How to Trump and Putin-Proof Our Democracy
This week we give the authoritarianism weather report – packed courts, purged agencies, and a pandemic running rampant as the Trump administration lies – and then examine a potential solution: Elizabeth Warren’s binder full of plans! We run through her proposals on information warfare, violent white supremacy, transnational crime, election integrity, and more! We argue that regardless of who wins the nomination, they should consult Warren’s plans as a roadmap out of this hellhole.
Martin Luther King:
When Rip Van Winkle went up in the mountain, the sign had a picture of King George III of England. When he came down 20 years later, the sign had a picture of George Washington, the first President of the United States. Rip Van Winkle looked up at the picture of George Washington, then looking at the picture he was amazed. He was completely lost, he knew not who he was.
Martin Luther King:
This reveals to us that the most striking thing about the story of Rip Van Winkle is not merely that Rip slept 20 years, but that he slept through a revolution. While he was peacefully snoring up in the mountain, a revolution was taking place that at points would change the course of history, and Rip knew nothing about it, he was asleep. Yes, he slept through a revolution.
Martin Luther King:
One of the great liabilities of life is that all too many people find themselves living amid a great period of social change, and yet they fail to develop the new attitudes, the new mental responses that the new situation demands and they end up sleeping through a revolution.
Sarah Kendzior:
I'm Sarah Kendzior, the author of the best-selling 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:
This is Gaslit Nation, a podcast covering corruption in the Trump administration and rising autocracy around the world. As you know, our government has been hijacked by a transnational crime syndicate, and for three years officials have refused to stop it or failed to stop it.
Sarah Kendzior:
Over and over, we've heard from these ineffective officials that the solution is to simply vote them out in 2020, but why does anyone think that an election can fix this when election interference in 2016 is what got us into this mess to begin with?
Sarah Kendzior:
Let's be clear, we are not saying don't vote,. You should absolutely vote and in enormous numbers, but we are saying that whoever you vote for needs to be prepared to deal with the unprecedented threats that we currently face. 2020 is not a normal election; it is an existential crisis.
Sarah Kendzior:
The endless horse race speculation on display in the media is an offshoot of widespread anxiety about the loss of basic sovereignty and safety. Pundits do not want to talk about authoritarianism, or organized crime, or the fact that the current administration is a death cult, refusing to act on major crises like climate change and the Coronavirus.
Sarah Kendzior:
Pundits would rather play prediction games and monitor polls because that's easy, that's comforting, but it's also wrong. The candidate coverage is so ephemeral as to be meaningless. We have Biden proclaimed the winner one week, Bloomberg the next week, and now it's Bernie, all while 98% of the country in 47 States has not even cast a vote and we're saying this on Tuesday morning.
Sarah Kendzior:
We're going to discuss the candidates and their controversies throughout the show, but it's important to remember that first, nothing is set in stone, and second we are as a nation dealing with a much bigger political crisis than which democratic candidate will win. And officials, including the candidates themselves, need to be much more blunt about its severity, they will need backup plans for if they lose, but they also need backup plans for if they win because Trump will likely refuse to leave office.
Sarah Kendzior:
People often compliment Gaslit Nation for our ability to predict the outcome of events in advance, but we are here to tell you right now that we have no idea who the democratic nominee will be, and one reason we do not know is because of the cavalcade of crisis we are facing ranging from structural obstacles to voting, to digital information warfare, to candidate health issues, to variations in voter turnout, to the chaos of the Trump administration itself.
Sarah Kendzior:
The reason we have been able to predict what Trump and his criminal cohort will do is because autocracy follows a playbook. You can see the time tested tactics of dictators being used here in the U.S., and you can see the patterns of autocratic consolidation in the Trump administration all throughout history.
Sarah Kendzior:
In contrast, the democratic presidential primary is volatile and unpredictable, so vote for who you think will do the best job. You cannot predict the future, you can only fight for the future you want.
Andrea Chalupa:
I want to say to anybody who is feeling despair at the moment, despair is an invitation to do something, so accept that invitation. And I want to thank our listeners for tagging me and Sarah in articles they think we would find of interest, we really do appreciate that.
Andrea Chalupa:
One listener, Jonathan C-137 on Twitter as “I'm too big to fail”, he let us know that there's this story in the UK press of two sisters, Asha age 12 and Jaya age 10, who boycotted a Kellogg cereal because the palm oil that this Kellogg cereal used was depleting forests that orangutans that are already endangered desperately needed to survive.
Andrea Chalupa:
We, in our credits, like to draw our audience's attention to urgent causes including fighting the palm oil industry which is very destructive, and palm oil unfortunately is very widespread and orangutans are losing their forest that they need to survive, leaving a lot of orphaned orangutans, and it's really heartbreaking.
Andrea Chalupa:
So these two young sisters in the UK started a petition, and Kellogg Cereal heard them and said, "Yes, Asha and Jaya, we agree with you and we're going to use more responsibly sourced and sustainable ingredients for our cereal, and we're going to start phasing that in." And so good on them, that shows they took their despair after watching a heartbreaking documentary on what was happening to orangutans because of the destructive and evil palm oil industry, and they took action. They took their despair and they turned it into action.
Andrea Chalupa:
So if these two beautiful little girls in the UK can do this, any of us anywhere in the world can do this, so turn your despair into action. Your despair is an invitation to do something, and if you want to know where to start, go to the Gaslit Nation Action Guide on gaslitnationpod.com.
Andrea Chalupa:
Now, we have your authoritarian weather report, let's move into this. The purge continues, I'm going to just go through some of the headlines of horror that have been going on just so we all understand, yes, this is really happening, and yes, this is what authoritarianism looks like. This is it, this is not a drill, this is the real thing guys.
