Gaslit Nation Coronavirus Special!
We at Gaslit Nation have spent years covering fascism, transnational crime, white supremacist violence, climate change disasters, genocide, and the threat of WWIII, but apparently the universe thought this wasn’t depressing enough, so now we have a plague! We discuss the coronavirus crisis, the terrible response of the Trump administration, the way the virus may be weaponized politically, and what you can do to protect yourself and those around you.
Chris Matthews:
Could you get a little closer to the camera?
Speaker 2:
What is it? Is it coming in strangely?
Chris Matthews:
Come in closer. Really close.
Speaker 2:
What are you doing?
Chris Matthews:
Just kidding, you look great. Anyway, thanks. Erin, it's great, look at that, look. No, you're beautiful.
Speaker 2:
Know your screen's location.
Chris Matthews:
Thank you. I'm just kidding, I'm just kidding, you're a knockout. The next time a producer has to choose between a picture of Maura Margaret Brennan and that oil derrick that offshore oil derrick stay on Margaret Brennan okay? She's a beautiful woman, she's a very bright reporter, she makes us feel good. Bring back Margaret, thank you dear, thank you. Back by popular demand. Happy Friday and she's six feet tall besides. You're gorgeous.
Chris Matthews:
High heels are a big part of this for some reason. Maybe it's your photography but women look great of course but you're always shooting the legs, shooting the shoes. So now you're in a wind tunnel, you look great by the way in the wind tunnel. The camera's looking at your legs, your shoes. We're interested in these gorgeous creatures of God here.
Chris Matthews:
You're walking down the street, you’re beautiful. Oh, you look great.
Speaker 3:
Nice try, Chris.
Chris Matthews:
No, you look great. We have got to go to din din sometime. You look great by the way if I were allowed to say that, unbelievable. I'm not allowed to say this but I'll say it, you're beautiful. I get in trouble for this but you're great-looking obviously. You’re one of God's gifts to men in this country. Very attractive people, physically. I mean they're beautiful people, like Nikki Haley's gorgeous.
Speaker 3:
And the party will trust Trump to be able to make that decision.
Chris Matthews:
Well, I think the party will have a role in it. Did you see her walk? Runway walk, my God is that great.
Speaker 4:
We just heard from the likely nominee.
Chris Matthews:
Be careful with your advances you're making with your eyes right now. Taryn, you first, you're giving me the peepers, I can tell. What are you doing here?
Speaker 5:
Peepers?
Chris Matthews:
You are doing it. You're flashing your incredible eyebrows at me, eyelashes. Look at that, it's awful what you're doing, look. Ann Coulter, do you find her physically attractive Tucker? Mike, do you want to weigh in here as an older fella? Do you find her to be a physically attractive woman? I find her... I wouldn't put her... Well, she doesn't pass the Chris Matthews test. I'm on the 29th floor overlooking this incredible city. I'm here to judge the Miss America Pageant which I've always wanted to do. I've never seen such talent and great looking women.
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 out on April 7th and available for pre-order now.
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.
Andrea Chalupa:
And today on Gaslit Nation, it is Christmas morning or whatever you celebrate. We are celebrating the fact that Chris Matthews is finally gone. Something we never thought possible because he's so entrenched in what we call the Chuck Todd Industrial Complex that has been polluting political narrative manipulation across the board in America for many years.
Andrea Chalupa:
For Chris Matthews fans who are shocked to hear this, I don't know how you even liked him, the guy barks over people, he has guests on his show just so he can interrupt them. He's somebody that's just generally obnoxious and I'm so grateful that we had that montage pulling together all those moments when he treated women as objects instead of equal fellow human beings. And that matters for reasons we're going to go into today. So Chris Matthews represents a coronavirus of white male misogyny that we've been trapped under for far too long.
Andrea Chalupa:
If you look at what happened in 2016 with Hillary Clinton, a lot of the men in cable news, in television news where most Americans get their information from, a lot of those men turned out to be massive violent misogynists. You had Mark Halperin of Morning Joe who was very anti-Hillary during the 2016 election and drove the political narrative in 2016.
Speaker 8:
Last week the spotlight turned to political journalist and author Mark Halperin who had become a well known name for his work at ABC, NBC, and Bloomberg. Five women came forward to CNN alleging that he had harassed them while he was at ABC. That number has now grown to at least a dozen and several have said he assaulted them as well.
Andrea Chalupa:
What a shocker that that would then translate into horrible attacks against one of the most qualified if not the most qualified candidate to ever run for President as we had in 2016 with Hillary Clinton. And then what was the name of that guy, Sarah, on the Today Show? Matt Lauer? Matt Lauer.
Sarah Kendzior:
Oh, Matt Lauer with his magical office door with the button he pushes to trap his victims so that he could sexually assault them? Yes, Matt Lauer. The face that greeted us every morning for decades on end as women sat in silence and in fear. So yeah, go on.
Andrea Chalupa:
Yeah, turns out he was a Bond villain this whole time. And so on and so on. So we did a lot of house cleaning since 2016. Men are on notice and Chris Matthews finally got his and who is to thank for that ut Santa Claus Elizabeth Warren who's having the most productive run for president because she is a woman who has built a career in being grounded in reality. Being grounded in the data. Being grounded in her research, doing her homework and therefore getting this done. And so far she has had a hugely productive few weeks and let's just go into that now.
