Episode 31: "America This Week," with Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn

Yeah, I was really looking forward to the moment where they banged Trump's head on the roof of a squad car on the way in. I mean, that was just going to be a funny video.

He's one of the first person in America to ever be blamed for not being arrested.

He supposedly started this whole bureau by announcing it was going to happen. And now it sounds like the DA is backing off and saying, you know, we didn't, you know, we didn't mean to do this in the fashion that he was predicting. And there's a lot of blame going around. They're obviously embarrassed, they've, you know, it's Friday today, and they've put off their grand jury proceedings till next week.

And you know, it's the dog that didn't bark. And I don't know how much. You can blame a potential target in an indictment process for talking about their imminent indictment. I don't know that they did, though. What's that?

And Trump didn't do that. It was, you know, it was New York.

In in advance of the supposed.

The support, the supposed arrest, and in the in response to the photos of the NYPD putting barricades out, yeah, we saw all sorts of people reacting.

Here's this guy, the Dean Obadiah, you ever seen him? He's got multiple prophecies around his name, he's sort of like Aaron Rupert, but like, but not as sophisticated. And he's. He's got these pictures of the NYPD, NYPD putting up these barricades, and he says, This is USA in 2023, 2023..

Thanks to Trump and the GOP, it's long past time that Maggabee designated a terrorist group. Then you had Maxine Waters describing.

Trump as a as a terrorist. Josh Marshall saying We probably need one of those green, yellow, red alert codes for the current state of threat. From the Trump aligned domestic terrorists. Lawrence O'Donnell Donald Trump proved once again today that he is a terrorist.

You know, it just goes on and on. There's this Keith Olbermann, Of course. Overnight, Trump made additional terrorist threats against Alvin Alvin Bragg.

And what were they?

Look, you know, I don't want to make too big of a deal about this. Oh, and then there's, there's another.

You know, elements of this. There's lots of people who suddenly coming up with the term stochastic terrorism with Trump. Asha Rangappa, who is one of my least favorite people in media, because she is not a media person, she is an FBI agent who is just sort of in media now.

And she's got a tweet this morning or yesterday, my latest, you know? On Colombia's battle to preserve the rule of law against terrorist violence. And why Trump's threats should not be taken lightly. You know, it's there, it's just this sort of. Everybody got the memo that Trump is going to be described as a terrorist now, now, why does that matter?

It matters because 20 years ago, after 9-11, when America started to go crazy, we started to play games with words. You know, suddenly, people we were fighting against militarily were no longer soldiers, they were enemy combatants, and that had a very specific meaning. The meaning of enemy combatant was somebody we were fighting with guns who was not subject to Geneva Convention protections.

Right, and terrorists, if you know, if you were a designated terrorist organization, if you were designated as one of the groups that contributed to 9-11,.

A whole host of rights disappeared, you could be assassinated, it was determined that you could be arrested and taken away without any due process. That that began with the Jose Padilla case. Then there was the Al-Awlaki case, where an American citizen could be and his 16-year-old son could be assassinated without due process because they were terrorists. So what we call people now has an extraordinary meaning, doesn't it?

I mean, I feel like it's incumbent upon.

PETE Sort of the public messengers to be more judicious in how they describe people, or maybe not. I don't know. I mean, I'd be curious to hear what you think about this.

But but, you know, you make a good point, as you've shown in the Twitter files. There is this massive information scanning and threat identification apparatus in this country. And for it to go on, it needs a threat equal to its, you know, elaborate and growing dimensions. And they've seen, they seem to have found it in Donald Trump. He has been the basis, or the rationale, behind the expansion of this censorship and identification state.

And that's sort of what I've seen all along with this, you know? Impending prosecution. It's like January 6th, I suppose, but in a way that's more imminent, it's the it's the foundation for the use of a lot of these tools. And when I start seeing these words, which are pretty scary, words, terrorists and so on used of a domestic political leader. It's clear to me that they are trying to assemble the legal basis for some kind of unprecedented action. And or the the use of this big machine that they've constructed, that they've done. It all on the backs of a rather dicey looking prosecution, which hasn't even resulted in an indictment yet, and may not.

It's pretty wild. You'd think that if they wanted to launch finally, the, you know, official domestic war on terror, they would find a more, I don't know, threatening and dangerous moment than Trump being perp walked and calling someone an animal. New York insult, humor or whatever is now, you know, the basis for some sort of large action. But yeah, they've got these people out there who obviously do receive some sort of instruction in the language that they're to use about these. And this is, as you say, tripwire language.

And it could be as simple as we've decided to call this person X. This person is a threat, this person is a is a potential foreign malign influence actor. You know what I mean? They come up with these terms and you get dumped into a bucket as a result of that.

And I remember being completely flipped out by the enemy combatant thing. But but it's now just sort of ingrained in our culture, so what are we going to say?

They start the cascade of name calling, which then becomes the basis for actual action. And I mean, we've seen this circular construction in so many areas over the last few years.

