Trumpism
PART V
Donald Trump’s Disruption Is Back
By Massimo Calabresi | Jan. 19, 2025
January 20, 2025
FULL INTERVIEW: Donald Trump’s nephew tells all ahead of White House return and reveals a darker side of his famous uncle.
Synopsis | Uncle Donald (2024) If political ruthlessness and cunning were Olympic events, Donald Trump would surely be glistening in gold. Such is his will to regain the world’s top job, he has become even more proficient at belittling and slandering anyone who stands in his way. This time around, Trump’s campaign for the presidency is setting records for spitefulness, and with 11 weeks still until polling day, there’s bound to be plenty more vitriol.
On 60 MINUTES, Amelia Adams reveals a counter-attack from an unexpected quarter: a member of Trump’s own family. Fred Trump has released a damning memoir, which reveals his Uncle Donald is capable of a whole new level of cruelty and nastiness.
January 21, 2025
Trump’s Comeback (full documentary)
FRONTLINE examines defining moments over Donald Trump’s life and career, his 2020 election loss, felony convictions and his historic comeback. “Trump’s Comeback” tells the story of Trump’s return to the presidency, overcoming obstacles and opposition.
January 22, 2025
How Saudi Arabia Bought Trump – And What They Want
Saudi Arabia is buying their way into American politics, tech, and sports. They’ve sent billions to the Trumps and are the largest backers of U.S. startups — including running a spy ring through Twitter. What do they want in return? U.S. silence on human rights abuses.
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More Perfect Union’s mission is to build power for working people. Here’s what that means: We report on the real struggles and challenges of the working class from a working-class perspective, and we attempt to connect those problems to potential solutions.
We report on the abuses and wrongdoing of corporate power, and we seek to hold accountable the ultra-rich who have too much power over America’s political and economic systems.
Jan. 22, 2025
WATCH: With Capitol officers from Jan. 6 attack,
House Democrats rebuke Trump’s clemency
Jan. 22, 2025
Constitutional Expert: Jan. 6 Pardons
“Most Shameful” in Presidential History
Among those included in President Trump’s January 6th pardons is the founder of the dark web criminal marketplace Silk Road, who was serving a life sentence. Conservative lawyer Paul Rosenzweig calls this “one of the most shameful acts” ever committed by a U.S. President. Rosenzweig explains to Michel Martin how Trump’s action differs from Biden’s 11th-hour preemptive pardons.
January 25, 2025
Power
Mad
A weekly accounting of the rogues and scoundrels of America
The Washington Post Commits an Unpardonable January 6 Sin
Jeff Bezos’s increasingly meretricious newspaper stooped to publish a pathetic
“both-sides” defense of the violent mob that stormed the Capitol.
Trump supporters clash with police and security forces as people try to storm the
U.S. Capital Building on January 6, 2021.
By Jason Linkins, deputy editor
Well, I hate to say I told you so. Back in December, I warned that Donald Trump’s plan to pardon the January 6 insurrectionists was going to be greeted by the media with prewritten takes about how President Biden’s own use of the pardon power justified a decision to free a violent mob. Today, The Washington Post’s editorial board, tasked with the mission of obtaining 200 million paying users while simultaneously following owner Jeff Bezos’s directive to make the venerable newspaper substantially more mendacious, made me look prescient.
“The outgoing and incoming presidents both abused their pardon powers on Monday, undermining the rule of law and setting dangerous precedents that perpetuate America’s divisions,” they wrote. According to the pundit logic here, Biden “started the trouble” after he preemptively issued pardons to immunize members of his family, administration, and Congress from future prosecution related to their activities during his term in office. Then Trump “ended the day by giving clemency” to the aforementioned insurrectionists. Just a bad day all around, and everyone’s to blame!
To put it charitably, this is a bungle from the editorial board. In the first place, the editors demonstrate a real inability to follow cause and effect chains; here asserting that the “the trouble” began with Biden’s preemptive pardons, when the use of the term “preemptive” clearly suggests a precipitating event. In this case, somebody forgot the well-documented history of Donald Trump publicly announcing his plans to persecute members of Biden’s family and administration, over and over again. Just this week, Trump intimated in an interview that he might go after Biden specifically because he wasn’t corrupt enough to pardon himself on the way out the door.
Then, once “the trouble began,” the editors suggest that Trump’s decision to pardon the January 6ers naturally followed from Biden’s actions—leading the reader to make the logical leap that the pardons handed out in the morning forced Trump’s hand later that day. But again, a reminder: Effect follows cause, and it was actually Biden’s hand that was forced when Trump repeatedly made the wanton persecution of his family and colleagues one of his big campaign promises. Meanwhile, Trump’s plan to pardon the insurrectionists has been a done deal for some time; it was another one of his oft-repeated campaign promises.
But the larger problem here is the way the Post editors senselessly flatten two wildly different actions by two wildly different presidents. Their main concern with Biden’s pardon is that it “opens the door for future presidents to likewise immunize their families and staffs from merely theoretical prosecution by their successors.” Meanwhile, they say that Trump’s decision to loose the January 6ers onto the world “risks emboldening militias and others to commit future acts of barbarity in support of political aims.”
Maybe these two things aren’t the same? It sounds to me like I’d grade the Biden pardons as a 3 out of 10 on the “I’m Worrying About the Precedent This Sets Whilst Stroking My Chin Thoughtfully” scale, whereas it’s safe to say I’d give the potential for “future acts of barbarity” a substantially higher rating. What if—and I’m just spitballing here!—one of these theoretical consequences is a lot graver than the other? And honestly, what if one of these theoretical consequences is a lot less theoretical than the other, given that an attempt to unlawfully overturn a legitimate election result actually happened?
January 23, 2025
Heather Cox Richardson
Last night, in an interview with host Sean Hannity on the Fox News Channel, President Donald Trump tried to explain away his blanket pardons for the January 6 rioters, calling the instances of violence against police officers “very minor incidents.”
In fact, as Brett Samuels of The Hill reported, about 600 of the rioters were accused of assaulting, resisting, or impeding police officers, and ten were convicted of sedition.
Ryan J. Reilly of NBC News explained that rioters wounded more than 140 officers with “firearms, stun guns, flagpoles, fire extinguishers, bike racks, batons, a metal whip, office furniture, pepper spray, bear spray, a tomahawk ax, a hatchet, a hockey stick, knuckle gloves, a baseball bat, a massive ‘Trump’ billboard, ‘Trump’ flags, a pitchfork, pieces of lumber, crutches and even an explosive device.”
Jan. 23, 2025
Capitol Rioter Turns Down Trump Pardon
Jan. 23, 2025
Trump taps conservative media critic
to lead global news agency
By David Folkenflik
President Trump has named a fierce conservative critic of the mainstream media, L. Brent Bozell III, as his pick to run the U.S. Agency for Global Media, the parent agency of the Voice of America and other federally owned international broadcasters.
In a posting on Truth Social, Trump said that Bozell would bring much needed change to the agency, which was led by a veteran news editor, Amanda Bennett, herself a former director of the Voice of America.
She resigned along with other Biden appointees across government as Trump took office.
“Few understand the Global Media landscape in print, television, and online better than Brent,” Trump wrote. “He and his family have fought for the American principles of Liberty, Freedom, Equality, and Justice for generations, and he will ensure that message is heard by Freedom-loving people around the World.”
Bozell, 69, is the founder of the conservative nonprofit Media Research Center. For decades, it has critiqued the news media and pop culture from a strong right-of-center outlook.
“These are not dispassionate observers of the national scene,” he wrote of journalists, in a characteristic commentary in 2018. “These are leftist partisans.” (In later years, his syndicated column was written with Tim Graham, a colleague at the center who is also executive editor of its offshoot, NewsBusters.)
Bozell comes from a family with strong links to conservative media. He is the nephew of National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr., who collaborated in writing with his father.
In addition, Bozell’s son, Leo Brent Bozell IV, was convicted of assaulting law enforcement officials during the January 2021 siege of the U.S. Capitol and sentenced to 45 months in prison. Trump’s blanket pardon of almost all convicted January 6 rioters encompassed the younger Bozell.
Before taking office, Trump announced he wanted to name Kari Lake, a former local newscaster in Arizona who unsuccessfully ran for governor and U.S. Senate on a strong pro-Trump platform, as director of Voice of America. Like Trump, Lake has attacked journalists as “fake news.”
Jan. 23, 2025
WATCH: Trump nominee and Project 2025 author Russ Vought
‘dangerous’ to working people, Schumer says
Jan. 24, 2025
Evangelicals Made a Bad Trade
Hitching the evangelical wagon to Donald Trump has
meant unhitching it from the life and teachings of Jesus.
By Peter Wehner
In his inaugural address on Monday, Donald Trump declared himself God’s chosen instrument to rescue America. He recalled the assassination attempt he survived last year: “I was saved by God to make America great again.”
Just a few minutes earlier, a beaming Franklin Graham—minister, Trump acolyte, and sometime Vladimir Putin admirer—had driven home the same point during his prayer. “Father, when Donald Trump’s enemies thought he was down and out, you and you alone saved his life and raised him up with strength and power by your mighty hand.”
One of the first acts of God’s newly anointed president was to issue pardons or commute the sentences of the nearly 1,600 people charged in the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Trump issued pardons to most of the defendants and commuted the sentences of 14 members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers militias, most of whom had been convicted of seditious conspiracy.
Axios reported that the pardons were “a last-minute, rip-the-bandage-off decision to try to move past the issue quickly.” As Trump’s team wrestled with the issue, “Trump just said: ‘Fuck it! Release ’em all,’” an adviser familiar with the discussions told Axios’s Marc Caputo.
January 24, 2025
“Shock and Awe”: ICE Raids Begin as Judge Halts
Unconstitutional Birthright Citizenship Order
As the Trump administration launches what it touts as the largest mass deportation campaign in U.S. history, we look at how immigrant communities and advocates are fighting back. The administration already faces some setbacks, including in its attempt to end birthright citizenship, which a federal judge halted Thursday from going into effect because it was “blatantly unconstitutional.”
Thursday’s ruling is the first in what’s expected to be a long legal battle against Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda. “We’re in a moment where there’s a ton of fear in the community,” says Harold Solis, legal director at Make the Road New York, which has filed its own lawsuit against the government.
We also speak with Columbia University historian Mae Ngai, who says the fight over birthright citizenship is part of the long history of restrictionist immigration policies in the country. “What we’re seeing this week is shock and awe. It’s meant to terrorize,” she says. “We have to fight on all levels.”
Inside with Jen Psaki
January 26, 2027
Gov. Whitmer condemns Trump pardons:
‘Everything that’s happening continues to normalize violence’
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer reacts to Donald Trump’s pardoning of over 1,500 Jan. 6 offenders and discusses excerpts from her new book True Gretch: What I’ve Learned About Life, Leadership, and Everything in Between.
“Two’s a Crowd” by Barry Blitt
January 27, 2025
Donald Trump 2.0: Inside the first week of
the greatest comeback in US politics
History in the making. A triumphant return. Donald J. Trump’s in no doubt the razzle dazzle’s well deserved. This is the 45th, now 47th President’s finest moment. The greatest comeback in American politics. But along with the congratulations, caution. So what does ‘making America great again’ really mean? Amelia Adams reports on the President’s whirlwind first few days back in power, and the major changes the world can expect.
Jan. 27, 2025
World leaders tell Fareed Zakaria
what they think of President Trump
President Donald Trump seems to think the US is a patsy. Fareed Zakaria argues the US has been the biggest beneficiary of the world order it built after World War II, but Trump’s transactionalism could undermine that world.
January 28, 2025
Trump’s Comeback: Tim O’Brien (interview)
Timothy O’Brien is a senior executive editor at Bloomberg Opinion. He was previously a reporter and editor at The New York Times and is the author of TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald. Trump filed a $5 billion defamation lawsuit after the publication of O’Brien’s book. The suit was later dismissed.
