Ep 1014: The New Red Scare

Episode 1014 dismantles the "Democrats in Disarray" panic after Dr. Abdul El-Sayed's progressive primary win in Michigan, tracing Third Way's $15 million war chest against democratic socialism back to nearly identical Red Scare rhetoric almost a century ago.  

Driftglass and Blue Gal prove that the same "socialism!" screeching Republicans threw at Obama just two weeks into his presidency in 2009 is word-for-word the same panic thrown at another Democrat facing deep economic crises a century earlier.   That "Red Scare" was funded then by Hearst's media empire and is now funded by Big Pharma, Big Banks, and Big Tech. 

The episode also indulges in a little well-earned schadenfreude over a solar-industry-funded super PAC quietly picking off the Republicans who sabotaged clean energy, one primary at a time. 

It's about corporate "centrist Democrats" manufacturing a crisis, media amnesia as a weapon, and why the same lies have been recycled for 100 years.

Links for this episode:  

https://www.newsweek.com/we-are-all-socialists-now-82577

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/06/us/politics/democratic-party-socialists-moderates.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/06/03/centrist-democrats-launch-new-pledge-moderate-party/

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/brooks-and-capehart-on-what-progressive-primary-wins-mean-for-democrats

https://www.commondreams.org/news/cheri-bustos-next-american-era

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/29/fema-democratic-disaster-requests-trump-01013938

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/30/us/politics/kennedy-center-tours.html

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-07-31/alaska-road-permit-shows-how-trump-upends-business-norms

https://crooksandliars.com/2026/08/theres-nothing-we-could-do-cornyn-concedes

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/10/white-house-max-miller-pressure-campaign-01031353

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/10/trump-vaccine-executive-order-autism.html

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/07/how-solar-donors-helped-take-down-a-trump-backed-republican-01028209 

More at proleftpod.com. 

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Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

You can listen to the professional left wherever you get your podcasts on Netroots Radio or at our website, proleftpod.com, where you can also contribute to this podcast. There's a PayPal button at our website, or you can mail us a letter and or contribution at P.O. Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791.

SPEAKER_07 0:19

This is the podcast for August 11th, 2026. It's not safe for work.

SPEAKER_04 0:24

Recorded live from the Cornfield Resistance, where we remain loud and proud New Deal Democrats. God damn it. God damn it, we do. God damn it. It is the professional left with Drift Glass and Bluegal. Hell yeah.

SPEAKER_07 0:44

That is exactly it, isn't it?

SPEAKER_04 0:46

It is. Bingo. Bingo. I was reminded, by the way, I was reminded of a little thing. There's a clip you might remember from Oppenheimer, where Matthew, uh Matt Matt Damon is cross-examining uh Killian Murphy about, you know, you're a womanizer, you're a this, you're a that. And he said, you're a suspected communist. And Murphy comes back with, I'm a New Deal Democrat. And Matt, and without missing a beat, Matt Damon says, We we said suspected.

SPEAKER_07 1:17

Yeah. No, I mean, this division in the Democratic Party. We're gonna get into this.

SPEAKER_04 1:23

Oh, yes, we are.

SPEAKER_07 1:24

And what bullshit it is. And it's Hillary's emails and Biden's age all over again.

SPEAKER_04 1:28

Yeah, and desperate. And Biden's laptop. Don't forget Hunter Biden's laptop.

SPEAKER_07 1:32

We're very grateful to Hal Sparks for covering Tucker Carlson's interview with Hunter Biden.

SPEAKER_04 1:40

And and being like right out of the box day one with this is all bullshit, and I can tell you why it's bullshit.

SPEAKER_07 1:46

Hal Sparks was right.

SPEAKER_04 1:47

Hal Sparks is right. 100% right.

SPEAKER_07 1:49

Yep. Yep. Uh all right. But look, uh, we know that it seems like it's been a month or maybe six months since Dr. Abdul El Sayed won the Michigan primary. But it's only been a week.

SPEAKER_04 2:04

Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_07 2:05

And already, you know, the Red Scare is going full for. Um, but things underneath all of that are going on mostly as they should in a healthy political party. And uh Abdul's Democratic opponent was Representative Haley Stevens, and she gave a gracious concession speech. She said, quote, I want to congratulate Abdul El Sayed on winning the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate. He is a doctor, a community health official, a road scholar, and a dedicated Michigander. I am proud to offer my support as he takes on Mike Rogers in the general election. This was a thorough and rigorous campaign that brought out the full span of views within the Democratic Party. And that is why we have primaries. This is Haley Stevens talking. All right. I am proud to have put up my hand to serve and prouder to continue to work together to make sure this Senate seat remains blue, that we flip the United States Senate and continue the work for Michigan.

SPEAKER_04 3:29

Hell yeah.

SPEAKER_07 3:30

Unquote.

SPEAKER_04 3:30

Hell yeah.

SPEAKER_07 3:31

State Senator Mallory McMahon, Democrat of Royal Oak, who dropped out of the race in early July, endorsed El Sayed based on NBC News making the call just before 2 a.m. And actually, it wasn't finalized until the next day. But here's what Mallory McMaho said: quote, I'm proud to give Abdul my full endorsement and support as we head to November together as a unified party. Take it from me, this was a brutal primary. But whatever differences there were between the candidates in this race, those differences are nothing compared to the contrast in November. Donald Trump and Mike Rogers are banking on all of us being too bruised, too proud, and too hurt to come back together to beat them. Let's prove them wrong. Unquote. No no these this is exactly what needed to be said. Right. And clearly, both of these women, you know, it's heartbreaking to lose a primary.

SPEAKER_04 4:40

Yes, it is, especially a close one.

SPEAKER_07 4:42

Yeah, especially a close one. It's it's a it's a lot.

SPEAKER_04 4:46

Yeah, but you gotta jump in and and close up those scars and wounds and right away. Right away. And don't let it fester and don't let them go into the general election going, you know, uh what is it, uh party unity, my ass.

SPEAKER_07 5:02

Right, right, no. Remember the boom?

SPEAKER_04 5:04

No, you can't do that. And and I think everyone involved knows this. I mean, from Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan to Senator Chuck Schumer to former Vice President Kamala Harris, they all embraced Dr. Saeed's Senate candidacy. But into every campaign, a little rain must fall. And in this case, that's taking the form of an insurgent reactionary outside group that is mounting a challenge to Democrats this fall. They are well funded, well connected, and are willing to pull down the whole edifice rather than allow Democrats to win.

SPEAKER_07 5:37

Is it Chapo Trap House Drift Glass? Is it is it Glenn Greenwald working with Chapo Trap House?

SPEAKER_04 5:44

Uh no. No. But it could be. Now, let me let me ask you this. Have the young Turks teamed up with Jimmy Dore and gotten a billion dollars, Bluegal? Do you think that might be?

SPEAKER_07 5:52

A billion dollars for Jimmy Dore? I do I, you know, he does he have that in his $17 million California mansion? I don't know. But I don't think so. I don't think that's who we're talking about today, Drew Quest.

unknown 6:03

No.

