0:03

I magnet chakrabarti and this is

0:05

the jackpot. Were on. Point News

0:07

analyst Jack Bd hopeless connect history,

0:10

literature, and politics in the way

0:12

that brings he unique clarity to

0:14

the world we live in now.

0:16

Hello there. Jack. Hello

0:18

back to. Where it? Episode Twenty six:

0:20

Jack: What's your headline? What?

0:23

leopard? We were indeed.

0:25

What Leopard are you talking

0:27

about Jack? Well here is

0:29

a a Power Bill by

0:31

Franz Kafka. Little.

0:33

Explain that leopards break into

0:35

the temple. And drink up

0:38

the offering in the chalices. This

0:40

happens again and again. Finally,

0:43

One. Couldn't predict their action

0:45

in advance and it

0:47

becomes part of the

0:49

ceremony or course that's

0:51

talking about the inexorable

0:53

tendency to normalize the

0:55

abnormal, the tolerate, the

0:57

intolerable, and and Jonathan

0:59

V. Last of the

1:01

Ball work. Ties it

1:03

to former President Trump

1:05

by saying you know

1:07

he's conditioned us to

1:10

expect nuts. Nuts is

1:12

normal with Trump. And

1:14

the question is, how did that. Come.

1:17

To be. And here

1:19

is a tiny an egg

1:21

data a little. In

1:23

the myriad of possible answers

1:25

to that, here's one little

1:27

jerk. a point: Chris Hayes.

1:29

He's an extremely challenged a

1:32

journalist. He has a show

1:34

on M S De and

1:36

see a Trump Trump calls

1:38

it. An end he is.

1:40

Extremely bright indeed. He may

1:42

be the only television host

1:45

in history to use the

1:47

word or phrase under theorized

1:50

he said or something. it's

1:52

Under theorized. Wow. That smart.

1:54

Anyway, Chris Hayes. through

1:57

a lot of the trump years not

1:59

all of them, but some of them

2:02

he would not say Trump's lies were

2:04

lies. And the reason is he

2:06

said, we don't know anybody's motive. We

2:09

can't get inside somebody and it's only

2:12

fair to say, you

2:14

know, their, their deceptions,

2:16

their prevarications, their, their inaccuracies,

2:19

but we can't go

2:21

to lie. Well, the

2:23

leopard got into the temple, put a, put

2:25

a paw into the temple on that one

2:28

because they were lies. And,

2:30

and Chris Hayes, as so many

2:32

journalists, simply was reluctant

2:34

to go to lie even when

2:37

there was a fire hose of lies

2:39

every time Trump opened his mouth. That's

2:42

an example of how the leopard put

2:44

at least one paw into

2:46

the, into the temple. And of

2:48

course, another reason that, that, uh,

2:50

nuts is norm is there's so

2:52

much of it. Every

2:55

day, Joe Klein writes, brings

2:57

a quote, new vomitation of

2:59

crazy from Trump. But

3:03

it's our Mark Twain, James

3:05

Carville, who this week relieved

3:07

the gloom with this lightning

3:10

flash of what said

3:12

Carville choosing which Trump bit

3:15

of crazy to single out. You

3:17

feel like

3:19

a mosquito at a nudist college. I

3:21

should, I should not laugh at that

3:23

because we are talking

3:26

about the fate of America here. But yeah, only James Carville, the

3:28

raging Cajun can

3:32

come up with that one. Well, you know, writing in the

3:34

New Yorker, Susan Glasser says you

3:38

only see, if you only see clips from Trump's speeches,

3:40

you, you, you, his lunacy can be dismissed

3:47

as well as background noise and

3:49

so on. He said, she says to get the whole effect, you

3:52

have to watch a whole speech.

