Moral Courage
Welcome to the final Gaslit Nation episode recorded during the Trump administration! Wow, does that feel good to write. Unfortunately, the conclusion of the most treasonous and sadistic administration in US history is accompanied by a host of other threats which we describe throughout the episode, but take a moment. You voted out an autocrat who employed every mechanism of voter suppression at his disposal. He then enacted a violent coup. Americans have overcome incredible odds – a rare achievement.
Show Notes for This Episode Are Available Here
Martin Luther Jr.:
Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead, but it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will, and he has allowed me to go up to the mountain, and I've looked over, and I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight, that we as a people will get to the promised land.
Martin Luther Jr.:
I'm happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the lord.
Joe Biden:
12 years ago, I was waiting at the train station in Wilmington for a Black man to pick me up on our way to Washington, where we were sworn in as President and Vice President of the United States of America. And here we are today, my family and I, about to return to Washington to meet a Black woman of South Asian descent to be sworn in as President and Vice President of the United States.
Sarah Kendzior:
I'm Sarah Kendzior, the author of the best selling books; The View From Flyover Country and Hiding in Plain Sight.
Andrea Chalupa:
I'm Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones.
Sarah Kendzior:
And this is Gaslit Nation, a podcast covering corruption in the Trump administration and rising autocracy around the world, and I'm very excited that this is maybe the last week I will ever have to say “corruption in the Trump administration”, because we are on the precipice of the inauguration. Andrea, I think you had some announcements about various things.
Andrea Chalupa:
Yes. This is the Gaslit Nation Inaugural Ball where we're celebrating. To honor what comes next for all of us, every day in America and the world—because he inspired the world—should be Martin Luther King Jr. Day. That is why we put him at the very top of the Gaslit Nation Action Guide, which you can find at gaslitnationpod.com. We urge everyone to read King's memoir, Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story, as a guide to overcoming the violence and greed of white supremacy and authoritarianism.
Andrea Chalupa:
Now, a very quick announcement, on January the 27th, in the evening, Eastern time in the US, I will be giving a talk on the researching and writing of Mr. Jones, my screenplay and film that I produced about Stalin's little known genocide famine that killed millions of people, the vast majority Ukrainian. My grandfather's family survived. I am doing a talk about that with one of our historical advisors, Marta Baziuk of the Holodomor Research and Education Consortium. She also helped with the research for Pulitzer Prize winning historian and Applebaum's must read book, Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine, which cites my grandfather's testimony to the US Congress about surviving Stalin's genocide famine in Ukraine.
Andrea Chalupa:
If you want to learn more about this little known genocide, it's lessons for us today on how government mass murder can be carried out with plausible deniability, and how history and art are healing and the process of mining our own history for art. Join us for this discussion Wednesday, January 27. We'll share the link on the Gaslit Nation Twitter and on the top of the show notes for this week's episode.
Andrea Chalupa:
Remember, you can access our show notes for free on Patreon, for this week's and every week's episode. You can access that where we publish each episode on Patreon, just find it there. Again, this is for free. You don't have to be a subscriber on Patreon to get our show notes. Now, kicking it to Sarah.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yeah, by the time that you hear this episode, it will be less than a day before Trump is removed from office, and this is a removal that we were pushing for and have wanted for a long time. But it's not coming in a moment of celebration or joy or exuberance, it's coming in a moment of trauma. This country is still reeling from the trauma of the Capitol attack on January 6th, and the degree to which it was carefully orchestrated from above with a great deal of internal complicity, and a great deal of external complacency that has led to our representatives nearly being killed on live television.
Sarah Kendzior:
No one should underestimate the trauma of this moment. This was a domestic terrorist attack that is still not fully being treated as one, and all attempts to normalize it just contribute further to the trauma. We have had many predecessors to this, in particular the pandemic. When COVID appeared and the Trump administration let over 400,000 Americans die, our officials and pundits began the process of normalizing mass death, not necessarily out of malice, but out of response to inaction.
Sarah Kendzior:
Numbers that used to shock us—like when the number of COVID victims surpassed the number of people who were murdered on 9/11—are now the numbers we see every day. The next step after the normalization of mass death is the normalization of mass murder. That is what they were after and that is what they still seek. If there is any lesson to be taken from this, it is to always treat human life as sacrosanct, and to take immediate action to remove those who treat human beings as disposable, to remove those people from power, because this threat was always clear.
Andrea Chalupa:
Now, the crime revisited. As we covered in a recent bonus episode, Donald Trump leaves office as the first president to be impeached twice. His second impeachment goes down in history as the most bipartisan impeachment. Here is Republican Representative from Washington State Jaime Herrera Buetler standing on the right side of history, far away from the majority of her Republican colleagues in the house.
Speaker 5:
The gentlewoman from Washington is recognized for one minute.
Jaime Herrera Buetler:
My fellow Americans, I rise today to stand against our enemy, and to clarify our enemy isn't the president or the president elect; fear is our enemy. Fear tells us what we want to hear. It incites anger and violence and fire, but it also haunts us into silence and inaction. What are you afraid of? I'm afraid of what people will say or think, I'm afraid of being devalued. I'm not afraid of losing my job, but I am afraid that my country will fail. I'm afraid patriots of this country have died in vain. I'm afraid my children won't grow up in a free country. I'm afraid injustice will prevail.
Jaime Herrera Buetler:
But truth...Truth sets us free from fear. Truth doesn't guarantee bad things won't happen, but it does promise to always prevail in the end. It has no shadows where darkness can hide. With truth comes love, and we could use that right now. My vote to impeach our sitting president is not a fear based decision. I am not choosing a side, I'm choosing truth. It's the only way to defeat fear.
Andrea Chalupa:
Giving us a summary of recent events and what they mean for the republic, here's Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who fought to protect our republic after just losing his son, Thomas Bloom Raskin—a passionate idealist who fought for human rights and animal welfare—to suicide.
Jaime Raskin:
Smashing windows and beating police officers over the head with fire extinguishers, a bloodthirsty mob attacked the Capitol and invaded this Congress last Wednesday. They erected a gallows and repeatedly chanted, "Hang Mike Pence." They stormed Speaker Pelosi's office yelling, "Where's Nancy?" They brandished the Confederate battle flag and occupied the Senate chamber. They wounded dozens of people, hospitalizing dozens of people, killed five of our people.
