 American issues take one. I'm J. Fidel, this is Think Tech, and the pretty lady is Cynthia Sinclair, and she joins me today for a discussion of the, the sycophants are still out there if you hadn't noticed, not only in the Senate, but also in the House, among other places. So we're gonna talk about the sycophants today, but let me make a preliminary remark about it. You know, if you, when you were growing up, thought that members of the Senate or the House by definitions, smart and organized and educated and interested in public policy, that time has come and gone. If you walk the halls of the Congress today, you would be struck by how few of them are like that. And there are so many of them that are not smart, that are not interested in public policy, that don't know anything about democracy. And they are the potential recruits for sycophants, or Donald J. Trump. And he has a very smart guy in his own way. He has created a tier of these people, call it a middle management leadership tier, and he gets them to do his bidding, and they in turn impress people, theoretically, with how smart they are and how powerful they are. And in fact, they're not. But people listen to them because they think that these guys are smart. The bottom line is that Trump has created this layer of sycophants who repeat everything he says, who do his bidding in every way possible, and they are part of his base, I guess, a part of his organization. And we wanna call them out today. We wanna identify them for what they are. We wanna connect the dots on how they respond to him and how the base responds to them. And what they are saying and doing and how they are undermining our democracy, our government, our lives in the country. So welcome to the show, Cynthia. It's always nice to talk to you. Thank you, Jay. It's nice to be here today. This is an important subject we're talking about. Can I kick it off with a couple of Lindsey Graham quotes? Yeah, but first I would like you to define sycophants. Oh, thanks a lot. Cause I didn't look enough. Let's see, someone who, I'll say one thing, goes against their own interests to suck up to somebody else, to put someone in power over the country, to put mostly, to suck up to someone, even if it's at your own expense. That would be my definition, but I didn't look it up. Okay, all right. Well, that's good to start with, just to give people a handle on it. And when we're talking about sycophants these days, we're talking about, you know, ostensible members of the government, officials, elected officials, what have you, by voters who probably didn't understand how actually, you know, incompetent they were. So let's talk about, in that vein, let's talk about Lindsey Graham, because he's been in the news lately doing Trump's bidding, clearly. Really scary what he said the other day, right? So he's gone from 2016, when he said, Trump is crazy and a kook. Who is not fit to be president? Then a year later, he says, what concerns me about the press is this endless attempt to label the guy as some kind of kook, not fit to be president. This is everything you need to know about Lindsey Graham. Actually, no. What he has recently said about the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, and that if there is any kind of prosecution or indictment of that twice impeached, former, disgraced, kook-blotting president, then there's going to be blood in the streets, that there's going to be riots everywhere. As if some kind of dog whistle is going out to all of the maggots out there in maggot land. And so that's pretty powerful to go from crazy kook, not fit to be president, to this, where he actually puts FBI at risk, where he puts this man over the rule of law, over the country. And that is... Well, let me ask you a question. I've seen probably too much footage on this on MSNBC. I told you I don't watch CNN anymore because they don't believe the big lie is the big lie. I'm excited. There's a really extraordinary change for them. But MSNBC, you've had a number of commentators, they're guests on the shows, sort of bouncing back and forth between whether Lindsey Graham was reporting that there would be violence industry, mayhem, in other words, you've heard, or whether he was calling for it. And a fair number of them have said, no, no, no, he's just reporting it. He's not calling for it. My view of that is that if he's working for Trump and he is working for Trump, when he sucks up the Trump, that's his life on the planet that he has identified by that in 360 degrees. But my view is he's calling for it. Trump is calling for it. And he's doing Trump's bidding. And that means he's calling for violence. So which side of the equation are you on? Is he reporting the possibility or is he calling for it? Oh no, I think he's calling for it. Because of his sycophant status, right? That's what makes me be able to judge what he has said. Now, I do agree with him. I do believe that there might be, very well might be, you know, violence in the streets after this. But the mega crowd is shrinking and shrinking and shrinking. So I don't think there's quite as much violence gonna erupt as they might think with quite as many people. We might still have the three percenters and the crowd boys and all those guys out there taking advantage of that moment. But I'm not so sure that there's gonna be just a lot of regular Republicans falling for this now. This is pretty big