December 8, 2021 • 35 mins
The virus enters the mainframe. Donald Trump’s Big Lie is ushered into the Senate Chamber by a ruthlessly ambitious young Senator who will do anything to get ahead, even at the cost of democracy itself.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Before we get into it, be advised that this series
contains bad language and references to violence. It's twelve thirty
pm on January six. On the east side of the
Capitol Building. A crowd of Trump supporters is growing in number.
(00:25):
They're chanting familiar slogans, shouting through bullhorns impossible broth, waving
banners and Confederate flags. But they are for now peaceful
(00:46):
as we know. Of course, this piece won't last long.
This crowd outside the east wing of the Capital will
soon overwhelm the police barrier, knocking officers to the ground,
(01:08):
shouting in their faces, advancing on the Capitol Building itself,
(01:28):
But not quite yet. For now, these protesters are simply
waving their banners and trying to keep warm. On a
January morning, It's freezing bro It is so cold. Until suddenly,
out of the blue, their posture changes. They spot something
(01:53):
behind the barricades on the police side of the line,
a boyish looking man in a navy suit emerging from
a black dad as u V. He's energetic and sprightly,
booie by the crowd's reaction to his arrival. The young
man looks out at the protesters. He can't know what
(02:14):
some of them are about to do, but they know
full well what he intends to do today. He's been
telling them for weeks, speaking on Fox News, on the
Senate floor, posting on social media. His plan has cost
him many friends, even lifelong mentors, have turned against him,
but that won't stop him, and that's why the crowd
(02:36):
cheers him on. In response to their appreciation, the junior
Senator for Missouri, fourty year old Josh Holly, raises his
fist and salute. This moment, one of solidarity between a U.
S senator and a small crowd of protesters, is captured
by a nearby photojournalist. Before the day's end, the image
(03:08):
will be plastered on news websites around the world. It
will become one of the many iconic moments of January six.
A sitting senator showing solidarity with the very people who
are about to invade his place of work. Unaware of
what lies ahead and focused on his day's work, Senator
Hally gives the protesters a thumbs up and disappears into
(03:31):
the Capitol. He's heading for the Senate Chamber, where he
plans to mount a challenge against American democracy from the
team's at Clues, Own Media, I Heart Radio, and novel.
This is The Assault on America Episode five, The Inside
Man MHM. So far in this series, we've dissected the
(04:16):
vast Stop the Steel disinformation campaign headed by Alley Alexander,
who came up with the idea of January six and
spread by the likes of Baked Alaska. We've also met
a rioter from Rule, Ohio who swallowed Alexander's poison and
is now facing decades in prison along with his commanding officer,
(04:41):
the Mercurial Grifters, Stewart Rhodes, who runs the extremest Oothkeeper's
Militia the necessity of the regular militia. This time in
The Assault on America, we're moving up the chain. Today
the virus enters the main frame. This is the tale
of how the youngest sitting you s Senator, welcome the
big lie into the political machinery of the United States.
(05:05):
It's Senator Josh Holly who on December triggers a vote
on whether or not the election result should be upheld.
That vote is scheduled for the afternoon of January six.
That's why organizers like Ali latched on to this day
as their big chance. By objecting to the certification of
the election, Josh Holly gave the far rights something to
(05:29):
focus on. He gave them an event without Josh Holly.
January six is just another day in Washington. If you'd
heard of Senator Josh Holly before the election, you most
likely heard him discussing a culture war issue, perhaps railing
(05:49):
against the mainstream media. The New York Times won a
Pulitzer Prize for the six nineteen Project, a propaganda campaign
designed to recast America's founding as an evil event or
speaking about wokeness or antiva, or some dastardly scheme dreamed
up by the radical left to destroy America. We've seen
(06:09):
a literal insurrection in the streets of Seattle, a breakaway
Antifa enclave ruled by a self described warlord. You cannot
make this stuff up. You can make it up. I
was there, and while the chap was a very messy
and ultimately deadly place, it was not ruled by a warlord.
But Holly's rhetoric here and everywhere else prior to the
(06:30):
election sounded like any other Republican senator. He was just
fresher faced, more eloquent, and judging by his TV appearances,
angrier than the rest of them. The bitter resentment of
a professional political class cannot accept the verdict of the people.
Probuses and distortions, secret meetings, outright lies at time to
(06:50):
bring this fiasco to a close. But Senator Holly didn't
always sound so angry. Twenty two years ago, long before
he got into politics, Josh Holly was a very different person.
His journey to high office begins at exactly the kind
of liberal elite institution he now derives from the floor
(07:13):
of the U. S. Senate, Stanford University. If you're a
fellow student and made Josh's acquaintance when he was a
Stanford undergraduate, you would probably have your as the saying
goes your socks charmed off, meet Professor David Kennedy. If
there was a video game about coastal liberal elites, he'd
be the final boss. He's an urbane academic who writes
(07:33):
books with titles like Freedom from Fear, the American People
in Depression and War. He won a Pulitzer for that one.
By the way, When Josh Holly arrived at Stanford in
nineteen ninety eight, David Kennedy was exactly the sort of
prestigious advisor Holly set out to cultivate. Well. I first
heard Josh Holly's name when he walked into my office
(07:53):
in nineteen night as a freshman student and declared that
he had a very big interest in the American presidency
as an institution, and he would like me to put
together some reading a reading list for him so that
he could learn more about that. Professor Kennedy was kind
of amused that an eighteen year old would bounce into
(08:14):
his office in the first week and demand extra reading,
but he humored the young Holly. He put together a
list of classic works about the presidency, by the Talkville,
by James Bryce, by the other people whose books I'm
never going to read, and he sent Holly on his way.
That Kennedy thought was the last he'd ever see of
the over ambitious freshman, But about two three, no more
(08:36):
than four weeks later, he reappeared in the office and
he said, well, Professor Kennedy, I've done the reading you
assigned me, and now I'd like some more. I thought,
there's no way that this young fellow could have completed
that pretty heavy duty reading list, and there's certainly no
way he could have taken it on board in a
way that he comprehends or really got anything out of it.
(08:58):
So I sat him down started asking him some questions
about some of these texts, some of which are a
bit arcane, and it is really demanding kind of reading.
And he nailed every question I put to him. It
was clear that in the brief span of time that
had elapsed, not only had he done all the reading
I had asked him to do, but he thought about
it analytically, critically, synthetically. And I thought to myself, this
(09:23):
is an unusual student. David wasn't the only person who
thought Holly was different. Friends and teachers alike had him
pegged one day to become at least a U S senator.
