Now that Manafort is in prison, Giuliani seems to have taken his place, especially in trying to drum up Democratic scandals to distract from Trump’s many investigations. We examine one of Giuliani's longtime moneymakers: Ukraine.
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We start off by looking at The Week The Mueller Probe Died in light of new information that’s been revealed since March. We go on to discuss the 2020 race, threats to election integrity, and the novelty of Elizabeth Warren.
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Constitutional law and voting rights attorney John Bonifaz answers our questions about one of the most contentious topics today – whether, when, and how to impeach Donald Trump. Bonifaz is the president and co-founder of Free Speech for People, a non-partisan advocacy group for a new constitutional amendment to limit campaign spending and repeal Citizens United, and the author of Warrior-King: The Case for Impeaching George W. Bush. He is also the co-author of the January 2019 op-ed “Time to Impeach Donald Trump” with Representative Rashida Tlaib.
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This episode picks up where we left off last week in our breakdown of the Mueller Report, in particular the role of Paul Manafort who flagrantly announced his crimes and no one did anything to stop him; the constant underestimation of this transnational crime syndicate masquerading as a government that spurred both the press and the Mueller probe to give them a pass; and the revelation that all fifty states were targeted and potentially compromised by Russia in 2016, despite earlier denials.
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At long last, the Mueller Report is here, and we are…underwhelmed. In the first episode of a two-part Mueller Report Special, we do an overview of the bizarre sequence of events that led to the Barr Report and the Mueller Report, which have been eclipsed by propaganda and atrocious media coverage. We examine the contents of the report itself, and ask questions like: why did Mueller fail to indict? Why did it take two years for Mueller to release a report on crimes that were documented in the public domain? Since when is obstructing justice openly no longer obstructing justice at all?
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We lay out, yet again, the urgent arguments for impeachment, and fact-check those we often hear against it. We also interview Alexandra Flores-Quilty (@AFQ_92) of the grassroots group By the People (@by_the_ppl) that works with Rep. Rashida Tlaib and other Congressional leaders to call for impeachment hearings. The worsening crisis at the U.S. border; the continued purge of our government leaving crucial key positions unfilled; threatening our national security and public safety; politically motivated attacks on investigators and other law enforcement; just this week alone strengthen the case.
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We discuss the Barr memo fallout, the insipid media coverage, the unchecked assassins of Russia and Saudi Arabia, Ukraine's election, FBI purges, and more.
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As we’ve said repeatedly at Gaslit Nation, the crisis in the US was never about Trump vs Mueller, but about corruption and exploitation – about massive institutional failure that worsened over multiple decades, culminating in a kleptocracy backed by a transnational crime syndicate. We discuss what’s next for the US and the world as the Trump team ramps up its autocratic goals.
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March 2019 marks the five-year anniversary of Russia’s annexation of Crimea. We explain why the fake referendum in Crimea is called a "referendum by gun point" and provide background on Russia's annexation which had been in the works since the mid-2000s. The story of human rights abuses that continue to this day in Russian-occupied Crimea are told through the political prisoner Oleg Sentsov, a filmmaker kidnapped from Crimea and held in a Siberian penal colony on trumped up charges. Despite the harsh conditions, Sentsov defies the odds by continuing to produce art, including a feature film. His story is an urgent reminder to choose hope over despair.
Impeachment sends a message about who we are as a country and what we will accept and abide. The rule of law demands action. Refusing to take action is normalizing atrocity. Lawlessness must be confronted regardless of the outcome, as a matter of principle and conscience. Fighting only the battles that you know you will win is a sure way of ensuring you lose; preemptive surrender, in a rapidly consolidating autocracy, is permanent surrender. The American people have suffered enough under Trump; they should not have to suffer due to Pelosi’s capitulation as well. We all deserve better than this.
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Like Trump Tower Moscow, which was supposed to be the tallest building in Europe with a penthouse for mass-murderer Putin and an Ivanka Trump branded spa, the White House was another monument for Trump, in a long list of monuments he's built for himself over the years, and one that would help him and his family continue to live above the law.
We are thrilled to welcome Carole Cadwalladr to Gaslit Nation. Carole is an investigative journalist who breaks major stories on the Kremlin and Mercer-backed Brexit vote, revealing a cast of nefarious characters that were also behind the election of Donald Trump. Her brave reporting, which won her the Orwell Prize and makes her a target of hit pieces, has uncovered the growing vulnerability of elections in a time of kleptocracy.