Jaime Raskin:
For six hours, they shut down the counting of electoral college votes, our sacred process under the constitution for peaceful transfer of power in the United States. They may have been hunting for Pence and Pelosi to stage their coup, but every one of us in this room right now could have died. As Senator Lindsey Graham said, “The mob could have blown the building up, they could have killed us all.”
Jaime Raskin:
Now, the far-right is calling for return engagement from January 17th to January 20th. They're asking the president to pardon the conspirators in last week's rampage as they prepare for a race war again next week. It's a bit much to be hearing that these people would not be trying to destroy our government and kill us if we just weren't so mean to them. Well, despite the floor leader’s desperate effort to polarize this body and this nation along party lines, it is the chair of the Republican Conference who best articulated what happened in a statement yesterday, and I recommend every American read this.
Jaime Raskin:
Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the elected Chair of the Republican Conference, wrote, "The president summoned this mob, assembled this mob and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the president. The president could have immediately and forcibly intervened to stop the violence. He did not. There has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States of his office. He is a clear and present danger to the people."
Andrea Chalupa:
Since Donald Trump has been blocked from using Twitter and other social media platforms after his violent coup attempt, the Washington Post reported that online misinformation about election fraud dropped 73%. Tech companies need to use their power responsibly or lawmakers need to take it away from them. It's as simple as that. This disinformation pandemic, driven by big tech, cannot continue. As we're going to cover in this week's episode, the white supremacist terrorists want a civil war. Foreign adversaries want to help light the match. Tech companies must defuse this ticking time bomb and accept responsibility for their online platforms, driving real world violence.
Andrea Chalupa:
Lives and our democracy remain under threat. Anyone who thinks we're out of the woods and safe now that Trump is leaving the White House is likely a white person. So, we welcome all white people to listen very closely to this episode and get some Black friends. This week's episode is a follow up to last week's mega episode. It's going to be another long one because there's a lot to document, so let's get started.
Andrea Chalupa:
From NBC News: “‘The FBI is investigating whether foreign governments, organizations or individuals provided financial support to extremists who helped plan and execute the January 6th attack on the Capitol’ one current and one former FBI official told NBC News. As part of the investigation, the Bureau is examining payments of $500,000 in Bitcoin, apparently by a French national, to key figures and groups in the alt right before the riot, the sources said. Those payments were documented and posted on the web this week by a company that analyzes cryptocurrency transfers. Payments of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency can be traced because they are documented on a public ledger. Separately, a joint threat assessment issued this week by the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and various other federal and D.C. area police agencies noted that since the January 6 riot, ‘Russian, Iranian and Chinese influence actors have seized the opportunity to amplify narratives in furtherance of their policy interest amid the presidential transition.’”
Andrea Chalupa:
“Russian state and proxy media outlets, ‘have amplified themes related to the violent and chaotic nature of the Capitol Hill incident, impeachment of President Trump and social media censorship’, the unclassified intelligence report said.”—Quoting it again—”In at least one instance, a Russian proxy claimed that Antifa members disguised themselves as supporters of President Trump and were responsible for storming the Capitol Building. Chinese media, meanwhile, have seized the story to deny great US democratic governance, cast United States is broadly in decline and to justify China's crackdown on protesters in Hong Kong.”
Andrea Chalupa:
“The examination of possible foreign influence related to the capital riot, which involves the FBI counterintelligence division comes after years of what current and former FBI officials say is mounting evidence that Russia and other foreign adversaries have sought to secretly support political extremists on the far-right and far-left.”
Andrea Chalupa:
“Law enforcement officials and terrorism experts say there has long been a ‘mutual affection between Western white supremacists and the Russian government,’ as two scholars put it in a February paper on the Just Security website. The current FBI official told NBC News that the Bureau did not necessarily suspect Russian involvement in the Bitcoin transfers, which appear to have been made by a French computer programmer who died by suicide on December 8th after triggering the transfers, according to French media. But the cryptocurrency payments prompted the FBI to examine whether any of the money was used to fund illegal acts, which if true, ‘raises the possibility of money laundering and conspiracy charges,’ the FBI official said.”
Andrea Chalupa:
Now, from our last episode, Clear Intent, I said that the seditious mob storming the Capitol did it under the President's orders and they expected to be pardoned and get away with their crimes like they've seen the president get away with his crimes and corruption and like they've seen his co-conspirators get away with their crimes and corruptions, including receiving pardons. The seditious mob proudly posted all those photos and videos because they expected to get away with it, just like their leader.
Andrea Chalupa:
Trump's violent attempted coup, which left five people dead, and now his supporters are claiming the Nuremberg defense: they were only following orders. After World War II, during the Nuremberg trials, Adolf Eichmann—an architect of the Holocaust—famously argued that lower level officers like him were just following orders, and therefore deserve pardons from the president... Nope, just kidding, I mean, clemency. From the Washington Post: "A man from Kentucky told the FBI that he and his cousin began marching toward the US Capitol on January 6, because, ‘President Trump said to do so.’ Chanting ‘Stop the steal’, the two men tramped through the building and snapped a photo of themselves with their middle fingers raised, according to court documents.”
Andrea Chalupa:
“A video clip of another group of rioters mobbing the steps of the Capitol caught one man screaming at a police officer, ‘We were invited here, we were invited by the president of the United States!’ A retired firefighter from Pennsylvania who has been charged with throwing a fire extinguisher at police officers felt he was ‘instructed to go to the Capitol by the president,’ a tipster told the FBI, according to court documents.”
Andrea Chalupa:
“The accounts of people who said they were inspired by the president to take part in the melee inside the Capitol vividly show the impact of Trump's months long attack on the integrity of the 2020 election, and his exhortations to supporters to, ‘fight the results.’ Some have said they felt called to Washington by Trump and his false message that the election had been stolen, as well as by his efforts to pressure Congress and Vice President Pence to overturn the result.”
Andrea Chalupa:
“But others drew an even more direct link, telling the FBI or news organizations that they headed to the Capitol on what they believed were direct orders from the president issued at a rally that day. While legal experts are split on whether Trump could face criminal liability for his role in the events of January 6th, testimony from rioters who felt directed to take part in illegal acts by his speech could inform a decision by prosecutors about whether to attempt to build a case.”—which they absolutely should—”Short of that, the testimony from rioters is likely to be cited in Trump's upcoming impeachment trial in the Senate, and it could become evidence should people injured in the Capitol attack seek to file lawsuits against Trump.”
