Felon 47

Welcome to week two of Trump and Project 2025’s Reign of Terror. A convicted felon, a Russian asset, an adjudicated rapist, a chronic cheater, a trust-fund brat with six bankruptcies, and a psychopath displaying clear signs of dementia is dismantling the foundations of American democracy, just as promised—and just as we warned. The cruelty is sending dangerous shockwaves across the globe. With each passing day under this regime, the nightmare grows darker.

But here on Gaslit Nation, we’re fighting back. Truth is on our side, and our collective liberation and survival depend on our unity and resolve. Together, we can resist, rebuild, and reclaim the future. This week, we’re joined by Terrell Starr of the Black Diplomats Podcast and Substack, reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine. He shares his insights on how people around the world can navigate these perilous times, and offers ways forward for the opposition here at home.

In this week’s bonus show—available to our Truth-teller subscribers ($5/month and above)—we tackle a difficult and necessary conversation: how the Left can unite despite lingering resentments over the 2024 election, including the question of who refused to vote and why. Gaza will cease to exist under Trump. Under President Kamala Harris, we stood a stronger chance to shift the status quo on Israel and Palestine. We warned that the moral imperative was to vote for the lesser evil to avoid the total evil now being unleashed on the world.

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Take Gaslit Nation’s HyperNormalization Survey! More info here: https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/survey-reject-hypernormalization

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Show Notes

Black Diplomats Substack: https://terrellstarr.substack.com/

Trump, Egypt, and Russia: A Nuclear Power Horror Story

https://sites.libsyn.com/124622/trump-egypt-and-russia-a-nuclear-power-horror-story-teaser 

White House pauses all federal grants, sparking confusion: Trillions of dollars could be on hold, according to an Office of Management and Budget memo.

https://wapo.st/4gfgcHQ

Researchers are terrified of Trump’s freeze on science. The rest of us should be, too. Government support is essential to science. The Trump administration kneecapped it.

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/396911/trump-science-nih-censorship-blackout

CDC ordered to stop working with WHO immediately, upending expectations of an extended withdrawal

https://apnews.com/article/cdc-who-trump-548cf18b1c409c7d22e17311ccdfe1f6

Senior USAID staff put on leave amid Trump’s order halting foreign aid: The move comes as officials accuse the agency of trying to “circumvent” Trump’s aid freeze, according to emails obtained by The Post. 

https://wapo.st/42qpQnM

Trump’s abrupt decision to play DJ, a sign of ‘accelerating cognitive decline’ says Cornell expert

https://as.cornell.edu/news/trumps-abrupt-decision-play-dj-sign-accelerating-cognitive-decline-says-cornell-expert

October 2024 episode referenced in this discussion: Adopt a White Woman:

https://gaslitnation.libsyn.com/adopt-a-white-woman

Money from For-profit Prisons to US Representatives, 1990-2024

https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/summary?cycle=All&ind=G7000&recipdetail=H&sortorder=N

ICYMI: Here are previous documents the Security Committee has shared:

For the Gaslit Nation Book Club – First Meeting at the Gaslit Nation Salon on February 24 at 4pm ET:


Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):

So we begin week two of the Trump Musk regime.

Speaker 2 (00:05):

Gaslit Nation is excited to announce the start of a new community history project. The project conceived by Gaslit Nation creator Andrea Chalupa is organized around a new weekly survey, Reject Hypernormalization,

Speaker 1 (00:17):

Which aims to help the community through the coming years and to aid those who look back on this time in history and wonder what it was like to live through Trump 2.0.

Speaker 2 (00:27):

The concept and goals of the survey were developed over the course of several Gaslit Nation political salons and Gaslit Nation's Archive Committee worked to make the survey a reality.

Speaker 1 (00:36):

The reject Hypernormalization survey consists of six questions. Participants are free to skip questions and the survey can be submitted anonymously.

Speaker 2 (00:45):

In addition to documenting each participant's lived history, gaslit Nation Survey aims to help participants resist and escape the hypernormalization that is occurring in our increasingly authoritarian nation. But what is Hypernormalization?

Speaker 1 (00:58):

A succinct definition of hypernormalization can be found in a New Yorker review of Adam Curtis's BBC documentary Hypernormalization. The reviewer Brandon Harris defines the term as:

Speaker 2 (01:10):

An entropic acceptance and false belief in a clearly broken polity and the myths that undergirded succinct, yes, but perhaps not very enlightening.

Speaker 1 (01:19):

The term hypernormalization was coined by a Russian scholar, Alexei Yurchak, in his book "Everything was forever until it was no more: The last Soviet generation."