SPEAKER_04 6:03

Well, who are we talking about? Bill Maher?

SPEAKER_07 6:06

I was thinking maybe Bill Maher had teamed up with Andrew Sullivan and Matt Taibe and grabbed them off the ash heap of professional oblivion to destroy, destroy Democrats' chances of taking the House and the Senate. Well, you know what? That's probably coming. Yeah. Uh, you know, the fall premiere of the Bill Maher show with Matt Taibee and Andrew Sullivan coming to HBO. It's not TV, Drickless. It's HBO.

SPEAKER_04 6:34

Two men and a baby, and we'll get let you guess which ones are which.

SPEAKER_07 6:38

Which one is the baby? Uh like I said, that's probably coming. That is not what we're talking about.

SPEAKER_04 6:43

No, no. We're talking about a radical outsider group called Third Way.

SPEAKER_06 6:49

When I saw that, I died.

SPEAKER_04 6:51

Yeah. Which has appeared on many of our allies podcasts. Uh, not on not this podcast, and never this podcast.

SPEAKER_06 6:58

Never this podcast.

SPEAKER_04 7:00

The big A listers certainly like to rub elbows with the Third Way. And they got the full champagne room treatment over at A. G. Schulzberger's House of Ill Repute. This is from the New York fucking times, August 6th, 2026.

SPEAKER_07 7:14

And I have to interrupt, and I must interrupt, and I must reiterate the New York fucking times because of course they are going to give free advertising to third way. Of course they are. Of course they are.

SPEAKER_04 7:29

And you know, Joe Manchin is just five op-ed columns away from now. Um, quote, moderate Democrats prepared for war against an ascendant left. One moderate group says the progressives' wins are deeply troubling. Yeah. Democrats winning in democratic primaries is deeply troubling to these people as planning a $15 million effort against democratic socialism.

SPEAKER_07 7:54

$15 whole million dollars.

SPEAKER_04 7:55

$15 million.

SPEAKER_07 7:56

All $15 million?

SPEAKER_04 7:57

Yeah. You got to say it in the Dr. Evil voice. $15 million.

SPEAKER_07 8:00

Million dollars. Yeah. Pritzker is laughing and laughing.

SPEAKER_04 8:04

Yeah, I got that in my sofa cushions. Um, the embattled establishment of the Democratic Party searched furiously for a political reset after Dr. Abdul al-Said's progressive victory in Michigan handed the party's long-dominant moderate wing its most painful defeat of the year.

SPEAKER_07 8:21

What? But wait a minute. What were we reading just now?

SPEAKER_04 8:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 8:26

From two moderate women in Michigan.

SPEAKER_04 8:29

One of whom ran against him.

SPEAKER_07 8:31

Ran against him and almost beat him.

SPEAKER_04 8:33

And said, you know what? I'm with him, I'm behind him. Let's go. Let's go.

SPEAKER_07 8:38

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 8:38

That's not the third way way, Bluegal. No, no, no. Now, back to the article. Some strategist urgently pressed to adopt a sharper edge to tap into the fury among Democratic voters that was felling its centrist candidates. Amen to that. What a great idea. You know, find out what the people want and give it to them. Others wanted to attack democratic socialism, undercutting a budding movement now set to have a have far more than a toehold in the next Congress. Yet another young Democratic socialist ousted an incumbent congressman in Detroit on Tuesday. Oh no. Oh no. We are preparing for the next war that is coming, said Jonathan Cohen, president of Third Way, a leading centrist democratic group revealing to the New York Times a new $15 million effort between now and 2028 to discredit democratic socialism. Unquote.

SPEAKER_07 9:32

It will not shock you to learn that Third Way, which is not a democratic group, it is a political action committee for sure. They get their money from big pharma, big banks, big tech, as well as some uh, you know, moderate democratic outfits like ExxonMobil. Also, big health insurance companies have devoted big big big bucks to third way. All the usual suspects who would rather see a mega flag flying over this country forever than share the Democratic Party with actual progressives because the progressive agenda cuts into their stock price by at least pennies.

SPEAKER_04 10:23

Yeah. And now it is rumored that this better dead than Al-Sayed gang of regressives, by the way, that's all trademarked. So, you know, five bucks to me every time you use better dead than al-Sayed or regressives. So deal with that. Uh, it's led by a shadowy figure known only as David fucking Brooks.

SPEAKER_07 10:45

Honest to God.

SPEAKER_04 10:46

Yeah. And last Friday, Mr. Brooks left his Bethesda, Maryland compound just long enough to appear on the PBS News hour where practically in tears, he said this quote, voters in almost every presidential race, I think, in every one of my lifetime have always said, Who's closer to the center? And they vote for that person. Trump seemed closer to the center than Kamala Harris. Really? Really? Biden seemed closer to the center than Donald Trump. Donald Trump, over the last few years, has run away from the center. He's handing this election to the Democrats. All they have to do is sit there and be couch potatoes. They do not have to support Medicare for all. So the Republicans go to go to them and say, You like your private insurance? Mr. El Saeed is going to take that away from you, you know, because the Barack Obama.

SPEAKER_07 11:34

Everybody is in love with their private health insurance.

SPEAKER_04 11:36

Well, and and and Brooks cannot get the taste of Barack Obama out of his mouth.

SPEAKER_07 11:41

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 11:42

Like, remember when all the people that I I love and respect and the party I work for shit all over Barack Obama and I sort of rolled over for it and helped them and all that stuff? Well, that might happen again. If you ask for anything, they're gonna come after you. So best not ask for anything. That's David Brooks's theory. Back to his stupid remarks. That is politically bad news, and that's only one of the issues on which the party is moving further and further away from the center, and therefore, unquote.

SPEAKER_07 12:10

Because dot, dot, dot. At this point, Brooks co-panelist Jonathan Capart had reached his limit of politely tolerating this old fraud's endless bullshit. And he interrupted him and said, I mean, I disagree that the Democratic Party writ large is moving far away from the center, and that a few races won by Democratic Socialists or people who identify as progressive, like Dr. El Sayed, that to me, I just don't, I do not see that it can, you can put this, make this blanket argument that the Democratic Party is running far left, unquote.

SPEAKER_04 12:46

No. No. And that, of course, was a signal for the host, that's Amnah Nawaz, to do the PBS thing of very quickly moving on to the next topic at the slightest hint of conflict. However, since PBS rules don't apply to us here at the professional left, I will just add that it is a matter of public record that David Brooks has never had any workable definition of the center beyond what I, David Brooks, happen to think at this exact moment. And it's also irrefutably true that he has spent the last quarter century publicly demonstrating that he knows fuck all about what voters think about anything.

SPEAKER_07 13:23

And yes he knows what people, wealthy, wealthy people around the world know.