It's a crazy thing to say about any student, but
Holly really was that gifted. I became his academic advisor.
He majored in history, and then I eventually ended up
(09:45):
as the supervisor of what we here call a senior
honors thesis that he wrote about the intellectual formation of
Theodor Roosevelt. And that thesis, I'll say, without qualification, was
one of the two best senior honors thesis, and I
supervised an half a century here a Stanford. In two
(10:07):
thousand eight, Holly turned his thesis into a book. He
seemed to be on track to become a renowned academic
like his friend and mentor David Kennedy. Holly even gave
his book the kind of title that Kennedy might use
for one of his Theodore Roosevelt Preacher of Righteousness. He
had what was clear to me, a deep scholarly temperament.
He had all the attributes of somebody who could develop
(10:30):
into an absolutely first rate scholar. But Holly always had
bigger plans than academia. He'd never hidden his political ambitions,
and he understood that in American politics there is one
tried and tested fast track to the top. Over one
third of US politicians started their career this way, including
half of all U S presidents. So you've guessed it.
(10:53):
After Stanford, Josh Holly joined a biker gang. Just kidding,
he studied law at Lee. Yes. After graduating from Stanford,
the future scourge of US elites headed to Yale University
to pay fifty thou dollars a year to become an attorney.
(11:14):
From there, he moved to d C and snagged a
slew of prestigious clerkships, including with the Supreme Court Justice
John Roberts. Ten short years later, Josh Holly decides he's ready.
In two thousand sixteen, he steps into the political arena.
My background as a lawyer, as a practicing lawyer is
fighting for businesses and individuals and nonprofit groups farm groups
(11:39):
against government regulation. Holly leverages his legal background and makes
a run for Attorney General of Missouri. I'm Josh Holly,
and I'll fight for Missouri's values as attorneys General. He
breathes through the primaries and eventually beats his Democratic rival,
becoming the first Republican to hold the office in almost
ten years. His former mentor from Stanford, Professor David Kennedy,
(12:01):
had stayed in touch with Josh. Of course, I was
proud of Josh having notched those kinds of achievements at
a very young age, and when he ran for attorney general,
I actually joked with him. I said, I'd be happy
to send you a contribution, Josh, but maybe it would
prejudice the case there for you in Missouri if it
got out that a California Democrat professor was contributed to
(12:24):
your campaign. But I wished him well, and I attended
his inauguration as Attorney General of Missouri in two thousand seventeen. Clearly, then,
at this point in his life, Josh Holly is still
the charming young man from his Stanford days. He's willing
to joke with liberal friends like David and clearly doesn't
think they're colluding to destroy the United States. Holly was
(12:47):
a partisan, but not an a rational one. There were, however,
early signs that he'd started to change. He'd won the
race for attorney General with the help of a TV
that blasted career politicians who use state office as a
stepping stone for their national ambitions. Jefferson City is full
of career politicians just climbing the ladder, using one office
(13:10):
to get another. As Holly addresses the camera, men in
suits are literally climbing ladders all around him. It's a
real work of art. Conservative outsider Attorney General. I'm Josh Holly.
I think you deserve better. Seven months after becoming Attorney
General in Missouri, Josh Holly thought that he deserved better too.
(13:31):
In August two thousand seventeen, he formed an exploratory campaign
committee for a U. S. Senate run now he was
the one climbing ladders. He wins again, this time by
leaning on his Missouri roots and setting up a theme
he'll return to again and again in the future, the
demonizing of elites. Here's a schmulti campaign ad he put out.
(13:51):
You'll see what I mean. The elites you run our nation.
Call this flyover country, big squares. They only see out
the windows of jet airport they pull. The lovers of
power in Washington at Hollywood call the shots on wall streets.
They're not just distant from our lives, they're distant from
our values, making decisions to enrich themselves. I'm not sure
(14:12):
what Hollywood has to do with Missouri, but the message
from privately educated Josh Holly, son of a bank manager
and a high flying graduate of Stanford in Yale, was
that the elites have dominated Missouri for too long. On
the campaign trail, Holly ties his campaign as closely as
possible to Donald Trump, who had taken Missouri by eighteen
(14:33):
and a half points only the year before. When I
think about President Trump, there's one word that comes to mind.
That word is courage. Do you agree? And well? It works?
Smash cut to the two thousand eighteen midterm election, and
I had a very nice call with the President of
the United States. Josh Holly has just become the youngest
(14:57):
sitting United States Senator. Thank you, MS President for your leadership,
Thank you for believing in Missouri. Tonight the people of
Missouri have delivered, but things were about to take a
darker turn. Any teacher is proud of students being successful,
(15:18):
and I was. I was very proud of his success.
I mean it killed me that he was a Republican.
That's another one of Josh's former teachers, Professor Elizabeth Bernhardt.
Like David Kennedy, Professor Bernhardt remained friends with Josh beyond
his years as a student, even attending his wedding in
two thousand ten. But as Josh Holly became more involved
in politics, Professor Bernhardt found herself worrying about the trajectory
(15:42):
of his career. There was one event, in particular that
she could not reconcile with the traditional conservative she'd known
at Stanford Charlotte Sville no question. On August eleventh, two
thousand seventeen, a white supremacist rally was held in Charlottesville, Virginia.
(16:09):
Far right activists and supporters of all stripes marched through
the city, carrying tiki torches and fighting with counter protesters.
Back a fuck up like com back a buck up.
One of their number would eventually drive his car into
a crowded street, not throw into people, killing a thirty
(16:33):
one year old woman named Heather Higher. Oh my god,
Oh my god, Oh my god. The event led to
one of the most infamous comments of Donald Trump's presidency.
You also had people, very fine people on both sides Charlottesville.
That is a moment for me when I thought all
(16:58):
persons need to abandon ship. That is just no. And
you can't have taken my course and say yes or
maybe at that moment. The course that Elizabeth Bernhardt is
referring to is the one that she taught Josh Holly
back when he was at Stanford. It was called Letters
and Diaries of Resistance in Nazi Germany. The course was
(17:20):
about where do you get the strength to essentially sacrifice
your life for doing the right thing in a situation
where you know you probably are not going to win.
Elizabeth's course looked at the writings of Germans who knew
that resistance to Hitler would get them killed and decided
(17:41):
to resist anyway, the class was focused on the emotion
I guess of courage. Now this wasn't just any old
class that Josh Holly happened to take as an undergraduate.
This was a class that he specifically sought out, deploying
the same charm and industrious nous that had pressed David Kennedy.
