Trumpism
PART IV
“Back to the Future” by Barry Blitt
January 21, 2024
Melania’s Ex-BFF is BACK with MORE TROUBLING
News For Entire Trump Family | The Weekend Show
Former friend and aide to Melania Trump, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, joins Anthony Davis to expose the Trump family dynamic during this politically turbulent period as Donald becomes even more extreme in light of his legal troubles and as the country grapples with the threat of dictatorship.
January 26, 2024
Liz Cheney Talks Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell
Being Weak and the 2024 Election
Former Congresswoman and Vice Chair of the January 6th select committee Liz Cheney joins the pod to discuss the dangers of a second Trump term, his chokehold on the Republican party and why she thinks Nikki Haley needs to stay in the GOP primary. Plus, more on Mitch McConnellâs about-face on the bipartisan Senate immigration deal and President Bidenâs endorsement from the United Auto Workers Union.
January 26, 2024
The Far Right In The US And Europe
The Politics Of Hate (2017)
At 16 he became the leader of the Chicago Area Skinheads, later a white supremacist punk band. But when Christian Picciolini started a family, he began questioning his far right views. This timely doc explores a changing Western political climate, chronicling the rise of the far right in the US and Europe, and giving alarming insights into the ways the alt-right movement operates.
PBS
January 30, 2024
Democracy on Trial
In March, 2024 Republican presidential nomination front-runner Trump is scheduled to begin standing trial on federal charges, including conspiracy to defraud the U.S., in connection with efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. He says the charges against him are politically motivated.
âDemocracy on Trialâ traces the road to this unprecedented moment, and examines the implications of the historic criminal case unfolding in the midst of a presidential election year. Drawing on court documents and revelatory interviews with elected officials, former government lawyers, House Select Committee witnesses and former committee staffers, authors and journalists, the documentary reports that the work of the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack provided the groundwork for special counsel Jack Smithâs indictment of Trump and may offer insights into how the trial unfolds.
The documentary chronicles how the committee built its case against Trump and tried to prove his intent, how it chose to present its case to the American public, and criticisms of its work. Key witnesses who testified before the committee and whose firsthand accounts are now evidence in the federal case speak out in the documentary â including Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Georgia election official Gabriel Sterling and former Arizona Speaker of the House Rusty Bowers.
Gripping and illuminating, âDemocracy on Trial,â the newest film from FRONTLINEâs award-winning political team, Michael Kirk, Mike Wiser and Vanessa Fica, also examines how Trump has challenged the case. Trump has pleaded not guilty and made the legal argument, now being reviewed by an appellate court, that he has âabsolute immunityâ from prosecution for his actions while in office.
January 30, 2024
Prosecutor Who TOOK DOWN Trump
BACK for More | Burn The Boats
While serving as the Assistant Attorney General of New York, Tristan Snell prosecuted Trump University, the Trump Organization, and Donald Trump himself. Tristanâs new book, Taking Down Trump, talks about that case and lays out the 12 rules for prosecuting Donald Trump. In this interview, Tristan talks about Trumpâs legal strategy, how he is manipulating the legal system, and his history of lies.
February 4, 2024
The resurrection of Donald Trump
To loyal Trump supporters, their candidate can do no wrong. Donald Trumpâs 2024 run for the White House seems unstoppable despite all the controversies.
Itâs Way Too Easy for a Crook Like Trump
to Pervert Our Legal System
If the law has one standard for the rich and powerful and another for the rest of us, it will be hard for ordinary Americans to maintain their faith in democracy.
Former President Donald Trump leaves the courtroom at the New York State Supreme Court during the civil fraud trial against the Trump Organization, in New York City on January 11.
We once again come to the start of yet another week that could, and by rights should, destroy Donald Trump. This Thursday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case that seeks to bar Trump from the ballot under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Meanwhile, we await word from New York Judge Arthur Engoron, who blew past his self-imposed January 31 deadline for announcing the damages heâll make the former president pay in the Trump Organization fraud case. Finally, we also sit here wondering what is taking that three-judge panel on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals so long in deciding that Trump should not be immune from prosecution.
What does it all add up to? This: We are forced to confront the devastating possibility that our legal and political systems have no way of punishing obviously illegal and immoral behavior when carried out by someone with enormous political and financial power.
We tell ourselves weâre a nation of laws. But what if that is a lie? What if thatâs a fairy tale? What if our system is not only imperfect, as any system designed by human beings is bound to be? What if it is designed so that rich and powerful people â even ones with horrible defense lawyers! â can wait the system out, even pervert it, and prevail?
This is what Donald Trump has done all his adult life. It goes all the way back to 1973, when the Justice Department moved against Trump and his father, Fred, for flagrantly racist renting practices. They did not rent to Black people. That isnât even disputed now. But the Trumps hired Roy Cohn, sued the government for defamation, and settled the suit painlessly two years later without ever having to admit guilt.
That was no aberration. That was our legal system atâpardon the phrase, âwork.â Weâve all seen more instances of this than we can count: A rich person or a corporation rips people off or peddles a product that doesnât work or that even causes people injury or death, and they pay a fine and donât admit guilt. This happens so often that itâs shocking when a wealthy corporate wrongdoer is truly brought to justice and sent to prison. Elizabeth Holmes, I guess. OK, thatâs one.
But when Trump entered the political world, well, I thought, now heâll see that you canât just endlessly get away with it. You canât lie and deny and pay fines and lightly dance on to the next controversy. For law-flouting real estate barons, thereâs always a way to wriggle out. But for law-flouting presidents, surely there are consequences.
There may yet be. Trump has, after all, been indicted four times. He is charged with 91 specific criminal acts. A jury of his peers (it seems rude to these people to consider this gruesome swindler their moral peer, but he is alas their legal peer) just awarded a woman, whom he repeatedly defamed, more than three times the amount of money her lawyer was seeking. And back in 2020, when he was trying to overturn the election, the courts were having none of it, even courts overseen by his own appointees.
So the legal system has some fight in it. But the battle is far from won.
Letâs consider Trumpâs current legal arguments in turn. With respect to the Fourteenth Amendment case, his lawyers contend that the president is not an âofficerâ of the United States. This is, on its face, a joke. Ask 1,000 people in the street if the president is an officer of the United States, and at least 975 of them will say of course he is.
But if you read some tortured defenses of the Trump position, you will see that our Constitution and laws are ambiguousâor perhaps the better word is malleableâenough on the matter that Trumpâs lawyers, in front of friendly judges (and Trump sure has some friends on the Supreme Court), might actually get away with saying that the president of the United States isnât an officer of the United States. (It would set an absolutely staggering precedent, it must be said, for the Supreme Court to decide that the president enjoys the unique power to order an insurrection.)
On the question of immunity, his lawyer, rather infamously, argued at the D.C. Circuit that Trump could, in fact, get away in a court of law with ordering Seal Team 6 to kill a political rival provided the Congress had not impeached and convicted him first. If Congress failed to do so, John Sauer argued, then, no, Trump could not be prosecuted for murder. Why this hypothetical rogue Seal team wouldnât simply also murder any conviction-minded senators is the part of this thought exercise that few have dared to ponder.
Again, this is as crazy-beans as it gets. And again, if you asked 1,000 people whether a president should be able to get away with murder (youâd have to ask it hypothetically, to remove the question of partisan loyalties), the overwhelming majority would say no. Iâd hope everyone would. And yet: Justice Department rulings are apparently malleable enough that this Supreme Court might uphold that logic.
What in the world is taking this three-judge panel so long? Thereâs a lot of speculation on that. Two of the judges are Biden appointees. The third, Karen Henderson, was appointed by George H.W. Bush. She has produced several pro-Trump rulings over the years, including slowing Congressâs access to Trumpâs tax records and joining a Trump judge in a decision, described as âsimply astonishingâ by Voxâs Ian Millhiser, that helped the legal position of Michael Flynn.
I still think, on balance, and most of our nationâs top legal experts think, that the three-judge panel wonât buy Sauerâs argument and that even this Supreme Court will likely uphold the Circuit, allowing all these prosecutions to continue. The Fourteenth Amendment case is far more up in the air. It will be interesting to hear Thursday what kinds of questions John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch in particular ask.
But we are left wondering: What if Trump skates away again? What if, in other words, itâs still 1973 in this country, and he gets away with it? Again: By any commonsensical standard, Trump as president was obviously an officer of the United States. He obviously incited an insurrection. It is obvious that no president should have total immunity from prosecution for anything he does. Into the bargain, he obviously stole classified documents he wasnât entitled to have, he obviously tried to rig the Georgia vote, and he obviously paid Stormy Daniels hush money. And finally, itâs obvious that if he wins, the minute heâs president, heâll nullify all these prosecutions of himself.
When we talk about the failures of American democracy, we talk about the Electoral College, we speak of the unequal Senate, and gerrymandering, and so on. We rarely talk of the law. We should. Americans see all the time that the law cuts deals with rich and powerful people. Is that supposed to make them think we live in a truly democratic society? It makes them think we live in a rigged society, and that on the question of democracy, the law is agnostic.
So, in the nine months between now and Election Day, we will see whether we have a system of laws that is capable of stopping an obvious lawbreaker. If we do, great. We at least live in a nation where the legal class finally rose up and said to one lawless and dangerous man, âEnough. We are stopping you.â And if we donât? Weâll spend the next four yearsâat leastâlearning the full price of the lawâs democratic agnosticism.
February 6, 2024
Trump’s Presidency: The first year as it happened
History, as it happened. A reminder of what happened in Donald Trump’s first year in office. Itâs the reality that millions of Americans struggled to accept. Following a tumultuous campaign filled with chants, sledges and accusations, Donald Trump came out on top and officially became the 45th President of the United states. His campaign was a strong indicator for what was to follow with Trump in the White House as Donald Trump wasted no time in taking action on his many promises.
In this documentary, we relive the first year of the Trump administration, through the 7NEWS team’s coverage of all key moments, with additional new commentary from 7 News anchor Mike Amor, who was the US Bureau Chief reporter during the first year of 45’s reign.
Februray 6, 2024
Is the USA on the Brink of Another Civil War?
Vice president of George Fox Digital, Dr. Brian Doak, speaks with university president Dr. Robin Baker and renowned historian Dr. Allen Guelzo about the American spirit, the removal of Civil War monuments, and the prospect of a major national conflict in light of the 2024 presidential election. Why do we still see Confederate flags flying, what is really behind the erection and removal of Civil War era statues, and are the conditions right for another violent schism in our time?
February 19, 2024
Trump fake elector in Wisconsin describes
how he says he was tricked
Andrew Hitt, who signed a phony electoral certificate for former President Trump in 2020, tells 60 Minutes that he and other Wisconsin Republican electors were tricked.
MARCH 1, 2024 * A JOURNAL FROM AMERICAâS HEARTLAND * Vol. 30, No. 4
An Incurable Disease?
The Mystery of MAGA
How is it possible that people cheer and celebrate the most transparent fraud, the most outrageous liar, the most straitjacket-ready psycho ever visited on the body politic?
By Hal Crowther
Like nearly every self-appointed critic of the American political system, I never imagined that I would still be typing that dread-laden five-letter word in February of 2024. The one that begins with âtâ and ends with âpâ, of course, and it isnât âtulip.â Iâve prayed, Iâve fasted, Iâve made burnt offerings to the neglected god of common sense, a deity so many Americans have left behind. And still the T-word and the man who embodies all its mystery and menace persist.
Arguments against the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump are like arguments against infanticide, or microwaving kittens. When you offer one, and there must be hundreds, you canât conceive of an objection or rebuttal. The case against this creature was closed nearly a decade ago, though more damning evidence seems to turn up every day. The New York Timesâ Michelle Goldberg, not a writer given to heated overstatement, refers to him as a âfreakish madmanâ and an âonrushing nightmare.â Yet indictments for 91 felonies havenât kept him from winning Republican primaries and drawing crowds of passionate believers. One Times headline reads âTrump Tightens Grip on National Psyche.â And another, âTrumpâs Connection With Supporters Has Little Precedent: Victory Reveals a New Depth of Devotion.â
The New York Historical Society
March 18, 2024
Confidence Man with Maggie Haberman // The American Story
How does a man like Donald Trumpâsimultaneously hailed as an all-American hero and condemned as a harbinger of the end of American democracyâbecome not only a cultural phenomenon, but the president of the United States? Maggie Haberman, the New York Times reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of the 45th president, offers insight into his background, his motivations, and the true nature of his personality, not to mention the means by which he gained a seat in the Oval Office.
Maggie Haberman, a senior political correspondent for the New York Times and a political analyst for CNN, is the author of Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. David M. Rubenstein (moderator), co-founder and co-chairman of the Carlyle Group, is the author of How to Invest: Masters on the Craft and the host of History with David Rubenstein on PBS.
DEADLINE | WHITE HOUSE
March 28, 2024
Liz Cheney urges the Supreme Court to
stop aiding Donald Trumpâs delay tactics
Anthony Scaramucci, former Trump White House Communications Director, Charlie Sykes MSNBC Columnist, and Basil Smikle join Nicolle Wallace on Deadline White House with reaction to Liz Cheneyâs most recent comments calling out the conservative Supreme Court for aiding and abetting Donald Trump and his legal teamâs delay tactics by taking up the issue of Presidential Immunity.