stuff that's coming out of Mar-a-Lago and the pictures of the most recent filing in court there with all of the top secret documents laid out on the floor. That's powerful stuff. I don't care who you are, that's gonna move you. You know what, I'd like to digress for a moment and talk about the press on this. You know, this has been a press frenzy for the past two, three weeks on this. And you don't wonder, you know, if there really needs to be. You know, the press has to exercise restraint sometimes. You and I and the others on American issues, take one, take two, we've discussed the issue many times to connect the dots and figure out what's really going on. And we have often found that it's better, you know, as Twitter has found to just exercise Trump, not report him, not show footage of him, not repeat his voice or at least minimize all of that. Because he's only trying to exercise people, he's only trying to, you know, create chaos. And so they and I would agree have decided that they're gonna minimize his effect on the public. On the other hand, you know, you have this situation where Trump is playing it. He's playing it, he's playing the press. He's playing all the media. He's getting everybody to report what he's saying. You know, hey, this is merely a search warrant obtained in due course by an appropriate, I think David, by an appropriate federal agency. There's no question that doing what they think is the right thing. They've been doing it for a long, long time. They know how to do it and they're doing it to him. And it's very clear from, you know, the National Archives that he inappropriately put documents. What's the issue here? Why are we having this three week conversation already? Is the press making too much of it? Okay, then you get Lindsey Graham, who in my opinion is intellectually challenged. Lindsey Graham comes up and is a sycophant and he repeats what Trump wants him to say and he is trying to do dog whistle and create violence. That's my opinion. And so the press reports that and repeats that and repeats that a thousand times over. Is the press doing us a favor? I mean, does every man, woman and child in this country need to know what Lindsey Graham said? He's one of those incompetents that accidentally walked the halls of Congress. He's one of those guys, a sycophant who works for Trump. He's not his own man. He's not interested in democracy or public policy. He's only bending over for Donald Trump. Why are we listening to him? Why are they repeating him? They should completely, you know, marginalize him. Just as they should marginalize Trump. These guys are playing us. And that's a real problem because that does lead to violence. Well, you know, we've got three major networks. You've got OAN, Newsmax and Fox. And all of them are absolutely 24 seven, pushing all of the just nonstop lies and triggers for people and dog whistles and all of that stuff going on, gaslighting America. So any one of the other major networks that actually try to present the truth have to go up against that. So there's this fine line that I think everyone's having to try to walk where they present what's going on on the other side, because we do need to know but they don't need to do this 24 seven nonsense. They undermine Merrick Garland's ability to investigate what's happening because of that. Like you said, why aren't the news media saying to the public how bad this is, what they found, how horrible what they have found is, how dangerous and how likely it is that he has sold them or given them away for favors or whatever, but it's in 18 months, it's pretty unbelievable that he hasn't already made some sort of profit off of this information that he stole. And nobody's talking about that. They all wanna give him the benefit of the doubt. They all wanna say, okay, well maybe until we find out for sure, instead of looking at the affidavit, instead of looking at this new latest filing by DOJ to try to stop this special, what was it, the special, not the prosecutor. Special master. Thank you, special master. You know, why are they going on and on about this? It's as if they wanna give him the benefit of the doubt and after everything that has happened, that's where I hold every media person liable right now. And that is because there is no gray area here. There is no benefit of the doubt. There is no, oh well, he said, she said, going on. This is cold hard facts, cold hard top secret documents that that idiot took with him and then hid from the Justice Department. So all of this, let's give him the benefit of the doubt stuff is just criminal in my mind and is complicit in some ways. And that's what bothers me is where, and we've talked about this before, where are the journalists that just wanna report the facts? Well, you know, the press actually have indicated that they wanted to see the affidavit, okay? And I think that it follows that they wanted to have a special master. And I think that they should muscle themselves on that sort of thing. There was no need for them to speak on those issues. Those were legal issues before judges. You know, we the public don't need to see the affidavit. We never see the affidavit. Why should we see the affidavit? You know, if it was me and I did these things, I'd be in a lockup already. And the affidavit wouldn't be public and there would be no public discussion about whether the affidavit should be public. Likewise, there