Endgame......?

The final blow has been struck and the villain falls.. But is the battle truly over? The one thing that comics teaches us that no hero or villain is ever really gone. Politics loves a comeback story and while republicans treat to recoup their losses, they know that any misstep by the Biden administration can be their portal back to the halls of power. But what of Trumpism? Is it truly vanquished? That remains to be seen. But for now the country celebrates and hope is in the air. Peace has returned, but for how long?

Transcript

Unknown Speaker  0:00  
So it is over. It is done. The villain has been vanquished peace returned to the land a calm rest over the nation. Or does it? Hey, everybody, welcome to this week's episode of superhero politics and we are in endgame. We are in, in game. This is the kind of the theme of this episode here is it's over the end of an era or error, e. r. o r, depending on where you sit on the political spectrum. You know, Trump has gone, you know, yesterday, or I should say, as I'm recording this, it is the 22nd. So we're into the second full day of the Biden administration. And congratulations to PRESIDENT JOE Safar, Biden, and vice president calmly Harris says they assume leadership of the country and preside over what is, you know, generously called a divided nation. And, you know, extreme challenges that probably haven't been seen by any president in the history of this country. But as I was watching the festivities of the inauguration yesterday, you know, there was obviously a lot of joy from people on the left and centrist democrats and some, you know, moderately conservative people who, you know, felt like, you know, what Trump had done, as president is, you know, specifically in the last, you know, few weeks of his presidency was, you know, just just too much to bear and they, you know, they were ready to turn the page. And so, as, you know, watch the festivities yesterday, and I saw the joy throughout the country, and, you know, post on Facebook, celebrating the administrator, new administration and celebrating vice president Harris and President Biden. Just, you know, you know, all the,

Unknown Speaker  2:29  
the the

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posts of women in chucks and pearls and, and, you know, people with the new hope, posters for Vice President Biden, and I mean, I'm sorry, for President Biden. This might take a little getting used to, but, um, I didn't have the same feeling like I mean, I did. But it was, it was anticlimactic in a way. And the reason that this episode is called endgame is because, you know, I want to reference a specific scene from Avengers endgame. That kind of captures how I felt yesterday, in this moment. And so, you know, you guys bear with me, this is kind of a long clip. But I want you guys to listen to the whole thing. Because, you know, at the end of it, I think you will understand how I felt yesterday. What you see here is, Santos is dragging himself up the stairs, he is clearly like, beat up, and like completely bruised, and he's no on his farm, you know, on his world on Titan. And he's he's just wiped out trillions of people, half the universe, and he's just trying to get some rest. And then at this moment, Captain Marvel wants to build the ceiling and like, attacks him. And then at this moment, you see, Bruce Banner and the Hulk Buster Come on the floor and like, he they restrain him, and then warmachine comes in, you know, they have, they have been found. And at this moment, Thor comes in and cuts off the hand with the Infinity Gauntlet on it. And they begin to question him about what he did with the stones. solicit Where

Unknown Speaker  5:14  
the universe requires

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stones.

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So he's telling them that he destroyed the stones should be grateful. And they went there to get the stones to bring everybody back.

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Reduced use them two days ago,

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he used the stones to destroy the stones.

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But the work is done.

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And this alone, I want you guys to listen to

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I am

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inevitable, inevitable.

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Let's tear this place apart.

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In this is where Thor takes his head, Thor cuts off then off his head at the moment to exact revenge for Loki and for billions and trillions of people that then have snapped away. But if you if you look at this scene, if you look at how they all failed, then it will explain to you

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the

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the crux of this episode is because they know that everything that they know said done, cannot be reversed. That for all their valiant effort to stop him from all of their effort to take him down. And even at the moment where they ended him. It didn't give them any satisfaction, because of what he had done was already set in stone. I mean, half of all existence had been wiped out. And they didn't even have the means to bring them back because he had destroyed the stones. And so when I, when I was watching the inauguration yesterday, I, I had this, you know this feeling that, you know, when they cut off the head of Santos in this in this film, they realized that they didn't just cut the head off the off the snake, that when they did cut the head off the snake that it was a Hydra. And that when one head popped off, more and more problems, pop out more heads pop out. And, you know, this is a reference to Hydra. And we'll get to that one in another live episode. But this was my sense, when, you know, people were celebrating, getting rid of Trump.