March 28, 2024
The Mass Psychology of Trumpism
What explains Donald Trumpâs enduring appeal among his supporters? What drives the intense emotional connection that his most passionate followers feel with the former â and possibly next â president? This question has flummoxed and bedeviled pundits, political scientists, journalists, historians and other observers for the last decade, leading many to the realization that the normal categories of political analysis fall short when it comes to this phenomenon.
In this video essay, the psychologist Dan McAdams ventures a theory: In the minds of Trumpâs most ardent supporters, he is both more and less than a person. âIn the eyes of his supporters, Trump possesses extraordinary powers that are wielded for good and against evil,â McAdams observes. âWho cares if he is flawed? So what if he lacks certain distinctively human qualities? What does it matter that he is rude, authoritarian or even a criminal?â
To explain this apparent paradox, McAdams draws on the research for his book The Strange Case of Donald J. Trump: A Psychological Reckoning (2020). McAdams, the Henry Wade Rogers professor of psychology and professor of human development and social policy at Northwestern University, is a pioneering scholar in the field of ânarrative identityâ theory, or the life-story model of human identity. His other books include The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live By (2006).
This video essay is drawn from McAdamsâ New Lines Magazine article âThe Mass Psychology of Trumpism,â which can be found at newlinesmag.com/argument/the-….
Written & narrated by Dan P. McAdams
Produced by Danny Postel
Edited by Mikey Andreasson
Assistant editor Mindi Roscoe
Sound engineered by Stephen J. Lewis
April 5, 2024
The Antisocial Network: Memes to Mayhem
How did a niche meme-sharing message board become a hotbed for conspiracy theories and dangerous disinformation? This documentary investigates.
April 2024
Jacobâs Dream
MAGA meets the Age of Aquarius
By Frederick Kaufman
Jacob Angeli-Chansley, the man the media has dubbed the QAnon Shaman, had been released from federal custody six weeks before when we met for lunch at a place called Picazzoâs, winner of the Phoenix New Times Best Gluten-Free Restaurant award in 2015. Despite a protracted hunger strike and 317 days isolated in a cell, Jacobâs prison sentence of forty-one months for obstruction of an official proceeding on January 6, 2021, had been shortened owing to good behavior, and he was let out about a year early on supervised release.
It took some doing to get him to sit for an interview, as Jacob is wary of what he calls Operation Mockingbird, an alleged CIA-sponsored effort begun in the Fifties to use mass media to influence public opinion. Jacob believes that people like me are the tools of the Mockingbird operation, of the deep state, international bankers, pharmaceutical cartels, and corporate monarchies that control the world. People like me believe in medicines that are addictive drugs, in food that is poison, in environmentalism that is ecocide, in education that is ignorance, in money that is debt, in objective science that is not objective. âPeople are brainwashed by the elites and their propaganda networks,â he said. âMass hypnosis, bro.â
April 9, 2024
Lying Is What Dictators Do
Straight from the authoritarian playbook, Trump has turned the RNC into a hereditary dictatorship in his quest to swap out the entire GOPâand reality itselfâwith a murderous Christofascist fantasy.
By Brynn Tannehill
One of Donald Trumpâs first acts as president in 2017 was to force Sean Spicer onto the podium to lie about how his inauguration was the best attended and watched ever. It was such an audacious and easily dispelled lieâthere was footage to prove otherwise. But Trumpâs narcissistic ego prevented him from admitting defeat. More so, everything had to be superlativeâthe most popular, the biggest, the best. It was Spicerâs job as his flack to make us understand and accept this. (Spicer paid for this by ritually being humiliated and emasculated in a way that recalls the infamous âMy name is Reekâ scene in Game of Thrones.)
However, Spicer was one man. And now it is a command from above to define reality as whatever Donald Trump says it is, regardless of facts, evidence, or logic. Now Trump, in his bid to run for the White House for a third time, wants the Republican National Committee, which he effectively has taken over, to replace the entire GOP. He swapped the organizationâs chair Ronna McDaniel with his daughter-in-law, Ericâs wife Lara Trump, and longtime Trump loyalist Michael Whatley, and then immediately instituted mass layoffs and began restaffing it with his own people. The goal was clear: Establish the Trump family as a hereditary dictatorship.
This past week, the Washington Post revealed that interviewees for positions at the RNC were asked whether they believed the 2020 Election was stolen. This was the litmus test, so that they would only hire those who would vocally support lies meant to undermine the legitimacy of the United Statesâ government.
If Trump takes power again in 2025 (according to polls, if the election were held today, he would likely easily win the electoral college based on six key swing states), he will spread this command to all of government via Schedule F. This will also allow him to fill all of the top 50,000 spots in government with cronies, ideologues, and sycophants who can be hired and fired at his will.
April 11, 2024
Column: Trump 1.0 made some world
leaders laugh. Trump 2.0 terrifies them
By Jackie Calmes
Not a joke, as Joe Biden might say.
Iâm talking about our country: America is no joke, no matter how many times Donald Trump claims it is.
One of his most obnoxious lies at every rally and in most interviews is his contention that, with Biden as president, a disrespectful world is laughing at us. Trump was at it again last week, at his most recent rally in Green Bay, Wis., claiming the United States is a global laughingstock.
âJoe Biden is not respected and Joe Biden is not fearedâ among the worldâs nations, he told his fawning crowd. But once he, Trump, is reelected, âAmerica will soon be respected again, very quickly respected, like never before.â
Like virtually all Trumpisms, this one is demonstrably false.
âThroughout Donald Trumpâs presidency, publics around the world held the United States in low regard,â the Pew Research Center reported soon after he left office. Its 2020 survey found that among 13 allied nations, the share of people who had a favorable view of America was the lowest it had been in the two decades since Pew began asking the question. Good feelings toward the United States rebounded after Biden took office and remained favorable by a 2-to-1 ratio last year.
Itâs almost laughable, Trumpâs projection of his own unpopularity onto Biden. Except that too many Americans believe him.
As for foreign leaders, theyâre not laughing at the United States or Trump. Theyâre openly fretting that the pro-authoritarian neo-isolationist whose crude credo is âAmerica Firstâ could return to power. Their agita is pretty astounding, really.
They donât respect Trump at all, though they do fear him â the way youâd fear a madman at the nuclear button. President Nixon sought leverage by making foreign counterparts think he was unstable; Trump actually is unstable. Foreign diplomats and some leaders donât even mask their anxiety. They mostly speak anonymously, in case he actually regains power, but they speak nonetheless, ignoring norms against opining about another countryâs election.
Trumpâs former national security advisor John Bolton has said repeatedly that even the autocrats Trump admires â Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un, among others â âthink heâs a laughing fool.â
April 19, 2024
What Did President Trump Do
for 187 Minutes on Jan. 6?
DEMOCRACY ON TRIAL
PART 12 of 13
April 30, 2024
How Far Trump
Would Go
By Eric Cortellessa / Palm Beach, Florida
Donald Trump thinks heâs identified a crucial mistake of his first term: He was too nice.
Weâve been talking for more than an hour on April 12 at his fever-dream palace in Palm Beach. Aides lurk around the perimeter of a gilded dining room overlooking the manicured lawn. When one nudges me to wrap up the interview, I bring up the many former Cabinet officials who refuse to endorse Trump this time. Some have publicly warned that he poses a danger to the Republic. Why should voters trust you, I ask, when some of the people who observed you most closely do not?
As always, Trump punches back, denigrating his former top advisers. But beneath the typical torrent of invective, there is a larger lesson he has taken away. âI let them quit because I have a heart. I donât want to embarrass anybody,â Trump says. âI donât think Iâll do that again. From now on, Iâll fire.â
Six months from the 2024 presidential election, Trump is better positioned to win the White House than at any point in either of his previous campaigns. He leads Joe Biden by slim margins in most polls, including in several of the seven swing states likely to determine the outcome. But I had not come to ask about the election, the disgrace that followed the last one, or how he has become the first formerâand perhaps futureâAmerican President to face a criminal trial. I wanted to know what Trump would do if he wins a second term, to hear his vision for the nation, in his own words.
May 17, 2024
The Affairs and Scandals of Trump’s Pastor
Paula White | Documentary
In a world of faith and flashy lights, megachurches and their pastors sometimes come with mega-drama⌠In Pastor Paula White’s world, alleged marital affairs, bankrupting churches, and using church money to pay for plastic surgery arenât unheard of. As a young girl who lived in a trailer and became a young married mother, she grew up to become a preacher after an affair with the associate-pastor of her church (and not before they ran off together to start their own church). She went on to lead a congregation of 22,000, became a multimillionaire, hosted a Christian TV show, owned a private jet and an 8,000 sq ft. beach-front home. But no matter how high she climbed, betrayal, greed, and multiple scandals have followed Paula her entire career and three marriages. This is the scandalous story and luxurious lifestyle of Pastor Paula White.
Yes, That’s Right: American Fascism
Why waste time debating the extent of Trump’s
fascism when we ought to be fighting it instead?
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âNo, no,â some admonish: âDonât get carried away. Sure, Donald Trump is dangerous, perhaps uniquely so. But ⌠fascist? The need to label him a fascist says more about the labeler than about Trump.â This argument has sprung from certain quarters of the right, which was to be expected, but it has also sprouted from the left, where a point of view has arisen that the âhystericalâ invocation of the f-word is as much a danger as Trump.
We have trouble seeing the hysteria. We chose the cover image, based on a well-known 1932 Hitler campaign poster, for a precise reason: that anyone transported back to 1932 Germany could very, very easily have explained away Herr Hitlerâs excesses and been persuaded that his critics were going overboard. After all, he spent 1932 campaigning, negotiating, doing interviewsâbeing a mostly normal politician. But he and his people vowed all along that they would use the tools of democracy to destroy it, and it was only after he was given power that Germany saw his movementâs full face.
Today, we at The New Republic think we can spend this election year in one of two ways. We can spend it debating whether Trump meets the nine or 17 points that define fascism. Or we can spend it saying, âHeâs damn close enough, and weâd better fight.â
We unreservedly choose the latter course. And so we have assembled herein some of our leading intellectual historians of fascism; a member of the fourth estate who learned firsthand what the Trump lash feels like; a leading expert on civil-military relations; a great Guatemalan American novelist with a deep understanding of immigrantsâ lives; one of our most incisive cultural critics; and a man with all-too-real experience in living under a notorious authoritarian regime. The scenarios they describe are certainly grim. We dare you to say, after reading these pieces, that they are impossible.
June 4, 2024
Vice President Kamala Harris on Protecting
Reproductive Rights, Trump’s Guilty Verdict
& Health Care
June 8, 2024
Trump’s final year as President: Part One
History, as it happened. A reminder of what happened in Donald Trump’s final year as president. In this documentary, we relive the first six months of 2020 under the Trump administration, through the 7NEWS team’s coverage of all key moments.
~~~~~~~~~
Part Two – June 9, 2024
“A Man of Conviction” by John Cuneo
June 19, 2024
Who Will Win America’s Second Civil War?
From April 12, 1861 to April 9, 1865, the U.S. Civil War drenched America in blood, claiming up to 750,000 soldiers’ lives and leaving the South in ruins. Today, 41% of Americans believe another civil war is likely within five years. What would this conflict look like?
July 12, 2024
The Problem With Elon Musk
The Billionaire Whoâs Not Like Other Billionaires
Is Elon Musk a net positive or negative for society? We spoke to people heâs worked with and researched his childhood, past business ventures like Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and X (formerly known as Twitter), and what heâs currently working on to answer this question.
With an assassination attempt on Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024, the U.S. experienced another violent episode in its increasingly polarized politics. Former President Trump, whoâs about to formally become the GOP nominee for president in the 2024 election, survived the attempted assassination when, initial reports said, a bullet grazed his ear. But one rally attendee was killed, more spectators were injured and the suspected gunman is also dead. The Conversationâs politics editor, Naomi Schalit, spoke with University of Massachusetts, Lowell, scholar Arie Perliger after the event. Perliger offered insight from his study of political violence and assassinations. Given the stark political polarization in the U.S., Perliger said, âitâs not a surprise that eventually people engage in violence.â
Schalit: When you heard the news, what was the first thing you thought?
Perliger: The first thing that I thought about is that we were basically one inch from a potential civil war. I think that if, indeed, Donald Trump would have suffered fatal injuries today, the level of violence that we witnessed so far will be nothing in comparison to what would have happened in the next couple of months. I think that would have unleashed a new level of anger, frustration, resentment, hostility that we havenât seen for many, many years in the U.S.
This assassination attempt, at least at this early stage, may validate a strong sense among many Trump supporters and many people on the far right that they are being delegitimized, that they are on the defensive and that there are efforts to basically prevent them from competing in the political process and prevent Trump from returning to the White House.
What weâve just seen, for many of the people on the far right, fits very well into a narrative that theyâve already been constructing and disseminating for the last few months.
Political assassination attempts donât aim only to kill someone. They have a larger goal, donât they?
In many ways, assassination attempts bypass the long process of trying to downgrade and defeat political opponents, when there is a sense that even a long political struggle will not be sufficient. Many perpetrators see assassinations as a tool that will allow them to achieve their political objectives in a very quick, very effective way that doesnât demand a lot of resources or a lot of organization. If we are trying to connect it to what weâve seen today, I think that many people see Trump as a unicorn, as a unique entity, who in many ways really consumed the entire conservative movement. So by removing him, thereâs a sense that that will or may solve the problem.
