Dirty World
This week we take on shady internal affairs (the enormous number of people in the Trump crime cult circle who died violent or mysterious deaths) and burning external affairs (the horrors of climate change and Joe Manchin’s role in destroying the planet). But before we get to that, we examine yet more confirmation of what we already knew – that Merrick Garland is a mafia state enabler. We discuss the leaked DOJ memo that Rachel Maddow discussed on her show Monday night, Bill Barr’s influence over the DOJ, and shadow mentor Jamie Gorelick, who is still molding both Garland and the January 6 committee.
Then we review the life of Ivana Trump, who was found dead at the bottom of a stairwell last week. We discuss Donald’s abuse of Ivana during their marriage, the ramifications of it on the Trump children, and how Donald Trump reacted to others who died mysteriously in his midst. (He reacted to Ivana’s death by fundraising off of it.) Then Andrea turns to climate change and things you do can do now to alleviate the damage, as well as advice on what to do politically to encourage reform and a changing of the guard. Make your voices heard and keep the pressure up!
In our bonus episode, available to Patreon subscribers at the Truth-Teller level or higher, we discuss the autocratic Supreme Court and an upcoming gerrymandering case that may decimate democracy for good in 2024. We also take questions from our audience on the January 6 committee, voting, and much more. Gaslit Nation is a very independent podcast that relies on our listeners to survive, and we thank you for your continued support!
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[introduction - clip from ABC News This Week)
Martha Raddatz (00:00):
Senator Joe Manchin, of course, abruptly pulled the plug this week on the democratic.
Senator Bernie Sanders (00:05):
Martha, he didn't abruptly… Martha.
Martha Raddatz (00:09):
Okay, let… He abruptly, on Friday-
Bernie Sanders (00:11):
He didn't abruptly do anything
Martha Raddatz:
He was negotiating for a while.
Senator Bernie Sanders:
He sabotaged the President's agenda. No, look, if you check the record six months ago, I made it clear that you have people like Manchin, and Sinema to a lesser degree, who are intentionally sabotaging the president's agenda—what the American people want, what a majority of us in the Democratic caucus want—nothing new about this. And the problem was that we continued to talk to Manchin like he was serious. He was not. This is a guy who is a major recipient of fossil fuel money, a guy who has received campaign contributions from 25 Republican billionaires. You think this guy is serious?
Martha Raddatz (00:50):
Okay, Senator, okay. You say he wasn't serious, but Manchin says his main goal is to do what's good for West Virginia and he's worried about inflation. Listen to what he told the West Virginia radio station.
Senator Bernie Sanders:
Reeeeally? [sarcastic]
Martha Raddatz:
Listen to this, please.
Bernie Sanders (01:04):
Is that right? [sarcastic]
[audio clip of Joe Manchin interview on West VA radio station]
Joe Manchin (01:06):
Inflation is absolutely killing many, many people. They can't buy gasoline, they have a hard time buying groceries. Everything they buy and consume for their daily lives is a hardship to 'em.
Martha Raddatz (01:17):
Your reaction to that, Senator?
Senator Bernie Sanders (01:19):
Well, look, it’s the same nonsense that Manchin has been talking about for a year. West Virginia, it's a beautiful state. I've had the pleasure of being there. Great people. It is one of the poorest states in this country. You ask the people of West Virginia whether they wanna expand Medicare to cover dental, hearing and eyeglasses. You ask the people of West Virginia whether we should demand that the wealthiest people in large corporations start paying their fair share of taxes. Ask the people of West Virginia whether or not all people should have healthcare as a human right, like in every other country on earth. That's what they will say, in my humble opinion. You know, Manchin represents the very wealthiest people in this country, not working families in West Virginia or America.
[end ABC News This Week clip]
[intro - theme music]
Sarah Kendzior (02:17):
I'm Sarah Kendzior, the author of the best sellers, The View from Flyover Country and Hiding in Plain Sight and of the upcoming book, They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent, which is available for pre-order now.
Andrea Chalupa (02:32):
I'm Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker, and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones about Stalin’s genocide famine in Ukraine. And if you're going to be in Washington DC on August 6th, a Saturday evening, there's going to be a free outdoor screening of Mr. Jones on the side of a Russian government building. I kid you not. My new best friend, Benjamin Wittes, is organizing this with his team. Ben has been doing a lot of projections on the side of the Russian embassy in DC, like the Ukrainian flag. He planted the sunflowers outside of the Russian embassy. And now he's going to scream… [laughs] He's going to scream as well as screen Mr. Jones on the side of a Russian government building. And that's gonna be followed by a live Q&A with me and Agnieszka Holland, the director of Mr. Jones. And if you're in DC, come out and watch it. Come out and watch it and watch the Russians squirm as we do this. Also you can watch it on a live stream anywhere you are in the world. So we'll be live streaming this. Again, it's happening Saturday night, August 6th in Washington, DC on the side of a Russian government building and you can watch it from livestream from anywhere.
Sarah Kendzior (03:40):
All right. And I encourage you to go, despite the fact that there have been dubious endorsements made from Mr. Wittes, including Bill Barr and Brett Kavanaugh. But Mr. Jones is a very good solid endorsement. So please go. And as you may have guessed, this is Gaslit Nation, a podcast covering corruption in the United States and rising autocracy around the world. And today we have yet more of our continuing theme of Merrick Garland is a mafia state enabler. Before that, did you have any announcements, Andrea?