Speaker 2 (01:30):

Looking back at the collapse of the Soviet Union, Yurchak argues that in Harris's words during the final days of Russian communism, the Soviet system had been so successful at propagandizing itself, at restricting the consideration of possible alternatives, that no one within Russian society, be they politicians or journalists, academics or citizens, could conceive of anything but the status quo until it was far too late to avoid the collapse of the old order.

Speaker 1 (01:57):

The system was unsustainable. This was obvious to anyone waiting in line for bread or gasoline, to anyone fighting in Afghanistan or working in the halls of the Kremlin, but in official public life, such thoughts went unexpressed. The end of the Soviet Union was among Russians, both unsurprising and unforeseen.

Speaker 2 (02:18):

In Hypernormalization Curtis documents and explains the phenomenon of Hypernormalization as it has played out more globally, the opening lines of his documentary on the topic will surely resonate with the Gaslit nation community.

Speaker 3 (02:31):

We live in a strange time. Extraordinary events keep happening that undermine the stability of our world. Suicide bombs, waves of refugees, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, even Brexit. Yet those in control seem unable to deal with. No one has any vision of a different or a better kind of future. This film will tell the story of how we got to this strange place. It is about how over the past 40 years, politicians, financiers and technological utopians, rather than face up to the real complexities of the world, retreated. Instead, they constructed a simpler version of the world in order to hang on to power. And as this fake world grew, all of us went along with it because the simplicity was reassuring.

Speaker 1 (03:33):

What can we take away from these words? From this simplified description, we can only take away something equally simplified. In order to reject hypernormalization, we need to identify propaganda and other trickery. Resist the pull of the status quo in the allure of a simplified fake world, and we must build a void That is what comes next.

Speaker 2 (03:54):

But do not sigh and say, so now I know what to do because everything we face is complex and cannot be simplified and therefore so are the answers. They are uncomfortable and hard. Answers of such complexity and grandness can only be collectively imagined, collectively crafted, and collectively manifested here week by week, we only begin to build our muscles. Let us start breaking down the spell of Hypernormalization all around us and let us practice imagining a radically different new future. Then down the road we may come together and collectively save ourselves.

Speaker 1 (04:27):

Sure, it might be a mass extinction event if humanity cannot save itself, but the planet will continue to exist. It will adapt and find new ways to thrive. Either way, our future will be both surprising and foreseen. Signed Archive committee secretary Kate Fowler

Andrea Chalupa (04:53):

To submit your responses to Gaslit Nation's Hypernormalization survey. Look for it in the show notes of this week's episode and on our website, gaslit nation pod.com. Welcome to Gaslit Nation. I am your host, Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones, about Stalin's genocide famine in Ukraine, a horror show that is repeating Today, I am joined by one of my soulmates, Terrell Starr, a journalist based in key of Ukraine and the brilliant mind behind black diplomats, the podcast in Substack, which we'll link to in the show notes. Hey Terrell. Hey,

Terrell Starr (05:42):

What's up?

Andrea Chalupa (05:43):

So I am in America, Terrell is in Ukraine. We are both seeing the global war between fascism and democracy from two very different parts of the world. So I'm going to give Terrell an update from my vantage point on the horror show that Trump is deliberately unleashing with his project 2025 backed plan to dismantle the American government from within and establish a dictatorship. You might recall in October, 2024 conversation that Terrell and I had I'll link to in the show notes where we're talking about a troubling encounter I had with a black woman, a Latina black woman and a Latino on a playground in New York state who were all in for Trump and citing Candace Owens like it's gospel, Candace Owens, who is now motivated to mass shooters. She has an entire section on our Wikipedia page of all the mass shooters that she has inspired with her disinformation machine of hate.

(06:49):

Anyway, so these non-white, all in MAGA supporters that I happened to cross in New York State did not know a damn thing about Project 2025, and maybe they will now because all hell is breaking loose in the us. The latest reporting is that Trump is freezing practically all money, all federal grants, not just foreign aid, but domesticate SNAP programs, student loans, nonprofit funding, funding for daycare, headstart so much the Washington Post estimates, it's in the trillions of dollars that is frozen. Obviously legal experts are speaking up and saying this is illegal. Trump is also saying that it is him that is going to control the power of the purse and not Congress. That again, is an illegal power grab against our system of checks and balances. Trump has also fired over 12 inspector generals that are supposed to be watchdogs for our government against overreach, against corruption, against exactly what he's doing.