I think that the conservative movement changed dramatically since 2016, when Trump was first elected, and a lot of the characteristics of Trumpism are actually now fairly popular in different parts of the conservative movement. So even if Trump will decide to retire at some point, I donât think that Trumpism â as a set of populist ideas â will disappear from the GOP. But I can definitely understand why people who see that as a threat will feel that removing Trump can solve all the problems.
In a study of the causes and impacts of political assassination, you wrote that unless electoral processes can address âthe most intense political grievances ⌠electoral competition has the potential to instigate further violence, including the assassinations of political figures.â Is that what you saw in this attempted assassination?
July 15, 2024
RETRIBUTION
PART ONE: THE BATTLE FOR DEMOCRACY
Investigating Trump, Project 2025 and the future
of the United States | Four Corners
There has never been a US president like Donald Trump â and now heâs back, this time with a detailed plan for his second coming.
Nearly four years after he was cast out by voters and accused of encouraging the American people to assault their own democracy with the attack on the US Capitol, the now convicted criminal wants to rebuild the country in his own image.
Ahead of the US election in November, Four Corners reporter Mark Willacy travels to Washington for the first of a special two-part series.
He sits down with White House insiders who witnessed the chaos of Trumpâs first term â some who continue to support his vision, and others Trump now considers âtraitorsâ.
Trump wants to reshape the pillars of American democracy and give himself more power. Willacy goes inside âProject 2025â, the blueprint for a second Trump term and the army of recruits ready to carry out his orders.
Meanwhile strategy, security and defence experts warn of the impact another Trump presidency could have on Americaâs institutions, its democracy, and the rest of the world.
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July 15, 2024
‘Noxious’: See Maddow expose JD Vance’s past
statements about Trump, Jan. 6 and more
Rachel Maddow looks back at the blistering insults JD Vance directed at his now running mate Donald Trump, as well as his newfound MAGA perspective on the January 6 insurrection.
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
July 15, 2024
Rep. Adam Kinzinger On Trump’s Cult-Level Control
Over The Republican Party
Former congressman Adam Kinzinger recalls the events of January 6, 2021 and admits he was surprised to see Donald Trump take total control over the GOP in the runup to the 2024 presidential race. Stick around for two more segments with Rep. Kinzinger.
Segment 2: “They Are Celebrating In Moscow Tonight” – Rep. Kinzinger On Trump Selecting J.D. Vance As VP
Segment 3: “Jan 6 Was Trump’s Last Desperate Move” – Rep. Kinzinger On Trump’s Attempt To Stay In Power After Losing…
July 19, 2024
Preacher, prophet, messiah: Trump cult
takes on religious overtones at RNC
As Christian nationalism grows in strength and influence within the Republican Party, Donald Trump’s cult of personality is shifting toward increasing religiosity with Trump as the central deity. George Conway, president of the Anti-Psychopath PAC, Susan Glasser, staff writer at the New Yorker, and Tressie McMillan Cottom, columnist for the New York Times, discuss with Alex Wagner.
“The Face of Justice” by Anita Kunz
July 23, 2024
Trump: Guilty on all Counts | Full Documentary
Donald Trump faces four criminal cases, with the sentencing for the Hush money scandal taking place on the 11th of July 2024. Just days before the start of the Republican National Convention on the 15th of July where Trump is expected to be formally nominated for president. Although the ex-president continues to claim he is ahead in the polls, the prospect of a jail sentence could really rock his campaign and has warned that the public would reach a breaking point. However, at a time of such high intensity, the prospect of civil unrest and violence could very much rear its ugly head…once again.
Cast
Andrew Wroe
Guy Walters
Matthew Goodwin
Natasha Lindstaedt
Filmmakers
Sarah Findley, Brian Aabech, Jordan Hill
July 26, 2024
Trump Backers Are Talking Up Possible
Civil War
These commentators and GOP state official sound willing to take drastic measures if Trump loses in November.
By Arianna Coghill
Last week, at J.D. Vanceâs first rally as the GOPâs vice presidential nominee, Ohio state Sen. George Lang said that civil war would be necessary if former President Donald Trump does not win the 2024 presidential election.
âI believe wholeheartedly Donald Trump and Butler Countyâs J.D. Vance are the last chance to save our country politically. Iâm afraid if we lose this one, itâs going to take a civil war to save the country, and it will be saved,â Lang said, as the crowd erupted in raucous applause.
Three days later, Lang apologized on X, claiming that the statement âdidnât accurately represent his views.â But while the Ohio legislatorâs statement may not represent his views, it certainly seems to represent those of other Trump supporters.
Since campaigning for the 2024 race began, several MAGA loyalists have openly advocated for political violence in the event the real estate mogul loses the race.
July 29, 2024
A half-million records and one app: The group
behind a massive effort to âcleanâ voter rolls
Police officers in Texas, senior citizens at a nursing home in Pennsylvania, and people who had registered to vote at a Marine base in California are among the thousands of voters whose right to cast a ballot has been needlessly challenged ahead of this Novemberâs election by activists â many of whom have been inspired by conspiracy theories â seeking to prevent voter fraud.
âMy simple right as a voter is being attacked,â said Daniel Moss, a university administrator from Denton County, Texas, whose registration was challenged by one of the activists even though he has lived in the county and voted there for about two decades. âItâs kind of un-American to do that.â
Election officials across the country have been inundated with dubious complaints about inaccurate voter rolls, which have wasted government resources and sapped taxpayer money spent reviewing lists of registered voters that officials say are already carefully maintained, a CNN investigation has found.
One of the main drivers of the fruitless challenges is a conservative Texas-based nonprofit group called True the Vote, an election-monitoring organization that has long peddled debunked voter-fraud theories. The groupâs founder, Catherine Engelbrecht, has called on followers to help clean voter rolls by using an app called IV3 that enables users to research voter data and submit voter-eligibility challenges to local election offices.
August 5, 2024
Even FOX can’t save Trump! Anchors struggle
to stop Trump disaster | Will’s Take
While Donald Trump brags about his own intelligence, he doesn’t have the intelligence to answer questions Fox News anchors directly coach to him. Will Saletan explains.
August 6, 2024
Kamala Harris Picks Minn. Governor & Midwestern
Dad Tim Walz as Running Mate
Michael Kosta gets to know Tim Walz, the Minn. governor Kamala Harris chose as her running mate. While the Trump campaign claims the vice presidential candidate will âunleash hell on earth,â Democrats love his political record and “Midwestern dad af” vibes. Plus, Josh Johnson weighs in on why Walz is the âright type of white guyâ for this race.
August 15, 2024
Trump DUMPED By Evangelicals After Ruthless
New Ad
Evangelicals are finally turning on Trump as his hypocrisy and moral failures push them to rally behind Kamala Harris in a desperate bid to save the GOP from its own self-destruction. Richard Ojeda breaks it down on Rebel HQ.
August 16, 2024
Project 2025 Co-Author Lays Out “Radical Agenda”
for Next Trump Term in Undercover Video
As Donald Trump tries to distance his campaign from Project 2025, those behind the right-wing policy blueprint to remake the U.S. government continue to brag in private about their close ties to the Republican presidential nominee and how they intend to push a radical right-wing agenda in a second Trump administration. In July, Project 2025 co-author Russell Vought met with two people he believed to be relatives of a wealthy conservative donor interested in funding the effort.
In fact, he was meeting with two reporters with the U.K.-based Centre for Climate Reporting as part of an undercover sting captured on video. Over the course of two hours, Vought described Trump’s disavowal of Project 2025 as mere theater and laid out plans for mass deportations, restricting abortion, gutting independent government bureaucracies, using the military against racial justice protesters and more.
The secret plans are “designed to ensure that this kind of radical agenda that the conservative movement has in the U.S. can be implemented from day one,” says Lawrence Carter, founder and director of the Centre for Climate Reporting and one of the reporters who spoke with Vought. “They want to make sure that the mistakes from the first Trump administration, as they see them, where not much got done, are avoided this time around.”
Trumpâs Latest Scheme to Steal the
Election: Let Congress Do It
The ex-president has demanded that Congress insert
âvoter fraudâ measures into a must-pass spending bill.
Speaker Mike Johnson says he agrees.
Get ready. Donald Trump has made good use of the propaganda technique known as the Big Lie 1.0, famously claiming that the 2020 âelection was stolenâ from him. And now heâs preparing to use Big Lie 2.0 to shut down our government this fall, believing itâll hurt the Biden administration and thus the Harris-Walz campaign.
That second weaponâthis Big Lie 2.0âis the false allegation of widespread âvoter fraudâ in America. He intends to use it to try to bring the Biden administration to its knees in the next few weeks. And, as a bonus, if it works, he gets to prevent millions of people, particularly minorities and women, from voting.
Republicans have been using this lie to attack the heart of our democracy right out in the open ever since the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, the year they responded by rolling out âOperation Eagle Eye,â yelling about nonexistent âvoter fraudâ and using it as an excuse to intimidate minority voters in the Goldwater/Johnson race.
In the 60 years since then, with the exception of the past year or two, no major American news media have seriously challenged the Republican âvoter fraudâ lie. Even though for the last few decades Republicans have routinely used it for blocking minority and women voters, and purging voting rolls the way, for example, Governor Brian Kemp and Attorney General Ken Paxton just did in Georgia and Texas, respectively, in preparation for this November.
Which brings us to Trumpâs iteration of Big Lie 2.0 that weâll all be talking about soon.
Last Thursday, he demanded that Republicans insert into must-pass budget legislation thatâll be considered in the next two or three weeks a provision that would demand that every state require absolute proof of citizenship to register to vote. Right now, this is largely confined to red states. âI would shut down the government in a heartbeat if they donât get it and if they donât get it in the bill,â Trump told Monica Crowley on her podcast.
Itâs already a felony in every state for noncitizens to cast a ballot. The simple reality is that thereâs never been a noncitizen âvoter fraudâ problem in Americaâor any other advanced democracyâso thereâs no need for a âsolution.â
What Republicans know, however, is that the lower a person is on the economic ladder, the less likely they are to have kept or have easy access to the kinds of documentation of birth and citizenship necessary to meet the GOPâs antiâvoter fraud registration requirements.
And the poorer a person is, the more likely they are to vote Democratic.
Republicans also know that millions of women are seriously pissed off about the Dobbs decision, particularly in the 20 Republican-controlled states with bans on abortion. This demand for proof of citizenship to prevent âvoter fraudâ is the main way the GOP is now expanding its suppression efforts to women. The National Organization for Women notes: âVoter ID laws have a disproportionately negative effect on women.⌠Roughly 90 percent of women who marry adopt their husbandâs last name. That means that roughly 90 percent of married female voters have a different name on their ID than the one on their birth certificate. An estimated 34 percent of women could be turned away from the polls unless they have precisely the right documents.â
Many women wonât have them, wonât be able to track them down, or canât afford to replace them, so millions will just shrug and go back to their lives, figuring that âjust one less voteâ wonât make that much difference.
Claiming widespread noncitizen âvoter fraudâ is the GOPâs primary go-to strategy to prevent people from voting or even registering to vote, and every day it seems they come up with new ways to exploit it. As Crystal Hill pointed out Wednesday at Democracy Docket, âTexas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) sued one of the stateâs most populous counties to block its plan to mail out over 200,000 voter registration forms to residents, claiming the move will âfacilitate [voter] fraud.ââ
Additionally, the GOP has expanded its campaign against âvoter fraudâ by planning to dispute millions of mail-in votes, particularly in blue cities, through so-called âexact signature match challenges.â
The GOP is recruiting as many as 100,000 people to examine millions of signatures on mail-in ballots, the majority in blue cities, so it can reject ballots that, in the observersâ opinions, donât exactly match signatures and thus could be âfraudulent.â Those ballots will not be counted unless the voters show up at the secretary of stateâs office within a few days of the election to prove that their signature is still theirs.
Expect this âvoter fraudâ Big Lie 2.0 to burst onto the scene over the next few weeks with much Sturm und Drangâand pontificating Republicans on Sunday shows trying to act like Very Serious People as they wring their hands about noncitizens votingâas the media will almost certainly give Trump and the GOP another pass on this monstrous lie when they threaten to shut down our government if they donât get their antiâvoter fraud rider in the budget legislation.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson says he agrees with Trumpâs demands, although he has not yet committed to shutting down the government over the next three weeks: âWe all know, intuitively, that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections,â he cynically lied last week, âbut itâs not been something that is easily provable. We donât have that number.â
When Donald Trump started squealing about the 2020 election being âstolenâ after his wipeout seven-million-vote loss and being crushed in the Electoral College, the media treated Trumpâs Big Lie 1.0 claim like a joke for more than a year. As a result, itâs now an article of faith among over 70 percent of Republicans. That worked for them, so now theyâre trying to do it with âvoter fraud.â
This situation has reached todayâs crisis point because our media has almost entirely ignored the truth about this Republican âvoter fraudâ scam for 60 years.
No democracy anywhere in the world can long survive if its citizens donât believe their votes are legitimately cast and counted. This lie about noncitizen votingâthat the GOP first rolled out in 1964âis now a harpoon pointed right at our elections: what Thomas Paine called âthe beating heartâ of our republic.
