Tweeter and the Monkey Man

Welcome to a Gaslit Nation special episode that wil bury you with stone cold facts! Over the past eighteen months, we have faced incredulity and even threats when detailing the shady background of Merrick Garland and his ineffectiveness as Biden’s attorney general. But unlike the DOJ, we welcome requests for proof and have provided it here!

This episode puts all our Merrick Garland exposes in one place, including segments on 1) his failures to bring justice in Biden’s DOJ 2) his decades-long history with corrupt operative Jamie Gorelick, the lawyer for Ivanka and Jared and a protégé of Alan Dershowitz 3) the decades-long propaganda campaign to present him as a stalwart crusader who solved the Oklahoma City bombing 4) his refusal to use the Mueller Report to indict Trump and members of his cohort for obstruction of justice 5) his lackluster pursuit of white supremacist militants 5) why certain GOP operatives, including those in the Trump Crime Cult, want him in charge.

It’s been a long eighteen months, and Americans have found out the hard way that nobody gives a damn. Officials have feigned shock to avoid accountability: when the walls came down, all the way to hell, the reaction of the DOJ was: “Never saw them when they’re standing, never saw them when they fell.” Here at Gaslit Nation, we would like to respond that everyone of you’s a liar, and if you don’t surrender now, it’s going to go down to the wire. We do not abide a system in which anything is legal as long as you don’t get caught (and apparently, even if you do get caught!)

Gaslit Nation will be back with a new episode next week, but be sure to check out our recent episodes including “Handle With Care”, “Rattled”, “End of the Line” and “Dirty World”!

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Andrea Chalupa
Handle With Care

The January 6th Hearings are a ratings bonanza. It’s a shame Democrats didn’t do more prime time hearings into Trump corruption sooner, following the Blue Wave of 2018. We told them then that the American people demand long overdue justice, and hearings are a great way of building public outcry to insist on accountability. Unfortunately, hearings can also be a way to rewrite history and rehabilitate reputations. Sarah breaks down the disturbing parallels between the 9/11 hearings and the January 6 hearings to provide warning signs of justice being denied. Another reminder of why we must handle our democracy with care.

We also discuss American patriot and veteran Reality Winner who must be unconditionally pardoned by President Biden. Reality Winner sacrificed her career and freedom to leak a classified report on Russia’s attack on our election in 2016, a report that should never have been classified in the first place as the information had to be acted upon by election officials and vendors across the country. Vulnerabilities needed to be fixed. Reality Winner made sure the information got out, and she paid a high price for doing so. Her whistleblowing led to long overdue security measures that helped protect our elections in 2018. We need more patriots like her. President Biden must do the right thing by pardoning Reality Winner, a veteran who risked all to protect us in a time of chaos, growing autocracy, and dysfunction.

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Andrea Chalupa
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!

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Andrea Chalupa
Rattled

This week we catch up on developments in two of the main stories we cover on Gaslit Nation: the January 6 Committee hearings, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Sarah breaks down the hits and misses of the hearings thus far, and warns of the hearings being used for reputational rehab for dirty Republicans both in the Trump administration (Barr, Kushner) and outside of it (Liz “Democrats kill live babies” Cheney.) Don’t fall for it! We also address the continued refusal of Merrick Garland’s DOJ to bring perpetrators to justice and how it’s torpedoing Joe Biden’s approval rating. The hearings have done a great job reminding Americans what happened eighteen months ago – and left them wondering why it took eighteen months to address crimes that still go unpunished.

Because we're not dead-soul drones in a deranged lack-of-personality cult, we have a friendly debate over how Biden is doing in office, with each expressing different opinions while still remaining friends. Amazing! We highly recommend randos on the internet pursue this pastime instead of accusing Sarah of murdering Shinzo Abe. We both warn that lack of accountability for the mafia syndicate that infiltrated our country will be kind of a drag on the midterms. We urge people to not only vote, but protest, pressure officials about terrible policies, and plan for survival!

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Andrea Chalupa
End of the Line

We’re ba-a-a-ack! Like a poltergeist of civic conscience, Gaslit Nation has returned to tell you all the things you do not want to know but need to hear. We were off for three months while Andrea had a baby (welcome to the family Chloe!) and Sarah had her bodily autonomy signed away by the Attorney General of Missouri. An eventful spring for all!