This interview was conducted by the Kirk Documentary Group’s Mike Wiser for FRONTLINE on November 18, 2024. It has been edited for clarity and length.
January 28, 2025
Trump Has Just Cut Off All Cancer Research
& Funding | Prof. David Cay Johnston at RIT
Prof. David Cay Johnston at RIT, Pulitzer Prize winning Author & Investigative Journalist https://x.com/DavidCayJ
Jan. 28, 2025
How much money has Big Tech given to
Donald Trump? | About That
U.S. President Donald Trump raised a record amount of corporate donations for his inauguration, millions of which were donated by CEOs of major tech companies like Google, Apple, Amazon and Meta.
Andrew Chang explains the shift in Trump’s relationships with these industry leaders since his first term, and the symbolism of their proximity to the president.
January 29, 2025
In a video to Senate, Caroline Kennedy says her cousin
RFK Jr. is “dangerous and willfully misinformed”
As Senate confirmation hearings begin Wednesday for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, his cousin Caroline Kennedy has published a video slamming him as holding “dangerous and willfully misinformed” views on vaccines and other public health issues. Caroline Kennedy is the former U.S. ambassador to Japan and Australia and daughter of President John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s uncle.
The BEAT with Ari Melber
January 30, 2025
He was wrong: Trump’s own FBI nominee rebukes
pardons for violent MAGA convicts at fiery hearing
Ari Melber reports on the confirmation hearing for Trump’s controversial FBI nominee, Kash Patel, who walked back previous statements during the proceedings.
February 1, 2025
American Heretics: The Untold Truth About Faith
in America’s Most Conservative State
“American Heretics” explores the intersection of faith, politics, and social justice in the heart of the Bible Belt. Featuring progressive voices challenging conservative norms, the documentary delves into the struggles of redefining Christianity in Oklahoma—a state marked by deep-rooted traditions and social challenges. From LGBTQ+ rights to addressing historical injustices, it uncovers how faith can inspire change in unexpected places.
February 4, 2025
Don’t Believe Him
Look closely at the first two weeks of Donald Trump’s second term and you’ll see something very different than what he wants you to see.
Feb. 5, 2025
Rep. Al Green (D-TX): “The movement
to impeach the president has begun.”
“I rise to announce that I will bring Articles of Impeachment against the president for dastardly deeds proposed and dastardly deeds done.”
February 5, 2025
THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE
ENGINEER
The right claims to loathe technocracy—but it has
empowered Elon Musk to remake the government.
By Franklin Foer
In the isolation of a Washington, D.C., office building, with a small team of acolytes, Elon Musk is dismantling the civil service and fulfilling an old dream. Deep within the folds of the Western brain resides a yearning for a savior: a master engineer who imposes reason and efficiency on the messiness of modern life, who can deploy his acumen to usher in a golden age of abundance and harmony. This is a fantasy of submission, where the genius takes charge.
Given American conservatives’ recent rhetoric, their surrender to Musk’s vision of utopia is discordant, to say the least. Ever since the pandemic, the MAGA movement has decried the tyranny of a cabal of self-certain experts, who wield their technical knowledge unaccountably. But even as the right purports to loathe technocracy, it has empowered an engineer to radically remake the American state in the name of efficiency.
Trumpists might be surprised to know that they are fulfilling a dream first conceived by a 19th-century French crank, Henri de Saint-Simon. A utopian polymath who fought in the American Revolution and claimed to be a descendant of Charlemagne, he imagined a society in which engineers and industrial managers usurped the aristocracy at the top of the pecking order. The ruling cadre of engineers, he theorized, wouldn’t just solve social and economic problems, but serve as high priests, guiding society to efficiency, progress, and harmony. Technocracy and spirituality were intertwined in his doctrine, which he called the “New Christianity.”
Feb. 7, 2025
Inside Elon Musk’s War on Washington
Elon Musk departs the Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill where President-elect Donald Trump spoke to House Republicans on Nov. 13, 2024 in Washington, DC. Kent Nishimura—Getty Images
By Simon Shuster and Brian Bennett
The standoff at 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue was not much of a spectacle. On the first day of February, a handful of men working for Elon Musk had come to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a few blocks from the White House, demanding full access to its headquarters. The agency’s staff refused. No guns were drawn. No punches thrown. Nobody involved the police. But in these early days of the Trump Administration, perhaps no other scene revealed more clearly the forces reshaping America’s government.
On one side stood an institution with a 64-year history, a $35 billion budget, and a mission enshrined in federal law. On the other stood Musk’s political wrecking crew. They identified themselves as members of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a collection of temporary staffers with no charter, no website, and no clear legal authority. Its power derives from Musk, the wealthiest person on the planet, who has been deputized to dismantle vast swaths of the federal bureaucracy—slashing budgets, gutting the civil service, and stripping independent agencies of the ability to impede the President’s objectives.
USAID leadership had allowed Musk’s team, a group of his young and eager followers, to spend several days inside their headquarters at the end of January. “The DOGE kids,” as some of the staffers called them in private, walked the halls with clipboards in their hands, examining desks and questioning managers, according to several USAID officials who described the events to TIME. But as the weekend arrived, their demands—including access to sensitive facilities designed to store classified information—went too far for the agency’s heads of security. The men from DOGE threatened to call the U.S. Marshals and have them clear the building. They also informed Musk about the problem. “USAID is a criminal organization,” Musk wrote to his 215 million followers on his social media platform, X, soon after. “Time for it to die.”
February 7, 2025
It’s Time to Prepare for the Fall of American Democracy
We’re in the middle of an ongoing constitutional crisis at the moment and may soon find out if The Constitution will remain “in effect” altogether, as Jamelle Bouie put it in an op-ed for The New York Times.
At the current pace, Trump could radically transform our entire form of governance in a short period of time. Historian Timothy Ryback explains in a piece for The Atlantic how H*tler was able to dismantle democracy in just 53 days by centering governance around the executive (i.e. rule by decree), purging the government of loyalists, and shutting down public unrest with the military.
The similarities between then and now are utterly chilling. In this video we’ll look at all of the warning signs that Trump is becoming a full-blown fascist dictator, and explain what Democrats should do to prepare before it’s too late.
Feb. 7, 2025
5 Reasons Trump Will Fail (and it’s already happening)
Inside with Jen Psaki
Feb. 9, 2025
‘Constitutional crisis’: Sen. Booker reacts to
possibility that Elon Musk will defy court orders
Senator Cory Booker discusses Democrats’ playbook for fighting back against Elon Musk’s government takeover.
Feb. 9, 2025
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn.: U.S. facing most
serious constitutional crisis ‘since Watergate’
Feb. 10, 2025
David Remnick – 100 Years of The New Yorker & Journalism in the 2nd Trump Era
The New Yorker editor David Remnick sits down with Jon Stewart to discuss the magazine’s 100th Anniversary Issue and journey since its inception in 1925.
They also talk about the importance of long-form journalism, especially under the overwhelming second Trump administration, as well as how the president is overstepping executive power, the danger of the tech oligarchy, and the need for Democratic politicians and citizens alike to finish licking their wounds and take action.
Feb. 10, 2025
Chris Hedges exposes how America’s fake Christian Right & billionaires are destroying us.
Marc Lamont Hill sits down with Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and former New York Times Middle East bureau chief, to break down America’s looming future under a toxic mix of corporate greed, religious extremism, and fascist politics.
Hedges calls out the “Christian Right” for its deep ties to the billionaire class, claiming they’re using “magic Jesus” to distract the masses from real economic collapse. The conversation goes deep into how the system is rigged against the working class, how “boutique activism” misses the point, and why the fight for true justice can’t be won without confronting economic inequality head-on.
The explosive talk covers the dangerous rise of Christian nationalism, the genocide in Gaza, and why the left is too weak to stop the chaos ahead.
With a long career covering war and global injustice, Hedges brings his deep insights into the collapse of the American empire, economic inequality, and the rise of authoritarianism. He’s the author of several books, including America: The Farewell Tour and Wages of Rebellion, and a fierce critic of both political parties.
Feb. 11, 2025
Is Calculated Chaos Trump’s Key Strategy?
Unpredictable, impulsive, arbitrary. These are some of the words that might come to mind to describe President Trump’s first few weeks in office. But is the chaos the point? Richard Nixon famously wanted the North Vietnamese to believe he’d do anything to end the war, including using nuclear weapons. It was called his “madman theory.”
Is Trump deploying the same strategy but, to the entire world? And what does his zero-sum approach mean for the post-World War II order?
February 11, 2025
Bernie Sanders Dismantles Elon Musk,
Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos Oligarchy
During remarks on the Senate floor, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) accused President Trump and the billionaire ‘oligarchs’ of leading the United States to ‘authoritarianism’.
ALL IN with Chris Hayes
February 13, 2025
‘Highway robbery’: Musk, Trump yank $80m
from NYC bank account over migrant lies
“They are taking money out of other people’s bank accounts, calling it a ‘clawback’ of taxpayer money. A lot of other people call it stealing $80 million,” says Chris Hayes. NYC Comptroller Brad Lander joins to discuss.
Feb. 13, 2025
Tom Friedman Examines the Beginning of the
Second Trump Term
We talk of many things including the US election, the new Trump administration, executive orders and constitutional challenges, the global economy and tariffs, Elon Musk, JD Vance, cabinet appointments and Democratic resistance, Israel and Palestinians, Europe and NATO, Iran and North Korea, Greenland and Panama, and big tech like artificial intelligence and big ideas like the end of the post-World War II liberal order, and the rise of new imperialism.
Feb. 15, 2025
George Conway on defiance of court orders:
We have basically a criminal regime
The Trump administration is working to discredit the legal system, with Vance suggesting Trump could ignore court rulings all together. George Conway joins The Weekend to discuss what this means for the rule of law in the U.S.
Feb. 16, 2025
Jamie Raskin says DOJ made “deeply corrupt bargain”
in move to drop charges against NYC mayor Eric Adams
February 16, 2025
A government worker’s message for Elon Musk
Since taking office, President Trump and his advisor, billionaire business owner Elon Musk, have worked to winnow the ranks of federal workers. At times questioning the contributions of some federal employees, they are also enticing more than two million government employees to quit, and have moved to shutter entire agencies.
But how will the public lose out if government workers lose their jobs? “Sunday Morning” national correspondent Robert Costa talks with Christopher Mark, a Department of Labor engineer who has helped keep coal miners safe and alive; and with Michael Lewis, editor of the new book Who Is Government?, which explores a workforce of individuals dedicated to the public good.
Feb. 16, 2025
Will the US and Israel succeed in ethnic
cleansing of Gaza? | The Bottom Line
Western ideals of morality and international law have been dealt a fatal blow by Israel’s war on Gaza, argues author Pankaj Mishra.
Mishra, whose latest book is The World After Gaza: A History, tells host Steve Clemons that US and Israeli leaders are normalising the idea of mass expulsion of the two million Palestinians who live in the Gaza Strip and may eventually succeed in carrying it out as the world watches.
The author dives into the racist logic behind some Western foreign policies and argues that India has lost “moral and diplomatic leadership” due to its support for Israel.
Feb. 16, 2025
Coup in Jordan: Trump’s Gaza Plan will
BACKFIRE For Eygpt & Jordan
Feb. 16, 2025
Trump Claims Role of Absolute Monarch
President Trump has just claimed that he’s above the law, trying to quote Napoleon. This is in response to the courts blocking his illegal executive orders. So, what does he plan next? It can only be the neutralisation of the courts. If he succeeds in doing that, America ceases to be a democracy.
Feb. 16, 2025
What Trump, Musk moves on USAID could mean
for other government agencies
A constitutional law professor and a former USAID administrator are raising questions about President Trump’s actions around USAID and what it could mean about the role of Congress in Washington.
DEADLINE | WHITE HOUSE
February 17, 2025
Protestors chant “No one voted for
Elon Musk” as federal layoffs begin
Media Matters President Angelo Carusone, The Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwell, and Washington Post investigative reporter Carol Leonnig discuss the nationwide protests that have sprung up as President Trump and Elon Musk gut federal agencies and lay off employees.