If itâs not debunked and destroyed by both the Democratic Party and our national corporate media, it could well signal the end of democracy in America and the beginning of a Putin/OrbĂĄn-style fascist reign.
Itâs beyond time for our media to do their damn job and point out the evil lie of âvoter fraudâ before it succeeds in killing American democracy altogether.
Thom Hartmann is the author of over 30 books. His writings appear daily at The Hartmann Report.
September 6, 2024
Fred Trump III Denounces His Uncle Donald Trump
for Saying Disabled People “Should Just Die”
Democracy Now! is joined by the nephew of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who has endorsed Trump’s Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. Fred Trump III’s new memoir, All In The Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way, shares fresh insights into the Trump family and acts as a platform to advocate for individuals with developmental disabilities.
Fred Trump’s own son William has a rare genetic disorder that causes severe developmental and intellectual disabilities. He says Donald Trump once told him to abandon William, saying, “He doesn’t recognize you. Let him die, and move down to Florida.” After a meeting in the Oval Office about dedicating more resources to people with disabilities, Fred Trump says his uncle said, “Those people, the costs. They should just die.”
“How could one human being say that about any other human being, least of all your grandnephew?” says Fred Trump, who calls on the next president to support disabled Americans.
Sept. 9, 2024
‘This is not an idle threat’: Schiff sounds
alarm on Trump’s threat to jail opponents
Congressman Adam Schiff discusses Trump’s threat to jail opponents if he wins reelection as well as Trump’s delayed sentencing in his New York “hush money” case.
Sept. 11, 2024
In debate, Trump embraced false claims
from the deep corners of the far-right internet
The former president disappointed some allies with how often he ventured into obscure conspiracy theories Tuesday.
By
Former President Donald Trump repeated a broad range of false claims, internet rumors and outlandish conspiracy theories during Tuesday nightâs presidential debate, many of which might have seemed unintelligible without a deep understanding of obscure corners of far-right social media.
It included a variety of baseless claims about abortion, campaign rallies, the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and bribes to government officials â not to mention a sensational rumor about immigrants in Ohio stealing and eating pets. And he denied any shift in his perspective on the 2020 election, falsely claiming there was âso much proofâ that he won it.
While some of the claims may have been familiar dog whistles to people who spend time on fringe message boards, itâs not clear how the outlandish rumors may have landed with everyone else. The debate drew more than 57.5 million viewers, according to ABC, which hosted it.
Late in the debate right before the second break, Trump released a torrent of vague claims alleging corruption in the Biden administration.
Sept. 12, 2024
The Secret Trump Investigation
Nobody is Talking About
Did Egyptâs President el-Sisi try to buy Trumpâs loyalty by sending Trump $10 million? We looked into it and hereâs what we found.
Read the excellent report that inspired this video, by Aaron C. Davis and Carol D. Leonnig for The Washington Post here.
Sept. 17, 2024
75 Worst Things about the Trump Presidency
Donald Trump left office with the lowest approval rating of any president ever. But some people now seem to be suffering from amnesia.
Sept. 18, 2024
Maddow on her ‘profoundly funny’ new
documentary on Trump-Ukraine scandal,
âFrom Russia with Levâ
Rachel Maddow is the executive producer of a new documentary on the Trump-Ukraine plot, âFrom Russia with Lev,â airing this Friday at 9 pm ET on MSNBC. Maddow joins Joy Reid with more.
Sept. 19, 2024
NC Candidate Mark Robinson Gets Exposed
and Trump Reunites with Rudy Giuliani
Ronny Chieng on the North Carolina Republican busted for posting weird comments on a porn site, Rudy Giulianiâs frightening performance at Trumpâs Long Island rally, and the shocking truth behind JD Vance’s cat eating stories. Plus, Troy Iwata joins with the inside scoop on one missing feline.
Sept. 19, 2024
Was Trump’s Presidency Part of Putin’s Plan?
NATO troops amass along Russia’s borders as U.S. officials grapple with Putin’s election meddling. How will a battle that started in cyberspace play out on the ground?
This episode of Cyberwar originally aired in 2017.
September 24, 2024
New Look at Trump’s Most Consequential Day:
Jan 6 Attack on the Capital
Fight Like Hell shows the true story of January 6 as it’s never been seen before. With no narration, commentary, or other âspin,â the film immerses the viewer into the Stop the Steal movement from its origins — long before the 2020 election had even ended.
As President Trump fought the election results in court, see how the Stop the Steal movement fought it in the streets. With original never-seen footage shot by an army combat cinematographer using state-of-the-art cinema cameras, Fight Like Hell is a visceral experience that brings you right into the moment as it happened.
Sept. 24, 2024
You Will Never Look At Elon Musk
The Same Way AgainâŚ
September 24, 2024
One-on-one with Heather Cox Richardson
Cap Times Idea Fest 2024
Heather Cox Richardson is a Boston College history professor whose daily digital essays (âLetters from an Americanâ) that place current political events into historical context have gained a massive national following.
In this keynote Idea Fest session, she talks with fellow historian David Maraniss about the precedents for what we are seeing now in Americaâs political landscape and where we might be headed.
Sept. 24, 2024
Mary Trump: âCruelty Was a Currencyâ in Trump Family
In a busy week for diplomacy, world leaders are weighing up what a second Trump term could mean for the U.S. and the world. To the former president’s niece, Mary Trump, it would spell nothing but bad news for American democracy. Mary Trump joined Michel Martin to discuss her views on the upcoming election and her latest book, Who Could Ever Love You: A Family Memoir.
PBS
THE
CHOICE
2024
HARRIS vs.TRUMP
Premiered Sep 24, 2024 | FRONTLINE investigates the lives and characters of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump as they seek the presidency.
October 1, 2024
Psychiatrists expose Trump’s mental
deterioration at major conference. Part 2
Anthony Davis reports on The World Mental Health Coalition’s major conference ‘THE MORE DANGEROUS STATE OF THE WORLD AND THE NEED FOR FIT LEADERSHIP’ with Dr Bandy Lee and 18 experts.
October 2, 2024
Unmasking the Illusion of Donald Trump
Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig are investigative reporters at the New York Times. Get a copy of their bestselling book, Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Sqaundered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success.
with Glenn Kirschner
October 2, 2024
Jack Smith Lays Out The Sharply Incriminating
Evidence of Trumpâs Democracy-Busting
January 6 Crimes
In anticipation of conducting the litigation the Supreme Court directed her to conduct on the issue of presidential immunity, Judge Tanya Chutkan placed on the public docket Jack Smithâs 165-page motion setting out the crimes of Donald Trump and why he is not immune from prosecution.
Smithâs motion reads like a 165-page opening statement, showing why Trump should never again be allowed to get within a thousand miles of the Oval Office.
Vice President Kamala Harris on
October 9, 2024
October 11, 2024
Fears grow that ‘clown-like’ Trump
could achieve fascist goals despite
gross incompetence
For as long as Donald Trump has been on the political scene, analysts have struggled with how much of his performance to take seriously. But as Election Day races closer and polls remain tight even as Trump rhetoric becomes more extreme and his supporters become more radicalized, more people are realizing that no matter how big a buffoon Trump may be, the risks of him taking power and abusing that power are significant and worrisome.
Charlie Sykes, a former conservative radio host who has now endorsed Kamala Harris, is joined by Susan Glasser, staff writer at the New Yorker, and McKay Coppins, staff writer for the Atlantic and author of Romney: A Reckoning, discuss with Alex Wagner.
October 11, 2024
“The Apprentice”: New Film Opens Despite
Trump’s Attempts to Block Anyone from Seeing It
We speak with the director of “The Apprentice,” which opens today in theaters despite legal threats from the former president. The film looks at how Trump was mentored by Roy Cohn, former chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Red Scare. He went on to represent Trump as he built his New York real estate empire, and “was the person who sort of built Trump, as a person, as a brand, as an identity,” says Abbasi.
October 12, 2024
Trump’s 40-Year Entanglement
with the FBI and Organized Crime
Never has a president so repeatedly and openly demonstrated his disrespect for the law, the Constitution and the democratic institutions of the United States. From Russian interference in the 2016 elections to secret deals with the mafia, Donald Trump has faced many accusations – while he claims to be the victim of an FBI conspiracy.
Despite being implicated in well-documented suspect deals, he was never charged. In fact, Trump and the FBI have been covertly enmeshed for 40 years. But exactly how far did he go to get his way, and to keep agents from investigating?
Using privileged access to FBI officials, this film examines the complex relationship between the United States Intelligence Community and its businessman-turned-President, who plays a double game with the Mafia and the bureau. In the run-up of the next presidential election, this investigation proposes to lay out the inside story of Trumpâs potentially compromised presidency, examined by those who know him best.
Documentary: An American Affair : Trump & the FBI (2020)
Directed by: Fabrizio Calvi & David Carr-Brown
Production: Pumpernickel Films and Allumage
October 15, 2024
Operation Trump: Russian Spies Conquer America
As the 2024 elections approach, Russiaâs interference in American politicsâthrough spies or agents of influenceâremains a troubling reality. Vladimir Putin is counting on Donald Trumpâs victory to weaken Ukraine.
Why does Trump almost always support Russia? Is he compromised? Did he betray during his presidency? And why has the Republican Party shifted its stance toward Russia?
Answering these questions means shedding light on a labyrinthine operation of espionage and manipulation. Still ongoing, it began in the final years of the Cold War. While it remains shrouded in mystery, some hold pieces of the puzzle. A former KGB leader, infiltrated âillegals,â a former Trump advisor, former CIA and FBI officials, and a former prosecutor provide testimony.
This gripping investigative documentary, filmed like a spy thriller, takes us deep into Soviet and later Russian infiltrations in the United States.
October 16, 2024
PolitiFact Founder Explains the âEpidemic of Lyingâ
in American Politics
As Americans gear up for the election, Bill Adair warns of an “epidemic of lying” in U.S. politics — particularly within the Republican Party. Adair joins the show to discuss his new book, Beyond the Big Lie: The Epidemic of Political Lying, Why Republicans Do It More, and How It Could Burn Down Our Democracy. As founder of the fact-checking website PolitiFact, Adair is well placed to account for where disinformation comes from, how it spreads and the danger it poses to democracy.
October 18, 2024
America’s Last Election Part 1: The Big Lie | If You’re Listening
Donald Trump did not win the 2020 presidential election. But if you watched his speech on election night, you wouldnât come away with that understanding. âFrankly,â he said âWe did win this election.â
In the months that followed, the story backing up that claim warped and changed, but at its core was a big lie about a supercomputer called âThe Hammerâ, an imaginary software called âScorecardâ, and a man with a long history of scamming the US government.
And now Donald Trump is on the ballot again. Over five episodes, If Youâre Listening looks at the transition period after the 2020 election, and what it tells us about the plan in 2024.
Part 2: The fake elector plot
Part 3: Trump’s plan to reject results
Part 4: What they did on January 6th
October 18, 2024
Putin & Trump : Russian Influence in U.S. Politics
and the 2024 Election
With the 2024 US presidential elections fast approaching, the Russian grip on the American political right – through spies, semi-spies and agents of influence – in the service of Russia is a pervasive, yet little-known and never really studied reality until now.
The Kremlin sees President Biden as weak, and Russian influence on the United States as strong. This context enabled Putin – among other considerations – to dare to invade Ukraine in February 2022. However, he is counting on Trump’s victory in 2024, which would mean the definitive end of American support for Ukraine, and pave the way for a Russian victory. As proof of this connivance, only 48% of Republican voters now support Ukraine, and more of them prefer Putin to Biden!
How did we reach this level of influence? What is really at stake in the United States? What are the origins of Trump’s positions? How is a part of American political life now under Russia’s sway?
This investigative documentary, shot like a political thriller, narrated and structured like an espionage film, immerses us in the story of Russian infiltration of the United States, and recounts the mafia-like logic of Russia, the evolution of Putinism, the ambitions of the Russian President and his thirst for revenge.
Documentary: Red Shadow Over the White House (2024)
Directed by: Antoine Vitkine
Production: Nilaya Productions
Oct. 18, 2024
“That man needs to go to jail”: Former Trump voters
explain why they could never support him again
Speaking to Salon, Republicans and independents who previously backed Trump explain why they’re now voting blue.
By Charles R. Davis
News Editor
October 20, 2024
Ex-Trump supporters on why they DUMPED TRUMP
— Former Donald Trump supporters, Robert Nix, Damian Salmon and Kyle Sweetser, join David to discuss why they have abandoned Donald Trump, who they are voting for in the 2024 election, whether they are still Republicans and/or conservative, and more.
October 20, 2024
DONALD TRUMP’S PAST REVEALED
*3 Part Marathon*
October 21, 2024
Rachel Maddow interviews Yulia Navalnaya
Watch the full, extended version of Rachel Maddow’s interview with pro-democracy, anti-Putin, anti-corruption activist Yulia Navalnaya, widow of Russian opposition leader and political prisoner Alexei Navalny.
DEADLINE | WHITEHOUSE
October 22, 2024
Donald Trump: âI need the the kind
of generals that Hitler hadâ
Rep. Jim Himes, Democratic Congressman from Connecticut and Miles Taylor, Former Chief of Staff at the Department of Homeland Security, join Nicolle Wallace on Deadline White House with reaction to the stunning reporting from Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic in the waning days of the Trump Presidency — where Trump claims the family of a fallen U.S. soldier tried to ârip him offâ and admired the generals that Adolf Hitler was able to surround himself with. NBC News has not independently verified The Atlanticâs reporting.