Andrea Chalupa (04:13):
We sure do! So we're going to be talking a lot more about the burning heat as you saw, as you heard in our opening clip, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont was on This Week on ABC calling out Manchin yet again. And then a big reminder: We are taping a live episode of Gaslit Nation on Tuesday, August 9th at 11:00 AM Eastern. If you wanna get access to that, support the show at the Democracy Defender level or higher on Patreon and we will send out the link where you could watch us, a live taping followed by an audience Q&A. I know we have a lot to talk about. Sarah's gonna get into some big stuff. I'm gonna get into some big stuff. But first this deserves a spotlight. We have a chance of expanding the Democratic majorities in both the Senate and holding the House.
Andrea Chalupa (05:12):
This is important. There's been news on this. Democrats have raked in massive amounts of donations this year for both House and Senate races, making Republicans very nervous. The more radical Republicans go, the greater the backlash. People are scared. People are angry. The red wave may meet the blue wave this November, so it's important that we each play a part. Join us by making a plan to vote in November and find out ways to get out the vote on the Gaslit Nation 2022 Survival Guide available on our website at gaslitnationpod.com. I've already arranged for childcare on Saturdays in September and October so I can make phone calls to get out the vote on Saturdays through election day. I hope you'll join me because this might be the last free and fair, relatively speaking, election we get if we don't turn things around and expand the Democratic majorities in Congress to pass climate emergency legislation as well as much needed voting rights legislation before the 2024 presidential race.
Andrea Chalupa (06:18):
If you listen to this week's bonus episode, available to Patreon subscribers at the Truth-teller level and higher, we break down all the ways the big North Carolina gerrymandering case the Supreme Court agreed to hear could upend our democracy, allowing for the Fox News Supreme Court to decide our elections. So get involved, stay in the fight and fight like hell because our votes and voices really do make a difference. Thanks to us getting out the vote, we now have gun safety legislation, a COVID relief bill that put money in people's pockets, big infrastructure legislation was passed that created jobs, a Black woman is on the Supreme Court. That's all thanks to our hard work and getting out the vote. And if we expand the Democrats’ majorities in the House and Senate, there'll be more good things to come.
Sarah Kendzior (07:10):
VOTE, and keep pressuring everybody to do better. And speaking of that, we have some semi-breaking Merrick Garland DOJ news. Last night, I was watching TV with my kids when suddenly my phone started going crazy and there were all these people in my mentions saying, “Oh my God, oh my God, Sarah Kendzior was right. Oh my God.” And I thought, Well, what terrible thing has transpired? Because whenever that happens, it's always something bad. And the bad thing was that last night, Rachel Maddow had a segment in which she read a leaked DOJ memo from May, 2022 signed by Merrick Garland basically saying that he's not going to prosecute Trump and that there are issues regarding the investigation and prosecution of former presidents. This is not entirely new. This is somewhat like the OLC Memo debacle that stymied the Mueller probe.
Sarah Kendzior (08:08):
This is a memo they did not have to follow. This is not a law we're talking about. We're just talking about norms, which are curiously respected in this case. When you're dealing with an actual mafia syndicate threat, suddenly the norms and the protocols are so, so important, so much more important than public safety. Anyway, the thing that really bothered me was the second part where Garland cited Bill Barr, the coverup general, as William Sapphire, called him because Bill Barr was too devious and Machiavellian even for ultra conservatives of the early 1990s. Garland has cited Bill Barr's beliefs on the prosecution of Trump, or presidents in general, as precedent for his own actions. So Garland is quite clearly taking his cues from Bill Barr and this is in line with what we have told you many, many times about Merrick Garland and where his loyalties lie, which is, you know, he's often labeled as an institutionalist.
Sarah Kendzior (09:08):
And while that is true, what you have to take into account is that the institution which he is protecting is utterly rotted and broken and corrupt and complicit, and it has been so for decades. It was so when Bill Barr was the attorney general the first time around at the end of the George H. W. Bush administration and it's remained so for decades. He did not remove the rot and instead, Garland has contributed to the rot. Again, I encourage you to go look at our old episodes. We've discussed how Jamie Gorelick, the deputy attorney general under the Clinton administration who hired Garland and mentored Garland, was herself a protege of Alan Dershowitz, one of the most corrupt lawyers in recent American history.
Andrea Chalupa (09:55):
Think of Jamie Gorelick as the female Alan Dershowitz.
Sarah Kendzior (09:59):
Yeah, or the female Roy Cohn. We've listed her multitude of corrupt endeavors, one of which—this is what's kind of important for the January 6th Committee and things going on now—is she was Jared and Ivanka's ethics lawyer. She got them their clearance to the White House. She got Rex Tellerson his clearance, despite his Kremlin ties. And she's also, in addition to being a close colleague of both Garland and Dershowitz, a friend of Bill Barr. They would do things like co-write op-eds together saying that journalists should be persecuted. And as we mentioned in last week's episode, you may have noticed that the January 6th Committee hearings, which we do support on principle because hearings on corruption are good, but they have been used by certain individuals, namely Jared, Ivanka and Bill Barr, to try to whitewash their own reputations. Now, who is helping to oversee and structure these hearings? Jamie Gorelick..
Sarah Kendzior (10:55):
So we once again see this little corrupt nexus of Garland, Barr, Gorelick, the same people over and over for decades on end. And I'm deeply alarmed by the Bill Barr aspect of this memo. The rest of it is old news. You can seriously go back. We will put all the links to our Merick Garland themed show, or you can find them on Twitter. I put them all in interconnected threads to make it easier for everyone to get the information. I'm gonna go into the death of Ivana Trump soon, but do you have comments on this, Andrea?
