

Hey, Jay, I'm curious, why do we call this podcast a Nazi on Wall Street?

Speaker 2 0:06

I'm glad you asked ej. You know, I study history. The Nazi on Wall Street podcast is part of elusive films Nazi on Wall Street Project, which tells the true story of how the Nazi sent a pair of the spies, a German lawyer, and a beautiful diabolical bareness to recruit American corporations for the fascist cause. And only a Jewish FBI agent stood in their way.

Speaker 1 0:25

<laugh>. Wow. How are you going to make this story come to life?

Speaker 2 0:28

We are raising funds to produce a short film highlighting just one part of the Nazi Wall Street pilot script, which showcases our team's talents and writing and production.

Speaker 1 0:36

Awesome. Where can someone go to learn more and help contribute to the

Speaker 2 0:39

Cause? Chances are, we're running a fundraiser right now, but regardless of when you hear this episode, you can go to elusive hyphen film slash donate to contribute to putting this highly relevant history on screen.

Speaker 1 0:50

Great. I hear there's some cool donation incentives too, like mugs, totes shirts, and more for yourself, or to give as a gift.

Speaker 2 0:57

That's right. Go to elusive hyphen film slash donate to learn more now onto today's show. And, you know, my, my third point is that I've lost that point, so you'll have to edit that out.<laugh>,

Speaker 1 1:14

You started the whole thing saying pre boys.

Speaker 2 1:16

it. It'll come back to me. Yeah, you know.

Speaker 1 1:36

Welcome to a Nazi on Wall Street podcast, because every time history repeats, the price goes

Speaker 2 1:42

Up. I am Dr. Jay Weichselbaum. I am a historian and producer of the Nazi Wall Street Project,

Speaker 1 1:48

And I'm EJ Russo. I'm just a regular guy who has grown concerned by the recent rise of anti-democratic sentiment growing around the world and is just trying to figure out what is really happening. Jay and I created this podcast in part to help promote his project, a Nazi on Wall Street, but to also discuss troubling current events and give them historical context. Jay, my friend, you, you smell, you smell something. I you smell that. It smells like republic faces burning off of their skull. It smells like I don't, I paradigm shift

Speaker 2 2:32

<laugh>. I was thinking, um, Indiana Jones, when the arc opens, just melting. Yeah. It's been, uh, quite a week. We record this podcast in part as, uh, as Heather Cox Richardson once said, as a time capsule recording your thoughts and feelings at this time is really important because it is a paradigm shift. I feel, I feel like I don't need to say it feels like, or it might be. I feel like the evidence is, is really stacking up that we are moving to a new status quo, which is what a paradigm shift

Speaker 1 3:00

Is. I mean, you said multiple times on this show that historians are awful prognosticators, but we've been consistent in our messaging that this is trending towards some sort of paradigm shift and that the way things have been kind of going, that we could see a resurgence in pro-democratic beliefs and energy. I'll be honest with you, when we recorded our, our previous episode, our most recent episode, when we talked about decoding Fox News, we had a little bit of a conversation to start that off. And we were very pessimist. I was very pessimistic. I did not think that we were going to see the type of turnout, especially by Gen Z. I feel really just pushed everything over, over the edge. And I thought the best case scenario would be that we were going to minimize the effect of the red wave. That hopefully it would be kind of like a, a red stream. You know, we would lose like 20, 50 to 20 seats in the house. You know, we would lose the, the Senate by hopefully only about like one or two seats. But at the time that we are, are recording this right now, it is Sunday, November 13th, and we just got news just a few hours ago, late last night that Masto is now the, the Senator of of Nevada. So the Democrats are going to maintain their majority in the Senate. That's crazy.

Speaker 2 4:34

Incredible. Just the implications on that alone, uh, CCM as Catherine Cortez Mao is known on a social media. What that means now with the Senate majority is that the Biden administration could continue to confirm judges in, uh, federal judgeship vacancies. They've been doing that at a historic clip in the, in the past session. They're gonna continue to do it. That itself is transformative because the way we interpret our laws in the judicial branch of our government, we've learned is quite crucial. Uh, which is one of the things that I think drove turnout was the, um, overturning of Roe versus wave. I saw a clever turn of the phrase, but it's not mine. But it was not a red wave. It was a row wave.