Andrea Chalupa:
So we had the debate, the most recent debate, where she yet again was going after Bloomberg, mopping the stage with his face and people were like, "Why is she doing that again?" Because repetition matters. Because you need to get into people's minds that Bloomberg is a bad, bad man and that he doesn't value women as equals and human beings and in fact, he has several NDAs out there, we don't know how many.
Andrea Chalupa:
So Elizabeth Warren called him out by name yet again and got Michael Bloomberg to pledge that a few women, a few can be released from NDAs and that he will stop the practice of using NDAs in the settlement of sexual harassment cases. Huge. Huge. That's systemic change. That's what it looks like in the Bloomberg organization. Warren got that done. Elizabeth Warren.
Andrea Chalupa:
Then you have Chris Matthews pushing Elizabeth Warren and getting in her face and that doesn't even really matter. He was just sort of asking really dumb questions of Elizabeth Warren after the last debate and saying, "You're making an accusation. A very serious accusation against Mike Bloomberg." And Elizabeth Warren looks at him and she says, "Chris Matthews, I believe women, don't you?"
Andrea Chalupa:
Chris Matthews was stuttering and stunned and this was followed up by a female journalist, Laura Bassett, who came out and said that she had a very uncomfortable, totally wrong encounter and called him out some more and finally he abruptly retired on air. This was something that was triggered, that was set in motion, by Elizabeth Warren confronting Chris Matthews on air.
Andrea Chalupa:
That set a sea of change going that led to Matthews’ abrupt departure from NBC. What happened with Matthews was he got Warrened. He got Warrened. Santa Warren came for him and she delivered to the rest of us lots of presents because she knows how to get things done and thank God for that.
Andrea Chalupa:
And so I want to talk about why this all matters for those who think “shut up already, you guys are objects just deal with it”. This is why misogyny is so insidious and dangerous and I want to speak directly to the men listening to this show. So Chris Matthews treating women as cute little objects for his enjoyment and valuing women on their looks, that is completely dehumanizing.
Andrea Chalupa:
And what you're doing is when you try to treat more than half your population as less than human you're following the footsteps of autocratic regimes from Saudi Arabia to Russia where women's rights are a painful human rights struggle.
Andrea Chalupa:
If you look at the nations that have equality between men and women, they also rank as nations that are doing the most to fight the climate crisis, that are doing the most to stand up to corruption in their countries, the most economically sound, and there's a reason for that. When you treat each other like human beings, when you have equality, it's like all boats rise with that tide.
Andrea Chalupa:
So you have to understand that equality, men, is in your own self-interest. And let me break it down for you why. When you had Hillary Clinton running and she was under this misogynistic microscope that no man in politics will ever have to be under in today's age, what you had were all these men just taking obscene shots at her. Holding her to unrealistic standards and beating the dead horse of her emails and all these things.
Andrea Chalupa:
And as a result... Any little things she did because people make mistakes, people are humans. Any little thing she did was exploited and exploded and as a result, now, men of America listening, you now have one of the greatest misogynists who ever lived, Donald Trump, as President. And he is unraveling all of our environmental protections, he's hastening the crisis of climate change.
Andrea Chalupa:
He's separating families, he's putting children in cages, he's undoing financial regulations to make our economy fairer and freer for everyone. He is an absolute existential threat to not just us as Americans, but to this planet and that is what misogyny got us. Okay? So if you want to be safe from Donald Trump then you need to attack what brought Donald Trump to power.
Andrea Chalupa:
You need to attack misogyny in all its little forms. And Chris Matthews flirting with women, praising women for their looks, making women very uncomfortable on live television when he does that by the way, objectifying women, that matters. That absolutely matters because it is part of a larger insidious culture that is all around us. That's in the air that we breathe and let me use a metaphor, plastic.
Andrea Chalupa:
You may watch your plastic consumption but it's impossible because plastic's all around you. It's all around you and now it's choking our oceans, it's ending up in the stomachs of whales that are beached onshore. In fish, in sea birds, it's in the fish we eat, it's inside us. Our oceans are becoming a plastic soup. Misogyny is the same way. Misogyny is the plastic soup that is choking our democracy. That is how you need to think about it.
Andrea Chalupa:
And the fact that we have in this election a candidate like Elizabeth Warren who people are saying she would be the front runner if she weren't a woman, she's the most qualified. She's the youngest, she's got all this energy, you cannot do a selfie line with that much enthusiasm unless that enthusiasm is real and unless that vitality is real.
Andrea Chalupa:
I'm so tired of that punchline that Elizabeth Warren would be the front runner if only she were a man. That means that our democracy is being choked by the plastic soup of misogyny. It is all around us. It is in the air we breathe. We are consuming it and when you have women who aren't voting for Elizabeth Warren because they're consuming that plastic, they're buying into the plastic that's inside their system now, they are holding themselves down.
Andrea Chalupa:
When you have men who want equality, who want a fair, freer world for their daughters, who want their sons to grow up loving and respecting strong women because all of us do better when we protect each other and look out for each other and treat each other as fellow human beings. The strongest societies, the strongest countries on this planet practice that.
Andrea Chalupa:
It is the model for us. It is the dictatorships and the vulnerable democracies that don't practice that, that we need to move away from. So understand that this plastic soup that is choking our democracy, it is all around us and let me break down some stats to you.