would be no special master. Why should there be a special master with nuclear secrets? You wanna expand the number of people who get to see the nuclear secret, are you kidding me? Going on here, the national security is involved. There's no need for that. And remember too that, you know, Trump is farm shopping. He went to another court, another judge 80 miles away who just happened to be appointed by Trump in the hope that she would be soft. You know, it is really extraordinary how chaotic this is getting. So you have all these players, all making these extraordinary statements and self-interested statements, including the media wants to sell airtime and commercials and, you know, and Sky-Risi, they wanna sell Sky-Risi to everybody. And so, you know, my concern is that what you and I are saying is really not what is getting through to people. You know, the fact is the affidavit is nothing unusual for a search warrant. Why should he be treated differently than anyone else? They have, you know, good probable cause on him. That's clear to everyone. What is the issue here? And all these, you know, feeble excuses are obviously feeble. And the motion for a master is out of place, his system maneuver. He's playing the courts. He's playing a judge who he thinks will rule his favor because he appointed her. And he's playing the media. And I think somebody has gotta stand up and we are. We are Cynthia. We're saying, wait a minute, let's clear the air on this. This is all poppycock. Let them get about their business. Let's not do one thing that, you know, undermines their investigation. And I hope Merritt Garland hears it. I hope Merritt Garland appreciates the fact that he's being distracted or they're attempting to distract him, you know, every single day, every moment. And it's not just Trump and his acolytes and sycophants. You know, it's the media. The media doesn't accurately report it. I don't understand why they can't just call a spade a spade. Anyway, let's move on to other sycophants because your friend, Lindsey Graham, is not the only one. He's the sycophant flavor of the day or maybe the week. But there'll be more because, you know, the great orchestrator back there will call on someone else. Who might he call on? Who are his other, you know, candidates for this chaos? I've got one right here ready to tell you about. Let's see, I got some, what I've tried to do is put together some then and now quotes from some of these sycophants, right? So I've got Kevin McCarthy, sycophant number two. He says, Donald J. Trump has already spent dozens of hours testifying in front of congressional committees. Endless investigations by either party won't change the fact that there was no collusion. It's time to move on. It's time to focus on issues, not investigations. All right, so now he says, in 2015, excuse me, that's now. In 2015, he said, but we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she's untrustable. But no one would have known any of that had happened. Had we not fought to make that happen? So he's all for investigations as long as it's on somebody else, right? Wow, wow, Donald J. Trump has spent countless hours testifying in front of Congress. You could have fooled me. Yeah, me too. Even three degrees of sanguinity away, they refuse, they thumb their nose at Congress. He hasn't testified in front of Congress. I think Kevin McCarthy is lying. I know Kevin McCarthy is lying, but what is interesting is that they have the moxie to make these lies, thinking that they could get away with it and that a certain percentage, it's a statistical demographic. A certain percent of the people out there, maybe a large percent of the people out there, are gonna buy the lies. So they are emboldened. And when I say they, I mean, all the sycophants, and I mean, certainly, certainly the king, the king of sycophants, Trump himself, they lie, regularly drill down and lie. You know, it's part of Vladimir Putin's style too. It's part of dictator style, you know, autocratic style. You lie, you double down, you keep on lying. You never, ever tell the truth. And you do it so often and so, you know, so determined that you think people believe you and they do believe you, a certain number of them do believe you and you shift public opinion that way. That's how he's achieved, you know, the big lie. That's how he's achieved his base. And that's how he's created, and that's why he's created his sycophants. So Kevin McCarthy, you know, was criticizing Trump right after the January 6th affair. And then he went to Florida and kissed the King's ring. And it is- I don't know, wait, wait. He didn't go kiss the ring. He went down there to get their story straight. Sorry. Okay, excuse me, didn't mean to interrupt, go ahead. Okay, all right, if you like. But when he came back, he was a changed man. Yes, he was. And now he was a sycophant. And he worked more than ever before. He had seen the light of January 6th, but then he changed his mind completely, 180. And now, you know, if he said anything, it would be a sycophantic statement, wouldn't it? It would be a Lindsey Graham kind of statement. And we can expect, you know, McCarthy who really, really, really wants to be a leader of the House, speaker of the House. We can expect that he will do whatever Trump wants. And as long as Trump can control these guys, and he apparently can, you know, he has power. He has power, and whether