Andrea Chalupa:
And so I'm going to start off with some headlines. Kyle Griffin of MSNBC News pointed out on Twitter, "The Trump White House and its allies over the past 18 months assembled detailed lists of disloyal government officials to oust and trusted pro-Trump people to replace them according to more than a dozen sources familiar who spoke to Axios."
Andrea Chalupa:
So the purge is deepening, they're going in deep, they are consolidating their power. They are going to have Trump loyalists in all corners of government, and those Trump loyalists will be strategically placed to monitor anybody who might be a patriot left in their government to ensure that government works freely, fairly, openly and fairly for all.
Andrea Chalupa:
So this is a very dangerous situation as Sarah pointed out, and as we always point out in every episode, if Trump should steal another election, if Trump should somehow win re-election of the Electoral College, because we know he's not going to get the popular vote because he didn't the first time and he's even deeply more unpopular this time around.
Andrea Chalupa:
So if he manages somehow to win the Electoral College and we get another four years, maybe eight years with Trump, and then more years coming after that with Ivanka and Don jr, that's it, that's it. And this is going to be real Franco Spain.
Andrea Chalupa:
From the Washington Post quoting McRaven who oversaw the 2011 Navy SEAL raid in Pakistan that killed Osama Bin Laden, writes in opinions that Americans should be deeply afraid for the future of our nation. This is from retired Navy Admiral William McRaven, who is reminding us yet again, this is the real deal, authoritarianism closing in.
Andrea Chalupa:
Trump's ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell who said he wanted to empower rightwing forces across Europe is back in the news. According to CNN, "Grenell ousted a veteran intelligence officer who served as the number two at the office of the director of National Intelligence and brought on board a former staffer of representative Devin Nunes, a California Republican who a staunch Trump ally."
Andrea Chalupa:
Nunes is more than that. Nunes is what an aspiring autocrat looks like. They're idiots. They're brazen. They really do want to sue anybody that dares make fun of them, anybody that dares sit down first during a standing ovation of them like Stalin famously did. Devin Nunes is what an autocrat looks like before he's sealed, consolidated total control. They're idiots like that. Devin Nunes is the mold.
Andrea Chalupa:
The majority on SCOTUS... Oh, so Howard Dean points out that our legislative branch is Far Right and extreme, and as we always point out, the courts are the prison bars of an autocracy. And so Howard Dean writes on Twitter, "The majority on SCOTUS has little loyalty to the Constitution, the legislative branch or democracy. Their masters are the federalist society, the Right Wing and the Republican party. They have made the court system into a joke."
Andrea Chalupa:
Yes, that's correct. Have you ever wondered, hmm, why is that country over there in that former Soviet state–why is it so corrupt? Why is it such a prison? Why is Belarus the way it is? It's because of that. It's because there's no way out. If your government is oppressing you and you try to take it to the courts, well, the courts are just another wing of that oppressive government. So that's what it looks like.
Andrea Chalupa:
Adam Serwer in The Atlantic sums this all up, pointing to the obvious. "Trump has interpreted his acquittal by the Republican controlled Senate as a writ of absolute power and the only way to stop him as an election he has determined to keep from being free or fair. This is how democracies are unmade." That is correct.
Andrea Chalupa:
From Reuters, “Trump calls for all cases stemming from the Mueller Probe to be thrown out.” Of course, he does. Meanwhile, it comes out that Trump offered a quid pro quo because that's what mobsters like to do, with Assange to deny Russian interference in exchange for a pardon. This revelation is even sicker than that.
Andrea Chalupa:
This news from Yahoo points out that they wanted Assange to dig up proof, quote, unquote proof that it was murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich that provided the emails, not Putin's mafia state that sent its hackers in to steal volumes of emails and documents from the DNC, an act of war against a major political party.
Andrea Chalupa:
From Yahoo, Russian intelligence agencies first planted the conspiracy theory that Seth Rich was murdered by gunmen hired by Hillary Clinton. It also reported out Russian trolls later repeatedly boosted claims on Twitter and other social media platforms that Seth Rich had leaked the material to WikiLeaks.
Andrea Chalupa:
Once again, Donald Trump stole the 2016 election with the help of Putin's mass murdering mafia state. We're up against an actual mafia posing as a theocracy because they need to have their diehard evangelicals, their doomsday cult acting as their Brown Shirts in order to control and suppress us. That's what's coming next.
Andrea Chalupa:
Here in New York, I know a family that's had to ask themselves when will they leave the country? What line will be crossed that would signal to them that it's time to pack up and move out of the United States? And for them it was if Roe versus Wade is overturned, which is a clear sign of an autocratic theocracy of finally cementing its powers because one of the things that autocratic regimes do is they suppress women. They shove women back into the home.
Andrea Chalupa:
Why? Because women are on the front lines of fighting for human rights, fighting for the children's future. So of course, if you control the women then you control dissent. That's it. And so we cannot afford... I understand that we're going to have a vigorous debate in this conversation today and people are having this across the country, but let's keep in mind that while we're having a very colorful democratic primary one that I think is descending into the petty chaos of a condo board meeting, we do have to keep in mind that actual authoritarianism is strengthening in our country.
Andrea Chalupa:
It’s strengthening, the coup is nearly complete, and if they steal the Electoral College again, it's going to take a generation of great sacrifice to undo that.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yeah, absolutely. And as we've noted many times on the show before, one of the things that distinguishes our present moment from prior eras of autocracy is the ticking clock, is climate change, is that kind of level of crisis where of course people have faced similar challenges in the past. They've faced despotism, they faced corruption, they faced tyranny, and people have overcome, including in our own country where you have selective, race-based authoritarian state sanctioned brutality practiced on our own American citizens, on black Americans.