Andrea Chalupa (11:27):
As has been pointed out on this show before, Gorelick was vice chairman of Fannie Mae and during that time, Fannie Mae had a $10 billion accounting scandal. Wherever Gorelick goes, there's just a scandal, scandal, scandal. She's like a scandal lawyer, right?
Sarah Kendzior (11:46):
Or terrorism, with 9/11. That's in another episode.
Andrea Chalupa (11:50):
Terrorism and scandal. She's a merchant of death in so many ways.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yeah. Literally.
Andrea Chalupa:
Death and destruction. But yeah, I think Merrick Garland, that memo that was put out in May saying essentially that “you can't go after Trump unless you get my sign off” and “there's sensitivities when there's an election year,” all of that, the fact that he released it right before the riveting, high ratings, must-watch TV of the House hearings, he was trying to get ahead of the public obviously watching these House hearings and being like, “Where the hell is Merrick Garland? Why hasn't Trump, the criminal, been indicted?” Merrick Garland was trying to obviously get ahead of that. He knew that the public would be furious once they were reminded and it’s all broken down for them that Donald Trump orchestrated a violent coup attempt against our democracy to literally violently overthrow our democracy.
Andrea Chalupa (12:48):
So Merrick Garland was trying to protect Trump. Why would he try to protect Trump? Because it's lucrative to try to protect corrupt mafia types. There's a lot of money in that game. There's a lot of power and it's obvious that Gorelick and others around them have been profiting from the Trump crime family. We know that directly because, as we keep saying, Gorelick was a lawyer for Jared Kushner. Yeah, so merit Garland is either a useful idiot… as Sarah andI always say, they're either dumb or they're evil. [laughs]. So Merrick Garland obviously has some agenda, some motive, he's happy to do it. Otherwise, Trump would've been indicted by now.
Sarah Kendzior (13:29):
Exactly. I lean on the side of he's the henchman for evil. He's the hired hand of evil. And I have actually a big backstory about this I’m going to do in another episode. I had a lot of time on my hands while Andrea was having a baby and we had our maternity leave/interview special, but there are other things to discuss. There is a big story in Trump news this week, which was the death of Ivana Trump, Donald Trump's first wife, at age 73. I wanna talk about that and the reason I'm talking about it is because we need to establish the difference between a conspiracy and a conspiracy theory because accusations of, you know, “You're a conspiracy theorist and alarmist” etc. are often used to shut down what would otherwise be productive conversation and investigation of actual and obvious crimes.
Sarah Kendzior (14:24):
And so I'm just gonna give some context about this situation. As you likely heard, “On July 14th, Ivana Trump was found dead at the bottom of a stairwell in her home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Within 48 hours, a medical examiner claimed that the cause of death was blunt force injury to the torso.” And, you know, that might be true. We do not know how Ivana Trump died. We are journalists and podcasters. We are not coroners. So we don't have any special information here. Ivana Trump's death immediately created a tide of suspicion, particularly since Ivanka and Donald, Jr. were supposed to give a long-delayed testimony in court about Trump Organization fraud crimes. And as a result of the sudden death of Ivana, that testimony was delayed. And that kind of delay, you know, due to a death in the family, is standard practice in state court.
Sarah Kendzior (15:24):
But the thing is, sudden violent deaths of people in Donald Trump's inner circle are also standard practice because Donald Trump has been an associate of a transnational crime syndicate for 40 years. And that is why people are suspicious about the death. This is a well-merited suspicion based on precedent. People are viewing Ivana Trump's death in the much greater context of Trump's own life, his criminal associates, and the body trail that has been left behind him. They are speculating, and in some cases forming conspiracy theories, because Trump has been implicated in a large number of actual provable conspiracies, ranging from fraud schemes to attempted coups to mafia activity in which his own lawyer, Michael Cohen, admitted under oath that Trump made him threaten hundreds of people with violence during his brief tenure—relatively brief—working for him. And so there is a great difference between a conspiracy theory that is just based on thin air, pulled randomly from someone's imagination, purely out of malice or spite, and a theory that is based on evidence and precedent..
Sarah Kendzior (16:46):
And it's important to note, this remains a theory and you should not confuse theories with facts. But you should also not dismiss theories or facts out of hand just because they make you feel uncomfortable. Instead, just consider the context and look to history as a guide. And as an example of that, I'm gonna give you an abbreviated list of people in Trump's circle who died violent and untimely deaths, usually right about the time that they were proving to be a problem for Trump or for other members of Trump's crime cult. And this does not mean that Trump killed them, or even, you know, had any role in their deaths. I mean, I doubt he personally killed anyone because he knows very well how to put distance between himself and his crimes. What we have instead are decades of convenient deaths that shut up both the victims and people who knew the victims, who then become afraid to talk.
Sarah Kendzior (17:49):
And that is standard mafia fair. That is what happens when your friends and colleagues are in a transnational crime syndicate. And so an abbreviated list here: We have the 1989 helicopter crash of three Trump aids that happened as his casinos were under investigation. At the least, Trump exploited their deaths for publicity, freely admitting that he was doing that, telling wildly inconsistent stories about how that death happened. Those individuals were Stephen Hyde, Mark Grossinger Etess and Jonathan Benanav. Then you have his colleague Robert Maxwell falling off a yacht in 1991. Maybe suicide, maybe murder. Maxwell's daughter, Ghislaine Maxwell's partner, Jeffrey Epstein, you know, as we know, “committed suicide” in prison in 2019. Epstein had been brought into the world of high society by Bill Barr's father. There are many connections. We've gone through that before. I'm gonna move on.
