Connecting the Dots

Nick Hauselman is out for the next two weeks, so Jared Yates Sexton takes the opportunity to draw together the plethora of breaking news stories and connect the dots. This is a table-setting episode dissecting how geopolitical chaos and U.S. decline is tied together in an agenda to destroy liberal democracy and create a techno-feudal, authoritarian order. If you haven't already, head over to http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast to support the show and gain access to the patreon-exclusive Weekender episodes on Friday.

This is a preview of The Weekender. Sign up for our Patreon and get access to the full episode each Friday as well as special Live Shows and access to our community discord: http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman open on Kevin Warsh raising interest rates when Trump appointed him to cut them, and why a rate hike can't do a thing about: record diesel prices, the war in Iran, or an economy already flirting with stagflation (not necessarily in that order). The Supreme Court keeps the Postal Service's mail ballot rule on hold through the midterms, with Thomas and Alito still on board (because of course) and a whistleblower alleging the USPS built the system anyway. Jared predicts November is headed for a mess no matter what the courts say. Speaking of a mess, Mitch McConnell returned to the Senate looking a lot like Grandpa at the dinner table in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, which Jared and Nick see as proof of a machine that grinds the humanity out of everyone who serves it. A new report that JD Vance tried to advise the Clinton campaign in 2016 shows exactly who he is: a striver (on a couch) with no principles who could just as easily have ended up a Democrat, and Hillary's own 9/11 essay in The Atlantic proves the striver class is bipartisan (good times). In What We're Watching, Nick catches The Odyssey a second time to get ready for his trip, and Jared is slowly working through For Whom the Bell Tolls and finally watched season one of The Rehearsal. Nick is off to Greece for two weeks, so Jared will hold down the fort until he's back in October.

Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman open on Dario Amodei's call to slow down AI development and why we should be worried when both Sam Altman and Elon Musk agree with him. Donald Trump responded that the whole thing is a sick conspiracy because, of course he did. They work through who actually benefits when an industry starts begging to be regulated, why a bubble this size might need to become a national security emergency to survive, and what it means that the quickest way to get what you want is to frighten people out of thinking. Then the Middle East, where the Houthis took Mayun island and closed the Red Sea route that was supposed to be the answer to the Strait of Hormuz, while drones launched out of Iraq and tore up the East-West pipeline . From there, the BRICS nations met in New Delhi and called for a multipolar world while Donald Trump blames Volodymyr Zelensky for diesel prices: good times. They make the case that the alternative order arriving now isn't better, only newer, and that the United States has spent the past year assembling it on the other side's behalf. Support the show by signing up to our Patreon to hear the full Weekender episode each Friday as well as special Live Shows and access to our community discord: http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast

This is a preview of The Weekender. Sign up for our Patreon and get access to the full episode each Friday as well as special Live Shows and access to our community discord: http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman open on the 25th anniversary of September 11th and the question running through the whole episode: who knew what, and what were they willing to ignore? Nick wonders whether the conspiracy theories are the attack's real legacy, while Jared argues the distrust behind them was earned by generations of leaders and that the true winner of the war on terror was the class that profited from it, a point Nick drives home with Palantir's founding date. Mayor Zohran Mamdani's release of 170,000 pages shows the Giuliani administration knew the air around Ground Zero wasn't safe while telling people it was, and successive mayors kept the records locked away, which Jared chalks up to honor among thieves. A new book reports that Benjamin Netanyahu was warned by the UAE and Egypt ten days before October 7th and never told his own security chiefs, which makes his "they didn't wake me up" defense look even worse. Then it's off to the half-empty GOP midterm convention in Dallas, where Trump promised every adult $5,000 if Republicans keep Congress, a pledge Nick holds up against 18 U.S.C. 600, and John Fetterman sent a video endorsing Dave McCormick that Jared is convinced took several takes. On what we're watching, Nick shrugs his way through Ted Lasso's unnecessary new season and gives Lanterns a lukewarm endorsement, while Jared recommends the horror film It Ends, grinds through For Whom the Bell Tolls, and cannot let go of a commercial VHS tape getting taped over on The Paper.

Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman open on Germany, where Alternative für Deutschland just took over 43 percent in Saxony-Anhalt and the famous firewall is starting to look less like a wall and more like a formality. The guys get into why decades of neoliberal austerity left the far right as the only people making anybody an offer, and why the conservatives currently swearing they'd never work with the AfD are exactly the people history says eventually will. Then it's Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, two private citizens holding no position in the United States government, flying to Moscow to tell Vladimir Putin that his retirement stories are going to be the best ones in the room. Back stateside, the Fifth Circuit informed the residents of Jackson, Mississippi that there's no constitutional right to clean drinking water and no right to truthful information from officials during a public health crisis, which does raise the question of what anybody is paying taxes for. And to close it out, Third Way took fifty million dollars and came back with a twenty point New Economic Bargain featuring federally backed used car loans, because if you can't afford a house you're going to need somewhere to sleep. Support the show by signing up to our Patreon to hear the full Weekender episode each Friday as well as special Live Shows and access to our community discord: http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast

This is a preview of The Weekender. Sign up for our Patreon and get access to the full episode, frequent live shows, and the Muckrake Discord community at http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast. Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman open on Army Secretary Dan Driscoll resigning directly to Trump's face after telling him that Pete Hegseth is doing 'generational damage' to the armed forces. Driscoll is the 25th senior military departure in a war that six generals have formally dissented from while the Defense Secretary shops for a presidential campaign. From there they unpack ICE's $5 million voter database, built on a 'crisis' that produced 14 convictions out of tens of thousands of leads, and how red states are handing over unredacted voter rolls while blue states get sued for refusing. The longest segment digs into what really happened when Jared Golden and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez rescued Mike Johnson's entire floor agenda from a Freedom Caucus revolt, clearing the path for Democrats to vote on a bill that condemned the DSA by name and stripped federal funding from colleges boycotting Israel. Jared argues this wasn't incompetence from Jeffries but choreography, the same Kirsten Manchinism that always picks which Democrats will cross the line when Republicans need the votes. They close with what they're watching, including Steve Carell's Rooster and the anxiety inducing of Silo.

Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman open on the Iran war flaring back up after a month of quiet, with new strikes exchanged, a missile wiping out a base in Jordan, and Trump posting AI-generated videos of Kharg Island being obliterated while the real military runs out of interceptors. Meanwhile, leaked Pentagon documents reveal six four-star generals filed formal dissent against extending the campaign, and Defense Secretary Hegseth's response to the worst military crisis in a generation is to start visiting Iowa and South Carolina for a 2028 presidential run. They trace the Venezuela oil grab for what it is: the U.S. overthrew a government, installed a puppet, and that puppet just signed over 100 years of oil rights to an unnamed private company while 80% of Venezuelan households live in poverty. From there they connect the collapsing food supply, where blueberries are killing people and Trump is deregulating meat processing live on Glenn Beck's radio show, to the Project 2025 blueprint that laid all of this out in black and white. They close on Jim Clyburn going on Meet the Press to announce that impeachment is not a Democratic priority, which tells you everything about why Hakeem Jeffries was meeting with Jared Kushner last week: the captured resistance has no plans and no platform two months before the midterms. Support the show by signing up to our Patreon to hear the full Weekender episode each Friday as well as special Live Shows and access to our community discord: http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast

Nick Hauselman is out, so Jared Yates Sexton mans the fort on this preview of The Weekender. To start, Jared reluctantly discusses the Democratic Party's choreographed focused on streamer Hasan Piker in order to examine how a party machine fights against insurgents. Then, China has hacked into...well, everything, economic threats against Iran reveal just how weak the U.S. is right now, and, in some good news, Meta settles for $18 billion dollars for preying on kids. This is a preview of the regular show. To listen to the whole episode and support The Muckrake Podcast, head over to http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast and become a patron.

Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman unpack the real reason Hakeem Jeffries sat down with Jared Kushner, and it has nothing to do with subpoenas or tough talk. The meeting is a preview of the bipartisan coalition that always forms before an economic crisis: corporate Democrats and Republicans getting on the same page to protect the donor class when the bailouts start. From there they trace the collapsing Canada trade deal, where Trump invoked a 1930s tariff law no president has ever used and Carney walked away from the table, into the bond market panic that sent Treasury Secretary Bessent scrambling with a buyback intervention that lasted exactly one day before the market shrugged it off. Bessent's answer to $40 trillion in debt and interest payments that now exceed military spending? 'We'll grow our way out,' the same promise Republicans have made after every tax cut since Reagan, and it's never once been true. They also dig into ICE's new $20 million purchase of electric shock gloves already being used on students in Omaha public schools, a device designed to leave no marks and no record, built by a man who believes Trump was anointed by God. Support the show by signing up to our Patreon to hear the full Weekender episode each Friday as well as special Live Shows and access to our community discord: http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast

The full Weekender is normally only available to our Patreon subscribers, but we're unlocking this one for everyone. If you like what you hear, sign up at http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast for the full Friday episode every week, special live shows, and access to our community discord. Jared Yates Sexton is out this week, so co-host Nick Hauselman sits down with Fred Wellman, the Democratic nominee in Missouri's second congressional district and a four-time combat veteran who spent 22 years as an Army officer, including service under General David Petraeus and General Martin Dempsey. Wellman makes the case that the Iran war is the biggest strategic blunder in American military history, bar none, and lays out exactly why the USS Lincoln is suffering: the administration launched a war with no allies and then got the bases that supply the fleet blown up, leaving 5,000 sailors stranded on a ship with no port to dock at while Pete Hegseth flies to Iowa to prep a presidential campaign. He talks about running against Ann Wagner, who has quadrupled her net worth to $26 million while in Congress, and why the voters he meets at doors in suburban Saint Louis care less about culture war issues than about whether their kids can afford to live in their own hometown. He lays out what he'd do from day one in Congress on stock trading, gun safety, abortion rights, and military oversight. And he's clear he's not going to Washington to work for Hakeem Jeffries or the DNC but to fight for 750,000 Missourians.