Andrea Chalupa:
“Disturbing details of what happened inside the building have already emerged in court documents, including one witness who told the FBI that the rioters intended to kill any member of Congress they encountered. Jenna Ryan, a real estate agent from Dallas who has been charged with illegally entering the building, appeared on local television Friday to beg Trump for clemency.” We'll play a clip of that now.
Jenna Ryan:
I would like, um, a pardon from the president of the United States. I think that we all deserve a pardon. I'm facing a prison sentence. I think that I did not deserve that, and I think every person, you know... From what I understand everyone's going to be arrested that was there. I think everyone deserves a pardon and I would ask the president of the United States to give me a pardon.
Andrea Chalupa:
Keep in mind, Jenna Ryan reportedly flew on a private jet under Trump's orders to overthrow our democracy. She is not hurting like the millions of people out of work and living in hunger during a pandemic. It's communities of color that are being ravaged by the pandemic and economic depression. The enemy is white supremacy, and white supremacy is a cult of greed and power lust, as we heard from Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which she recorded for social media.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:
I don't want to hear or see the Republican Party talk about blue lives ever again. This was never about safety for them. It was always a slogan, because if they actually cared about rule of law, they would speak up when people break the law. They would speak up. They would enforce fairness and equity, but they don't give a damn about the law. They don't give a damn about order. They don't give a damn about safety. They give a damn about white supremacy. They care about preserving the social order and the mythology of whiteness than the grandeur of our democracy—that's what they care about. They lust for power more than they care about democracy.
Andrea Chalupa:
Then another woman, Riley June Williams, has been arrested by the FBI for stealing Nancy Pelosi's laptop with plans to mail it to a friend in Russia, who would then give it to the SVR (Russian Intelligence). As we keep saying, Putin's Kremlin is a mass murdering, xenophobic regime that's aligned with Trump's mass murdering, xenophobic regime. There are reports that members of Congress, like Lauren Boebert of Colorado, in the days leading up to the attack gave tours of the Capitol at a time when such tours were largely restricted due to the pandemic.
Andrea Chalupa:
These tours are now being investigated by Capitol Police for possibly being reconnaissance missions. Boebert tweeted out Nancy Pelosi's location during the attack. Several reports, as we highlighted in last week's episode, point to insider help. The staff of Ayanna Pressley—a Black woman and member of the Progressive Squad in Congress—discovered during the attack that their panic buttons in their office, which they had used before had been torn out.
Andrea Chalupa:
Republicans are calling for us to move on. There is no moving on when the Republican Party remains a clear and present danger. Listen to this from Greg Sargent at the Washington Post who writes, "The new Post poll has some awful findings among Republicans. 50% say GOP leaders didn't go far enough in nullifying the election. 56% say Trump bears zero blame for the insurrection. 66% say he has acted responsibly. Behold," Greg Sargent writes, "The GOP's authoritarian core."
Andrea Chalupa:
That disturbing poll is a giant Times Square billboard neon sign blazing the fact that we are only at the beginning of this crisis. Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti Defamation League, an international Jewish non-governmental organization that exposes extremism and has decades of experience analyzing these threats, warns in an interview with PDS that this is only the beginning. We will play that clip now.
Jonathan Greenblatt:
I don't think this was the end. I think this was the end of the beginning, and I think we're now moving into a dangerous new phase.
Speaker 11:
Does this change or alter your organization's approach?
Jonathan Greenblatt:
This will certainly alter the way the ADL thinks about the problem. Our analysts have been studying extremist movements for decades and decades. But what's worrisome is we are moving into a new phase where more and more people are being radicalized and willing to do the kinds of things like commit a clear criminal activity.
Speaker 11:
Are there any historical markers that you're looking to, to essentially deprogram not just the hardcore, but thinking of that group that was behind the push? How do we reach those people?
Jonathan Greenblatt:
Well, I think one of the things we need to acknowledge is that what happened last week happened in the context of I'd say a very complicated socio-economic cultural moment. We've seen the gap increase between the haves and have nots. We've seen more and more jobs move overseas. We've seen COVID-19 literally demolish communities, destabilize our economy, cost millions of jobs. This all fits into a narrative where people feel really alienated and afraid. Layer on top of that the role of the media, and I would point out social media in particular.
Speaker 11:
It is hard to understand though, because while the economic argument and understanding has been there, the Olympic swimmer, the real estate agent, the CEO from a Chicago based company, I can't imagine that they are living on the economic margins in the same ways that others who have been displaced by manufacturing jobs lost.
Jonathan Greenblatt:
Radicalization isn't necessarily a process that happens only to a certain type of person. It may be that the out of work individual is more vulnerable to it, but we know from the annals of history—whether it's political Islam in the Middle East, whether it's Nazism in Germany, whether it's communism in the former Soviet Union—the intellectuals, the executives, that ordinary people can get swept up in the madness. That's literally what played out last week in Washington.
Jonathan Greenblatt:
How do we fix it? I do think it's going to require a process of national healing. Before you can have unity, you will need accountability, and unless we have a full accounting for that offense, the country will never heal.
Andrea Chalupa:
Biden will be sworn in this week, a man whose own life of personal tragedy prepared him for this time of grief and mass trauma. Our number one priority is to refuse to abandon him and each other. In 2008, when Obama was sworn in, we celebrated then went home and stopped paying attention. Meanwhile, Karl Rove got to work turning state governments red. Republicans came dangerously close to controlling so many state governments, they could have called a constitutional convention to edit our constitution.
Andrea Chalupa:
From a May 2016 article in The New York Times: "Taking advantage of almost a decade of political victories and state legislators across the country, conservative advocacy groups are quietly marshaling support for an event unprecedented in the nation's history: a convention of the 50 states summoned to consider amending the constitution."
Andrea Chalupa:
In 2008, what also happened when we all went home after celebrating Obama's inauguration? The Oath Keepers—a far-right extremist white supremacist group—was formed and remains active today, including organizing online and running for office. Our jobs now are to remain vigilant, to keep showing up election cycle after election cycle, to run for office, to recruit strong, empathetic and science driven people to run for office, to do whatever it takes to keep the next Trump—the far more successful Trump who learns from the mistakes of the first one—out of power.