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But

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not realizing all of the problems that remained from his presidency. And I don't want to say they were unaware and I know, it was a moment of euphoria. But, you know, I'm a realist, you know, I'm a, I'm a pragmatist. You know, so, you know, when I look at, when I look at things, I look at things as, you know, what are the scenarios that could happen? What are the what are the possibility, so, like, Doctor Strange looks at 14 billion, you know, scenarios, and they only win in one, you know, I'm in that camp. So yesterday, I, you know, I celebrated, I was happy. You know, I don't believe that Donald Trump was good for America. I don't believe he was a good president. I don't believe he was engaged in the job. You know, you know, personal animosity towards him. You know, it's, it's hard not to have it. But, you know, I know, from, you know, being an elected official that you don't have to earn that. Like, that's not something that you have to earn. Like, they're literally just people who, because you're the candidate, that one and the candidate that they prefer, did not that they're just not gonna like you. It doesn't matter what you do. Doesn't matter how you perform, that they're just not going to like you. But Donald Trump earned the antipathy of the American people and the world. And so, you know, as he left, you know, to go off to Florida to, you know, seek refuge on his own Titan. You know, the world celebrated in the world rejoiced, but it didn't change the world that he lived There's still 400,000 Americans that died on his watch. There are millions of people who are unemployed and underemployed in in struggling with, you know, food and housing and everything. And there are, you know, hundreds of 1000s of people who can't get the vaccine because now it's come out that he didn't even have a plan for distribution. So you cut the head off the snake.

Unknown Speaker  10:37  
But

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three or four more heads pop up. And so as we get into the Biden administration, we have to realize that there Acolytes of Trump everywhere, you know, the same republicans that are that were so eager, when we had a full employment economy, to cut taxes for the richest people in this country, are now saying, Oh, well, we can't spend any money to bring COVID relief to the people of this country. And so, you know, my advice to America, and to the American people is, you have to temper your expectations. Because if you remember the rest of the movie, it skipped ahead five years. Like from the moment Thor took his head, for five years, the Avengers, the earth, all of existence languished, under what Thanos had wrought. And it will be very similar here in America. Even though President Biden yesterday, God bless him, and I'm his arm has probably fallen off right now. He's signed, so many executive orders, reversing things, but those things are not immediate. Those things are not permanent. And so with razor thin majorities in the house in the Senate, they can't afford any missteps. They don't have any latitude, to be able to work things out. They have to have everything. You know, the plan is has to be flawless almost. And Republicans have already signaled they're not in a conciliatory mood. They're not, you know, reflexive over what they've done. They don't say, Well, you know, we made a mistake. Now, we have to, you know, follow President Biden in fixing this problem that we created no Course not. Have you ever met a republican? So the challenge that the Biden administration faces won't be fixed this year, or next year, or the year after that, or even the year after that, just like it took the Avengers five years, to come up with any sort of plan to restore reality is going to take the Biden administration that long to unpack all the damage that the Trump administration did. Now, we're talking about levels and levels and levels of government. And we're talking about, you know, agencies that haven't been staffed. We're talking about agencies that have been staffed with loyalists. You know, it's ironic when you listen to when the when Trump came in, he talked about the deep state, he talked about, you know, Obama loyalists who were there to thwart his agenda. And it was just projection. Because now what do you have is you have them working furiously, even the night before the inauguration to install someone at DHS who was a loyalist to Trump. And so, not only has President Biden had to sign, executive orders, reversing all manner of things. He's also had to fire people that were loyalists to Trump and have pledged to resist the new President's agenda. Like it's almost having to shift between Avengers endgame and Captain America Winter Soldier, because what you have is you've lopped off the head of Thanos. And now you got to go deal with Hydra. That's him. added into the American government. And I told you we get back to hydro. Later. That was a little segue earlier. But now you got to realize like, he's got to uncover and unpack loyalists to Trump. And it's not just in government agencies. You saw the video where when the insurrection happened on January 6, you had police officers, Capitol Police officers taking selfies with insurrectionists, you had them opening the gates, you had them leading,

