Impeach Barr
Hey you guys, did you hear – we’re living in a burgeoning authoritarian state! Much like we have been for the last four years! This week we discuss the delayed revelations of the punditry, what’s behind their unwillingness to state the obvious for so long, and ponder how long their clarity will last until collective amnesia kicks in again. More ominously, we examine the continued annihilation of the court system under Trump’s Roy Cohn reincarnation, Bill Barr.
Elizabeth Warren:
I know everybody wants to talk about the horse race but the thing that is really getting to me right now is what's going on over at the Justice Department and the whole notion that we have people in our Justice Department resigning because Donald Trump's inappropriate influence and the attorney general overturning sentencing of Donald Trump's cronies right in front of our eyes. We're watching a descent into authoritarianism and this just seems like a moment to me everybody should be speaking out. Presidential candidates should be speaking up, people around this country should be speaking up. We can't have this.
Speaker 2:
Last night I think I said on air that the Washington Post says democracy dies in darkness. It actually doesn't, it does on television, it dies right under the lights of the bright of day. This is the attack on the institutions of justice.
Elizabeth Warren:
That's right and with people not doing something. I mean understand right now we should all be calling for the attorney general to resign. What Barr has done should mean that we are demanding a resignation and if that guy won't resign then the House should start impeachment proceedings against him.
Sarah Kendzior:
I'm Sarah Kendzior, the author of the bestselling essay collection The View from Flyover Country and the upcoming book Hiding in Plain Sight.
Andrea Chalupa:
I'm Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker and the writer and producer of the upcoming journalistic thriller Mr. Jones.
Sarah Kendzior:
And this is Gaslit Nation. A podcast covering corruption in the Trump Administration and rising autocracy around the world and we have been doing this podcast on rising autocracy for a year and a half. So yeah. Welcome to the show, in more ways than one. So Trump's so-called acquittal in the sham Senate trial has promoted yet another round of pundits and officials realizing that we are in a burgeoning authoritarian state.
Sarah Kendzior:
We have been through this before. These rounds of media revelations usually last about 48 hours before everyone gets distracted by some minor controversy and reverts back to denial. For those of you who crave a comprehensive and honest account of where we are and how we got there check out our prior 75 episodes of Gaslit Nation on this topic.
Sarah Kendzior:
We have been warning of all the scenarios that came to pass as well as tracking it in real-time. We also have transcripts online at Gaslitnation.com for those who would rather read our horrifying history than listen. I want to stress that we were not alone in predicting this or in observing the obvious. It's hard not to predict authoritarianism when a proto dictator openly announces his autocratic ambitions and it's hard not to spot a criminal when that criminal is constantly confessing to his own crimes.
Sarah Kendzior:
So what you really need to examine here is complicity by members of Congress, state officials in the mainstream media. Other people saw the exact same things Andrea and I saw. They chose to lie about it and we chose to call it out as it was, regardless of the danger that that put us in. The agendas of those who chose to lie differ. Some were craven careerists, some were criminal accomplices and some were simply cowards.
Sarah Kendzior:
But in the end, they all contributed to the demise of our democracy and that was a choice they made. They chose to lie, deny, delay and obfuscate. They chose that knowingly so remember that in the midst of this horrific moment in history when so many rights and resources are being stripped away that you still have a choice. You have your conscience. You have a choice of whether to honor your own principles or to betray your integrity.
Sarah Kendzior:
You have the choice of whether to help others more vulnerable than yourself or whether to conform to the dictates of the cruel and powerful. You have the choice of what kind of person you want to be. You have your individuality and your morality and you should never surrender that. You've now seen what happens when others do. So Andrea, thoughts? It's an authoritarian state if you haven't heard.
Andrea Chalupa:
Yeah so, yeah here we are. I want to tell people who are listening I know everything seems incredibly scary right now if you've been paying close attention as many of our listeners have and yes it is what it is and it's possibly even worse than what it is and Sarah and I are going to go through breaking down the latest terror show coming out of Trump's White House.
Andrea Chalupa:
As a reminder that as bad as things are, guess what? They can always get worse. If that's true that's not on us, we're not inventing that, that is just a fact and we'll break that down in this episode. Just so you're aware we're not doing that to scare you, we're doing that simply to prepare you and I want to just share an inspiring story that I've lived through in recent years which is an important reminder to why passion matters and fighting for what you believe in matters.
Andrea Chalupa:
And by doing so you find your people, you find your community that's going to sustain you in the urgent work we desperately need everybody to be engaging in right now. Do not wait, as Congresswoman Barbara Lee, the moral voice in Congress said on this show, "Do not wait until 2020 November to stop Trump. Start now.” Start now, find your community get engaged with your community, strengthen your community and start now to stop Donald Trump in November 2020. To stop an Ivanka Trump presidency, to stop a Don Junior presidency because that is the name of the game.
Andrea Chalupa:
And I'm telling you, in talking to other journalists who follow all this closely and when I tell them you know the end game is to make Ivanka Trump the first woman president and to keep the Trump legacy going they're shocked. Like, "Don't say that oh my God don't say that." So even people who follow this closely don't fully understand that the times they are a-changing and we're up against actual authoritarianism. Yes, of course, it can happen here.
Andrea Chalupa:
So one country it's happened in historically speaking and one country that lately in recent history has been resisting this far-right take over is France and I want to share what I hope is an inspiring story because I learned a lot from it myself and it helped energize my work that I'm doing. So back, I don't know when this was, maybe 2017 or so, I happened to be in Paris and I was getting ready to go on set for the production of my film, Mr. Jones, which is a story very much about today.
Andrea Chalupa:
It takes place in 1933 right at the rise of Hitler which everyone was underestimating at the time as shown in the film and as well as Stalin and it's about a real-life Welsh journalist who risked his life and career to expose Stalin's genocide famine in Ukraine that deliberately killed millions. And major journalists of the day in the Western press including Walter Duranty of the New York Times helped cover it up and got away with it.
Andrea Chalupa:
It's a horrible story, it's a tragic story, but ultimately there is a silver lining to that story so I encourage you all to see that film, Mr. Jones. It's out in the U.K. right now and it's coming to the U.S. and Canada in April. So when I was getting ready to go into production on that film as the screenwriter and producer I physically wanted to get into the world of my film before even heading on set.
Andrea Chalupa:
So being in Paris at this time, I think in late 2017, there is a book by the American historian, Timothy Snyder. Now, you know Tim Snyder because we talk a lot about his work. We've told you all to go check out On Tyranny, Lessons from the 20th Century and How to Resist Authoritarianism. So Tim Snyder's a mainstream historian but here in this little random bookstore in France, in Paris, there was a Tim Snyder book prominently displayed which was bootleg Tim Snyder.