ALL IN with Chris Hayes
October 22, 2024
‘Hitler did some good things’: Trump praised
Hitler multiple times, Kelly confirms
In an interview with the New York Times, Trumpâs former chief of staff John Kelly says his former boss told him more than once that ââHitler did some good things, too.ââ Kelly also called Trump a fascist.
October 25, 2024
President TRUMP – Has he Made
America Great Again? | First Term
The World According to Trump | Documentary
Donald Trump has imposed his own pace, provocative style, and agenda, and the world experienced his four years in office at full throttle. Every day a new controversy crowded out the previous one, to the extent that it was hard to grasp what was really at stake. What if the time had come to watch the film once again at a normal speed?
October 25, 2024
Why Trump Is So Dangerous
In this Changing Climate video essay, I examine the disaster of another Trump presidency and the implementation of Project 2025. In short, Trump will build a fossil fascist regime that would not only be catastrophic for oppressed people everywhere, but also lock-in climate chaos for decades to come.
October 26, 2024
Trump: The Art of the Insult
Donald Trump used The Art of the Insult to brand political opponents and bash the media all the way to the White House. Trump dominated the news with a master plan of political incorrectness, hurling insults like Lyin’ Ted and Crooked Hillary.
In this film, Trump emerges as a marketing genius and performance artist who, despite being a Manhattan billionaire, captured the hearts of middle America.
October 28, 2024
“Whoever Wins this Presidential Race,
Weâre Going To See a Lot of Violence” | Shawn Ryan
Shawn Ryan, former Navy SEAL and CIA contractor, joins John to discuss politics, war, and the psychological toll of military service. Shawn reflects on his experiences in conflict zones like Iraq and Afghanistan, the rise of his podcast “The Shawn Ryan Show,” and how it resonated with listeners craving authenticity amidst a media landscape they no longer trust. He shares his personal struggles, including battling alcoholism, and how transparency and vulnerability became central themes on his platform, especially for veterans reintegrating into civilian life.
Shawn and John explore the state of the world today, touching on societal unrest in the US, the dangerous rise of extremism, and the challenges posed by foreign adversaries like China. Shawn also highlights the importance of critical thinking, the influence of money in politics, and the vital need for America to “get its house in order” before it can effectively handle global threats.
October 29, 2024
American Voices 2024
Returning to voters filmed in 2020, this 90-minute documentary explores how their hopes and fears have changed amid another polarizing election season.
âAmerican Voices 2024â begins in 2020, following ordinary Americans with different viewpoints as they dealt with COVID-19 in their communities that spring, responded to George Floydâs murder that summer, and then participated in the election and its aftermath that fall. Then, the documentary revisits those same Americans from a mix of urban, rural and suburban areas as they reflect on the past four tumultuous years, navigate health and economic challenges, and share their perspectives on politics today.
Filmed everywhere from Texas to California; from Virginia to Minnesota; and from Iowa to Oregon, âAmerican Voices 2024â is a journey across geography, race and politics that sheds light on where our country has been â and where it is headed.
October 30, 2024
The Accidental President [4K]
In 2016 it was Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump… The mainstream media pollsters, the political establishment failed to recognize the Trump challenge for what it was — serious. And spent much of the campaign dismissing him and his antics. Pollsters gave Clinton an 83% chance of winning. And then on a night in November 2016, there was a political explosion. And this is how it happened.
October 30, 2024
Nationalism is not patriotism: 3 insights
from Orwell about Trump and the 2024 election
Shortly after Donald Trump was inaugurated as president of the United States in January 2017, George Orwellâs 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four shot to the top of Amazonâs bestseller list. Apparently, lots of people thought Orwell had something relevant to say in that political moment.
Nearly eight years later, the United States once again faces the prospect of a Trump presidency.
In 2016, many Americans were caught off guard by Trumpâs win, leading them to grapple with the potential consequences of a Trump presidency only after he was elected. But this time, more people seem to be thinking about the ramifications of such an outcome in advance.
Oct. 30, 2024
Why Narcissistic Leaders Always Fail (In The End)
October 31, 2024
Fahrenheit 11/9
Michael Moore’s epic Trump-era film, presented in full.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2007 documentary on America’s healthcare system.
January 30, 2024
Stories behind the rich and powerful
named in the Jeffrey Epstein court files
Fire and Fury – The Podcast
What happens when one of the best-sourced reporters in the game catches up with an old friend to share his latest scoop? Every week, we listen in as journalist Michael Wolff (FIRE and FURY: Inside The Trump White House; SEIGE: Trump Under Fire; LANDSLIDE: The Final Days Of The Trump Presidency) speaks with James Truman, former editorial director of CondĂŠ Nast. They dish from inside the Trump campaign and share election intel before the world gets to hear it. Fire and Fury: The Podcast is essential listening for anyone looking to stay one step ahead of the headlines.
October 31, 2024
EPISODE 22: JEFFREY EPSTEIN AND DONALD TRUMP
In this episode, Michael reveals a key source for his reporting on Donald Trump: Jeffrey Epstein. Through behind-the-scenes stories and never-before-heard recordings, Michael recounts Epstein’s candid insights into Trumpâs rise, revealing a world of power plays, unsettling competitions, and twisted allegiances. The conversation unearths Epsteinâs perspective on Trumpâs character, ambition, and his relentless pursuit of power.
Oct. 24, 2024
Former Sports Illustrated swimsuit model says
Trump groped her to show off for Jeffrey Epstein
In her first on-camera interview about the allegation, with CNN Thursday, Stacey Williams offered her most detailed public account of the alleged encounter, which she said occurred outside Trumpâs office in Trump Tower in the early 1990s when she was in her 20s andâŻwas briefly dating Epstein. CNN has spoken to three friends of Williams,âŻwho each said that she told them about the incident with Trump and Epstein, in 2006, in 2015 and in 2018, respectively.
October 31, 2024
Trump’s brain is QUICKLY getting worse,
says psychologist
— Doctor Harry Segal, clinical psychologist and Senior Lecturer in the Psychology Department at Cornell University, as well as the Department of Psychiatry at Cornell Weill Medical School, joins David for a final discussion of the cognitive stakes of the Donald Trump vs Kamala Harris election.
November 1, 2024
Interview with Dr. Greenwood on Trump’s Brain
Top psychologists and doctors, including Dr. Greenwood, sound the alarm on Donald Trump’s dangerous mental diagnosis, which could prove terrifying consequences if elected again.
Nov. 1, 2024
Trump Loves Pretending God Likes Him,
But His Cult Is Far From Christian
Will Saletan breaks down how Donald Trump and his supporters have used the failed assassination attempt on the former president to argue he’s been chosen by God to save America.
Nov. 2, 2024
Donald Trump against the FBI | Full Doc
Nov. 2, 2024
US faces ‘chaos’ if Trump wins 2nd term
A second Donald Trump presidency would paralyse the US government and embolden its global adversaries, says former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum.
The Atlantic writer says the former president would immediately try to shut down the various legal investigations against him if re-elected, triggering widespread resistance.
Nov. 4, 2024
Fascist tendencies in Trump: A comparison to Hitler’s rise
An unsettling question has been dominating the US presidential race: Is Donald Trump a fascist? Some have even compared him to Nazi Adolf Hitler. DWâs Washington Bureau Chief Ines Pohl sat down with Timothy Ryback, historian and author of Take Over: Hitler’s Final Rise to Power.
Nov. 8, 2024
Jon Stewart on Trumpâs Win and
Whatâs Next w/ Heather Cox Richardson
In the aftermath of 2024 election results, Americans are rightfully worried about what a second Trump administration may bring. This week, Jon Stewart is joined by Heather Cox Richardson, author of Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America to explore what our past can teach us about the resiliency of our democratic institutions as we navigate an uncertain future.
“Tightrope” by Barry Blitt
November 11, 2024
Did Donald Trump Actually Win?
2.7 Million Provisional Ballots Were Rejected
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Oct. 18, 2024
VIGILANTES INC.
AMERICA’S NEW VOTE SUPPRESSION HITMEN
Greg Palast’s award-winning documentary, introduced by Martin Sheen and narrated by Rosario Dawson.
Nov. 12, 2024
Is Every Civilization Doomed to Fail?
Gregory S. Aldrete is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of WisconsinâGreen Bay. He earned his PhD in Ancient History from the University of Michigan. He has been honored with numerous awards for his research and teaching and has received five fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is also a prolific scholar whose books include Gestures And Acclamations In Ancient Rome, Daily Life In The Roman City, and The Long Shadow Of Antiquity: What Have The Greeks And Romans Done For Us?
Brace Yourself
Trump 2.0: Here Comes the Night
Well, reality must be faced now. But many courageous Americans are ready to fight.
Nina Burleigh / November 14, 2024
In the summer of 2015, Steve Bannon watched Donald Trump descend the Trump Tower escalator. He exclaimed: âThatâs Hitler!â He meant it, of course, as a compliment.
Bannon would go on to become campaign CEO and a White House staffer, and Trump went on to win his first presidency. He didnât get to do full Hitler. He did spend four years smashing norms, insulting women, finding âfine people on both sidesâ of a Nazi march, committing treason (or at least trying to), operating an open-air kleptocracy, mishandling and lying about a pandemic, inciting a coup, surviving two impeachments, and then grabbing dozens of classified documents on his way out the door.
Now, a majority of the American electorateâover 70 million votersâhas handed supreme power back to this supremely unqualified, disrespectful, convicted fraudster and sexual abuser who likely avoided prison time for conviction in the Stormy Daniels hush money case. And now, his power to fulfill Bannonâs prophecy is even greater than it was during his first term, thanks to a timorous Republican Party and a Supreme Court that has granted him nearly monarchical immunity.
We are headed into uncharted territory as a people and a nation. Trump and his allies have promised to initiate their radical right-wing agenda the minute after he takes his hand off the Bible on Inauguration Day. We are about to experience an unprecedented assault on the Constitution and our civil liberties related to speech and assembly, and an abandonment of norms related to the military, the Justice Department, and government contracting that will make the first term look, well, normal.
The worst-case scenarios are disturbing, to put it mildly. Whose side will the military take, Trumpâs or the peopleâs? Will America come to resemble Argentina in the 1970s and 1980s, the âenemy withinâ rounded up and held without charges? Will women be stopped at state borders and hormone tested for pregnancies? Will Americans watch behind closed curtains as men in military garb, maybe without identification, hustle their neighbors away? Will we hear ofâbut never seeâthe concentration camps, deep in the barren Western deserts, surrounded by razor wire?
For this article, I spoke with former government officials; experts in American law, politics, and national security; and civil society NGOs and activists to get consensus on what to expect, and when and how, and what a resistance movement might look like. The consensus was bleak, but many saw a silver liningâa new coalition of Americans from many points on the political spectrum fighting back against autocracy, newly engaged and energized to create a stronger, more vigorous democracy.
Civil Servants, Migrants, and the âEnemy Withinâ
Many people believe Trump 2.0 will begin with some orders delivered and carried out at lightning speed. Shock and awe. California Representative Jared Huffman, co-founder of the House Democratsâ Stop Project 2025 Task Force, expects action within minutes of Trump taking the oath of office. âThis is not a drill,â Huffman said. âWe havenât been talking about Project 2025 just for campaign fodder. It is truly a wrecking ball aimed at our democracy and our individual rights. I think speed is part of their agenda.â
There are lots of guesses about the order of business on day one, but most agree that Trump will sign orders that include all or some combination of the following:
⢠Reinstitute Schedule F, a job reclassification Trump lackeys put in place at the tail end of his administration to strip federal employees of job protections, and which President Joe Biden rescinded. Maybe for on-brand cruel entertainment, he will announce heâs firing a large number of such employees as well.
⢠Pardon all federally charged and convicted January 6 rioters, effectively putting a paramilitary organization on the streets, answerable to Trump.
⢠Undo Bidenâs climate change protections, and instantly reopen federal lands for resource extraction.
In the following hours, days, or weeks, the administration will likely activate some form of Trumpâs MAGA-pleasing deportation threat. The logistics of rounding up the millions of ânewcomersâ who are âpoisoning the bloodâ of America and moving them are still unclear. A sudden nationwide roundupâa mass kidnappingâwould immediately normalize extreme use of police powers and a domesticated military unlike any in the history of the country. âThere is no doubt that they believe that is the most popular part of their agenda,â said Huffman. âTheyâre going to just rip that Band-Aid off right away. Itâll be an early test of whether all of us understand that this is the first of many steps to take away our democracy. Maybe a lot of people will look the other way. And so, you know, when they come around for the national abortion ban, or for rolling back civil rights, voting rights, you know, gutting other institutions, theyâre well on their way.â
Whether by shock and awe or by frog-boiling, there is no doubt Trump will enact the major Project 2025 priorities.
And the first of those is Schedule F.
The first Trump administration was built around a long-standing Republican goal: to shrink âbig gummint,â as George W. Bush sometimes slurred it. In the first term, this goal was sold to the public as revolutionary, in the words of Steve Bannon: deconstruction of the administrative state.