Andrea Chalupa:
The major conditions that lead to authoritarianism include economic instability and inequality, hyperpartisanism, rampant disinformation and political instability (like a crisis of domestic terrorism). The ground remains fertile in America for authoritarianism, and anyone who claims otherwise is blinded by their own privilege. Black and brown people have been warning us. To Black and brown people, American history is authoritarian history. The Jim Crow South was a genocidal dictatorship for people of color. So, anyone who wants to brush off these threats are simply telling on themselves. The so called alarmists were right. The so called alarmists remain right. Listen to people of color.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yes, absolutely. God, I have so many things to say about everything you just said, but to kind of recap where we're at...After Biden won the election, we began referring to Trump's actions as a coup—or an attempted coup—and we took a lot of shit for that, a lot of people parsing the definition of coup into its most narrow form. But one thing that we emphasized right off the bat is that a Trump attempted coup is not only about the result, but the process.
Sarah Kendzior:
That legal attack, those weeks and weeks of court cases—I think over 60, and Trump lost all of them—that was not necessarily an expectation of actual legal victory (although, of course, they would have accepted that, they would have been pleased with that), it was propaganda. It was to put into people's minds the idea that, well, clearly Trump would not try so hard to do this unless there was real evidence. And clearly, if this was dangerous, if this was some sort of attempted coup, folks would be talking about the fact that it's an attempted coup.
Sarah Kendzior:
So when you brought up the statistics that Greg Sargent cited about the number of people in America who believe that Trump is justified in his claims, that're still believing these lies about his rigged elections, and all of the things he went to court with, this was something I warned about in an episode months ago, that the more hesitant officials are to enforce accountability, the more support of it will grow. That's what I said last week about the Capitol attacks.
Sarah Kendzior:
I said, also, that on November 10th, 80% of Americans believed that Biden one and only 3% believed that Trump won. Because Trump refused to concede and because our officials pretended that a coup was not happening and did not act forcefully, voters began to wonder, “Did Trump really win?” What Sargent said with that new polling data just brings home that point, that from the start, you need to call a lie, a lie, a conspiracy, a conspiracy, a coup, a coup. You need to use language that expresses the severity of the situation.
Sarah Kendzior:
When Trump is engaged with the mafia, you need to call it the mafia, instead of “criminally adjacent actors” or “racially charged situations” when something is a band of white supremacists. A lot of the reason we're in our plight is because of the refusal to call things out in plain terms. I know that there's legal pressure on a lot of media organizations. There's also threats on a lot of media organizations. There's certainly threats on our officials; we've seen that abundantly over the last four years, but especially the last week.
Sarah Kendzior:
Moving forward, as Biden attempts to rebuild the country and remedy what has happened, we need to talk about it in plain terms. To your point, this is coming back once again to Russia, the original subject that was so blatant and clear, but was never described—with a few exceptions, like Hillary Clinton—as the severe threat that it was.
Sarah Kendzior:
We had Trump in the summer of 2016 openly asking Russia for Hillary Clinton's emails. Then we had many reporters either digging up prior articles and information about Trump's long history with the Kremlin, long history with the Russian mafia, or bringing up new points of contact. We obviously had Manafort as the key liaison and running his campaign directly linked to the Kremlin. It was very hard to deny it, but people still did because they didn't want to believe that something this awful could happen. They would much more rather label that alarmism or people being hyperbolic or people being hysterical than to confront the terror right in front of them.
Sarah Kendzior:
The repercussion of that is that the terror then hits home in the most atrocious and painful of ways. The culmination of that was January 6th. And I have to say, I'm pleased to see what I think is some change in attitude from our representatives. They did go on to impeach. They are starting to hold the perpetrators accountable, as you just mentioned, with people being arrested. We still have a very, very long way to go. I feel like we go through this over and over. Every week, we're like, all right, finally, the wake up call has happened. People get what we've been saying, people get this is authoritarianism.
Sarah Kendzior:
My fear for the future is, right now everyone is in a heightened state of alert. We're all very afraid of what will happen during the inauguration. We've had many warnings about violent insurrectionists being in the police, being in the National Guard, being more loyal to Trump than they are to our constitution and our country. If everything goes fine, I think there's going to possibly be a reversion into denial. I fear that. I fear that abdication of vigilance, and that it will bring us right back to where we were. Because when I started out the show talking about trauma, one thing that is likely to happen is people will want to forget, because we've all endured just tremendous horror. Whether it's witnessing the horror and feeling empathy for the victims—for example, the kids and families split apart at the border and tortured and held in cages—or whether it's things we experienced personally, like being brigaded with death threats, like being plunged into poverty, as many Americans were after Coronavirus, or losing people to Coronavirus. They're just living in a constant state of fear.
Sarah Kendzior:
People will want to push that away. When you've lived through a very deep trauma, that's what happens. That's what Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome is. It's the emergence of that trauma in unexpected ways and it does control your life if you don't confront it and try to work through it. We now are experiencing that on a national level. That's what we're about to plunge into. So I hope people are able to maintain clarity of thought in the direction of accountability, because if we can enforce accountability, if we can bring the perpetrators, not just of the Capitol attack, but of everything that preceded it; the four years of Trump administration and crimes, the decades of criminal ties and alliances between the Trump crime cult and a very wide variety of foreign and domestic actors. If we can bring those people to light, if we can have open transparent commissions and investigations, that is how you heal. That is how you unite. That is the road to moving forward.
Sarah Kendzior:
Forgetting...It's just going to bring back every nightmare and every horror that we have managed to endure for four years. No one wants to relive that. That's just a reminder. Go on to the crime scene. Back to the crime scene.
Andrea Chalupa:
To anyone, if you need any further proof that this is just beginning, we have a followup to my warning last week that Ivanka Trump may still make a political comeback. If you thought her political career was over after her father led a violent attempted coup, you would be wrong. Politico reports that, "At least three Trump family members are either considering runs for office or being urged to do so, according to well connected GOP operatives and Trump family allies."
Andrea Chalupa:
“Top party officials say that Laura Trump, wife of the president's son, Eric is actively contemplating a run for the Senate in North Carolina, where an open seat awaits in 2022. ‘It's real and she is legitimately interested in it’, said one Trump family political adviser. The President's eldest son, Don Jr. is eyeing a future in politics as well. Though allies say it's unclear when or what office he'd seek after he passed on running for the Senate in Wyoming this last cycle. He and his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, have also been scoping out real estate in Florida. The newest and most buzzed about possibility, however, surrounds the president's daughter, Ivanka. The senior White House adviser is set to decamp to Florida after her father's presidency comes to a close. Though talk of her launching a primary challenge to Senator Marco Rubio has given off the faint whiff of political fanfic, in reality, Trump officials say there have been machinations behind the scenes.”