Sarah Kendzior (18:51):
We have the 2017 death of GOP operative, Peter Smith, who gave an interview to the Wall Street Journal about how he tried to rig the 2016 election for Trump with the help of Russian hackers, and then shortly after that interview, Smith was found dead holding a note that said in all caps, “NO FOUL PLAY WHATSOEVER”, which is totally a normal thing to do when there's no foul play whatsoever. You have a large number of people who handled Trump or Kushner's or Epstein's finances at Deutsche Bank who’ve died in strange ways, including father and son, Bill Broeksmit and most recently, Valentin Broeksmit. You have Jamal Khashoggi, butchered at the orders of MBS, Biden's new BFF. Jamal Khashoggi is, of course, a relative of Adnan Khashoggi, who was an associate of Trump and Maxwell. As I keep emphasizing, this is a transnational crime syndicate.
Sarah Kendzior (19:49):
You have Trump's doctor, Harold Bornstein, who forged Trump's certificates of health, found dead with no cause revealed. You have Christine Seymour, who died in 1994 in a car crash. Who was she? Well, she was the assistant of Trump mentor, Roy Cohn and she was in the middle of writing a very damning expose about both Cohn and his clients, including Trump. The manuscript was burned after that death. You have dozens of Russian high level operatives, many of them linked to the 2016 election, who died of heart attacks or falling out a window or murder or other things, or no cause of death listed. This includes ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin and the Ukrainian Kremlin-tied and Trump-tied millionaire, Alex Oronov, both of whom died in 2017. I'm gonna stop there but, you know, there are so many violent deaths linked to Trump and his inner circle that when I wrote my book, Hiding in Plain Sight, I had to put in a disclaimer when I discussed the death of journalist and Trump enemy Wayne Barrett. I had to specify that Barrett had by all accounts died of cancer because otherwise I think his death would've been viewed as suspicious because that is precedent.
Sarah Kendzior (21:09):
That is what we're dealing with. So it's a very bad sign for our nation that it is actually a normal response to wonder, Was Ivana Trump murdered? Or what's the full story here? Or are we getting accurate information? Or can we trust the information that we have been told? That is the reality that we're dealing with and so when we talk about stuff like the failure of Garland or other officials to hold this crime cult accountable, it is not at all related to partisan issues. It's related to national security threats and public safety. Cuz we are dealing with people whose lives are drenched in blood and who have left a body trail behind, who have threatened other figures publicly and openly. You know, we saw that in the 2019 impeachment of Trump, all of the individuals who testified were threatened.
Sarah Kendzior (22:01):
We're seeing it now with people who are testifying in front of the January 6th Committee, their lives are being threatened. This is very serious. And so, you know, all of this needs to be looked at in the full context. I want to briefly describe what happened to Ivana Trump. Ivana was both a witness, at the least, to many of Trump's crimes involving financial fraud and casinos but she was also a victim. And the crimes that Trump committed against her were often kept tightly under wraps from the press, in part because around 2015, Trump dispatched Michael Cohen to threaten any journalist who covers them. And one of the stories they worked hardest to keep under wraps was his alleged violent rape of Ivana, a rape that Ivana confirmed during their 1990 divorce hearings. And then she kind of semi-retracted this claim in 2015, around the time Cohen was threatening everyone saying she didn't mean he raped her in a “literal or criminal sense”.
Sarah Kendzior (23:05):
This is worth talking about both because the crime itself is hideous and the person that committed it was the President of the United States and could become the president again, but also because the crime and the coverup reveal a lot about censorship, business and politics in the late 20th century and today. And so I'm gonna talk briefly about a book called Lost tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump written by Harry Hurt III, published in 1993. And so Harry Hurt III wrote this when Trump had gone bankrupt, he had left Ivana for Marla Maples. This was probably the lowest point of Trump's life, therefore the point where Ivana felt that she could speak most freely. And the book is full of revelations, some of which are serious, some are about Trump being unable to please any woman sexually. Anyway, what is important to know is that in 2016, Harry Hurt III was told by his publisher, Norton, that Lost Tycoon was “too dangerous to remain in print.”
Sarah Kendzior (24:14):
And Hurt was deeply alarmed by Trump running for office so he ended up republishing this himself on Kindle simply to get the word out. And as I've said before, Trump media coverage is not based on profit motive. It is based on narrative control. Norton, the publisher, could have made a fortune reissuing Hurt’s book, but instead they sought to contain its revelations as Cohen and Trump were threatening people. And so what is in the book? What does it reveal about Donald Trump? I'm gonna just read a few passages. It describes… I don't know whether to call this a sex life. It's a… it's a rape life. Just to kinda give you an idea of, you know, this is stuff that was publicly reported about Trump in real time. So just a heads up. I'm going to read a passage from the book about Trump's alleged rape of Ivana.
Sarah Kendzior (25:12):
It's upsetting, so if you need to, please skip ahead about a minute and a half if you want to avoid that. This is a scene where Trump is upset about a scalp reduction treatment he had gotten. He threatens to kill the doctor who does it. Now I'm just gonna read a little from the book. He says, “I'm gonna kill you. I'm going to sue you. I'm gonna cost you so much money. I'm going to destroy your practice. Then Donald vents his rage on the person who allegedly got him into this mess in the first place, his wife. Ivana Trump has been relaxing in the master bedroom of the Trump tower complex.” And it goes on to describe from there. It says, “Suddenly Donald storms into the room. He's looking very angry. He's cursing out loud, ‘You're fucking doctor has ruined me!’, he screams. Donald flings Ivana down on the bed.”