Sarah Kendzior:
Genocide of native Americans, anti-immigration laws. It's not like all of this is brand new and was ushered in with the Trump era, but the level of consolidation, the brazenness, the disregard for the constitution, that I think is unprecedented. And then on top of it, we don't have all the time in the world to solve it because we're facing other humanitarian crises currently.
Sarah Kendzior:
And even as I say this we're facing possibly a pandemic because they just have to like add an extra thing to make sure that we're living every Stephen King, and John le Carré, and Tom Clancy novel simultaneously. But we have a government that this morning is apparently having classified briefings about a fatal pandemic that allegedly kills about 2% of everyone who has it, that they're not testing people for, that they're not bringing about a cure.
Sarah Kendzior:
All of this is new. The apocalyptic mindset of the government is new. The fact that we have people like Mike Pompeo who structures policy around the rapture overruling the CDC is new and everything you just listed of course, these long ongoing purges. I remember, to give some insight info here for our listeners of how the show operates, we were going down the list of topics, what are we going to talk about this week.
Sarah Kendzior:
You texted me and you go, "We’ve got to talk about the purge." And I'm like, "Which purge?" Because there have been so many purges, like these agencies have been purged continuously from the moment that Trump took office. And he took office announcing along with Steve Bannon that his goal was to purge these agencies and have them overseen by people whose intent is to destroy them.
Sarah Kendzior:
So you get people like Betsy DeVos who does not believe in public education, being in charge of the Department of Education. You get Ben Carson who does not believe in public housing, being in charge of housing and so on, and so on. And now we are in three years later, finally, people seem to have accepted what we were pointing out three years ago, even though honestly, we were not that brilliant and everything we pointed out was incredibly obvious because they told you that they were doing it, and then they did it.
Sarah Kendzior:
So there's really like a problem of delusion, of savior syndrome, of a belief of “this can't really be happening.” I think people have finally accepted it's really happening, but very few seem to have the courage, and the will, and the momentum to change it, and to move forward. Which is one of the reasons that I am grateful for Elizabeth Warren and her big binder full of plans.
Sarah Kendzior:
I know you've been reading those very closely, do you want to go into some of them and how they relate to all the things we were just discussing?
Andrea Chalupa:
Yeah. And so we just want to say, if Elizabeth Warren were not running for president, Elizabeth Warren being Elizabeth Warren, she'd probably come out with these plans anyway, whether or not she was running because that's who she is. She's a professor, she's a wonk, she gets into the details on these urgent issues. So let's just say Elizabeth Warren, the expert on confronting inequalities in America and confronting issues that threatened vulnerable populations.
Andrea Chalupa:
Elizabeth Warren being an expert, having a long career devoted to writing and talking about those issues and fighting for them in public service, she just happened to come out with a long list of plans. And then Sarah and I are going to discuss some of those that we believe, given all of the years of research that we've done into corruption and authoritarianism, we believe that these are Elizabeth Warren's plans that provide us with a blueprint on how to Trump-proof and Putin-proof our democracy.
Andrea Chalupa:
So whether Elizabeth Warren wins or loses does not matter. It does matter to us because we want to see these plans implemented, but what we're telling you, whoever you support in this primary, however that person speaks to your heart and however they convince you to not watch Netflix that night and instead make some phone calls for them.
Andrea Chalupa:
So whoever that is for you in this democratic primary, we're asking you to have an open mind and consider how these specific plans are essential no matter who wins or loses, no matter what happens in November 2020, these are the plans we need to follow on the all important grassroots state level and make sure that we get communities around implementing them.
Andrea Chalupa:
Because if we do this work, if we devote ourselves to this work over the next 10 years, which we have to do, we can successfully avoid, I believe, an Ivanka Trump presidency. We can successfully avoid a Don Jr. presidency because that is what we are very much up against. And if you think that is shocking to hear, then you're not paying attention. That is the name of the game. It is no longer the Republican Party, it is the Trump Crime Family Party.
Andrea Chalupa:
The Republican Party that you may have grown up with as a kid, that's long gone, no longer exists. And so here they are. You can find these plans by going to elizabethwarren.com if you want to read along. This is it, this is what needs to be done. So she has a plan for fighting back against white nationalist violence.
Andrea Chalupa:
Why does that matter? Why is that important? Who the hell has been funding white nationalist groups for years now and helping bring them together? The Kremlin, the Kremlin. Why? Because white nationalist violence is their Brown Shirts, it's their blunt force instruments. They're used as intimidation tactics. They're used to create instability. They're used to prop up Far Right candidates to further divide the EU and the rest of the Western Alliance.
Andrea Chalupa:
White nationalists are the blunt force instruments and we have this homegrown white nationalist terrorism here in the U.S. and Trump is their savior. Whether they directly support Trump or not, some of these white mass shooters have cited that maybe they're not in total favor of Trump, but they respect that he's one of them and what he stands for.
Andrea Chalupa:
The red MAGA hat is the new KKK hood. And Trump and Putin are aligned because they're both white nationalist heroes and Elizabeth Warren has a plan for how to confront that. And even the FBI says that white terrorism is one of the greatest threats based in the world today.
Andrea Chalupa:
So number two, fighting digital disinformation. That is an easy one. The Kremlin used every single social media platform available to divide and conquer Trump's opposition and to drive out authoritarian leaning voters. Okay? Number three, fight global financial corruption. Obviously, what did Manafort get arrested for? All that money laundering. That's how the mafia and the 21st century works.
Andrea Chalupa:
Robert Mueller as FBI director in 2013 gave a speech about it that the mafia, namely the Russian mafia in the 21st century, it's all about fancy accounting firms and fancy law firms that hide money around the world. That's how corruption flourishes.