Andrea Chalupa:
It was a random book that most people have never heard of and it was called The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569 to 1999 and I point that out that here in Paris they prominently displayed an obscure Tim Snyder book because that is very French and I thought that was so funny. And then during this week in Paris, I also visited a phono museum which is just all those old-style record players from the 20s and 30s.
Andrea Chalupa:
There was a man that's absolutely passionate about old school record players and keeps a massive collection of them and even took me into some random private collection that's not even displayed in his own personal museum to show me the good stuff. Like this was a Labyrinth of old record players and this man was just so passionate.
Andrea Chalupa:
So what I'm telling you is, is that the intellectualism on display in Paris and just all these little eccentric characters are living their passion out loud. Whether it's for an old school record player or jazz music, I was just completely eating at this buffet like crazy, just enjoying it even though I personally did not have to be there.
Andrea Chalupa:
Me as a screenwriter and producer I had a team of people, like our production designer who was doing all that work for us. Looking at the history and the times on how to recreate the sets for the film I chose to be there. I chose to nerd out, I chose to follow my passion. I chose to immerse myself in that creativity and to find people like me that are just as nerdy and passionate about this stuff.
Andrea Chalupa:
And amazingly I just found out that my little film about genocide which has gotten a limited release in markets like the U.K. and North America is going to be shown in 130 theaters across France including a dozen theaters in Paris. So that's massive. My husband is from Paris and when he found that out he was blown away. That's a massive release for a film like this.
Andrea Chalupa:
So I am just so honored and thrilled that my work is being recognized so far in France. It has a big home there in France, they're welcoming it with open arms. It's a country where freedom of expression is very much part of their culture. There's a wonderful feminist group from Ukraine, the Topless Feminists known as FEMEN. They take their shirts off and they disrupt Davos, they disrupt Putin.
Andrea Chalupa:
They fight against all kinds of human rights abuses and they put their bodies on the line and they started in Ukraine and their international headquarters is in Paris and it's in Paris for a reason and I've visited their trainings and so forth. So I'm honored that Mr. Jones is part of France's long history of freedom of thought and creativity and expression which is what this film stands for.
Andrea Chalupa:
And so I'm sharing this story with you because I'm thrilled about this discovery and very honored by it and also it's just a reminder that that same passion and creativity that artists have, that is the same passion and creativity that's required for fighting for your country. It's the same and in all my experiences with activism, like when a group of us random strangers on Twitter got together and launched the March for Truth.
Andrea Chalupa:
Demanding accountability in the Russia investigation a bunch of artists came to our rescue like Javier Nunez who played Hamilton in the Broadway show in New York. Jay Smith Cameron who plays Jerry on Succession. Those guys were instrumental in making the March for Truth a huge success and they brought all their artist friends into it.
Andrea Chalupa:
So the reason why you see so many artists as activists is because that same passion you need for your art, and that same creativity, that is what we need right now to save our country. So please, passionate eccentrics of the world, nerds, whomps, all of you, we need you to unleash your inner beast, let it out now.
Andrea Chalupa:
If you need a place to start, go to the Gaslit Nation action guide on gaslitnationpod.com. This is why we always say why art matters because it does. We need our oxygen tanks more than ever and you need to breathe deep into who you are and your community and you guys need to fight like hell right now because the survival of our democracy literally and urgently depends on it.
Sarah Kendzior:
People need to find something else that sustains them kind of beyond just the sheer political fight whether it's your family, your community, your art, your creativity. You know find something else to keep you going because if you're immersed in this hell hole 24/7 it is very easy to kind of burn yourself out, to lose perspective and so on.
Sarah Kendzior:
Remember what you're fighting for. Not just that you're fighting but what are you fighting for? What do you value? What do you want to see? If you can hold onto that vision of the future then it's a lot easier to keep going for the long haul and this is a long haul fight.
Sarah Kendzior:
So on that note, speaking of the long haul, Bill Barr the master of the long game, the Iran Contra cleanup guy who has reemerged in the Trump White House to be probably the greatest threat of this administration is back to his old tricks, newly emboldened after Trump's sham acquittal and no one is doing anything about it.
Sarah Kendzior:
So despite calls from legal experts and ordinary citizens alike, the House is refusing to impeach Bill Barr which is unfortunately in keeping with Nancy Pelosi's lackluster impeachment strategy. According to a recent interview with Ralph Nader who was a consultant to legal teams working on impeachment, the majority of House representatives who worked on impeachment wanted to impeach Trump on far more articles than the two that were actually named and the sole reason they could not do so was Pelosi's refusal.
Sarah Kendzior:
So now Nadler, Schiff, and others sought a rigorous impeachment. They sought real accountability and they were shot down. And so now the House is going through the hell of inept leadership yet again as Pelosi deems impeaching Barr to be not worth it much in the same way she initially deemed impeaching Trump as not worth it. Even though Barr is a profound threat to our country, possibly even a greater threat than Trump.
Sarah Kendzior:
Last week Barr interfered in the sentencing of Roger Stone in a move that showcased the loss of independence in the courts and prompted four career prosecutors to resign in protest. This corrupt intervention by Barr shouldn't have surprised people. Roger Stone is a key player in this transnational crime syndicate going all the way back to the early 1980s.
Sarah Kendzior:
Like Trump, he was a pupil of mafia lawyer Roy Cohn and he long ago embraced Cohn's corrupt and brutal tactics while devoting decades of his life to building up Trump as a presidential candidate. We did an episode in January 2019 called “Roger Stone: Democracy's Undertaker” that describes Stone's long criminal history and how he uses the media to try to hide under this image of a lovable yet reckless trickster.
Sarah Kendzior:
In reality, Roger Stone is extremely dangerous as well as powerful and Barr is seeking to protect him. They are the Deep State that they claim to rally against. Barr is also seeking to protect Michael Flynn and prevent him from facing punishment much in the way Barr's lackey Robert Mueller did in late 2018 when he overruled a judge's sentencing much to the shock of that judge who had deemed Flynn a traitor and was horrified by the severity of his crimes in the lack of punishment.
Sarah Kendzior:
So meanwhile over 2,000 former DOJ employees have now called for Barr's resignation. These former DOJ employees noted that because they have little expectation that Barr will actually resign, I quote, "It falls to the department's career officials to take appropriate action to uphold their oaths of office and defend non-partisan apolitical justice. The rule of law and the survival of our republic demand nothing less."
Sarah Kendzior:
After that, the Federal Judges Association called an emergency meeting to address Barr's intervention in the Stone case and in other cases involving Trump's inner circle. This was an unprecedented move for this group which has over 1,100 members. And so it's obviously very good that both of these legal groups are doing this and we applaud them and we are on their side.