(07:54):

Trump has also fired several career prosecutors at the DOJ and he's putting under investigation the DOJ prosecutors that led the investigation into January 6th, and that's going to be an expensive toll of financial fees and emotional stress on those families that were just doing their damn jobs for the American public. And I can keep going. He's muzzled urgently needed public's health safety programs like NIH, the CDC at a time when we're having a bird flu epidemic that's rising where entire flocks are being killed because of bird flu, the price of eggs are going up. I have a whole list here of stuff that I can go down, but just look at the post and the show notes for this episode to see a roundup of the latest so you can be aware of how this might impact you. Now I want to just share that what I'm hearing from folks that are trying to calm themselves down is that Trump's aid freezes these money.

(08:56):

Freezes are temporary. No one should believe that. And here's an example of why no one should believe that In the brilliant must read powerful Holocaust memoir by Victor Frankl called Man's Search for Meaning, which we're reading as part of Gaslit Nation's -- book club info on that in the show notes. In Viktor Frankl's memoir, he describes how when he arrived with other prisoners to Auschwitz, the prisoners that greeted them looked well fed and were in good spirits laughing, welcoming them. What he would later learn is that that was used as crowd control by the Nazis to reassure the prisoners that this concentration camp wouldn't be so bad. So understand that Trump's administration claiming that these freezes are temporary, is crowd control so that we convince ourselves it's not going to be so bad. There needs to be urgency. Now, there needs to be people in the streets now.

(09:59):

Every single member of Congress needs to have their phones flooded with urgency on speed dial just because we barely lost a problematic, deeply problematic likely illegal election doesn't mean our voices haven't mattered to push back against the worst of this so far. So we need to get out of our stupor, get out of our fear, and fight back with the very limited time we have left. Now, there needs to be outrage. I know the Dems are MIA. The Dems are out there chasing their tail. They're high paid consultants are trying to cling on to their influence even though they got us here into this mess by neutering Tim Waltz, who was a masterclass and how to clap back against these weirdos. But you need to use your voice now more than ever. Call your reps, say, Hey Congress, where's checks and balances? Why are you allowing 'em to usher in dictatorship? So what are your thoughts on all this, Terrell?

Terrell Starr (10:55):

My thoughts are of my friends who I talked to today, one of them said that they are worry that the Gina is going to collapse. And so they're trying to get as many dollars as possible in case they have to leave the country because they fear that the military aid, which by the way is not affected by this freeze. That's an important thing to note. Coming to Ukraine, most of it is not affected at all because I was passed through Congress and not an executive order and he doesn't have control of it from a departmental level. So that's the good news for Ukraine. The issue though is for funding that comes from say, U-S-A-I-D, other state department budgets. For example, we have an organization called Veterans Hub where there's a hotline that provides 24 hour care to soldiers who have been fighting on the front to call in case they want to hurt themselves.

(11:50):

And that is not operating anymore. They can't work because you need to pay people. And so roughly, I think they support a lot of soldiers. There was a story in the Associated Press that said that a soldier was calling talking about self-harm and that staff member was texting throughout the night. And what's really tough about it's that they got no warning that this funding would be cut. Another thing this funding covers are things such as people who are dealing with organizations that support women through domestic violence. So you have all these sociological issues that have come up as a result of this war that there was no funding for and or organizations that were dependent upon the engagement of Twitter to get their continued funding. But because the algorithm is all jacked up and is geared towards right-wing extremists, that platform is not as Bible as it used to be, particularly at the start of the war.

(12:49):

And so when you have these aid programs that are being free frozen for no apparent reason, by the way, it actually hurts people's lives. And so we can go on and on and on about the direct impact that these programs have. And so the reason why this is happening is because of Trump's xenophobic America first framework. The whole thing about the Haitians eating dogs and cats and the Mexicans coming in and taking your jobs and committing all the crimes even though there's no data to support that at all, he is definitely won by his mandate of rid the country of as many foreigners as he possibly can and getting rid of the so-called all the nuisance foreigners also includes the money that finances these foreigners over the American people, IE the American white man and white woman. And so it's very xenophobic, very racist ideology that actually is hurting people's lives.

(13:53):

It actually cuts HIV and AIDS programming. So it's really maddening and cruel. The impact is cruel. It's reasoning behind doing this cruel. And so from a first on the ground perspective, I know how this is impacting people because people don't realize that so much about how America works beyond empire. We can have a whole conversation about that and we do. There is a lot of good that come out of these programs and being the biggest economy on earth, there is philosophically a belief that we have to make our world better. And that also includes supporting anti-corruption programs. And ironically, Trump said that he's doing this audit in order to root out corruption even though he is a convicted felon who was known to cheat on the value of his. And he is convicted of sexual assault. And so we know that.