(18:01):
He wrote in his application, I've already read all of
this stuff that you're offering in this class. And I said,
I don't understand. You've applied for this class, but you've
read everything. Why do you want to be in this class?
He said, very nicely, I'm really interested in knowing what
(18:24):
other people think about this material. And I eventually hired
him to work in the class as he became a senior,
and I took more sophomores in. So he was wonderful
to work with, wonderful to know. Holly was so taken
with this class that he mentioned it in a speech
in two thousand two, saying that what he learned from
(18:46):
it became a quote so much a part of me
that I could not help but share it with others.
But the fact that Holly stuck so closely to Trump
during his Senate campaign, even after Trump described neo Nazis
at Charlottesville as very fine people, caused Elizabeth Bernhard to
ask herself a question, what lessons could Josh Holly possibly
(19:06):
have taken away from her? Course, there's probably no question
about him that troubles me more I I would have
to say none. I'm just stupefied by any support for
any group of people who would either carry a swastika,
(19:28):
would wear a sweatshirt with Auschwitz on the front, who
would yell Jews will not replace us. This is one
thousand percent at athetical to anything that we discussed or
read after Charlotte'sville. Josh Holly went about his business as
(19:51):
a senator. Maybe his friends and mentors thought maybe his
transgressions up till now were the compromises one has to
make in politics. But if further proof was needed that
Josh Holly was willing to move beyond the usual compromises
required up a politician, it came in November. The really
(20:13):
bad part then came about the big lie. The process
is rigged, This whole election is being grigged. After the
presidential election, Josh Holly was one of the first high
profile politicians to fall in line with Drump's falsehood that
the election had been fraudulent times election, But Holly didn't
(20:39):
approach the lie in the same crass, lazy way that
Trump did. Not a conspiracy theory post. No, Josh Holly
has the guile and eloquence to make it sound like
he's simply doing the job of a responsible elected official.
I have heard from people like I've never heard before
over the last month about this election, and they have major,
(21:01):
major concerns about the integrity the fairness of this election.
And somebody has got to take their concerns seriously and
speak up. And that's what I'm gonna do. Holly presents
himself as someone who's merely trying to start a debate
about electoral integrity. Meanwhile, he starts publicly questioning whether Joe
Biden will even become president at all. If Joe Biden
(21:22):
ends up being sworn as president, if he if Joe Biden,
if he is the president, if Joe Biden ends up
his president, any worry Joe Biden, if if? If? If?
But Holly's next step takes the matter beyond mere rhetoric.
On December he announces that he's going to challenge the
(21:44):
electoral College results in the Senate, the Republican leader of
the Senate, Mitch McConnell, has been dreading this move, understanding
that it would put other Senators in a tight spot.
Do they vote with Trump and against democracy, or do
they go on record accepting Joe Biden's victory. McConnell feared
that if Holly triggered such a vote, it would breach
(22:05):
the damn He was exactly right. As soon as Holly
announced his intentions, a host of Senators and congress people
followed suit, vowing to challenge the electoral college results on
January six. At this point, more than ninety federal and
state judges had rejected Trump's lawsuits seeking to overturn the
(22:27):
outcome of the election. Trump's own Attorney General, Bill Barr,
had dismissed allegations that there was widespread voter fraud. There's
been no discrepancy reported anywhere that's looked at that, and
I'm still not aware of any discrepidanst That didn't stop Holly.
His mentor David Kennedy, was alarmed. That was a shock
(22:48):
to me across the board. Frankly, I thought it was
a really, really dangerous to be honest, and I was shocked,
and I dare say appalled that the President stuck with
that line of our ument, and compoundedly appalled when others,
including someone for whom I in answers respect that's Josh,
I got on board with that. David wasn't the only
(23:10):
person shocked at Holly's decision. His former political mentor in Missouri,
former Republican Senator Jack Danforth, was also astounded. He publicly
declared that supporting Josh Holly had been the greatest mistake
he'd ever made. Holly's biggest donor, a businessman named David Humphries,
who had donated over six million dollars to Holly's campaigns,
wrote that Holly had revealed himself as a political opportunist,
(23:33):
willing to subvert the constitution and the ideals of the nation.
He swore to uphold. We always allow for a little
hyperbolean politics, but that strong stuff. And the reason is simple,
Josh Holly was pushing the big lie harder and harder.
On January four, he went on Fox News for an
interview with anchor Brett Bear. I just want to pinion
(23:57):
down on on what you're trying to do. Are you
trying to say that as of January that President Trump
will be president. Well, that that it depends on what
happens on Wednesday. Wednesday is, of course, January six. Holly
is implying to Fox News viewers that their actions in
(24:17):
d C and his actions on the Senate floor might
still swing the election for Donald Trump. As it turns out,
Holly pushed things too far, even for Fox News quite
an achievement. What happens on Wednesday in the States, by
the constitution, say they certify the election. They did certify it.
By the constitution, Congress doesn't have the right to overturn
(24:39):
the certification for this interview and for many others. The
Senate would later open an ethics inquiry into Holly's actions,
claiming that he quote lint legitimacy to the mob's cause
and made future violence more likely. And when the violence starts,
(25:01):
Josh Holly is in the Senate chamber preparing to mount
his challenge against the election. He doesn't get the chance.
At two thirty three p m. Secret Service agents abruptly
rush into the chamber and remove Vice President Mike Pence.
Somewhat unsettled, the senators continue debating, ignoring the lingering questions,
(25:26):
we need to do something. At two pm, with the
senators still in the chamber, shots are heard from the
other side of the building, and I will stand in
recess until the call of the chair. At this point,
rioters are less than two minutes away from preaching the chamber.
Protestors are in the Michael Cranish, an investigative reporter for
(25:53):
the Washington Post, has the inside scoop on Holly's movements
at this time. As the storming of the capital occurs
in the Holly's in the Senate with the other senators.
Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, confronts Holly and he says, quote,
you have caused this, So there's a lot of tension
going on. I can't help, but wonder did Holly have
(26:14):
second thoughts as he stood in the Senate chamber with
a mob seconds away and a party elder pinning the
blame directly on him. The senators are then taken away
to a secure room in an office building near the
Capitol building, the Senate Office Building, and one senator looked
over in this room, and every time he looked over,
(26:34):
he saw Holly standing alone, basically in a corner. The
question for Holly was simple, should he go through with
his plan to challenge the election, even in the face
of a historic ransacking of the Capitol building. There were
efforts trying to talk him out of going through with
his challenging of the results, but Holly refused and he
(26:57):
went forward in fact with the challenging of the results.