Andrea Chalupa:
So from Women's Media Center, close to two-thirds of women journalists report experiencing threats, sexist abuse, intimidation, threats, and harassment in the course of doing their work. An 11-year analysis of online harassment cases found that women made up 72% of the victims.
Andrea Chalupa:
From the United Nations, 35% of women worldwide have experienced either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or sexual violence by a non-partner. Okay at some point in our lives women and girls together account for 72% of human trafficking.
Andrea Chalupa:
From RAIN, the Rape Abuse Incest Network, one out of every six American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime. So Chris Matthews flirting with ladies constantly over the course of his career, that is part of a larger insidious violence that is holding our democracy hostage and weakening it. And we need to confront it at the root.
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Andrea Chalupa:
We have a strong, fearless, non-apologetic, ruthless, terrifying woman right now running for President who likes to get things done. Who has a habit of getting things done. Who is beloved by her students, who helped mentor Katie Porter, one of the strongest voices in this new Congress and we can't have her as President because of Chris Matthews? Because of guys like Chris Matthews in industries across the board? We can't have Elizabeth Warren as President because of this plastic soup that we're choking on?
Andrea Chalupa:
We need to confront it. We absolutely need to confront it because we're not going to get out of this unless we do and it does matter that she is a woman, it absolutely does matter. If we wanted just any woman as President we would be putting our money on Ivanka Trump because guess what? According to the patriarchy, Ivanka Trump is the right kind of woman. She is the model for how the patriarchy wants women to behave.
Andrea Chalupa:
Where you are an object and you accept that you are an object and you live up to being an object with your long bleach blonde hair and your frilly pink dresses and when you open your mouth nothing comes out because you're just vacuous and self-interested and all you care about is pleasing the patriarchy around you because that's how you get your power.
Andrea Chalupa:
So if we wanted a woman for woman's sake we would be like, "Yay Ivanka Trump. We know that your daddy's going to steal an election for you, come on in. First woman President, yay." But no. We want the right president to steer us out of this crisis, who's got the plans, who's done the research, who's grounded in reality, who has a history of getting things done and a lot of progressives who are desperate, desperate for life-saving progress that's far overdue in this country are turning to Elizabeth Warren because she gets things done.
Andrea Chalupa:
She gets things done and no matter what happens in November we're going to vote for whoever the candidate is and we're going to fight like hell for Elizabeth's plans because she has shown us the way out of this mess. And let me tell you, purity test, Elizabeth Warren cannot pass a purity test, that's a fact. Bernie Sanders cannot pass a purity test, that is a fact. Biden cannot pass a purity test, that is a fact.
Andrea Chalupa:
We can name lists of things that are wrong with each of those three individuals but I'm telling you with purity test aside, Elizabeth Warren checks all the boxes to save us from ourselves and we need to finally put misogyny on trial with Elizabeth Warren and we need to take it down because it is hurting us. It is choking us just like that plastic soup choking our oceans.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yeah, I agree and I think we should clarify for our listeners that we're recording this on the morning of Super Tuesday so we have absolutely no idea what's going to happen today. You know Pete and Amy and Beto endorsed Biden yesterday and Biden also won South Carolina and all of this has put a race that a lot of people were claiming was either an inevitable win for Bernie and then an inevitable win for Biden and briefly it was deemed that for Bloomberg.
Sarah Kendzior:
Now it's kind of up in the air because Warren was a lot of people's second choice including Pete and Amy and Beto supporters. So we don't know. I just want to kind of contextualize this for you and we are going to do a special post-Super Tuesday episode for our Patreon listeners, a bonus episode this week that will come out I think tomorrow on Wednesday after the results are in. So if you want to listen to that please join our Patreon at the five dollar level or higher and you'll get access to that episode and also to all past and future bonus episodes.
Sarah Kendzior:
We do a bonus episode like that every week so check that out. And yeah, as for what you said–one thing that's been frustrating with Warren is that unlike with Hillary Clinton, as you mentioned the microscope that she was ceaselessly put under, you have erasure. You have her left out of the list of candidates who are running. You have her left out of poll questions and that's because as you said, she has plans and she names names.
Sarah Kendzior:
She actually will go after the people who are holding up this oppressive system. Whether they're financiers or misogynist media lackeys in real-time and she gets results quickly. So that is the reason I think that she frightens people in a way that other women haven't and she doesn't come with the kind of history that Hillary Clinton did either so there's less to focus on.
Sarah Kendzior:
It has been very frustrating and it's also... It's frustrating in a way to see these little glimpses of the world that could be if Warren is able to succeed. If people allow her to succeed. If they're willing to take a chance on her. If they're willing to take a chance on intelligent, tough women in general instead of always assuming that we are second class citizens. That we're also-rans, that we're people who should just bow down and kiss your ass.
Sarah Kendzior:
They get so startled when we don't. They're always just... they're baffled. They have no idea what to do with a woman like Elizabeth Warren and they have no idea, I think, what to do with a lot of women who are out there speaking their minds and demanding change. So my words of advice on that are keep demanding it and whatever happens with her campaign the lesson that it provides on how to fight back and how to get results I think are valuable.
Andrea Chalupa:
Well, I want to put a one call out there, whoever your chosen candidate is in this primary, for the love of God please do your civic duty and make phone calls to drive out the vote for that candidate. You must do that now. You must knock on doors now. Why? Because it's easy. Why? Because you can make calls from home. And why? Because we're not going to get out of this mess by Netflix binge-watching the decline of our democracy. You've got to be an active participant.