3:56

And so this week I, he

3:58

looked at a speech in Georgia. I looked

4:00

at the same speech it's from last week

4:03

and watched Nearly the two

4:05

hours of it and the question is is

4:07

she right this Trump seemed to me crazier

4:10

and or more dangerous than

4:12

before I Watched

4:15

the whole speech. Well Stay

4:17

tuned for the sequel. Okay, because

4:20

that's that's exactly what we're gonna do Jackie I

4:22

mean you've identified major portions of the speech for

4:24

us to go through To

4:26

get to your conclusion if in watching it in

4:28

the entirety of a Trump

4:30

rally you come to any other Summary

4:34

then, you know, the leopard

4:36

is very firmly inside the

4:39

temple. Where would you begin your

4:41

analysis? Well

4:43

with the beginning this is how a

4:45

Trump rally begins I

5:11

Pledge allegiance to the

5:13

flag of the United States of America

5:15

Now Jack

5:24

to be honest The anthem

5:27

and the pledge are things that I've

5:29

said thousands of times in my life

5:31

So what's the problem with starting

5:33

a presidential rally or a campaign rally? I

5:35

should say with that The

5:37

problem is who the singers are. These are

5:40

the people convicted some of them for

5:44

trying to overthrow The

5:46

government on January 6th. These are these

5:48

are the insurrectionists. These are the insurrection.

5:50

It's not the warm wire Yes,

5:53

not the Mormon's tabernacle choir.

5:55

It's the insurrectionist Washington DC

5:58

jail choir there. And

6:01

Trump has, of course, made them,

6:04

you know, stars of the show. They are

6:06

martyrs. And

6:08

so that's how he begins. And

6:10

he flows in. Before

6:12

he comes on, you hear his

6:15

voice reciting the pledge

6:17

while the banner is entombed

6:19

by the context.

6:22

Quite a moment. I would like to

6:24

just repeat this again so that I'm

6:26

clear on what you said. There's

6:28

a choir of

6:30

currently incarcerated insurrectionists who

6:33

attacked the U.S. Capitol

6:35

on January 6,

6:38

2021, in order to stop the peaceful

6:40

transition of power in the United

6:42

States. And Donald Trump

6:44

is beginning his presidential campaign

6:47

rallies with these

6:49

people singing the national anthem. He

6:53

is. And he goes a

6:55

step—he went a stepfather this

6:57

week in a

6:59

speech in Vandalia, Ohio. And

7:02

I would commend to anybody

7:04

an article by our friend

7:06

Tim Schneider, the Yale professor,

7:09

the historian of

7:11

fascism in Nazi Germany. His

7:14

article is entitled The Bloodbath

7:16

Candidate. And

7:18

the subtitle is, in context, Trump is

7:21

worse. Of course, this alludes to Trump's

7:23

comment about, well, there'll be a bloodbath

7:25

if I lose the election. And immediately,

7:27

the people who wanted to, you

7:30

know, keep the—don't look at that leopard,

7:32

kept saying, oh, like, for example, you

7:35

know, the persuasion, that website. They

7:37

said, oh, no, he's talking about

7:39

automobiles. He's not talking about—he's not

7:41

talking about a bloodbath if he

7:43

loses the election. Au

7:45

contraire, says Tim

7:47

Schneider, who points out

7:50

something really new here in Vandalia.

7:54

Not only does the Star

7:56

Spangled Banner, you know, the

7:58

convict singing that, but Trump

8:00

says, please rise for

8:02

the horribly and unfairly

8:04

treated January 6th hostages.

8:06

So people stand up

8:09

for the hostages. And

8:14

Trump goes on to say that he's

8:16

going to pardon them on the

8:19

first day of office and he's

8:22

signaling, as Schneider says,

8:24

that violent criminals who

8:27

tried to get him into office are

8:29

going to be pardoned. And if you're

8:31

violent to try to get me

8:33

into office, come in November, I'll pardon you

8:35

too. That's

8:38

the bloodbath promise.

8:41

And he goes on in this

8:43

same speech to make

8:46

martyrs of the

8:49

January 6th coup

8:51

prisoners. And Schneider

8:54

finishes, he says, we should see Trump

8:56

for what he is, an aspiring fascist

8:59

who likes, wants, and needs

9:01

violence. OK, Jack.

9:03

So that is, that's a lot,

9:05

but that's just the beginning of

9:08

Trump's rally last

9:11

week. What then,

9:14

after that, specifically caught your attention

9:16

as he got the Trumpian snowball

9:18

rolling? Yeah, well,

9:20

in between the beginning and the

9:22

end comes a bulging midriff of

9:25

words arranged according to this principle.