Andrea Chalupa:
Number four, strengthening our democracy. Elizabeth Warren writes, "Under my plan, federal elections will get state-of-the-art federal machines, federal ballots, and federal security. The federal government will replace insecure and outdated systems with hand marked voter verified paper ballot machines."
Andrea Chalupa:
Again, our elections were hacked. All 50 States were targeted by the Kremlin. We do not know how successful they were because the federal government has been very reluctant to tell us. And information has come out slowly and painfully. Reality Winner is serving five years in prison because she dared to warn the American public about how successful Kremlin hacking of our election systems were, so Elizabeth Warren has a plan on how to secure our elections.
Andrea Chalupa:
Number five, getting big money out of politics. Russian oligarchs were funneling money to the GOP, not just Trump, the GOP. Number six, 100% clean energy for America. Again, if you want to take on tyrants like Putin, you’ve got to put gas station dictatorships out of business. Number seven, get rid of the electoral college. Yes please. It is a monument to slavery.
Andrea Chalupa:
Manafort, according to the Mueller Report, was targeting key States’ Electoral College, States that went against the polls and surprised everyone by swinging to Trump in the final hour, and those States triggered a big recount of the vote in 2016. Okay? So we should not be a prisoner to the Electoral College anymore, and Elizabeth Warren has a plan for how to get rid of it.
Andrea Chalupa:
Number eight, end Washington corruption. Now, this is a shocking plan. It's shocking in the sense that when you read it, Elizabeth Warren in her plan names names, and it is stunning, stunning what this hedonistic cesspool of corruption looks like. Federal judges being wined and dined by all these big Far Right special interest groups.
Andrea Chalupa:
It's like a Las Vegas of corruption right now. You can read about that, what the Bellagio of Washington D.C. looks like, what The Caesars Palace of Washington D.C. looks like for billionaires, and the Far Right groups that prop up their interests. You could read all about that in Elizabeth Warren's plan, which is so damning that you will sit there and stare at the wall for 30 minutes because you had no idea just how corrupt it actually was until you look through Elizabeth Warren's microscope.
Andrea Chalupa:
Number nine, how we can break up big tech. I'm going to read directly from Elizabeth Warren's plan, and it's important to break up big tech because Mark Zuckerberg has come out on record to say essentially that he doesn't care about democracy. He doesn't care that misinformation is deliberately being spread across Facebook, one of the most dominant social media giants today.
Andrea Chalupa:
He doesn't care that that's hacking minds and leading to horrible real world results of corrupt politicians getting elected. Mark Zuckerberg does not care about democracy. Okay? So how do you hold him accountable to stop selling out our democracy for his own wealth? It's very simple, you break up big tech, and there's other reasons to do that as Elizabeth Warren explains in this plan, and I'm going to read from it directly because it's really interesting.
Andrea Chalupa:
"In the 1990s, Microsoft, the tech giant of its time was trying to parlay its dominance in computer operating systems into dominance in the new area of web browsing. The federal government sued Microsoft for violating anti-monopoly laws and eventually reached a settlement. The government's antitrust case against Microsoft helped clear a path for internet companies like Google and Facebook to emerge.
Andrea Chalupa:
The story demonstrates why promoting competition is so important. It allows new, groundbreaking companies to grow and thrive, which pushes everyone in the marketplace to offer better products and services. Aren't we all glad now that we have the option of using Google instead of being stuck with Bing?
Andrea Chalupa:
Today's big tech companies have too much power, too much power over our economy, our society and our democracy. They've bulldozed competition, used our private information for profit and tilted the playing field against everyone else, and in the process they have hurt small businesses and stifled innovation.
Andrea Chalupa:
As these companies have grown larger and more powerful, they have used their resources and control over the way we use the internet to squash small businesses and innovation, and substitute their own financial interest for the broader interests of the American people.
Andrea Chalupa:
To restore the balance of power in our democracy, to promote competition, and to ensure that the next generation of technology innovation is as vibrant as the last, it's time to break up our biggest tech companies, and we must ensure that Russia or any other foreign power can't use Facebook or any other form of social media to influence our elections." My God, the common sense is blinding me. It's just a blazing light of common sense.
Andrea Chalupa:
Number 10, a great public school education for every student, and she has a big plan on how to achieve that. Why is that important? Because we need to raise critical thinkers. When you are up against a technology advancing in such a way that deep fakes are already being used in elections as one story came out in an Indian election, when you have deep fakes, the era of deep fakes coming in where somebody could make a video of me and Sarah looking as though we're doing something and we're actually not, but it looks so authentic, you could believe it.
Andrea Chalupa:
That's what we're up against. That's coming next. That's the next wave of all this. The era of deep fakes is going to make the era of bots on Twitter seem quaint. So the way to combat that is that we need a generation of critical thinkers and you need to raise those by strengthening public schools for every single child in this country.
Andrea Chalupa:
Number 11, affordable higher education for all. A trillion percent yes. This is needed for the same reason, we need critical thinkers, we need people to develop their minds. Talking to a very wealthy business man in the heart of Copenhagen, he was telling me that it is in his own best interest to pay his taxes because his money is going to afford social services for the citizens of Denmark, and he considers the minds of the citizens of Denmark as a natural resource that must be exploited.
Andrea Chalupa:
The minds of the citizens must be developed because the minds of a country are its natural resources. That's the investment that we're making. And the entire cost of Warren's college debt cancellation plan, canceling more than 95%, the nearly 45 million Americans with student loan debt and providing universal free college, that's all covered by what she's calling her ultra millionaire tax, which is a 2% annual tax on the 75,000 families with 50 million or more in wealth.