Sarah Kendzior:
But it's really something they should have done much earlier. Like before Barr was confirmed. Barr's entire record was in the public domain. Going back to his days as the Iran-Contra cleanup guy, and he literally auditioned for the job by penning a long letter promising to persecute anyone who sought justice in the Russia probe and defending Trump regardless of the legality.
Sarah Kendzior:
The law never mattered to Barr, power did, and he was very clear about that the whole time. People simply refused to see what was right in front of them. And finally, there is also likely an element of fear. Most folks seem to have forgotten this but back in 2016, the American Bar Association did a study of how Trump abuses the legal system to intimidate his opponents into silence with NDA's, threats and excessive litigation among the tactics he employs.
Sarah Kendzior:
The American Bar Association then went on to self censor their own paper out of fear that Trump would sue them. That incident should have served as a warning that the legal system would not hold under Trump. But it was largely ignored by the media, possibly because they feared commenting on it would lead to excessive litigation as well. We were headed toward authoritarianism long before Trump even took office.
Andrea Chalupa:
So remember when we thought it couldn't get any worse than Jeff Sessions as attorney general? Jeff Sessions who was so extreme that he had Stephen Miller who is a 4chan internet troll in human form. Stephen Miller was the communications director for Jeff Sessions when Jeff Sessions was a Senator. That's how extreme Sessions and Miller was.
Andrea Chalupa:
Jeff Sessions was so extreme he gave us Stephen Miller okay let’s just put it that way. And we thought it couldn't get any worse than that and along comes William Barr the Iran-Contra coverup guy. The Roy Cohn for President Donald Trump and his family. If it can get worse than Sessions it can always get worse than Barr, it could always get worse than a President Trump because once they start normalizing their corruption to this level, and we got here again because so much of the Republican-driven corruption in this country was normalized to begin with.
Andrea Chalupa:
George W. Bush not being impeached and George W. Bush and Dick Cheney being free to walk around even though they committed war crimes and so forth. And just this revolving door of corruption and pundits on TV just praising these guys and praising William Barr when he was coming in as the "Oh good I can breathe a sigh of relief because William Barr cleans up nice, he's so respectable he's a white man in a suit." Whereas Jeff Sessions wore his Far Right-ness like a baseball mascot.
Sarah Kendzior:
His Klan robes.
Andrea Chalupa:
Yeah exactly. And so I want to read now just to get us up to date on the specifics here of what we're up against and what this all means and where we're headed next. So from the New York Times now I'm reading, "When more than 1,100 former federal prosecutors and justice department officials called on attorney general William P. Barr to step down after he intervened last week to lower the justice department's sentencing recommendation for president Trump's longtime friend Roger Stone they also urged current government employees to report any signs of unethical behavior at the justice department to the agency's inspector general and to Congress."
Andrea Chalupa:
And they quote the letter, "Each of us strongly condemns President Trump's and attorney general Barr's interference in the fair administration of justice." The former justice department lawyers who came from across the political spectrum wrote, "those actions" they said, "Require Mr. Barr to resign." And then the article goes to point out that after prosecutors on Monday recommended a prison sentence for up to nine years for Mr. Stone who was convicted of obstructing a Congressional inquiry, Mr. Trump lashed out at federal law enforcement.
Andrea Chalupa:
Senior officials at the department including Mr. Barr overrode the recommendation the next day with a more lenient one. Immediately prompting accusations of political interference and the four lawyers on the Stone case abruptly withdrew in protest.
Andrea Chalupa:
All right, so you know what's really interesting here? I know we're back to deja vu, Sarah, where Gaslit Nation again is calling for impeachment way ahead of the opposition party even doing so largely. And we could take one of our impeach Trump episodes from early 2019 and simply replace Barr with every time we say Trump and we could run that. It'd be just as useful today.
Andrea Chalupa:
But I have to say it's amazing that it doesn't get pointed out on cable news hardly anywhere that the Republican Party–put Nancy Pelosi aside and her clear lack of will at this point of impeaching Barr and that's something that we could definitely change. Definitely change just like we did when we came to impeaching Trump. But put that aside for a moment.
Andrea Chalupa:
My God, why aren't people pointing out that the Republican Party is the party of cowards? They can't stand up to some humpty dumpty orange menace who just wants to snuff down McDonald's and scream at Fox and Friends on TV all day? Who's totally incompetent, who doesn't read, who can barely put together sentences when he has to make a public statement. Who's got this massive slurring issue.
Andrea Chalupa:
This is who they're terrified of. This is who the Republicans are scared of and they fall in line. So William Barr is certainly being an ideologue, certainly shares the world view of this Kremlin clown car. But at the same time, this has just gone way too far to the point where they can't even hold their own anymore. Like they're absolute cowards and servants to Trump.
Andrea Chalupa:
And certainly, you could say corruption is an industry and they're all making money so really they just have really horrible jobs. They're getting handsomely compensated, they're staying in power and so forth but you do have to point out the absolute cowardice of the Republican Party despite whatever handouts they're getting in return for their utter lack of moral courage.
Andrea Chalupa:
In addition to that, I want to point out that it's really amazing how autocrats and wannabe autocrats go to great lengths to use the system itself to justify its actions. So I'm going to read from Marcy Wheeler and her great deep dive into William Barr's coverup and we're going to link to this in the show notes because it's absolutely worth reading just to see how the sausage is made in an autocrat power grab/coverup.
Andrea Chalupa:
It reminds me so much of how Putin now is busy trying to secure dying in power. Putin is rearranging his own government so he can die in power. He went to such great lengths to do this that he tried to politically absorb Belarus as a country so that Russia and Belarus would unite as one country and he would have been justified in a new constitution that would then make him the head of that new country.
Andrea Chalupa:
That was what Kremlin watchers were pointing out and that was such a desperate move to die in power by Putin likely that even the people in Belarus were protesting and for once their dictator was on the side of the people. And the dictator was like, "No thanks, I'm happy just being the dictator to Belarus. I don't want to be a dictator stuck under you." So that fell through.
Andrea Chalupa:
So Putin had to reorganize his government because that's what autocrats do. They use the system itself to legitimize and normalize their crimes. That's why they have these sham elections. Putin doesn't need to hold elections every year when he just steals them but they do it anyway to legitimize it.
Andrea Chalupa:
And keep that in mind as you hear Marcy Wheeler now on Barr's coverup. And I'm quoting from her great piece which we'll link at the top of our show notes. "But Parnas has insinuated that a sudden arrest on October 9th." And that's Lev Parnas of course. "Was an attempt to keep him silent. Barr visited the SDNY that day and subsequently visited Rupert Murdoch at his home." Interesting. “SDNY showed unusual concern for the privacy of third parties as Parnas tried to share more information with the House Intelligence Committee and Bill Barr has not recused in spite of a clear conflict in a request from Parnas."