he's on Twitter or not, he speaks through them. They are his voice. So, and it's a one way street, by the way. Kevin McCarthy is not coming back, completely committed. And for that matter, Lindsey Graham is not coming back, completely committed. He is completely invested in lying right alongside Trump. So I kind of think that maybe part of that motivation from them isn't just that they want to revere Trump and the power they can get through him. It's because he has proved that they were part of all of it, and we'll bring them down with him. And I'm sure he's threatened them across the board with that. Because we know how much they were already carrying his water to begin with before January 6th. So we can pretty much, you know, bet that that's part of why they are so in line now. I've got a question. Wait, wait, before the question, I just wanna, I think you really hit on a critical point. And that is that the more they are invested, the less likely it is that they can change their mind. But two reasons, one is he will punish them. He will punish anyone who is not completely loyal. You know, look what he did to Comey, that's the tragedy story, worth looking at the movie, Comey rules. But the other part is what you just touched on. This is really important. Once they are invested, you know, they are contaminated and they can't turn back because they are so dirty, if there's no way they can reverse course. And that's another kind of corruption. That's where he corrupts them by bringing him closer and makes it impossible for them, you know, to actually tell the truth. They're done, they're done. They're completely trumped and they're sick of fence for life. It defines them for the rest of their political careers and beyond. Sorry I interrupted, go ahead. No, no problem. It seems to be a show for that today. You know, I absolutely agree. And I believe that Trump, because he has such a, a good criminal mind, right? He's not so smart about very many things, but he's very smart about crime and corruption. And in order to get these people on his side, first he tricks them into being corrupted and then, you know, gets proof of it and then can hold it over their heads forever. And there's not a lot they can do, except come out and say, oh yeah, I blew it. I shouldn't have, I'm sorry, but they can't do that, right? They'll lose their power, they'll lose their seat. So they're stuck. And I bet they all have to hold their nose doing it because they don't like it, they don't want you, but they're stuck. So this comes, brings me right to my question. Who remembers when GOP Senators Roy Blunt, Mike Crapo, Lindsey Graham, Chuck Grassley, Jim Anafi, I don't know if I got that name right, Jerry Moran, Rob Portman, Richard Shelby, Mitch McConnell, John Thune and Roger Whitaker, or Roger Wicker, sorry, voted to convict Bill Clinton for lying about an affair, but acquitted Trump for attempting a coup. Who remembers that? I do. Yeah, that's a really good point. Cynthia, that's a really good point. So those guys feel that whatever happened with whatever name was in Clinton, it was really serious. A consensual affair, wasn't just an affair, a consensual affair. Right, that was really, really serious, worthy of impeachment, but Trump's attempt to turn the country upside down, create political chaos, and to do a coup, that word is being used more and more and it was always accurate as to what Trump was doing and the select committee is finding out that when you look at all the four corners and I hope they find all the corners, it was in fact a coup, that's what it was. And that's more serious than what happened to Walinsky or whatever name was. And so I'm much more. And it's kind of remarkable how those guys do not have the moral compass to make that distinction. Right. Okay, as for McConnell, now Mitch McConnell, he's a real study in all of this. Boy, he's really playing his cards close to his vest. He's saying one thing out there, one thing in here, one thing to Trump, one thing to his people. Mitch McConnell, I have always said is probably the most dangerous man in America. And I still kind of believe that because all of this stuff with Trump, Mitch McConnell could have put an end to it more than just once, but he didn't. But okay, so there's always been sort of a bitter history between Trump and McConnell. But in February, 2021, McConnell rebuked Trump for his disgraceful dereliction of duty during the Capitol riot. There is no question, none says McConnell, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. He said that in a speech before the Senate and then voted against impeaching it. And he could have brought along enough people in the Republican Party to make that impeachment stick, but he didn't. And that's where I go, well, they're both kind of connected to Putin and maybe that's where their bitterness gets put aside as long as we keep Putin happy. I mean, and you kind of help, you can't help but wonder, they're always talking up Trump. And who remembers the eight Republicans that went to Moscow that time? Was it a July 4th, our Independence Day? They went to Moscow to meet with Putin. It's pretty important, if you ask me. And that says a lot about the Republican Party. We talk about all the sick of pants being just beholden to Trump. And as long as we get rid of Trump, we'll be okay. Well, I don't know as I believe that anymore, partly because we got all the Hollys