During this “break” which was not a break thanks to the News Cycle of Constant Doom, we ran an interview series we called the Cassandra series in tribute to all the amazing experts we interviewed whose warnings were not heeded. If you missed it, we urge you to check it out, especially the episodes on reproductive rights. This week, we take stock of the illegitimate SCOTUS, its individual members’ histories of corruption, and its horrific new rulings, in particular the repeal of Roe v Wade. We discuss how this attack on privacy and bodily autonomy is being weaponized by operatives to stoke secessionist movements and civil war, and how destructive it would be to fall for these dark ploys. We review the attack on the citizens of hostage states by GOP state legislatures who throw away the votes of the people and consider what that means for 2022 and 2024. Remember, folks, America is purple despite what the propagandists tell you. It's all right, even if they say you're wrong -- it's all right, sometimes you gotta be strong!

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Andrea Chalupa
The War on History Teachers: The Sari Beth Rosenberg Interview

Public school teachers have one of the hardest jobs in America right now. For two years, they have contended with a politicized pandemic, a manufactured culture war over “critical race theory”, and violent threats aimed at school board members and other officials. This is all in addition to the low pay and budget cuts that they’ve dealt with for decades! So show your teachers some support and respect!

This week Sari Beth Rosenberg, a high school history teacher in New York and activist on the democracy frontlines, shares her thoughts on the past two chaotic years and the current challenges America’s schools face. Sari and Andrea discuss book banning and the “anti-CRT” attacks on accurate history as well as the role teachers can play in educating students about authoritarianism. In addition to being an educator, Rosenberg is the host of the PBS Newshour Extra Educator Series and a curriculum consultant on history and social studies. She holds a B.A. from Columbia College, Columbia University and a M.A. from Teachers College, Columbia University.

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Andrea Chalupa
Fight Back with The States Project - Part II

In a two-part discussion, this week we’re joined by two experts on the frontlines of fighting for our democracy on the all critical state level. If you want to fight for our democracy and prevent the slide into authoritarianism, clean up your local state government! How to proceed? Two experts from The States Project – Melissa Walker, a widely read author for teen novels turned democracy defender, and the Head of Giving Circles, and Aaron Kleinman, the Director of Research – are here to tell you. Walker and Kleinman address structural impediments to democracy – including gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the composition of the Senate – as well as challenges from dark money shadow networks and astroturf protests. They also give advice on navigating state politics and staying strong in the midst of this onslaught on our rights. We need all hands on deck for 2022, and an informed public is a powerful public!

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Andrea Chalupa
Fight Back with The States Project - Part I

In a two-part discussion, this week we’re joined by two experts on the frontlines of fighting for our democracy on the all critical state level. If you want to fight for our democracy and prevent the slide into authoritarianism, clean up your local state government! How to proceed? Two experts from The States Project – Melissa Walker, a widely read author for teen novels turned democracy defender, and the Head of Giving Circles, and Aaron Kleinman, the Director of Research – are here to tell you. Walker and Kleinman address structural impediments to democracy – including gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the composition of the Senate – as well as challenges from dark money shadow networks and astroturf protests. They also give advice on navigating state politics and staying strong in the midst of this onslaught on our rights. We need all hands on deck for 2022, and an informed public is a powerful public!

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Andrea Chalupa
Democracy in Chains: The Nancy MacLean Interview - Part II

This is Part II of our interview. In this two-part interview, we take a deep dive into a right-wing hellhole with acclaimed scholar Nancy MacLean, the author of the bestseller Democracy in Chains, which discusses how anti-democratic networks run by powerful plutocrats came to hold the United States hostage. MacLean discusses the Koch dark money network and its shadowy political partners, the decades-long libertarian takeover of the Republican Party by far-right mercenaries, the infrastructure of this extremist network and how it has sustained itself for so long, the rise of the neo-confederacy, and the dystopian plans billionaires have for the American future. We also get MacLean’s opinions on recent crises like the pandemic, the Trump Crime Cult’s Capitol attack, and the assault on voting rights. And of course we ask her how we best battle these insidious adversaries, break America’s Koch addiction, and get our country back!