Andrea Chalupa (14:55):

Adjudicated rapist, as they say

Terrell Starr (14:58):

Precisely and adjudicated rapist, right? And so he has the nerve to talk about corruption. So it's really terrifying because what's really at the core of all this is that everyone is being impacted because it was at first you think about his targeting of people of color, Mexicans, Latino community, people from the Caribbean, people from the continent of Africa, this whole thing about the Chinese, this xenophobia directed at the Chinese, which was the motivation behind TikTok going at TikTok, which makes no sense because the biggest iron is that everyone steals your data. And so that's the bottom line. And so you are directing, you say your animus are saying that we should be concerned about the security of China having access to our data when all the major platforms in the United States of America are doing some form of gathering our data in ways that don't make us secure in the first place.

(15:56):

But you're targeting China because you're adding this element of this foreign entity applying harm to us. So the biggest irony in that is that Ukrainians, a lot of people, some people I've been talking to who may have thought that this would not have impacted them, like the xenophobic fervor of it are starting to feel it because 100% this is xenophobia. This has nothing to do with anything else but punishing the other at the xenophobic zeal of his supporters, who he is not honest with about why they are in the current situation that they're in, which is dealing with economic inequity, which is dealing with injustice in regards to gender inequality. All these things upon things that he can take advantage of, but he has no interest in sharing with the kind of person who votes for him ironically.

Andrea Chalupa (16:48):

And let's hear from some of those Trump voters, I'm going to play a clip of one Latina woman sobbing begging Trump to stop this mass immigration madness. We'll play that now.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (17:05):

This is so crazy that we voted for Trump. We trust him with the word that he promised us Latinos. This is crazy that starting next week, multiple cities will be hitting immigration that is so crazy that multiple people are scared to go to work.

Andrea Chalupa (17:28):

And I don't know how non-white people didn't see the writing on the wall when every single Trump rally behind him was white person after white person holding up a Trump campaign sign saying mass deportations. Now he spelled it out for them and they still refuse to see it. Why do you think that is?

Terrell Starr (17:54):

Because we are conditioned to hate each other. And one thing about white supremacy and its effectiveness is that it's really skill ful in the art of getting minorities to be pitted against one another. And my philosophy is that black people, Latino people, all people, Ukrainians, the way that my mind works, we all are having to fight these various forms of supremacy. However, you can be a Latino and be anti-black. You can be Asian and be anti-black. So the foundation of Trump's xenophobia is anti-blackness. And we know this because he refused to sell or rent to black people during the 1970s in the Justice Department found him liable and he suffered a fine for the US Justice Department. And so that is documented.

(18:44):

And so with the Latino community, for many of them, I genuinely believe the idea is that those are just the black people. We're not them With a lot of people, there's an anti-blackness within that community just like theirs ignorance in our community, the person who was really perpetrating this dogs and cats, Magnus was a black man who had to later apologize. So none of us are inoculated from having this ignorant perspective of people who are different from us and trying to find them liable for our problems. But particularly with the Latino community, I think that we have to realize that they're humans and they could be just as xenophobic, just as sexist, just as racist, just as susceptible to all of these evils as anyone else.

(19:32):

And I think that just because we would deemed them people of color, and by the way, not all Latinos are considered people of color. There are plenty of Latinos who are white, so let's just keep that in mind as well. And so this community is a lot more complex than we have to give them credit for, but they messed around and they're dealing with their find out moment right now. And so they're going to see the depths, they're going to find out to the highest degree what their owns and the phobia and own anti-blackness and other phobias is going to impact their lives. And they're going to come to the point where they will really respect the fact that we're all in this together. Whether they want to see themselves on the same landing as black folk and everyone else.

Andrea Chalupa (20:18):

Yeah, that's what worries me is the fuck around find out face of it because all of us are finding out together, it's going to be a collective punishment for their stupidity.

Terrell Starr (20:29):

We knew.

Andrea Chalupa (20:30):

We knew I should not get punished for the 11 phone banks that I had in the 2024 election trying to stop this. We warned everybody where this was headed. We were one of those podcasts to do an early show warning about Project 2025 before that became the thing for at least people paying attention in this election, I want to just say Herbert Hoover oversaw shanty towns as president, the Great depression that ravaged the world, especially across America. Then that led to FDR rising up out of the ashes and doing four terms where he brought in what America has enjoyed ever since that we've been losing, which is a social safety net, social security, the labor department and so on. Then you had Nixon's crime spree, which again, America got so demoralized that then led to Carter, Jimmy Carter, a good man, a beautiful human being rising up out of those ashes and showing America decency again.