Unknown Speaker  15:36  
leading the interaction is through the halls of Congress while they were hunting. For congressmen, for the Speaker of the House, like the tentacles of Donald Trump, and the effects of Donald Trump will not be purged, because Donald Trump is going and let's be honest, he's really not going. He's out there on the periphery, because what's going to happen is republicans are already pushing back, the Senate impeachment trial, they're already pushing it back. They're trying to push it back. And they're saying, Well, we've got to give them time to mountain defense. And what they're doing is they're fortifying their reasoning, to not convict him. And see when they don't convict him, which I don't even understand why they witness idiotic, because they don't convict him, and then have the separate vote to bar him from running for federal office again, that means he can run in 2024. And so he can spend the entire time that he's out of office these four years, criticizing and dogging

Unknown Speaker  16:58  
Joe Biden the same way that he did Barack Obama, four years before he ran for president. And I know you'll say but he's been he's been d platformed.

Unknown Speaker  17:09  
That's already the word for 2021. He's been deep platformed. Mike, like, he's not on Twitter. He's not on Facebook. Fox News is turned against him. You know, the the proud boys are turning against them. parler has turned against everybody's turned against him for now. Everybody's turned against him for now. Two years from now, if Joe Biden is able to pass his agenda, this ambitious, very progressive agenda. Do you actually think that Republicans will not mount the socialists claim and run against this, no matter what the economy looks like, no matter what the country looks like, Republicans are going to run against socialism. It's all they have left. It's all they have left. It's like they have one of the Infinity Stones. And they're gonna they're gonna use it to the fullest, fullest extent of his power.

Unknown Speaker  18:19  
So here we have Donald Trump, who is, you know, on Titan right now in Florida, and we're gonna call, you know, Mar

Unknown Speaker  18:25  
a Lago Titan. He's there, he's rehabilitating. He's licking his wounds. But you know, that he is not taking this lightly. And depending on what happens with some of his legal problems, if he's able to weather those storms, he will absolutely reemerge sometime in the next three years, and reassert his his dominance over the Republican Party. So what does that mean for the rest of the party? That means that they will have to deal with Donald Trump now, you know, strategically,

Unknown Speaker  19:05  
the Democrat in me will say, well, that's good, right? Because if they're fighting amongst themselves, if they're having a civil war, then that just, you know, makes it easier for Democrats to win, not necessarily.

Unknown Speaker  19:22  
Because what we found is that Republicans, conservatives, hate Democrats.

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Far more then they have differences amongst themselves. The galvanizing force for conservatives is their hatred, hatred of Democrats and progressivism.

Unknown Speaker  19:50  
It's not conservative values. It's not policy. It's hatred for us. If you think back to anything that that that Trump supporters said that The reason that they voted for him is because it drove liberals nuts. Madison cawthorne is from my home state of North Carolina, and he's a freshman Rep. And his first tweet was cry more libs. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, very professional there. But that's the galvanizing force. And then there would be nothing more. It would be nothing more that would drive conservatives would be in to vindicate them, then to have Donald Trump reelected as President, after four years of being out of power. So they have reason to want failure by the by an administration. You know, it hurts us all.

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But

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right now, they're grieving. They're grieving the loss of their leader. And so that always would make me wonder, like,

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where,

Unknown Speaker  21:19  
you know, during that time, you know, after the snap? Like, where did the Blackwater go? Like, where did Where did evany Mall and all those guys go? After the snap? Like?