SPEAKER_04 13:28

He knows what every single person on the Acel Accord or Quiet Car thinks about stuff. Right. And what everybody in the green room and what a bunch of college, you know, CEOs and college deans think of things. Because that's the those are the circles he travels in. And those people are the Frady cats and don't want to hear about issues.

SPEAKER_07 13:44

Well, they don't want their taxes to go up. So, you know. Or their investments in what was it again? ExxonMobil, big insurance, big pharma, off usual people.

SPEAKER_04 13:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 13:56

Well they want that to stay stable for them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 13:59

And that's the point because David Brooks has been wrong about everything forever. So all this bullshit that happens on Friday says a whole lot more about the people who keep paying him money to confidently spout his poisonous clap trap decade after decade than it does about the man himself, David fucking Brooks.

SPEAKER_07 14:16

Yeah, and you know, at this point, Driftglass went on for about three more hours about David Brooks, and I cut all that out.

SPEAKER_04 14:24

I did. Unapologetically.

SPEAKER_07 14:26

By the way, I just I just went, delete.

SPEAKER_04 14:29

By the way, for the record, not a single punctuation mark in there anywhere. It was a three-hour-long sentence.

SPEAKER_07 14:35

It's it it'll go on the on the uh posthumous album.

SPEAKER_04 14:40

The best of.

SPEAKER_07 14:42

All right. Uh, but you know what? Third Way Driftglass is not a solo act. They have plenty of fellow travelers who are horrified that a few Democratic candidates have won their primaries in ways that Third Way Incorporated does not approve. This is from Common Dreams, February 9th, 2026. Quote: One more billionaire front group, centrist Dems mocked over new initiative led by corporate lobbyists. Next American Era, that's the political action committee, will be headed by Sherry Bustos, former chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, who has lobbied for powerful corporations. That's after she got out of the house. She was an Illinois congresswoman.

SPEAKER_04 15:27

She was.

SPEAKER_07 15:28

The ambiguity of the abundance agenda's policy proposals, strategic or otherwise, allows private interests to leverage abundance as a Trojan horse for their preferences. The Revolving Door Project observed last year. The growing abundance movement has institutional support from fossil fuel and big tech affiliates, including the sprawling coke network and crypto and AI industry players. Axios observed that the next American era is one of several center-left groups, in quotation marks, that have popped up or expanded in the past 18 months, including the Think Tank Searchlight Institute, Majority Democrats, and Welcome Pack. Welcome PAC. Yeah. Just one more billionaire front group, just one more neoliberal policy shop. Reporter and political analyst Austin Alman wrote mockingly on social media in response to the launch of Next American Era. Just one more polling outfit, cooking the numbers on behalf of corporate interests, and we'll win, bro, a promise, unquote.

SPEAKER_04 16:37

And this is from the Bezos Washington Post, June 3rd of this year. Quote, centrist Democrats launched a new pledge. We're capitalists, not socialist. Two Democrats in Congress who flipped Republican-held seats in 2024 are launching a pledge for their party's candidates they hope will act as a rallying cry for centrists, calling for a politics of persuasion over purity, and declaring that we're capitalists, not socialists. I have a question, Blue Gal. If it's the politics of persuasion over purity, then how come they're not welcoming democratic socialists into the party?

SPEAKER_07 17:15

Why isn't it a big tent party, Driftglass?

SPEAKER_04 17:18

Well, it is. It is. The tent flap only up almost on the right, Blue Gal.

SPEAKER_06 17:22

Oh, I see. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 17:23

Because, you know, Liz Cheney can build a whole fucking career calling us baby killing scum in the face of pure evil, which she sure as hell did right up until she left the party.

SPEAKER_07 17:33

And then welcome her right in.

SPEAKER_04 17:34

Welcome her with open arms. But Democrats and progressives who are winning Democratic primaries, well, that's that's just too much for us. You know, that by the by the way, um uh Sherry Boustos, that is a fucking purity test.

SPEAKER_07 17:48

Yes, it is.

SPEAKER_04 17:49

That is exactly what a purity test looks like. Anyway, the pledge is a direct rebuke to the party's leftward tilt, as Democratic socialists such as New York Mayor Zoran Mamdani and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont capture the party's energy and activism. Representative Tom Swoozy of New York and Representative Adam Gray of California said they will unveil the pledge Wednesday afternoon at the center-left conference. Oh, yeah, we heard of them. Welcome Fest.

SPEAKER_06 18:15

Welcome Fest. Welcoming Liz Cheney into our kit, I guess is what it is.

SPEAKER_04 18:20

And hope to get candidates up and down the ballot to join them in signing it, unquote. Yeah, Welcome Fest, everyone's welcome, except the majority of Democrats who think a little Democratic socialism would not be the end of the world.

SPEAKER_07 18:32

It's also very Grover Norquist of you to have a pledge. What are you, seventh graders? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 18:37

Sign a pledge.

SPEAKER_07 18:38

Sign our pledge. Uh the biggest surprise here is that there is nothing surprising here at all, because none of this is new. This is from In These Times seven years ago, February 7th, 2019. Quote, why is the political establishment so afraid of Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal? At a time of widespread environmental devastation, which they ain't seen nothing yet at that point compared to what we've had this year, much of the U.S. political establishment appears allergic to large-scale public projects that would solve the climate crisis through directly challenging the economic status quo. This attitude was perhaps best encapsulated by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's glib mockery of the Green New Deal plan laid out Thursday morning by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey, who's from Massachusetts. In an interview with Politico, Politico, Pelosi referred to the proposal as the Green Dream or whatever they call it. She went on to suggest that the plan had not been thought through, saying nobody knows what it is, but they're for it, right? Pelosi is not the only lawmaker who is reflexively resistant to the plan. There is the predictable opposition from Republicans, including Representative John Shimkus of Illinois. He used to be our congressman.

SPEAKER_04 20:01

Yes, he did. And he was the ranking member on the Congressman from Cole, right?

SPEAKER_07 20:05

He's a congressman from Cole.

SPEAKER_04 20:07

Yep.

SPEAKER_07 20:08

The ranking member on the House Energy and Commerce Committees Subcommittee on Environment and Climate Change. And he's the Congressman from Cole, who's on the climate change subcommittee. He's there to stop everything.

SPEAKER_04 20:25

Yeah. Was.

SPEAKER_07 20:26

Was. He's not even in Congress anymore.

SPEAKER_04 20:28

He's him no more.

SPEAKER_07 20:30

Uh he said at a hearing Wednesday, we should be open to the fact that wealth transfer schemes suggested in the radical policies like the Green New Deal may not be the best path to community prosperity and preparedness. I just shrug my shoulders. That is just straight out of coal lobby. Yeah. Cole keeps the lights on, says the billboard. When we're in the middle of a blackout, you see the billboard light it lit up. The billboard's still lit up that says coal keeps the light on. All right. Representative Doug Lamborn, Republican of Colorado, meanwhile, turned to red baiting. Ah saying the Green New Deal sounds too much like a Soviet five-year plan. Lamborne's critique echoed President Trump, who warned in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday that in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country. Oh no. America was founded on liberty and independence, not government coercion, domination, and control. Unquote.