Andrea Chalupa:
Let me tell you something, if I have $50 million, I have $50 million in total assets, I have that much money. Imagine that. I would be so happy to pay a 2% annual tax on that fortune if it meant that everybody could be debt free from their college and kids could have strong, secure public schools, and I could live in security knowing that my democracy was strong and functioning, and that my fellow citizens weren't burdened and going bankrupt with medical bills, with college debt, with other things that really put them into stress and working incredibly long hours, and juggling jobs which took up their time and prevented them from being active, engaged citizens.
Andrea Chalupa:
See that is the doomsday hamster wheel that Americans are on where you have to choose between working so you can pay for childcare, so you can put food on your table, so you can save for retirement, so you can put aside money for the college fund, and taking some time off so you can stay engaged as a citizen and pay attention to what's going on and knock on doors and make phone calls and show up at your local Congress office and so forth, so you can fight for the democracy that will help protect you and your children's future.
Andrea Chalupa:
But when you're burdened with bills, when you're burdened with a debt, it's very difficult for you to be an engaged and active citizen. And so all of these plans, not only Putin-proof our democracy as we've just explained, but they also provide security for all Americans making it a fair, freer country so all of us can stay engaged citizens, and by doing so, then we Trump-proof our democracy.
Andrea Chalupa:
We're all in better shape and we're going to be seeing through all of the gaslighting of Ivanka Trump coming out on a convention floor and sounding like a Democrat when she's truly not. She's just Elena Ceausescu in heels.
Sarah Kendzior:
I think that's great and I hope that everyone not just listens to what you said but actually goes and looks up these plans on their own, analyzes them, thinks about them in reference to our current political plight and see that these are actual roadways out. Andrea and I are not known for our optimism or for advocating easy solutions.
Sarah Kendzior:
There are no easy solutions in this time, but that is why these proposals are all the more impressive. And honestly it would be such a wasted opportunity to not have Warren or at the least to not have these proposals implemented in office because we're at a turning point. We are turning rapidly toward autocratic consolidation and whoever wins is just in for hell. They're going to spend their term digging us out of this hell hole that not just Trump, but all the crises of the past that were never fully addressed in remedies have brought us to.
Sarah Kendzior:
But there is the potential to turn this around and I think the majority of the candidates genuinely want that. But originally going into this election, I thought basically the best we would get is like Trump versus not Trump, and of course, you vote for not Trump, you vote against the existential apocalyptic threat.
Sarah Kendzior:
It never occurred to me that we would actually be so fortunate as to get a candidate who intrinsically understands the crisis that we're facing, understands the intersection of those crises, has actual compassion for people who are being affected, people who are being vulnerable. Is skilled in both domestic and foreign policy because she understands that kleptocracy is a global phenomenon, particularly in the digital age.
Sarah Kendzior:
Her plan addressing financial crime makes this very clear, and so that is why we endorsed her on Gaslit Nation. We didn't take that endorsement lightly, and it doesn't mean we hate all the other candidates or anything like that. It's just this is an actual good thing. We're bringing you the shocking phenomenon of good news on Gaslit Nation.
Sarah Kendzior:
And again, to reemphasize Andrea's point, I hope that whomever wins considers these plans carefully because that is what matters. What matters is serving the public. What matters is turning this around. It should not be about personality cults, it should not be about these kind of weird miniscule intra partisan feuds that have dominated media coverage and have dominated the Democratic Party itself.
Sarah Kendzior:
It should be about helping people, and these are roadmaps to doing that. It's very hard for me to envision some of the candidates taking these suggestions seriously, particularly Michael Bloomberg who we discussed last week as the most dangerous of the quote, unquote democratic–I don't even know whether to call him that–democratic challengers, but I can see the others at least taking bits and pieces of it. So yeah, please check those out.
Andrea Chalupa:
We all have to be united, whoever the democratic candidate is, because I'll tell you very simply, we need to all endorse in 2020, Stop the Bleeding. Stop the Bleeding 2020, because that's really what this is. And as president, even if it's the worst Democrat in the bunch, as president, that Democrat will not be suing the States or carrying out vindictive measures against the States like what Trump is doing, such as banning New Yorkers from getting global entry, which is just so petty because New York City's a sanctuary city against his crackdown on immigrants. It’s dystopian what he's doing, how he's terrorizing immigrant communities.
Andrea Chalupa:
And so please understand that this show, we constantly highlight the all-important work that we each must be doing on the State level, meaning know who your state rep is, make sure that your entire state government is a blue trifecta. That is how you're going to protect you and your family against-
Sarah Kendzior:
{laugher} Sorry.
Andrea Chalupa:
What?
Sarah Kendzior:
Sorry. Go on. This is such a fantasy, but you're right. Keep going.
Andrea Chalupa:
But you can get it though. Look at Virginia. Virginia is now solidly blue.
Sarah Kendzior:
True.
Andrea Chalupa:
Virginia was purple, Virginia was red. Look at the miracle of Virginia, it's absolutely possible. And progress takes time, progress takes smart organization, progress takes hard work, and progress takes a refusal to give up. And so no matter where you live, Missouri, Kansas, you have to keep the faith, find your community of fellow weirdos and follow smart organization and plan.
Andrea Chalupa:
When I look at Elizabeth Warren's plans, I think about Howard Dean's 50-State Strategy and why can't we band together with organizations like Move On, Swing Left, all these other groups and all of us work together on a 50 State level strategy like Howard Dean did to get Barack Obama elected in 2008?
Andrea Chalupa:
Barack Obama seemed like a long shot in 2008. Howard Dean did it with a 50-State strategy. They showed up everywhere, and the Democrats came out of hiding and they were thrilled. They were thrilled that they finally had a democratic leadership that united the country because Democrats and Progressives are in every single state. We cannot abandon each other, we have to–we have to solidify that.