Unknown Speaker  21:33  
Did you take any of them? And I'm trying to remember, but what you're seeing is that you're seeing the difference between how Democrats have approached Donald Trump and how Republicans have proposed approach Donald Trump. And so, you know, here we are at the end of this administration. And now we're struggling to deal with the Fallout, because if you remember, in game, like people just kind of wandered around for four years, like, you know, loved ones were there, and now they're gone. You see neighborhoods, dilapidated, you know, people just, you know, waking up, trying to figure out how to navigate the world. And it was the same for the Avengers. You know, Thor famously went off and got fat. And, you know, you know, the rest of the Avengers is kind of languished. So, this is where we are right now. Like, we're in this point, like, yes, it's this euphoria that Donald Trump has gone. But what now? Like how do we solve the problem of the remnants of this administration, not just from a policy standpoint, because though, that's actually the one thing that we can fix, like, we can fix the policy, like, we can look at, you know, you know, monetary policy and interest rates, like the one of the things that, you know, President Biden signed, was an extension of the moratorium, forbearance on student loans, and putting the interest rate at zero, like, those are policy specific things that can be that can be fixed. But what about the psyche of our country? Like, what about the, the the soul of our country? You know, in his inaugural address, President Biden said that this election was a battle for the soul of America. Now, you will say, Okay, well, he won. So I'm guessing that you know, that the soul has been restored. No. We're deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply divided nation. And the anger and the frustration is palpable, like you can, like you can cut it. And so we have to worry about this bubbling over again. Like, we had an insurrection. We had people literally, storm capital, breaking break in murder people. They built gallows on the lawn of the Capitol. They were going to hang the vice president. They were going to murder the Speaker of the House. They were going to, you know, destroy the ballots certifying the election. And then these people just thought they were going to go home. I get on a plane, drive back home and just go home. Like nothing had happened. Why? Because Donald Trump had made them believe that the proper state of things was him being in power. Now, one of the stones on the Infinity Gauntlet, and I have one here. I'll tell you guys about that story a little later in another episode, but one of the stones is the reality stone. And what it does, is allows the the wear of the gauntlet to shape reality around them and bend it to their will. Donald Trump bent political reality to His will. Now we have to straighten it out. Because he's gone. Yes. What reality, the reality he created is still there. And there are millions and millions of people out there who are To this day, two days into the Biden administration, two days after the inauguration, two days after he took the oath of office and was sworn in, that are still saying that he's gonna, he's gonna come up with a plan, and that this is all part of the grand scheme of Donald Trump to reassert himself and take power in jail, all of the usurpers. And they're holding on to this, like they are holding on to this knowledge.

Unknown Speaker  26:39  
Now we've never seen before in this country, someone possessed this much sway over this larger group of American people. Now, you will look at Donald Trump and say, he is not charismatic. He's not exceptionally bright. He doesn't have those, you know, qualities that, you know, people people gravitate to, in a positive fashion. How did he do it? Well, he did. Was he unlocked, he unlocked what was already brewing within us. So this is why I felt like it was important that you guys listen closely to the line within Oh said that he was inevitable. Donald Trump was inevitable. He was always going to happen. And to begin, far, far decades before he came to power, he was always going to happen. Why? Because this country was is changing. And that change is inevitable. And so when you have held power for so long, and you see the winds of change coming in, you are desperate to stop it. You will do in embrace any methods that you can to stave off the inevitable. And so as you see the rise of women, and you see the rise of minorities, and you see us fully embracing the, the core value of us being a nation of immigrants and a melting pot, and you're in the majority, that of that has always held power. That fear can cause you to make choices, that is outside of your character. Or maybe it is your character. Because the the most revealing thing that we've seen in the era of Donald Trump is we got to really know our friends and family. We got to really know them. We got to see underneath. And we got to see the darkest corners of ourselves. So this is why it's not easy just to go back. Just to believe that the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and the you know, deposing of Donald Trump is gonna fix us because we were fundamentally flawed in damaged before Donald Trump, he just finished breaking us now I'm gonna play advocates devil here don't don't get mad. I'm gonna play advocates devil here devil's advocate I should say

Unknown Speaker  29:55  
there's a silver lining to Donald Trump. And that silver lining is that we can't put it back in the bottle. We can't stuff it in the closet. We can't hide it anymore. We can't say, with our hands over our chest clutching our pearls. This is not who we are. We're bigger than this. This is not the America that I know. Because yes, it is. And we owe Donald Trump. I'm not gonna say, oh, but we can credit Donald Trump for making us face the reality of what America is. Because now, without knowing and acknowledging exactly, the complete and utter frailty of our democracy of our national character, we could never completely fix it. But now that we can, Joe Biden, in his inaugural inaugural address, said that we need to confront and face white supremacy and defeat it.