and the Marjorie Taylor whack jobs and the Boberts and all these Matt Gaetzes coming in. And they're really changing the face of the Republican Party from just conservative to crazy, right? Well, I think the crazy part is that they do what Trump wants them to do. They support him in everything he wants, even though it's really nutcakes. And some of these guys went to Harvard and Yale, law school, some of these guys, some of these guys are at least academically smart. And my question to you, I think it's really important that we address this, is what is the common denominator that makes them do this? Because they all really act the same. All sick of pants, all acolytes, all working for Trump and not working for the country in any way they perform. And they're consistent. They're predictable. They're committed. What is the common denominator process here? Power and greed. Very simple. Let's break it down. Let's break it down. Let's talk about greed first though. How do they make money by sucking up the Trump? Oh my gosh, well, the Republican Party is just raking in the dough, absolutely raking in the dough from these, well, Republicans that are being handed a bunch of lies and thinking that they're saving America when in reality they're funding its demise. But they don't know that, so they just keep doing it. And that's part of it that's easy to do. Plus the greed part, it hides all of their backroom deals. It hides all of their, not just backroom deals within Congress, but their backroom deals that make them money. That how many Republicans, and if there's a few Democrats too, I'm not saying it's just the Republicans, but mostly there is just, there was what a half a dozen or more Republicans that have been caught with insider trading. All of the information they had from the pandemic, and it can't help but wonder, playing it down was part of how they made more money. And I was part of it, I don't know, but there's all of that that goes on and they have to cover their bases. The Democrats don't want corruption in Congress. So they gotta make sure the Democrats don't get in power because then they might expose all that corruption. Yeah, and then there was that contribution to this pack, this Republican pack of $1.6 billion and that's being spread around right now as we speak. And he who controls the way that money is spread, Donald Trump would be my guess, gonna control who gets it and what they do with it and how much greed and how obligated they are, how obligated they are to him. It's extraordinary, it speaks to corruption on a huge scale. You know, when we saw Citizens United come about from the Supreme Court, it was a dark day, it was a cold chill. I think anybody thinking about that case, including a lot of people in the media would say this is going to lead to bad things. This is the worst thing they ever did because it perverted the political system in the country. And they were right, they were right to predict that. It was the worst possible thing the Supreme Court has ever done because it led to all these other things, the money. Okay, let's move from the money to the power. Why does the Holy do this? Why do the other sycophants do this? What power did they gain by bending over for Trump? Well, they get to stay where they are. They get to keep their positions in Congress and they are afraid that if they stand up against him he'll trot out the evidence he's got on him and off they'll go. So in order to keep their place and then they justify their own stuff and their own lack of integrity by saying, well, it's worth it because we're getting what we want. So it's like those words that Rusty Bauer said at the hearing. If I have to cheat to win, I don't want to win. These guys, they don't care. If they have to cheat to win, well, bring it on, they're happy to do it as long as they win. That's all that matters to them. It's that power, it's that control. And we know that a lot of people in Congress are narcissistic. You kind of need to have a little bit of that in order to stay alive in Washington probably, right? So depending on how extreme that is or how much their narcissism has been enabled, right? As to how bad and pervasive it is. But it's not just them in Congress, right? Because think of all the Republicans. I personally know lots of very smart people that have fallen for these lies, have sacrificed their integrity to get what they want. Have held their nose so they could get rid of rogue. Have held their nose so they can get their judges. And these are regular people. I worked for a woman, smartest person, smartest woman I have ever met in my entire life. And she's a Republican that just went all in, percline and sinker still, right now supports this whole mess of a Republican part. You know, two things of what you said in the last few minutes are worth pursuing, I think. One is it's not just getting power, it's holding onto power. And the recipe is clear, it's shady. You know, if you wanna run against Trump and you don't wanna support him, you wanna say that he's lying, then what happens to you is you lose your position. It's mechanical, mechanical. It's that simple. And he crots out some money against you. He finds a completely incompetent candidate like Herschel Walker, who Herschel Walker's big issue is trees. He thinks there's too many trees on the planet. You know the biggest thing in Georgia is logging, right? So it's pretty amazing