Speaker 1 5:15

Ah, it was a row wave. I like it. I like it. But I also wanna make sure that simply because Democrats held their majority, it is still vitally important that Warnock wins the runoff on December 6th. At the time that we're recording this, again, I mentioned the date, we don't know what that turnout is going to be. Um, I believe looking at the numbers that Warnock has more votes than Herschel. So hopefully if energy is maintained in the state of Georgia, that Warnock will be reelected as the Georgia Senator. Yeah. And if that's the case, what does that mean? Like, what is the difference between having a 50 50 split with Kamala Harris as the tiebreaker and a 51 49 split? What is the difference

Speaker 2 6:03

There? Couple really big differences. One is, is something people are gonna be much more familiar with, which is our, our mansion cinema problem. That becomes less of a problem because now you have a tiny bit more wiggle room. You don't need to get these mavericks, if you will, on board. They've been very frustrating the last term. Um, they've been the reason why, uh, a lot of the big bills that Biden has passed, which is still really impressive, but were, were significantly smaller. That becomes, uh, less of an issue there. There's a perhaps less well known issue, though that also gets better, and that is the composition of various Senate committees with a much clear majority. There's less negotiation. Democrats have a lot more leverage, and Senate committees are very powerful and very important. The Senate Intelligence Committee, for instance, which uh, showed us that, uh, a certain foreign power, namely Russia, is interfering in our elections. Um, in fact, we just got news today that the uae, United Arab Emirates has also been interfering with our elections. They're supposed to be an ally allegedly, although, uh, uae, Saudi Arabia, are they kind of, uh, the same thing when it comes to this issue, perhaps. Anyway, that's a, that's a whole other rabbit hole, but to say that, um, yeah, an extra seat in Georgia would be very helpful. And just to quickly give the state of play, we'll see how things actually go in Georgia. But because ccm, uh, has won her Senate seat in Nevada, this means that no matter what Republicans do, they've already lost a majority. So does that affect turnout? Do Republicans turn out as aggressively to vote for a black man or, uh, or do does this depress their turnout? I think for Democrats, I think we're energized. I think we're gonna be fine. I don't think we have to worry. There was one tweet, and I won't, I won't get too deep into it, where people are in their exuberance. This commentator was like, we don't even need Georgia. And everybody got mad about that. I think that was exuberance rather than an actual attitude that's shared amongst many people. I think there's gonna be a high interest and lots of money and activism going into Georgia. So

Speaker 1 8:02

We'll see. Well, I mean, I hope that the pessimist in me still is holding on to the paranoia that has driven me over the last six years. That voice is constantly telling me that it's the Republicans are gonna be more driven against warnock. Now you'll see a lot of Democrats saying, okay, well we, we went out and we voted once. Why do we have to vote again? Yes, I'm reminded that Warnock won the runoff in 2020, but this is a situation where Democrats have majority of the Senate might that cause people to like that tweet said, give them positive to have to go get daycare and go and wait in line for hours and, and all that type of stuff. Meanwhile, you have a number of donors that are primed on the conservative side that wants to make sure that, you know, they see 2024 down the road. They, they see that that's going to be a difficult stretch for Democrats if they can get their guy Herschel Walker in. Now, that might pose a, a big threat to Democrat majority in 2024, especially if Biden has a couple difficult years, you know, in his first term. Um, one thing that I also wanna mention that is very important now that the Democrats have majority of the Senate is judges,

Speaker 2 9:19

Yes,

Speaker 1 9:20

It'll be much quicker to appoint judges. I can't explain how important appointing judges are for the political landscape for years to come. Yeah, I

Speaker 2 9:32

Mean, um, there's something like 80 something, 85, uh, vacancies currently, which is a lot. So this is a, a really big issue. I mean, think about the student loan issue, uh, right now. Uh, the, uh, Republicans managed to tie up that program in court, which is extraordinarily frustrating. I think maybe, uh, perhaps, uh, those Gen Z voters that were motivated to come out, we're thinking about that. I just wanna, just a quick divergence, cuz you mentioned Gen Z voters and we've been hearing a lot about them. I'm gonna spin this in a positive way.<laugh>, I hope that the Gen Z that did participate are people watching See that Gen Z has a lot of power here. Their turnout was anywhere from about 17 to 27%, which is not a lot, it's still very low participation for the, the

Speaker 1 10:19

It's room to grow, it's room to, to grow.

Speaker 2 10:23

Look at how much that did. So the, the rest of y'all somewhere in the realm of 60, 70% of you that did not vote should think about voting. Because if you want some student loan forgiveness, if you care about climate change, this, um, election shows that your vote has a lot of power. And look at Michigan. Michigan has flipped their entire state house. Uh, they had some of the largest turnouts of Gen Z.