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Now,

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I don't know of any president who's ever said that, in an address any elected official? And he said it from the steps of the Capitol, to the entire world watching. So we are, we're definitely on the precipice of of a new, a new national attitude.

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The question is, can we maintain it? Can we defend against Donald Trump's rise again, or a new Donald Trump? When we come out of this stronger? Will we be able

Unknown Speaker  32:15  
to hold fast, this very tenuous grasp that we have? on our democracy? Can we repair the damage to our relationships? We can fix our economy, we can we can, we can fix our relationships with our allies abroad.

Unknown Speaker  32:37  
We can we can actually bring equity, you know, to our country, we can do all those things through policy. But do we have the strength to repair in face down those more existential things, like goodness, and virtue, and brotherhood that I'm not so sure about. So as we approach the dawn of a new day, as we're into it, to a new day, you know, hopefully I will eventually start to feel, you know, the same hope and joy that the rest of the world feels right now. But,

Unknown Speaker  33:36  
you know, looking, looking at the task ahead, you know, it's daunting, so I just hope that we're up to it as a country, and I hope that we're ever vigilant against this happening again. And the reason I say this, and this is not just talking to the republican party you know, this is also talking to the democratic party because you know, with the Republican Party really right now and falling apart there is you know, an opportunity for the progressive movement to seize power that they'd never had before. And you know, what they say about power and in power absolute. And, you know, I need to warn us against creating our own thing Oh, slash Trump, on the on the left. And I know you're saying like, Damn, Mike, like, how you both sides this, and I'm not both sides in this. This is a pragmatic warning. The one thing that Daniels had, and I'm gonna say this, because all every villain believes that they're the hero. And then hosts truly, truly believed that he was doing the right thing for the universe. He made it He made some very well reasoned arguments for his agenda. And the thing that he said, was balance. As all things should be, this country needs to have a balance between our progressive ideals. And our conservative pragmatism. If we're going to achieve a more perfect union, we have to have that. And if we don't have a functioning, conservative alternative in this country, we run the risk of driving ourselves into the very thing in the very position that Thanos talked about, and that he was combating. The last thing that we want to do as progressives is vindicate the villain. Like, we don't want to vindicate the villain. So we have to be cognizant of our own power. And we can't let it consume us either. And, you know, you know, as I go into, you know, the second year of my term, you know, I look at what we're attempting to do, you know, in the city, and, you know, we have support for that, but, you know, you never want to lose sight of those

Unknown Speaker  36:49  
who

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may not support what you're doing. And so, you know, there's always the risk that you can overreach, and there's always a risk, that, you know, the power that you hold, ultimately, is what takes you down, you know, Thanos use the stones to destroy the stones. And as he said, it almost killed him. So, they just serve to remind him and tempt him to continue to do things that was outside of the plan. So Best of luck to President piden and vice president Harris, best of luck to the country, best of luck to the world, you know, we are going to work to rebuild, you know, as the Avengers traverse time, and the stones from from a different time to come back to restore reality, to what we knew. That's the work that we have to do now. We have to take extraordinary measures to return our reality to what we knew to some sort of normalcy, but it's gonna take us all it's gonna take a united team, powerful individuals, powerful people, powerful communities, to get our country back to where where it needs to be. So I'm hopeful ever increasingly hopeful that we can do that. And, you know, I believe we can overcome any challenge if we're united. Until next time, this is the bureau politics and I am your host, Michael Holmes.