Andrea Chalupa:
We expected Obama in 2008–the first black president, an exciting Hollywood moment–we thought that that was going to solve everything. We gave into savior syndrome. You cannot do that. You have to participate. And listen, making phone calls, yeah, people are going to hang up on you, people aren't going to want to talk to you but guess what? Anybody you've ever admired living today, getting things done that really blow you away, they've been hung up on.
Andrea Chalupa:
They've picked up the phone and called somebody and they've been hung up on. It happens to everyone. I'm telling you, making calls, knocking on doors, that is great training for anything worth doing in life. Those are skills that will translate into anything else you need to do to get where you need to go. So please do it.
Andrea Chalupa:
Warm up now because the more you do it the easier it becomes and the more calls you make the more doors you knock on. So please we need you to get warmed up, get your muscles warmed up, your civic muscles and then you'll be ready for the really big fight that the entire world depends on us winning in November to defeat Donald Trump.
Andrea Chalupa:
Whichever candidate is still in the race speaks to you, go out and make calls, knock on doors for that candidate. You need to warm up your civic muscles starting now and I enjoy doing it. I feel like it's my civic duty to do it and so I make calls for Elizabeth Warren and I love it because I break through the gaslighting of mainstream media and I talk directly to my fellow citizens.
Andrea Chalupa:
I talk to men and women in Texas, in Colorado, in Arkansas, in Virginia, in California and I love, love the conversations that we're having. I'm really inspired by them. One man in Virginia blew me away. He said that he was voting for Elizabeth Warren and I asked him why and he said immigration, because he cares about that, but then he also said equality. He thinks it's about time we had a woman president.
Andrea Chalupa:
I was so shocked I didn't know what to say and he was so sincere in saying this. At first, I was like are you trolling me? Are you having fun at my expense? But no he really meant it. He really cared about it and I'm telling you, there's a craving for all of us to connect with each other and be reminded that we're all one. That we're all part of the same human race. We're all part of this big large family and that we're stronger than the darkness that's trying to divide us.
Andrea Chalupa:
And there are a lot of wonderful men out there who are really strong and reliable allies to women and it's because of you that we're going to finally get equality in this country. It's because of you so keep showing up, keep fighting and refuse to abandon each other no matter how dark things get because our democracy and the fate of the world literally depends on that.
Sarah Kendzior:
Speaking of darkness and of us all coming together let's talk about the coronavirus. So we at Gaslit Nation have spent years now covering fascism, transnational crime, white supremacist violence, climate change disasters, genocide and the prospect of World War III. But apparently, the universe thought that this wasn't depressing enough so now we have the plague.
Sarah Kendzior:
So this is going to be the Gaslit Nation coronavirus special. We are your one-stop shopping for all of your questions about surviving a pandemic during a time of rising autocracy. We are your Costco of doom and our shelves are always stocked. And so for the rest of this episode, we're going to be examining the coronavirus crisis from a number of angles including corruption and incompetence in government, the danger of propaganda and alternative facts, the agenda of Trump administration bigots like Stephen Miller whose wife is now involved with the effort.
Sarah Kendzior:
The ongoing threats to worldwide public health in the global economy. The parallels to historic disasters like Chernobyl and more but first we have an important Gaslit Nation public service announcement. Wash your hands. Wash your hands like you just touched Roger Stone and you have to wipe him off. Wash your hands like they are drenched in Paul Manafort's blood money.
Sarah Kendzior:
Wash your hands like you’re Michael Bloomberg and you just met a member of the middle class. Wash your hands for 20 seconds. The exact duration of this take down from Elisabeth Warren.
Elizabeth Warren:
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. Democrats are not going to win if we have a nominee who has a history of hiding his tax returns.
Sarah Kendzior:
So there are a few other things that you can do to keep yourself and those around you safe. If you are sick, pretend you are a Republican who got a subpoena and just stay home or make like Robert Mueller and disappear from public life altogether.
Sarah Kendzior:
While at home it's good to have basic supplies like three-weeks food and water. But unless you're a doctor you don't need to wear a mask. Leave the masks for the professionals, much like Ivanka Trump should leave playing president for the professionals.
Sarah Kendzior:
There are other things that you can do to stay safe and we've included links to articles by scientists and doctors on our Gaslit Nation Patreon page so please go check those out. This has been a public service announcement from Gaslit Nation.
Sarah Kendzior:
So on with the show. So should we start from the beginning of how this virus began? I mean we've known about it since January and watching it develop has been like watching a slow-moving disaster. We knew it would hit the U.S. and it was predictable that the Trump administration instead of trying to combat it and save people's lives would be either negligent or malicious or both in their approach. But do you want to review the journey of the virus from China?
Andrea Chalupa:
Yeah, let's do it. I feel safer by the way after that PSA.
Sarah Kendzior:
You do, I'm glad. It's all for you. That's protecting us from Captain Trips and all that follows, but go on.
Andrea Chalupa:
Never waste a good crisis. This is going to be really interesting to watch play out with the coronavirus. Okay, so it came from Wuhan which is a region that ironically has a lab that studies viruses. So, of course, Steve Bannon, Trump's white nationalist cohort, is seizing on this opportunity by spinning it into a massive propaganda narrative that there's some Chinese conspiracy behind this ,that this was a virus deliberately unleashed by China.