Speaker 1 10:46

Yeah. And honestly, it's also could for tell the diminishing numbers of baby boomers and we're just starting to see mm-hmm.<affirmative>, their voice starting to soften a little bit. Whether that's because they're changing their ideologies or they're starting to die off, which is a little bit more pessimistic, but what have you, just look what happened. Democrats have managed to resist the normal pattern of heavy midterm losses for first term president without a new deal or a Cuban missile crisis, or a nine 11 attack. I mean, it just shows the magnitude of this achievement. It's clear that the message of the 2022 election was, we cannot have a great economy or a national security if we don't have a democracy. And I think that Generation Z saw the writing on the wall and they saw Roe v Wade, they saw student loans, they saw this potential wave of Christian nationalism taking over. They saw all of this and they're like, you know what? No. And they were extremely helpful and energized to go out and vote. And hopefully if Democrats are smart, they'll be able to change their messaging to target this demographic so they can solidify this new empowered electorate.

Speaker 2 12:12

Yeah. On some of the things you mentioned, uh, first one, boomers leaving the scene, there's been some analysis and there will be more about c especially in these close races, right? Like, people who have resisted vaccination, who have floated the use of masks, who have taken medicine that actually harms them and weakens their immune systems, perhaps aren't capable of voting because they've passed away, they've infected their families and passed away on purpose because they didn't want to take the basic precautions against a pandemic. I think we're gonna see a lot more analysis of that. That is a critical, and, and the problem is, is that it's still an ongoing problem. We're still seeing around two to 300 deaths a day. This is a sicker population. I know we're gonna talk a bit about covid in a later episode. The people who are, who are end up passing now are sicker, uh, population with lots of comorbidities or other health problems. Yeah. And we know in red states, this is where this, these populations live because it's an environment that is just less healthy and, and buy lots of different metrics because of the lack of, uh, social safety nets, uh, being shredded by Republican party gleefully. Uh, so that's one point. Another point is, you know, uh, messaging, democratic messaging, you mentioned the refrain from, from the, you know, national media, and I'm not even talking about the right wing. I'm talking about like New York Times and pr like entities we've talked about on the show continually talk about this democratic messaging problem. I am not sure that that is real. I think this midterm is a large piece of evidence against that argument. Uh, gen Z voters heard democratic candidates talk about the inflation reduction act being the largest investment in, uh, climate action in not only US history, but in the world. And of course we must do much, much, much more. But that's a big deal. People heard that that wasn't a messaging problem, that was a good use of messaging. I've been hearing a lot about how democratic voters didn't hear about abortion. Yes, they did. They heard about Roe v. Wade from all the candidates. I think that's, that's an important point to make is that, you know, maybe, maybe Democrats don't have as much of a messaging problem as we're being told that they do.

Speaker 1 14:21

I wanna make sure that we're really careful of what's happening currently on the Twitter sphere because of all of the parody accounts that are coming out. I have been guilty of believing, uh, blue checked accounts when they are not the actual person or organization that is releasing information. And it's really important that people pay attention and are skeptical of what is being shared online right now. Because Elon Musk just threw a grenade right into the heart of Twitter a couple days ago, and it's just a complete bonfire right now.

Speaker 2 15:01

Yeah. I mean, what a moment. Uh, we are in, in, in so many different ways. Uh, I wanna zoom out a little bit on some other, on some other stuff too. That's all happening all the same time. Yes, we were all, I think many people, uh, were very, uh, worried that Elon Musk came in right during this very crucial election where we had to hope that some pro-democratic people got into key positions and very swing states. So American democracy not collapsed and in turn upend a lot of things in the world that are providing stability. Instead, what has happened is a complete tragic comic collapse on Twitter that did not stop, uh, the American electorate from sending a powerful message to the fascist of the world, which you had, um, these parody accounts. And at first it was really funny, uh, especially when, because it cuts both ways. Yes, you can have the, we, we all worry these accounts be used for misinformation. I saw parody accounts of Ted Cruz and Penn Shapiro, and all of a sudden these free speech advocates were very much in favor of some regulatory measures. But then it became a less tragic comic and more like, holy crap, this has significant implications in that. A fake Eli Lilly account Yes. That looked verified, said insulin would be free.