9:27

I'll say any darn thing that

9:29

pops into my mind. You

9:34

could almost call it my terminally

9:36

distracted mind. And here he is.

9:41

Yeah, I got it. I got it. You

9:45

know, the fake news was, oh, he goes from subject

9:47

to no, that's you have to be very smart to

9:49

do that. You got

9:51

to be very smart. It's called, you know what

9:53

it is called spot checking. You're

9:55

thinking about something when you're talking about something else

9:57

pop up, pop up, pop up, pop up. Then

10:00

you get back to the original and they go, holy, you

10:02

see what he just said to them. Cold

10:06

intelligence. I mean, Jack, Trump

10:08

is showing some self-awareness here that

10:10

people have the very criticism of

10:13

him that you're highlighting now. Yes,

10:16

it was very shrewd. It was about an

10:19

hour in and I think he must

10:21

have sensed that he was

10:23

having one digression after another. He must

10:25

have sensed that people needed to

10:28

understand what was going on. So

10:30

he labels it superior intelligence, creativity.

10:34

And here's an example of just what

10:36

he's talking about, this interruption, his

10:40

divigation on Biden at the

10:42

beach and, wait

10:44

for it, Cary Grant.

10:47

Somebody said he looks great in a bathing suit, right?

10:51

And you know, when

10:53

he was in the sand and he was having a

10:55

hard time lifting his feet through the sand, because you

10:57

know sand is heavy. They

11:00

figured three solid ounces per foot, but

11:03

sand is a little heavy and

11:05

he's sitting in a bathing suit. Look at 81,

11:07

do you remember Cary Grant? How good was Cary

11:09

Grant, right? I don't think Cary Grant, he was

11:11

good. I don't know what happened to movie stars

11:13

today. We used to have

11:15

Cary Grant and Clark Gable and all these people

11:17

today we have. I won't say names because I

11:20

don't need enemies. I don't

11:22

need enemies. I got enough enemies. But

11:25

Cary Grant was like Michael Jackson once told

11:27

me, the most handsome man Trump in the world,

11:30

who? Cary Grant. Well, we

11:32

don't have that anymore, but Cary Grant at 81 or

11:34

82 going on 100, this guy, he's

11:39

81 going on 100. Cary

11:41

Grant wouldn't look too good in a bathing

11:43

suit either. And he was pretty good looking,

11:45

right? Wow.

11:49

What can you say? In

11:51

fact, you know, as to Cary Grant in

11:53

a famous New Yorker profile long about 1980,

11:56

Pauline Kael goes to

11:58

visit him. He was around 80. then. And

12:00

I said he's swimming in his pool and

12:02

he comes out of the pool, Cary Grant

12:04

does and greets her, and her first line

12:07

is something like, Cary Grant is

12:09

remarkably Hale. And she goes on

12:12

to say just how great he

12:14

looks and age 80. So there's

12:16

a little footnote of trivia to

12:18

this incredible digression

12:22

on Biden at the beach

12:24

and Cary Grant. You

12:26

know what really seizes me

12:28

about that digression, Jack, is

12:30

that it has absolutely nothing to do

12:32

with what Trump claims he

12:34

can bring back to the White

12:37

House that would make people's lives

12:39

better. I mean, it's just pure

12:42

schoolyard taunting, but

12:45

his masterful

12:48

way of doing that taunting is

12:50

extremely effective with his base. Oh,

12:54

it is. It is. It's mocking and

12:56

he's having a good time while he

12:58

was doing it and while his mind

13:00

was, you know, furnishing the

13:02

image of Cary Grant, he went to

13:05

that and by way of Michael Jackson,

13:07

you can't make something like that up.