SPEAKER_04 21:39

No, I don't I it shakes my faith in an almighty God, Blue Gal.

SPEAKER_07 21:43

Yeah, I know what you mean.

SPEAKER_04 21:44

Now, for more on the story, we are going to turn back the clock even further to a chilly February in 2009 when three historic events took place. The first one was Barack Obama had just been inaugurated as the forty-fourth president of these here United States.

SPEAKER_07 22:00

Second, Illinois Governor Rob Lagojevich was impeached by the Illinois House of Representatives on January 9th, 2009, and unanimously convicted and removed from office by the Illinois Senate on January 29th, 2009. We will remind everyone that it was Democrats that removed this Democratic governor from office for trying to sell Barack Obama's Senate seat. And it was Donald Trump who pardoned Rod Belagoy's.

SPEAKER_04 22:28

Let us all remember that when it comes to who did what about what. And third, of course, I had just been laid off from my assistant commissioner position at the city of Chicago. This was done in order to give another City of Chicago employee who was incompetent but well connected a soft place to land. And I have not had a full-time job with benefits since. Anyway, this is from Newsweek, published February 6, 2009, and the date here is very important because the day it was published, we were only 17 days into the Obama administration. Or maybe it was 16 days, Blue Gal, because you will remember that the Republican Chief Justice John Roberts screwed up on the oath on January 20th. So just to be sure, Obama retook the oath privately in the White House on January 21st, 2009. Recall?

SPEAKER_07 23:17

I do recall that, and some on the right saying, well, he can never really be president.

SPEAKER_04 23:22

It'll never count. It wasn't noon on that day. He screwed it up. He can't, he's not the real president.

SPEAKER_08 23:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 23:28

Anyway, less than three weeks, as you will note, the article is referencing a Fox News interview from a week before that. So just two weeks into Obama's first term. This was the opening paragraph from John Meacham's New York Newsweek, I'm sorry, cover story. Quote: The interview was nearly over. On the Fox News Channel last Wednesday evening, Sean Hannity was coming to the end of a segment with Indiana Congressman Mike Pence. Jesus, remember him? The chair of the House Republican Conference and a vociferous foe of President Obama's nearly $1 trillion stimulus bill. How, Pence asked, had asked rhetorically, was $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts going to put people back to work in Indiana? Huh? Huh? Huh? How would $20 million for fish passage barriers, a provision to pay for the removal of barriers in rivers and streams so the fish could migrate freely, help create jobs? Hannity could not have agreed more. It is the European Socialist Act of 2009, the host said, signing off. We're counting on you to stop it. Thank you, Congressman. Unquote.

SPEAKER_07 24:35

This was like 10 days into the Obama administration.

SPEAKER_04 24:37

Yeah, yeah. Just a heartbeat in, mind you, in the middle of the worst economic catastrophe in 75 years. Well, let's let's just proceed.

SPEAKER_07 24:47

Let's just proceed. Yep. In just this is just two weeks after the catastrophically failed Bush administration limped out of office. While we were still in the middle of, as Drift said, the worst economic crisis in 75 years. Thousands of thousands of thousands of people out of work. Hundreds of thousands. Hundreds of thousands of people out of work. And already the Bush era was being memory-holed by right-wing media. Yep.

SPEAKER_04 25:14

Right in front of us.

SPEAKER_07 25:15

Right in front of us on television. I'll never forget.

SPEAKER_04 25:20

Some of you might remember, in March of 2009, just two months after the Obama administration uh moved into office, the Daily Show did a whole segment on the complete right-wing freakout over the election of Barack Obama. And to this very day, we thrice curse Comedy Central for scrubbing their old links because that clip is gone forever.

SPEAKER_07 25:40

Yep. Michelle Malkin's mantra. Bush isn't president anymore.

SPEAKER_04 25:44

Yeah, Bush isn't president anymore.

SPEAKER_07 25:45

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 25:46

Yep.

SPEAKER_07 25:47

But look, uh, the Daily Show's uh coverage of the Bush administration, et cetera, lives on in our memory and in our blogs because we in the liberal blogosphere knew this was coming. And we documented it every day in real time. And it was something to see, something that every single person on the left could and did predict. That barely two months after Barack Obama was sworn into office, it was the unanimous verdict of right-wing media that suddenly America had taken a turn, an irrevocable turn toward dictatorship.

SPEAKER_04 26:23

Yep. And everybody was in on it, Blue Gal. Everyone. It was a parade of all the usual horribles who would, of course, become even more influential during the Obama administration because they were relentlessly selling a message to the rubes of the pre-MAGA party, which was the soon-to-be Tea Party party. But at this point, they were just what they'd always been racist, dumbass Republican voters.

SPEAKER_07 26:47

And the message that hate media was peddling every day, this early in the administration, not giving him a hundred days.

SPEAKER_04 26:54

Not giving him ten minutes.

SPEAKER_07 26:56

Ten minutes was that tyranny had come to our shores. Socialism or communism or fascism, whichever seemed scariest at the moment, was right around the corner. That Obama's jackbooted thugs were ripping away our liberties, and that we were definitely on a long downward spiral towards totalitarian hell.

SPEAKER_04 27:18

Yeah. Remember when Republicans were against totalitarianism? Uh the not yet dead Andrew Breitbart said, you know, it's gotten so bad at my kids' school, they no longer celebrate St. Patrick's Day. Now they're calling it Potato Day.

SPEAKER_07 27:32

And the right wept bitter tears because all their freedom was now gone in just a couple weeks, Drift Glass.

SPEAKER_04 27:37

It was very sad.

SPEAKER_07 27:39

That's how it actually was. Full stop.

SPEAKER_04 27:42

Yeah, that's how that's how things actually happened in real time, right before our very eyes on tape. Now, do you want to know how the fascist right remembers that same period? How everyone, from your crazy young of Liberty to every Fox News drone to every Republican elected official, remembers this period? Well, take it away, Janine Pierrot, from December of 2016.

SPEAKER_02 28:05

You know, there was a time in this country when we united behind the flag in celebration of America's new president, our new leader. We all did so in 2008 when Barack Obama was elected. We had high hopes for a united country, irrespective of our politics. And it's time for the left, assuming they're capable, to show the same dignity and class to the 45th president-elect.

SPEAKER_04 28:32

That was back when she was just box of wine Pierre, running her mouth on Fox News before she was put in charge of humiliating herself by losing one Trump political revenge case after another in federal court as the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.

SPEAKER_07 28:47

Where she folded like an umbrella.

SPEAKER_04 28:49

Over and over again.

SPEAKER_07 28:51

As Trump said. Yes. Um, which is why trying to reason with these people is a lost cause. Because once Fox News and hate radio tells them a thing happened a certain way, even though it's a ludicrous lie, even though they lived through whatever it was and should obviously know better, whatever fascist media tells them happened becomes what they earnestly and completely believe happened. I I do want to bring up Michelle Malkin again, because I've said this before. She had a book come out about the lack of transparency in the Obama administration in April of 2009, when Obama had been president for three and a half months. And what I want to know is when did she sign the contract for that book?