Dr. Nancy MacLean is an award-winning scholar of the twentieth-century United States, a distinguished professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University, and the author of the modern-day classic, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America. Booklist called it “perhaps the best explanation to date of the roots of the political divide that threatens to irrevocably alter American government.” MacLean is the author of four other books, including Freedom is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace, called by the Chicago Tribune "contemporary history at its best,” and Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan, named a New York Times "noteworthy" book of 1994. Her articles and review essays have appeared in American Quarterly, The Boston Review, Feminist Studies, Gender & History, In These Times, International Labor and Working Class History, and many edited collections.

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Andrea Chalupa
Democracy in Chains: The Nancy MacLean Interview - Part I

In this two-part interview, we take a deep dive into a right-wing hellhole with acclaimed scholar Nancy MacLean, the author of the bestseller Democracy in Chains, which discusses how anti-democratic networks run by powerful plutocrats came to hold the United States hostage. MacLean discusses the Koch dark money network and its shadowy political partners, the decades-long libertarian takeover of the Republican Party by far-right mercenaries, the infrastructure of this extremist network and how it has sustained itself for so long, the rise of the neo-confederacy, and the dystopian plans billionaires have for the American future. We also get MacLean’s opinions on recent crises like the pandemic, the Trump Crime Cult’s Capitol attack, and the assault on voting rights. And of course we ask her how we best battle these insidious adversaries, break America’s Koch addiction, and get our country back!

Dr. Nancy MacLean is an award-winning scholar of the twentieth-century United States, a distinguished professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University, and the author of the modern-day classic, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America. Booklist called it “perhaps the best explanation to date of the roots of the political divide that threatens to irrevocably alter American government.” MacLean is the author of four other books, including Freedom is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace, called by the Chicago Tribune "contemporary history at its best,” and Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan, named a New York Times "noteworthy" book of 1994. Her articles and review essays have appeared in American Quarterly, The Boston Review, Feminist Studies, Gender & History, In These Times, International Labor and Working Class History, and many edited collections.

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Andrea Chalupa
Protect the LGBTQ Community: An Interview with Chase Strangio of the ACLU

Despite the Democrats holding the presidency, Senate and House, LGBTQ rights are in greater danger than they have been in over a decade. The revival of the right-wing culture wars along with sustained court packing by Republican radicals has put hard-won rights in jeopardy. Gaslit Nation welcomes Chase Strangio of the ACLU to break down the legal landscape of LGBTQ rights in the US today, including challenges to the legal right to gay marriage, the battle for transgender rights, and the religious extremism of today’s Supreme Court majority. He also addresses what ordinary Americans can do to preserve equal rights for all. Strangio is Deputy Director for Transgender Justice with the ACLU's LGBT & HIV Project and a history-making expert on transgender rights. He is the lawyer behind the historic June 2020 Supreme Court ruling protecting LGBTQ rights in the workplace and in 2020, was in Time Magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

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Andrea Chalupa
Help Ukraine by Cleaning Up Western Corruption: The Maksym Eristavi Interview

In this interview conducted a few weeks before Russia’s escalation of its invasion of Ukraine, Eastern European journalist and writer Maksym Eristavi explains the social and political crises that led the world to this point. Andrea and Maksym discuss corruption in Ukraine, how the Kremlin has weaponized that corruption, and how corruption in Ukraine is an enduring legacy of Russian genocidal colonialism, and how the West can help Ukraine by cleaning up its own corruption. They also discuss Ukraine’s efforts to build a free and just civil society despite corruption, in particular ongoing initiatives to preserve LGBTQ rights. This interview provides vital historical context on the ongoing regional conflict.

Maksym Eristavi is an Eastern European journalist and writer. His work explores the intersection of identity politics, disinformation and Russian colonialism. A self-described 'bridge-builder', he amplifies and explains stories from global frontline battles for equal human and civil rights. He is a Transatlantic Leadership fellow with the Center of European Policy Analysis, a DC-based foreign policy think-tank; co-founder of the Free Press for Eastern Europe that manages the largest hub for independent journalism in Eastern Europe; a former policy adviser at the European Parliament; writer for Washington Post, Politico, Foreign Policy, among others and sits on the managing board of Kyiv Pride, the biggest pride event in Eastern Europe. Eristavi is a 2015 Poynter fellow at Yale University with a focus on informational wars and pan-regional LGBTI civil rights movements.