13:10

Oh, you can't. And by the way, just because, I mean,

13:12

we have to try to do little fact checking as

13:15

we go along when he says that they

13:17

say sand is three ounces

13:19

a foot. I will have

13:21

everyone know that that cannot possibly be

13:23

true because a foot is a unidimensional

13:26

measurement. In order

13:29

to have weight, you have to be measuring in

13:31

three dimensions. So there's like a

13:33

foot of sand that's

13:36

50 feet deep would be way more than three

13:38

ounces. Okay, I'm grasping at straws here, but

13:41

that is a fact. Now, Jack, next

13:44

part of this Georgia speech that you

13:46

wanted us to listen in on. Yeah,

13:49

well, throughout that Trump conjures

13:51

the nightmare of America under

13:54

invasion by the world's off

13:56

scourings, the wretched

13:58

of the earth. Surging across

14:00

the border that he says

14:02

Joe Biden has intentionally left

14:05

wide open. And in

14:07

this bite of this from the

14:09

speech, he goes right at the

14:11

economic anxiety of Americans who have

14:14

most of fear from quote, cheap

14:16

foreign labor. Virtually 100%

14:18

of all jobs created under Biden have

14:20

gone to foreign born workers. How

14:22

do you feel about that? Good.

14:26

Okay, well, that's what Donald Trump

14:29

claimed, obviously, in that speech last

14:31

week. But here are the facts.

14:33

And it's very, very important to

14:36

put to rest this falsehood,

14:39

this lie that Trump is saying.

14:41

Because the truth is that since

14:43

Joe Biden's inauguration, there

14:46

has been an increase of 6.2

14:48

million jobs, an increase of

14:51

6.2 million jobs for native born Americans.

14:54

So Jack, I mean, you wanted us to

14:56

talk about this particular statement of Trump's for

14:59

a reason. And why is that? Because

15:02

it's so preposterous and because

15:05

Trump should not, he lives in a glass

15:07

house when it comes to creating jobs. And

15:10

let's put it in context, partly because of

15:12

the pandemic, maybe

15:14

mostly because of it. Trump

15:17

is the only president since Herbert

15:19

Hoover who ended his tenure with

15:22

fewer jobs in the country than

15:24

when he began. It's

15:26

not a record to boast of. And of course,

15:29

Trump wouldn't bring up the exonerating

15:32

context for anybody else. But we will

15:34

mention that there was a pandemic. Okay,

15:37

so then, but this, you know, when speaking of

15:39

jobs and the economy, Trump

15:41

often says he was good for everybody,

15:44

but especially he claims

15:47

the Trump presidency was good for black

15:50

and Hispanic Americans. Did he make mention of

15:52

that in Georgia? He did.

15:54

And he went right to something

15:56

we've covered on this program. understandable

16:01

resentment. We

16:03

focused on Chicago, it's true elsewhere,

16:06

of African-American

16:09

and Hispanic Americans

16:13

to the devotion of

16:15

resources to the surge

16:17

of asylum seekers. Mayor

16:20

Adams of New York has

16:22

said, you know, this immigration will destroy

16:24

New York City, and he's had to

16:26

cut funding

16:28

for the schools and other things. Again,

16:31

Trump goes right to this idea

16:33

of who's going to suffer most

16:35

from this invasion

16:38

by immigrants. In

16:40

February alone, nearly 1 million jobs

16:43

held by native-born Americans disappeared by

16:45

one... think of that. You

16:48

lost a million jobs. Black

16:50

people, that's

16:52

who lost the jobs. Hispanic people, that's

16:55

who lost the jobs. That's why we just had

16:57

a poll come out. Now it doesn't sound great,

16:59

but it is great relative, you know, a guy

17:01

as stiff like Mitt Romney, I think he had

17:03

4% of the black vote. I

17:06

had, as of this

17:09

poll today, Marjorie, 28%!

17:11

If that's the case, this

17:13

election is over! Once

17:16

again to provide some context here, when

17:18

Trump speaks of February alone, that is

17:20

actually a month where jobs for native-born

17:22

Americans did go down in that one

17:24

month, but it was 500,000, not a

17:27

million. So

17:29

Jack, here's the thing. You wanted us

17:32

to go through these different parts of

17:34

the totality of a Trump speech in

17:36

order to, you know, to get back to your

17:38

headline, to see just

17:40

how far and how permanently the

17:43

leopard, as Kafka put it, has,

17:45

you know, become at home in

17:47

the temple that nuts is normal.