Project 2025 carries vestiges of that ideology. It calls for dismantling the Department of Education. But in other ways, Trump 2.0 will do the exact opposite of smashing the administrative state. It will expand and weaponize it. Under current law, the president gets more than 4,000 political appointees, and their employment ends when the president leaves office. Schedule F allows the president tens of thousands of political appointments, a mass right-wing burrowing into the âdeep state.â
National Federation of Federal Employees executive director Steve Lenkart said hundreds of civil servants already know they are going to be fired and put the potential number at 100,000. âIt is going to turn into something we have never seen before,â Lenkart said. âItâs hard for people to imagine something getting so bad. I think thereâs a little bit of denial for that reason.â
Anti-Trump conservative Bill Kristol is among the Washington insiders not in denial. He participated in a tabletop exercise earlier this year with dozens of lawyers, judges, and elected officials, gaming out what an unleashed, autocratic president could do. Kristol was on the âred,â MAGA/Trump team. They enacted Trumpâs desired Schedule F changes right away. âPeople who were there playing Congress, and Democratic groups, unions, said, well, weâre not going to let you do that,â he recalled. âWeâre going to fight you in the courts. Meanwhile, youâre busy intimidating huge numbers of civil servants, firing some, and you donât have to fire that many. You donât have to fire all of them. You just have to intimidate all of them, right?â
The plan is already in place: Right-wing operatives associated with the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 have reportedly assembled a list of thousands of MAGAs who filled out a purity test questionnaire. (Agree or disagree? âThe police in America are systemically racist?â âLife has a right to legal protection from conception to natural death.â) Those people will be brought in to replace career civil servants and presumably will be willing to follow orders and break norms and laws for Trump 2.0. For example: a vetted DOJ lawyer or IRS officer who will be willing to open any investigations ordered by the president.
Next up, migrants. Trump sold himself in both his campaigns by blaming migrantsâpeople who are desperate to wash dishes in the middle of the night or bike through New York Cityâs rainy streets delivering meals to the wealthyâfor the problems of white America. He has promised to deport 11 million, and sometimes millions more depending on the day.
No one seems to understand how this mass expulsion would work logistically. Trump has mentioned the military. His in-house xenophobe Stephen Miller has promised to erect way stations in the form of massive detention camps. Immigration lawyers and activists who successfully challenged the Muslim ban in Trumpâs first term have been studying how the plan for mass deportation would work. Most probably, federal agencies assigned to the task will contract with local jails and prisons to house those taken in. Challenging that activity in the states is one way activists and lawyers plan to try to slow the process down.
But even if limited human resources and a lack of infrastructure prevent the mass roundups Trump has been promising, a few harsh crackdowns and Immigration and Customs Enforcement kidnappings of family members will be effective, inspiring panic and fear in marginalized communities. “Nobody has painted a picture of a pathway to effective deportation of 12 million people who live here without documentation, but they can terrorize a lot of communities without doing the whole kit and caboodle,â said Mike Zamore, national director of policy and government affairs at the American Civil Liberties Union. âWhat we are concerned with is not that he gives MAGA rallygoers exactly what he promised, but that he starts in that direction by busting up families and taking people critical to employers and families and puts them out in the middle of the New Mexico desert where no journalist can find them.â
After that: Besides scapegoating migrants, Trump built his political brand threatening to jail his political opponents. In his first campaign, on at least three occasions he threatened to prosecute Barack Obama, and of course Hillary Clinton. The âLock Her Upâ chant premiered at the 2016 Republican convention in Cleveland. In those early days, the threats still shocked us, but over time, they barely blipped into the news. During this second campaign, Trump turned up the volume on the threats, expanding them to potentially thousands of lawyers, political opponents, elections officials.
Trump has claimed he will back up his threats by siccing a domesticated military on the enemy within: âIt should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by the National Guard, or, if really necessary, by the military, because they canât let that happen.â
In Trumpâs first term, researchers at the NYU Law Schoolâbased group Just Security clocked a dozen times Trump tried to prosecute his enemies. And at least four of his targetsâClinton, John Kerry, James Comey, and Andrew McCabeâwere in fact investigated. This fall, The New York Times Magazine interviewed over 50 former officials on the subject of Trump and revenge. Forty-two of them thought it âlikely or very likelyâ that Trump 2.0 would pose a significant threat to the norm of keeping criminal enforcement free of White House influence.
No one knows exactly how this might play out in Trump 2.0. Execute former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley for treason? Jail women who object to the state abortion bans? Put Liz Cheney on trial before a war tribunal? Trump has suggested all of that is on the table and more.
âLook at what [retired Army Lt. Gen.] Mike Flynn and others are saying right now,â said Representative Huffman. âYouâve got these Trump vigilantes out there. Thereâs one guy that runs around the Capitol calling himself the secretary of retribution. People like that are going to be empowered and tolerated if not activated.â
If Trump wins, Flynn recently promised the crowd at a gun festival in Pennsylvania, âKatie, bar the door. Believe me, the gates of hellâmy hellâwill be unleashed.â Flynn shared billing at the Rod of Iron Freedom Festival with Ivan Raiklin, a bald, batshit right-wing agitator who is the aforementioned future âsecretary of retribution.â
The list of people on Trumpâs known retribution list is long. He has said he plans to throw special counsel Jack Smith in jail. He wants to prosecute Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg, who brought the hush money case in which he was convicted. He wants to âlook atâ New York Attorney General Letitia James and Judge Arthur Engoron, who presided over the fraud case for which he was fined hundreds of millions of dollars. He has said he will appoint a prosecutor to go after Biden and his family. He has accused Liz Cheney and Adam Schiff of âtreason.â He has suggested he might again try to investigate Hillary Clinton. He has suggested all members of the House J6 committee be âindicted.â He has threatened to yank the licenses of CBS and ABC.
Exacting this kind of vengeance would require Trump to use the Justice Department as his personal revenge law firm. You might hope thatâs illegal. But the mechanism preventing that kind of collusion between a president and the DOJ is just a norm, not a law. âIf a president were to decide that he wanted to direct the Department of Justice to go after a particular political adversary, he would largely do that through the White House Counselâs Office,â Neil Eggleston, an Obama White House counsel, told Politico recently. He predicted that, under Trump 2.0, one thing to go would be the âno contacts policyâ between the White House and DOJ.
Even before the election, media watchdogs were concerned that a second Trump win would have a chilling effect on the media. Major American newspapers, led by The Washington Post, backed off plans to endorse Harris. The spectacle of Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, performing preemptive obeisance before the incoming strongman was a clear sign of where much of the Fourth Estate was headed.
Whistleblowers and truth-tellers will also be cowed. Matt Gertz is a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a nonprofit progressive media watchdog outfit. He said Trump learned in his first presidency that denigrating individual reporters provoked supporters to menace those journalists, either online or in person. Several Trumpers were brought up on federal criminal charges for threatening journalists or their employers. âI think we could definitely see a recurrence of that sort of individual-level terrorist campaign targeted at individual reporters by Trumpists who believe him when he says that journalists are enemies of the people,â Gertz said. âI think that we are looking at a real and credible threat of Donald Trump and the Republican Party more broadly taking as their example the autocratic government of Viktor Orban.â
In Hungary, Orbanists have tried to use state power to force critical news outlets out of the hands of people who want to use them for real journalism and into the hands of regime allies. Trump has already tested this tactic. In his first term, he had his Justice Department hold up a CNN parent company merger. At one point, he took revenge on The Washington Postâs owner when he slow-walked a Pentagon contract with Amazon web services and jacked up the rates Amazon was paying the U.S. Postal Service.
âThe thing that Donald Trump understands about this is that these news outlets have corporate ownership structures,â Gertz said. âHe understands that the people in charge of the parent companies are responsible to shareholders who might not actually care that much about what are fundamentally small portions of their broad portfolio,â i.e., the news outlets.
There are of course media concerns that thrive under Trump. Fox News is one. Gertz is among the dedicated few who studied Fox during the first term. He clocked numerous examples of Trump taking up issues mentioned on Fox, or even demanding investigations of people who were targeted by Fox. âHundreds and hundreds of his unhinged tweets came as a direct response to what he was seeing on Fox News,â Gertz said. âThey pick his targets. They guide his worldview.â Gertz added: âWe can expect people like Sean Hannity to be functioning as the attorney general of the United States, finding enemies that need federal prosecution.â
Hannity may not be in the running, but it almost goes without saying that the names floating around for AG do not portend business as usual in Washington. They include Jeffrey Clark, who pleaded not guilty after being indicted in Georgia for involvement in efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and who is currently fighting his disbarment in Washington. The most insane possibility (and therefore, with Trump, quite likely) for an attorney general nominee: Florida Judge Aileen Cannon, the relatively inexperienced, MAGA-friendly tool who crushed the purloined classified documents case against Trump. âAs a useful match to the Justice Department deck-stacking, Trump will surround himself with the worst of the worstâfrom Gen. Flynn to Stephen Millerâto make sure that he gets the kind of advice and counsel he wants to hear,â Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginiaâs Center for Politics, predicted. âNo establishment types this go-round. No restraints on his worst instincts. Trump will be careful not to put them in Senate-confirmable posts, just in case there are a few GOP U.S. senators whoâll decide to say ânoâ on occasion.â
Whoâs Going to Stop It?
No powerful white hats are in view on the horizon, riding in to save the day. The white shoe law firms and moderate leaders of the private sector who once could be counted on to assist appear ready to sit this out and let their clients gobble up their tax cuts and regulatory favors. Big business most definitely wonât jump in, greenwashing and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs notwithstanding. Venture capitalists and bankers and CEOs will stand back and stand by. âThere is some consideration about who to engage and make allies of in the private sector,â said Zamore of the ACLU. âFrom [executive director] Anthony Romero on down, we have close relationships with some business leaders. My feeling is they are good allies to have, but they are unreliable allies, and we are not banking on that.â
Representative Huffman agreed. âCorporate America is going to go along with this because Trump will buy them off,â he said. âHeâs going to cut their taxes. And heâs going to do crony capitalism deals. Thatâs why he wants to have complete control over the [Federal Communications Commission] and the [Federal Trade Commission]. He will be able to direct which corporate mergers occur, which enforcement actions happen or donât. Anyone who thinks that venture capitalists or the business community will somehow be the conscience of America to save the day, I mean, thatâs definitely not going to happen.â
Former Republican Reed Galen, a founder of the anti-MAGA Lincoln Project, concurred. âThe banks will all get in line,â he said. âAs I understand it from someone who was close to one of the big bank CEOs who had thought about doing something more vocal, they were told by their board, you know, weâre a regulated entity in a regulated business. And thatâs the last thing in the world we want to be, this guyâs target.â
That leaves the protection of American democracy up to nongovernmental organizations and their lawyers, the federal and maybe state judiciaries, blue state governors, attorneys general and legislators, and citizen activists.
One wall will probably be erected by the attorneys general in blue states. The Democratic Attorneys General Association, or DAGA, consists of 24 state AGs. As an organization, they have been working to put plans in place ahead of a Trump presidency. âItâs really important that we have these badass lawyers that are just looking in a calculated way at how to protect democracy from the state level,â said Zamore.
Trump has already threatened to withhold natural disaster money from blue states, and he will likely try using needed funds to leverage them into enforcing or not objecting to his immigration roundups and doing his bidding in other ways. As president, he can cut off federal transportation and emergency response money. His lawyers will likely lean on the unitary executive theory to support that activity, and the pro-Trump Supreme Court might well uphold it. âStates can try to go it alone and do their part, but a second Trump administration will make that untenable,â Zamore said. âThatâs whatâs so scary about this agenda. Theyâve really thought through all the different moves you make to tear down democracy and install a dictator. Thereâs no other way to say it.â
In May and June, the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law invited 250 participants to take part in five tabletop exercises aimed at gaming out how a Trump presidency might use existing weaknesses in the American legal and constitutional system to implant an autocratic regime.
The results were disheartening at best, and at worst, frightening. The exercises demonstrated repeatedly that an authoritarian in control of the executive branch with little concern for legal limits holds a structural advantage over any lawful effort to restrain him. âNone of the exercises left us sanguine,â the organizer, Bart Gellman, later reported. âParticipants were almost uniformly sobered by the paucity of effective constraints on abuse of power.â
But Gellman and others did see some glimmers of hope. âThere are opportunities to sort of delay, deflect, diminish the damage, move to a different forum, and there are opportunities to enlist public support for the kind of country we have always been, which is not a country subject to a dictator.â
First of all, there may not be enough MAGA-approved applicants who can pass civil service security checks or nomination hearings to fill all the vacancies. âI just donât know that heâs going to be able to get thousands of Stephen Millers,â Gellman said. âAnd friends of the rule of law, friends of democracy are going to have to look for alliances where they can find them with people who see a bright red line and are asked to cross it and donât feel so good about it.â
Even with the Supreme Court Six at the top, lower federal courts can still hold the line. âTrump certainly has sway, tremendous influence, and a fear factor,â said Stuart Gerson, a Republican who worked in the first Bush administration and co-founder of the anti-Trump conservative group Society for the Rule of Law. âBut the people he supports donât necessarily get elected, and judges who he nominates donât necessarily rule in his favor. His batting average is pretty poor among his own nominees. These are all the moving parts, and why I doubt that you can do everything, even if Stephen Miller gets appointed secretary of something or another. You can only do so much.â
Dozens of civil society organizations and hundreds if not thousands of lawyers across the country have prepped for the eventuality of a Trump presidency and are ready to go into court with writs and demands for injunctions, tossing sand in the gears of the Project 2025 machine at every possible turn.