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Andrea Chalupa
Shadow Network: The Anne Nelson Interview - Part II

This is Part II of our discussion. Gaslit Nation is excited to welcome Anne Nelson, an expert on American right-wing aspiring autocrats who has been warning about the conditions that led to our present national crisis for our entire adult lives! Yes, you should have listened to Anne Nelson’s warnings earlier but it’s never too late to start. In this crash course in America’s secret history, Nelson describes a radical right-wing takeover that was decades in the making. She explains the nefarious financial and political alliances that arose during the Reagan administration and still guide the US today, the rise of the religious right over the past five decades, “shadow network” think tanks like the Council for National Policy, and the infusion of dark money in politics. She also describes the ineffective response of the Democratic Party to Republican extremists, the January 6 attack on America, and what steps we can take to preserve our democracy.

Anne Nelson is the author of Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right, and a lecturer in the fields of international affairs, media and human rights. As a journalist she covered the conflicts in El Salvador and Guatemala, and won the Livingston Award for best international reporting from the Philippines. She served as the director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. In 1995, she became the director of the international program at the Columbia School of Journalism, where she created the first curriculum in human rights reporting. Her 2009 book Red Orchestra describes the way media was used for both propaganda and resistance in Nazi Germany. She writes regularly for the Washington Spectator and you can read her work there.

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Andrea Chalupa
Shadow Network: The Anne Nelson Interview - Part I

Gaslit Nation is excited to welcome Anne Nelson, an expert on American right-wing aspiring autocrats who has been warning about the conditions that led to our present national crisis for our entire adult lives! Yes, you should have listened to Anne Nelson’s warnings earlier but it’s never too late to start. In this crash course in America’s secret history, Nelson describes a radical right-wing takeover that was decades in the making. She explains the nefarious financial and political alliances that arose during the Reagan administration and still guide the US today, the rise of the religious right over the past five decades, “shadow network” think tanks like the Council for National Policy, and the infusion of dark money in politics. She also describes the ineffective response of the Democratic Party to Republican extremists, the January 6 attack on America, and what steps we can take to preserve our democracy.

Anne Nelson is the author of Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right, and a lecturer in the fields of international affairs, media and human rights. As a journalist she covered the conflicts in El Salvador and Guatemala, and won the Livingston Award for best international reporting from the Philippines. She served as the director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. In 1995, she became the director of the international program at the Columbia School of Journalism, where she created the first curriculum in human rights reporting. Her 2009 book Red Orchestra describes the way media was used for both propaganda and resistance in Nazi Germany. She writes regularly for the Washington Spectator and you can read her work there.

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Andrea Chalupa
The Assault on Reproductive Rights: An Interview with Imani Gandy and Jessica Mason Pieklo

Next year, 2023, will mark the 50-year anniversary of the landmark Roe v Wade case…if it is not overturned by then. Gaslit Nation welcomes Imani Gandy and Jessica Mason Pieklo, the cohosts of the podcast Boom! Lawyered, to explain the ongoing attack on reproductive rights, why prior warnings were not heeded, and what actions we can take to fight back now. We discuss the long-term Republican takeover of the courts, the questionable legitimacy of the Supreme Court, the connections between the erosion of reproductive rights and the strengthening of an autocratic surveillance state, new laws legalizing violent vigilantism against women in states like Texas, why the media played down these threats, how the Democrats should respond, and much more!

Imani Gandy is Senior Editor of Law and Policy for Rewire News Group, where she covers law and courts and co-hosts the RNG podcast Boom! Lawyered. Imani is a recovering attorney turned award-winning journalist and political blogger. Previously, Imani founded Angry Black Lady Chronicles, winner of the 2010 Black Weblog Award for Blog to Watch and the 2012 Black Weblog Award for Best Political Blog. She received her JD from University of Virginia School of Law in 2001. Jessica Mason Pieklo is a Senior Vice President and Executive Editor and the co-host of Boom! Lawyered. Jessica has over a decade of experience as a former litigator, and taught law for four years before transitioning to journalism. She was part of the SCOTUSblog symposium on abortion rights following Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt and won the Excellence in Online Journalism award in 2018 from the Association of LGBTQ Journalists. Boom! Lawyered won Podcast of the Year in 2017 from the Population Institute.