17:53

You know, I have to say that maybe

17:56

these parts that we picked are the wrong ones?

17:58

I don't know, because it... It

18:00

seems normal for Trump is what I want

18:03

to say, Jack, and maybe we've just been

18:05

in the Trump normal world for so long

18:07

that it doesn't seem out of the ordinary

18:09

the things he said, Jack.

18:12

Susan Glasser says, you know, watch the whole speech

18:15

and you'll see the danger and craziness of

18:17

this guy. I

18:19

disagree. This

18:22

speech did not restore the leopard's

18:25

warning growl to me. For

18:27

one thing, it was so,

18:30

two hours of it, so boring. I'd

18:33

rather watch paint dry. And

18:36

second, he was enjoying

18:39

himself. This wasn't the

18:41

grim Trump. And

18:43

for a man facing, you know,

18:46

91 felony indictments

18:49

or counts, and possibly

18:51

the loss of his fortune

18:53

to, you know, indeed,

18:56

he may have to, he may

18:58

lose Trump Tower on Monday

19:00

if he can't pay back the ill-gotten gain of $500

19:02

million to the state of New York, he may

19:06

lose Trump Tower. Yet you'd never know

19:09

it, looking at him. He's

19:11

these blies, he's having fun, he's

19:13

talking Cary Grant. And

19:15

then the third thing that makes

19:17

him less menacing is his naked

19:22

insecurity, his lack of

19:25

confidence. It just comes out

19:27

again and again. For example,

19:29

Viktor Orban, he has a

19:31

section on that, visits him,

19:33

the Hungarian quasi-dictator. And

19:35

he goes right to what's

19:38

important about Viktor Orban. He said, I

19:40

should be the country would be

19:42

much better off if Trump were president than

19:44

he says, points that out. He

19:46

went on an excursus

19:49

about The Apprentice, the program that used

19:51

to be, he hosted on and

19:53

he taught and he revealed in

19:56

this how potentially jealous he

19:58

was that Arnold And Schwarzenegger

20:00

would succeed as the new

20:02

host, replacing Trump, who left

20:04

to run for president.

20:07

And he even talked about a dialogue

20:09

he had with an important

20:11

person at NBC saying, look,

20:14

I don't want Schwarzenegger to

20:16

do well on this. And he said, and I was

20:18

really glad when he didn't. Again,

20:21

the lack of just

20:23

basic self-confidence,

20:25

the need to boost

20:28

himself. And even in these anecdotes,

20:30

he's showing how vulnerable he is.

20:33

He was worried that Arnold would put him

20:35

in the shade. So I

20:37

don't agree with Susan Glasser. He

20:40

doesn't seem to me, he seems, in

20:43

this speech at least, more pathetic than

20:46

menacing and frankly more ludicrous than

20:49

either. Mm, okay. Well,

20:51

in that case, I actually want

20:53

to use your headline

20:56

today about the, or what

20:58

leopard, as the

21:00

question for Jack Potters,

21:02

okay? Because do you

21:04

think that Donald

21:07

Trump, many years now

21:09

in the public political state,

21:11

has led to a normalization

21:13

of the sort of fire hose of

21:16

lies and delusions that

21:18

he spits out during

21:21

one of his rallies? I mean, has

21:23

that kind of, has that language and

21:25

that alternative reality become normalized for us?

21:29

Or do you think, as Jack says, that the more you

21:31

listen actually to Trump, the more you hear

21:34

his vulnerabilities? So those are the questions

21:37

that I want to know from Jack Potters or

21:39

the answers I want to know this week,

21:41

especially because your answers will

21:43

help us better understand what impact Trump continues

21:45

to have and his language continues to have

21:47

on all of us as Americans.

21:49

So you know what to do? Go to the

21:51

On Point Vox Pop app if you've already got it.

21:54

If you don't, just look for On Point

21:56

Vox Pop wherever you get your apps

21:58

and let us know think about

22:01

this week's jackpot. So

22:04

Jack, when we come back, we're going

22:06

to hear from some folks about last week's

22:08

jackpot. And we got some pretty strong rebuttals

22:10

to your theory of presidents and the Xanadu

22:13

effect. Are you ready for that, Jack? Okay,

22:16

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now to the Up First podcast from NPR.