Speaker 1 16:12

The

Speaker 2 16:12

Tanked it Eli Lil, I've seen estimates that they lost 14 billion. That account that did that, it cost them$8 to make that

Speaker 1 16:23

<laugh>. Incredible. That's tragic.

Speaker 2 16:25

Incredible. And then I saw that, you know, some of the biggest ad agencies in the world, there's one really big one. They represent Apple and Unilever and McDonald's and Coke and all these giant global companies. They pulled out of Twitter. Wow. So it seems like everything is falling apart on there. Another paradigm shift happening, but not enough, not enough to stop, uh, what happened in this election.

Speaker 1 16:49

And then there's everything that's happening over in Ukraine, especially in the Heran district.

Speaker 2 16:55

Oh my gosh. Yeah. I've been trying to just unpack that on Twitter today. So one of the last few major cities that Russia held in the southwest of Ukraine, Heran early, I believe it was the beginning of last week, Russian military announced they were pulling out because they had been surrounded and crushed for a while. There's a river that runs through this city. The city's on a bank of a kind of a east, west river. And so these forces were all pinned down and, uh, Ukraine had blown all the bridges. They were trapped and just getting slowly just crushed. Well, they finally gave the order to pull out winter's coming. It's just a very bad time. Might as well cut your losses. I think, uh, it was their only move other than just complete destruction. But that meant the liberation of this major city. It happened during the midterm elections in the US and it was unmistakable. Uh, you could immediately draw inferences of, uh, successful resistance to fascism going on. The, um, eminent historian Tim Snyder made that connection on Twitter. Uh, and for the first time that I've seen actually had a hopeful message. He is, he's a fascism expert. He's a scholar I look up to, I've actually asked him to come on this show. Maybe he will, Tim, if you're listening<laugh>. Um, but it's not just that this is a huge psychological blow to a Putin, the forces of fascism everywhere. It's also incredibly strategic point because it means that in simple terms, is the gateway to Crimea. Uh, Ukraine can now advance to retake that whole area because basically it's protected by a big, like naval airbase in Sevastopol that is now in range of all of Ukraine's weapons. So big deal.

Speaker 1 18:31

So I wanna know your opinion. What are you looking forward to most the Civil War within the Republican party or the Civil War surrounding Putin in Russia?

Speaker 2 18:43

Hmm. Yeah, we haven't touched upon the house vote yet in our, in this midterm episode and of the coming civil war, which this is a Thank you. It's a perfect segue. Um, and of course, yeah. Will it split screen with, uh, the end of the Putin regime? I think those two things are highly likely to be split screen. And let's, let's start with just the tie to Ukraine to the midterm results. You know, I think Putin's gambit in very real, the, the countries he's allied with in his orbit did big geopolitical things. You know, Saudi, the OPEC led by Saudi Arabia tried to mess with our gas prices because they thought it would help a red wave. And thus Republican congressional control could, uh, start cutting back on aid to Ukraine in a very real way. And these are very large forces trying to influence the average American voter. And they failed, uh, which is a huge deal. So that means that I think Ukraine aid continues to, to flow. But this is the tastiest part of this discussion in my mind. Sorry, sorry to get gleeful folks. Uh, the veneer of neutrality has fallen away for a moment here, but Republicans are in for a bad time, regardless of how these next few house seats shake out and who ultimately controls the house. Because if they have a slim majority, I think it might even be worse. A slim majority for Republicans is quite bad for them actually, because on big issues where there's a clear, very, very wide consensus in America, it's gonna be really easy to divide the Republicans. So let's take Ukraine, there's gonna be more Ukraine aid bills coming on. Let's say the Republicans have a five, let's be generous with them and say they have a five seat majority. I don't know if they're even gonna get that. Wow. It's gonna be really easy to peel off a few of those Republican Congress people to support, especially if they're in a district where they make military equipment, stuff like that. So that's gonna be bad for them.

Speaker 1 20:31

Okay. You just mentioned peeling off a representative. What do you mean by that? Like, how does that process go and is having someone like Biden in the presidency add to that?