Andrea Chalupa:
“One person in contact with the president said that Jared Kushner is viewed as working single-mindedly to protect and promote his wife's political career."
Andrea Chalupa:
I'm going to take a break from reading from this Politico article (which you can find on our show notes) to point out that there's been reporting that white supremacist leader, Steve Bannon, has been in touch with Donald Trump and advising him in how to steal the election. White supremacist leader, Steve Bannon, is also a king of spreading online extremism. As he famously called it, he wants to “flood the zone with shit”. He did that during his time at the far-right website, Breitbart, and he tried to get a far-right academy in Italy off the ground where he planned to teach the dark arts of media manipulation.
Andrea Chalupa:
I can think of no better name for the national tragedy of January 6th, than to call it That Time Trump and Bannon Flooded the Zone With Shit. White supremacist leader, Steve Bannon, now wants to see Ivanka Trump primary Marco Rubio in Florida for the US Senate. Back to the Politico article: “And perhaps most tellingly, in the last week, Steve Bannon, as he was renewing his contacts with Trump himself, began talking up Ivanka's political resume. ‘The second most fire breathing populist in the White House was Ivanka Trump.’ The president's one time adviser said on a recent podcast of his. ‘If,’ Bannon added, ‘Rubio voted for the certification of Joe Biden's selection,’—and he did—then, ‘I strongly believe and would strongly recommend that Ivanka Trump immediately, if she is not going to remain an assistant to the president, she should immediately file and run for the Senate and primary Marco Rubio in Florida."
Andrea Chalupa:
All right, so everyone should read that article to confirm that yes, the Trumps are still coming after us. Bannon may be promoting Ivanka, of course, to help secure a pardon from Trump. What's important for us to know is that Ivanka, Laura Trump, the idiot son, Don Jr., they all have political futures in America. I'm seeing white people laugh at this and dismiss it and I'm seeing Black people warn us about this. Really, this whole episode is an intervention for white pundits and white men in particular. Do not make the same mistake as you did underestimating the Trump threat in 2016, 2017, 2018, ignoring and attacking the very same people trying to warn you. We simply don't have time for that.
Sarah Kendzior:
I just want to say one thing here. It's like you're preaching to the people who are going to abet the plot. I know there are some people in the media who just still haven't caught on to this—to the fact that Ivanka and Jared are an actual threat, a national security threat, that they both have a history of criminality. In Ivanka's case, predating Trump becoming the president by quite a bit. I've also seen people say nothing could replicate the cult that Donald Trump has built up around himself and that his children don't have his charisma, they don't have his power, they don't have his history. That's true, they don't. But what they do have is the media. What they do have are a bunch of propaganda flacks who are disguised as journalists and who have been using them as sources, who've been pumping out palace intrigue tales, or—in the beginning—trying to present them as a moderating force.
Sarah Kendzior:
They are fully on board. They are from the same social world, and their goal is to not expose the corruption and moral rot within that world because they share it. Their goal is to streamline it and to get access and power for themselves by way of people like Ivanka Trump, or potentially Don Jr. With Don Jr., I feel like he's so obviously shunned. I think that Donald Trump truly hates him, and I’ve felt that way from the start. I would pity him if he weren't such a terrible, destructive person who has hurt others.
Sarah Kendzior:
Donald Jr. in 1990, when he was 12 years old, told Vanity Fair, "My father doesn't love me. He doesn't love anyone. He doesn't even love himself. He just loves his money." For a kid to say that is a remarkable thing, and there have been lots of stories about Don Jr. having drinking problems and all of these things. He now seems to have thrown in his lot fully with the QAnon crowd. That's where he gets his high. That's where he gets his validation, is from just outright, overt, violent white extremism. He's wearing t-shirts with emblems of white extremist groups and militant groups like the Three Percenters and so forth.
Sarah Kendzior:
So he may hold up that side of the equation. Ivanka, and then, I guess, Laura Trump and others will try to insulate themselves into our actual political life. Another thing we need to remind you of yet again is this is a mafia family. This is a family of people who have collected blackmail on others. They get this blackmail from their long training from people like Roy Cohn—Trump's mentor—and they get it from their connections abroad; from the Kremlin, from Netanyahu, from Bannon and Cambridge Analytica and all of these other groups. They are incredibly dangerous to have in office.
Sarah Kendzior:
Fortunately for us, they are people who have committed a wide variety of crimes publicly—really, really blatantly. You can get my book, Hiding in Plain Sight, where all I do is list Jared's crimes and it takes up like a page and a half. I'm not fleshing them out, I'm just trying to list them, and it was written in early 2019. Since then, he went on to commit a variety of other crimes, the most notable of which was the Coronavirus crisis, where he saw it as an opportunity to profit. He purposefully let people die. They said let people be infected. They stole PPE equipment, they sold it.
Sarah Kendzior:
There are a million ways to go after them and the point is not vengeance, it’s justice. But within that justice, you can find protection if you actually investigate and prosecute these extremely dangerous members of the Trump family, as well as those around them—people like Bannon. Americans will be best protected, and that doesn't mean we're not protected from the general threat of authoritarianism or mafia rule. There are plenty of others who would love to just fall into the footsteps that they've left behind. But these are specific individuals who have committed grotesque crimes.
Sarah Kendzior:
When you see people like James Comey saying, "Oh, Biden should pardon Trump” or “These folks shouldn't be investigated", that's because they're also implicated in the crimes. They're implicated through negligence or complicity, or they want to protect completely broken institutions that let this happen. Again, for our own protection, everyone that has been involved in this attack on America needs to be investigated and prosecuted. There's just no way around it.
Sarah Kendzior:
I can't believe I even have to have this conversation again, but we are and it's necessary. You keep having this conversation with people you know, and Andrea and I will keep having it here and on Twitter very loudly until justice is served. So, go on.