23:16

Well, we're back and Jack, last

23:18

week you talked about the Xanadu

23:20

effect and how presidents can

23:22

get very tightly insulated away

23:24

from reality. And we got

23:26

a lot of response from Jack Potters.

23:29

Almost all of them were in agreement

23:31

with you about the cosseted nature of

23:33

the Oval Office. But we

23:36

got this awesome rebuttal and I'm going to

23:38

play the whole thing today. This awesome rebuttal

23:40

from Joe in Los Angeles. I'm

23:42

MacDane Jack. This is Joe in Los Angeles. I

23:45

was thrilled to hear my comments on the

23:47

air last week and honored to be included

23:49

in the company of my fellow Hoosier Howard

23:51

from Elkhart and all the other intelligent and

23:53

thoughtful callers featured on your show. I

23:57

am particularly grateful to Magna for

23:59

her persistent American- optimism. I

24:01

will hold her to that come November. As

24:04

for this week's question of the

24:06

Xanadu effect on American presidents, of

24:08

course presidents are shielded from reality.

24:11

The rewards for success in any

24:13

competitive endeavor are so over-weighted relative

24:15

to their actual contribution to the

24:17

human condition that the most

24:20

successful are not necessarily the most

24:22

talented or the most gifted, but

24:24

rather the most obsessed with reaching

24:26

the highest levels of their particular

24:28

field. If you

24:30

are obsessed enough to become the President of

24:32

the United States, you did

24:34

not get that far by having a shred

24:36

of doubt or even allowing doubt to be

24:38

in the same room with you. And

24:41

is you have surrounded yourself with people

24:43

who know exactly what you want to

24:46

hear from your earliest days. Our

24:49

presidents do not give in to the

24:51

Xanadu effect while in office. They

24:54

sit down behind a resolute in

24:56

January already suffering

24:58

from chronic late-stage long

25:01

Xanadu. Thanks both

25:03

and have a great week. I

25:05

love Jack Potter's. First of

25:08

all, Joe, absolutely I will

25:10

go to my grave with undying American optimism,

25:12

so thank you for noting that. But he

25:14

was making an excellent point, Jack, about you

25:16

know, there's that that adage about, you

25:19

know, anyone who the

25:21

person who most who really should be president is

25:23

a person who would never want to run for

25:26

the office, right? So I was wondering what you

25:28

thought about that. Well

25:30

you know, I love long Xanadu. Late-stage

25:34

long Xanadu. And

25:37

late-stage Xanadu. And

25:39

certainly in the case of Joe

25:41

Biden, think of the Senate all

25:43

those years, my learned colleague from

25:46

Delaware, all that deference and how

25:48

and the effect it has. Yeah,

25:50

I mean that is a

25:54

tough thing to shake off. There

25:56

are cases though, I'm thinking of

25:58

Mike Pence. The night

26:01

that Trump was elected

26:03

in 2016, this has

26:05

been reported, Mrs.

26:08

Pence, I've forgotten her first

26:10

name, I'm sorry, looked

26:12

at him and reportedly,

26:15

anyway, angry and said, well,

26:19

you've got what you wanted and walked

26:21

away. So Mrs. Pence was not

26:24

getting into the Xanadu effect there.

26:29

And with Lyndon

26:31

Johnson, Lady Bird, he

26:34

was debating whether to run for president

26:36

again in 1968 and

26:41

naturally the clack around him was

26:43

saying, well, yeah, the job's dependent on

26:45

it, go ahead, Mr. President. And

26:48

Lady Bird said, Lyndon, I

26:51

remember President Wilson, the

26:54

last year and more of his tenure, he had

26:56

a stroke and he was just sort of

26:58

going through the motions of running the country. She

27:01

didn't have that his wife and physician

27:03

pretty much ran the country, which if

27:05

it were a

27:07

substitution for Lyndon

27:10

Johnson, I'd take Lady Bird any

27:12

day. Anyway, he listened to her.