Andrea Chalupa:
Of course, Bannon and Trump have made a case for themselves to come to power in 2016 and I think it is something that works in their favor. I've heard from a financial expert that people in the world of business and finance do appreciate how tough Trump's White House claims to be, imposters to be on China, because they are afraid of China's growing world dominance and it does tend to steamroll over the international laws and pirating and all of it.
Andrea Chalupa:
So they feel that Trump's belligerent White House will be a necessary and strong counter to China so here comes Steve Bannon with his anti-China conspiracy theory saying that this was a deliberate weapon of war used by China.
Andrea Chalupa:
So we have from Media Matters, I'm quoting now, "Buzzfeed recently reported on Bannon's ties to G News, a digital media outlet launched by Chinese billionaire and exile Guo Wengui that has also published two false stories about how the coronavirus was first introduced to residents of Wuhan. One G News story falsely alleged that the Chinese government would imminently confess the virus was genetically engineered and leaked from a lab near the densely populated city. The other included a document purporting to validate the conspiracy theory that the Chinese military spread the disease on purpose."
Andrea Chalupa:
Now, there's going to be conspiracy theories around this but the more interesting and larger question is–I'm shocked this doesn't happen more often given the strain that overpopulation–is putting on our environments given just the rise of corruption around the world and corruption flourishing and the fact that this is obviously going to trickle down to a lack of regulation and how we grow the animals that we eat.
Andrea Chalupa:
Because of the strain that humans are putting on this planet, we are increasingly vulnerable to viruses like this and so if anybody wants to look for a conspiracy here that this was unleashed intentionally like some ICE-9 in Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle sort of thing, it's a self-destructive thing to do. Just like a nuclear bomb because you simply cannot control it.
Andrea Chalupa:
So if we have something like mutually assured destruction when it comes to nuclear weapons which, knock on wood, have mostly been about posturing and threats by nuclear powers like Russia and Trump's U.S. and North Korea but not backed up. Nothing's been done with nuclear weapons since of course World War II.
Andrea Chalupa:
That's how you have to think of biological warfare, like unleashing a virus. It can come back to bite you. It can come back to destroy you. And so please keep that in mind when these conspiracy theories come out. So that's how they're capitalizing on it. They're trying to make it part of their anti-China shtick.
Andrea Chalupa:
Even though the Trump Crime Family directly benefits from a surprisingly complicated but surprisingly warm at times relationship yet complicated relationship with China. Ivanka Trump, for instance, got a lot of trademarks from China. Okay? Her daughter is learning Mandarin, she posted a video of her daughter speaking Mandarin. Like, Ivanka Trump is working that Chinese connection, all right? So how strained can those relationships really be?
Andrea Chalupa:
And plus Trump even wanted China to investigate Bo Biden so it's a lot of blustering really at the end of the day. So what are they going to do with this coronavirus because more cases are going to sprout up across 2020, it's just inevitable. This thing is on the rise, it's going to be traveling, it's going to be getting around.
Andrea Chalupa:
Experts are saying that it's going to just be part of our annual flu season, it's just going to be a really tough flu and it's not the big one yet that people are anticipating or say that is inevitable one day. What's interesting is that Trump can use this to his benefit as we saw with the Bannon China conspiracy.
Andrea Chalupa:
But at the same time, it is hurting the markets and the one thing that Trump lives by like an idiot is the rise and fall of the stock market. Presidents tend to avoid it because it is a gambling den so you don't want to stake your greatness on how the market is doing because that's a recipe for disaster and people voting against you depending on how the market goes but Trump lives and breathes by it.
Andrea Chalupa:
So he needs this coronavirus to be contained in order to reassure Wall Street, but at the same time the coronavirus can be pretty useful for suppressing the vote, and it's not a conspiracy theory to say that because look at what happened in Ohio in 2004. You had long lines. You had a lack of voting machines in districts that were predominantly Democrat and you didn't have those problems in predominantly Republican voting districts. This is well documented.
Andrea Chalupa:
We'll link to some stories there in our Patreon. It's easy to see in Democratic districts polling workers, people that sign up to vote at voting booths on election day in heavily Democratic leaning areas, they can suddenly not turn up for work that day because they had concerns about the coronavirus because guess what? The coronavirus is going to be all over the headlines more and more this year.
Andrea Chalupa:
So even if the market may be under control because Trump's going to try to do whatever he can to please Wall Street and keep the market up so he can help secure his re-election, you're still going to have poll workers on the ground just last-minute not showing up to work in places in Democrat-leaning areas.
Andrea Chalupa:
I mean I can totally see that being engineered. You already had the 4chan psychopaths flooding a voter hotline in Iowa to create confusion. So they're looking for any way that they can steal this election for their dictator. Republicans depend on stealing elections in order to come to power and stay in power.
Andrea Chalupa:
We saw it under George W. Bush, we saw it under the Trump crime family in 2016. So, of course, they're going to use the coronavirus to their advantage.
Sarah Kendzior:
Just a couple of points to respond to what you're saying. One thing that was crazy when this virus first emerged in January is I went out right away and I got more supplies to add to the growing stockpile of emergency preparedness that I've had in my basement since the Trump administration came in and I live in Missouri so we get tornadoes, so most people have something to kind of keep themselves going in case the power goes out.