Speaker 2 20:44

Oh man, people are gonna be feeling the, uh, the power of Don Brandon. The reason why Joe Biden is such an amazing president executive to watch in this particular moment is cuz he has been around for a very long time. He is exceptionally good at understanding how Capitol Hill works and how to negotiate and get people to support his agenda. He's been doing this a really long time. And so if you have a matter like a Ukraine aid bill, I don't think it's gonna be hard for him, honestly. I think it'll, you know, it's still gonna take some work, but I don't think it's gonna be hard for him to get to 218 votes in the house. But what does that mean for Republicans? Republicans, they've rejected roundly rejected democracy writ large. They hate compromise. They are hardcore populists who see things in black and white, right and wrong enemies and heroes, good versus evil. So if one of their Republican colleagues votes on even something that has very, very wide consensus, um, we haven't talked about the debt limit yet, and I think we should then that Republican risks themselves being branded just an enemy and this is it. They're gonna lose their seat seat. They just won a very hard fought race in this midterm. It's a lot to lose, but it's gonna happen. I think the chances of it, of this scenario I've just painted for you not happening is almost nil. I think we're definitely gonna see scenarios like this. So that's a big problem for the Republican party because they don't have it in them now to come to together for anything other than to cause harm to their enemies. They painted themselves in a corner on that one.

Speaker 1 22:11

So you're actually suggesting that if the Republicans have a slim, let's say five or six seed majority in the house, that that's going to exacerbate a civil war amongst the conservatives, amongst the Republicans, as opposed to having the Democrats take a slim majority. I mean, obviously having the Democrats take the majority of the house, that would be better for Democrats. No,

Speaker 2 22:38

Sure, sure. I mean, the other half of this that I hadn't explained yet, the other half of that point is that if Republicans lose and Democrats have a house slim majority, they have an enemy to galvanize against. I think what animates American politics, not just political parties and voters, but also our legislatures in our Congress, is something to be against, is way easier to bring everybody together to be against things. So if Republicans have a minority, they can kind of tamp down the fractures, the cracks within their party. And there's a big one which we are gonna talk about, I think is, uh, the Trump wing versus everyone else in the Republican party. And there's, we have only just begun to deal with this delicious scenario. Yes. I mean, the veneer is gonna fall away here.

Speaker 1 23:19

I mean, at the time of us recording this, we're having a huge spat between Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, Ron DeSantis, who just won handedly reelection as the governor of the state of Florida. There's a lot of news media that have started going to bat for Ron DeSantis started supporting Rhon DeSantis and suggesting not subtly, mind you, that Donald Trump is over or going, going to forget about Donald Trump. Please shut up Mr. Trump. We're going to crown a new leader in Ron DeSantis. Look how much support he has generated as the executive of the state of Florida.

Speaker 2 23:56

I'm seeing two emerging themes. One is on on what you're saying. We should look at which media organizations are starting to promote this anti-Trump narrative in the right wing media sphere. Guess what? Many of them, if not all, are in some way own my Rupert Murdock. Roger Ales. Murdock ails mean

Speaker 1 24:13

Trumpy Dumpty on on the

Speaker 2 24:14

New York. Yeah. New post. Uh, there was a big, uh, anti-Trump op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. Uh, we're starting to see a trickle in on Fox News. Uh, it's coming. Um, yeah, Julia Jet Ski has been tweeting about this and writing about it. So yeah, so that's one theme. The other theme is, which is quite bad for, uh, a certain orange hinged man in Florida, in that if this is real and this is happening, uh, one of the most effective ways of getting rid of this person is starting to support efforts to take him down legally. And there are many opportunities, many, many, many, many opportunities in these investigations and in court themselves, but also in the court of public opinion to start knee capping Trump on all of his le whether it's his business fraud case, whether it's the issues he's got in the, the Georgia election grand Jury, or whether it's at the espionage stuff that's coming through, or whether it's the January 6th, uh, things or anything else that we don't know about yet. He and his family are probably in the most dangerous spot they've ever been in right now.

Speaker 1 25:15

So considering everything that you just stated, is it more likely that he's going to declare his candidacy or less likely? And if he does declare his candidacy, how does that affect what you just alluded