SPEAKER_08 29:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 29:38

She had to have signed it before the election, right? Yeah, of course. Somewhere and along that timeline, she decided to make a buck over writing an anti-Obama screed as early as possible.

SPEAKER_04 29:50

Yeah. Well, they all did. They were all elected on this. This was the same. Yeah, there was money in it. There was money in it. This is well, not just that, but this is what was going to carry them through the Obama years.

SPEAKER_09 29:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 30:00

Just screaming tyranny, tyranny, jackbooted, gun-grabbing scum, monster, monster, scary, scary.

SPEAKER_07 30:05

Yeah. And look, you can yell at them all you want. You got the memory of a fucking fly! But that will change nothing.

SPEAKER_04 30:12

Nope. However, over here at the professional left, we don't consider the past to be our mortal enemy, which is why we have a regular no-fair remembering stuff feature. Because when amnesia is the weapon of the enemy, memory becomes an act of rebellion and defiance.

SPEAKER_07 30:28

So back to the Newsweek article from February of 2009, Sean Hannity, Indiana Congressman Mike Pence bitching about Obama's proposed $1 trillion stimulus package to help dig the nation out of the hole the Bush regime had left us in. This is the second paragraph. Quote, there it was just before the commercial, the S-word, a favorite among conservatives since John McCain began using it during the presidential campaign. Remember Joe the Plumber? Sadly, so do we. But it seems strangely beside the point. The U.S. government has already, under a conservative Republican administration, effectively nationalized the banking and mortgage industries. That seems a stronger sign of socialism than $50 million for art. Whether we want to admit it or not, and many, especially Congressman Pence and Hannity, do not, the America of 2009 is moving toward a modern European state. Unquote. And the title of that cover article, I have the original cover displayed in my home office here at the Casa DGBG. We're all socialists now.

SPEAKER_04 31:48

Yep. And it wasn't controversial when banks were taking handouts.

SPEAKER_07 31:51

Yeah, all the banks needed their bonuses from the federal government.

SPEAKER_04 31:56

Yeah. And this article is full of treacly mechemisms, like we remain a center-right nation in many ways. No, we don't. And this is not to say that Berets will be all the rage this spring or that Obama has promised a croissant in every toaster oven. But the article makes clear that while decades of bashing the government and demonizing liberal has created an environment where, quote, Americans don't trust government and still don't want big government, whatever the fuck that means. They do, however, want what the government delivers, like health care and national defense, and now protections from banking and housing failures. During the roughly three decades since Reagan made big government the enemy and liberal in epithet, government did not shrink. It grew, unquote. And there's also this quote. But it was again under a conservative GOP administration that we enacted the largest expansion of the welfare state in 30 years, prescription drugs for the elderly. People on the right and the left want the government to invest in alternative energy in order to break our addiction to foreign oil. And it is unlikely that even the reddest of states will decline federal money for infrastructure improvements, unquote. They'll run against it, they'll scream about it, they'll demand that whoever is going to spend that money be run out of office on a rail, but then they'll show up at the bridge, the giant check ribbing signing, right? And they'll run ads about how they they went into the lion's den and got this money for you fucking rubes, so you better fucking vote for me again.

SPEAKER_07 33:25

Right.

SPEAKER_04 33:26

Because their voters are idiots.

SPEAKER_07 33:28

Yep. And you all remember the fate of that economic recovery package, right? Because we talked about it just last May. Obama's economic advisors believe the collapsing economy required a stimulus much larger than what eventually passed, roughly $1.2 trillion to $1.8 trillion to close the output gap and stop unemployment from spiraling. But political advisors, especially Larry Summers and a few congressional Democrats, told him that Congress would never pass something that large in early 2009. So the original ask was cut in half, and pretty much all the reductions between what was needed and what Obama got were the result of concessions Democrats made to try to get Republican votes. The key compromises were much larger tax cuts than many Democrats wanted. To attract moderate Republicans, the package shifted heavily toward tax relief. You know, that was something that Mike Pence really wanted. He wanted tax relief. So bad. Originally, many Democrats preferred more direct infrastructure spending, more aid to states, and more public works employment. Instead, about one-third of the package became tax cuts.

SPEAKER_04 34:36

Yeah. And one of the other big compromises came during Senate negotiations with moderate Republicans like Susan Collins, Olympia Snow, and Arlene Specter, to get their votes, Democrats removed or reduced school modernization funds, a lot of infrastructure spending and certain state stabilization funds. About $100 billion in spending was cut during these negotiations. Then, much smaller state fiscal relief than many governors needed. States were bleeding money and jobs during the recession. Many Democrats wanted much larger Medicaid stabilization aid and direct state assistance. Republicans hated that. So more cuts. And while the resulting aid did help prevent layoffs, it was insufficient to meet the crisis, which is why it dragged on for so goddamn long.

SPEAKER_07 35:22

While Obama was desperately trying to placate Republicans who were out to destroy him, this is how Republicans were framing the issue. At CPAC in February 2009, John Boehner, who's now a pot lobbyist, unless he's retired from that, uh attacked Obama's stimulus and budget as, quote, one big down payment on a new American socialist experiment, unquote. Boehner also repeatedly characterized the stimulus as a spending binge, a government takeover, and theft from our kids and grandkids. The rhetoric became foundational to later Tea Party messaging. This is from the Washington Post of July 27th, 2009. Quote, last week, Senator Jim DeMint, remember him, Drift Glass?

SPEAKER_04 36:11

Vividly.

SPEAKER_07 36:12

Likened the president's healthcare fight to Napoleon Bonaparte's final defeat. If we're to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. He said in a conference call with GOP activists, it will break him, unquote. Mike Pence denounced this as, quote, a spending bill masquerading as a stimulus bill.

SPEAKER_04 36:33

Mike is not very bright.

SPEAKER_07 36:35

Not very smart, Mike Pence. That was unquote.

SPEAKER_04 36:38

And uh Rush Limbaugh said very bluntly and publicly that he wanted Obama to fail. Of course I want Obama to fail. Across the board, Republicans framed it as socialism, national decline, illegitimate government expansion, or a deliberate attempt to transform America permanently. And despite all those concessions and all the Republican foot dragging, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act received zero Republican votes in the House and only three Republican votes in the Senate.

SPEAKER_07 37:07

We better have learned a goddamn lesson from Barack Obama on this.

SPEAKER_04 37:10

I I he he I certainly hope we have. You cannot, cannot compromise with these people. You can't negotiate in good faith with them.

SPEAKER_07 37:18

Right. And this they are not going to vote for your stuff.

SPEAKER_04 37:21

No.

SPEAKER_07 37:21

Ever.