February 17, 2025
Bill Gates on Trump, AI, and a Life of Revolutionizing Tech
In the United States, international aid is also on Trump’s foreign policy chopping block. For now, a federal judge has paused a funding freeze on USAID.
Tech giant Bill Gates joins Walter Isaacson to explain how the global fight against disease could be affected by the sweeping cuts. Gates also discusses his new memoir, Source Code: My Beginnings.
The LAST WORD with
Lawrence O’Donnell
February 17, 2025
Because of Musk and Trump, for the first time
Social Security payments are not guaranteed
MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell explains how Elon Musk, whose only mission in government is to cut payments, has gained control over Social Security and put those payments in jeopardy for the first time, proving that President Roosevelt was right when he said, “No damn politician can ever scrap my social security program.”
Feb. 18, 2025
“The callapse of a generation is here.” | Richard Wolff
Feb. 19, 2025
Exposes Trump & Elon’s Billionaire Giveaway Scheme
ALL IN with Chris Hayes
February 19, 2025
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA): Before Elon Musk
robs the bank, he’s firing all the cops
Inside with Jen Psaki
Feb. 20, 2025
‘This is not a game’: Psaki calls out GOP lawmakers
for flip-flopping on Russia
“This is what Republicans are doing now: going against all of their strongest convictions about America’s role in the world—about the threat of Russia, the threat of Putin—to bend the knee to Trump,” says Jen Psaki on Republicans like Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham and Mike Waltz.
Politics
February 20, 2025
Trump Just Hit a Disgusting New Low for an American President
His embrace of Russia’s propaganda and strategic goals is appalling even by the standards of his extreme and callous second term.
By Alex Shephard
As Donald Trump insisted this week that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was somehow responsible for his own country being invaded by Russia, and accused him of being a “dictator” responsible for “millions” of unnecessary deaths, even Vladimir Putin likely couldn’t believe what he was hearing. For three years, the Russian leader—who, unlike the democratically elected Zelenskiy, is an actual dictator—has been spouting similar disinformation to justify his invasion of a sovereign nation. Putin also has held stubbornly to his wild demands, despite the war having long been mired in a stalemate.
Now, improbably, Putin is poised to get everything he wants—huge territorial gains, the crippling of Ukrainian democracy, a weakened NATO—for no reason other than that Trump was elected as part of a global backlash to rising prices. It’s shocking that any American president would effectively abandon its defense of a former Soviet state in favor of Russia, but it’s also unsurprising that Trump, specifically, would do so. He has long made it obvious that he sees no value in sticking up for a small democracy against a larger dictatorship. And yet his negotiations with Russia over ending the war in Ukraine are still breathtaking in their cynicism and inhumanity. In his haste to end the war and give himself the bogus title of “peacemaker,” Trump is acceding to every Russian demand and setting Europe, and perhaps the world, up for even more devastation to come—without getting anything in return for the United States.
One of the hallmarks of Trump’s style of governance is that he cares little about most aspects of foreign policy. But he does appear to have genuinely swallowed the entire Russian propaganda narrative about Ukraine, short of repeating Putin’s nonsensical pretext that Ukraine needed to be “de-nazified.” While Trump is unmoved by the actual stakes of the war—an emboldened Russia that may look to invade other neighbors, particularly Poland and the Baltic states, that belong to NATO—he does adore strongmen. At the same time, he also is so desperate for a huge, legacy-defining “win” that he is eagerly giving Russia everything it wants, even going so far as to make concessions to Putin before negotiations have begun in earnest.
Trump’s foreign policy is typically described as “isolationist,” but that’s not quite accurate. He’s a transactional imperialist. He sees the war in Ukraine as being useless because it costs America billions but only provides ineffable benefits (like checking Russian belligerence). The talks that Secretary of State Marco Rubio is currently engaging in with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, are instructive insofar as they show a different set of priorities. Trump wants the war to end, but he also wants to rob Ukraine of much of its sizable deposits of natural resources and precious metals, ostensibly to pay America back for the money it spent in helping Ukraine defend itself.
What Trump is asking for—from a nation that the United States was, until recently, pledged to defend—is so breathtaking it is difficult to comprehend. Ukraine not only would cede a great deal of its sovereign territory to Russia, it would also effectively cede much of its economy to the U.S.—all to “pay it back” for its support in a war that Trump is now attempting to force it to surrender. Per The Telegraph, the U.S. would take half of Ukraine’s revenues from resource extraction as well as half of the financial value of “all new licenses issued to third parties” for the monetization of those resources. The U.S., moreover, would have to be paid before anyone in Ukraine saw a dime. It makes the terms imposed on Germany at the end of World War I seem downright modest. At the same time, it would effectively destroy what remains of America’s reputation abroad. Why would any nation accept American support knowing that a future administration could waltz in and demand such onerous terms?
Trump is perfectly happy to be involved abroad, in other words, as long as the U.S. is getting some material benefit from it. Recall his take on the Iraq War, which in his mind was a folly not because it inflamed tensions in the Middle East and accomplished none of its goals in spreading democracy, but because the U.S. didn’t “take the oil” as part of its invasion. Or his vow, as president in 2019, that the U.S. is “ keeping the oil” in Syria. (To this day, U.S. troops are illegally occupying oil fields there.)
Trump’s retreat from Ukraine should be seen as part of a larger recalibration of the United States’ strategic focus, at least for the next four years. Doing the kind of things that the U.S. did after World War II—advancing democracy, investing in alliances, countering dictatorships and adversaries—are all out. Part of this means a retreat from the nation’s European allies, whom Trump consistently denigrates as freeloaders who should provide their own security. “This War is far more important to Europe than it is to us,” Trump wrote Wednesday on Truth Social. “We have a big, beautiful Ocean as separation.”
Instead, Trump is reorienting U.S. foreign policy toward antagonizing allies, and even shaking them down. Trump sees all interactions in zero-sum terms, including diplomatic relations; there are only winners and losers, and he believes that the United States is being taken advantage of by capricious, greedy, and weak nations who are allies in name only. Thus, he has taken aim at Canada (which he insists will become the “51st state”), Europe (particularly Denmark, from whom he wants to acquire Greenland—the “52nd state”), and much of Latin America, which his administration is fixated on exerting its influence over.
Trump has initiated trade wars with some of these countries. Relations with Canada, in particular, are perhaps lower than they have been since the War of 1812. The tariffs Trump has levied against America’s neighbors always have stated rationales (usually stopping the flow of illegal drugs or migrants), but in every case it’s clear that there is little that any country can do to meet these vague demands. Trump’s tariffs are partly guided by his increased veneration of William McKinley, who used them over a century ago—in a vastly different world—to enrich the nation. But they are also textbook examples of bullying: There is no ultimate goal, other than to show one’s dominance.
This points to what unites Trump’s foreign policy both in the Americas and in Ukraine. He worships “strength” and wants no part in pitting the United States against another Great Power—even a weakened one, like Russia. Instead, he’s prowling around the schoolyard, looking for smaller nations that he can pick on. The result is not just an embarrassment for the entire nation, but a massive exercise in futility. Trump’s foreign policy will do nothing good for the United States, even as it is already accomplishing a great deal for our adversaries.
Feb. 21, 2025
EXCLUSIVE: DID TRUMP STEAL THE 2024 ELECTION?
Feb. 23, 2025
Rise and Fall of Putin’s Oligarchs | Inside the Russian Elite
Putin and the Oligarchs | 2022 | ENDEVR Documentary
When Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000, Russia’s super rich saw him as a technocrat they could control, just as they had dominated his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin. They had a rude awakening in 2003, when Putin arrested, caged and exiled the richest man in Russia. Looking on from their yachts, jets and castles, the Oligarchs sent the same message to Putin: “How do I avoid being caged?” His response: “50 percent.” In one bold stroke Putin spread fear across his land, consolidated his power and likely made himself the richest man on earth. Now, with war raging in Ukraine, the Oligarchs are caught between sanctions in the west and a backlash at home. This is the story of Russia’s super rich and the man who rules over them.
Feb. 23, 2025
Justice Department purge under Trump administration
President Trump says his administration is cleaning up a Justice Department corrupted by politics. Amid the firings and resignations, one leader described a workplace of “confusion” and “fear.”
Feb. 23, 2025
Fareed’s Take: Trump’s foreign policy yes men
CNN’s Fareed Zakaria discusses President Donald Trump’s strategy for ending the war in Ukraine, Trump’s disdain for Ukraine, and more on his show, “GPS.”
Feb. 24, 2025
CFPB, the consumer watchdog agency,
under fire by President Trump, DOGE
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a watchdog agency created to protect consumers, is under fire by President Trump and DOGE. Its new head ordered work to stop and funding to end.
February 24, 2025
ONE WORD DESCRIBES
TRUMP
A century ago, a German sociologist explained precisely
how the president thinks about the world.
By Jonathan Rauch
WHAT EXACTLY is Donald Trump doing?
Since taking office, he has reduced his administration’s effectiveness by appointing to essential agencies people who lack the skills and temperaments to do their jobs. His mass firings have emptied the civil service of many of its most capable employees. He has defied laws that he could just as easily have followed (for instance, refusing to notify Congress 30 days before firing inspectors general). He has disregarded the plain language of statutes, court rulings, and the Constitution, setting up confrontations with the courts that he is likely to lose. Few of his orders have gone through a policy-development process that helps ensure they won’t fail or backfire—thus ensuring that many will.
In foreign affairs, he has antagonized Denmark, Canada, and Panama; renamed the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America”; and unveiled a Gaz-a-Lago plan. For good measure, he named himself chair of the Kennedy Center, as if he didn’t have enough to do.
Even those who expected the worst from his reelection (I among them) expected more rationality. Today, it is clear that what has happened since January 20 is not just a change of administration but a change of regime—a change, that is, in our system of government. But a change to what?
There is an answer, and it is not classic authoritarianism—nor is it autocracy, oligarchy, or monarchy. Trump is installing what scholars call patrimonialism. Understanding patrimonialism is essential to defeating it. In particular, it has a fatal weakness that Democrats and Trump’s other opponents should make their primary and relentless line of attack.
LAST YEAR, two professors published a book that deserves wide attention. In The Assault on the State: How the Global Attack on Modern Government Endangers Our Future, Stephen E. Hanson, a government professor at the College of William & Mary, and Jeffrey S. Kopstein, a political scientist at UC Irvine, resurface a mostly forgotten term whose lineage dates back to Max Weber, the German sociologist best known for his seminal book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
Weber wondered how the leaders of states derive legitimacy, the claim to rule rightfully. He thought it boiled down to two choices. One is rational legal bureaucracy (or “bureaucratic proceduralism”), a system in which legitimacy is bestowed by institutions following certain rules and norms. That is the American system we all took for granted until January 20. Presidents, federal officials, and military inductees swear an oath to the Constitution, not to a person.
The other source of legitimacy is more ancient, more common, and more intuitive—“the default form of rule in the premodern world,” Hanson and Kopstein write. “The state was little more than the extended ‘household’ of the ruler; it did not exist as a separate entity.” Weber called this system “patrimonialism” because rulers claimed to be the symbolic father of the people—the state’s personification and protector. Exactly that idea was implied in Trump’s own chilling declaration: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”
In his day, Weber thought that patrimonialism was on its way to history’s scrap heap. Its personalized style of rule was too inexpert and capricious to manage the complex economies and military machines that, after Bismarck, became the hallmarks of modern statehood. Unfortunately, he was wrong.
The LAST WORD
Feb. 24, 2025
Trump humiliated on the world stage as France’s
Macron instantly corrects his Ukraine lie
Lawrence O’Donnell details how French President Macron humiliated Donald Trump after the United States, for the first time in history, “voted with the dictator against freedom” when it stood with Vladimir Putin in opposing a UN resolution condemning Russia’s war in Ukraine. For more context and news coverage of the most important stories of our day click here: msnbc.com
Feb. 25, 2025
Adam Kinzinger: Don’t Be Afraid
This panel was held at the 2025 Principles First Summit, featuring former Congressman Adam Kinzinger, hosted by former Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer.