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Andrea Chalupa
Targeted by the Mafia State: An Interview With Cheri Jacobus

Back in 2015 and 2016, as the GOP caved to the Trump crime cult and the mainstream media normalized their corrupt ambitions, a few voices from the right rose up in dissent. One of the leading lights in this regard was Cheri Jacobus, a political commentator and former Republican who was an early target of Trump’s vicious campaign and its propaganda machine. Currently a registered Independent, Cheri was the founder, President, and Executive Producer of “America Reads The Mueller Report” and the former host of the podcast “Politics with Cheri Jacobus”. She remains an outspoken critic of the Trump crime cult and its enablers.

In this interview, we discuss Trump’s rise to power, how the GOP facilitated it, and the mafia tactics the Trump team uses to try to silence their critics. We pay particular attention to early campaign advisors like Roger Stone and Michael Caputo, who targeted Cheri personally as she fought to bring the truth to light. We also discuss the FBI, the Mueller probe, Merrick Garland’s DOJ, and the general failure to enforce accountability. Cheri also shares her thoughts on the “Never Trump” Republicans, the Lincoln Project, and the hypocrisy of George Conway. She gives us a behind the scenes look at how the mainstream media did Trump’s bidding – in particular, Jeff Zucker of CNN. (This interview was taped before Zucker resigned in disgrace.) We also discuss what’s worth fighting for in America today and what values transcend party lines.

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Andrea Chalupa
The Cult Age: Interview with Cult Expert Dr. Janja Lalich

Countries undergoing extreme instability – like, say, a violent insurrectionist coup, a deadly plague, climate change catastrophes, and domestic and foreign information warfare – tend to breed cults, and America is no exception! This week Gaslit Nation welcomes cult and extremism expert Dr Janja Lalich to explain the rise of fringe movements in the US and how to deal with it.

Lalich is a researcher, author, and educator specializing in cults and extremist groups, with a particular focus on charismatic relationships, political and other social movements, ideology and social control, and issues of gender and sexuality. Her books include Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships, Captive Hearts, Captive Minds, and Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults, based on her research on the Heaven’s Gate cult, the group that committed collective suicide in 1997, and her own 10+ years’ experience in a political cult, the San Francisco-based Democratic Workers Party.

We discuss Trump, QAnon, the “Mueller will save us”-style cults of bureaucracy, how social media and disinformation operations shape the US political landscape, and the rise of authoritarianism and cults of personality worldwide. We also discuss what to do if someone you love has fallen under the sway of a cult and what social and political conditions make cult mentalities thrive.

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Andrea Chalupa
Putin's War on Ukraine: Democracy vs. Fascism

As we’ve been saying since the start of the show, Ukraine is on the frontlines of Putin’s global war against democracy. Ukraine has long been a testing ground of Kremlin aggression, including cyberattacks and disinformation warfare that helped tipped the scales in both the Brexit referendum and bringing Trump to power. In this special episode, we feature insights over the years from the many Ukraine experts who have been on Gaslit Nation to share urgent lessons of hope and resilience in the global struggle of democracy versus fascism.

Featured episodes are:

  • Ukrainian journalist and author Nataliya Gumenyuk on Lessons from Ukraine Five Years After the Revolution (Full episode here)

  • Film producer Anna Palenchuk sharing the incredible story of how former political prisoner Oleh Sentsov Directed a Film from a Siberian Prison (Full episode here)

  • Journalist and author Vladislav Davidzon on the political rise of Volodymyr Zelenskyy following the 2019 presidential election (Full episode here)

  • Ukrainian journalist Olga Tokariuk on how Kremlin disinformation wormed its way into an Italian trial of a Ukrainian soldier, Vitalii Markiv, who was eventually acquitted (Full episode here)

  • Ukrainian filmmaker Oleh Sentsov on how Dictators Die, But Art is Forever (Full episode here)

  • Razom co-founder Olya Yarychkivsk on the importance of staying true to one’s values when battling corruption (Full episode here)

If you would like to support Ukraine during this horrific time, we encourage you to donate to Razom, at RazomForUkraine.org, which is working hard through its international network to help refugees and deliver much needed medical aid to Ukraine.