In the end, he was only one of seven Senators
to vote to challenge those results, so his effort failed.
But the people who are critical of them would say
the damage was done. Following the carnage on January six,
(27:29):
Josh Holly became one of the most toxic politicians in Washington.
Even some Republicans were calling for his resignation. But the
truth is his political prospects have only risen since the riot.
Any donors he lost after the riot were more than
made up for by the flood of cash that poured
from Americans who bought the big lie to them. Josh
(27:51):
Holly is a patriot, one of the few suits in
Washington brave enough to take a stand against the biggest
fraud in American history, the of a presidential election. Now
our man. Josh Holly has said that if Donald Trump
runs again in he'll fight for the former president with
everything he has. But if Trump doesn't run, then perhaps
(28:13):
Josh Holly will. I mean, his clean cut, youthful looks,
his ivy league eloquence, it all kind of makes him
just a much better version of Donald Trump. Has his
dedication to the big lie made him Trump's heir apparent.
There's another question that those who know him well are
asking themselves. Is there any chance he believes what he's saying.
(28:38):
His former professor Elizabeth Bernhardt doesn't think so. This is
a person who has every talent and skill to find
the information, the data if that election were stolen and
we've never seen it. There are a bunch of his
(28:59):
call as that I suspect aren't smart enough to be
able to look for a lot of that kind of information.
That's not true of Josh Holly. Ultimately, his mentors are stumped.
That was not the person I knew, and knew pretty
well as a young man, when anger just wasn't part
(29:19):
of his makeup. I don't understand what you're thinking. Tell
me what I really would like to know. Tell me
what you're thinking, I asked Michael Cranish for a more
dispassionate view. He's a journalist, after all, we're very impartial people.
There's some people look at Josh holly'd say, gee, what
happened to him? But I look back at his history,
(29:40):
his writings and so forth, I saw that it was
pretty consistent from the time he's fifteen years old and
even earlier, actually up until today. Michael spoke to some
of Josh Holly's friends and mentors in the wake of
the Capital riot. He also noticed that many of the
people in Ally's life had only encountered the smooth talking
moderate and not the ruthlessly ambitious hard miner until he
(30:01):
reached the Senate. They've only seen him on his best behavior.
They had a view of him, and they helped him along,
and now they feel deceived, betrayed. They uw some pretty
strong language to describe Holly. Michael argues that the real
Josh Holly has always been hiding in plain sight. You
just have to look back into the past. Before his
days as a charming Stanford grad and pro bono Washington attorney,
(30:25):
Josh Holly grew up in a small city called Lexington
in northwest Missouri. Lexington's about an hour from Kansas city.
It's right on the Missouri River, and if you go
there today, it looks pretty down on its heels. The
area is known even today as a little Dixie. Dixie
is basically synonymous with the Deep South during the Confederacy era,
(30:46):
and as it happens, Lexington, Missouri, before and during the
Civil War, was the center of slavery in Missouri. There
was a lot of slavery in Missouri, and the greatest
concentration of enslaved people happens to have been in Lexington.
This is interesting because if you visit Lexington, Missouri now,
you will find no trace of this history whatsoever. It's
(31:08):
just not something that people talk about. This historical blindness
of the town seems to have imprinted itself on Holly's
own worldview. Josh Holly, when he was fifteen years old
and it started going to private school in Kansas City,
wrote a series of columns for the local Lexington newspaper
called State of the Union. And I was fifteen, I
was playing dungeons and dragons to each his own I
(31:29):
guess anyway, Josh Holly had some heavy hitting opinions for
a fifteen year old son of a bank manager. He
said that affirmative action programs which helped blacks, for example,
who have been subject to discrimination and other people who
have just suffered the overall effects of general discrimination, even
if not directly. He said that affirmative action was a
(31:49):
quote perverted racial spoils system, and he said that Martin
Luther King Jr. The great civil rights leader, would have
been turning over his grave over affirmative action, would have
been repulsed by it. Punchy stuff. But is it in
any way accurate. It's just not true at all. King
clearly favorite of front of action programs, and in fact,
he was specifically asked about these and said, you know,
(32:11):
this was needed to give people some equality, to make
up for all the centuries of racism and for what
happened during the era of slavery and so forth. So
Holly just did not have a proper understanding of that history. Now,
why are we critiquing a newspaper written by a fifteen
year old, even if he is a future U. S. Senator.
The reason is that there's a version of Josh Holly
(32:33):
that has been remarkably consistent throughout his life. This is
a Josh Holly who wrote in defense of the Oklahoma
City bomber Timothy McVeigh he Lambastad the media for stereotyping
militia members like McVeigh as radical right wing pro assault
weapon freaks. This is after McVeigh murdered a hundred and
(32:56):
sixty nine people. This is also the Josh Holly who
made popcorn in anticipation of the bombing of Baghdad during
the Allied invasion of a rat in two thousand three.
And it's a Josh Holly who pushed a lie to
ingratiate himself with millions of Trump voters who might be
looking for a new candidate to send the White House
in four the moderate Republican and all around good fellow
(33:20):
that he inhabited at Stanford, That was only half the story.
Since the election, it's clear which version of himself Josh
Holly has settled into. When Josh Holly cast his vote
to challenge the election results at eight pm on January six,
(33:41):
the blood on the marble floors of the US capital
was practically still wet. Hundreds of police officers and rioters
were seeking medical attention. Four people were already dead. Three
more all police officers would perish in the next forty
eight hours, and things aren't looking any better. For the future,
(34:02):
we can only guess at what further harm is being
stored up by the continued falsehood spread by Holly and
his allies. What is the future in a nation where
almost a third of the population believe that their democracy
is functionally dead. Your guess is as good as mine
on that one. But I can tell you this that
mass illusion serves Josh Holly very well. Hell, it might
(34:23):
even take him to the White House. For the rest
of us, well, for the rest of us, it screws
things up beyond comprehension. I don't know whether it's more
accurate to frame Holly as a symptom or a cause
of our current social ills and the rise of political
violence in the United States. He has certainly played a
role in making those problems worse. But he's also someone
(34:46):
who grew up in a society that the fifteen year
old kids published political rants aimed at pushing fringe agendas.
He's someone who grew up surrounded by people who convinced
him to have sympathy for a man who detonated a
truck bomb next with daycare, and so at the end
of this episode, I'm left thinking that, in some ways,
(35:07):
the story of Josh Holly is the story of the
inevitability of the Capitol riot. In the next episode, we
go to the front line of the mayhem as police
battle rioters, bear spray and bomb threats the guard. He
(35:29):
leans over and he takes a look at the device,
and he recoils immediately and says, holy shit, it's a bomb.