Andrea Chalupa:
So I'll pause there. What the hell is Barr doing meeting with puppetmaster Rupert Murdoch? Because as we keep pointing out we need laws in place to prevent abusive power in the media. Rupert Murdoch built a media empire around the globe by bulldozing over media regulations and now we're trapped in his propaganda prison here in the U.S. as well as in the U.K.
Andrea Chalupa:
Marcy Wheeler goes on here. She points out that the DOJ prevents a full investigation of the Ukraine complaint. "Barr and his DOJ engaged in multiple acts of obstruction of the Ukraine complaint. First Barr did not recuse from a complaint mentioning him by name, then knowing that Barr was personally implicated DOJ did not conduct a full assessment of the whistleblower complaint which would have identified a tie to the SDNY investigation of Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. Then OLC invented an excuse not to share a whistleblower complaint with Congress which resulted in a significant delay and almost led Ukraine to make concessions to obtain aid."
Andrea Chalupa:
Do you understand that Barr's coverup almost forced Ukraine out on its own to do Trump's bidding in exchange for much-needed aid so their soldiers stopped being killed by Putin's invasion? Putin who helped bring Trump to power. Then Marcy goes on, "The DOJ did not share a whistleblower complaint with FEC as required by memorandum of notification." Finally, "DOJ made a comment claiming Trump was exonerated. Precisely the abuse speaking about ongoing investigations that Jim Comey got fired for." So the rules only apply to us, they do not apply to the autocrat and that is how the sausage gets made.
Sarah Kendzior:
This shows the weakening of the legal system, the weakening of the judiciary which has always been the strongest bulwark against autocracy in any case where a country goes from being a democracy into an autocracy and it was something that we warned about early. This is why we warned people to not have too much faith in the Mueller probe if the Mueller probe was not going to move swiftly.
Sarah Kendzior:
Because what happens is that time becomes the enemy. So you have courts that are packed, you have judges that are threatened. You have agencies that are purged, you have lackeys taking their place and then you have people like Barr. These deeply corrupt institutionalists and that's not a contradiction in terms. He was an institutionalist and he was covering up crimes for the time that he served in office consistently across his entire life.
Sarah Kendzior:
And what happens is people get so caught up in the image and in the title and in the idea that this person could serve as the attorney general twice and that no one is going to challenge him. Challenge his fundamental legitimacy as somebody whose job it is to uphold the law. They think, of course, you're the attorney general, that's what you do.
Sarah Kendzior:
That is never what he has done. He has been immersed in Republican criminality for several decades and has been kind of lurking at the surface of various offenses and before you mentioned how the GOP has coward to Trump despite Trump looking ridiculous. Despite Trump looking last week like the orange Teletubby son in a photo there are these moments where yes, okay there must be incredible humiliation for this of all people to become the dictator. He's not even a badass dictator. But that of course is-
Andrea Chalupa:
I want a sexier dictator. This is America damn it. We invented the action movie, I demand a more suitable dictator. If we're going to go down I want to go down under some svelte.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yeah some heft, some look.
Andrea Chalupa:
Yeah. Yeah. It might as well be a dapper Nazi than an out of shape Nazi.
Sarah Kendzior:
He is very American though I think in the way that he deceives people and especially deceives this kind of snotty high brow media into thinking that he's not a threat and this is what the GOP has been doing for a long time. Like when you mentioned before about how we've had these recurring crises where there is never accountability for those who committed the crimes.
Sarah Kendzior:
And so you see the same people recurring again and again. You see Watergate, GOP, Iran-Contra, GOP. The 9/11 aftermath, again GOP, War in Iraq based on false pretenses by the GOP. The 2008 financial collapse, GOP. What happens sometimes like in the latter case you get a Democratic president who comes in after this as Obama did and he gets the blame for what Bush and his administration actually did.
Sarah Kendzior:
But this is a very consistent pattern over the last 40 years where you're literally seeing the same people. You see Roger Stone all the way back to Watergate. Roger Stone who has a giant tattoo of Nixon on his back that will hopefully be seen in a jailhouse though I don't really have a hope for that anymore.
Sarah Kendzior:
You see Bill Barr being written about in 1992 by people like Bill Safire. People who were hardcore conservatives and yet they were out warning everyone, like stay the fuck away from Bill Barr, Bill Barr is crazy, I'm paraphrasing Bill Safire here. You know, Bill Barr is fucking nuts, he's a criminal, he's covering shit up, he's making the rest of us look bad, he's bringing the whole operation down holy shit.
Sarah Kendzior:
I mean that's basically what it is although that's also wrapped up in this well-mannered veneer. So everyone should have seen this coming and everyone should have recognized this as deeply scary. You know Bill Barr and Trump are two sides of the same coin.
Sarah Kendzior:
You get Trump as the flamboyant clownish buffoonish asshole basically and then you get Bill Barr as the slick institutionalist who people like Ben Wittes and the Lawfare blog will go and swoon about and say how wonderful they are until they do the very Bill Barr things that Bill Barr is programmed to do which is to be a crime machine, which is to cover up the dirty work of criminals.
Sarah Kendzior:
And it's gross. The whole system is disgusting. That is indeed the swamp. When Trump said there was a swamp he wasn't lying about that. All the people I just mentioned are in that swamp but Trump is in that swamp too and all Trump did was take the swamp and make it a moat and put it around the White House and have it protect his family and their criminal interests and that's it.
Andrea Chalupa:
And we want to just clarify we're not fat-shaming anyone here. We're not fat-shaming the President of the United States. We're shaming specifically just how physically, mentally, emotionally Trump is unfit to be in office. You personally can be in any shape, size you want, we all have that right. Donald Trump specifically is somebody that has shown us again and again that he is mentally unfit to be in office.
Andrea Chalupa:
He is somebody who fat shames other people who shames other people for what they look like for anything. For any tiny little thing perceived or real and yet he is somebody who is just physically repulsive to look at. I simply cannot look at this person anymore. His utter lack of character is physically manifested like Jabba the Hut in who he is as an individual. So I just wanted to clarify that.
Andrea Chalupa:
And in terms of finally becoming mainstream that yes this is authoritarianism, women and people of color, women of color have been calling this out since the beginning. The Black Lives Matter movement was about calling out police state violence. As we always point out in the show, black people in America, Native Americans in America, have always been on the forefront of confronting the strain of authoritarianism. Has always been a part of our country's history because we were built on centuries of the Holocaust of slavery itself.
Andrea Chalupa:
It's just gotten to the point where now white people including affluent white people are impacted. Including the DOJ and members of the DOJ and FBI like Andy McCabe and others. Those people were normally cloistered from the strain of authoritarianism that's always ran through our history and now they're not. And that's what's changed things. That's what's changed the game. It's gotten so bad that white people are impacted.
