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Welcome to the bullwork podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes welcoming back Dana Milbank nationally syndicated op ed columnist for the Washington Post author of a new book called The Destructionists, the 25 year crackup of the Republican party.

Dana, you're probably going to have to update that when it comes on paperback, you know.

You know, a wordy up to 27 year crackup, the 28 year crackup, the number keeps changing like, you know, strikeouts on the scoreboard.

This could be like one of those textbooks that has to be updated every year, right?

New, revised edition.

So, the edition, the 40 year crackup of the Republican party.

Yeah, speaking of which, I just have to start off by commenting on the incredible jury verdict against Alex Jones, you know, as I wrote in my newsletter this morning, I mean, you know, the just punishment would be for Alex Jones to roll up to the gates of hell completely dead broke.

So, but yesterday was a good start for all of the years of lying about murdered children, but I think it's naive to think that somehow this is going to sober up the right wing media culture that really advanced Alex Jones and continues to defend.

Yeah, I don't think so. And who knew that conspiracy theory mongering was so lucrative that he might be able to come up with a billion dollars.

But, of course, it's symbolic, you know, that he'll never need to cough that up. But you got to think that these lawsuits against Fox News against the likes of pillow guy, Mike Lindell are still going on very similarly.

So, there is some recompense available out there and it may bankrupt them, but, you know, even if it's not going to get money to the actual victims of it, there is moral victory here.

I think so too. And, you know, a billion dollar here, billion dollars there before you know it adds up to some pretty significant money.

That's right. Right. You get one point four trillion. It's the you've covered the deficit for the year.

I know this is getting old now, but, you know, watching him, he was live streaming actually when the verdict was coming down treating it like it was a whole joke when the jury announced that one of the plaintiffs named Robbie Parker, you know, was going to get 120 million dollars.

Jones is pumping his fist yelling, yeah, woo. And he's, you know, talking about, you know, come on, get those numbers up. It's hilarious. And of course he used it as a chance to grift more, raise more money.

See, that doesn't strike me as amazing. What is amazing to me is that other people can look at him and go, yeah, I want to be on his side. I want to be on his team.

You know, Marjorie Taylor Greene is defending him and Charlie Kirk is defending him. And like, why would you expend any moral bandwidth on this scum sucking creek?

Well, I think, you know, there is no shame. So I think in his world, it only confirms the conspiracy theories that they're all out to get him. Right. I mean, so it's a perfectly circular situation.

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