Feb. 25, 2025
Did Russia Recruit Trump as a Russian spy in 1987?
For decades, Donald Trump has cozied up to Russia, praised Vladimir Putin, and attacked America’s closest allies. But is this just ego—or something far more sinister? From his first Moscow visit in 1987 to his 2024 campaign threats against NATO, this documentary unravels the 40-year connection between Trump and the Kremlin.
Why did Russian intelligence take an interest in Trump decades ago? Why has he repeatedly sided with Putin over America’s own allies? And is Russia backing Trump’s 2024 campaign—again?
Feb. 26, 2025
US author explains Donald Trump’s Russia,
KGB connections
Craig Unger is an American journalist and writer who has written two books on Donald Trump’s connections to Russia’s security services and the Russian mafia stretching all the way back to the 1980s. Unger says he is “absolutely certain” that the U.S. president is a Russian asset whose current actions are benefiting Russian President Vladimir Putin, and destroying relationships with long-time allies.
February 26, 2025
Congressional GOP is ‘Hiding in a Cave’
February 26, 2025
Donald Trump shares bizarre
AI-generated video of ‘Trump Gaza’
The US president posted the clip, which appears to have been published beforehand by accounts unaffiliated with the White House, on the site Truth Social on Wednesday.
It features Trump and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, sunbathing in a Dubai-style resort while Elon Musk is showered with bank notes while walking on a beach. The clip echoes Trump’s recent comment on Gaza when he said: ‘We have an opportunity to do something that could be phenomenal … the Riviera of the Middle East, it could be so magnificent.’
Trump says US will ‘take over’ Gaza Strip in shock announcement ► theguardian.com/world/202…
Trump’s grotesque Gaza proposal is appalling ► theguardian.com/commentis…
Trump’s Gaza takeover won’t happen. But it has already changed the face of Israeli politics ► theguardian.com/commentis…
February 27, 2025
The Billionaires’ Government: Branko Marcetic
on Trump’s “Complete Betrayal” of His Base
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has been the public face of the Trump administration’s effort to dismantle many government agencies and slash the size of the federal workforce.
On Wednesday, he attended Trump’s first Cabinet meeting, although he is not a Cabinet member. Meanwhile, Russell Vought, the Project 2025 mastermind and director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, has been working behind the scenes to enact far-right policies aimed at privatizing public resources like Medicaid and Social Security.
We speak with Jacobin staff writer Branko Marcetic to discuss the radical DOGE agenda. “As they make these ruthless, ruthless cuts to the programs that people rely on, … they also want to keep in place massive tax cuts for the rich,” he says.
February 28, 2025
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is trying to find
her party’s path back into power.
The New York Democrat is a more seasoned politician than when she burst onto the national scene during the first Trump administration. Elected by surprise in 2018, Ocasio-Cortez was a progressive insurgent, a democratic socialist, a frequent critic of her own party, and a social media sensation.
She was also a leading character on Fox News, a figure conservatives loved to hate. Seven years later, she remains an outsized public figure, who also has built relationships inside Congress with Democrats and even some Republicans. At 35, she is a veteran lawmaker.
We sat with Ocasio-Cortez this week just after House Democrats managed a show of unity: they all voted against a Republican budget plan, which barely passed. We talked through her party’s path toward political recovery.
Feb. 28, 2025
The full, on-camera Oval Office CLASH between
Trump, Vance and Zelenskyy
Ukrainian President Zelenskyy’s meeting with Trump and Vance unravels into an extraordinary shouting match on camera inside the Oval Office. The White House meeting was intended to kick off negotiations over a deal over Ukraine’s rare earth minerals.
The tense exchange began after Vance said that the path to peace between Russia and Ukraine is diplomacy. Zelenskyy disagreed and said that Russia had broken agreements with his government in the past, including in 2019 when a ceasefire deal was signed and Zelenskyy said Russia didn’t honor the agreement.
In a social media post after the meeting, Trump said the Ukrainian leader “disrespected” the U.S. in its cherished Oval Office and that Zelenskyy “is not ready for Peace if America is involved.” A scheduled press conference with the two leaders was later cancelled.
February 28, 2025
It Was an Ambush
Today marked one of the grimmest days
in the history of American diplomacy.
By Tom Nichols
Leave aside, if only for a moment, the utter boorishness with which President Donald Trump and Vice President J. D. Vance treated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House today. Also leave aside the spectacle of American leaders publicly pummeling a friend as if he were an enemy. All of the ghastliness inflicted on Zelensky today should not obscure the geopolitical reality of what just happened: The president of the United States ambushed a loyal ally, presumably so that he can soon make a deal with the dictator of Russia to sell out a European nation fighting for its very existence.
Trump’s advisers have already declared the meeting a win for “putting America first,” and his apologists will likely spin and rationalize this shameful moment as just a heated conversation—the kind of thing that in Washington-speak used to be called a “frank and candid exchange.” But this meeting reeked of a planned attack, with Trump unloading Russian talking points on Zelensky (such as blaming Ukraine for risking global war), all of it designed to humiliate the Ukrainian leader on national television and give Trump the pretext to do what he has indicated repeatedly he wants to do: side with Russian President Vladimir Putin and bring the war to an end on Russia’s terms. Trump is now reportedly considering the immediate end of all military aid to Ukraine because of Zelensky’s supposed intransigence during the meeting.
Vance’s presence at the White House also suggests that the meeting was a setup. Vance is usually an invisible backbencher in this administration, with few duties other than some occasional trolling of Trump’s critics. (The actual business of furthering Trump’s policies is apparently now Elon Musk’s job.) This time, however, he was brought in to troll not other Americans, but a foreign leader. Marco Rubio—in theory, America’s top diplomat—was also there, but he sat glumly and silently while Vance pontificated like an obnoxious graduate student.
Zelensky objected, as he should have, when the vice president castigated the Ukrainian president for not showing enough personal gratitude to Trump. And then in a moment of immense hypocrisy, Vance told Zelensky that it was “disrespectful for you to come into the Oval Office and try to litigate this in front of the American media.” But baiting Zelensky into fighting in front of the media was likely the plan all along, and Trump and Vance were soon both yelling at Zelensky. (“This is going to be great television,” Trump said during the meeting.) The president at times sounded like a Mafia boss—“You don’t have the cards”; “you’re buried there”—but in the end, he sounded like no one so much as Putin himself as he hollered about “gambling with World War III,” as if starting the biggest war in Europe in nearly a century was Zelensky’s idea.
Feb. 28, 2025
Shocked Ukrainians react to bombastic
Trump-Zelenskyy meeting
Ukrainians are waking up to the news of a tense meeting between their president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and President Trump. CBS News’ Imtiaz Tyab has more from Kyiv on the claims of lack of gratitude over U.S. support in the war against Russia.
REPORTS
Feb. 28, 2025
‘Completely selling out to the Kremlin’:
Lawmaker slams ‘true puppet of Putin’
Trump
What happens now? Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) joins Katy Tur to react to President Trump and Vice President Vance clashing with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy in the Oval Office and to spell out the consequences of this meeting.
Feb. 28, 2025
Brooks and Capehart on the implications
of Trump’s altercation with Zelenskyy
New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart join Amna Nawaz to discuss the week in politics, including President Trump’s public spat with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, if Europe can depend on the U.S. and new restrictions on the White House press corps.
March 1, 2025
What The Bullying Of Zelensky Reveals About Trump
Trump and JD Vance revealed something profound about themselves when they treated Zelensky the way they did on February 28th 2025 in the Oval Office. A deep-seated aspect of their psychological makeup was shown to the public for the first time in a shocking way. In this video I break it down.
For reference, another broader video I made about the mind of Trump is here: • Inside Trump’s Mind Bullying Of Zelen…
March 1, 2025
Trump-Zelenskyy blowup, Rubio ‘should resign’:
Trump’s First 100 Days – Day 40 | Highlights
President Trump, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy and Vice President Vance had a tense exchange about the ongoing war with Russia. National security experts join Nicolle Wallace with reaction to the shocking Oval Office meeting and what it means for Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Plus, a judge ruled the OPM cannot directly fire federal workers at other agencies and that they have to rescind their mass firing memo.
Inside with Jen Psaki
March 2, 2025
Fmr. Russia ambassador shreds Vance over Ukraine:
‘Why in God’s name should Trump get a thank you?’
Former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul and David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker and former Moscow correspondent for The Washington Post discuss the potentially disastrous consequences of Trump’s Oval Office meeting with Zelenskyy.
REPORTS
March 2, 2025
‘Sick to my stomach’: Fmr. Gov. Kasich slams
Trump over combative Zelenskyy exchange
Reactions are still flying in over the abrupt end to Ukrainian President Zelenskyy’s visit to the White House last week. Zelenskyy attended a summit of European leaders in London on Sunday.
Former Governor John Kasich (R-OH) and former Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Chris Meagher share their thoughts on Friday’s Oval Office meeting and the unexpected support from GOP lawmakers President Trump has received so far.
March 2, 2025
The American Oligarchy: How corrupt is US politics?
In America, lobby groups, corporations, and billionaires invest millions of dollars to ensure that the ‘right’ candidate wins elections. It affects everything from the selection of local officials to presidential elections and creates countless conflicts of interest, undermining what used to be a model democracy. And it has a serious impact on people’s daily lives. Drug prices are the highest in the world. Tax rates for the wealthy have fallen. Climate change is being denied. The impunity and extent of this are staggering. For many, this is nothing less than “legal corruption”.
Today, America “is just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery”, said former president Jimmy Carter himself. Rules seem to have been designed to be bypassed; supposedly impartial judges are elected with the help of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars. We follow candidates on the field during the electoral process and hear from people whose lives have been directly affected.
March 2, 2025
Trumpism Isn’t Working
As a checked-out president sits back and lets Elon Musk shred the civil service, the signs of economic calamity are growing—and Americans of all stripes are getting pissed off.
By Jason Linkins
Last November, voters elected a president who’d largely campaigned on an unrelenting hostility to trans people and a plan to let Silicon Valley oligarchs gut the civil service and turn government into a machine for the president’s self-enrichment and political revenge. Much of the political press either ignored this stuff or didn’t care enough to inform their readers—some were too busy trying to polish a mass deportation scheme into a sensible response to the housing crisis—but some of us, here at The New Republic and elsewhere, went hoarse trying to warn about the consequences.
And now here we are. While it’s early days, Trump’s second term has been going about the way you’d expect the presidency of an anti-trans, pro-oligarch, corrupt mass deporter to go: not well! Migrants are effectively being thrown into internment camps, a gang of child cybercriminals are heisting our personal data, and what’s left of the civil service is bogged down wondering whether or not they have to send busy-work emails to gang leader Elon Musk. Meanwhile, Trump has largely checked out, prompting Musk, on multiple occasions, to step in as the president’s emotional-support fascist during public appearances.
March 2, 2025
Even US SHOCKED by UK, EU and Turkey’s
Surprise Bold Move for Ukraine
March 3, 2025
‘A disaster for U.S. national security’:
Senator reacts to Oval Office meeting
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., joins Morning Joe to discuss the Oval Office meeting between President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy.
March 3, 2025
Keir Starmer speech at emergency
summit of European Leaders
Keir Starmer: ‘It is time to act’ to defend the West at Defence Summit.
Sir Keir Starmer has set out what was agreed at Sunday’s summit on Ukraine. Speaking at a press conference in Lancaster House, the Prime Minister said that “any deal must be backed by strength”.