Andrea Chalupa:
One of the best commentaries on the lenient Paul Manafort sentencing was somebody wrote on Twitter, "Now you understand white people how the justice system works. If you’re rich and white you can get away with it no matter how many lives you destroy." And now we're looking at the possibility of Manafort even being pardoned right? So with Stone nearly getting off here which is such a Roger Stone dark magic trick to pull off, who do you think is next? Manafort.
Andrea Chalupa:
And then he'll be free to commit more crimes as Putin's political operative. He'll dye his hair again that'll be probably one of the first things he does when he gets out of prison and he'll get his suit on and he'll do the table rounds, you know, cable TV news rounds and he'll be right back at it and people will fall for it again because white people who are cloistered from the authoritarian strain in our nation's history are not impacted.
Andrea Chalupa:
And that's just a reality. That's just a reality. So we need to confront that reality and we need to change it and we need to understand that we need to take leadership from women, especially women of color because they're on the front lines and have a long history of building and fortifying communities to resist this and you can imagine how exhausted they are by now, so we need to fortify them and back them up and be the calvary to the most vulnerable among us and not leave this on them to save our democracy because it's about all of us refusing to abandoned each other now because things really are that bad.
Andrea Chalupa:
So we do call on the Democratic leadership in the House to impeach William Barr as soon as possible. That impeachment trial will play out likely just like Trump's did. They'll be phenomenal must-watch TV coming out of the house thanks to Adam Schiff and others in the House and then it's going to go to the Senate where the Republicans in the Senate are going to humiliate themselves for all of history in front of all the world by voting to let a criminal off the hook. You'll still get incredible must-watch TV coming out of the Democrats like Adam Schiff really nailing them for their utter lack of moral courage.
Andrea Chalupa:
And we need that to play out again because guess what? William Barr will be the first attorney general of the United States to be impeached and he needs to go down in history with that around his neck. We need to absolutely make sure of that because we need to fight with all the power that we have at our disposal as of now. Who is to say that the Democrats will maintain the House after the 2020 election? The Trump Crime Family needs to dodge accountability. They've been very good at doing that. They've amassed a fortune doing that over the years. Who's to say they're not going to pull out all the stops to steal as many races as they can in 2020? Why wouldn't the Kremlin help them?
Andrea Chalupa:
Because one of the first things a Democrat would do and one of the first things that the Congress would do if it had enough of Democrats in power, the first thing would be to pass sanctions on Russia for its massive aggression and finally contain Putin's aggression. That's what they would do, and then guess what? The EU would fall in line because the EU needs the U.S. to be strong on the Kremlin.
Andrea Chalupa:
That's how it always has been. Of course, the Kremlin and the Trump Crime Family need to dodge accountability now so we don't know if we're going to have a fair and free election and that's not alarmist to say that because look at our attorney general right now. Look at what's happening in front of our very eyes. While we have the House, Democrats absolutely must impeach and please call on your representatives to demand that they impeach Barr, that's it.
Sarah Kendzior:
Because if you don't put your foot down, if you don't fight back forcefully at every turn, but especially early, you end up in this situation. If for example, Iran-Contra had been dealt with, if Bill Barr hadn't been around then to help people get off, if these Republican criminal administrations had been put in check, had been held accountable, had been publicly shamed, had not just been reappearing endlessly on Sunday shows or on news programs and had been treated as the anti-Democratic corrupt people that they are, we would not be in this situation.
Sarah Kendzior:
If people had reacted to Trump announcing his campaign by proclaiming Mexicans to be rapists and murderers by banning him from TV or just saying, "We're not part of that. We think that that's dangerous and horrible and is actually hurting people, we're not going to go along with this." That's what NBC initially did by the way. They canceled the Apprentice over that and then within years you find them bowing down to him. That's what would happen.
Sarah Kendzior:
I mean even thinking about Roger Stone. How when everyone was so ecstatic thinking he was going to go to jail and he just immediately was on CNN and on all these networks paling around with the media that he pretends is his enemy but is actually his best friend and being legitimized by them. So there needs to be a whole change in this entire system in who people uphold, what they accept. You know I always encourage people to strike out on their own.
Sarah Kendzior:
To not necessarily try to fit in to this system which is corrupted from within but build your own media. Express yourself. Build your own projects because my God it's corroded and grotesque. It requires conformity at a level that no one should have to bear. And speaking of actually this is a pretty decent segue into Bloomberg. Did you have anything you wanted to add on Barr before I start into that?
Andrea Chalupa:
Speaking of Barr lets now talk about Bloomberg, seamless segue which is absolutely true as Sarah's going to explain.
Sarah Kendzior:
Well speaking of gross institutionalists, like people who are legitimized for horrible behavior over many years of time without facing any repercussions. So we are against Bloomberg on Gaslit Nation, I'm just going to come out and say that. Bloomberg is an incredible danger to democracy. In my view, he is the most dangerous of the Democratic candidates and I'm actually including Tulsi Gabbard in that in part because I don't think she has a chance to actually win.
Sarah Kendzior:
But his candidacy is an insult to voters. We should not have to choose between a kleptocrat, meaning Trump, and a plutocrat, meaning Bloomberg. Both of whom are racists. Both of whom have enacted vicious policies against children who aren't white. Both of whom have been accused of sexual harassment by dozens of women. Both of whom seek to decimate basic services that benefit ordinary people. Both of whom defend dictatorships like Russia and China and both of whom are connected to Jeffery Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and their pedophile trafficking operation.
Sarah Kendzior:
I would just like one president who is not in a fucking photo with Ghislaine Maxwell or Epstein. Just one. Also, like Trump, Bloomberg is someone who switches parties when it is politically expedient and now he is running as a Republican in a Democrat’s clothing. We will never vote for Trump obviously but the old mantra of “vote blue no matter who” does not apply to Bloomberg. You cannot expect people to vote for someone who said this quote a mere five years ago. And so here's what Bloomberg said about his notorious stop and frisk policy, this was brought up by Benjamin Dixon, so thank you for that, thank you for all the things people are bringing back into the public eye.
Sarah Kendzior:
So Bloomberg says, "95% of murders, murderers and murder victims fit one MO. You can just take a description, xerox it and pass it out to all the cops. They are male, minorities, 16 to 25. That's true in New York, that's true in virtually every city and that's where the real crime is." So this is not just factually wrong but it is disgusting, it is cruel, it is racist. No one should abide this or be asked to abide by this.
Sarah Kendzior:
So is Bloomberg better than Trump? Sure. Because nearly everyone is because Trump is a sociopath with a nuke fetish at the center of a transnational crime syndicate. But Bloomberg's election would destroy U.S. democracy in its own way. He has authoritarian tendencies. He is smarter and slicker than Trump and he seeks to build a technocracy. Probably along the lines of what we've been seeing in China.