Sarah Kendzior (25:58):
“Then he pins back her arms and grabs her by the hair. The part of her head he is grabbing corresponds to the spot on his head where the scalp production operation has been done. Donald starts ripping out Ivana’s hair by the handful as if he is trying to make her feel the same kind of pain that he is feeling. Ivana starts crying and screaming. The entire bed is being covered with strands of her golden locks, but Donald is not finished. He rips off her clothes and unzips his pants…” And I'm just gonna stop there because this is… It's very upsetting to read. This comes from their divorce testimony and, you know, he goes on to say that he raped her. He raped her very violently and when he was done, it says “he glared at her and asks with menacing casualness, ‘Does it hurt?’”
Sarah Kendzior (26:46):
There are other examples in the book of Trump ordering people to kill for him. One of those involves Trump going through Manhattan with his longtime bodyguard and sometimes chauffeur, Matthew Calamari, who worked for the Trump organization. This is the same body of individuals who are under investigation now by New York state. I’m gonna read a little from here. It says, “‘You’d do anything for me, wouldn't you Matty?’ Donald called from the rear of the limousine. ‘Yes, sir, Mr. Trump,’ Calamari assured him. ‘Anything at all?’ ‘Yes, sir,Mr. Trump.’ ‘Would you kill for me, Matty?’ Donald pressed. ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Would you kill for me, Matty?’ Donald repeated as if he were a cheerleader inciting a crowd to riot. ‘Yes, sir, Mr. Trump.’ ‘Would you kill for me, Matty’ Donald said again, in an even louder voice.”
Sarah Kendzior (27:41):
‘Yes, sir, Mr. Trump.’ ‘See,’ Donald grinned, turning back towards Fitzsimmons, ‘Matty would kill for me.’” So there's that. And then I was looking through this book after Ivana died because it's one of the most comprehensive sources about their relationship and I noticed that passage and I was thinking, you know, I've seen Matthew Calamari’s name in the news recently, where did I see it? And so I looked it up and it turns out Matthew Calamari, Sr., the same person described in this 1993 excerpt that I just read from Lost Tycoon, is standing guard in front of Ivana Trump's building right now, the building where she died, refusing to allow people in with his son, Matt Calamari, Jr. who is the director of surveillance at the Trump Organization and that they were allegedly there on the day that Ivana Trump died. So I'll just leave it at that. It's good to review history.
Andrea Chalupa (28:39):
Ugh, it's so disturbing. Ivana Trump's death on the eve of the Trump depositions was just chilling and you had on Twitter, the word “Epstein” trending. Just the fact that, given all that we know about this toxic family, that the immediate thought so many of us had was, he killed her. He had her killed. If you could violently rape someone, you can have someone killed, especially when it's convenient for you, especially when that person has been forthcoming, as Ivana Trump has, over damning details that give insight into how destructive and dangerous you are. It was Ivana Trump that revealed that Donald Trump kept a book of Hitler speeches by his bedside. That captures everything about this monster. He was a wannabe Hitler with his rallies. He came to power. He ruled using the dictator's playbook of these emotional speeches and scapegoating and overt, proud, fascist racism, having his stormtroopers—the Proud Boys and others—building a cult for himself in order to come to power, consolidate power and attempt, as we saw, to violently try to stay in power. So Ivana Trump hit the nail on the head by revealing to the world that Trump kept a book of Hitler's speeches. And so this is somebody that her death and all the sympathy and the clause that's allowed when you're mourning someone, you can push off your legal obligations, they took advantage of that, obviously.
Sarah Kendzior (30:28):
Well, it's also the children. It was Ivanka and Don, Jr. that were supposed to show up and were excused because, you know, she was their mother. And somebody asked me about this on Twitter and I said, you know, I obviously don't know the particularities of this, but in mafias, in dictatorships, if a criminal body wants to send a message, they don't necessarily target the person that they want to shut up. The person they don't want to, say, testify or speak out or whatever, they will target the people closest to them. They'll target family members and they'll send a broader message. They'll say, “We will go this far. Human life means nothing to us.” And in all those examples of people who were killed, you certainly see this. I mean, I think Jamal Khashoggi, as a recent one, was meant to send a message. The other recent suspicious deaths, all those Russians, meant to send a message to anyone who witnessed the crimes, just “stay silent because we might not go after you, we'll go after anybody. We will hurt you any way we can.” That is how they operate and it's incredibly frightening.
Andrea Chalupa (31:38):
Without question and Ivanka Trump, all that we've seen of her, she's just somebody born into and raised in this family. She's just dead inside. When her parents were getting a divorce, one of her biggest concerns was that she could keep the Trump name, right?
Sarah Kendzior:
Mmmhmm <affirmative>
Andrea Chalupa:
She was just brainwashed into that materialistic wealth and greed worship and personal branding cult that her father created. Jared is somebody who, when he talks in his little weasley voice, it sounds like the mouth of hell opening up. You know, these are just very, very toxic, damaged people from toxic, damaged families. And that's why all of us, when we were stuck under them when they, together, ruled the White House and were the most powerful people on the planet, enriching themselves to the tune of, what, hundreds of millions of dollars?
Sarah Kendzior (32:28):
Billions if you wanna bring in Jared's Saudi Arabian deals, which should be a thing heavily covered by the media and investigated by the DOJ and it's basically going by the wayside because Biden is chumming it up with MBS and continuing the plot. Anyway, we'll get to that in another episode, I think.