Join me in episode six, Hugs and Kisses
Before we get into it, be advised that this series
contains bad language and references to violence. It's twelve thirty
pm on January six. On the east side of the
Capitol Building. A crowd of Trump supporters is growing in number.
(00:25):
They're chanting familiar slogans, shouting through bullhorns impossible broth, waving
banners and Confederate flags. But they are for now peaceful
(00:46):
as we know. Of course, this piece won't last long.
This crowd outside the east wing of the Capital will
soon overwhelm the police barrier, knocking officers to the ground,
(01:08):
shouting in their faces, advancing on the Capitol Building itself,
(01:28):
But not quite yet. For now, these protesters are simply
waving their banners and trying to keep warm. On a
January morning, It's freezing bro It is so cold. Until suddenly,
out of the blue, their posture changes. They spot something
(01:53):
behind the barricades on the police side of the line,
a boyish looking man in a navy suit emerging from
a black dad as u V. He's energetic and sprightly,
booie by the crowd's reaction to his arrival. The young
man looks out at the protesters. He can't know what
(02:14):
some of them are about to do, but they know
full well what he intends to do today. He's been
telling them for weeks, speaking on Fox News, on the
Senate floor, posting on social media. His plan has cost
him many friends, even lifelong mentors, have turned against him,
but that won't stop him, and that's why the crowd
(02:36):
cheers him on. In response to their appreciation, the junior
Senator for Missouri, fourty year old Josh Holly, raises his
fist and salute. This moment, one of solidarity between a U.
S senator and a small crowd of protesters, is captured
by a nearby photojournalist. Before the day's end, the image
(03:08):
will be plastered on news websites around the world. It
will become one of the many iconic moments of January six.
A sitting senator showing solidarity with the very people who
are about to invade his place of work. Unaware of
what lies ahead and focused on his day's work, Senator
Hally gives the protesters a thumbs up and disappears into
(03:31):
the Capitol. He's heading for the Senate Chamber, where he
plans to mount a challenge against American democracy from the
team's at Clues, Own Media, I Heart Radio, and novel.
This is The Assault on America Episode five, The Inside
Man MHM. So far in this series, we've dissected the
(04:16):
vast Stop the Steel disinformation campaign headed by Alley Alexander,
who came up with the idea of January six and
spread by the likes of Baked Alaska. We've also met
a rioter from Rule, Ohio who swallowed Alexander's poison and
is now facing decades in prison along with his commanding officer,
(04:41):
the Mercurial Grifters, Stewart Rhodes, who runs the extremest Oothkeeper's
Militia the necessity of the regular militia. This time in
The Assault on America, we're moving up the chain. Today
the virus enters the main frame. This is the tale
of how the youngest sitting you s Senator, welcome the
big lie into the political machinery of the United States.
(05:05):
It's Senator Josh Holly who on December triggers a vote
on whether or not the election result should be upheld.
That vote is scheduled for the afternoon of January six.
That's why organizers like Ali latched on to this day
as their big chance. By objecting to the certification of
the election, Josh Holly gave the far rights something to
(05:29):
focus on. He gave them an event without Josh Holly.
January six is just another day in Washington. If you'd
heard of Senator Josh Holly before the election, you most
likely heard him discussing a culture war issue, perhaps railing
(05:49):
against the mainstream media. The New York Times won a
Pulitzer Prize for the six nineteen Project, a propaganda campaign
designed to recast America's founding as an evil event or
speaking about wokeness or antiva, or some dastardly scheme dreamed
up by the radical left to destroy America. We've seen
(06:09):
a literal insurrection in the streets of Seattle, a breakaway
Antifa enclave ruled by a self described warlord. You cannot
make this stuff up. You can make it up. I
was there, and while the chap was a very messy
and ultimately deadly place, it was not ruled by a warlord.
But Holly's rhetoric here and everywhere else prior to the
(06:30):
election sounded like any other Republican senator. He was just
fresher faced, more eloquent, and judging by his TV appearances,
angrier than the rest of them. The bitter resentment of
a professional political class cannot accept the verdict of the people.
Probuses and distortions, secret meetings, outright lies at time to
(06:50):
bring this fiasco to a close. But Senator Holly didn't
always sound so angry. Twenty two years ago, long before
he got into politics, Josh Holly was a very different person.
His journey to high office begins at exactly the kind
of liberal elite institution he now derives from the floor
(07:13):
of the U. S. Senate, Stanford University. If you're a
fellow student and made Josh's acquaintance when he was a
Stanford undergraduate, you would probably have your as the saying
goes your socks charmed off, meet Professor David Kennedy. If
there was a video game about coastal liberal elites, he'd
be the final boss. He's an urbane academic who writes
(07:33):
books with titles like Freedom from Fear, the American People
in Depression and War. He won a Pulitzer for that one.
By the way, When Josh Holly arrived at Stanford in
nineteen ninety eight, David Kennedy was exactly the sort of
prestigious advisor Holly set out to cultivate. Well. I first
heard Josh Holly's name when he walked into my office
(07:53):
in nineteen night as a freshman student and declared that
he had a very big interest in the American presidency
as an institution, and he would like me to put
together some reading a reading list for him so that
he could learn more about that. Professor Kennedy was kind
of amused that an eighteen year old would bounce into
(08:14):
his office in the first week and demand extra reading,
but he humored the young Holly. He put together a
list of classic works about the presidency, by the Talkville,
by James Bryce, by the other people whose books I'm
never going to read, and he sent Holly on his way.
That Kennedy thought was the last he'd ever see of
the over ambitious freshman, But about two three, no more
(08:36):
than four weeks later, he reappeared in the office and
he said, well, Professor Kennedy, I've done the reading you
assigned me, and now I'd like some more. I thought,
there's no way that this young fellow could have completed
that pretty heavy duty reading list, and there's certainly no
way he could have taken it on board in a
way that he comprehends or really got anything out of it.
(08:58):
So I sat him down started asking him some questions
about some of these texts, some of which are a
bit arcane, and it is really demanding kind of reading.
And he nailed every question I put to him. It
was clear that in the brief span of time that
had elapsed, not only had he done all the reading
I had asked him to do, but he thought about
it analytically, critically, synthetically. And I thought to myself, this
(09:23):
is an unusual student. David wasn't the only person who
thought Holly was different. Friends and teachers alike had him
pegged one day to become at least a U S senator.
It's a crazy thing to say about any student, but
Holly really was that gifted. I became his academic advisor.