March 3, 2025
Zelenskyy enacts true diplomacy as the GOP scrambles
As House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senator Lindsey Graham suggested Zelenskyy should resign if he doesn’t bend the knee to Trump, Zelenskyy was in Europe trying to negotiate real deals to save his country. The U.S. still needs to back any plan Europe puts forward, but his diplomacy shows that the Trump administration still can’t handle having a normal meeting or coming up with a decent foreign policy agenda.
MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin discusses with Rick Wilson, the co-founder of The Lincoln Project and Democratic strategist Ameshia Cross.
March 3, 2025
Trump biographer Michael Wolff: The president
“is a moron and a genius”
It’s been a seismic weekend in global politics with nothing less than the future of European security at stake.
Amid the fallout of Donald Trump and JD Vance’s shouting match with Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office on Friday, Keir Starmer hosted a summit of international leaders and seemed to pull off a delicate balancing act as a conduit between the American and Ukrainian presidents.
Whether Starmer and French president Emmanuel Macron’s plan for a “coalition of the willing” to lead the defence of a post-war Ukraine is feasible very much remains to be seen – especially without American air cover.
Few know Trump better than his biographer Michael Wolff, who is in the Daily T studio to mark the publication of his latest book All or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America (dismissed as “totally FAKE” by Trump). Wolff gives Kamal and Camilla his take on the thinking of a man he describes as “both a moron and a genius”.
March 3, 2025
Matthew Desmond – “Poverty, by America” & What
It Takes to Close the Poverty Gap
“Investing in American people and stabilizing communities that need it the most is the best way for all of us.” Sociologist at Princeton University and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Evicted, Matthew Desmond sits down with Jon Stewart to discuss his latest book, Poverty, by America.
They talk about America’s welfare state, how society benefits from poverty, the opportunity to close the poverty gap if the top one percent paid their taxes, and empowering the poor with better choices like building worker power, and expanding housing choice. They also highlight how Democrats need to get more serious about economic justice to fully commit to poverty abolitionism.
March+April 2025 Issue
Warning to Whistleblowers: “We Are Back in the
Days of the Red Scare”
Lessons from the lawyer of the whistleblower
who prompted Trump’s first impeachment
By Abby Vesoulis
Government employees who report possible malfeasance are almost certain to be targeted by the second Trump administration. Mark Zaid is a lawyer likely to represent some of them; over the past two decades, he has provided legal counsel to a long list of federal employees and intelligence officers, including whistleblowers.
His most high-profile whistleblower case, however, was that of the intelligence officer who reported to an inspector general that then-President Donald Trump pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to find political dirt on his presidential rival. While dangling military aid to Ukraine that Congress already had approved, Trump asked Zelenskyy to investigate the family of Joe Biden, a leading Democratic contender to face Trump in 2020. This whistleblower’s 2019 report led to Trump’s first impeachment case.
March 3, 2025
WHERE JEFF BEZOS WENT WRONG WITH
THE WASHINGTON POST
The billionaire handled his ownership admirably for more than a decade. But his courage failed him when he needed it most.
By Martin Baron
THE DAY THE WORLD LEARNED that Jeff Bezos would buy The Washington Post, the Amazon founder offered assurances that he would not cower when faced with threats from a vengeful president and his appointees.
He summoned memories of Richard Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell, who warned that the legendary publisher Katharine Graham was “gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer” if the Post published one of its Watergate stories. “While I hope no one ever threatens to put one of my body parts through a wringer,” Bezos wrote to the paper’s anxious journalists in August 2013, “if they do, thanks to Mrs. Graham’s example, I’ll be ready.”
I led the newsroom at the time Bezos bought the Post. For a long while, he fulfilled his promise to the paper and its readers, exceeding my expectations. Then he faltered badly.
Now we know that Bezos is no Katharine Graham. It has been sad and unnerving to watch Bezos fall so terribly short of her standard as he confronts the return of Donald Trump to the White House. It’s been infuriating to observe the damage he has inflicted in recent months on the reputation of a newspaper whose investigative reporting has served as a bulwark against Trump’s most transgressive impulses.
“You’re Fired!” by Barry Blitt
March 4, 2025
American Bar Association backs ‘rule of law’
after Musk calls for judges to be impeached
“There are clear choices facing our profession,” the ABA said in a statement.
By Ryan J. Reilly
The American Bar Association this week rejected attacks on the court system and the legal profession, after billionaire Elon Musk used his X platform to call for the impeachment of judges who have overruled or delayed aspects of President Donald Trump’s moves to overhaul the federal government.
The ABA said in a statement that it would “not stay silent in the face of efforts to remake the legal profession into something that rewards those who agree with the government and punishes those who do not,” calling for an end to efforts meant to “cow our country’s judges, our country’s courts and our legal profession” and saying that such attempts at intimidation “cannot be sanctioned or normalized.”
Trump attacked judges whose decisions he disagreed with during his first term in office, as well as some of the judges who oversaw the four criminal cases against him during the intervening four years away from the White House.
Now, with Trump back in the Oval Office and Republicans in control of both the House and Senate, the federal judiciary has paused or overturned some of the most aggressive measures implemented by Trump and Musk, who has repeatedly urged the impeachment of judges who held up Trump’s measures.
“We are witnessing an attempted coup of American democracy by radical left activists posing as judges!” Musk wrote on Feb. 11.
“There need to be some repercussions above ZERO for judges who make truly terrible decisions,” Musk added.
“When judges egregiously undermine the democratic will of the people, they must be fired or democracy dies!” Musk wrote on Feb. 25.
“The only way to restore rule of the people in America is to impeach judges,” Musk added.
When a judge blocked a Trump order that paused refugee admissions, Musk posted that the judge was “violating the will of the people.”
“If ANY judge ANYWHERE can block EVERY Presidential order EVERYWHERE, we do NOT have democracy, we have TYRANNY of the JUDICIARY,” Musk posted.
The nonpartisan ABA did not explicitly name Musk in its statement, instead broadly noting, “High-ranking government officials (appointed and elected) have made repeated calls for the impeachment of judges who issue opinions with which the government does not agree.” The ABA cited two phrases — “corrupt judges” and “corruption” — that were used by or reposted by Musk and noted that those criticisms had been aimed only at judges who ruled against the government.
March 4, 2025
Analysis of President Trump’s joint address to Congress
After President Donald Trump wrapped up his joint address to Congress, Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker and NBC News’ correspondents analyzed the most memorable moments of the night.
For more context and news coverage of the most important stories of our day, click here: nbcnews.com
March 4, 2025
Bernie Responds to Trump’s State of the Union Address
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
March 4, 2025
“Let’s Be Clear: Tariffs Are A Tax”
Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg joins Stephen Colbert LIVE following President Trump’s address to Congress, and breaks down the real economic consequences of Trump’s tariffs on foreign goods. Stick around for two more segments with Pete Buttigieg:
2 – On Trump’s Foreign Policy Flip: “Helping Russia And Fighting Canada. It’s Upside Down.”
3 – On How Democrats (And Republicans) Can Resist Trump’s Authoritarianism
March 4, 2025
Watch Trudeau speak directly to Trump during
blistering speech
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau outlined how his country will respond to the blanket 25 percent tariffs President Trump imposed on Canada and Mexico.
Jan. 13, 2025
“Yankee, Go Home!” – Canadian Anti-Trump Song
Feb. 14, 2025
“Not Your 51st”
(U.S. Marines’ Hymn Parody)
This song is a bold and ironic remake of the U.S. Marine Hymn, turning a patriotic American anthem into a defiant Canadian protest song against Donald Trump’s tariffs and threats of annexation. Originally repurposed as a pro-Trump campaign song in 2016, we’ve flipped the script—using the same tune to reject his trade war tactics and his suggestion that Canada could become the 51st state.
With themes of Canadian independence and sovereignty, the lyrics push back against economic intimidation and political arrogance, making it clear that Canada will never bow to pressure or threats. The song celebrates the strength, resilience, and freedom of the True North, standing firm against those who try to undermine it.
Feb. 28, 2025
“MAGA Man”
(A Neil Young Parody – Canada Ain’t Your 51st State)
Canada has always been a good friend to America—but that doesn’t mean we’ll roll over. With some in the U.S. floating the idea of annexation, this is a Canadian response to the madness. Inspired by Neil Young’s “Southern Man,” this parody, “MAGA Man,” calls out the chaos, corruption, and threats to democracy south of the border.
From culture wars to economic deception, from the Felon in Chief to your failing empire, it’s time to wake up, America—and leave Canada out of it.
I am by no means a professional, just an amateur who loves music and a good protest song. I can only hope Neil Young doesn’t mind—because let’s be real, I could never do it as well as him. Apologies in advance for that! If you love Canada, Neil Young, satire, or just a good protest song, hit like, and share! Let’s keep the true north strong and free.
Jan. 29, 2024
“Battle Hymn Of The Trumpublic”
Oct. 13, 2024
“Song For Donald”
Feb. 6, 2020
“The Day Democracy Died”
Premiered Dec. 5, 2020
“So Long, Farewell Donald Trump”
August 12, 2024
“How Do You Solve A Problem Like A MAGA?”
July 20, 2024
“Vance VP”
Oct. 28, 2024
“Bohemian Trumpsody”
March 1, 2025
“Puppets on a Kremlin String?”
March 5, 2025
Rep. Moulton Reacts to Trump’s Speech to Congress:
“It Doesn’t Make Sense”
In his address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night, President Trump acknowledged that there will be “a little disturbance” ahead. The theme was meant to be “Renewal of the American Dream,” but instead Trump doubled down on his plan to break up the global economic order. America must now deal with a possible trade war as well as Russia’s war in Ukraine.
While he acknowledged President Zelensky’s efforts to repair their relationship, Trump made no mention of reversing his suspension of U.S. military aid. One of the attendees at last night’s address was Democratic Congressman Seth Moulton. He joins the show from Washington, D.C.
March 5, 2025
‘Buffoon of a president’: Trump exposes ignorance
of U.S. farming in speech to Congress
Michelle Norris, MSNBC senior contributing editor, joins an MSNBC panel to discuss the effects of Donald Trump’s trade war and tariffs on American farmers and the degree to which Donald Trump does not appear to understand the necessity of foreign markets for U.S. agriculture.
March 5, 2025
Republicans Slobber Over Trump Address,
He Lies About Transgender Mice &
We Hire a Fired Fed Worker
ALL IN with Chris Hayes
March 5, 2025
Trump is coming for Social Security.
And he has a new ‘Big Lie’ to justify it.
Trump’s lies about the 2020 election had a purpose: to destroy faith in the electoral system and overthrow American democracy. Now he’s revamping same lies and false claims of “fraud” to destroy Social Security.
March 6, 2025
Canadian official’s interview stuns Amanpour
Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly talks to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour about Trump’s ideas on trade, military cooperation, annexation and more.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
March 6, 2025
Jon Stewart & Maria Ressa
on the US’s Authoritarian Slide
Nobel Peace Prize winner and Rappler CEO Maria Ressa joins Jon to discuss the decline of democracy in the U.S. and the Philippines, the misuse of digital platforms, global shifts, ways to protect American democracy, and slicing deli meat—specifically salami.
March 6, 2025
Six Weeks In, This White House Is On Its Way
To Being The Most Corrupt In U.S. History
WASHINGTON—U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Thursday spoke on the U.S. Senate floor to expose the unprecedented corruption of the Trump administration’s first six weeks in office. Murphy condemned Trump’s normalization of pay-to-play politics, where billionaire donors dictate policy and taxpayer money is funneled into the pockets of the president, Elon Musk, and the corporate elite.
March 7, 2025
How Elon Musk Took Over the US Government
Elon Musk’s “DOGE” follows a playbook familiar to the world’s richest person: it’s the one he used at Twitter. But the stakes this time are infinitely higher, and his actions will have lasting consequences for America. What’s more, Musk’s work on behalf of President Donald Trump has raised unprecedented conflicts of interest that could benefit him and his businesses in innumerable ways.
March 8, 2025
They Were the Original DOGE.
Then Trump Fired Them.