Speaker 2 25:28

To? Short answer, uh, yes, he's going to announce as quickly as he can because he thinks it's gonna protect him from his encroaching walls closing in legal troubles. It will not, it is too late. But just to take a step back a little bit, your daughter, your beautiful daughter, Tiffany's getting married. There's a beautiful, uh, decorated, um, celebratory hall where everybody's laughing and dancing and everybody's phone simultaneously lights up to show that they've just lost the Senate. That is what occurred night, yesterday night, yeah. The night before. We've recorded this episode. The mood in Trump world inside his family and, uh, amongst people around him is existential at this point. The stench of desperation. Look for it. Uh, when you hear him announce his apocalyptic presidency, because now all the veneer of any kind of involvement in democracy has fallen away. He is making a bid for a dictator who is going to kill his enemies and torture them first. That that is what's behind whatever he says. He's just a unbridled, unhinged, unleashed maniac at this point, given what's just happened in the midterms and around rejection. It's gonna be really interesting to see how this reaction plays out. Operatives in Georgia to go back are praying that it's not a complete and utter craziness that comes out of Trump's mouth. Um, they're hoping he will not even announce, uh, even though I think their hopes are unfounded. I think he's absolutely going to announce next week. It's his ego. No one else. Nothing else matters to him that's very bad for, uh, Herschel Walker's prospects because what voters are rejecting are this, this like open fascist craziness. They don't like it. Even regular Republicans who put, you know, let's go Brandon sticker on their car are are not ready for a an apocalypse. It's gonna be really interesting. And then midterms over. So who knows, all kinds of, uh, legal consequences are gonna start occurring. The Department of Justice is going to continue it's work. Merrick Arlen's going to continue other things, uh, are gonna continue in in New York and in Georgia in these investigations, grand jury deliberations and so forth. So I would love never to hear this man's voice again. But I'm also gonna be very interested to see just how desperate this framing's gonna be. So we'll see with 400 and I think 435, uh, Congress people in a chamber, you know, lots of stuff happens. People get sick, people die, people get indicted, uh, go to jail. Having, having a one seat or two seat majority is tough for, for any party Credit to Nancy Pelosi for being masterful in keeping her caucus together. I think it's quite remarkable. I think historians are gonna be looking at her tenure for a long time in the future. Especially

Speaker 1 28:15

In the wake of her husband being attacked Yeah. In their home. Oh my

Speaker 2 28:18

Gosh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Thank you. A republican majority that is trying to do these big things. Biden have hearings on c Hunter Biden. They wanna

Speaker 1 28:27

Do, they wanna do Impeach Biden for no reason. They just like, let's, let's just throw the impeachments out there and we'll figure out the reasons later.

Speaker 2 28:35

It's gonna be hard to do any of that with only even a majority of five seats. There's a very far right, uh, very fascist, uh, congressman, his name's Paul Gosar. He ran uncontested. It's in a red district in Arizona. He's been showing, um, pretty obvious signs of Parkinson's disease. Whatever you think about being kind to somebody who's having this health challenge. I actually work on Parkinson's disease in my professional life. It's a terrible affliction. We're working hard on, on addressing it. Scientists are anyway, and I'm helping them. But anyway, if you've only got like a one or two or five seat majority, it matters that you've got a representative who's showing, um, advanced development of this disease, whether he can even function as a voting member of this body. So if you're trying to impeach Joe Biden and you've got a one seat majority and Paul Gosar can suddenly not make it to DC that he's hospitalized or something like that, that's a problem. And that's one example. There are probably many, many others that I don't know about that I'm not thinking of. I mean, just to throw out another example, you know, the January 6th committee has alluded to not even that subtly that, uh, several members of Congress were involved in the January 6th attack. There may be, there should be legal ramifications for some of those. I'm talking about our, our famously jacket list, Jim Jordan. We've got our friend Matt Gates, who we know is still in serious trouble, uh, illegal trouble, although this seems to be going on for a very long time in Florida, or some underage sex, possibly, uh, some fraud related stuff. Uh, I believe his, his partner in crime, uh, whose name eludes me right now, has taken some sort of a deal that's also hanging out there. So any one of these things is gonna throw all the Hunter Biden c impeachment, all that stuff out the window really fast. And, and, and do you think, dear listener, that Republicans are gonna react well to any of this, if that was to, is to occur? Are they going to turn on each other? Are they they're gonna turn on whoever they can. They're already mad at Democrats. It's gonna be messy. So

Speaker 1 30:33

Who are the leaders in, I mean, let's just take the House of Representatives here. Who are the main leaders of each faction who's banging the gavel for each perspective