Andrea Chalupa:
And so I would love to see a Howard Dean-style, 50-State Strategy of all these communities in every single state working together to pass Elizabeth Warren's plans to Trump-proof and Putin-proof our democracy. And I believe that it can be done.
Sarah Kendzior:
My sort of dark laughter at that moment was just in reference to how dire the situation is in Missouri. But as you noted, Virginia was in this position before and Missouri was not always in this position. And so there is no such thing as a red state or a blue state. I've said that many times, I said that in my book, The View From Flyover Country. That's a conceit that was created by cable news.
Sarah Kendzior:
Every state is a purple state and every state is dealing with structural corruption, and it is that corruption, gerrymandering, voter suppression, all these other problems that lock people in to legislatures that don't actually represent their interests. We've gotten into that in previous episodes, but I feel like we've been getting a lot of questions lately from our listeners about Bernie Sanders and Russia because as you know, we are a podcast that heavily covers Russia and covered the Mueller Probe.
Sarah Kendzior:
Should we discuss that since at this point the 1.8% have voted he's technically the front runner of the narrow margin?
Andrea Chalupa:
I want to go back to the opening clip of this show, which is Martin Luther King warning everyone not to sleep through a revolution. And that when times are changing, it's time for you to change with them. We opened the show with that because a lot of these pundits who are attacking Bernie or who are just erasing Warren, they don't understand that Bernie and Warren supporters combined so far on these caucuses show that the progressive movement is now the mainstream movement of the Democratic Party and that is because you have a historic level of income inequality.
Andrea Chalupa:
That is because you have the climate crisis taking away jobs, impacting communities, threatening all of us and creating climate refugees who have barely any social safety net to depend on. Do not attack Bernie, do not erase Warren. Look at those as signs that you are sleeping through a revolution, Joe Scarborough.
Andrea Chalupa:
And I want to say how funny it is that Joe Scarborough is calling for Warren to drop out so that she can consolidate the movement to stop Bernie, when in 2016, Mika and Joe Scarborough liked to boost up Bernie in opposition to Hillary. They suddenly were like Bernie bros and saying, "Oh, look how unfair Hillary is being to Bernie."
Andrea Chalupa:
I remember that vividly thinking, please, you guys don't care about Bernie, you're threatened by Bernie. All you care about is stopping a Democrat from winning the White House and getting your friend Trump elected because you think that he's going to give you a seat in his kitchen cabinet. And you went to his New Year's Eve party when he was the President-elect and then he burned you like he's made a career burning everybody because that man has no soul.
Andrea Chalupa:
So stop, pundits, sounding so out of touch and pay attention to how Americans, the so-called real Americans you claim to be the voice of, how painfully they're hurting now and how scared they are. That is where the progressive movement is coming from. And I can tell you as somebody that cares deeply about the democracy and anti-corruption movement in Ukraine, and human rights movement in Russia, and so forth, if I had any concern, and we've talked about concerns we've had about Bernie, like why the hell isn't he aggressively supporting the Magnitsky Act?
Andrea Chalupa:
The Magnitsky Act confronts corruption. And as we always say, kleptocracy anywhere, it's kleptocracy everywhere. Why is Bernie in 2017 saying that NATO should let Russia in when Putin's mafia state is a terrorist regime that absolutely cannot be trusted? They are insidious, and undermining, and aggressive, and they will always, always outsmart you because they are determined criminals.
Andrea Chalupa:
And so yeah, there are some red flags in terms of Bernie's totally unrealistic, and naïve, and ill-informed olive branch to Putin's mafia state. I think that's ill-advised, but I do take him at his word when it comes to his robust plan on how to fight the climate crisis. And if Bernie Sanders as President carries through on the promises to protect our environment and to confront the climate crisis, then guess what? That's bad news for Putin.
Andrea Chalupa:
So I think whoever we elect in 2020 that is not Trump, whether it's the worst case scenario or the best case scenario, that person is going to stop the immense bleeding that's happening now. And whatever imperfections they have, we will work to correct those on the State level and fight for the policies of the candidates from the primary that we really loved.
Andrea Chalupa:
And if anybody says to you, "We can't vote for this person, or that person, or that person because that wasn't my favorite candidate" then ask that person point blank, "Oh really? Tell me which policies of your favorite candidate you plan to work for on the State level and what your plan is there?" And guess what? If they can't tell you, they're probably a bot or they're just an idiot. So all of us have to get realistic now because this is not a drill.
Sarah Kendzior:
To get back to the Russia issue with Bernie, you brought up some of our main concerns from before, his votes on Magnitsky, his votes against sanctions on Russia. There has been smoke, but not really fire when it comes to Bernie and the Kremlin. However, of course we have yet another election where there is Kremlin influence in the election.
Sarah Kendzior:
That's what happens when the Kremlin installs an asset who is also linked to a mafia syndicate, meaning Trump in the White House. When people debate who is the preferred candidate of the Kremlin, it's Trump. This is not a question. Of course, they want Trump in. He has an entire cabal of Kremlin-friendly actors who he's already installed in positions in the Treasury, in the State Department.
Sarah Kendzior:
He has actors like Giuliani running free. He has patched the courts to carry out policies that benefit the Kremlin. They don't want to throw all of that away and put in Bernie Sanders. The idea of that is absolutely ludicrous to me. Then the question becomes, do they want Bernie to be the Democratic candidate or do they want chaos?
Sarah Kendzior:
And first of all, the second part of that, they always want chaos. Chaos is just a guarantee. Chaos is coming with the territory, not just of having Trump in power, but also having all of these field institutions that have honestly put us in chaos for the last 20 years. So yes, of course they want chaos. The weaker we are as a country, the better it is for the Kremlin.