Sarah Kendzior:
I live in St. Louis, a city where the power will go out for nine days and no one will turn it back on. The last time that happened I was living in a yurt in Kyrgyzstan and people were just wondering why we lived such primitive lifestyles here in St. Louis. Anyway, but since Trump came in I had a stockpile that I had in anticipation of a power grid hack, an infrastructure hack, which could happen.
Sarah Kendzior:
In anticipation of a war with Iran and some kind of blowback or war with other countries that could happen. Not even in anticipation, during the government shutdown when I worried that goods and services and the flow of them would be disrupted I had it. So you know this has been going on for a while and I see on Twitter until recently a lot of people having prepper shame. They don't want to be that person at Target or at the grocery store with a big shopping cart full of canned goods. Be that person.
Sarah Kendzior:
It is definitely good to be prepared. The worst thing is that you just have some extra food and water and medical supplies and you'll use them at a later date and things will be fine but I think it's reasonable to expect that things will not be fine because we do have an actual flu pandemic. And to be clear, from what we know, the fatality rate is about 2%. It's not like Ebola or something like that.
Sarah Kendzior:
But it is dangerous. It's good to take precautions and as Andrea just said it's going to get worse. And one of the reasons that it's going to get worse is because of who the Trump administration has appointed to handle this pandemic. Because as usual, Trump has put loyalists instead of experts in charge of public safety. So this is very typical. You see this in autocracies around the world.
Sarah Kendzior:
The longer he's in power, the smaller the inner circle gets. And he's been in power for three years and you see very few people from the original Trump administration remaining and those that are still there tend to be linked to Trump through nepotism. This is true of Ivanka and Jared but also of people like Elaine Chow, the wife of Mitch McConnell.
Sarah Kendzior:
Or complicity in a criminal plot which you see with Wilbur Ross and Steve Mnuchin and other long-time New York lackeys. So Steven Mnuchin, the Secretary of the Treasury (which does not have to do with public health) is on the coronavirus dream team. He's there along with Katie Miller who is the new wife of concentration camp architect, Stephen Miller.
Sarah Kendzior:
She's also managing this crisis. And then leading it all is Vice President Mike Pence, best known for helping facilitate an AIDS outbreak while he was the governor of Indiana. So these are the absolute worst people that you would want in a public health crisis because it is all about sugarcoating Trump's image or, I think, about more malicious intentions–using this as a weapon, as a way to scapegoat people, as a way to contain people, as a way to abuse power. We'll talk about that in a minute.
Sarah Kendzior:
I just kind of want to run through who's running this and some other things that make this unique. There is one doctor who is both qualified for and dedicated to the job and that's Doctor Anthony Fauci at the National Institute of Health. He was a trailblazer in the study of AIDS in the 1980s where he bravely spoke out despite the Regan administration.
Sarah Kendzior:
But he is today being muzzled by the Trump administration. For example, he was supposed to speak out about this public health crisis on the Sunday shows over the weekend but the Trump administration forbade it. So you have national information conflicting with state and local information which is a very dangerous situation to have on the ground as panic increases among citizens and the rates of infection and death rise.
Sarah Kendzior:
So here's where we get to something that is really distinctive from the other crises that we've experienced during this administration. This is the first national crisis since 2017 that was not created by the Trump administration itself and that's affecting people nationwide, like all of us, unlike natural disasters or mass shootings which are witnessed only by people in the regions where they occurred.
Sarah Kendzior:
So we're all being affected by this. We're all seeing the same things and that is a unique situation in a world that's been filtered by algorithms and bombarded with propaganda. The Trump administration has thrived by shaping public perception and manipulating the masses with fake facts and that is simply impossible to do here.
Sarah Kendzior:
We'll know if people around us are sick. We'll know how those people are being treated. Everyone in the United States is affected regardless of who they voted for. So we are all in this together and the question is whether we will act like it or whether the virus and the accompanying health crises and economic hardship will lead to violence and oppression and civil unrest.
Sarah Kendzior:
So one final point, the long term effect of a crisis like this, it may be akin to Chernobyl where the lies of the government could not stand up to what people on the ground had witnessed and could objectively measure. And I'm not comparing the severity of the coronavirus to Chernobyl at least at this point, but simply it's potential to break through the propaganda wall.
Sarah Kendzior:
The coronavirus may be the Chernobyl of the digital age. However, the ability to break through propaganda does not actually alleviate the danger in terms of both the administration's failure to act–for example, they've been refusing to provide testing kits–or the likelihood of them using the virus to scapegoat their enemies.
Andrea Chalupa:
All of Trump's response so far to the coronavirus has an autocratic ring to it, clearly, and this is an administration that unjustly and inhumanely punishes whistleblowers and humiliates whistleblowers and harasses whistleblowers. So, they have a long history of doing that, they have a long history of vindictively purging anyone that dares to call them out for their corruption and criminality.
Andrea Chalupa:
They have an open war on the Press. So it is a dangerous time that they are in charge of keeping us safe when they're actively working to control the message just like an autocratic regime would. When we were all discussing in the media the early figures on the victims in China, people kept reminding each other that China is an autocratic regime so you can't trust the information coming out.