(21:32):

America didn't learn and they allowed the Reagan revolution to come in, steamroll across everything and give birth to the Frankenstein monster of Donald Trump. But before that, you had George W. Bush tanking the global economy, releasing the hounds of the apocalypse with these two illegal invasions, Afghanistan and Iraq, which gave birth to isis. And after George W. Bush, a war criminals set everything on fire. In comes America is so desperate and in need of a hero that they will actually elect a black man president. And Obama comes in two terms. He maintains this neoliberalism status quo. No one goes to prison for the illegal gambling den of Wall Street mistakes there obviously. And then Biden, of course, came in in 2020 out of our desperation as a country to get rid of wannabe dictator Trump who did not go willingly. People died because of his attempted violent coup of January 6th.

(22:28):

And so now we're facing another rock bottom where people alive right now in this moment are going to be dead because of Trump and his deliberately cruel fire hose of terror. And that rock bottom, you Olga experts in authoritarianism are saying, Americans just need to learn the hard way. We tried to save them, we tried to stop them, and now they need to learn the hard way. Well, the hard way impacts so many countless innocent people around the world. Just one example, Trump has given the green light for major corporations to pollute our water with cancer causing pfas the horrible chemical. And just to your point on U-S-A-I-D, just one of many of trillions of programs that have been frozen, the foreign aid that we're giving around the world, that empowers some of the most vulnerable groups on the front lines of fighting corruption, building civil society in their countries.

(23:25):

And that in turn protects us here at home. Ukraine has always been a laboratory for Kremlin aggression and Ukraine. Civil society funded by donors around the world, especially the United States, has led to brilliant bombshells of investigative journalism that has informed us here at home, including confirming here in the American press, the pages of the New York Times and elsewhere that Paul Manafort was a longtime Kremlin operative who built up a Ukrainian Trump victory. Jankovich brought him to power who was then overthrown in a popular uprising where he fled to Russia where he's been ever since. And so if longtime Kremlin operative who built up his own MAGA operation in Ukraine comes to the United States and for free manages Donald Trump's campaign for president and does that same operation here, that's a five alarm fire America, we got all that confirmation thanks to Ukraine's Civil Society of Investigative Journalists that US programs have funded all these years.

(24:29):

That's what is at stake here. And I also want to point out that the freeze does not include Israel and Egypt. Why might that be? Number one, Israel Netanyahu, who himself is a war criminal, who himself is a wannabe dictator. I just interviewed the brilliant filmmakers behind the must watch documentary, the BB files. That episode's going to run soon net and Yahoo and his wife Sarah are the Trumps through and through. You need to listen to that chilling discussion. It's running next week. You need to watch the film, the BB files. It is mind blowing the level of corruption that the Netanyahu's wrought and how they're clinging onto their forever war just to stay in power and avoid prison. The same dynamic we're up against here in the us under the Trump's. Anyway, so Israel isn't touched because Trump's close with Netanyahu and so are the Kushners and Egypt isn't touched.

(25:22):

Why? Because there is this bombshell Washington Post report that came out last August. I did a whole special on it reporting how Trump received a $10 million highly illegal cash donation from the dictator of Egypt in return for unfreezing over a billion dollars in US military aid to Egypt and normalizing the dictator l CCC of Egypt with a fireside chat. And the Oval office LC was persona on grata according to US foreign policy because he overthrew the only Democratic elected government in Egypt in a military coup. He was frozen out by the US and when $10 million from Egypt mysteriously hits Trump's campaign and the 2016 election, next thing you know, l CCC is getting everything he asks from Trump's White House in his first term and Mueller's team in the DOJ and the FBI were investigating this and their investigation was shut down V to longtime Republican coverup King William Barr.

(26:31):

So if you're wondering why was Egypt an exception? That's why. So if you have $10 million in cash to give the Trumps, maybe that might save your life. If you need it, maybe that might protect you from this hell fire that's raining on us now, but maybe not because a lot of people are getting screwed over left, right and center. Now, it's not just us, the little people caught in this, it's also all the big innovation companies that depend on NIH funding depend on NIH grants and on and on the list goes. And so I want to play quickly now, a clip of JD Vance, I hate to say it, vice President of the United States, JD Vance, total grifter trying to convince the American public that Trump has the right to edit the US Constitution. No, he does not.

Speaker 7 (27:18):

There are five legal challenges already to one of the other immigration actions, the order on birthright citizenship, a federal judge appointed by Ronald Reagan, who I think you'd agree has some conservative credentials. Sure, pause the order to end birthright citizenship, calling it blatantly unconstitutional. How do you reconcile this challenge to the 14th amendment to the constitution?