Andrea Chalupa:
And it's going to be a process because we're talking about a cult, and the cult has infiltrated our law enforcement. Back to the crime scene: From Shayan Sardarizadeh, a journalist investigating online disinformation and conspiracy theories for BBC Monitoring and BBC World. He writes on Twitter, "The most viral theory in QAnon land now is that Sunday,”—that's January 17th—”is the start of boom week. The Capitol riots were a trap so Team Q could get the military in Washington D.C. for what's about to drop on the 20th when Biden will be forced to concede and the cabal will be walled in."
Andrea Chalupa:
"Videos and images are being shared in QAnon circles on 8Kun, Gab, Telegram and Rumble, which claimed the fencing around the Capitol ahead of Inauguration Day faces inward, which implies they are intended as a military prison to keep Deep State traitors in."
Andrea Chalupa:
According to the Associated Press, the FBI is vetting National Guard troops in Washington D.C. amid fears of an insider attack. They've just caught a couple of these guys so far. There are reasons, of course, to be concerned, as we've been pointing out on this show for years. From Mother Jones in an article aptly called, "Fight Trump Like He's a Terrorist Leader, National Security Experts Say." I'll read from it now: “Fears emerged about law enforcement complicity, but what about sympathies for trumpism among those with security responsibilities?”
Andrea Chalupa:
“Last August, former FBI Special Agent Michael German authored a report for the Brennan Center for Justice focused on the unknown extent but clear existence of extremist views among American law enforcement. ‘The continued presence of even a small number of far-right militants, white supremacists and other overt racists in law enforcement has an outsized impact on public safety and on public trust in the criminal justice system, and cannot be ignored.’ German wrote.”
Andrea Chalupa:
“There has also been mounting evidence that police officers around the country have been caught up in apocalyptic pro-Trump conspiracy theories stemming from the dangerous QAnon movement, which Trump last fall refused to disavow even after it had been designated by the FBI as a domestic terrorism threat. ‘My concern about all this,’ says Marisa Randazzo, a leading threat assessment professional and former Chief Research Psychologist for the US Secret Service, ‘is that we have protective systems in place for different parts of our democracy that we've normally been able to rely upon, and that has to be called into question now.’”
Andrea Chalupa:
“That includes finding out, what if the events of January 6 were, ‘Not just a failure of individuals, but possibly a willful or planned failure?’” Now, I just want to say and I think, Sarah, you know, where this is all headed: this is a Civil War. Meaning, we don't want a civil war to start, they want a Civil War with us. All of this has been amplified—as we keep pointing out—by our adversaries who want a Civil War. They want to see us destroy our country from within.
Andrea Chalupa:
This is an escalation of this threat. The Civil War started on January 6, 2021. Trump and his family and their complicit enablers, Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, the three Republican Congressmen who allegedly work with Stop the Steal organizer, Ali Alexander (and those men are Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar of Arizona, and Mo Brooks of Alabama who spoke at this deadly Trump rally). they all fired this first shot. They are at war with us. They have made this abundantly clear.
Andrea Chalupa:
The Kremlin, which helped bring the Trump family to power, is at war with us. They, too, have made this abundantly clear. Civil Wars tend to last around eight years. We have eight years of this boiling domestic terrorism threat propped up by the oligarch donors and elected officials like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, among many others.
Andrea Chalupa:
If you think that sounds like a long time, consider this: when 2022 comes around, they're going to double down. When 2024 comes along, they're going to double down. Then 2026 and 2028. They're going to keep digging in their heels and relying on these same mob and cult terrorist tactics to come to power, fueled by disinformation. If we don't do something about this, if Big Tech doesn't play its part in defusing this, you're going to see more QAnon people in Congress.
Andrea Chalupa:
How do we know this? Because the dark forces that helped bring Trump to power want to protect their wealth from taxes, protect their industries from regulations, they want to dodge accountability. We had a president determined to live above the law who was brought to power by mega wealthy donors who also want to live above the law. The cult behind the cult is greed. So the way Biden and his team counter that is by communicating and showing to the American people, we're the ones protecting our democracy from authoritarianism. We're going to visibly change your life for the better.
Andrea Chalupa:
The third point, accountability. As Sarah said, without accountability, you're gaslighting the very people who brought you to power and that itself is a form of abuse. To repeat—because this is important, because there is a way through all this, it's not inevitable that it gets worse—Biden must show strength throughout the next four years. He must show us that he's the one protecting us and he's improving our lives. Those two things must go hand in hand. It's not enough to say, “vote for the Democrats or America will turn into a dictatorship”. That's too abstract for some people. You have to also visibly transform their lives for the better. People need to be shown the difference between the two parties.
Andrea Chalupa:
If Biden doesn't deliver on his promises, he will demoralize the base and all the people who work tirelessly to give him the White House and the Congress. When democracy is under attack, you cannot afford to demoralize the people you rely on to stay in power. Demoralization of any kind only helps the enemy.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yeah, I want, like, a tattoo of that. I want that in skywriting. It's so true and we saw the ramifications of it over the last few years with the hesitancy within the House. I hate the fact that the wake up call may have been the ransacking of their offices and threats of murder directly within the Capitol. But I'm seeing some signs that they take it more seriously.
Sarah Kendzior:
And you're right. They need to have actual, tangible changes in people's lives. They cannot emphasize the needs of the Republican Party or their obsession with their own media image above the actual daily experience of Americans, about what Americans have had to endure from Coronavirus, through Trump, through attacks on civil rights, and all of the traumas that followed. They need to put just such a massive amount of effort into this, and we knew this. We talked about this all throughout the election when we were trying to focus on candidates who truly understood the severity of the harm that we had already endured by 2019, and what was coming, and we have Joe Biden.
Sarah Kendzior:
So I hope Joe Biden listens to a wide variety of advice, including what you just said, and I hope he takes it to heart, because the calls for a civil war are not just rooted in disagreements between violent white racists and those who would like to stop them (which is how it plays out on the surface). There are powerful backers behind this.
Sarah Kendzior:
One of the goals of a civil war, it's much like what I said about the coup, that the coup was a process. It was not just about Trump winning—or stealing—a second term and remaining in office. It was about changing a narrative, pulling off a heist, accomplishing all of these other goals towards the greater goal, which is the collapse of the United States itself. That is what they want. Their desired outcome within this collapse is the triumph of secessionist movements. We've talked about this previously, that their model for the United States is the same as the collapse of the USSR. They want us to completely fall apart, and then plutocrats, oligarchs and other bad actors come in, take the resources, take the land, take the money, take people's freedoms, set up little fiefdoms with proxy governments that really are serving their donor class in a way that's much more overt and worse than what we already have but, of course, builds on the fact that we already have the flourishing of this kind of relationship between Big Money and bought politicians.