And you know, from what you just read me and from what I've read myself, it's it is these barking dogs in the media who are starting the process. You know, they react, they put up the pictures, then they react to the pictures of the barricades, they start using this language. Then these kind of, as you say, non-journalist types who exist in this limbo between government and media. Like this FBI agent referring to come out and sort of is that person.

Yeah, I mean, we haven't had such figures until now, so we haven't had a name for them really. They represent some, you know, chimera, some hybrid of of media and governmental power. And it seems that their job is to provide, you know, an enhanced level of alarm that seems semi-official rather than, you know, just hysterical.

They faltered. It's not, in other words, it's not a wonderful debut for this new method.

And we, you know, it's now in suspense, we have no idea what's going to happen.

There is a legal process happening behind the scenes. You wouldn't think it, you'd think that Keith Olbermann himself could command the arrest of the U.S, you know, former president. He seems to believe that, too. I mean, he's calling for it as though he has actual troops at his command.

Yeah, that was in, I think, Mother Night.

Or I'm trying to remember which book it was, but.

But yeah, no, there should be a really crappy, ridiculous uniform with too many.

You know, different, you know, medals and badges on it, which they'd be all too happy to wear.

Is it sort of like the members of the Soviet?

Journalism, the Union of Journalists, right? Like, you know, everybody got like a little tin thing at the end of the year that they could put on their their jacket. And they got an extra two shits to eat at the at the, you know, at the Union club, or whatever it was. I mean, I don't know. I feel like that's where the media is headed.

Who breaks the law should get away with it. But the relentless.

And you know that it can't be construed as a campaign that he would have had to pay this anyway, whether he was running for president or not. So we have the full complement of chorus members here. Avenatti You know, Trump's ex-lawyer Cohen, who, you know, is silent because he's at the center of this thing, you know? I guess it's his testimony that maybe it would rest on.

It's like a damn time warp, too, because I'm not sure when the alleged stormy Daniels affair actually took place somewhere at the deep past.

And you've got everyone involved, having made about three contradictory statements about the thing over the years, and who cares?

Aspirations as a potential Republican candidate? He, you know, he came out with a statement that, while in its entirety, was kind of thoughtful, offended the hell out of Trump supporters.

And you know, he's now. He's now thought to have ruined his chances by a lot of people. Because he won't ever win over the populist wing of his own party after this.

It's like, you're, you're giving him the ability to make all kinds of hay out of this. Because it makes it look like he's being persecuted. And look, he might be, you know what I'm saying like, it's a symbol of of a system that doesn't know how to restrain itself.

But in any case, he made no secret of his desire to bring him down, which is, I think many anticipate, one of the problems with a potential prosecution. Because he made such, you know, prejudicial statements about the guy in advance and wasn't coy about his desire to see him, you know, see him. Face justice that can look like a malicious prosecution or be portrayed as one, I suppose, by the defense lawyers. But Trump's, Trump's genius has always been, and, you know, my. My personal knowledge of Donald Trump, and my professional knowledge of him as a member of the press. Goes back to the 80s, the Spy magazine, when we ran an entire magazine based on humor about Donald Trump. To some extent.

I mean, he was our bete Noir, our go to guy. We had him on the cover over and over. He was the short fingered Bulgarian.

At this point, to have Donald Trump in handcuffs will be the meme explosion that, you know, is equal to Nagasaki. It will be the first total memeing opportunity. It'll break the internet. Trump in handcuffs People will be wearing lapel buttons, They will, you know, be doing tick tock dances to imitate Trump in handcuffs.

They will, they'll flood the zone, so I don't think they want that. Maybe they didn't anticipate it, but if they don't, he got away again. He is the David Blaine Houdini of misdemeanor payoffs, porn stars and and Russian collusion and every other damn thing that he's been.

But, you know, I have Republican friends who think that the whole thing is a media conspiracy to make Donald Trump the nominee. That that they were actually, in some 4D chess way, trying to create sympathy for him. Because they so desperately want him to run, because they are so confident he will lose. I've heard that from three people who, you know, are fairly thoughtful.

So I don't know.

Bragg, He. He announced his own impending indictment created a furor and, you know, moved straight into the crosshairs. In a way that seems to have kind of paralyzed the other side, which wasn't yet ready to make its move. And now it's acting all, you know, spoiled and upset that, you know, it was pushed on a schedule that it didn't want to have to observe.

Well, first of all, Donald Trump doing Sean Connery is a funny idea.

Does he have a Sean Connery accent? I mean, almost everybody does.

But yeah, no, I don't know, I don't know, man, this whole.

There was a tweet I saw yesterday by Wesley Yang saying The current thing is dead. And it was the first time that I thought it's kind of true. There was no current thing. This week, Trump didn't get arrested. No one's telling us what to think about in Ukraine.

You know, there's no counter-narrative. That's deeply in my head right now.

And yeah, the Trump arrest will go into the Great Nevermind is kind of astonishing, but I think Wes is right. Unless you can pay off your current things and or bring in a new one that actually has some, you know, has some legs.