that he said that. I was just like, what? Well, I mean, but you know, he's not qualified to run. He shouldn't be running. But I guess Trump thinks that because of his football background and people will vote from no matter what because they like football and they do like football in Georgia. So my point though is that it's not just to gain power, it's not to lose power. And these guys, they're happy to stay in Congress for the rest of their lives and earn big bucks actually. It's a nice salary and all those perks and to be friends with the big boys and to achieve things through their Trump-like networks. That's one thing. The other thing you mentioned in it, it brings to mind Gates. Gates was involved with some pretty sorted stuff a year or two ago. And I don't know where that is now. Certainly we haven't heard much about the investigation or prosecution of those charges against him. It seems to have been, may I say, buried. And you wonder about Trump having compromise on these people. He says, Gates, if you play ball with me, you won't hear much about that. I have friends. If you don't play ball with me, you will be prosecuted. We'll put it on a fast track and you'll wind up in jail. Gates is not going to jail yet, by the way. So just as Vladimir Putin plays with compromise, there's a real possibility here that Trump is playing with compromise. He has a file on these guys. And if they wanna play ball with him, not only, do they get primary and lose power, but also they might get prosecuted by virtue of what he has in the file. Who knows what's in there? It could be a golden shower. You don't know. Compromot is very deadly business. Well, in the case of Matt Gates, I don't know if he needs to have something against him. I think he's got something for him because Matt Gates likes little girls just like Trump does. Let's not forget what he said about Jeffrey Epstein, that he likes pretty girls just like me. He likes pretty girls and some of them on the younger side. I think that might be, they're more... I think that suggests that he's got something on him. So I don't think we should be naive here to think that it's just because they like Trump. They wanna see Trump succeed. They wanna have the benefit of Trump's base, wherever they are, however that base may vote for them. It's a combination of things. The common denominator is multiple layers of things. And you really do have to give Trump credit for orchestrating these things. He's got a file in every one of them. He has threats, he has cajole. He has carrot and stick. He has all these things. He knows how to make them loyal. He knows how to keep them loyal. And he's doing a good job at it. Now, sometimes he loses and sometimes it was probably a close call. Some of those people who have testified before the select committee only a few weeks ago, they were at one point, you know, at one point they were loyal to him because that was the test of getting the job. He doesn't hire anybody who is not absolutely loyal. And some of them broke stride on that and they went and testified, you don't know if they give us the whole story. I'm sorry, I don't believe that some of them did. But the bottom line is he knows who will stick with him. He knows who his dedicated sycophants are. But my final question to you is, is he still getting new ones? Or are they the regular suspect and does it stop there? New ones, yeah, if all these crazy election deniers get into office, yeah, he's getting new ones. You know, I got a quote from Norman Ornstein about this. It's kind of speaks to the question. I have been around Congress for more than five decades. Every Congress has some idiots, incompetence and lunatics. But never before have we had a political party where a majority fit that description. Okay, well, I close this by reminding myself Anne Applebaum writes for The Atlantic and the things she writes for the, a couple of other, Washington Post. And she wrote an article a couple of years ago about the process by which the Russians were able to hold and achieve power, achieve and hold power in the Eastern Bloc after the war. And one of the big, you know, and she had a list of seven things. I remember that in this article to explain why these people bent over for the Russians, bent over for the Communist Party. It was really creepy. But those seven things are similar to what you and I have been talking about. So we are in a time of great political corruption. Trump is orchestrating it and it has every indication of going forward. And continuing to be the dominant process may be getting worse. And I guess this all leads to our next show. That is American Issues Take Two Tomorrow where we're going to examine what would happen if Trump wasn't doing this, if Trump wasn't on the stage, if Trump wasn't running the operation, what would happen to all of these people and all of these elements? Don't answer that question. Oh, please, let me. Please, please, I have the perfect quote because you asked that question. This is my hope. Remember how aggressively the flying monkeys protected the wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz? Then when she broke and melted and the fever just broke. It's gonna be like that. Okay, okay, may not be quite that simple. So I hope to see you tomorrow, Cynthia. Cynthia Sinclair, so nice to talk to you. This is American Issues Take One, Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.