27:14

She didn't get inside Xanadu. And

27:17

so people can

27:19

pierce the bubble, but

27:22

it's the daring aide

27:24

who tried to play

27:26

Cassandra with

27:30

bad news. As I say, the

27:33

sort of model for the courtier

27:36

who tells bad news is the guy

27:38

who told Peter that it's great that his

27:40

army had lost the battle and Peter said,

27:42

strangle that guy. By

27:46

the way, it's Karen Pence, just so we

27:48

do her justice. I

27:51

just have to make the

27:53

painfully obvious observation, Jack, that

27:55

the two examples you brought up were

27:57

of the women married to the

27:59

men. in the office. So,

28:02

sense does prevail, but oftentimes

28:05

not for the person who's occupying

28:07

the office. Okay, so anyway, we

28:09

have some more. There was this interesting

28:12

observation from Miles Allison in Austin, Texas.

28:14

So, my parents have been cobbled against

28:17

reality. They've been indoctrinated by Fox News.

28:20

That is, until they had to incur the

28:22

cost of nursing home care

28:24

for my grandfather, and now they

28:26

have a more progressive view of

28:28

socialized medicine. So, I

28:30

guess there's progress that can be made. Xanadu

28:33

can be broken down by the horrors

28:35

of actually some of the realities

28:37

of living in the United States. I actually

28:40

feel for Miles's parents there.

28:43

But there's one more regarding last

28:46

week, Jack, that I want to play for you. Because

28:48

we had this Jack Potter send us

28:51

a message of very strong disagreement

28:54

with you, Jack. Here's Chris Sondheimer

28:56

from Glendale, California, who says he's

28:58

your fan, but... I'm tired

29:00

of the constant belittling of Biden from

29:03

the left. And no one's

29:05

perfect. But as far as

29:07

candidates go, he's the best pro-labor president we've

29:09

had since Kennedy. He's feeding our

29:11

children. And he ended that money

29:13

grab called Afghan war. But we're

29:15

in a fight for our country. And if the left believes it,

29:18

we need to start acting like it, because it's

29:20

going to be the independence that we need to win over,

29:22

because they're the ones who are going to win this election.

29:24

So, Jack, are you going to stop

29:26

trashing Joe Biden? Oh,

29:29

gosh. Well, I guess I

29:31

don't see it as my job to

29:33

do either boost or trash him. I

29:35

was citing Biden

29:37

because I do think that... I

29:40

was thinking particularly of the New Yorker

29:42

profile of him recently by

29:44

Evan Osnos. And Osnos speaks of

29:47

the almost preternatural calm in the

29:49

White House. I think he calls

29:51

the sedative feeling. The people are

29:53

alarmed that they're not getting, you

29:55

know, we're going to do fine.

29:57

In other words, I don't know.

30:00

that the Biden people feel quite as

30:02

urgent about this election as Chris does,

30:04

or at least the president has started

30:06

to act that way, vigorous State of

30:08

the Union. He's out on the campaign

30:10

trail, but do they really get

30:12

what's at stake? Are

30:17

they acting that way? What

30:19

could Biden do? Well, look

30:21

at the Democratic bench, the

30:23

governor of Pennsylvania, looking

30:25

at all the qualifications, the jobs in the

30:28

state. He said, wait a minute, we don't

30:30

need college diplomas for all this stuff, Governor

30:32

Shapiro said. Anybody can apply

30:34

for these jobs. What's going to stop

30:37

Biden from saying that about the federal civil

30:39

service? Maybe he can't

30:41

do it legislatively, but say it.

30:43

Say something like that, something

30:46

dramatic, something up to the moment. They

30:48

haven't done it yet, and I think

30:50

part of the reason is Xanadu. Okay.

30:54

Well, you know, there's one more set of Jack

30:56

Potter comments that I want to touch on today.

30:58

It actually has to do with something

31:01

from a couple

31:03

of episodes ago because Jack

31:05

Pod listeners keep wanting to go back to this.

31:08

You remember this? So here it is. This

31:10

is this comment that we heard

31:12

from Chris in California at the

31:14

beginning of this month. When

31:17

are we going to start calling these people stupid?