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Andrea Chalupa
Corruption is the Way of the Manhattan DA

We’ve got a new District Attorney in New York City – but it’s the same old story of entrenched corruption and impunity for criminal elites! Last month, new DA Alvin Bragg decided not to pursue the prosecution of Trump for obvious crimes, and last week, lawyer Mark Pomerantz, who had come out of retirement to aid then-DA Cy Vance in the Trump Crime Cult investigation, published a blistering resignation letter in which he blamed Bragg for stopping the investigation in its tracks. What Pomerantz failed to mention was that Vance had spent his entire tenure protecting criminal elites – including the Trump family! – while lawyers in the know like Pomerantz said nothing until it was too late. Bragg did not create these problems; he inherited them. But now it is Bragg’s job to fix them, and he seems more content to be the fall guy than to act.

This episode is a deep dive into the shady world of the Manhattan DA’s office, focusing mainly on Cy Vance and all the crimelords he let off, from Weinstein to Epstein to the Trumps to Bannon to Manafort. Sarah discusses how letting these operatives go free not only endangers the United States, but the entire world, particularly since so many are tied to Russia as Russia brutally invades a sovereign country that it sees as its first stop to a broader imperial conquest. If only the strong words that Biden accidentally uttered in his “gaffe” about Putin – the “gaffe” that righteously condemned a war criminal and therefore upset the DC establishment – were used to describe domestic threats as well.

For our Patreon bonus episode, available to subscribers at the Truth-Teller level or higher, we are airing the live Q & A special with our beloved listeners that we held last week. This was the first Gaslit Nation live event but it will not be the last! We plan to do this again over the summer so sign up at the Democracy Defender level or higher to join the Gaslit Nation Zoom Party! In this week’s bonus we discuss Ukraine, voting rights, the midterms, Eric Greitens the serial abuser Senate candidate and more. We thank you for your continued support of our extremely independent show!

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Andrea Chalupa
How the West Can Help Protect Civilians in Ukraine

This episode tackles the urgent need for accountability in both the United States and in Putin’s war on Ukraine. We start out with yet another deep dive into the cesspool that is Merrick Garland’s political career and in particular, his alliance with lifelong mentor and corruption queen Jamie Gorelick. We have located the ur-text that spurred the “Garland nabbed Timothy McVeigh” propaganda myth and learned that it includes an endorsement from…Trump Coup Plot pal and Russian oligarch lawyer Joseph DiGenova! Learn about this and other seedy ties (Rex Tillerson makes an appearance) in the latest Great Debunking of Merrick Garland.

We then turn again to the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine and the urgent need for Ukrainians to be protected from the brutal Russian air strikes and ongoing mounting genocide of Ukrainian civilians. Andrea details the latest in the Russian assault and examines how decades of complicity brought us to this point.

So what should the West be doing to stop this horrific crisis? We welcome a special guest this week: Ukrainian analyst Olena Tregub, Secretary General of NAKO (the Independent Defense Anti-Corruption Committee), an international oversight body created by Transparency International. From 2015 to 2017, Olena led the national authority for international development assistance coordination as the director at Ukraine's Ministry of Economic Development. She answers our questions on what the West should be doing to help Ukrainian civilians, how Ukraine can get a no-fly zone and what that would lead to, talk of World War III, and Putin’s broader agenda.

Our bonus episode this week is the recording of our special live Zoom Q & A with our Patreon subscribers at the Democracy Defender or higher! True to form, we forgot to tape the first thirty minutes, so we stayed for an extra thirty minutes to make up for it! We thank everyone who turned out for this fun event; we loved getting to see you and answer your questions. We will be doing another one of these events this summer so please join at the Democracy Defender level if you’d like to take part! Gaslit Nation is and shall forever remain an independent podcast and we are able to keep going thanks to listeners like you.

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Andrea Chalupa