Sarah Kendzior:
Now, do they want Bernie to become the nominee so that he will lose to Trump? Now, first of all, you've got all these other things going on where Trump can potentially rig the election. You have domestic voter suppression with disenfranchising democratic voters, you have unsecure machines which Elizabeth Warren has a plan to fix, the potential that machines can be hacked.
Sarah Kendzior:
You have Trump simply refusing to concede or other Republicans refusing to concede, and courts which are rigged with judges who will honor the complete annihilation of democracy. So you've got all sorts of stuff going on. However, if I was Russia, an easier plan I think would not necessarily be to have Bernie become the nominee and everyone freak out about socialism.
Sarah Kendzior:
I think that the mainstream media and cable news is definitely freaking out about it, but I'm not sure that that really factors as much into the general population who are freaking out about things like how do I feed my family? But I think what they're looking for is a third party candidate.
Sarah Kendzior:
My big worry about this race is that either Bernie or Bloomberg will run as a third party candidate. I think that if Bernie were to do this, I think it would be because Bloomberg is the nominee, and that's a very dangerous situation because as we've discussed, Bloomberg is a dangerous candidate who is essentially a Republican, a racist, who has many similarities to Trump.
Sarah Kendzior:
I think that that is the desired outcome of the Kremlin, which is why it's very, very important that no matter what you do in this primary, do not vote for Michael Bloomberg because that's the actual road, I think, to a disaster. And to just get into the news briefly of what happened this week, we have this ongoing, very ferocious, very vicious debate, especially on Twitter about “is Bernie Kremlin asset? Is the Kremlin interfering and helping his campaign?” But we don't know the details.
Sarah Kendzior:
This is what the Washington post says. It says, "U.S. officials have told Senator Bernie Sanders that Russia is attempting to help his presidential campaign as part of an effort to interfere with the democratic contest according to people familiar with the matter. President Trump and lawmakers in Capitol Hill have also been informed about the Russian assistance to the Vermont Senator.
Sarah Kendzior:
Those people said, 'Speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence, it's not clear what form that Russian assistance has taken.' U.S. prosecutors found a Russian effort in 2016 used social media to boost Sanders' campaign against Hillary Clinton, part of a broader effort to hurt Clinton, sow dissension in the American electorate and ultimately help elect Donald Trump.
Sarah Kendzior:
And then we have Sanders saying, 'I don't care, frankly, who Putin wants to be president. My message to Putin is clear; 'Stay out of American elections, and as president I will make sure that you do.''"
Sarah Kendzior:
That's the right response. It's good that he said that. That's what every candidate should say. I would honestly like him to elaborate, I would like him to say what he would do if he won, how he would stand up against Putin. I would like him to explain his previous votes. I would like him to explain hiring Tad Devine who is linked not just to the Kremlin, but to Paul Manafort in 2016.
Sarah Kendzior:
There are questions and the best thing is for Sanders to simply answer them. But what's concerning me here is we know that there is Russian interference all throughout this election. We know that it is real and we also know that it can be used as a propaganda tool to de-legitimize different candidates.
Sarah Kendzior:
We have no idea in what way the Kremlin is helping or trying to help Sanders. They won't tell us, it was a classified briefing, that's why Sanders didn't come forward. That's what his campaign says. They weren't allowed to speak out about it, then the Washington Post says it a month later. It could be something like propaganda, it could be bots, it could be troll farms, which we know is happening.
Sarah Kendzior:
It could also be something much more serious like putting dirty money in the campaign perhaps without his knowledge. There are so many things that could be happening, changing votes. And so I'm just most frustrated that Congress and the intelligence community is once again not alerting the American public to the broader threat of Russian interference in our election irrespective of the candidate.
Sarah Kendzior:
Whether it's Bernie or someone else, we need to know what is happening to our elections. What are they doing to make sure that these elections retain integrity? What are they doing to protect us to make it different this time around than it was in 2016? That's where my frustration on this whole issue lies.
Andrea Chalupa:
Let's all remind ourselves that even if you can't stand to vote for Bernie in the general election or Elizabeth Warren, or Pete, “Mayor Pete”, or anybody who gets in, even if you cannot stand to vote for that person, vote for that person anyway to stop the bleeding. Why? Because in 2008 when we elected Barack Obama, Americans, Democrats, treated that as some Hollywood happy ending and we all went home and we stopped paying attention.
Andrea Chalupa:
And over the course of Obama's two terms, Karl Rove engineered a takeover of State governments, turning so many State governments red across the board, creating red trifecta after red trifecta, that the Republican Party came so close to calling a constitutional convention to edit our Constitution.
Andrea Chalupa:
And it wasn't until the wake up call of 2016 that the Republicans stealing the 2016 election under Donald Trump with the Kremlin's help that local grassroots groups woke up and began launching all these efforts to take back state governments. And so far we've been making major progress.
Andrea Chalupa:
And this is so critical because quality of life issues from education to voting rights and so forth are determined on the State level. And if you try to have, for instance, a sanctuary city, if you try to pass aggressive environmental laws, the White House and the DOJ, the Attorney General can sue your State, can do all types of vindictive measures to try to stop that progress in your state.
Andrea Chalupa:
So if you want to be able to build a progressive union State by State and not have to also battle the White House and the DOJ, then get any damn Democrat in there because I promise you none of these Democrats will sue your State for creating progress on the ground. And so that's what we need. We need that because right now we're up against an actual dictator and he's accelerating the purge, he's consolidating his power, he's packing the courts with FARA ideologues.
Andrea Chalupa:
Roe versus Wade may be overturned, the war on women will accelerate in unimaginable ways, ways that a white male punditry lacks the imagination to envision. Okay? This is very serious now and the way you stand up to a bully like Trump is you call him out. And to get us in that spirit, to get us in that mood, we know that there was a debate Tuesday night and this is going to be publishing on Wednesday morning.