J.D. Vance (27:40):

So I obviously disagree with that judge and these things, some of them will be litigated. That's the nature of our constitutional system. But here's the basic idea of President Trump's view on this. If you are a lawful permanent resident or a legal immigrant who plans to stay, your children of course should become American citizens. But let's say you're the child of an ambassador, you don't become,

Speaker 7 (28:01):

But that's not part of it.

J.D. Vance (28:03):

That's

Speaker 7 (28:03):

Already a carve out having to do with

J.D. Vance (28:04):

Kids with diplomas. But we're saying that that carve out should apply to anybody who doesn't plan to stay here. If you come here on vacation and you have a baby in an American hospital, that baby doesn't become an American citizen. If you're an illegal alien and you come here temporarily, hopefully your child does not become an American citizen by virtue of just having been born on American soil. It's a very basic principle in American immigration law that if you want to become an American citizen and you've done it the right way and the American people and their collective wisdom have welcomed you into our national community, then you become a citizen. But temporary residents, people who come in here, whether legally or illegally and don't plan to stay their children shouldn't become American citizens. I don't know any country that does that or why we would be different.

Speaker 7 (28:51):

Well, this is a country founded by immigrants.

J.D. Vance (28:53):

Well, this is a country founded by...

Andrea Chalupa (28:55):

We've come to the point where so much that should not be normalized has been normalized, including Donald Trump in this highly problematic election where so many laws, the KKK playbook were expended out in the open. And the DOJ, the Feds did nothing about it. The Democrats did nothing about it. Elon Musk was openly breaking laws, bribing voters. The judge tried to reign him in. This was a deeply problematic election. I don't think it was a legitimate election. I highlighted all of these factors on the show in real time during the 2024 election warning, everyone MAGA is openly trying to steal this election. And I believe they did. They did everything through their disinformation machine, help from the Russians, help from eagle ai, especially AI technology meant to scrub voter rolls, especially in Georgia. They had massive help from the Republican party itself, including Brian Kemp in Georgia and voter ID laws that were expanding across the country.

(29:51):

So this is an illegitimate president in 2024, just like in 2016. And we've been in a constitutional crisis ever since 2016. And as we've always warned on the show, the bad guys are fast. The good guys are way too slow. The Democrats just now are having a press conference on Trump partying January 6th terrorists, which happened a week ago. And in that time of a week, he's frozen trillions of dollars in aid domestically in foreign that people's very lives depend on. He's muzzled the CDC and the NIH during a growing pandemic of bird flu. So I want to ask you, what is happening with the Democrats and what do you think an opposition to Trump should look like?

Terrell Starr (30:37):

Democrats and I speak specifically about the leadership of the Democratic Party. It is beholden to the elite aspects of their party to the point of they're going to be satisfied with losing because they're more devoted to their elites than they are to the people that they claim to represent. And so until that happens, we're going to always have these issues. And if there are victories that take place, they're going to come in spite of the larger democratic infrastructure. Anything from the DNC to the echelon of leadership in Congress to the donor class, et cetera. The people who should be running the DNC for example, I've always said Latasha Brown would be a perfect person. I think we're still going to work to have her on the show who is a co-founder of Black Voters Matter. It needs to have a grassroots feeling. If you have a grassroots centered policy, that means that you're going to undermine the people who are at the very top IE: You're going to challenge their power.

(31:37):

And so what does that say? That says that in many respects, some of the same elitist policies that, or I would just say inequitable policies that target Republicans, some of that will target elitist Democrats. Not exactly the same thing. There's an issue with many Americans, and I've been thinking about this, is that either people are wrongly angry and they target it at the wrong people, IE immigrants and then they elect a xenophobe in Trump. Or people are just so disillusioned that they don't participate at all. America has one of the lowest participation rates in elections of any developed country. I think that's a democratic issue. But I think largely it's with American's failure to actively participate in a democratic process. And much of that has to do with the fact that America, while it's considered the most democracy on earth, is actually the single most democracy that actively seeks to undermine people's access to the ballot box.

(32:50):

After the Civil Rights movement, people have taken their foot off the pedal, and I was on Monique Presley's show the other day, who's a great civil rights lawyer and political commentator. She was basically saying that we as black people, our mentality is very much 1965, not even 1968, we don't really have what we have because if we have what we have, it wouldn't be so easy to threaten it. And the reason why it's so easy to threaten it is that too many people don't feel like we have anything to defend as vigorously as it used to be, as it was fought for. And so I think that we think about the Democrats, that's a conversation to have, and I can even go back and forth with you on it, but I think that even deeper than that is the fact that we don't have a populace that holds anyone accountable as well as they should be. And I think until we deal with that issue, then after Trump leaves, finally the only good news that he will no longer have access to the White House, JD V could very easily take over.