President Trump has sworn to root out corruption within the government, yet one of his first acts as president was to fire over a dozen independent watchdogs who did exactly that. We spoke to seven of them about the abuses they uncovered, what they really think about DOGE and what all this means for the future of American democracy.
March 10, 2025
Is Trump Crashing the Stock Market on Purpose?
March 10, 2025
The Man Who Gets Under Trump’s Skin: Michael Wolff
How did Michael Wolff manage to penetrate and expose Trump’s inner circle multiple times? Will the Murdoch empire survive the death of its Patriarch? Who’s really in charge in the White House?
Rory and Alastair are joined by journalist and author, Michael Wolff, to discuss all this and more.
AYMAN
March 10, 2025
Rep. Mark Pocan: ‘people are pissed’ that
Republicans are fleeing town halls
Republicans have complete control in Washington… and yet, they’re running away from their voters. As angry constituents continue to confront Republicans over Trump’s policies, GOP leaders are urging lawmakers to stop doing town halls altogether. But while Republicans hide from their constituents, Democrats are reaching out across the country to voters even in GOP-led areas.
MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin spoke with Rep. Mark Pocan on how Democrats are talking to voters impacted by Trump and Elon Musk’s cuts and whether this is the beginning of a new movement.
March 11, 2025
Trump Shamelessly Shills for Tesla, Hurls More
Tariffs at Canada & Stock Market Suffers Bigly
Trump announced an additional 25% tariff on all Canadian steel coming into the United States, keeps doubling down on wanting to make Canada our 51st state; the stock market was down again today, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt claims it’s because we are in a period of transition.
The MAGA media is bending over backwards to try and spin the fact that Trump is crashing the economy, Lara Trump provides some “historical perspective,” Elon Musk is having a heck of a week as Tesla stock had it’s biggest drop in five years.
Trump announced that he will be buying a Tesla and did a big commercial for them today absolutely free outside of the White House. His quest continues to buy Greenland, and we head out onto the street to see what people think of the viral $19 strawberry that is actually just a regular one we bought at Ralph’s market.
March 11, 2025
WATCH LIVE: Senate Democratic leaders hold
news conference as House considers funding deal
March 12, 2025
“Impeach Trump Again”: John Bonifaz on Fighting
Trump’s Lawlessness, Corruption & Attacks on Judges
More than 250,000 have signed a petition to support an impeachment investigation of President Donald Trump, who was twice impeached during his first term. The Impeach Trump Again campaign is being led by the advocacy group Free Speech for People.
“This president has already committed multiple abuses of power since assuming the presidency, and the framers designed the Constitution to ensure that we would not have a monarch or a tyrant govern this nation,” says the group’s president, John Bonifaz. “When we see these abuses of power, we have to invoke this impeachment clause.”
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
March 12, 2025
Musk And Trump Are Trying To Break
The Government So Billionaires
Can Take It Over – Ezra Klein
Ezra Klein, the bestselling author and host of “The Ezra Klein Show” podcast, offers analysis of the DOGE chaos and says President Trump ultimately intends to privatize many government services. Ezras’s book Abundance is available March 18th.
March 13, 2025
Attacks on universities aren’t about antisemitism.
They’re about silencing dissent
Protesters in New York City demand the release of Mahmoud Khalil.
By Anita Chabria
Columnist
- The arrest of Mahmoud Khalil is about the Trump administration trying to destroy universities, by any means possible.
- Khalil’s arrest has sparked numerous protests on college campuses, including in California.
Hello and happy Thursday. Today we’re starting with a quiz. Which American political leader said, “The professors are the enemy”?
That would be Richard Nixon, speaking to Henry Kissinger in the Oval Office in 1972.
His full quote is even more chilling: “Never forget, the press is the enemy. The establishment is the enemy; the professors are the enemy. Professors are the enemy. Write that on a blackboard 100 times and never forget it.”
That charming list of perceived villains might seem like a blast from the past, except that Vice President JD Vance ended a 2021 speech railing against American universities with that “professors” portion of the Nixon quote.
And it wasn’t just a one-off. For years, Vance, in lockstep with the Project 2025 folks, has been clear and vocal in his desire to destroy U.S. higher education, viewing it as a threat to conservative values — and conservative power.
Vance has said universities “train” people to hate their family and country.
“I actually think that we have to destroy the universities in this country,” the Yale law school graduate said in another interview. “They get too much money. They have too much power. I don’t think they do anything good.”
So while this week’s news is filled with the frighteningly authoritarian plight of Mahmoud Khalil, the recent Columbia University graduate student and green card holder detained for his role in pro-Palestinian protests, there’s a bigger picture that we can’t lose sight of.
This isn’t wholly about fighting antisemitism (a worthy and important fight) or even entirely a free speech issue. This is about the Trump administration trying to destroy universities, by any means possible.
Brian Levin, a professor emeritus at Cal State San Bernardino and an expert on extremism, perhaps put it best: The government’s moves to crack down on dissent are “part of a one-two punch being targeted at some of the nation’s most elite universities, that if they don’t toe a government line with respect to viewpoint that they and the students that are most vulnerable to governmental sanction are at risk.”
That, Levin told me, “is something that a free society cannot tolerate.”
The case against Khalil is as thin as it is shocking, from what we know so far. Khalil served a leadership role in last year’s protests at Columbia, but has since graduated with a master’s degree. He is a permanent resident of the United States, raised in Syria, who is married to an American citizen (who happens to be pregnant).
On Saturday, Khalil was detained by ICE agents, including one honored personally by President Trump in 2019, and flown to an immigration detention center in Louisiana, according to Khalil’s attorney. Louisiana happens to be in the jurisdiction of the conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, as opposed to the more liberal 2nd Circuit that covers New York. The government has claimed he is “pro-Hamas” but has offered no evidence.
The case had its first hearing Wednesday in a New York court, though Khalil was not present. His lawyers argued that the case should be moved back to New York, and said they had been unable to have confidential conversations with him. The court ordered that his lawyers be given that access, and gave the government time to file its argument as to why Louisiana is the proper venue.
Trump, for his part, said on social media that the Khalil detention was “the first arrest of many to come.”
March 16, 2025
The New American Oligarchs: Who Rules The USA?
These are the intricate journeys of the world’s billionaire tycoons—industrialists and entrepreneurs who wield as much influence as elected leaders, if not more. From the steel and oil barons of the past, like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, to today’s tech magnates such as Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Jack Ma, these figures have shaped industries, redefined economies, and amassed staggering wealth. Their power extends beyond business, influencing politics, society, and even the future of technology and space exploration. These are the superpowers’ super-rich—the modern oligarchs of a globalized world.
Documentary from 2022
Politics
March 18, 2025
There Is No Method to Trump’s Madness.
He’s Simply Insane.
His defenders try to apply reason to his erratic, nonsensical decisions. That’s a fool’s errand—but fools abound in this administration.
By Ross Rosenfeld
Trump at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Monday
“They say an old man is twice a child,” Rosencrantz remarks in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, as he and the prince of Denmark observe Polonius. It’s a borrowed line, dating back to antiquity: Sophocles wrote, “For the aged man is once again a child.” We all recognize that old age can cause senility and fragility. And when a person is already inclined toward delusion, that trait can become more entrenched and grandiose over time. The irony in Rosencrantz’s comment is that he is speaking with a character who is both feigning madness and possibly descending into it. Polonius, in fact, is the one to note that Hamlet’s act may produce certain benefits, declaring, “Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.”
We’ve seen this strategy throughout modern political history. Khrushchev feigned irrationality to strike fear into the West. Reagan thought it benefited him if Russia viewed him as possibly crazy. After Hiroshima, Truman wanted the Japanese to believe he would bombard them with “a rain of ruin from the air,” even though he only had one more bomb at his disposal (and figured it a bonus if the Soviets thought he might drop one again). Sometimes it can be difficult to discern what is an act and what is true madness, but it’s important to recognize when there is no meaning to be found—no method to the madness.
That seemed to be CNBC economic analyst Steve Liesman’s conclusion last week about President Donald Trump’s tariffs. “I’m going to say this at risk of my job,” Liesman said, “but what President Trump is doing is insane. It is absolutely insane … and now he’s saying he’s putting 50 percent tariffs on Canada unless they agree to become the fifty-first state. That is insane. There’s just no other way of describing it.” Host Kelly Evans countered with an attempt to make sense of Trump’s actions, suggesting the president might be motivated by Canada’s threat to tax electricity exports or that he might be employing “insanity as a strategy.” But Liesman wasn’t having it. “Insanity is not a strategy,” he retorted.
It’s not just Trump’s unpredictable tariff policy that appears insane. His entire administration is defined by madness—in both senses. On Friday, he went on another incoherent rant on social media, claiming once again that the 2020 election was stolen from him and rewriting history to blame all of our current problems, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, on Joe Biden. In other Truth Social posts, he’s boasted about being a king and claimed that the “European Union was formed for the sole purpose of taking advantage of the United States.”
If these acts were merely confined to deranged posts, perhaps one could argue there’s “method in his madness.” After his rant on Friday, Trump gave a speech at the Justice Department wherein he kvetched about various imaginary enemies of the United States (which, coincidentally, are his personal enemies) and made clear that he expects the department to serve as an extension of his personal wrath. Similar delusions have led to the dismantling of USAID, a wasteful visit to Fort Knox to check if the gold had been stolen, and continual talk about annexing other countries.
Even his official portrait shows signs of delusion. He seems to have intentionally posed like Winston Churchill because, in his mind, he’s of the same mold and is saving the world. He’s promoted a book called Trump and Churchill, which might as well be called Trump and Mickey Mouse for all the supposed similarities.
Worse still, his delusions are echoing throughout his administration. His aides, advisers, Cabinet appointees, and other defenders are going to ridiculous lengths to invent methods for Trump’s madness. Asked last week about Trump’s tariff threats, his senior trade and manufacturing adviser, Peter Navarro, said, “Looks like the president is negotiating strategically. So stop with the rhetoric. OK? Just stop that crap.” When a reporter replied, “But he does seem to be changing his mind all the time,” Navarro snapped back, “Stop that crap!” Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, went even further that same day, claiming that “tariffs are a tax cut for the American people.” She added that the tariffs would make us “wealthy again,” as if we haven’t experienced any growth since the McKinley administration.
Practically everyone in Trump’s orbit is there solely because they’ve shown a willingness to go to great lengths to entertain his delusions and stroke his ego. His attorney general, Pam Bondi, got the job because she supports the delusion that Trump was wrongfully and illegally targeted by federal prosecutors. Likewise, Kash Patel, the new FBI director, understood that engaging Trump’s delusions and constantly flattering him were key to landing a big role in the administration. Patel has been a frequent proponent of the idea of a widespread and nefarious “deep state,” and he’s even written children’s books wherein he helps topple the enemies of “King Donald.”
Adding the most fuel to the fire, perhaps, is Trump’s right-hand man—yet another angry megalomaniac who suffers delusions of grandeur (and grand delusions). Elon Musk’s rage toward Democrats may stem in part from a perceived snub by the White House under the Biden administration, when Musk wasn’t invited to an electric vehicle event (though he had also, of course, grown tired of what he saw as interference from federal regulators in his businesses). These days, Musk competes with Trump on a near-daily basis for the title of Most Batshit Social Media Post. Last month, he tweeted that the journalists at 60 Minutes “deserve a long prison sentence” for the crime of editing an interview with Kamala Harris. The other day, he retweeted a post blaming “public sector workers” for millions of deaths under Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. (As it happens, Musk’s own policies as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency are causing people to die around the world.)
Some of you might argue that Trump isn’t mad, but just a psychopath feigning madness for his own ends. Or perhaps his ludicrous assertions began as convenient foils and have morphed into true delusions. After all, he’s had plenty of people telling him he’s right. Perhaps there’s a more accurate Shakespearean comparison, then. King Lear has a deep hole in him that constantly has to be filled: He insists that his three daughters publicly fawn over him to gain his graces and dismisses his most beloved daughter, Cordelia, when she refuses to engage in the practice. He cannot accept the errors of his ways. Yet Lear somehow retains his hold on power even as his hold on reality slips away, until ultimately he meets his demise and causes the death of all who are dear to him.