Andrea Chalupa (32:47):
Remember how we all felt stuck under this toxic family. It was just… I will just say, like, I am a very busy person. I'm juggling a million different projects and I made it a point to go see a therapist during the Trump years because I felt the whole squeeze in my chest and I felt like a tumor was forming in my brain because this family was just so toxic. Right? And I remember the therapist and I were helping each other, venting over how toxic this family is and how we were just stuck under them, and they're forcing their darkness on us, that emotional chest tightening that we're also feeling under the Trump's. It must be pure poison to be part of this family. It's no secret if you've been in New York long enough that you know that Don, Jr. hates his dad, but he doesn't mind using his father to enrich himself and come to power. So, yeah, offing the mom when it's convenient for them… “She's a drunk anyway”, however they see her, that's very much in the realm of possibility when it comes to this disgusting family.
Sarah Kendzior (33:49):
Especially with Don, Jr. because his connection to Ivana and to Ivana’s parents too in the Czech Republic was allegedly pretty deep. I think it was, yeah, it was 1990, Vanity Fair did a profile of Ivana and about the Trump divorce and they interviewed what was then a 12-year-old Don, Jr. who flat out told Vanity Fair, you know, “He doesn't care about anyone. He doesn't care about me. Doesn't care about our family. He only cares about money.” I'm paraphrasing that quote, but you can look it up. For a 12-year-old boy to say that to a national magazine, you know, he felt pretty intensely about it. Whatever is now in the hole that is Don, Jr, there was something there. There was a spark of life and love and he lived under a father who allegedly beat him.
Sarah Kendzior (34:41):
There are reports of that, of Trump hitting him while he was at college, of people witnessing this, abused him. You know, he has a lot of problems. His mother was abused by Trump. I think he possibly lives in fear. If I were an investigator, Don, Jr. is who I would kind of look at or talk to because maybe there's something there, maybe there's some depth of humanity there, or just a desire to escape this terrible situation. I don't think that's true with Ivanka. Like you said, I think Ivanka wants to capitalize on this situation. But yeah, it’s… Everything about this is awful. We don't take pleasure in the death of Ivana Trump. We're analyzing it in the context of all of these horrific crimes and suspicious deaths.
Sarah Kendzior (35:29):
And we're wishing that we were not—we are not and were not—living under a mafia state. That is the crux of it. That's why Andrea had to go to a therapist, because that's the reality of it, and we watched it play out year after year with people constantly denying the severity of that reality and the utter loss of control we had to have any recourse against a mafia state. Institutions do not function as they should. Protection is not available. And if you're a journalist, for example, if you're talking about all of this, your own life is always in danger. That's just the reality of the situation and it really sucks. There's nothing romantic about this. There's nothing that makes us feel like, Wow, we're so brave, we're so enterprising. We would rather be doing something else, anything else. We would rather be raising our kids in a free and democratic country without constantly having to worry about our personal safety. So when we cover a story like this, there's no schadenfreude here, there's only sadness and weariness because of the climate of fear that we, and all other Americans, are forced to live under, even now—even with the Biden administration—because of the failures of the DOJ and other entities to hold any of these people accountable.
Andrea Chalupa (36:50):
Speaking of holding people accountable, we have a segment that I’ll walk you through on how to get back at Joe Manchin right now. Obviously, we're all gonna unite and vote like hell and get the vote out like crazy. And we're going to expand our majority in the Senate and the House, making Joe Manchin irrelevant. I have so much anger towards this guy. If you've been a long time listener of this show, or you're just paying attention to what's going on, you must as well. He's the worst of the worst. So while the world burns with historic heat waves, thousands of people dying from extreme heat, Joe Manchin decides he's gonna let it all burn as long as he dies rich. He goes ahead and does what he does best and he kills climate action in the Democrats’ reconciliation package. As you heard Senator Bernie Sanders say in our opening clip, yes, Biden can pass executive orders, but these don't have the staying power as congressional legislation does. Biden should still pass sweeping and aggressive climate emergency orders as soon as possible.
Andrea Chalupa (37:58):
Meanwhile, here's how Manchin sells his soul and our children's future. Manchin rakes in millions from the apocalypse industrial complex. According to CNN, Manchin has holdings in 2021 that were valued between $1 million and $5 million in Enersystems, Inc.m the coal brokerage business he founded. Between 2011 and 2020, the Democrat made between $4.9 million and $5.1 million from coal-related enterprises. Coal is a dying industry. Manchin is an urgent reminder that Congressional ethics rules must be reformed. He's the chairman of the Senate's Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which means he gets to regulate an industry that he personally profits from. That should be illegal. Members of Congress are still allowed to own stock. That, too, should be illegal. Until ethic rules are reformed, we're going to continue to have the foxes watching the henhouse. Manchin is effectively a coal lobbyist blocking much needed climate change legislation. This guy does not negotiate in good faith, but he's good at stalling for time.
Andrea Chalupa (39:15):
Biden and the Democrats are trying to pass a reconciliation package before the midterms while they control both chambers of Congress. This means a very tight vote in the Senate, which needs Manchin’s support. As part of this package, Democrats wanted to accelerate the transition to renewable energy, including incentives for utilities to switch to clean energy, like solar and wind, tax credits for electric cars. It's astounding they can't get a single Republican on board with this to replace Manchin, even though every single state is going to be disrupted by the accelerating climate crisis. Wherever you live in America, wherever you live in the world, listening to this, if you're furious at Joe Manchin, if the name Joe Manchin makes your blood boil like an airport runway in extreme heat, this is how you get revenge on Joe Manchin right now and haunt his nightmares. This is what you do.