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We break down decades of intertwined corruption in both the US and the UK and urge officials to seek actual accountability, because time is running out. Kleptocracy anywhere is kleptocracy everywhere, and it is ordinary citizens who pay the most painful price.
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Ukrainian journalist Nataliya Gumenyuk, the head of the independent media network Hromadske TV, co-founded by a journalist - Mustafa Nayyem - that launched the EuroMaidan revolution with a Facebook post, looks back on lessons from Ukraine for the West. The discussion includes important insights for understanding international conflicts generally, like Ukraine and Venezuela, by focusing on the people caught in the middle and resisting seeing the world as a geopolitical chessboard. Gumenyuk shares how, while covering the 2016 election in the U.S., she knew Trump would win. And she provides advice for Americans and journalists living in a political climate similar to Ukraine's given the Putin-puppet in power, enrichning himself and his family.
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This week, we discuss the continued economic, environmental, and psychological fallout of the government shutdown, and speculate on what’s in store later this month. We have a long discussion about the horrific forced separation of migrant children and parents at the US-Mexico border, which both violates the UN’s Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and is reminiscent of the worst racist abuses of America’s past. For a family, especially kleptocrat princess Ivanka, that likes to brand everything, their most enduring brand will be the deaths their administration has caused. We talk about how rampant income inequality has created a level of plutocrat seemingly immune from legal consequence, and how plutocracy is the new manifest destiny. We debate whether the Mueller probe targets are really all that worried about imprisonment. Finally, we discuss the adult Trump children, their various criminal acts, the urgency of removing Jared Kushner from office, and how Don Jr should turn himself in because his father couldn’t care less what happens to him.
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Welcome to a very angry episode of Gaslit Nation! The government may be back open, but the US is not out of danger – we are merely in the eye of the hurricane as damage from the shutdown mounts and Trump threatens both another shutdown and a scheduled “national emergency.” Sarah and Andrea discuss the toll the shutdown took on workers and how the broader ambition of the GOP – to strip the US down and sell it for parts – continues unimpeded. We note how female representatives like Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez grasp the stakes and are acting as responsible leaders while Congress and the justice system, on the whole, continues to fail citizens.
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We breakdown Trump's war on America in the form of the longest government shutdown in our nation's history, the urgent case for#ImpeachmentNow, and examine Deripaska's very sweet sanctions deal.
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This isn’t just a shutdown – it’s a hostile restructuring. As the longest shutdown in US history drags on, Sarah and Andrea discuss the incredible toll it’s taken on workers, the economy and national security. We discuss the apocalyptic vision of much of the GOP elite, including rapture-fiend Mike Pompeo and nuke-lover Trump, and how their destructiveness ties into the current goals of the shutdown. We also discuss the NYT non-revelation that Trump is a Russian asset (see every damn episode of Gaslit Nation for more on that, folks!) who is being investigated by the FBI, and ask yet again why the FBI didn’t do anything earlier. Andrea explains how “The Comey Effect” is the new butterfly effect. We also discuss Ivanka helping pick the leader of the World Bank, the yellow vest protests in Europe, the latest attacks on Andrea’s sister from acting Attorney General Whitaker (!) and more.
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We continue examining the diastrous fallout of the government shutdown and the toll it’s taken on unpaid federal workers, national parks, and public safety. We debunk the myth that Trump did not understand what the shutdown would entail and argue that this is exactly what he and his camp have wanted: controlled chaos that allows him and other operatives to more easily strip the country down and sell it for parts. With Trump raising the prospect of a “national emergency," we stand on the precipice of something we’ve dreaded for a long time, and that in other settings has been how dictators consolidate power – by fabricating a massive crisis and exploiting it with a show of force. We discuss how the urgent threats of climate change and technological surveillance culture make the rising authoritarianism of the present distinct from that of decades before.
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There is treason in the treasury, nepotism in the government, and corruption everywhere – it may be a new year, but it’s the same sad story for the US! This week Sarah and Andrea discuss the cabinet shakeups that have left our government in the hands of a criminal syndicate bound by blood, marriage, and guilt; the retirement of James Mattis and what it means for US foreign policy, especially in Russia and Ukraine; the explosive Buzzfeed expose on how the Treasury was compromised by the Kremlin in 2015 with the help of complicit American employees, and how whistleblowers were the only people punished; the disturbing background of the Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin and his ties to international kleptocrats; and the strange spy saga of Paul Whelan.
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