Not everyone expects shock and awe. Georgetown Law professor and former Defense Department official Rosa Brooks thinks that, while Trump might want to do the bull-in-a-china-shop approach right away, his smarter advisers could try a slow rollout to avoid provoking a backlash. âThe smart thing to do is carry it out in dribs and drabs,â Brooks said. âDetain and deport 150,000 migrants, not 15 million. And you donât fire the whole Department of Education at once. You yank security clearances, relocate people who disagree with you to a branch office in Juneau. You have intrusive audits and frivolous criminal investigations of the 10 nonprofits most annoying to you.â
Eventually this harassment creates a self-censoring and chilling effect, she said: âEverybody looks around saying âIâm next.â I am going to go bankrupt; I will have to spend all my time with lawyers. So you decide, I will keep my head down. You get to the same place in the end. Shock and awe generates much more backlash. American people wonât like troops in the streets. If they engage in persecution little by little … that scares me moreâ than the grand fascist gesture.
Norm Eisen, senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, believes the government is too big to completely cave. âI think that if Trump is president, I believe that conventional wisdom is true that he will try to surround himself this time with loyalists who anticipate and obey his whims,â Eisen said. âBut every president is frustrated by the response, or lack thereof, of the government apparatus and bureaucracy. And I personally doubt that there are enough people to fill the thousands and thousands of politically appointed government jobs who are willing to break the law for Trump. Still less the next-level civil service jobs that he wants to make political.â
Eisen also said heâs got faith in judges and courts, citing legal challenges in the first Trump administration, including two court cases against Trump, involving his D.C. hotel income, over potential violations of the Emolument Clause, which forbids federal officials from taking foreign gifts. Trump ran out the clock on that, when the Supreme Court mooted lower court decisions allowing the cases to proceed, since Trump was out of office. By the way, the hotel is now a Waldorf-Astoria and no longer Trumpâs, so at least he canât execute that little bit of graft.
Eisen predicts Trumpâs impunityâleveraging renewed political ascendance with a crypto company for personal gain, for exampleâwill create a âtoxic cocktailâ that will draw immense legal action: âHeâs doubling down, so you can expect the legal pushback to double down.â
The ACLU is among the NGOs that have spent months preparing for a Trump 2.0. Its playbook is detailed âdown to the hour after the victory is announcedâ and includes the transition period and the administrationâs first 100 days, Zamore said. Broadly, the four-part plan involves litigation; preparing an oversight agenda for the House, assuming it goes blue; partnering with blue states and cities that have proâcivil rights political leaders; and mobilizing and organizing for mass actions. One node of resistance is a unified defense by blue states. âIf one governor takes a stand, itâs worth something. But if 10 stand together, itâs really powerful,â Zamore said.
Journalist and activist Anne-Christine DâAdesky, a founder of the nonprofit Stop the Coup 2025, has been working with a broad coalition of activists and researchers trying to educate citizens about and prepare them for the Trump agenda and show these employers, teachers, activists, students, and others how to protect themselves and their communities. She takes an optimistic long view. âItâs simple enough to follow Project 2025 to know how it can unfold, combined with what is needed to secure power Ă la Orban,â she said. âWhat isnât in the script is the opposition to crackdown. Thatâs the interesting part. AIDS politicized a generation and gave us ACT UP. Trump 2.0 could do much more.â DâAdesky predicted street and other protest actions would ultimately prevail: âWhenever you have a clear enemy, everyone unites.â
But street protests could be exactly what Trump needs to call for emergency military action. âThe American people donât like anything that looks like bad behavior,â said Rosa Brooks. âThe natural impulse on the left is to get out on the streets. But with agents provocateurs, it will be very easy to have them spun as riots. The courts have ruled that if the executive says itâs an emergency, itâs an emergency. If you have an administration that doesnât care about norms of law and is willing to break the law, it becomes very dangerous very quickly.â
Violence is the defining undercurrent of Trump and MAGA. And as we know, Trump has suggested he may use the military to crack heads in a second term. Fortunately, the military is limited from involvement in domestic affairs. But thereâs a work-around: a law dating to the early nineteenth century, called the Insurrection Act, that allows the president to deploy the military to assist with domestic law enforcement. It has been invoked numerous times in U.S. historyâby Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, by presidents on behalf of employers in labor disputes, and by Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy to desegregate schools in the South. It was last invoked in 1992, when the state of California asked for help during the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles.
Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU, told The New York Times this summer that the nonprofit expects Trump to be drawn to the authoritarian âtheatricsâ of dispatching troops into Democratic cities, which he and Fox have smeared as hotbeds of criminal activity for years. The rationale will always be chaos incited by the left. âWe are in the process of the second American revolution, which will remain bloodless, if the left allows it to be,â Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts said during the campaign.
âI think thereâs every reason to believe the Insurrection Act will be invoked early on,â Representative Huffman said. âItâll be used to stop protests. It may be used to weaponize the Department of Justice against political opponents.â
Stuart Gerson said the Insurrection Act is so vague that anything is possible. âWould a nationalized military operation respond to illegal orders?â Gerson wondered. âItâs easy to envision really horrible things occurring. We have a history, a very unfortunate history of attempts to round up immigrants and deport them.â
James Goodwin of the D.C.-based nonprofit Center for Progressive Reform has been working with Congress and networking with other nonprofits. Since Project 2025 was released late last year, other progressive organizations have had time to look for potential plaintiffs and gather resources to pay for litigation. âIf there is a silver lining, people are learning what the administrative state is and does,â Goodwin said. âBecause of it, planes land safely, drinking water is safe.â
DâAdesky also sees a silver lining: âWe will see more and more engagement by Americans in the defense of our system, which will give us a stronger system. I anticipate a lot of fresh protest. Point is, autocracy is never only bad, as there is a counterresponse. Yin-yang.â
Maybe so, in the long run. But itâs the short run that rightly has a lot of people eyeing Saskatchewan real estate. For his part, Representative Huffman believes that, in the short term, âweâre screwed.â But when that reality sinks in, he thinks the American people will, perhaps, wake up. âI think the only thing that saves us is a mass shift in public opinion in favor of democracy and checks and balances. I hope the American people are up for that. We are going to have to decide whether weâre a democracy or not. And then fight back.â
Nina Burleigh is a contributing editor and author, most recently, of the novel Zero Visibility Possible.
Nov. 14, 2024
‘Worst of the worst’: Go inside El Salvadorâs
fortress prison for gang members
We get rare, exclusive access inside El Salvadorâs Cecot prison, where some of the countryâs most notorious gang members are held, isolated from the rest of society. Join us as David Culver tours the controversial high-security facility with El Salvadorâs prison officials, capturing the tight security, packed cells, and firsthand accounts from inmates.
With Cecot likely to receive more criminal migrants from the U.S. under President-elect Trumpâs immigration plan, the prison has become a focal point in El Salvadorâs crackdown on gangs. While critics say the prisonâs strict control and isolation of inmates is a violation of human rights, many locals see it as essential in keeping brutal violence from seeping back into society.
November 15, 2024
America’s Last Election Part 5:
The one thing Trump demands of his new cabinet
Donald Trump is bringing together his cabinet, from RFK to Matt Gaetz to Elon Musk to Vivek Ramaswamy. The one thing he is prioritising above all else is loyalty.
The President has learnt from his last term in the White House where senior leaders in his administration refused to follow through on his orders.
The story of his interactions with the likes of James Comey, Mark Milley and Mark Esper are a warning for Trump.
This time around, he is determined to Make America Great Again and he is setting up his administration to make that happen.
November 16, 2024
Top Harvard Intelligence Expert: “This is the
Golden Age of Disinformation” | Open Book
Calder Walton is a world-leading expert on intelligence, national security, and geopolitics â a scholar at Harvard Universityâs Kennedy School of Government. Read his wonderful book Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West.
November 16, 2024
“Donald is absolutely crazy,” says his biographer
David Cay Johnston is a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology and author of The Making of Donald Trump.
November 21, 2024
Heather Cox Richardson
Today, former Florida representative Matt Gaetz withdrew his name from consideration for the office of attorney general. He did so shortly after CNN told him that they were going to report that the House Ethics Committee had been told there were witnesses to yet another sexual encounter between Gaetz and a minor in 2017. There was already evidence that he had sent more than $10,000 to two women who later testified in sexual misconduct investigations. The notes explaining the payments said things like: âLove you,â âBeing my friend,â âBeing awesome,â and âflight + extra 4 u.â
Trump transition spokesperson Alex Pfeiffer told Will Steakin of ABC News that discussions of Gaetzâs payments âare meant to undermine the mandate from the people to reform the Justice Department.â
Gaetzâs withdrawal turns attention to Trumpâs pick for secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth. As host of the weekend edition of Fox & Friends, Hegseth has no relevant experience to run a crucial United States government department, let alone one that oversees close to 3 million personnel and a budget of more than $800 billion.
According to Heath Druzin of the Idaho Capital Sun, Hegseth has close ties to an Idaho Christian nationalist church that wants to turn the United States into a theocracy.
Jonathan Chait of The Atlantic did a deep dive into Hegsethâs recent books and concluded that Hegseth âconsiders himself to be at war with basically everybody to Trumpâs left, and it is by no means clear that he means war metaphorically.â Hegsethâs books suggest he thinks that everything that does not support the MAGA worldview is âMarxist,â including voters choosing Democrats at the voting booth. He calls for the âcategorical defeat of the Leftâ and says that without its âutter annihilation,â âAmerica cannot, and will not, survive.â
November 22, 2024
PROJECT 2025: Trump’s REAL Plan All Along
We Should Have Known
Mary Trump exposes the terrifying reality of Project 2025 – the extremist blueprint Trump denied but is already implementing. Watch as his administration executes the playbook’s core principles: mass deportations, military purges, and the dismantling of public education. From targeting reproductive rights to eliminating a million federal jobs, the plan reveals exactly how to prepare for what’s coming.
November 23, 2024
Ex-Republican predicts “Fascism” and “Chaos”
in Trump 2nd term
— Steve Schmidt, renowned American political strategist, commentator, and founder of The Warning, joins David to discuss the aftermath and consequences of the 2024 election.
November – December 2024 Issue
The Bureaucrat Who Could Make
Trump’s Authoritarian Dreams
Real
Russ Vought has a plan to take presidential power to new heights.
By Isabela Dias
Our November+December issue investigates the Christian nationalist movement that aspires to take over government at all levels, from school boards and state legislatures to Congress and the Supreme Court. Read the series of stories here.
In the waning days of the Trump presidency, Russell Vought, the outgoing director of the Office of Management and Budget, had a request.
After years in Washington, DC, soaking in the minutiae of policy, Vought had come to both know and loathe the bureaucracy. A rare voice in an administration committed to âdraining the swampâ who had actual Beltway experience, he found in the Trump era he could put his expertise to use.
On November 20, 2020, Vought wrote to the head of the Office of Personnel Management for approval to reclassify dozens of career civil servant jobs within his agency. A few weeks before the 2020 election, President Donald Trump signed an executive order creating a new category of at-will employeesâso-called Schedule F positionsâwhich would be exempt from the rules designed to protect civil servants from partisan hatchetmen.
Despite Trumpâs loss, Vought pushed to recategorize scores of OMB roles. To an outsider, this might have seemed like a technical adjustment. But in practice, reassignment would have stripped 415 employeesâ68 percent of the agencyâs personnelâof work protections, effectively making it easier for political appointees to fire them. Vought called it âanother step to make Washington accountable to the American people.â
In the end, Vought couldnât get it done by inauguration. But this combination of lofty public rhetoric and ruthless behind-the-scenes gamesmanship has become his trademark. By the tail end of Trumpâs turbulent four years in the White House, the OMB director had turned into one of the presidentâs most trusted and obsequious officialsâan acolyte with a knack for making the half-formed schemes from his boss achievable.
As Trump runs for a second term, Voughtâs years of faithful service havenât gone unnoticed; his name has been widely floated for chief of staff, and he is a key policy adviser. One of the masterminds behind Project 2025âthe Heritage Foundationâs presidential transition blueprint to overhaul the executive branch and usher in an ultraconservative agendaâVought, an avowed Christian nationalist, is the man best positioned to realize Trumpâs visions.
PBS
Nov. 26, 2024
China, the U.S. & the Rise of Xi Jinping
The complex, contentious U.S.-China relationship is a high-profile issue President-elect Donald Trump will face in his second term. FRONTLINEâs timely investigation traces Chinaâs emergence as one of the worldâs wealthiest and most repressive countries, and the role of its longtime president, Xi Jinping.
Nov. 27, 2024
Chris Hayes: Remember the last time a country
fooled around and found out?
âJust like the Tories and Liz Truss in London two years ago, Donald Trump told us what he plans to do. And just like then, the critics have said what the devastating results will be. Now we are about to enter the âfinding outâ phase of the story,â says Chris Hayes on Trumpâs economic plans.