Sarah Kendzior:
It is a frightening prospect and so what everyone needs to do is vote in the primary and make sure that we do not have a Bloomberg versus Trump election. And finally, the last thing, people should be vetting Bloomberg far more rigorously than they are. You may recall Trump spent his life in the public eye yet the extent of his criminality still came as a shock to most Americans. That is decades of criminality. Bloomberg was mayor when the Republican mafia continued the money laundering operations. It had begun under Giuliani in the 1990s.
Sarah Kendzior:
Under Bloomberg, New York became not only a city for the wealthy elite but for elite criminals. Bloomberg is the last person you want in charge of holding the Trump Administration accountable. For in a world where white-collar crime has merged with organized crime, he is part of that circle.
Andrea Chalupa:
And without further ado a very special guest on this week's episode, an old friend of mine as well as Sarah's, he is a reporter that covered the Democratic Primary in 2016 for the U.S. Presidential Election and he's covering it again this year where he's on his way to South Carolina, an early voting state in this primary and he also happens to be an expert on the countries of Ukraine and Georgia, countries where he's lived. And an expert in Putin's aggression toward both countries as well as U.S. foreign policy in regard to those states. Welcome senior reporter for the Root.com, Terrell Jermaine Starr.
Terrell Starr:
Hey you all, I'm so happy to be here with you all. I always have fun listening to you all before and now I'm an actual guest.
Andrea Chalupa:
And we have to say Terrell happens to be a Patreon supporter, that's not why he's on the show.
Terrell Starr:
Yeah, I Bloomberged my way on.
Sarah Kendzior:
Well said, well said. Well, thank you for coming on we really appreciate it. And so before, you know we were starting to talk about Bloomberg and you're a New Yorker, you have experience living under his tyrannical rule. You also are an expert in kleptocracy and Russia's regime. You've been following Trump and covering elections for years. What are your thoughts on his candidacy?
Terrell Starr:
Well, I have to tell you that one thing that we have to remember when we're discussing Bloomberg is we have to remind ourselves that too often American reporters, just the American media landscape covers America from the lens of exceptionalism. Meaning that we are not like Russia. We are not like Ukraine. We are not like those other countries where we use these political science terms plutocracy, kleptocracy, aggressor or regime but when you look at Bloomberg and what he's done in particularly the way in which he bought his way into his third term it very much reflects that of an oligarch. Somebody who uses their political power in order to exact the type of result that they seek.
Terrell Starr:
Now, what's different between a Ukrainian oligarchy or say the American version of Bloomberg's oligarchy is that the modes through which they deploy their methods is very different. So I'll never forget when I was in Ukraine and I was talking with a corporate lawyer and they were explaining to me how the Ukrainian oligarchy works and the short version of the joke is that so Dmitri in Ukraine and there's a Dmitri in Moscow and so basically they're investigating corruption through the internal affairs offices of a company.
Terrell Starr:
So Dmitri in Kyiv, somebody goes to him, a mysterious man says, "Dmitri, is everything okay? We understand that you've been asking some questions. Do you need any assistance from us?" And no. Same thing happens in Moscow, scenario takes place. Now in Moscow the very next day Dmitri's car blows up. And in Ukraine, the same mysterious guy comes again the next day and then a week later Dmitri's car blows up.
Terrell Starr:
The same scenario happens in which the mysterious man goes to Dmitri at the internal affairs and the mysterious man says, "I heard that your car blew up. Is everything okay? Do you need any help? We can look into it for you." And Moscow Dmitri says, "No I don't need your help." The next day they kill him.
Terrell Starr:
In Ukraine the next day the mysterious man comes and says, "I heard your car blew up Dmitri do you need any help? Is everything okay?" And Dmitri says, "No." Now what happens in Ukraine is that the mysterious man comes for another few weeks and then finally kills him.
Terrell Starr:
The moral of this joke is that in Ukraine and in Russia the oligarchs will both kill you but the Ukrainians are nicer and they'll just give you more time to come to your senses.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yeah, that sounds about right.
Terrell Starr:
Now when I heard that I'm like, oh this is just so morbid but yeah I mean the joke is that the Ukrainians are just nicer but in reality, I'm saying all that to say that Bloomberg is not killing anybody okay? He's not going to kill you but if you look at the mode through which he deploys and when you think about stop and frisk.
Terrell Starr:
When you think about how someone uses a misleading claim that stop and frisk actually stops and reduces crime when it doesn't, all you're doing is you’re taking advantage of black and brown bodies and you're pushing this narrative that a particular mode of policy works when it clearly does not. So you're using this mode of this racist policy in order to strengthen your position as a political leader. So he very much fits it.
Andrea Chalupa:
Explain what stop and frisk was in New York City for so long under Bloomberg.
Terrell Starr:
Yeah so stop and frisk, it was a policy through which they would stop random people in very... The theory is that you are in neighborhoods where high amounts of crime are taking place and so you are looking at black, and it focused on black and brown people particularly. I mean he had said this in recordings, okay? So the idea is that you stop people in these crime areas who, and officers had the discretion to determine if they felt they were likely to cause crime, right?
Terrell Starr:
Now, legally the stops, they were not illegal. The problem was that there was a racial profiling component behind it. So that was the issue right? That makes it unconstitutional but the way that stop and frisk worked was that the theory was we're going to go to high crime areas. That was the theory but in reality... So over the course of-
Andrea Chalupa:
But it went anywhere. It went anywhere. When I was taking the Q train I think the Seventh Avenue stop of the Q train and you see a black child getting stopped and frisk by a gang of NYPD police officers in front of everyone in broad daylight that was stop and frisk.
Terrell Starr:
Yeah.
Andrea Chalupa:
Like black children and teenagers going about their business getting stopped and frisked in front of people. It’s humiliation.
Terrell Starr:
Yes. That's absolutely correct. But I mean I'm just giving you what their theory was, it was absolute BS.
Andrea Chalupa:
Can I just say something? When I was their age in high school I was a menace. I somehow got my driver's license and I proceeded to drive 120 miles per hour, got pulled over, I’d drive through stop signs. I became so good at talking my way out of speeding tickets and running stop signs in a way that if I were a black teenager doing that they would have derailed my life.
Terrell Starr:
Absolutely. So when I was living in the Upper East Side you never saw this where they were going down at nearly the same rates but it was really an indiscriminate policy that impacted people across this city. So you had hundreds of thousands of people who were impacted by this and it was all unconstitutional and Bloomberg didn’t admit until he threw his hat in for the presidency that he was wrong.
Andrea Chalupa:
Right. Exactly right. And also misogyny.
Terrell Starr:
40 plus cases of sexual harassment.
