The Auron MacIntyre Show - October 23, 2025


A Convenient Case of Political Amnesia ｜ 10⧸23⧸25


Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

167.92987

Word count

1,226

Sentence count

70

Harmful content

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

With former President Donald Trump now facing criminal charges, the left has quickly rediscovered their love for judicial restraint. But what happens when one side has already transgressed political norms and stepped squarely off the playing field? What happens to that argument if one of your opponents has already done the same?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Earlier this week on MSNBC, host Joe Scarborough gave a familiar speech about the dangers of
00:00:06.480 Donald Trump wielding government power against his political opponents.
00:00:10.760 With figures like Letitia James, James Comey, and John Bolton finally facing charges, the
00:00:17.280 left has quickly rediscovered their love for judicial restraint.
00:00:21.220 Scarborough delivered his tirade with nods of approval from other journalists as he warned
00:00:25.740 that Trump and his administration officials would face a similar set of politically motivated
00:00:30.600 prosecutions once they were out of power.
00:00:33.640 The obvious problem being that the Democrats already brought those charges against Trump
00:00:38.220 and his staff.
00:00:39.500 The left is attempting to engage in political amnesia in hopes of selling a program of political
00:00:44.740 de-escalation which they have no intention of taking part in.
00:00:49.060 The classic argument about the centralization or use of power in American politics is that
00:00:54.840 it should be avoided because eventually it will be turned on you when your party is out
00:00:59.340 of power.
00:01:00.440 The case is simple and persuasive, but it comes with some assumptions built in.
00:01:04.940 The argument is based on the idea that the lines have not already been crossed, that both
00:01:09.760 sides are still squarely playing on a field of objective political order.
00:01:14.420 Neither party wants to step off the field to gain a momentary advantage because the cost
00:01:19.040 of their opponents adopting the same strategy would be too great.
00:01:22.480 But what happens to that argument if one side has already clearly transgressed those rules
00:01:28.300 and stepped squarely off the playing field?
00:01:31.020 It becomes far more difficult to convince your opponent to avoid using a strategy that
00:01:35.100 you regularly deploy yourself.
00:01:37.580 For a long time, liberals were able to contain conservatives, and frankly conservative leaders
00:01:42.220 were able to contain the larger right wing by preaching about the dangers of political
00:01:46.840 escalation.
00:01:48.100 Republicans were, at least in theory, the party of small government.
00:01:51.820 They feared the accumulation or exercise of power in almost every area, and the prosecution
00:01:57.340 of political opponents was no exception.
00:02:00.000 This is why most conservatives stood awestruck as they watched the very people who had told
00:02:04.800 them for decades that no political prosecution should ever take place arrest protesters, administration
00:02:10.700 officials, and even the president himself.
00:02:13.560 One of the reasons that warnings against political escalation are so effective is that the spiral
00:02:18.740 is hard to escape.
00:02:19.920 Once one side has violated the norms, the other side must reciprocate or invite further abuse
00:02:26.300 at the hands of their opponents.
00:02:28.080 But just like a real fight, once blows and counterblows have been thrown, it's very difficult to call
00:02:33.580 a truce.
00:02:34.600 Both sides recognize that once violence has been deployed, one party must win by taking violence
00:02:40.380 back off the table.
00:02:41.600 It's very difficult to reestablish an equilibrium and restore order, which is why it's best
00:02:46.840 to never enter into the spiral in the first place.
00:02:50.440 Democrats have their justifications, of course.
00:02:52.860 Trump is a once-in-a-generation threat, a proto-dictator who embodies all the worst impulses of middle 0.98
00:02:58.780 America.
00:02:59.700 When faced with that kind of threat, the system must make an example of this dangerous fascist,
00:03:05.160 or his brand of politics will become normalized.
00:03:07.420 At some level, the left knew it was opening Pandora's box by prosecuting a former president
00:03:13.140 and his officials.
00:03:14.680 But they were so desperate to punish their foes that Democrats simply convinced themselves
00:03:19.320 that the consequences would never materialize.
00:03:21.820 Now that the shoe is on the other foot, they have no real argument to stand on.
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00:03:56.700 Progressives recognize at some level that they've painted themselves into a rhetorical corner,
00:04:02.400 but there's no way that they'll ever admit it.
00:04:04.780 Democrats are predictably upset, but they've already deployed every one of these legal
00:04:09.520 strategies that they're now complaining about against their own political opponents.
00:04:13.760 Now they're forced to deploy some kind of strange version of political amnesia, pretending
00:04:19.220 that the last eight years just never took place.
00:04:22.180 The president was never convicted on a pile of manufactured charges.
00:04:26.080 Administration officials were never put under arrest.
00:04:28.980 Meme makers and protesters were never incarcerated.
00:04:31.620 Be careful about jailing your political opponents because they might jail you.
00:04:36.360 Rings a little hollow when your political opponents have already put you in prison.
00:04:40.900 In truth, the gamble the Democrats took was relatively safe.
00:04:45.300 Republican politicians are spineless cowards as a rule.
00:04:48.700 Despite regular violations of political norms by the left, they're rarely if ever held
00:04:53.320 accountable for their action.
00:04:54.780 Yes, the nakedly political prosecutions against Trump were an unprecedented escalation, but Democrats
00:05:01.340 were sure that the imbalance dynamic would hold.
00:05:04.860 What they didn't consider is that Trump's not a typical GOP politician.
00:05:09.000 The billionaire holds a grudge, and he doesn't like to lose.
00:05:12.300 If you give him an opportunity to settle the score, he will.
00:05:15.900 It's now clear that even in this moment where the political pendulum has swung decisively to
00:05:21.380 the other side, the Democrats have learned nothing.
00:05:24.980 Politicians and pundits on the left consider every action taken against Trump and his staff
00:05:30.000 to be legitimate.
00:05:31.860 The warnings against political retribution ring hollow, but empty words are all the progressives
00:05:37.140 have left.
00:05:38.600 They disturb the equilibrium.
00:05:40.480 Retribution was always going to come due.
00:05:42.740 And now all they can really do is make insincere appeals to procedural normalcy and hope that
00:05:48.740 spineless conservatives capitulate.
00:05:50.600 Again, honestly, not the worst bet to make.
00:05:53.540 It's worked out for them before.
00:05:55.720 In truth, the real battle for the left has moved from the realm of politics to the realm
00:06:00.440 of the streets.
00:06:01.780 Having lost the last election against a man that you sold as the next Hitler, Democrats 0.79
00:06:07.060 are totally out of rhetorical options.
00:06:09.420 Where do you go after calling your opponents Nazis who plan to enslave women and murder minorities?
00:06:15.780 How do you communicate an escalation in urgency when you've already turned your
00:06:20.440 opponents into secular Satan?
00:06:22.940 This is why the left has settled on violence as their political weapon of choice.
00:06:27.660 If you declare Trump Hitler and the country votes for Hitler, how can you continue to embrace 0.75
00:06:32.540 the electoral process?
00:06:34.220 The answer is that you don't.
00:06:35.780 And that's why the left has now embraced terrorism instead.
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