SPEAKER_04 37:22

And that but what about the politics of persuasion, Blue Gal? Not purity. Yeah. Fuck you.

SPEAKER_07 37:27

They'll be primaried if they vote with you.

SPEAKER_04 37:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 37:29

Well, don't expect them to vote with you unless you can convince their voters that there's some absolute pork going to a very specific district that these people definitely want. If you go into a Republican district and point out this road that everybody knows is broken and say, Your congressman better vote with me if you if you want this fixed.

SPEAKER_04 37:55

Well, I would just say you better vote with me, because your congressman's never going to pass this because he thinks you're idiots.

SPEAKER_07 38:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 38:01

He thinks you care more about trans kids than about this goddamn road out here that you're talking about.

SPEAKER_07 38:06

Driving around this pothole.

SPEAKER_04 38:07

Right, right. And are you really that stupid? I mean, that's why I couldn't run for office. Because I think that's a good idea. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 38:13

You and I would just say the reason the reason you have this giant pothole and you have never elected anybody who will bring enough money to fix it is because you're all fucking racist idiots.

SPEAKER_04 38:23

Yeah, you're inbred hicks who deserve every bit of this. We're trying to save you from yourselves.

SPEAKER_07 38:28

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 38:29

Now, just listen to all these people screaming socialism and communism, bluegill.

SPEAKER_07 38:32

It's yeah, you found quite a list here. This is Representative Robert Rich of Republican of Pennsylvania on the House floor, who says they're socialists, not Democrats.

SPEAKER_04 38:43

And this is Senator Simeon D. Fest of Ohio, a Republican, of course, attacked the progressive agenda as undisguised state socialism.

SPEAKER_07 38:53

Senator Thomas Shaw of Minnesota claimed that the progressive policies have, quote, communist intentions. And the progressives' true objectives have been concealed from American voters.

SPEAKER_04 39:07

And the largest media corporation in America denounced progressive policies as socialism and warned that the next step would be forced collectivization, Blue Gal.

SPEAKER_07 39:17

Yep. One centrist organization, the American Liberty League, funded by prominent business interests, relentlessly portrays progressive programs as fundamentally hostile to free enterprise and as a slippery slope towards socialism.

SPEAKER_04 39:34

So all sounds very terrible. And of course, if you're unfamiliar with the American Liberty League or the pernicious blathering of Senators Shaw and Fess and Representative Bobby Rich, or who are wondering which giant media corporation we're talking about, well, we're not surprised. They're all real people and real organizations, but they're all from almost 100 years ago, from the mid-1930s. And all the quotes are real, but we've slightly altered them because all of this slander and so much more was directed at Franklin, Delano, Roosevelt, and the goddamn New Deal by Republicans.

SPEAKER_07 40:10

By Republicans. Yep. And that largest media corporation in America was actually at that time the largest media empire in the world, owned and operated by William Randolph Hearst, who controlled 28 major daily and Sunday newspapers in large U.S. cities, reaching millions of readers daily. He also owned 13 major magazines, including Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, and Harper's Bazaar, Wire Services like King Features, and International News Service, as well as a number of radio stations and newsreel and movie production companies.

SPEAKER_04 40:44

So we say let the fascists and the weaklings and the corporate stooges of 2026 scream socialism all they want. Progressive candidates are winning using the same strategy that every other successful candidate history has used. Understanding what voters need and demand and campaigning on delivering it for them.

SPEAKER_07 41:05

Meanwhile, on the right, things just keep getting worse. And in Tennessee, by the way, last week, we found out exactly when the mega voter gag reflex kicks in. It turns out, and I'm so happy that we're still going to talk about this story this week, Drift Glass. Andy Ogles lost his primary. Republican Andy Ogles. And he lost it for three reasons. One, Republicans had redrawn his Tennessee district to be more red, but it meant that there were Republicans voting in the primary who did not know him. Secondly, his opponent, who's Charlie Hatcher, had statewide recognition as the former commissioner for agriculture and ran hard on being an actual farmer and a friend of former governor Bill Lee, who actually endorsed Hatcher late in the race. So Hatcher actually, as an, even though he was a challenger, had wider name recognition in the district than Ogles.

SPEAKER_04 42:10

Yeah, he had all the advantages of being an incumbent without being an incumbent.

SPEAKER_07 42:13

Right, exactly. Exactly. And finally, this from Politico. Politico, quote, the Invest in Tomorrow Coalition PAC spent $2 million opposing Ogles and boosting Republican primary opponent Charlie Hatcher. This was more than both candidates spent on the race combined. That is now I am not in favor of that.

SPEAKER_09 42:39

No.

SPEAKER_07 42:40

Some political action can be coming in and dumping more money than either one of the candidates has. We got to stop that crap. But they did this to get Andy Ogles out. And Andy Ogles is garbage.

SPEAKER_04 42:52

He's terrible. He's garbage. He's absolute garbage.

SPEAKER_07 42:54

Lots of money missing, money coming into his campaign that nobody knows where it came from. On and on. But uh yeah, the Invest in Tomorrow coalition is now poised to be a force in future contests, says Politico. Ogles was the third Republican this year to lose a race after being targeted by the Super PAC, which was launched by solar executives wanting to get back at Republicans who actively work against renewables. Yeah. And this is Tom Matsy, the CEO of solar company Clean Choice Energy and chair of Invest in Tomorrow Coalition. He said in a statement, we will continue to punish members of either party.

SPEAKER_04 43:43

Right. Right. Gotta say that. Gotta say that.

SPEAKER_07 43:46

And yet, and yet they've only gone after you know people like Andy Ogles.

SPEAKER_04 43:50

Well, there's nobody else to go after. Right.

SPEAKER_07 43:51

What are you gonna do? Oh no, we've we have to go after this Democrat who hates solar.

SPEAKER_04 43:57

We have to build a Democratic Party in Tennessee. That we can have someone to go after it.

SPEAKER_07 44:02

And they gotta hate solar, sure. Either party who want to play politics with American jobs, energy security, and utility prices, the entire map is in play. And we will take this fight across the country through November. Lawmakers like Ogles, Chip Roy, and another congressman named Norman pushed Republican leaders in Congress last year for a quick phase out of renewable energy initi incentives in what became the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. So uh apparently they want socialism for solar drift glass.

SPEAKER_04 44:35

Oh no, what wait a minute. Does that that rhymes with Cylindra, doesn't it, Blue Cash?

SPEAKER_07 44:40

It does. It's the same thing, Drift Glass.

SPEAKER_04 44:42

Oh no.

SPEAKER_07 44:43

Cylindra. Uh the here is Michael Brune, former executive director of the Sierra Club and co-founder of the Invest in Tomorrow Coalition. And by the way, there are a lot of Republicans in the Sierra Club.

SPEAKER_09 44:56

Yes, there are.

SPEAKER_07 44:58

It is a nonpartisan organization. Uh it is full of people who are either eco-voters who really want ecology and people who uh lionize and idolize the West.