He majored in history, and then I eventually ended up
(09:45):
as the supervisor of what we here call a senior
honors thesis that he wrote about the intellectual formation of
Theodor Roosevelt. And that thesis, I'll say, without qualification, was
one of the two best senior honors thesis, and I
supervised an half a century here a Stanford. In two
(10:07):
thousand eight, Holly turned his thesis into a book. He
seemed to be on track to become a renowned academic
like his friend and mentor David Kennedy. Holly even gave
his book the kind of title that Kennedy might use
for one of his Theodore Roosevelt Preacher of Righteousness. He
had what was clear to me, a deep scholarly temperament.
He had all the attributes of somebody who could develop
(10:30):
into an absolutely first rate scholar. But Holly always had
bigger plans than academia. He'd never hidden his political ambitions,
and he understood that in American politics there is one
tried and tested fast track to the top. Over one
third of US politicians started their career this way, including
half of all U S presidents. So you've guessed it.
(10:53):
After Stanford, Josh Holly joined a biker gang. Just kidding,
he studied law at Lee. Yes. After graduating from Stanford,
the future scourge of US elites headed to Yale University
to pay fifty thou dollars a year to become an attorney.
(11:14):
From there, he moved to d C and snagged a
slew of prestigious clerkships, including with the Supreme Court Justice
John Roberts. Ten short years later, Josh Holly decides he's ready.
In two thousand sixteen, he steps into the political arena.
My background as a lawyer, as a practicing lawyer is
fighting for businesses and individuals and nonprofit groups farm groups
(11:39):
against government regulation. Holly leverages his legal background and makes
a run for Attorney General of Missouri. I'm Josh Holly,
and I'll fight for Missouri's values as attorneys General. He
breathes through the primaries and eventually beats his Democratic rival,
becoming the first Republican to hold the office in almost
ten years. His former mentor from Stanford, Professor David Kennedy,
(12:01):
had stayed in touch with Josh. Of course, I was
proud of Josh having notched those kinds of achievements at
a very young age, and when he ran for attorney general,
I actually joked with him. I said, I'd be happy
to send you a contribution, Josh, but maybe it would
prejudice the case there for you in Missouri if it
got out that a California Democrat professor was contributed to
(12:24):
your campaign. But I wished him well, and I attended
his inauguration as Attorney General of Missouri in two thousand seventeen. Clearly, then,
at this point in his life, Josh Holly is still
the charming young man from his Stanford days. He's willing
to joke with liberal friends like David and clearly doesn't
think they're colluding to destroy the United States. Holly was
(12:47):
a partisan, but not an a rational one. There were, however,
early signs that he'd started to change. He'd won the
race for attorney General with the help of a TV
that blasted career politicians who use state office as a
stepping stone for their national ambitions. Jefferson City is full
of career politicians just climbing the ladder, using one office
(13:10):
to get another. As Holly addresses the camera, men in
suits are literally climbing ladders all around him. It's a
real work of art. Conservative outsider Attorney General. I'm Josh Holly.
I think you deserve better. Seven months after becoming Attorney
General in Missouri, Josh Holly thought that he deserved better too.
(13:31):
In August two thousand seventeen, he formed an exploratory campaign
committee for a U. S. Senate run now he was
the one climbing ladders. He wins again, this time by
leaning on his Missouri roots and setting up a theme
he'll return to again and again in the future, the
demonizing of elites. Here's a schmulti campaign ad he put out.
(13:51):
You'll see what I mean. The elites you run our nation.
Call this flyover country, big squares. They only see out
the windows of jet airport they pull. The lovers of
power in Washington at Hollywood call the shots on wall streets.
They're not just distant from our lives, they're distant from
our values, making decisions to enrich themselves. I'm not sure
(14:12):
what Hollywood has to do with Missouri, but the message
from privately educated Josh Holly, son of a bank manager
and a high flying graduate of Stanford in Yale, was
that the elites have dominated Missouri for too long. On
the campaign trail, Holly ties his campaign as closely as
possible to Donald Trump, who had taken Missouri by eighteen
(14:33):
and a half points only the year before. When I
think about President Trump, there's one word that comes to mind.
That word is courage. Do you agree? And well? It works?
Smash cut to the two thousand eighteen midterm election, and
I had a very nice call with the President of
the United States. Josh Holly has just become the youngest
(14:57):
sitting United States Senator. Thank you, MS President for your leadership,
Thank you for believing in Missouri. Tonight the people of
Missouri have delivered, but things were about to take a
darker turn. Any teacher is proud of students being successful,
(15:18):
and I was. I was very proud of his success.
I mean it killed me that he was a Republican.
That's another one of Josh's former teachers, Professor Elizabeth Bernhardt.
Like David Kennedy, Professor Bernhardt remained friends with Josh beyond
his years as a student, even attending his wedding in
two thousand ten. But as Josh Holly became more involved
in politics, Professor Bernhardt found herself worrying about the trajectory
(15:42):
of his career. There was one event, in particular that
she could not reconcile with the traditional conservative she'd known
at Stanford Charlotte Sville no question. On August eleventh, two
thousand seventeen, a white supremacist rally was held in Charlottesville, Virginia.
(16:09):
Far right activists and supporters of all stripes marched through
the city, carrying tiki torches and fighting with counter protesters.
Back a fuck up like com back a buck up.
One of their number would eventually drive his car into
a crowded street, not throw into people, killing a thirty
(16:33):
one year old woman named Heather Higher. Oh my god,
Oh my god, Oh my god. The event led to
one of the most infamous comments of Donald Trump's presidency.
You also had people, very fine people on both sides Charlottesville.
That is a moment for me when I thought all
(16:58):
persons need to abandon ship. That is just no. And
you can't have taken my course and say yes or
maybe at that moment. The course that Elizabeth Bernhardt is
referring to is the one that she taught Josh Holly
back when he was at Stanford. It was called Letters
and Diaries of Resistance in Nazi Germany. The course was
(17:20):
about where do you get the strength to essentially sacrifice
your life for doing the right thing in a situation
where you know you probably are not going to win.
Elizabeth's course looked at the writings of Germans who knew
that resistance to Hitler would get them killed and decided
(17:41):
to resist anyway, the class was focused on the emotion
I guess of courage. Now this wasn't just any old
class that Josh Holly happened to take as an undergraduate.
This was a class that he specifically sought out, deploying
the same charm and industrious nous that had pressed David Kennedy.
(18:01):
He wrote in his application, I've already read all of
this stuff that you're offering in this class. And I said,
I don't understand. You've applied for this class, but you've
read everything. Why do you want to be in this class?