Sarah Kendzior:
We're seeing even more signs of this this week. There is a call this week from Wyoming. There are secessionists in Wyoming who responded to Liz Cheney, the representative there, being one of the few Republicans who decided to impeach, and I think that this is going to build and build. Again, I have to warn you not to fall for this narrative where you see people just being like, "Well, fuck you, Wyoming. Who cares about you? You're a big blank square in the middle of the country. Whatever, you're just a bunch of Republicans, blah, blah, blah."
Sarah Kendzior:
Don't do that. First of all, it's incredibly insulting to people who actually live in Wyoming, to progressives who live in Wyoming—and there are progressives in Wyoming—but to anybody who would have to endure the collapse of your country and the partitioning of it into little parts ruled by sadistic maniacs. No one deserves this. I keep insisting on this, but it doesn't necessarily sink in. No one deserves this. You've already learned your lesson about saying this about the South, all these, “Let the South secede, who needs the South anyway, it's full of racists,” which is itself a racist argument because you're basically saying, “Let's let all of the Black people in the South or all of the Latinos in Texas who have to battle racist representatives, and gerrymandering and voter suppression and all of these issues, who cares? Let's just let them rot away. Let's just leave them at the mercy of these predatory Republican actors.”
Sarah Kendzior:
I think now people have seen through Georgia that no state is actually red or blue, that every state is far more complicated than its portrayed in the media and that the goal needs to be protecting the most vulnerable and maintaining the unity of our nation. It's so paramount. We are in a country with a very diverse population. Obviously, we're not all going to agree on everything, and we're not going to like each other, but we have to not just live with each other but just make sure that people can live. That's the priority, because what we're dealing with is a death cult. That death cult is going to be far more able to accomplish its goals if our country is partitioned into smaller parts, if it goes through a process of Balkanization. That is what they have been trying to do the whole time.
Sarah Kendzior:
And we've seen this process throughout American history. You may have noticed Andrea's fascination with Ulysses Grant. I think it's possible she might have mentioned this a couple of times.
Andrea Chalupa:
I've been trying to prepare everybody by saying watch the Grant documentary, let's all have our own tailgating democracy party by watching the Grant documentary.
Sarah Kendzior:
[laughs] She brings up her boyfriend, Ulysses Grant, in every episode, because he understood. He understood that the priority needed to be the protection of vulnerable people in the nation, the protection of rule of law in a real sense, rule of law that protects individuals and also protects the country itself from being torn apart from within. That means being truthful, being forceful, cracking down on bad actors, not having false unity, not having false hopes, just being brutally realistic about the entire thing.
Sarah Kendzior:
It's an interesting parallel to Grant that Trump will not be going to Biden's inauguration because the last time that happened was when Andrew Johnson—the first American president to ever be impeached— refused to go to Grant's inauguration. That just sort of shows when you're on the right side of things. So, yes, history is not just repeating. As they say, the past isn't even passed. We're still living through the ramifications of the end of the Civil War, the attacks on reconstruction, and so on, and so forth. But yeah, I just wanted to bring that secessionist point home. I'm sure we're going to be talking about this all throughout 2021 because I think that that's their next play. That's where they're really going to try to get people riled up and try to tell people a better way of life awaits you if you leave the union, if you leave the United States behind.
Sarah Kendzior:
They're going to do this to progressives. They're going to do this to right-wing extremists. They're going to do it to everyone. Do not fall for it, you will end up with a much worse situation than the horrible situation we already have.
Andrea Chalupa:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). It will spiral out of control.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yep.
Andrea Chalupa:
So, an important reminder of the Grant documentary, if I may, is that we all know, famously, President Lincoln—to try to unite the country—had a team of rivals helping him run things. You cannot have unity, or a team of rivals, without having a Nazi hunter on your side, like Ulysses S. Grant, who went after those Nazis. He was not impressed by them and he just hunted them down, because that's the only thing to do with Nazis. The Biden administration, we're watching you, and we're going to be observing you closely and one of you will be designated the Nazi hunter badge of honor, but you have to earn it, because we’ve got a lot of Nazis and not a lot of time.
Andrea Chalupa:
To all the people on this side of democracy, I know this all sounds very scary, but there's a way through. Again, study and practice non-violence. That is why we put MLK on the top of our action guide. The Neo Confederates and their backers want us to shoot first. They want a bloodbath. They're armed and ready for war. Don't give it to them, clearly. Remain actively peaceful. That will infuriate them more than anything and it will avoid an all out chaotic situation that spirals. Peace above all else. Peace.
Andrea Chalupa:
We must work to keep things peaceful over the next eight years or so as our elected officials implement the real world changes to people's lives, changing the culture and the economy so much that people never, ever want to go back to an authoritarian Republican Party. You isolate the enemy by improving our country to the point of making them irrelevant, and that includes, of course, Rupert Murdoch. You bring back the laws and safeguards he steamrolled over to create a far-right propaganda machine, and you transition as quickly as possible to cleaner energies to further isolate and sideline gas station dictatorships like Putin's Russia. And you finally destroy the blood money gun lobby—the NRA—who demilitarize both the police and the gun culture, threatening Americans.
Andrea Chalupa:
A gun lobby that again worked as a conduit for the Kremlin to help bring the Trump family to power. It's accountability time for all the people that brought us Trump in the first place. Just remember, this isn't a time of darkness. Don't think of it like that. This is a time of moral courage. This is a time of heroes stepping up and doing the right thing. Who do you think resisted the Nazis across Europe and American slavery? That's how we define this moment in history. It's not an age of despair. We're witnessing an age of moral courage.
Andrea Chalupa:
A wonderful example is Daniel Hodges of the D.C. Police, an American hero who represents the best of us. The world saw him smashed in a doorway defending the Capitol and elected officials and their staff from a mob of violent insurrectionists. Here he is describing the attack.
Daniel Hodges:
That was... We were just fighting it with everything we had to push them back. I got pinned to the doorway. They ripped my mask off, stole my equipment, beat me up, and sprayed me with everything. I think that I was able to get out before any permanent damage was done. If it wasn't my job, I would have done that for free. It was absolutely my pleasure to crush a white nationalist insurrection and I'm glad I was in a position to be able to help. We’ll do it as many times as it takes.