Andrea Chalupa:
Right. So the coalition of support that the Democrats need in order to beat Trump in November 2020, women and people of color, women of color, those are the communities that are going to be fighting their hearts out to make sure that voters show up. Those are the communities that Bloomberg checks all the boxes in terms of causing actual harm against.
Sarah Kendzior:
And young people too I would add. Young people and poor people and younger people are poorer people. Anyway, I want to hear what Terrell thinks so go on.
Terrell Starr:
Okay so here's the thing, what's hard about this is that much of the knowledge about stop and frisk and all of the horrible things he's done. All this information is digital and for people, most voters who are going to go to the polls who are the 40 and up, particularly the 50 and 60 and up are living analog realities. And so when you go around the country a lot of folks don't even know this and I know it because I travel and I listen to people talk about Bloomberg.
Terrell Starr:
Talk to a range of these folks and so the mistake that journalists make, people like us make, is that we assume that their level of knowledge and understanding of these issues equal that of ours and that's simply not true. So when they look at a Bloomberg they look at somebody–particularly black people–they look at somebody who ran New York City and think if there's an exception to anybody who can move up to the city level to the national level it would be that of Bloomberg.
Terrell Starr:
So they're not really into the nuances and nitty-gritty of stop and frisk. And then we have to also deal with the very painful complex issue within black communities is that there's a complicated relationship between black folk and the police, there are a lot of people who have not come to the conclusion that having more officers on the street does not equal a reduction in crime.
Terrell Starr:
So the conversations around investing in schools, divesting from the criminal legal system in regard to jailing, people just want their communities to be safe and they assume that there's a police officer there then that means that's going to be least likely equal to them enduring any type of harm and you get that particularly from older voters who are not harassed, who are not profiled like a number of people are. And those younger people while they may be the most impacted are the hardest ones to get to the polls.
Terrell Starr:
So that's what you're dealing with. You're dealing with a generation of people, literally a generation of people who can really remember stop and frisk but the problem is getting them to the polls while the older voters who may find Bloomberg appealing and may not be as impacted by those policies. They're not hearing what we're hearing and so that's the problem.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yeah, I think that's a huge problem and also the geographic disparity because this reminds me of Trump, like when Trump ran people in New York tended to know his history. They'd grown up with him as a tabloid figure, they knew about his bankruptcies, they knew not the full extent of his criminality but the basics and out here in the Midwest people knew him mostly as the host of the Apprentice and the host of Celebrity Apprentice and they assumed if this guy has been in the public eye for so long the really bad stuff about him must have already come out.
Sarah Kendzior:
There can't be that much more to know and I kind of feel like the same thing might be happening with Bloomberg, that people who were most directly impacted by him, particularly black youth but also just people who live in New York City who read the New York City media, they tend to know more than folks who are out where I live who experienced the same policies. I mean you know I live in Saint Louis obviously so people are experiencing stop and frisk.
Sarah Kendzior:
They're experiencing police brutality. They're experiencing bad bureaucratic management from above but what they're seeing on YouTube–and I know this because his ads are so ubiquitous that even my nine-year-old is reciting to me things about Michael Bloomberg the great savior–they think Obama endorsed him. Bloomberg has an ad saying that. They think he's the next LBJ. Bloomberg has an ad saying that. They think he's sincerely apologized for stop and frisk which he didn't. He did when it was politically expedient. What do you think of this on a national scale? Because your reporting takes you outside of New York City quite often right? So do you notice that kind of disparity as well?
Terrell Starr:
Yes, and the main problem is the press corps and its racial makeup and when we're covering these types of issues the trajectory for a national reporter like myself traditionally happens when you work at the metro desk. I mean you worked at the Daily News, Sarah, so you know how this works. So you start off at the metro desk, you start off at city hall, or the city council and you move up. And so you build up your resume by going through those different steps and then you're going to the national desk or the political desk which I believe at the New York Times there's a national and there's a political. I think it's the same way with the Washington Post.
Terrell Starr:
It's different and so when you get into the political desk you can go through those steps without having any understanding of white supremacy of not understanding the way that kleptocracy's work so you go there without any ideological or political education that will compel you to ask the type of questions that will make it into the national conversation. So that is the issue and so when you get on shows like Meet the Press or other Sunday morning shows you don't have hosts that really put people like Bloomberg's feet to the fire to really ask him these types of questions.
Terrell Starr:
So they're not going to know because most Americans are getting their news not through Twitter or not through–well Facebook is a different animal but they're not getting it on Twitter, they're getting it on these shows where you can just turn on the remote control. You know get the remote control, turn on the television set and they're watching CNN in prime time. So it's primarily the failure of them and then also the makeup of the press corps is more diverse than it was in 2016.
Terrell Starr:
I see more people of color on the campaign trail but the other issue is with the exception of Elizabeth Warren, for example, you have to have the other candidates that are challenging him too. So I see Elizabeth Warren talking about his redlining, talking about his racism to a really robust extent but the other candidates perhaps not so much, because they probably have their own issues to deal with if you think about it. So Klobuchar, Bernie, Joe Biden, you know all these people when you go back to policing, using their time as prosecutors. In the case of Klobuchar, it's a multifaceted problem that is creating an information gap that is not reaching these most vulnerable populations.
Sarah Kendzior:
And what do you think drives the kind of coverage that we're seeing? You know where we do have not only a white male-dominated media but also a media that can be bought? A media economy that's been in tatters for a while and that depends on people like Bloomberg or Jeff Bezos or other billionaires to pump it up? Like where do you think the reluctance comes from? Is it just a combination of all these factors of wealth and racism and just structural impediments or is there anything in particular that stands out?
Andrea Chalupa:
Well, being a Ukraine expert where the media is largely owned by oligarchs, this makes Terrell an expert at answering this question.
Terrell Starr:
It does. There are a couple of things, one, and I can even go back to the Ukraine part so you have some independent media outlets in Ukraine that are pushing back against this oligarch bought media. So let's just say, the thing is that at the fall of the Soviet Union this is more pronounced in Russia than it is in Ukraine and Russia has been on steroids and Ukraine I feel like there's some efforts to really push for independent media there to a lesser extent but better than Russia but the thing is, is that in both Ukraine and in America what both populations share is a distrust and a misunderstanding of what media does.
Terrell Starr:
So the distrust, it ranks kind of like in those professions as lawyers, the shystie professionals that defend people who they know are guilty and then you have the journalists who are seen as creating stories that are not true just so they can get juicy headlines. So there is not a healthy relationship between media powers and the people who they want to consume their content. To me, that's the number one problem because if you did have a healthier relationship you would have people who would be more invested and supporting you.