We are in a Shakespearean moment right now. Journalists are trying to understand Trump’s irrational behavior, and are generally unwilling to consider the possibility that it is not some grand strategy but just a sign of a madman with increasingly diminished mental faculties. Perhaps he’s not quite yet burying steaks to grow meat trees, like George III, but Trump’s delusions cause considerably more damage than that. Are we going to wait until he’s ranting about “drainage” like Daniel Plainview and beating someone to death with a bowling pin? Are we going to continue to bend over backward to pretend that this emperor isn’t naked?
Ross Rosenfeld is a political writer and educator who lives on Long Island. Follow him on Substack.
March 20, 2025
“Murder the Truth”: David Enrich on Right-Wing
Campaign to Silence Journalism & Protect the Powerful
The new book Murder the Truth: Fear, the First Amendment, and a Secret Campaign to Protect the Powerful by The New York Times business investigations editor David Enrich chronicles an ongoing campaign by the wealthy and powerful to overturn the landmark Supreme Court decision New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, which in 1964 established bedrock protections against spurious defamation and libel cases in the U.S. legal system.
By “subject[ing] people to this torturous, long-running and extremely expensive legal process,” those who can afford to pay for expensive and threatening defamation lawsuits can silence any public criticism and suppress others’ rights to free speech, says Enrich. “It has huge implications for our democracy and the ability of everyone to speak their mind.”
March 20, 2025
Trump’s Appetite for Revenge Is Insatiable
The president is making good on his campaign promise.
By Peter Wehner
NO ONE CAN SAY THEY DIDN’T KNOW.
During his first official campaign rally for the 2024 Republican nomination, held in Waco, Texas, Donald Trump vowed retribution against those he perceives as his enemies.
“I am your warrior,” he said to his supporters. “I am your justice. For those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”
Sixty days into Trump’s second term, we have begun to see what that looks like.
March 21, 2025
What the Venezuelans Deported to
El Salvador Experienced
Reporting from San Luis Talpa, El Salvador
Holsinger is an American photojournalist
based out of Nashville, Tenn.
On the night of Saturday, March 15, three planes touched down in El Salvador, carrying 261 men deported from the United States. A few dozen were Salvadoran, but most of the men were Venezuelans the Trump Administration had designated as gang members and deported, with little or no due process. I was there to document their arrival.
The BEAT
March 21, 2025
Voters reject Trump: AOC hits billionaire ‘thieves’,
Michael Moore calls for alternative to Dems
Director Michael Moore joins Ari Melber for a conversation on the future of politics in the Trump era.
March 23, 2025
Former Facebook executive exposes
tech giant’s alarming failings
Sarah Wynn-Williams reveals the secrets about the upper management of Facebook’s parent company, Meta.
She has written a tell-all memoir — Careless People: A Story of Where I Used to Work — detailing disturbing stories, including the company honing in and cashing in on vulnerable teenagers.
March 23, 2025
The far-right Proud Boys’ chilling message
Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, jailed for 22 years over the US Capitol riots but then freed by Donald Trump, has a chilling message for the world.
DEADLINE | WHITE HOUSE
March 24, 2025
‘Nazis got better treatment’: Judge unloads
on Trump’s deportation of Venezuelan nationals
Lisa Rubin, MSNBC Legal Correspondent and Jacob Soboroff, NBC News Correspondent join Alicia Menendez in for Nicolle Wallace on Deadline White House with reaction to the stunning and chilling court hearing the DC Court of Appeals over the Trump Administration’s use of the Aliens Enemies Act which has led to chilling and inhumane deportation of Venezuelan nationals some of whom have been sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador.
March 25, 2025
Bernie Sanders Asks Trump’s SSA Chief Point Blank:
Was Trump Lying About Social Security Fraud?
At today’s Senate Finance Committee hearing, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) questioned Frank Bisignano, President Trump’s nominee to be Commissioner of Social Security Administration.
March 26, 2025
Donald Trump on Retribution – From My 1992 Interview.
On March 20th, The Atlantic posted an article titled: “Trump’s Appetite for Revenge Is Insatiable”
Author Peter Wehner quotes President Trump from this CHARLIE ROSE interview in 1992.
March 26, 2025
Hear Trump officials’ Signal chat through
AI-generated audio
CNN is using artificial intelligence software to create an audio version of the text conversation between Trump officials that was exchanged via Signal and inadvertently included Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic. The AI-generated voices we used are reading the text neutrally; we did not add emphasis or emotion or alter the text exchange in any way. We also did not try to imitate the actual voices of the officials in the group chat.
March 27, 2025
Jeffrey Goldberg and Anne Applebaum discuss
the Signal group chat | New Orleans Book Festival
The Atlantic kicks off opening night at the NOLA Book Festival with a dynamic conversation reflecting on the Signal breach and weighing its national-security implications. Featuring editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg, this special event brings him into conversation with Anne Applebaum as they survey the landscape of democracy.
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Watch Jeffrey Goldberg and Anne Applebaum, in conversation with Atlantic staff writers McKay Coppins, Elaina Plott-Calabro, and Adam Serwer on the opening night of the New Orleans Book Festival. Our journalists take the stage at Tulane University to explore themes including the threat to free press, the future of journalism, and the intersections of politics, media, and American identity.
March 28, 2025
Why Bob Woodward worries about Trump’s America
What does Bob Woodward think of all this? Colby Itkowitz poses that question to the renowned Washington Post journalist in his first sit-down interview about President Donald Trump since Trump’s second inauguration.
Over 50 years ago, Woodward’s reporting of the break-in at the Watergate with his colleague Carl Bernstein exposed the Nixon administration’s plan to spy on and sabotage his political adversaries and the cover-up that followed. After President Richard Nixon’s resignation, Congress would go on to enact new limits on presidential power, which Trump is now challenging.
In the years since Watergate, Bob Woodward has continued to report on presidents – interviewing Trump and writing three books about him that reveal the president’s approach to power.
“So much of it is Trump just asserting himself, taking on the role of the courts, taking on the role of Congress,” Woodward told Itkowitz. “So we are entering a moment where there is going to be a clash of those traditions and laws and Trump’s will.”
March 29, 2025
Highlights – March 28 – THE TRUMP REGIME
March 29, 2025
Trump vs. Truth – Schiff Fact Checks It All
There’s an important strategy behind Donald Trump’s constant firehose of falsehoods. And it comes straight from the dictator’s playbook.
March 30, 2025
What Trump’s silencing of Voice of America
means for listeners worldwide
Voice of America is silent after President Trump effectively shut down the broadcaster. VOA journalists are speaking out about what this could mean for an audience of 360 million around the world.
“Left to Their Own Devices” by Barry Blitt
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
IT’S ALWAYS THE OTHER
SIDE THAT’S BEEN
BRAINWASHED
What talk of brainwashing helps us not to talk about.
By Nikhil Krishnan
March 31, 2025
March 31, 2025
STEVEN CHEUNG IS THE
VOICE OF TRUMP
The White House communications chief has a strategy:
relentless aggression
By Elaine Godfrey
The Rachel Maddow Show
April 1, 2025
‘Bloodbath’: Protesters meet Trump at every step
as he butchers U.S. government agencies
Rachel Maddow looks at some of the extreme actions Donald Trump has taken in the 24 hours that Senator Cory Booker was delivering his history-making speech in the Senate, from slashing thousands of healthcare jobs to cutting veterans’ health services to snatching immigrants off the street, with Americans protesting every step of the way.
House Committee on the Judiciary
April 1, 2025
Ranking Member Jamie Raskin delivers opening remarks
Hearing: Judicial Overreach and Constitutional Limits on the Federal Courts Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence, and the Internet.
April 5, 2025
TRUMP FINALLY GETS HIS WAY ON TARIFFS
With a single act, the President has upended
the entire global economic order.
April 6, 2025
How Trump’s Corruption Hurts You
April 6, 2025
Are Elon Musk’s days in the White House numbered?
Elon Musk is feeling the consequences of his controversial role at the White House.
April 6, 2025
Bernie Sanders: U.S. under Trump faces
“unprecedented level of danger”
Across the U.S., tens of thousands have been attending rallies held by Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has said that the nation is moving rapidly toward what he calls an oligarchy influenced by billionaires. Sanders sits down with “Sunday Morning” national correspondent Robert Costa to discuss the senator’s criticism of the Trump administration; the influence of Elon Musk and other wealthy backers in Washington; the pressure campaign waged by the White House against some law firms; and why, at age 83, Sanders continues to fight.
April 6, 2025
What records show about the migrants sent
to Salvadoran mega-prison
The U.S. sent 238 Venezuelan migrants to a Salvadoran mega-prison. The Trump administration says they’re all gang members, but 60 Minutes could find no criminal records for 75 percent of them.
This Week
April 6, 2025
Sen. Booker: Trump’s vows of retribution
is a way ‘to hurt people’
George Stephanopoulos interviews Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J.
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
April 7, 2025
Sen. Cory Booker On America’s “Moral Moment”
And Why Trump Is The Last Boomer President
Stephen Colbert’s full extended conversation with Senator Cory Booker, who talks about his record-setting speech on the Senate floor, how Americans are pushing back against President Trump’s disastrous second-term agenda, and why the country is ready for a new generation of leadership in Washington.
April 7, 2025
Forging a New Political System, 2024 and Beyond
Historian and political commentator Heather Cox Richardson joins UC Berkeley professor of law and history Dylan Penningroth in a timely conversation about the reshaping of the United States’ two major political parties. A professor of 19th century American history at Boston College, Richardson provides an incisive perspective on current politics to the more than three million readers of her nightly newsletter, Letters from an American.
She has written for the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Guardian, and is the author, most recently, of the best-selling book Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America. Penningroth is the author of the award-winning Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights.
Recorded on 2/26/2025. [Show ID: 40424]
ALL IN with Chris Hayes
April 8, 2025
‘They’re attacking attorneys’: Lawyer representing
student protestor detained
Michigan attorney Amir Makled was detained by federal agents on his way home from a spring break trip with his family. His only crime appears to be representing a student protestor. “We’re seeing a chilling effect on not just individuals and their rights, but also on the attorneys representing these individuals,” Makled tells Chris Hayes.
REPORTS
April 8, 2024
‘Moral shame’: Why Trump’s second term is
‘making the globe a playground for gangsters’
In the latest cover story for The Atlantic, contributing writer David Brooks explains how President Trump’s second term has transformed America’s role in the world. He joins Katy Tur to explain more on the shift.
April 8, 2025
Democracy DYING in Broad Daylight,
How Trump is Leading a Totalitarian COUP
Marianne Williamson delivers monologue on the U.S. approaching totalitarianism.
April 10, 2025
Trump is Handing Our National Security to… Who?
Right-wing internet troll Laura Loomer is firing top national security professionals across the Trump administration.
April 10, 2025
Is Elon Musk the Ultimate Scam Artist?
This week author and journalist Max Chafkin, co-host of the podcast Elon, Inc. joins myself and Christiana to discuss one of today’s most fascinating and controversial figures: Elon Musk. We talk about how Elon came to be the world’s richest person, whether he’s a brilliant entrepreneur, scam artist, or both, and whether he and the rest of the “Paypal Mafia” have helped the world or helped ruin it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
April 11, 2025
‘How is it possible that you have this job?’
RFK Jr.’s incompetence becomes too glaring to overlook
From his cluelessness about critical cuts made to his agency, to his celebration of dangerous quackery, Robert. F. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump’s HHS secretary, is distinguishing himself as not only incompetent but dangerously so, leading a department with lives at stake.