Andrea Chalupa (40:11):
You contact your local utility company and ask them how your home can switch to being fueled by clean energy, whether wind or solar or options. I just did this. My home is now going to be powered by solar. I'm in New York City so there's plenty of options for this if you're in New York. If you do not own your own home, ask your landlord if you can make the switch and offer to help your landlord by doing the legwork needed to make the switch. My point is, roll up your sleeves and do what it takes to make sure that wind and solar or any other available renewable resource is fueling your home. It can be done. We have that option, as I said, in New York City. For New Yorkers, I'll share a link to check out in the show notes for this week's episode, available as always on the Patreon page for this week's episode. Maybe you have the option where you live and you just need to do some research and make some phone calls to find out.
Andrea Chalupa (41:05):
And if you do not have that option, contact your local utility anyway and ask how soon you can have renewable energy as an option, because at least you'll be raising your voice and letting them know that this is what people want. Then contact your local representative, whether they're a Democrat or not, and let them know you would like to stop furthering your own demise and you would like your home to be fueled by renewable clean energy. Make demands, make your voices heard, complain. The change is going to come from us. So keep putting on pressure. The name of the game is to give Joe Manchin climate anxiety. You want Joe Manchin to open his eyes in the middle of the night and see hundreds, thousands of us calling our local utilities to switch to clean energy. It's up to us. I spoke with a college professor recently who engages on a lot of issues of sustainability.
Andrea Chalupa (42:02):
And he said companies are largely greenwashing their PR. The changes they've promised to make when it comes to helping the environment are largely just PR. I asked what was needed. He said “consumer pressure”. Consumers need to put pressure. The market needs to demand changes. Just look at how many fast food chains now are offering fake meat vegan options. That's because of consumer pressure, so it can be done. So if you want to feel useful right now, to take your anger out on Manchin now, switch your home's energy source to renewable energy. And if you don't have that option, then make your voice heard with your local utility company and your local representatives and demand it and ask those around you wherever you live to do the same. As we've said from the start of the show, you can't negotiate with a Confederate statue. And Joe Manchin is a Confederate statue.
Andrea Chalupa (43:00):
He cares more about his own personal wealth than human lives. And it's non-white people and poor people, especially poor children, who will be most impacted and displaced by man-made climate change. All people everywhere will be impacted, but rich people who tend to be white due to the system of white supremacy and inherited wealth will have obvious advantages in bracing for impact. It's easier to be a refugee when you have money. You can live in a hotel or in one of the many houses you own instead of a refugee camp or a train station, like refugees with lesser means. This point must be underlined. As we're seeing in Ukraine, anyone anywhere can become a refugee. Those images of refugees we're seeing on the news out of Ukraine, those people are doctors, lawyers, tech, executives, athletes, school teachers, small business owners. They're regular people from all walks of life.
Andrea Chalupa (43:56):
That's what the climate disaster looks like. And when we say poor people and non-white people will have a harder time, it's because they don't have the immense wealth of white people—the ruling white supremacy elites—to protect them. But in terms of becoming a refugee, climate change is all about equal opportunity. Anyone can become a displaced person due to climate change. Why? Because the climate science models of prediction are being steamrolled by reality. The planet is heating faster and systems are being disrupted faster than expected. Hurricanes and storms are becoming stronger and more destructive. Fire are becoming more destructive. Floods will increase and impact areas that normally don't see floods. I can't sleep at night because of the climate emergency, so I don't want Joe Manchin to sleep either. Do what you can to try to switch your home's energy to being powered by renewable resources.
Andrea Chalupa (44:53):
Now, in a recent New York Times/Siena College poll, only 1% of voters offered climate change as their number one concern. The leading concerns of voters are, according to this poll, the obvious ones: the economy and inflation. There's that famous saying when it comes to campaigning: It's the economy stupid. Everything comes down to the economy. Obviously, if you're struggling on how you're going to get food on the table, how you're going to pay rent, whether you're on the verge of homelessness, when you're fighting for survival, the immediate threats are obviously going to be your number one priority. And so many people are vulnerable right now. But before political leaders take this polling to dismiss climate change as a key issue, they should take into account that—I'm gonna quote now from Harvard Health Publishing—”according to a survey by the American Psychological Association, more than two thirds of Americans experience some climate anxiety. A study published by The Lancet found that 84% of children and young adults ages 16 to 25 are at least moderately worried about climate change and 59% are very or extremely worried.”
Andrea Chalupa (46:01):
So in general, two thirds of Americans experience some climate anxiety and the next generation of voters are also extremely worried. So guess what, politicians? If you want people to knock on doors for you, to make phone calls for you, to move mountains getting out the vote, speak clearly and with moral leadership when it comes to the climate emergency. The majority of Americans experience climate anxiety. That's motivation. The economy is always a leading factor in elections but it's firing up the base that can make all the difference in an election, especially a close one. So don't lose sight of the fact that the climate emergency is the number one issue. The climate crisis is disruptive across all industries, all walks of life. In the UK, for instance, you see the British Royal Air Force had to stop flights out of its largest air base because the runway had melted in extreme heat.