SPEAKER_04 45:13

Yeah, it is cowboy culture. It's full of Ron Swansons.

SPEAKER_07 45:17

Ron Swanson that want that land preserved for their image of the frontier. Freedom and cowboy and you know the wildness of it. And so there are, I mean, and and it is a nonpartisan organization set to preserve public lands and so forth. But there are Republicans who want to do that. Um, so this is Michael Brun, and he said the clean energy industry's political muscle is only getting stronger and more intimidating. So our hope here is that clean energy will go back to being a bipartisan issue. And maybe one of the few issues that all Americans can agree on. But before we get there, we've got to continue our retribution tour and take out a few more members who have voted the wrong way. That's you know, I mean I I I gotta admire it. Yeah, you know, just coming from a it's coming from the right place, and they they and using the corrupt law of Citizen United to drop more money than either either candidate combined.

SPEAKER_04 46:25

But look at the action verbs here: stronger, intimidating, and retribution.

SPEAKER_07 46:29

Yeah, retribution.

SPEAKER_04 46:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 46:30

For people who voted against solar.

SPEAKER_04 46:32

And take out a few. I mean that that's sends a very, very clear message that um that there's a different there's another game in town.

SPEAKER_07 46:40

There's another game in town. And these guys are right, maybe right wing, but they have invested in solar for money.

SPEAKER_04 46:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 46:47

And they want federal money. Yes, they do. And I they call it I I love how they call it incentives instead of subsidies. Right. When it's a big corporation run by conservatives, it's incentives.

SPEAKER_04 46:59

Right. And I'm I'm I would be delighted to give them incentives to ramp up production of solar panels and solar energy and conversion kits and and generators that are powered by it and batteries. I would be delighted to spend my tax dollars on that.

SPEAKER_07 47:14

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 47:15

And there's one party preventing us from doing that.

SPEAKER_07 47:17

Well, you know, thank God Ronald Reagan kept all those solar panels on the White House roof. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 47:22

Well, you know, there is another there's a prominent there is a prominent Republican who's who's down with all this stuff, and his name was Teddy Roosevelt.

SPEAKER_07 47:28

Yeah, exactly. Well, same thing. I mean, that is the same thing. He had the rough rider ethos and wanted those western lands preserved because hunter, big hunt, big game hunting, and that sense of the west.

SPEAKER_04 47:44

It's not being tamed. It's beautiful and it's wild and it's good to be as it is.

SPEAKER_07 47:51

Yeah, yeah. And it's also manly. Well, yeah, you know, that that sort of thing. Now, as as Driftglass pointed out to me earlier this week as we were talking, uh, Republicans will go right on voting for bridge trolls and grifters and scumbags. That's gonna happen.

SPEAKER_09 48:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 48:06

But at least in Tennessee, candidates will have to be around 12% less obviously awful than Andy Ogles.

SPEAKER_04 48:15

Yeah, yeah. His his MAGACRED didn't protect it.

SPEAKER_07 48:18

It it didn't.

SPEAKER_04 48:19

It didn't protect it.

SPEAKER_07 48:19

And and and you you have to see that a friendly looking guy who's just a Republican statewide ag commissioner, who's ran on pro-God, pro-gun, pro-Trump, I'm a farmer. Right. That was his slogan. So he was not off the trail.

SPEAKER_04 48:42

Now, if if I'm in Tennessee, am I voting for this guy? Of course not.

SPEAKER_07 48:45

No.

SPEAKER_04 48:46

Because all he is, this is the same pitch Liz Cheney made to Democrats. There's well, you should really vote for me in the primary because all my Republicans are gonna vote for this other crazy bitch. It's like, no, because all you are at that point is one more vote to make Mike Johnson Speaker of the House. You're just you're just giving the majority away. I'm not gonna vote for any Republican anywhere at any time. Yeah, because I all they are to me is one more vote to make someone horrible control the House of Representatives to destroy everything else.

SPEAKER_07 49:17

I make more cuts to Snap. I mean, you know, okay.

SPEAKER_04 49:20

That that too. I'm you can you can dial it. But it's but it's not it's not cuts specifically, it's control of the house.

SPEAKER_07 49:28

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 49:28

If you are in the majority, it doesn't matter if you're if you're good on solar. You still are the majority party and you're still a monstrous party. And it's not just snap at that point, it's everything else.

SPEAKER_07 49:37

Everything else, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 49:38

So a vote for any Republican in any state is a vote to give them control over the Senate and the House.

SPEAKER_07 49:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 49:47

Period.

SPEAKER_07 49:47

And a and a vote for any Republican is a vote for more Andy Ogles. That's what it is. Yeah, it is.

SPEAKER_04 49:54

And speaking of voting for monsters, uh, we're gonna lead off the news roundup today with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse trying and failing to reach some tiny spark of humanity in the cold, dead Republican hearts of his colleagues.

SPEAKER_01 50:09

The last question that I'm left with here is what's left of this committee? What's left of this committee when we don't demand straight answers from witnesses? How many times has this Department of Justice been asked what became of the $50,000 that the FBI reported that it handed to Mr. Homan in a bribery sting? That's administrative stuff. That gets reported. There's an account, you've got to check the money out. If you get the money back, you've got to check the money back. There's an administrative trail. We can't get any information about that. Our Republican colleagues see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil. Cash Patel virtually certainly lied to this committee sitting in front of us. Is there any interest in that? At a time when Republicans in Congress seem agitated about Biden officials lying to Congress? We got lies right here, folks. I don't know where this committee goes after it stops being taken seriously, because all you have to be is on the right partisan side to get this committee to roll over and play dead. Thank you, Chairman.

SPEAKER_07 51:28

Might as well have been talking to a slab of concrete because Trump henchman and Epstein Files bagman, Todd Blanche, was confirmed by that same Senate as the 88th U.S. Attorney General in the wee hours of Saturday, August 8th, 2026. Yep. Because you're a bunch of fucking cowards.

SPEAKER_04 51:48

Well, and it all came down to Republican Bill Cassidy, who proved to be the decisive vote on Todd's confirmation, which passed 50 to 49 with no Democrats voting for it. Remember, Cassidy is already a dead man walking. Trump having sabotaged his re-election bid and ending his Senate career. He has nothing to lose, nothing to gain by giving Trump anything. And yet, as one of his last acts as a senator, once again Cassidy was the deciding vote to confirm a dangerous and monstrously unqualified Trump stooge to a position where he can and will do tremendous damage to this country.

SPEAKER_07 52:23

Meanwhile, lying abusive sociopath Max Miller, apparently he ain't going anywhere.

SPEAKER_04 52:29

Nope.

SPEAKER_07 52:29

This is from Politico, August 10th. Quote, White House officials tamped down efforts to oust Max Miller in final days, unquote. Of course they did.

SPEAKER_08 52:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 52:39

Or as one of my former colleagues at Crooks and Liars, Red Painter, put it, congrats, Ohio Republicans. You must carry Max Miller to term.

SPEAKER_04 52:50

I just that red's very funny. Red painter.