Andrea Chalupa (33:56):

How is Trump going to leave, heart attack? He's poisoned by his food taster?

Terrell Starr (34:02):

I know a lot of people have a scorched earth approach and mindset and feelings to this. And I don't for the very simple reason that again, this country has gone through slavery. We've gone through decades of Jim Crow, we've been in worse times and we've overcome them. So I'm not a scorched earth person. He has to serve two terms. And so what will happen, however, is that there will be more finagling of our electoral system so that someone like JD Vance could easily take his place. That's a very real possibility, but Trump won't be there. But my point is that we have to really think about who we are as a country. We have to have a national conversation with ourselves as individuals about where do we want to live. Being over here in Ukraine and just being somebody who's a citizen of the world, I have this mentality that there is a tax to pay simply for being an American.

(35:02):

The fact that you can turn on your electricity and it works. The fact that we have an infrastructure that is functional. We have all of our complaints, but we have far more than the vast majority of human beings on the face of this earth. Meanwhile, in Ukraine, I have my license on here and the money that is frozen, a lot of that goes into restructuring of infrastructure, rebuilding of infrastructure here. And so the lights have not been impacted or disrupted for a while, but that can change in any moment's. Notice the fact that you can go to sleep night as an American and not have to worry about the basics of getting access to water, getting access to food. Now of course, we have our own individual issues, I know that, but compared to the rest of the world, it's still better than the worst of everyone else in the world.

(35:53):

Around the world there is this feeling that if we were in America, we could at least have this. I understand that a lot of people will respond by saying that we have this issue, this issue, this issue. Of course we do. However, the tax of being in a country where we don't have to fear for our lives as far from a foreign entity, the fact that we live in a country that's this dynamic and the fact that we raise our voice and we can have change without being to in jail, that is something that is very precious. And I don't think enough people fear losing it. That's where we are. People don't fear losing what we have because they don't know what they have. What distinguishes Democrats is that they don't realize that some of the very elitism that they espouse is very much ruining the party, but that requires us to be accountable, to be the accountability holders, and we're not harnessing our individual powers to do that.

(36:50):

Instead, what we are doing is this ignorant black person in Ohio saying, well, these people are eating dogs and cats. Meanwhile, we as black Americans who are born here are dealing with so many levers of inequity that we really shouldn't be devoting our time to immigrants coming in. Or if you're a Latino who feels like, okay, I came here legally is the common word, without realizing that this person that's appealing to your ego really doesn't care about you, either he's typing into one thing that you like, and then when you close your eyes, you wake up to a world in which it's just thrown upside down for the very simple reason that he tapped into one emotional thing that you feel without realizing that he doesn't care about you. And so we have this very indifferent attitude to each other's humanity, which is really at the core of this. And until we get to really deal with why it's so easy to turn us against one another, we're not going to really be able to hold anyone accountable regardless of who the party is.

Andrea Chalupa (37:58):

All brilliant points. And I want to remind Americans I'm more of the mindset that he's burning it all down to weaken us, keep us in a constant state of survival mode, terror that we're so overwhelmed we don't even have the wherewithal to fight back. And that makes it easier for him to control us, conquer us, and essentially enslave us because the mass immigration that's furthering private prison slavery, which benefits not just the private prison industrial complex, but corporations that are going to get all this slave labor here on American soil. We're already at the start of that expanding a OC on the floor of Congress said, look at which members of Congress are raking in money from private prisons. I did. It's a very long list, the vast majority Republican or Southern Democrats, and I'll link to that in the show notes,

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (38:59):

Give this money no doubt. I want folks at home to look at what members of Congress are invested in private prison companies who receive this kind of money and look at the votes on this bill. It is atrocious that people are lining their pockets with private prison profits in the name of a horrific tragedy and the victim of a crime. It is shameful. It is absolutely shameful. And Mr. Speaker, I'll conclude with this. In a few months, there are members of Congress who voted for this bill who are going to pretend they didn't know about all the bad things that are going to happen because of it. So when a private prison camp opens in your town, when a dreamer

J.D. Vance (39:48):

Wait time has expired, I yield the gentle lady in additional 30 seconds.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (39:50):

So when a private prison camp opens in your town and they say, we didn't know this was going to happen, know that they did and they voted

Andrea Chalupa (39:59):

For it. This is one of the darkest chapters that America has been through. And yes, we've been through a lot of dark chapters. 50 years after the Civil War, when the first MAGA movement known as the Confederacy had to be militarily defeated, those traitors had to be defeated. 50 years after that, Woodrow Wilson becomes the first president of the United States to play a film in the White House. And that film is Birth of a Nation glorifying the KKK of which Trump's father was likely a member. He got arrested at a KKK rally in New York City. Yes, we had the Black Panthers, which were a community organization feeding kids in schools, being infiltrated by the FBI. Yes, we had environmental activists who were trying to fight back against mass polluting by corporations, precious forests being raised, and they were infiltrated by the FBI. We had Fred Hampton Jr.