April 11, 2025
Russian People Are Abandoning Putin
Greetings from Anka Daily News. Today, we bring you a shocking development from within Russia — a reality the Kremlin desperately wants to keep hidden. Thousands of Russian citizens are fleeing their country, no longer willing to carry the burden of war and repression. Soldiers are deserting the front lines, while civilians seek refuge in neighboring countries to escape the oppressive regime. This growing wave of migration clearly signals the internal collapse of Putin’s rule.
From Georgia to Kazakhstan, from Finland to Latin America, Russians are searching for hope along migration routes. Why is this mass exodus happening? How have Putin’s policies pushed the people to this breaking point? And what does this historic escape mean for Russia’s future? Before we dive into the details, a quick reminder: Here at Anka Daily News, we continue to bring you the truth despite censorship. Make sure to subscribe to our channel and turn on notifications to stay updated with our daily reports and analysis.
No matter how much the Kremlin tries to hide the truth — we will keep exposing it.
April 12, 2025
Violent, suspicious deaths of Putin foes
From November 2024, Cecilia Vega’s report on critics of Vladimir Putin who suffered mysterious deaths around the world. From 2017, Lesley Stahl’s chat with Russian opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was twice poisoned to the brink of death by a mysterious toxin. And from 2020, Stahl’s interview with the late Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny.
April 12, 2025
Trump is Putin’s ‘useful idiot’ enabling the
ongoing destruction of Ukraine’s sovereignty
“Putin is simply laughing in his sleeve at what Trump is attempting to do.”
Vladimir Putin “teases” Donald Trump and is exploiting the “weak” White House administration to stall a ceasefire deal, says military historian Sir Antony Beevor.
April 13, 2025
Volodymyr Zelenskyy: The 2025 60 Minutes Interview
As Russia’s war with Ukraine continues, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sits down with Scott Pelley to discuss U.S. support for Ukraine, the war, the Oval Office meeting, and the latest attacks on civilians.
April 14, 2025
Top U.S. & World Headlines
Breaking News
from Washington and beyond
Trump Ramps Up War on the Media in Dark Rant
on CBS and 60 Minutes
Donald Trump is determined to gut the free press.
Hafiz Rashid / April 14, 2025
Donald Trump worked himself into a frenzy after watching CBS’s 60 Minutes on Sunday, calling for the network to be penalized in a Truth Social post.
“They should lose their license! Hopefully, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), as headed by its Highly Respected Chairman, Brendan Carr, will impose the maximum fines and punishment, which is substantial, for their unlawful and illegal behavior,” Trump posted. “CBS is out of control, at levels never seen before, and they should pay a big price for this. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
It’s Trump’s latest complaint about CBS, which he is already suing in a $20 billion defamation suit, claiming that the network deceptively edited an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris to make her look better before last year’s election. The FCC is also investigating the network over Harris’s interview.
Trump’s latest tantrum is over two segments on the show Sunday. The first was an interview with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in which correspondent Scott Pelley traveled to the site of a Russian attack earlier this month that killed nine children. The second was a report from Greenland by correspondent Jon Wertheim on how people in the Danish territory are receiving Trump’s threats to take over the island.
The president is trying to intimidate news networks that produce even the slightest bit of critical coverage against him, threatening lawsuits and FCC action. He has also threatened other news outlets, such as ABC and NBC, with ABC even capitulating with a legal settlement before Trump took office. In a presidential term already full of abuses of power, hopefully the free press in America continues to report critically of the Trump administration, otherwise they’ll be paving the way for autocracy.
April 15, 2025
‘Oh My Word’: Bernie Sanders Mocks Trump For
Trying To Remove CBS’ License After Critical Reporting
At a “Fight Oligarchy” rally in Nampa, Idaho on Monday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) spoke about President Trump’s lawsuits against media platforms.
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April 16, 2025
FULL SPEECH: Bernie Sanders Tears Into Trump Administration
At ‘Fighting Oligarchy’ Rally In Missoula, Montana on Wednesday
April 15, 2025
THEY NEVER THOUGHT
TRUMP WOULD HAVE THEM
DEPORTED
The administration’s drive to carry out the largest campaign
in history has ensnared people who didn’t see themselves as targets.
By Caitlin Dickerson
Speaking to a classroom of students at his alma mater, Boston University’s School of Theology, Martin Mugerwa described how being a chaplain informs his work as a counselor at a mental-health clinic, where he treats people navigating depression, unemployment, and homelessness. But the campus was whirring with talk of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, and several international students stayed after class that February evening to ask whether Mugerwa—who is from Uganda—feared that he could be targeted. “I’m not worried,” Mugerwa told them confidently. “He’s going after criminals.”
Mugerwa told me that his outlook on the new presidency, and how it could alter his own fate, changed the next day. His family and a group of friends stopped to see Niagara Falls on their way to visit one of Mugerwa’s seminary classmates. But they took a wrong turn and ended up on a bridge that led across the Canadian border. When they told an American customs officer that they wanted to turn around and remain in the United States, they were directed instead to an immigration office. Hours later, an official explained that Mugerwa and two others in the group were going to be detained for overstaying their visas, even though they had all applied for asylum and were still waiting for their cases to be decided.
Mugerwa turned to his partner and sons, who are 5 years old and 10 months old. “I was like, What is going to happen at this point? How is she going to manage?” he recalled thinking. “Who is going to pay the mortgage? My mind was just spinning.”
April 16, 2025
Judge says Trump officials could be found in contempt.
What happens next?
By Brandon Drenon
A US federal judge has given President Donald Trump’s officials a one-week deadline to comply with his court order or risk being found in contempt of court – potentially setting up a historic clash between two equally powerful branches of government.
Judge James Boasberg said the “most obvious way” for the officials to avoid contempt was to “assert custody” over a group of more than 200 people who they deported to El Salvador last month – after he told them not to do so.
But the Trump administration has shown no sign of a desire to adhere, criticising Wednesday’s request and saying it would appeal.
The White House denies any wrongdoing, and has depicted the group as “terrorists and criminal illegal migrants” who threaten American society.
Experts have told the BBC that a showdown between the judicial and executive branch appears all but inevitable. So, what might happen if the government does not comply with Judge Boasberg’s deadline of 23 April?
April 17, 2025
The Emergency Is Here
The president of the United States is disappearing people to a Salvadoran prison for terrorists: a prison built for disappearance, a prison where there is no education or remediation or recreation, a prison where the only way out, according to El Salvador’s justice minister, is in a coffin.
The president says he wants to send “homegrown” Americans there next. This is the emergency. Like it or not, it’s here.
April 19 – Part 2
April 17, 2025
Targeting by Trump:
Who’s in the crosshairs and why? | Inside Story
Universities threatened, NGOs and media outlets targeted, US overseas agencies shut. The Trump administration has taken drastic action against hundreds of organisations and companies.
Why is this happening, and what does it mean for the US and its global standing?
Presenter: Dareen Abughaida
Guests:
David Cay Johnston — Author of three books on Donald Trump and professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology
Ryan Enos — Professor of Government and Director of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University
Shannan Adler — Host of the political show ‘The Shannan Show’ and an Adjunct Professor of Journalism, Ethics and Interactive Media at Emerson College
April 17, 2025
Los Angeles schools leader explains why
he refused to let DHS agents see students
Officers with the Department of Homeland Security recently attempted to enter elementary schools in Los Angeles but were not allowed in. Agents claim to have been conducting a welfare check, not an immigration enforcement action. School administrators say DHS lied about having permission from caregivers to speak to students. The agency denies that its officers lied.
Laura Barrón-López is joined by Alberto Carvalho, the superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District.
UBC School of Public Policy and Global Affairs
UBC Phil Lind Initiative 2025: Heather Cox Richardson
As a professor of history at Boston College and an award-winning author, Heather Cox Richardson has explored critical periods of American history, from the Civil War and Reconstruction to the Gilded Age and the evolution of the Republican Party. Reaching over 1.5 million readers daily with her wildly-popular newsletter Letters from an American, she has earned a reputation as one of the most trusted voices in American public life.
Bridging academic rigor and public discourse with insight and precision, Heather offers accessible yet profound commentary on American politics. Her Phil Lind Initiative talk draws from a deep well of historical knowledge to contextualize the current threats to American democracy. Learn more here: https://lindinitiative.ubc.ca/series/…
April 17, 2025
Will Trump invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807
to enforce his rule, via a militia if need be,
ending democracy in the USA in the process?
April 18, 2025
Trump’s authoritarian push stumbles
as resistance diversifies and grows
Rachel Maddow shows how resistance to Donald Trump’s authoritarianism is mutually reinforcing among a broad range of American society, from the courts to civic activism to journalism to politicians. Collective pushback succeeds and feeds on itself.
INTERVIEWS WITH
Brian Tyler Cohen Interviews top political figures – from
the President of the United States and cabinet members
to Senators and lawmakers to local leaders and activists.
Breaking News
from Washington and beyond
Articles on Donald Trump
DONALD TRUMP
Reporting and commentary on the forty-fifth and forty-seventh President.
TOPIC: DONALD TRUMP
News about Donald Trump, including commentary and archival coverage from Salon, the original online source for news and politics.
President Donald Trump
DONALD TRUMP
Quora
Sustained resistance to the Traitorous Mister Trump,
his clones, and his MAGATS.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
United against Trump, Trumpism, and all threats
to democracy and civil rights.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A space to protect democracy and inspire action.
April 19, 2025
Protest rallies take place across US against Trump policies
Rallies are taking place across the United States to protest the policies of President Donald Trump, which critics call a threat to democracy. Thousands of protesters joined a rally here in Washington D.C., with hundreds of other protests planned for across the country. Among other things, demonstrators are angry about Trump’s immigration crackdown, economic uncertainty from sweeping tariffs, and Trump slashing the federal workforce. Millions joined similar protests earlier this month.
Meantime, the US Supreme Court has responded to an emergency appeal and ordered the Trump administration to halt any further deportations of Venezuelan migrants. The White House had invoked a law from 1798 to round up and remove those they identified as gang members. Trump officials have already defied earlier court orders to reign in their campaign to deport migrants.
April 20, 2025
Rep. Jamie Raskin Delivers URGENT UPDATE on Trump Corruption
Congressman Jamie Raskin joins Anthony Davis to discuss Trump’s abuse of the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law, over deportations, tariffs and mass firings. Plus the corruption within the regime and how Democrats can return America to a state of normalcy – only on The Weekend Show.
July 31, 2019
Updated May 21, 2024
Pathocracy
When people with personality disorders gain power.
By Steve Taylor, Ph.D., a senior lecturer in psychology at Leeds Beckett University. He is the author of several best-selling books, including The Leap and Spiritual Science.
The Polish psychologist Andrew Lobaczewski spent his early life suffering under the Nazi occupation of Poland, closely followed by the brutality of Soviet occupation after the war. His experience of these horrors led Lobaczewski to develop the concept of “pathocracy.” This is when individuals with personality disorders (particularly psychopathy) occupy positions of power. (1)
Lobaczewski devoted his life to studying human evil, a field which he called “ponerology.” He wanted to understand why ‘evil’ people seem to prosper, while so many good and moral people struggle to succeed. He wanted to understand why people with psychological disorders so easily rise to positions of power and take over the governments of countries. Since he was living under a “pathocratic” regime himself, he took great risks studying this topic. He was arrested and tortured by the Polish authorities, and was unable to publish his life’s work, the book Political Ponerology, until he escaped to the United States during the 1980s.
Pathocracy is arguably one of the biggest problems in the history of the human race. History has been a saga of constant conflict and brutality, with groups of people fighting against one another over territory and power and possessions, and conquering and killing one another. Surveying the course of human history from ancient times to the 20th century, the historian Arnold Toynbee spoke about the “horrifying sense of sin manifest in human affairs.”
But there is an argument that this is not because all human beings are inherently brutal and cruel, but because a small number of people—that is, those with personality disorders—are brutal and cruel, intensely self-centered, and lacking in empathy. This small minority has always held power and managed to order or influence the majority to commit atrocities on their behalf.
A Science on the Nature of Evil
Adjusted for Political Purposes