31:20

And I don't mean to be vulgar, but I

31:22

mean, come on, this is ridiculous.

31:24

We're becoming the laughingstock of the

31:26

world. Okay, so that was

31:29

remember that was when Chris was using

31:31

a believable word to describe Donald Trump's

31:35

voters who were in his base.

31:37

And I said, don't do that. That

31:40

is exactly the kind of disrespect

31:44

that is the cause of a deep

31:46

seated grievance in many Trump voters. And

31:48

so people are still really riled up about

31:50

this, Jack. They're actually riled

31:53

up with my vigorous disagreement

31:55

with Chris. So for example, here's

31:57

Tom from I elicited.

32:00

And truth is he is correct and

32:03

I work with a lot of these people and The

32:08

crazy part is when you Try

32:11

to tell them they're stupid They

32:14

get offended and that's kind of what

32:16

why you were worried about You

32:19

know airing that you know when I found the

32:21

dumb people But they're

32:24

the same people that call Democrats

32:26

snowflakes But then once

32:28

you call them out on their BS They

32:32

melt and they can't handle it

32:35

and they don't even recognize the

32:37

hypocrisy Okay. So here's the

32:39

thing Jackson's I'm the host I Get

32:41

to choose how we end every episode

32:44

of the jackpot and I

32:46

am this is for Joe actually

32:48

I'm gonna choose to end on

32:50

my indefatigable American optimism this

32:52

time. It's actually voiced by none other than Howard

32:55

the man with the view from

32:57

Elkhart, Indiana who actually just

32:59

disagrees with the Insult

33:01

calling and believes that change is

33:03

possible. There are even Positions

33:06

that I believe that given the facts

33:08

I would change my belief Or

33:11

that the dumb person given facts won't

33:13

change their belief There

33:15

are some out there like that, but I do believe

33:17

that the vast majority of us given

33:20

true facts Will believe true facts.

33:22

It's just a matter of educating

33:24

the people for that. Okay, Jack.

33:26

What do you think? Howard

33:29

again, I Wise

33:31

man on the Wabash out there Yeah,

33:34

I agree with that people, you know

33:36

are courage of old by reality. We

33:38

just heard about a Parents

33:41

who were facing, you know

33:43

putting someone in a nursing home and coming

33:45

right up against the limits

33:47

of the American welfare state It ends

33:49

with at the nursing home door

33:53

And that that that's a piece

33:56

of reality that can penetrate but

33:58

to penetrate it requires the

34:00

people, a very hard thing, admit

34:03

they were wrong. It's so

34:05

hard to admit you're wrong. And

34:07

they were wrong to, yeah, they

34:09

were wrong voting for Trump. They

34:13

have, at some level, they have to know it,

34:15

everybody does. But it's

34:17

a tough one. I mean, you

34:20

know, you've got this, and then

34:22

there's this socialized effect. Your friends

34:24

are in the

34:26

cult, your relatives, and you know,

34:28

you can't, and as

34:31

we heard on an earlier program, in fact,

34:33

I think our first program, Trump

34:35

voters have had to sacrifice a

34:38

lot to support him in

34:40

terms of ostracism, in terms of

34:42

scorn, in terms of family members

34:44

breaking content. They have suffered for

34:46

Trump. That's an

34:48

investment. That's a sunk moral

34:51

cost in sustaining Donald Trump.

34:53

So I think it's so hard to get people

34:56

to to to change.

34:58

And there's a Kierkegaard quote

35:00

that crystallizes this. He says, how

35:02

can I be myself in the

35:05

presence of the truth? You know,

35:08

identity comes before truth. Wow.

35:11

Okay, once again, everyone, Jack

35:13

just remembered that Kierkegaard quote

35:16

spontaneously, with no

35:18

notes, right out of

35:20

it, just came out of his mind. I'm telling

35:23

you, Jack, one of these days, I'm gonna insist

35:25

the Jackpot just be like, how do you have

35:27

such a fantastic memory? But anyway,

35:29

with that, Jack, thank

35:31

you, as always. Thank

35:34

you, Magna. I'm Magna Chakrabarty, and this is

35:36

the Jackpot.