Andrea Chalupa:
If you want to know our response to that debate, follow us on Twitter or check in next week's episode, but for now we're going to end this episode by playing the highlights of Elizabeth Warren mopping the debate stage floor in Nevada with the face of Michael Bloomberg, a very rich white man who looked like a deer in headlights because he is so rich and powerful, he's not used to being called out to his face and he very naively walked out on that stage and was not ready for what was dished out. And so we'll play that now.
Elizabeth Warren:
We need to get everybody's healthcare plan out here. Mayor Buttigieg really has a slogan that was thought out by his consultants to paper over a thin version of a plan that would leave millions of people unable to afford their healthcare. It's not a plan, it's PowerPoint, and Amy's plan is even less. It's like a Post It note, “insert plan here.”
Elizabeth Warren:
Amy, I looked online at your plan, it's two paragraphs. Families are suffering and they need a plan.
Amy:
Okay, that's it.
Elizabeth Warren:
You can't simply stand here and trash an idea to give healthcare coverage to everyone without having a realistic plan of your own. According to the New York Times, the last time that Mitch McConnell was on the ballot, the Vice President stood in the Oval Office and said, "I hope that Mitch gets reelected so I can keep working with him." Well, Mitch did get-
Speaker 6:
That's [crosstalk 00:52:23] totally out of context.
Elizabeth Warren:
... Mitch did get reelected, he did not have an epiphany. Instead, he blocked really everything that Barack Obama tried to pass-
Speaker 6:
Did you ever [crosstalk 00:52:35]-
Elizabeth Warren:
... and he controlled-
Amy:
Senator-
Elizabeth Warren:
... a Supreme Court seat-
Speaker 6:
Come on.
Elizabeth Warren:
... from the Democrats, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. I'd like to talk about who we're running against. A billionaire who calls women “fat broads” and “horse faced lesbians.” And no, I'm not talking about Donald Trump, I'm talking about Mayor Bloomberg.
Mayor Bloomberg:
In my foundation, the person that runs it's a woman, 70% of the people there are women. In my company, lots and lots of women have big responsibilities. They get paid exactly the same as men.
Amy:
Senator Warren, you’ve been critical of Mayor Bloomberg on this issue.
Elizabeth Warren:
Yes I have, and I hope you heard what his defense was, "I've been nice to some women." We are not going to beat Donald Trump with a man who has who knows how many nondisclosure agreements and the drip, drip, drip of stories of women saying they have been harassed and discriminated against. That's not what we do as Democrats.
Amy:
Mr. [inaudible 00:53:32].
Elizabeth Warren:
... a two cent wealth tax, it is a question of values. Do we want to invest in Mr. Bloomberg or do we want to-
Speaker 8:
All right.
Elizabeth Warren:
... invest in an entire-
Speaker 8:
Senator, thank you.
Elizabeth Warren:
... an entire generation of young [crosstalk 00:53:41]-
Speaker 8:
Senator Sanders-
Elizabeth Warren:
Democrats want to beat Donald Trump but they are worried. They are worried about gambling on a narrow vision that doesn't address the fears of millions of Americans across this country who see real problems and want real change. They are worried about gambling on a revolution that won't bring along a majority of this country.
Elizabeth Warren:
Amy and Joe's hearts are in the right place, but we can't be so eager to be liked by Mitch McConnell that we-
Amy:
Oh my God.
Elizabeth Warren:
... forget how to fight the Republicans. Mayor Buttigieg has been taking money from big donors and changing his positions, so it makes it-
Speaker 6:
That's just not [crosstalk 00:54:26]-
Elizabeth Warren:
... unclear what it is he stands for other than he-
Speaker 8:
Senator, thank you [crosstalk 00:54:31]...
Andrea Chalupa:
And next up we have comedian Krissychula here to basically provide a condensed version of what you just heard. If you have children in the room listening to this with you, we're going to give you a five second warning, we suggest that you pause and ask them to cover their ears or leave the room. All right?
Andrea Chalupa:
We endorse this because we think it's hilarious and that Kris is brilliant. And thank you Krissy for providing this little relief in these interesting times.
Krissychula:
I would like to start this debate off by first saying, "Mike Bloomberg, you a bitch, you're not shit and ain’t never going to be shit." And since I got your time, Amy Klobuchar, your healthcare plan only two paragraphs. You know what you're going to get with Amy Klobuchar's healthcare plan? Some Robitussins and some water.
Krissychula:
Pete Buttigieg, you're a child, stay in a child's place. Joe Biden, ho, why is you here? Bernie Sanders, you're cool but low key fuck you.
Krissychula:
Join me at elizabethwarren.youjustgotknockedthefuckout.org. I bet you all miss Kamala now. Lizzy out.
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 towards Australia's first nations communities, check out the Fire Relief Fund for First Nations Communities by Neil 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 pressure from the palm oil industry, donate to the Orangutan Project at theorangutanproject.org.
Andrea Chalupa:
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:
Our production managers, who we sorely need, are Nicholas Torres and Karlyn Daigle. Our episodes are edited by Nicholas Torres and our Patreon exclusive content is edited by Karlyn Daigle.
Andrea Chalupa:
Original music in Gaslit Nation produced by David Whitehead, Martin Visenberg, Nick Farr, Damian Arriaga, and Karlyn Daigle.
Sarah Kendzior:
Our logo design was donated to us by Hamish Smyth of the New York-based firm Order. Thank you so much Hamish.
Andrea Chalupa:
Gaslit Nation would like to thank our supporters at the producer level and higher on Patreon.