Andrea Chalupa:
Well, guess what? Same with the U.S. So Anthony DeRosa here on Twitter points out in this latest article from the New York Times, Defense Secretary Mark C. Esper has urged American military commanders overseas not to make any decisions related to the coronavirus that might surprise the White House or run afoul of President Trump's messaging on the growing health challenge.
Andrea Chalupa:
So stay in line, stay on message, no matter what is happening on the ground. No matter how many lives are at risk. This is autocratic. This is what it looks like. This is part of a larger pattern where innocent lives are at stake, where people are vulnerable and all the regime cares about is protecting its own reality. Protecting its own propaganda and furthering it and keeping us from valuable information that could potentially keep us safe. This is part of a larger pattern of how autocratic regimes function. This is what we're up against.
Sarah Kendzior:
It's a very frightening situation. I mean this is one of these things… you know, we've managed to predict a lot of what the Trump administration would do because they follow a playbook and then you have something like this, a crisis that I mean I'm assuming there's no existence of a flu-minati and this is actually something that happened accidentally that they did not create but that they're going to try to control and to exploit and I'm very concerned about this. I'm concerned that Stephen Miller is involved in any way in the handling of this crisis.
Sarah Kendzior:
I'm concerned about the messages we're hearing from the military. As we are recording this episode FEMA is contemplating saying that there's a national emergency and this is interesting to me because the big boogie man of the Right Wing throughout the 1990s and the 2000s was FEMA. This idea that FEMA was going to grab everybody and throw them into camps and instill Martial Law and create basically what they saw as a Democratic autocracy.
Sarah Kendzior:
It concerns me that FEMA is acting because at this point we can't trust people in these government agencies that have indeed been purged of people who want to do their jobs. This is true of the CDC, this is true of the State Department. I mean there are some people left that are trying to do their jobs and I'm sure there are people like that at FEMA that just simply want to protect Americans but we also know that these agencies for three years have also been packed with people full of malicious intent.
Sarah Kendzior:
So it's very hard to evaluate what kind of response they're going to have to a natural disaster. The last time anything even comparable to this happened was probably Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, the aftermath of which was horrendous. They still haven't recovered. They still have not been able to move on with their lives. There's still lasting economic and health and all sorts of other repercussions from that.
Sarah Kendzior:
You remember Trump standing there just tossing paper towels into the crowd and then lying. Lying about the death toll. Lying about the illness and a lot of that, of course, was rooted in anti-Puerto Rican racism and honestly, xenophobia, because Trump did not understand that Puerto Rico is part of the United States.
Sarah Kendzior:
This is different because it's going to affect everyone equally. There's not going to be anybody who is immune because of what region they live in or who they voted for and because we don't know that much about the transmission it seems that even valiant attempts to protect yourselves, and you should try to do that by doing things like washing your hands regularly, they're not always working.
Sarah Kendzior:
It seems to be able to be transmitted via surfaces. There are reports from other countries that it's mutating. I mean it's like living in a really horrible sci-fi movie. I mean honestly, this is the plot of the season finale of the show Millennium in season two. So it's very surreal to see this, down to the Seattle outbreak.
Sarah Kendzior:
Anyway, as you can tell I'm a bit stressed by this situation. One thing we have to look out for is how the administration is going to use this to perhaps label different groups, different ethnic groups that they don't like already, as diseased, as a threat. We have to remember that Trump and Miller invented a migrant horde that seems to appear before every election.
Sarah Kendzior:
It appears before any time that they want an excuse to shut things down. We have to remember that during the government shutdown they enacted a national emergency and I don't think that they ever lifted it which means that they have the capacity to release the military on private citizens, to freeze bank accounts without justification, and in the midst of a pandemic all of this gets a lot worse because people are trying to just simply fight the pandemic but I don't know, this is what happens when you leave an autocrat in power.
Sarah Kendzior:
Like when Andrea and I were saying you need to get him out early for the safety of the country, you cannot just wait for an election, you cannot just wait for things to work out–this is the kind of crisis that we were worried about where you really see the need for competent, transparent government as a way to save our lives and protect ourselves and it's gone.
Sarah Kendzior:
And there's so many ways that things can go awry. I don't know, I mean, do you want to talk about the election itself since you started discussing that before?
Andrea Chalupa:
Well yeah. I just think they're going to leverage the coronavirus to try to suppress the vote. They're going to try to do everything they possibly can to try to suppress the vote because if you can't win on the issues then you suppress the vote and that is why Republicans literally rely on stealing the vote to seize power, stay in power. So that's it, that just sums that up.
Andrea Chalupa:
But I do want to point to another issue. World War III is playing out over Syria right now and the conflict there is heating up which is creating more civilian casualties, which is creating more refugees, and so to Sarah's point on how autocratic regimes, Far Right movements, scapegoat innocent people–namely brown people, namely poor people–in order to strike fear into people and come to power, consolidate power, stay in power.
Andrea Chalupa:
I am heartbroken over the already boiling point level of the refugee crisis in the Middle East and Northern Africa and the videos of refugee boats being fired on by Greek forces right now. Where people are risking their lives, their children's lives, just to get to safety.
Andrea Chalupa:
So you're going to have the coronavirus, of course, complicating things and I just think we as a show and we as citizens no matter where we live, we have to put in more effort to remember the refugees and the innocent children out there who are extraordinarily vulnerable. The children and people of all ages that are vulnerable to human trafficking, to sexual exploitation and violence and abuse and I think our show needs to start covering that more because we talk about misogyny and Elizabeth Warren being invisible.