He said, very nicely, I'm really interested in knowing what
(18:24):
other people think about this material. And I eventually hired
him to work in the class as he became a senior,
and I took more sophomores in. So he was wonderful
to work with, wonderful to know. Holly was so taken
with this class that he mentioned it in a speech
in two thousand two, saying that what he learned from
(18:46):
it became a quote so much a part of me
that I could not help but share it with others.
But the fact that Holly stuck so closely to Trump
during his Senate campaign, even after Trump described neo Nazis
at Charlottesville as very fine people, caused Elizabeth Bernhard to
ask herself a question, what lessons could Josh Holly possibly
(19:06):
have taken away from her? Course, there's probably no question
about him that troubles me more I I would have
to say none. I'm just stupefied by any support for
any group of people who would either carry a swastika,
(19:28):
would wear a sweatshirt with Auschwitz on the front, who
would yell Jews will not replace us. This is one
thousand percent at athetical to anything that we discussed or
read after Charlotte'sville. Josh Holly went about his business as
(19:51):
a senator. Maybe his friends and mentors thought maybe his
transgressions up till now were the compromises one has to
make in politics. But if further proof was needed that
Josh Holly was willing to move beyond the usual compromises
required up a politician, it came in November. The really
(20:13):
bad part then came about the big lie. The process
is rigged, This whole election is being grigged. After the
presidential election, Josh Holly was one of the first high
profile politicians to fall in line with Drump's falsehood that
the election had been fraudulent times election, But Holly didn't
(20:39):
approach the lie in the same crass, lazy way that
Trump did. Not a conspiracy theory post. No, Josh Holly
has the guile and eloquence to make it sound like
he's simply doing the job of a responsible elected official.
I have heard from people like I've never heard before
over the last month about this election, and they have major,
(21:01):
major concerns about the integrity the fairness of this election.
And somebody has got to take their concerns seriously and
speak up. And that's what I'm gonna do. Holly presents
himself as someone who's merely trying to start a debate
about electoral integrity. Meanwhile, he starts publicly questioning whether Joe
Biden will even become president at all. If Joe Biden
(21:22):
ends up being sworn as president, if he if Joe Biden,
if he is the president, if Joe Biden ends up
his president, any worry Joe Biden, if if? If? If?
But Holly's next step takes the matter beyond mere rhetoric.
On December he announces that he's going to challenge the
(21:44):
electoral College results in the Senate, the Republican leader of
the Senate, Mitch McConnell, has been dreading this move, understanding
that it would put other Senators in a tight spot.
Do they vote with Trump and against democracy, or do
they go on record accepting Joe Biden's victory. McConnell feared
that if Holly triggered such a vote, it would breach
(22:05):
the damn He was exactly right. As soon as Holly
announced his intentions, a host of Senators and congress people
followed suit, vowing to challenge the electoral college results on
January six. At this point, more than ninety federal and
state judges had rejected Trump's lawsuits seeking to overturn the
(22:27):
outcome of the election. Trump's own Attorney General, Bill Barr,
had dismissed allegations that there was widespread voter fraud. There's
been no discrepancy reported anywhere that's looked at that, and
I'm still not aware of any discrepidanst That didn't stop Holly.
His mentor David Kennedy, was alarmed. That was a shock
(22:48):
to me across the board. Frankly, I thought it was
a really, really dangerous to be honest, and I was shocked,
and I dare say appalled that the President stuck with
that line of our ument, and compoundedly appalled when others,
including someone for whom I in answers respect that's Josh,
I got on board with that. David wasn't the only
(23:10):
person shocked at Holly's decision. His former political mentor in Missouri,
former Republican Senator Jack Danforth, was also astounded. He publicly
declared that supporting Josh Holly had been the greatest mistake
he'd ever made. Holly's biggest donor, a businessman named David Humphries,
who had donated over six million dollars to Holly's campaigns,
wrote that Holly had revealed himself as a political opportunist,
(23:33):
willing to subvert the constitution and the ideals of the nation.
He swore to uphold. We always allow for a little
hyperbolean politics, but that strong stuff. And the reason is simple,
Josh Holly was pushing the big lie harder and harder.
On January four, he went on Fox News for an
interview with anchor Brett Bear. I just want to pinion
(23:57):
down on on what you're trying to do. Are you
trying to say that as of January that President Trump
will be president. Well, that that it depends on what
happens on Wednesday. Wednesday is, of course, January six. Holly
is implying to Fox News viewers that their actions in
(24:17):
d C and his actions on the Senate floor might
still swing the election for Donald Trump. As it turns out,
Holly pushed things too far, even for Fox News quite
an achievement. What happens on Wednesday in the States, by
the constitution, say they certify the election. They did certify it.
By the constitution, Congress doesn't have the right to overturn
(24:39):
the certification for this interview and for many others. The
Senate would later open an ethics inquiry into Holly's actions,
claiming that he quote lint legitimacy to the mob's cause
and made future violence more likely. And when the violence starts,
(25:01):
Josh Holly is in the Senate chamber preparing to mount
his challenge against the election. He doesn't get the chance.
At two thirty three p m. Secret Service agents abruptly
rush into the chamber and remove Vice President Mike Pence.
Somewhat unsettled, the senators continue debating, ignoring the lingering questions,
(25:26):
we need to do something. At two pm, with the
senators still in the chamber, shots are heard from the
other side of the building, and I will stand in
recess until the call of the chair. At this point,
rioters are less than two minutes away from preaching the chamber.
Protestors are in the Michael Cranish, an investigative reporter for
(25:53):
the Washington Post, has the inside scoop on Holly's movements
at this time. As the storming of the capital occurs
in the Holly's in the Senate with the other senators.
Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, confronts Holly and he says, quote,
you have caused this, So there's a lot of tension
going on. I can't help, but wonder did Holly have
(26:14):
second thoughts as he stood in the Senate chamber with
a mob seconds away and a party elder pinning the
blame directly on him. The senators are then taken away
to a secure room in an office building near the
Capitol building, the Senate Office Building, and one senator looked
over in this room, and every time he looked over,
(26:34):
he saw Holly standing alone, basically in a corner. The
question for Holly was simple, should he go through with
his plan to challenge the election, even in the face
of a historic ransacking of the Capitol building. There were
efforts trying to talk him out of going through with
his challenging of the results, but Holly refused and he
(26:57):
went forward in fact with the challenging of the results.
In the end, he was only one of seven Senators
to vote to challenge those results, so his effort failed.
But the people who are critical of them would say
the damage was done. Following the carnage on January six,
(27:29):
Josh Holly became one of the most toxic politicians in Washington.