Nov. 29, 2024
INFURIATING Clip Shows Just How Little
the Truth Matters to Trump | Will’s Take
Will Saletan breaks down how Donald Trump pathologically lies, using a story Trump tells about CNN’s Van Jones as a prime example.
December 2, 2024
“Instrument of Vengeance”: Mehdi Hasan on
How Trump & Kash Patel Could Weaponize
FBI Against Critics
We speak with journalist Mehdi Hasan, founder and editor-in-chief of Zeteo, about the incoming U.S. administration and President-elect Donald Trump’s picks for key roles, including lawyer Kash Patel to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Trump reportedly considered Patel for FBI deputy director during his first term but dropped the idea after pushback from within his own administration. Hasan describes Patel as a “toady” whose threats against political opponents and journalists should be disqualifying, but that he aligns with Trump’s goals of further politicizing the FBI. “He wants to use it as an instrument of vengeance.”
December 4, 2024
America’s Lonely Future: David Frum on
Trump’s “Predatory” Foreign Policy
With Trump’s inauguration on the horizon, conversations continue about the impact of the President-elect’s policies both at home and abroad. David Frum is a political commentator and former speechwriter for President George W. Bush. In his latest piece for The Atlantic, âAmerica’s Lonely Future,” Frum warns that the U.S. could become a global bully. He joins Walter Isaacson to discuss.
Dec. 20, 2024
Why Democrats can’t get over the grief
of losing to Donald Trump
A party without a leader is hopeless
By Chauncey DeVega
Senior Writer
Following their trouncing by Donald Trump and the MAGA movement in the 2024 election, Democrats continue to plod through the stages of grief, vacillating between denial, anger and bargaining. This behavior is increasingly taking the form of self-soothing talk among its leadership, consultant and media class that their defeat in the 2024 election was not as extreme and dire as it first appeared (Trump won the popular vote and the Electoral College; the Republicans now control both chambers of Congress) and that a big rebuild and reassessment of the party and its strategy, messaging and leadership are not necessary.
MSNBC Highlights
December 23, 2024
Americans Are FLEEING to These 10 Countries Because of Trump.
Escape Plan: Discover the top 10 countries Americans are fleeing to in 2024! From Costa Rica’s “Pura Vida” lifestyle to Japan’s strict social rules, we’re exploring the most popular destinations for Americans looking to start fresh abroad.
Ready to trade your American zip code for an international address? We break down the real deal on living in these countries — from Portugal’s golden visa program to Canada’s point-based system. Plus, get the inside scoop on visa requirements, cost of living, and what daily life is really like in each destination.
Dec. 24, 2024
‘Pay-to-pray’: Trump reportedly charging supporters
$100,000 to attend church service with him
By Carl Gibson
The day before his inauguration, President-elect Donald Trump will reportedly be attending an interfaith prayer service in Washington D.C. His wealthiest supporters can also attend â if they write or solicit a big enough check.
That’s according to a recent report in Religion News Service (RNS), which published promotional material from Trump’s inaugural committee showing a list of different tiers of “benefits” depending on how much a donor gives. On Saturday, January 18, donors can get tickets to a “Make America Great Again Victory Rally,” a Cabinet reception and a dinner with Vice President-elect JD Vance. And on Sunday, January 19, donors who give $100,000 or raise $200,000 can get two tickets to the “One America, One Light Sunday Service.” RNS reporter Jack Jenkins described it as a “pay-to-pray” event.
THE WEIRD NEW
NORMAL OF DONALD
TRUMP IN 2024
Radical revisionism is a strong contender for the theme
of this disruptive year, in which some unique property
of political alchemy managed to transform a defeated
and disgraced ex-President into a perfectly electable
Republican candidate.
By Susan B. Glasser
December 26, 2024
WELCOME TO THE DONALD!
Welcome to the forum of choice for The President
of The United States, Donald Trump!
Be advised this forum is for serious supporters of
President Trump. We have discussions, memes,
AMAs, and more. We are not politically correct.
December 27, 2024
WASHINGTON WEEK with The Atlantic
George Packer is known far and wide for his penetrating analysis of American history and American politics. Across his distinguished career, Packer has reported from war zones and countries in turmoil around the world. This week, Jeffrey Goldberg and Packer focus on turmoil at home to make sense of this year and Americaâs future.
Dec. 28, 2024
How Empires Fall and Why the US is Next
Every empire falls, no matter how long they reigned and how far their rule stretched. So is the empire weâre living under today – the US Empire – also crumbling?
There are three symptoms of its impending demise that we can see from looking to the past.
Jan. 6, 2025
Rep. Jamie Raskin – Jan. 6 & Reevaluating
Democratsâ Priorities
âWeâre going to be standing up every single day for the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the freedom of the people.â Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland joins Jon Stewart from Washington D.C. to discuss the countryâs future following the certification of Donald Trumpâs 2024 election win.
As the newly-elected ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, he weighs in on Democratic priorities moving forward, engaging young voters through the Democracy Summer project, his friendship with Rep. Lauren Boebert, and positive memories from the day after the 2021 insurrection.
Jan. 7, 2025
Chris Hayes: Zuckerberg and tech execs cozying
up to Trump is chillingâbut ‘very clarifying’
January 8, 2025
Donald Trump holds a bizarre and disturbing
press conference at Mar-a-Lago
Jan. 8, 2025
“We did not discuss that”: Trump spoke to Alito
before asking SCOTUS to intervene in hush money case
Justice Alito admits he spoke to Trump before the filing,
but denies they discussed Supreme Court business
By Alex Galbraith
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito spoke with Donald Trump mere hours before he filed a request for the court to intervene in his New York hush-money case.
The president-elect’s legal team filed an emergency application to the highest court on Wednesday, asking the justices to intervene ahead of Trump’s upcoming sentencing hearing. The filing asked the court to act to “prevent grave injustice and harm to the institution of the Presidency.” Though Alito admitted to speaking with the president-elect on Tuesday, he said they did not discuss his case.
“William Levi, one of my former law clerks, asked me to take a call from President-elect Trump regarding his qualifications to serve in a government position,” Alito told ABC News. “We did not discuss the emergency application he filed today, and indeed, I was not even aware at the time of our conversation that such an application would be filed… We also did not discuss any other matter that is pending or might in the future come before the Supreme Court or any past Supreme Court decisions involving the president-elect.”
Trump was found guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in May of last year. After several months of delays, Trump was ordered to a sentencing hearing by New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan. Barring intervention from other courts, Trump will be sentenced on Jan. 10.
Merchan has telegraphed that he has no intention of sentencing Trump to jail time or fines. In his order, he shared that the court would not “impose any sentence of incarceration” and floated the idea of an “unconditional discharge,” a sentence that comes with no consequences. That did not stop Trump from raging against Merchan and calling for him to be disbarred.
“There has never been a President who was so evilly and illegally treated as I. Corrupt Democrat judges and prosecutors have gone against a political opponent of a President, ME, at levels of injustice never seen before,” he wrote on Truth Social earlier this month. “Corrupt judges or judges so blinded by their hatred of me … are making a mockery of the United States Judicial System, and the World is watching in disgust.”
Jan. 10, 2025
Rachel Maddow on Pam Bondi: Five things to know
about Trump’s (second) pick for attorney general
How much will Americans get to know about the people Donald Trump is choosing to run the U.S. government? In the absence of any real vetting the way it’s usually done, Rachel Maddow presents a Rachel Maddow Show Public Servant Announcement to hopefully help fill that gap.
In this episode, Rachel takes a closer look at Trump’s choice for attorney general, Pam Bondi, who has been working closely with Trump, despite not being given a role in his first administration, showing commitment to his causes, including the prosecution of his political opponents. While Bondi is not highly regarded for her abilities, she does benefit from comparison to Trump’s first choice for attorney general, former Rep. Matt Gaetz.
Jan. 12, 2025
Interview with FBI Director
FBI Director Christopher Wray, who’s stepping down before President-elect Donald Trump takes office, sits down with Scott Pelley to discuss the Bureau’s future, and the threats America faces.
January 12, 2025
How global autocrats will OWN Trump
— Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer prize winning historian and writer for The Atlantic, joins David to discuss her book Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World.
Jan. 14, 2025
Mary Trump: My uncle is out for revenge
Speaking to Andrew Marr, Mary Trump said: “Donald thrives in division, he’s a chaos agent, and he will use the most horrific tragedy or crisis of humanity to his benefit. He will exploit human tragedy to divide us against each other and weaken his perceived enemies. Gavin Newsom was just doing his job and minding his own business. It’s Donald Trump who launched baseless attacks against the Governor and other officials in California and who has been threatening to make aid to California conditional, which is just absurd.”
Mary Trump also discussed Elon Musk, the next administration, and democracy.
January 14, 2025
White Nationalism, Sexual Assault & Corruption:
Pete Hegseth Faces Senate Confirmation
The confirmation hearing for President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for defense secretary, former Fox News host and military veteran Pete Hegseth, begins today amid backlash over his history of sexual assault, misusing funds in his previous positions, and various violations committed while under the influence of alcohol.
Hegseth was also one of 12 National Guard members removed as guards for President Biden’s 2021 inauguration over possible extremist ties. He has tattoos associated with the white supremacist and neo-Nazi movements, including what’s known as a Jerusalem cross, a symbol used by Christian nationalists. If Hegseth is confirmed, “the Trump administration would stand to gain a loyalist,” says reporter Alice Herman, who is covering Hegseth in The Guardian.
January 15, 2025
Pam Bondi and Adam Schiff clash
At today’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) questioned former Florida AG Pam Bondi, President-elect Trump’s nominee for Attorney General.
January 16, 2025
Trump’s Return Echoes Rome’s Fall: Is America Next?
Will Trump make America fall like Ancient Rome? Thom Hartmann reveals how Ancient Romeâs democratic collapse set the stage for Americaâs current crisis⌠Trump’s second inauguration.
Jan. 17, 2025
What’s with Trump’s obsession
with Greenland? | About That
U.S. president-elect Donald Trump has long been fascinated with owning and controlling Greenland, spanning from his interest in buying the country in 2019, to his recent refusal to rule out taking it by military force.
Andrew Chang explores four potential reasons why Trump calls ownership of Greenland ‘an absolute necessity.’
January 17, 2025
PBS News Weekly: Trumpâs incoming
cabinet under the spotlight
In his final days in office, President Joe Biden reflected back on his presidency in a speech to the nation, while his successorâs administration began to take shape through confirmation hearings. This week, we take a close look at the hearings, the upcoming presidential transition and the legacy Biden will leave behind after 50 years in public service.
Jan. 17, 2025
‘Alarming’: RFK Jr. sought to stop vaccinations
In May 2021, just six months after the rollout of the Covid vaccine, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tried to stop all coronavirus vaccinations in the U.S., the New York Times reports. Sen. Ed Markey joins Chris Hayes to discuss that and more.
January 17, 2025
Heather Cox Richardson
In his final address to the nation last night, President Joe Biden issued a warning that âan oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.â
It is not exactly news that there is dramatic economic inequality in the United States. Economists call the period from 1933 to 1981 the âGreat Compression,â for it marked a time when business regulation, progressive taxation, strong unions, and a basic social safety net compressed both wealth and income levels in the United States. Every income group in the U.S. improved its economic standing.
That period ended in 1981, when the U.S. entered a period economists have dubbed the âGreat Divergence.â Between 1981 and 2021, deregulation, tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, the offshoring of manufacturing, and the weakening of unions moved $50 trillion from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%.
Biden tried to address this growing inequality by bringing back manufacturing, fostering competition, increasing oversight of business, and shoring up the safety net by getting Congress to pass a lawâthe Inflation Reduction Actâthat enabled Medicare to negotiate drug prices for seniors with the pharmaceutical industry, capping insulin at $35 for seniors, for example. His policies worked, primarily by creating full employment which enabled those at the bottom of the economy to move to higher-paying jobs. During Bidenâs term, the gap between the 90th income percentile and the 10th income percentile fell by 25%.
But Donald Trump convinced voters hurt by the inflation that stalked the country after the coronavirus pandemic shutdown that he would bring prices down and protect ordinary Americans from the Democratic âeliteâ that he said didnât care about them. Then, as soon as he was elected, he turned for advice and support to one of the richest men in the world, Elon Musk, who had invested more than $250 million in Trumpâs campaign.
January 18, 2025
The rise of the ultra-right in the US
How has the ultra-right made it to the heart of American politics? By gradually occupying positions of power in politics, the judiciary and the media and steadily expanding its sphere of influence. Adherents have been bolstered by Trumpâs 2024 election victory.
The tightening of abortion laws, the 2021 storming of the Capitol, a flare-up in racist violence: The US far-right has never been more powerful and visible than it is today – and thatâs not just due to Donald Trump. The ultra-right has managed to gain a foothold at the very heart of US politics.
As part of a strategy to win the 2024 election, it was ready to create a social divide similar to that of the secessionist wars, plunge the country into chaos and cause democracy to totter. The triumph of the radical right is the outcome of a well-thought-out strategy set in motion more than 40 years ago by a conservative minority thirsty for power. And this group has pushed through its agenda under the nose of the world.
Today, we can see how successful its strategy was: The ultra-right has gained control of the key centers of power, a process accelerated on all levels by Donald Trump. With his help, the ultra-right now has control of the Supreme Court. Its advance continues unabated, with Trumpâs election victory marking an interim high point.