Speaker 2 30:43

Here? Yeah, I mean, we haven't even gotten to McCarthy yet. Who?<laugh> Ruper Murdock's knives are out for Trump. Uh, you know, knives are out for McConnell, knives are out for McCarthy as well. Um, and McCarthy's, uh, speakership may die in the crib before it can even, uh, grow up and be a real boy. That's a big issue for him. So yeah. Who replaces him? Well, I mean, you've got your, your nasty cast of characters that we've been seeing these kind of like ultra maga people. You know, your gates, your Jordans, your Marjorie Taylor Greens, these first termers. I don't know, I don't think they've got speakership. I think there's probably others that I'm not thinking of. I've have heard of some other names. First of all, yeah, if McCarthy may, it's gonna be like the night of the long nights. You may see it as a metaphor for what's going on. Um, this is actually a story from Nazi Germany. Surprise surprise in 1934. So this is after Hitler has become chancellor of Germany. He's already got a lot of power. He's already outlawed the other political parties, but he's got some issues. He doesn't have complete control and complete power over everyone. Some of the people that helped him get there, particularly the leaders of the s a, the storm troopers, these are folks who helped the Nazis kind of come to power earlier from the late more early twenties into the thirties. They were, uh, led by an individual named Ernst Rome. And then of course, as time went on, Hitler built his own kind of violent and dangerous group called the ss. These are kind of the special services people around him. And so there's some tension cuz fascists, they need a very strict hierarchy because that's what they believe in, first of all. But also because it allows for power to flow in a very rational way towards one person, up through a chain. It's the flip side, or very different from a kind of liberal democracy pluralistic kind of way we live, right? So anyway, in 1934, in a very kind of like breaking bad, Walter White killing off all his, his guys in the, in, in jail and elsewhere, all on one night, Hitler and his and his inner circle orchestrated basically an arrest, torture and murder of all his rivals within the Nazi realm, including, uh, Rome. It's interesting, this comes up a lot, but Rome was gay and everybody knew it. And of course, uh, the Nazis, uh, not particularly friendly to the L G B T community, not known for that. But look the other way, cuz it's our fascist, right? And, and this is, we see this in contradictions with the Republican party today, right? Like Herschel Walker, like Republican party hates black people, but they love to have these kind of token individuals who control those minorities, if you will. Same with that, you know, Jewish Republicans can't stand up. Yeah, that was for you dear listener. If you're a Jewish Republican, you're listening question your life. Uh,<laugh>. Yeah, I said it. So anyway, they were all these guys just in one and Rome, of course was blamed for being divergent degenerate, you know, suddenly it was not okay for him to be gay. And basically all these rivals were Im prison and killed. And it sent a very strong message to the rest of any potential upstarts that this would happen to them in, in the Nazi world. And of course that that really solidified Hitler's absolute power over the party. So what does that mean for Republicans? And is are we gonna have a Republican night of long nights? I don't think anybody's gonna be summarily executed<laugh>, if you will, but McCarthy might wanna brush up on that history. I, I feel like there's gonna be kind of this fascist on fascist violence that's coming. I feel like the Republican civil War has not even yet really begun and we're really gonna start seeing it over the holiday season and into 2023. And I think there's gonna be a very, very vicious battle for control the party between, uh, Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump.

Speaker 1 34:19

I love the finding out period. We have been in the f around period for so long, it seems, and I feel we're finally in the finding out period and I enjoy it so much. I'm,

Speaker 2 34:38

I've been so good.

Speaker 1 34:39

Oh, it's so delicious. Oh, everything around me, I feel it. Well, I mean Willy Wonka's factory, it's just oh, oh, I wanna just take some of that. Oh, and look over there. Oh, it's a chocolate pond and oh, I can eat this flour. It is so glorious. The finding out period. Obviously in the wake of the last six years, my dopamine levels have just been taking a huge hit that now I've finally reached this moment and everything is just bright and beautiful and colorful. I wanna make sure though, that we don't lose sight. Yes. We still have a runoff election that that's coming up. And I wanna be absolutely clear that yes, Trump was not on the ballot this election, but it wasn't about Trump that we were voting against. It was Trumpism, right? Because Trumpism is cool. Trumpism is antit truth. It's using the power of the government to punish conceived enemies of Christian nationalism. That's Trumpism. Yes, team democracy won this election and boy, howdy. But hopefully the lesson is learned here that democracy takes work. Democracy is going against the natural order of things. It's trying to formulate compromise and cooperation. And that is extremely difficult when everybody is selfish man. Like everybody wants to make sure that they have theirs. And it gives me hope that yes, it was still a low turnout for Gen Z, but a much higher turnout than that age demographic has ever, ever contributed. And so hopefully we'll be able to use this as a jumping off period that we understand now that we can't let our guard down. Am I afraid that that's going to happen? Absolutely. You know, Rhon des Sanders is right around the corner saying crazy crap. But it's super important to make sure that we don't see this as the solution, but we see this as a springboard.