Andrea Chalupa:
What is happening to our refugees, a crisis that's only going to get worse because that hot war in Syria is heating up. Tensions are escalating and we'll go into covering that in an episode soon. This show is really focused on the coronavirus and an update on the Democratic Primary but that's what's also breaking my heart right now, is that the coronavirus is going to of course spread among vulnerable populations like refugees that are already overrun with all types of vulnerabilities and there's just not enough resources to help them.
Andrea Chalupa:
Volunteer doctors are doing the best they can but Europe is strained. Europe is divided over what to do with refugees, so is the U.S. Trump has limited severely the number that the U.S. takes and it just worsened the crisis for them and then, of course, you have a refugee crisis in Venezuela from Maduro's inhumane policies there. The CIA did not screw up Venezuela; it was Hugo Chavez's policies and Maduro furthering those destructive policies and trying to cover up a widespread famine.
Andrea Chalupa:
So you have a refugee crisis coming out of Venezuela that rivals the refugee crisis coming out of Syria and then, of course, you have climate change also displacing it and forecast to displace countless people around the globe. We've already seen that with Puerto Rico with what happened with Hurricane Maria. The fires in California and so forth.
Andrea Chalupa:
So we as a nation, all of us, citizens of the world actually have to center how we protect each other, how we protect the most vulnerable and all have to live with refugee news and how to protect them because they're regular people. They're regular people. There's nothing inevitable about that happening to people in Venezuela or Syria. We interviewed a Ukrainian journalist who said to us on this show, "I never thought in a million years that I would be living in a country that is being invaded."
Andrea Chalupa:
You can't dismiss Ukrainians, for instance, thinking that “oh it's inevitable that they're going to live in a country being invaded by Russia, that's inevitable. That's for Ukrainians, that won’t impact me.” And then along comes Trump in 2016 with Putin's help. So what I'm saying is there's nothing inevitable about these people. They're regular people like you and me going about their daily lives. They love their children, they sing Baby Shark to their children and then suddenly their house has exploded and they're on the run.
Andrea Chalupa:
And they're trying to get anywhere for safety and if they stay in some of the refugee camps it's dangerous for them because some of the camps are in really bad condition. So we have to keep the refugees in our hearts and we have to start talking about them a lot more and organizing together in how to help them because their numbers are only going to increase given the state of the world, not decrease. So we all have to learn to live with helping them and bringing some relief and healing to those communities.
Sarah Kendzior:
And to your point before about autocrats never wanting to waste a crisis, this is a crisis that they've been encouraging in terms of refugees from Syria and other parts of the Middle East coming into Europe. People like Bannon and all these Right Wing nationalists, all these aspiring fascists, have welcomed this refugee crisis. They absolutely don't see any humanity there.
Sarah Kendzior:
It's always “the refugees are a threat, they're a destabilizing force” and refugees of course you know it does destabilize a country. Any kind of massive population influx does. But what they're trying to do is get you to abandon your fundamental humanity in the way you see this. And any kind of panic-inducing event which includes here the coronavirus which they're very likely to link to the refugee crisis both in Europe and link to things like the border.
Sarah Kendzior:
They're going to try to use this as yet another justification to build the wall. Do not give in to your fear of that. Do not, after four years of valiantly fighting Trump, suddenly decide to err on the side of xenophobia and cruelty and brutality because there is no excuse for it. As Andrea said, that could be any of us at some point in time.
Sarah Kendzior:
Almost no one is truly protected. So, I mean, it’s so very, very old school but treat others as you would want to be treated. If we want to get Biblical in the kind of non-Bill Barr, non-Mike Pompeo kind of sense. The Golden Rule is there for a reason. But it is frightening to watch this because there's just a lot of different crises intersecting at once. We're probably going to see great problems with goods and services from China, from other parts of the world coming to the United States.
Sarah Kendzior:
We're very likely to see a recession. We were already headed for that because of retail and other things that were happening before this virus hit. This may just be the thing that pushes it along and we have officials who are either openly malicious or apocalyptic. There are people like Pompeo, Barr, and Pence who truly seem to believe that a depopulated earth is easier to control.
Sarah Kendzior:
Or they're incompetent. Or they're so awash in nostalgia for what once was they're just burying their heads in the sands in terms of this greater crisis looming. I mean honestly, I think that's what's behind Biden's rise as leading political figure again is it's not so much Biden as an individual but as a symbol as what he represents, which is a time that honestly in real life was not all that stable and was not all that pleasant but certainly was more so than now.
Sarah Kendzior:
And people are just looking for that feeling of assurance. They're looking for a reverse button. They just want to go back but there's only going forward. “There's only going through”, as Stephen King wrote appropriately in The Stand. So yeah, keep that in mind.
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. We also encourage you to donate to WIRES, agroup that rescues native Australian wildlife in distress. Donate at WIRES.org.au. We've posted links to these groups and others on our Patreon page.
Andrea Chalupa:
We encourage you to donate to the International Rescue Committee, a humanitarian relief organization helping refugees from Syria. Donate at Rescue.org. And if you want to help critically endangered orangutans already under pressure from the palm oil industry donate to the orangutanproject.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, Demian Arriaga and Karlyn Daigle.
Sarah Kendzior:
Our logo design was donated to us by Hamish Smith 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.