Andrea Chalupa:
With that, there's another story of stunning strength and courage. Alexei Navalny, after several poisoning attempts by the Kremlin that used chemical weapons on Navalny and his wife and nearly killed him, returned to Russia where he was immediately arrested. Navalny called for Russians to rise up and march on January 23rd. Following his arrest, Alex Kokcharov, an analyst on Eastern Europe shared a photo on Twitter of Navalny at a sudden and rushed trial writing, "A curious detail: In the Khimki Police Station where Navalny is on trial today, you can see a portrait of Genrikh Yagoda—the head of the NKVD Secret Service in 1934 to 1936—hanging on the wall. He supervised show trials and was the person who launched the Gulag."
Andrea Chalupa:
Now, how's that for some irony that's very painful. Bianna Golodryga of CNN writes on Twitter, “Navalny aid Vladimir Ashurkov posts on Facebook, ‘Days before Alexei boarded his flight to Moscow, we agreed on a list of people he felt should be sanctioned if the West wanted to get serious about encouraging Russia to cease attacking human rights and rein in corruption. Top eight below.’”
Andrea Chalupa:
Now, remember in last week's episode where I mentioned that Ivanka Trump is old friends with a long time, now former wife of a Russian oligarch who was like a son to Putin? That oligarchy is on the top of this list. We're going to read the list now to amplify it as a call for elected officials, not just in the US but around the world to sanction these blood money bandits, all right?
Andrea Chalupa:
Here it is, Navalny's list of top eight: “Roman Abramovich, one of the key enablers and beneficiaries of Russian kleptocracy, with significant ties assets in the West. Denis Bortnikov, Deputy President and Chairman of VTB Bank Management Board. He is the son of Alexander Bortnikov, FSB Director and a key ally of Vladimir Putin, and he has been acting as a wallet for his father's ill gotten gains. Andrey Kostin, President and Chairman of the Management Board of state owned VTB Bank, a key facilitator of corrupt money flows related to the functioning of the Russian government and security services. Mikhail Murashko, Minister of Health Care of Russia responsible for covering up Alexei's poisoning and hindering efforts to evacuate him to Germany for medical treatment.
Andrea Chalupa:
Dmitry Patrushev, Minister of Agriculture of Russia. He is the son of Nikolai Patrushev, Director of the Security Council of Russia and a key ally of Vladimir Putin, and he has been acting as a wallet for his father's ill gotten gains. Igor Shuvalov, Chairman of the State Department Corporation VEB.RF, a former senior government official, who has been instrumental in creating the system of state corruption, which took over the Russian political and legislative institutions. Vladimir Solovyov, a key Russian state media personality, one of the primary mouthpieces of authoritarian propaganda.” That would be like sanctioning Sean Hannity, which I'm all for, if he wants to do that.
Andrea Chalupa:
“Alisher Usmanov, one of the key enablers and beneficiaries of Russian kleptocracy with significant ties to assets to the west.” Please, Biden administration, EU officials, Canadian officials, officials who believe in democracy around the world, take this list seriously and please give the Russian people the support they so desperately need. Luckily, Jake Sullivan—the National Security Adviser for President Elect Joe Biden—immediately called for Navalny's release, whereas Trump remains silent and in need of a Russian bailout given the debt he's amassed. Hopefully, Biden's team passes these sanctions soon.
Andrea Chalupa:
Now, for our final profile of courage—and there is no shortage of moral courage around the world. That is how we in America overcame historic levels of voter suppression across our country, including the purging of the United States Postal Service, to ensure that Trump was defeated knowing that our democracy could not survive another term under the Trump family. We are living in a time of moral courage and it spreads. The courage spreads.
Andrea Chalupa:
To share, in tribute to his tireless work on behalf of our democracy, Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland—an impeachment manager—was in the Capitol with members of his family when it was under attack. He had just lost his son to suicide, as we mentioned earlier. Raskin told CNN's Jake Tapper he could feel his son with him during the violent assault on our democracy. Raskin, you inspire us. Your son inspires us. And thank you for calling on all of us through your actions to be brave by standing firmly on the side of truth.
Jake Tapper:
I can't even begin to express my condolences for what you and your wife and your daughters and family are dealing with. I can’t also imagine having that trauma compounded with this other trauma—you just lost your son, and now you're in Congress worrying about your daughter and your other daughter's husband because of these terrorists who had attacked the Congress. That trauma on top of trauma just seems so debilitating.
Jamie Raskin:
Well, I'm not going to lose my son at the end of 2020 and lose my country and my republic in 2021. It's not going to happen. The vast majority of American people—Democrats, Republicans and Independents—reject armed insurrection and violence as a new way of doing business in America. We're not going to do that. This was the most terrible crime, ever, by a president of the United States against our country. I want everybody to feel the gravity and the solemnity of those events. At the same time, of course, that all of us are deeply invested in President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris, moving the country forward to repair all of the wreckage and the damage of last year on everything from COVID-19 to the economy.
Jamie Raskin:
But I was thinking on the way over this morning, Jake, about the preamble to the Constitution. “We the people in order to form more perfect union establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, and promote the general welfare, and preserve to ourselves and our posterity the blessings of liberty, do hereby ordain and establish.” We have to do all of those things at the same time. We have to establish justice. We have to ensure domestic tranquility at the same time we're promoting the general welfare. But this is America, and the people are up to it, and we've got a new administration coming to town that is ready to lead America back on the road of progress.
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 you to donate to your local food bank, which is experiencing a spike in demand due to the coronavirus crisis. We also would like to share our deepest condolences to representative Jamie Raskin and his family on the death of his son, Tommy Raskin, an activist who fought for human rights and animal rights. We encourage you to donate to the Tommy Raskin Memorial Fund for people and animals, which we have linked to 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 Orangutan Project at theorangutanproject.org. Gaslit Nation is produced by Sarah Kendzior, and Andrea Chalupa. If you like what we do, leave us a review on iTunes. It helps us reach more listeners and check out our Patreon, it keeps us going, and you can also subscribe to us on YouTube.
Sarah Kendzior:
Our production managers 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 is produced by David Whitehead, Martin Vissenberg, Nick Farr, Demien Arriaga and Karlyn Daigle.
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Andrea Chalupa:
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