Speaker 2 36:37

Yeah. Let's game this out just a little bit. What does 2023 look like? It's gonna be yet another crucial year as we make our way, as we navigate through this paradigm shift. And so the things that do happen have an impact. So let's say Republicans take the house. Well, it's gonna be messy, it's gonna be chaotic. There's probably gonna be attempts to do things like some of the stuff we mentioned, impeachments, hunter, Biden and Covid, whatever. Those things are tenuous at best. And if they flop, all it's gonna do is just continue the response the voters have had in this midterm election. It repulses people. So that's sad for them. I don't think there's any scenario where they don't do that. And the fact that it could fail kind of tragically, I think it's even worse for them with a narrow majority, a smart Republican party might hold off and see there's gonna be a huge leadership battle. Uh, we're talking for the speaker of the house, but also DeSantis Trump. That's gonna be another thing that turns voters off, I think and divides them. A divided, a acrimonious Republican party going into in election season at the end of next year is bad for them when they have to face a very powerful, and let's just pop this media narrative. Popular executive Joe Biden is popular friends. There wouldn't be a dark brand in me if he wasn't. I'm just gonna

Speaker 1 37:49

Gonna, but he has 42% of, of the approval rating. How can he be popular? Jay,

Speaker 2 37:53

You know what? The pollsters and the pundits lost big in this selection. And I'm talking about the Nates Nacon, Nate Silver guys. Nate Silver, you've been getting high in your own supply too long. You're done like the needle. Uh, these guys and CNN and MSNBC and, and New York Times and npr. How is this bad for Democrats? All this stuff, it's done. You guys were so wrong and a lot of us don't trust you anymore.

Speaker 1 38:15

One of my favorite Twitter parody accounts is the New York Times pitch

Speaker 2 38:20

Bot times pitch bot. Of course. Oh, so good. So

Speaker 1 38:24

My

Speaker 2 38:24

God. And sometimes they post stuff where it's actually an article from them. Like they, they, they are a parody of them. New York Times become a parody of itself

Speaker 1 38:33

Inside the democratic mistakes and miscalculations that led the party to a historically strong midterm showing<laugh>. I think that just, it describes mainstream media and their take on everything about the Democratic Party to a T.

Speaker 2 38:49

Yep. If we're gonna talk about the big losers in the midterms, it's also the, uh, the the whole pundit set and, and pollsters. We saw that Republicans tried to flood the zone with crap polls and use it to game the narrative. NPR et al pick that up hook, line and sinker. But it didn't work when it came to people actually going to the polls and expressing their feelings, which is great news because I feel like I've been screaming in the wilderness about this for six years now. It's great to see it finally happening. So all of that tells me that 2023 is actually, uh, gonna be a very painful year potentially for Republicans. And what are the Democrats gonna do? Well provided they don't win the house, you know, Joe Biden's gonna be starting to grow all the seeds. He planted the infrastructure bill. People are gonna be building stuff all over this country. You're gonna see stuff in the inflation, uh, reduction act. All the climate legislation, you're gonna see that getting promoted. Uh, there's gonna be a big fight over student loan forgiveness. None of this is good for Republicans. Um, you're gonna see fights over aid for Ukraine, as Ukraine looks like could be victorious in the spring. Their military experts know a lot more than me who are saying this. All of this is bad for fascism writ large globally. And so 2023 stands to be very interesting year as we may be. This may be the other side of the paradigm shift. The eye of the storm is now past us. Now we're getting the rest of the hurricane as things slowly recede. That is where we are right now. And of course, we can start talking about some of the other very important things in the Democratic agenda, starting with showing up voting rights, making sure we, uh, solidify the right to choose what to do with your own body. These are all huge things. Again, also not good for Republicans either. So I think it's a lose lose situation for those forces that are set to harm us to fulfill their own emotional insecurities and a great sign for those who care about democracy and peace and justice around the world.

Speaker 1 40:43

I feel that I, for the first time in a long time, that I have my country back. What a time it is.

Speaker 3 40:49

To be an American. A Nazi on Wall Street is brought to you by elusive films maker of the a Nazi on Wall Street's film and television series. It was recorded and edited by EJ Russo. Original music was written and performed by Joseph Mulholland. We can't bring these stories to life on screen without your support. So please consider donating to our crowdfunding campaign@elusivefilms.com. That's elusive hyphen films.com. For Jason Wexel Baum, I'm EJ Russo. Thank you, and we will see you next episode.