Andrea Chalupa (46:56):
That extreme heat is only going to get worse. The climate crisis is an international security crisis. The Pentagon knows this. They released a report on it that was apocalyptic. Also, all the oil and gas that we're consuming that's destroying the planet, that oil and gas, that's paying for Russia's war crimes in Ukraine. Russia continues to deliberately target civilians because it's a terrorist state. And Russia released a report saying that “a warming planet is a good thing for Russia because it's going to melt the ice in Siberia and Siberia will then be turned into farmland for Russia to exploit”. I kid you not. Russia wants climate change so that it can turn Siberia into a bread basket of Europe. The idiots there don't understand how extreme heat, flooding, extreme drought, extreme storms will mess with those plans. So Russia continues to rake in billions from oil and gas, using that money to fuel its war machine committing genocide in Ukraine.
Andrea Chalupa (47:58):
And Joe Manchin is empowering all that. Joe Manchin and his financial backers are fueling Russia's war machine by preventing America from taking any meaningful action right now on the climate emergency. We need to make oil and gas obsolete. We need to accelerate our transition to renewable energy. We're not moving fast enough. And in the meantime, we're empowering mass murdering psychopathic dictators like Putin. Yes, economic uncertainty and inflation brought on by that pandemic then made even worse by Russia's genocidal war are scary, but we need to weather this storm and demand we move faster in our transition to renewable energy. We're all being called to meet this moment. There's so much at stake at this dangerous crossroads we're all facing now. We're going to end this show with a clip of Jens Stoltenberg, the former Prime minister of Norway for the Labor Party and the current Secretary General of NATO speaking to the European parliament.
Andrea Chalupa (48:58):
The euro, currently, is getting battered. The euro and the dollar are now equivalent, which is huge. Europe is paying a big price in the energy hit that it's taking in trying to wean itself off of Russian oil and gas. This is a problem of Europe's own making. They should have been paying attention all this time on how Russia was abusing its own people, abusing its neighbors. They should have never relied on a terrorist state like Russia for its energy. But unfortunately, the policy across Europe was disastrous appeasement led by Angela Merkel of Germany. Under Merkel, Germany became further dependent on Russian energy and now here we are. Europe created this crisis for themselves and now they're forced to pay the price. It is a reminder to all of us that we have to have moral leadership. You cannot trust or do business or let in terrorists of any kind, whether it's a terrorist lawyer like Jamie Gorelick, or mass murdering terrorist like Putin, we have to draw the line and we have to enforce those lines or else that's it.
[begin audio clip]
Jens Stoltenberg (50:06):
The price of not supporting them is much higher partly because, for me, this is a moral issue. This is about a sovereign independent nation with more than 14 million people living in Europe, which is brutally attacked by a big power, Russia. If you don't react to that enough, you have seen what happened in Bucha and other places. It violates my understanding of, let’s say, decent behavior of neighbors and friends of Ukraine. So, of course, yes, it has a price, but not to act and just let that brutality continue and let that brutality of Russia be awarded is for me a higher price. Second, it is in our interest to help Ukraine because you have to understand that if Ukraine loses this, that's a danger for us that will make Europe even more vulnerable to Russian aggression. Because the lesson learned from Georgia in 2008, from annexing Crimea in 2014, from starting to undermine Donbas in 2014 and then the full fledged brutal invasion by President Putin in February is that they can just use force.
Jens Stoltenberg (51:06):
They will. It's to reestablish the idea of spheres of influence where big powers can decide what small neighbors can do. And that will make all of us more vulnerable. So even if you don't care about the moral aspect of this, supporting the people of Ukraine, you should care about your own security interest. So therefore you have to pay: pay for the support, pay for their entire aid, pay the consequences of the economic sanctions because the alternative is to pay a much higher price later on. And then remember one thing: yes, we pay a price but the price we pay as the European Union, as NATO, is the price we can measure in currency, in money. The price they pay is measured in lives lost every day. So you should just stop complaining and step up and provide support, full stop.
[theme music - roll outro credits]
Andrea Chalupa (01:01:33):
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 (01:01:38):
We want to encourage you to donate to your local food bank, which is experiencing a spike in demand. We also encourage you to donate to Oil Change International, an advocacy group supported with the generous donation from the Greta Thunberg Foundation that exposes the true cost of fossil fuels and facilitates the ongoing transition to clean energy.
Andrea Chalupa (01:01:57):
We encourage you to help support Ukraine by donating to Razom for Ukraine at razomforukraine.org. Do not donate to the Red Cross because your money will never reach Ukraine for the most part. Please donate locally, and Razom for Ukraine is an organization that works there on the ground. We also encourage you to donate to the International Rescue Committee, a humanitarian relief organization helping refugees from Ukraine, Syria, and Afghanistan. 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 and check the products you buy for palm oil and don't buy them anymore.
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.
Sarah Kendzior (01:02:50):
Our production manager is Nicholas Torres and our associate producer is Karlyn Daigle. Our episodes are edited by Nicholas Torres and our Patreon exclusive content is edited by Karlyn Daigle.
Andrea Chalupa (01:03:02):
Original music on Gaslit Nation is produced by David Whitehead, Martin Vissenberg, Nik Farr, Demian Arriaga, and Karlyn Daigle.
Sarah Kendzior (01:03:08):
Our logo design was donated to us by Hamish Smyth of the New York-based firm, Order. Thank you so much, Hamish.
Andrea Chalupa (01:03:15):
Gaslit Nation would like to thank our supporters at the Producer level on Patreon and higher. If you do not hear your name here and you should, then just send us a quick message on Patreon. We've had a very intense maternity leave <laugh> so we appreciate your help. Thank you so much to all of our supporters. So let us know if your name is missing and we'll quickly add you to the list. So thank you very much to…