(41:02):

Who was a community organizer being gunned down in his bed by the FBI. We had J Edgar Hoover, whose name is still in the FBI building, spying on all sorts of Americans and even sabotaging our own resistance to the Nazis of World War II because of his own dumb ego. Joe McCarthy, who destroyed lives with his communist witch hunt and was backed by Roy Cone, who would become Trump's mentor. So America has gone through horror shows like this before. I do think this is a particularly bad one. And because of the climate crisis compacting everything and the oligarchs, the corporations becoming more powerful than states and being above regulation, I do believe that we are at an extremely dangerous tipping point. And I do believe that the solution of the smartest oligarchs in the room, that's how they see themselves. Their arrogance is just so blinding and self-destructive to us all.

(41:59):

I do see this, may I use this term, final solution, is to weaken and enslave us because they see that as an easier solution to all the instability that's coming with the climate crisis. They know they're not going to get to Mars anytime soon. They're not going to be able to get a bunch of vacation rentals going on Mars in their lifetimes. So they're stuck with us. So how do you stay stuck with us? You control us. You get rid of as many of us as you can, and that lessens the problem where they can live above the law in their mega yachts and not have to worry about uprisings and ine. And so I'm here to tell you, fight back America because our voices still matter and there's still a lot that we can do to be a huge pain in the ass. For instance, I will provide a script on what to say to call your members of Congress. It doesn't matter if you're in a red state, they need to hear from you. You need to, for instance, fight back against RFK Jr. His appointment and Tulsi Gabbard, who has been trained for an entire life as part of a cult, part of a cult, where their loyalty pledge was eating the nail clippings of the creepy founder. I will link to all of this in the show notes. So you need to use your damn voice while you still have it. We need to rise up and make a joyful noise together. Resist, resist, resist.

Speaker 9 (43:34):

When to join the conversation. Shape the show by becoming a member of Gaslit Nation on Patreon. Join our community of listeners for exclusive q and a sessions. Bonus shows. Get all episodes ad free invites to live events and more. Most importantly, connect with other listeners in our group chat and committees, planting Seeds of change. Sign up at patreon.com/gaslit. Gaslit Nation hosts resilience political salons every Monday at 4:00 PM Eastern Can't make it live. Recordings are available to our community on Patreon. Salons are your space to vent, ask questions, and connect with other listeners who also really, really hate Nazis to help Ukraine with urgently needed humanitarian aid. Join me in donating to RASO for ukraine@rasoforukraine.org to help refugees in conflict zones donate to Doctors Without borders@doctorswithoutborders.org. And if you want to help critically endangered orangutans already under pressure from the palm oil industry, donate to the Orangutan project@theorangutanproject.org.

(44:42):

Gaslit Nation is produced by Andrea Chalupa. Our editing wizard is Nicholas Torres, and our associate producer is Karlyn Daigle. If you like what we do, leave us a review on iTunes. It helps us reach more listeners and check at our Patreon. It keeps us going. Original music and Gaslit Nation is produced by David Whitehead, Martin Berg, Nick Farr, Damien Ariaga, and Karlyn Daigle. Our logo design was donated to us by Hamish Smite of the New York based firm Order. Thank you so much Hamish. Gaslin Nation would like to thank our supporters at the producer level on Patreon and Higher Iceberg is defiant. Lily Wachowski, Abby Zavos, Sherry Escobar, Sydney Davies. Work for Better Prep For Trouble. John Shoal. Larry Gossan, Ann Bertino. David East Joseph Mara Jr. Mark Mark, Sean Berg, Kristen Custer, Kevin Gannon, Sandra Collins, Katie maus, James D. Leonard. Leo Chalupa, Carol Goad, Marcus j Trent, Joe Darcy and Marshall. DL Sinfield. Nicole Spear Abby Road. Jans, stri. Rasmussen. Mark. Mark, Sarah Gray, Diana Gallagher, Jared Lombardo, and Tanya Chalupa.

(46:05):

Thank you to everyone who supports the show. We could not make Gaslit Nation without you.

Andrea Chalupa