SPEAKER_07 52:54

He's very funny.

SPEAKER_04 52:54

Uh from political, also political, political. Politico. Uh from July 29th, quote, President Donald Trump cash aside bipartisan precedent when he rejected eligible disaster relief from four blue states. Again, unquote. We're not going to play the imagine if Obama did it, because Obama would never do it. No other president did that. It's just Donald Trump being a vindictive, bitter old degenerate with all the power in the world.

SPEAKER_07 53:19

From the New York Fucking Times July 30th, quote, Kennedy Center halts free public tours after five decades of service. The decision to suspend tours indefinitely came after a volunteer tour guide was featured in a Times article detailing President Trump's dramatic revamp of the Kennedy Center.

SPEAKER_04 53:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 53:41

Unquote.

SPEAKER_04 53:42

Yeah. So the kids are calling it revamp. That's a new word, huh? That's what they're calling it these days. And since we're speaking of socialism, Blue Gal, this is from Bloomberg from July 31st, and it seems very timely. Quote, Trump's Arctic mining deal signals a new era of state capitalism. Oh, how exciting. The federal government granted a permit to build a road through Alaskan wilderness. In exchange, it gets part of a mining company. The mining industry argues it's integral to the Alaskan economy, essential to national security, and the Trump administration's priority to challenge China in the race for critical minerals. The trustees for Alaska, a nonprofit environmental law firm, represents parties that are furious at the prospect of tearing up the areas surrounding the gates of the Arctic National Park and preserve to prospect for copper and zinc points to the rising temperatures, increased erosion, and melting permafrost. The Biden administration sided with those concerned about the road's impact on the region and had declined to issue a permit for the road. But when Donald Trump re-entered office, the issue became open for debate. Trump administration knew the miners needed the permit. In exchange, it asked for the U.S. government to get equity in the company developing the region according to a person's. Yep. Well, it's good it's extortion. It's straight fucking extortion. And some people might even call socialism blue gap.

SPEAKER_07 55:03

I was going to say state owner, state-owned industry. State social. And finally, this from Conover again over at Crooks and Liars, August 4th. Quote, asked whether it worried him that Donald J. Trump had been talking as recently as yesterday about bringing back his so-called anti-weaponization fund, money meant to compensate people he claims were unfairly investigated. It's all going to him. And finding some way to pay people out of it, Texas Senator John Cornyn didn't even pretend the GOP had a plan. He coped to it outright. There's nothing they can do to stop the president once he's decided he likes something, weaponization fund included. And this response from Senator Professor Elizabeth Warren.

SPEAKER_03 56:07

Senator, do you agree with Senator Cornyn that there's nothing the Senate can do to constrain Donald Trump?

SPEAKER_05 56:12

No. The Republicans have the majority. They could constrain Donald Trump on the war. They could constrain him on these deals. They could constrain him on it.

SPEAKER_03 56:42

What do you make of uh you know time plans on this way to be confirmed despite none of the X being blob is outrageous. Thank you, Senator. Appreciate it.

SPEAKER_04 56:51

We love her. She's amazing.

SPEAKER_07 56:54

Uh although she should uh be planning her exit, she should be working on getting her successor elected. Successing and grooming and training her successor so we don't have another Scott Brown sneak in in Massachusetts.

SPEAKER_04 57:10

Sorry. She's wonderful, but she really needs to retire.

SPEAKER_07 57:13

It's time to retire and pick your successor.

SPEAKER_04 57:16

Yeah, and then come on our podcast and talk to her.

SPEAKER_07 57:18

And then come on our podcast and we'll tell you how wonderful you are, Liz. All right. Feel free to write to both of us at proleftpodcast at gmail.com. We love hearing from you. Be aware that if you write to us at any of our addresses, we reserve the right to read your email or US Postal Service Go Postal Unions letter on the air, unless you say otherwise. And thank you for supporting our show at patreon.com forward slash proleft pod. You guys support us so much. We've gotten so many nice letters and checks and $5 bills in the mail as well. And we just want to thank you and tell you we love you. And we got a lot of good feedback uh about the interviews that Yeah, the one with with uh Greg Bush especially was uh very well received. So we're looking to do more of those kind of things. Uh politicians who run in small races, blue dots in red states who are seeing uh the earth move beneath them in some cases.

SPEAKER_04 58:16

Well, we've reached out to at least one personally. Uh we'd love to have you on, we'd love to tell you.

SPEAKER_07 58:21

And if you know of anyone running in your state who might like to come in and who is a Democrat, of course.

SPEAKER_04 58:27

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 58:27

Um, running in a in a smaller district who might want to come in and just talk politics with drift glass for an hour.

SPEAKER_04 58:33

Bit of a bit of an uphill battle, bit of an uphill battle. Um we we especially love the people who could use a bit of a bump, especially from folks out here, because we understand exactly where you are, exactly what what your situation is, because we're also blue dots in a red area, in a large red area. So and we're especially people from you know the middle of middle America.

SPEAKER_07 58:52

Yeah, flyover country. If you're in flyover country and you uh know someone who's running in a a local race or a uh state wide race, uh let us know. We'd like to host that candidate.

SPEAKER_04 59:05

A bit of this isn't quite housekeeping, but it's a little behind the curtain things. We I don't know what level of micro celebrity we've hit. We get a lot of solicitations, completely un uh unrequested solicitations from all kinds of people about their book, about you know, minor economics. But some of them are like from I'm I'm a professor of right-wing studies at uh Liberty University, and I have I have proof. I have proof of what and they have no idea who we are. We're just on some list somewhere. Um, so we get plenty of those, but we really would like to talk to people who are actively engaged in the process of running for political office, especially in the Midwest, especially without you know, people who don't get the megaphones from uh the East from our coastal elite friends who will have them on and talk about the men give them a bump, which is great. That's wonderful. But we would like to do what we can for the little men and small men and small women, not in stature but in uh in reach and voice, uh who are here in the Midwest, who are running for office to make this country a better place. Love to do it. And another thing you can do personally is share our show on social media. If you love this podcast, please get someone else to listen to it too. If you know somebody running for office, definitely turn them on to the Professional Left Podcast.

SPEAKER_07 1:00:23

Hey Drift Class, how are the Internet Kitties doing this week?

SPEAKER_04 1:00:27

Well, Blue Gal, the Internet Kitties, and I'm speaking of one in particular, appears to be on the mend and thanks you all very much for your good wishes.

SPEAKER_07 1:00:36

Barack Hussein, the Kenyan usurper, he's doing lots of good things, all the things. He's doing the things in the kitchen to eat food tonight. He's going potty in the potty box, he's uh walking around, and uh he seems to be making a full recovery from his illness. And we are so, so grateful for all your good thoughts.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:56

We're we're knocking on wood and monitoring every day because he's an old boy, you know, he's an old guy.

SPEAKER_07 1:01:01

He's 14.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:02

But um, thank you for all your kind words and good wishes.