Terrell Starr:
Just think about this podcast right, Gaslit Nation, think about the people who are subscribing and everyone who's listening please subscribe. I mean I am via Patreon and so getting people to support that work, that's something that matters but in order to do really quality work just like me traveling on the road it requires a lot of money and it requires a lot of money that frankly a lot of independent media just does not have. But in regard to the oligarch element of it, media is one of those weird businesses where it's the fourth estate but it's a fourth estate that strongly depends on the oligarch culture.
Terrell Starr:
It depends on the wealth culture in order to survive and to be honest with you it's always been that way. It's always been that way so now, and you always have political power that's been using media in order to advance their concerns. That has not changed. I think what's changed is that it's kind of like cell phone cameras with police abuse. Your video recording it and in the case, with social media, we just have more information to tell us what's going on. But the Bloomberg's of the world and I can't name them in the 1940s and 50s and 60s but they were always there but also you just had more billionaires over the past 30 years and 40 years.
Terrell Starr:
And so when you see with people like Bezos and Bloomberg, who created his own enterprise–he started off in finance right and moved on to media–is that a lot of these people who saw that if I can create a media outlet that is independent because Bloomberg has won Pulitzer prizes in a wide range of national and international awards it creates a very dangerous cocktail because we live in a capitalist society and because we live in a capitalist society that's unregulated it creates a blurred line where someone like Bloomberg can come in and use their media resources and then there's no checks and balances for it.
Terrell Starr:
Really that's the problem is capitalism and it's along with the fact that we don't know. We don't have a healthy relationship between media and the people we want to consume it.
Andrea Chalupa:
So Bloomberg News does some excellent reporting obviously and it's just, I'll go back to your brilliant analogy where you basically said that oligarchs that tend to be on the Democratic side of the spectrum in the U.S. are like Ukrainian oligarchs whereas oligarchs that tend to be on the conservative side of the spectrum in the U.S. are like Russian oligarchs, they're absolutely ruthless. So in terms of Bloomberg, Bloomberg news is certainly not Fox News. They do excellent reporting there but what is troubling and what is very much in the style of a Ukrainian style oligarch is Bloomberg telling his news media company that they will not be reporting on his candidacy.
Terrell Starr:
Well more or less, I don't know if that went down with Zellensky per se but I'll give you a comparison right, so with-
Andrea Chalupa:
But that's bizarre.
Terrell Starr:
That was more author-
Andrea Chalupa:
We already have a president that's declared open war on the press using Stalin's phrase, calling the press the “enemy of the people”. So it's like we don't need another president who is afraid of being scrutinized.
Terrell Starr:
Well, you know what's interesting is that no we don't but the thing is, is that people don't realize that Bloomberg is not particularly different from Trump in many ways.
Andrea Chalupa:
Exactly.
Terrell Starr:
That's the thing that people don't understand and the problem with this call for anybody but Trump is that it undermines the primary process when you're supposed to vet people who have problematic relationships with media and with money and with policy. And because you don't properly vet someone like Bloomberg or properly challenge someone on their policy and then you say, "Okay I think this person might be better than Trump."
Terrell Starr:
Then you have someone like Bloomberg who has complete control of a major political apparatus to change the narrative and that's what he does and that's why I'm saying what makes him different from a Ukrainian is that because we have unions here, because we have a civil society here, there is a way in which Bloomberg cannot deploy a violent type of reaction or force his reporters to do anything too extreme, well directing them not to do political coverage of the campaign that's one thing right?
Terrell Starr:
Of him, that's one thing, but as far as sending someone to reporters’ offices or doing something completely authoritarian, that's what makes it different. But what Bloomberg is doing that's authoritarian in the American sense is that it’s kind of like, you know, you can't do something because he has power. Because the threat, it doesn't have to be explicit.
Andrea Chalupa:
Right.
Terrell Starr:
That's the main thing with Americans.
Andrea Chalupa:
He gives a lot of money away to grassroots organizations. EveryTown movement has been quite effective, it's an important part of the coalition and the political resistance to the far-right takeover of our governments state by state and so forth, so yeah I mean no one really wants to mess with Bloomberg openly.
Terrell Starr:
And no one wants to mess with Bloomberg openly because-
Andrea Chalupa:
He is such a hiring machine that I have friends that are like looking at that Bloomberg money and thinking I really need to pay my mortgage.
Terrell Starr:
But see that's the thing, that's what oligarchs do and that's what makes them an American oligarch.
Andrea Chalupa:
They buy your silence.
Terrell Starr:
They buy your silence and they take advantage of your financial situation.
Andrea Chalupa:
And then you're stuck in oligarchy.
Terrell Starr:
And you're stuck in oligarchy so the question for the person is that because I'm having this conversation with black people who are supporting him because there is a way because I work in black media that I can critique black people who support him in ways that quite frankly white people can't. You know because I can look at my people and be like, "What the fuck is going on?" I can look at you and have these very critical questions about stop and frisk and bring folks to task but on my end I also see people, I see candidates who have a struggle raising money themselves.
Terrell Starr:
When I covered the 2018 elections, the midterms, I met people at the state level and the local level who through the various organs of the Democratic Party and the financial structure could not get support, particularly black women. Now am I going to blame these black women and these marginalized folks who want jobs for taking a job with Bloomberg? It's honestly a tricky question because you have to ask yourself what part of the financial apparatus has failed and decayed to the point where somebody who is a person of color would go for somebody whose policies toward black people were as disgusting as Bloomberg's.
Terrell Starr:
And it deals with the larger issue of the failure of campaign finance reform, it deals with the failure of the larger organs of the Democratic Party to make entry into candidacy more equitable. So we're talking about Bloomberg but this deals with the larger, wider failure of the democratic apparatus in general.
Andrea Chalupa:
Our discussion continues and you can get access to that by signing up on our Patreon at the Truth-teller level or higher.
Sarah Kendzior:
We want to encourage our listeners to help the victims of the Australian fires by donating to the Australian Red Cross. Working on the ground to help people in need. For help directed toward Australia's first nations communities check out the fire relief fund for first nations communities by Neal Morris. We've posted links to these groups and others on our Patreon page.
Andrea Chalupa:
We also encourage you to donate to Wires. A group that rescues native Australian wildlife in distress. Donate at wires.org.au and if you want to help critically endangered orangutans already under pressure from the palm oil industry donate to the orangutan project at theorangutangproject.org. Gaslit Nation is produced by Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa. If you like what we do leave us a review on iTunes. It helps us reach more listeners. And check out our Patreon it helps keep us going.
Sarah Kendzior:
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Andrea Chalupa:
Original music in Gaslit Nation produced by David Whitehead, Martin Visenberg, Nick Farr, Demian Arriaga and Karlyn Daigle. Our logo design was donated to us by Hamish Smith of the New York-based firm, Order. Thank you so much, Hamish.
Sarah Kendzior:
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