Even some Republicans were calling for his resignation. But the
truth is his political prospects have only risen since the riot.
Any donors he lost after the riot were more than
made up for by the flood of cash that poured
from Americans who bought the big lie to them. Josh
(27:51):
Holly is a patriot, one of the few suits in
Washington brave enough to take a stand against the biggest
fraud in American history, the of a presidential election. Now
our man. Josh Holly has said that if Donald Trump
runs again in he'll fight for the former president with
everything he has. But if Trump doesn't run, then perhaps
(28:13):
Josh Holly will. I mean, his clean cut, youthful looks,
his ivy league eloquence, it all kind of makes him
just a much better version of Donald Trump. Has his
dedication to the big lie made him Trump's heir apparent.
There's another question that those who know him well are
asking themselves. Is there any chance he believes what he's saying.
(28:38):
His former professor Elizabeth Bernhardt doesn't think so. This is
a person who has every talent and skill to find
the information, the data if that election were stolen and
we've never seen it. There are a bunch of his
(28:59):
call as that I suspect aren't smart enough to be
able to look for a lot of that kind of information.
That's not true of Josh Holly. Ultimately, his mentors are stumped.
That was not the person I knew, and knew pretty
well as a young man, when anger just wasn't part
(29:19):
of his makeup. I don't understand what you're thinking. Tell
me what I really would like to know. Tell me
what you're thinking, I asked Michael Cranish for a more
dispassionate view. He's a journalist, after all, we're very impartial people.
There's some people look at Josh holly'd say, gee, what
happened to him? But I look back at his history,
(29:40):
his writings and so forth, I saw that it was
pretty consistent from the time he's fifteen years old and
even earlier, actually up until today. Michael spoke to some
of Josh Holly's friends and mentors in the wake of
the Capital riot. He also noticed that many of the
people in Ally's life had only encountered the smooth talking
moderate and not the ruthlessly ambitious hard miner until he
(30:01):
reached the Senate. They've only seen him on his best behavior.
They had a view of him, and they helped him along,
and now they feel deceived, betrayed. They uw some pretty
strong language to describe Holly. Michael argues that the real
Josh Holly has always been hiding in plain sight. You
just have to look back into the past. Before his
days as a charming Stanford grad and pro bono Washington attorney,
(30:25):
Josh Holly grew up in a small city called Lexington
in northwest Missouri. Lexington's about an hour from Kansas city.
It's right on the Missouri River, and if you go
there today, it looks pretty down on its heels. The
area is known even today as a little Dixie. Dixie
is basically synonymous with the Deep South during the Confederacy era,
(30:46):
and as it happens, Lexington, Missouri, before and during the
Civil War, was the center of slavery in Missouri. There
was a lot of slavery in Missouri, and the greatest
concentration of enslaved people happens to have been in Lexington.
This is interesting because if you visit Lexington, Missouri now,
you will find no trace of this history whatsoever. It's
(31:08):
just not something that people talk about. This historical blindness
of the town seems to have imprinted itself on Holly's
own worldview. Josh Holly, when he was fifteen years old
and it started going to private school in Kansas City,
wrote a series of columns for the local Lexington newspaper
called State of the Union. And I was fifteen, I
was playing dungeons and dragons to each his own I
(31:29):
guess anyway, Josh Holly had some heavy hitting opinions for
a fifteen year old son of a bank manager. He
said that affirmative action programs which helped blacks, for example,
who have been subject to discrimination and other people who
have just suffered the overall effects of general discrimination, even
if not directly. He said that affirmative action was a
(31:49):
quote perverted racial spoils system, and he said that Martin
Luther King Jr. The great civil rights leader, would have
been turning over his grave over affirmative action, would have
been repulsed by it. Punchy stuff. But is it in
any way accurate. It's just not true at all. King
clearly favorite of front of action programs, and in fact,
he was specifically asked about these and said, you know,
(32:11):
this was needed to give people some equality, to make
up for all the centuries of racism and for what
happened during the era of slavery and so forth. So
Holly just did not have a proper understanding of that history. Now,
why are we critiquing a newspaper written by a fifteen
year old, even if he is a future U. S. Senator.
The reason is that there's a version of Josh Holly
(32:33):
that has been remarkably consistent throughout his life. This is
a Josh Holly who wrote in defense of the Oklahoma
City bomber Timothy McVeigh he Lambastad the media for stereotyping
militia members like McVeigh as radical right wing pro assault
weapon freaks. This is after McVeigh murdered a hundred and
(32:56):
sixty nine people. This is also the Josh Holly who
made popcorn in anticipation of the bombing of Baghdad during
the Allied invasion of a rat in two thousand three.
And it's a Josh Holly who pushed a lie to
ingratiate himself with millions of Trump voters who might be
looking for a new candidate to send the White House
in four the moderate Republican and all around good fellow
(33:20):
that he inhabited at Stanford, That was only half the story.
Since the election, it's clear which version of himself Josh
Holly has settled into. When Josh Holly cast his vote
to challenge the election results at eight pm on January six,
(33:41):
the blood on the marble floors of the US capital
was practically still wet. Hundreds of police officers and rioters
were seeking medical attention. Four people were already dead. Three
more all police officers would perish in the next forty
eight hours, and things aren't looking any better. For the future,
(34:02):
we can only guess at what further harm is being
stored up by the continued falsehood spread by Holly and
his allies. What is the future in a nation where
almost a third of the population believe that their democracy
is functionally dead. Your guess is as good as mine
on that one. But I can tell you this that
mass illusion serves Josh Holly very well. Hell, it might
(34:23):
even take him to the White House. For the rest
of us, well, for the rest of us, it screws
things up beyond comprehension. I don't know whether it's more
accurate to frame Holly as a symptom or a cause
of our current social ills and the rise of political
violence in the United States. He has certainly played a
role in making those problems worse. But he's also someone
(34:46):
who grew up in a society that the fifteen year
old kids published political rants aimed at pushing fringe agendas.
He's someone who grew up surrounded by people who convinced
him to have sympathy for a man who detonated a
truck bomb next with daycare, and so at the end
of this episode, I'm left thinking that, in some ways,
(35:07):
the story of Josh Holly is the story of the
inevitability of the Capitol riot. In the next episode, we
go to the front line of the mayhem as police
battle rioters, bear spray and bomb threats the guard. He
(35:29):
leans over and he takes a look at the device,
and he recoils immediately and says, holy shit, it's a bomb.
Join me in episode six, Hugs and Kisses
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Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.