← Next Comes What
Next Comes What
Trump Corruption Overdrive — Who Pays? And How to Fight Back.
00:42:34
Trump isn't just pushing corruption to get a cut of the action--he wants to run the whole game. Read the post that inspired this episode: Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer’s Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: Today's episode of...
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- [00:00]
Andrea Pitzer
You're listening to. Next comes what from Degenerate Art. Each week, we'll look at one aspect of authoritarianism to figure out how we got where we are and how to fight back. This is Andrea Pitzer. In October 2011, I went to Russia to do reporting for my first book, which was about Vladimir Nabokov, the writer. For two of my days there, a graduate student named Fyodor walked with me around St. Petersburg, where Nabokov had been born and where he spent his childhood. That trip took place only months before Vladimir Putin, who had been president before, would return to that office, though he had effectively remained in power as prime minister in his four years away from the presidency. Walking miles and miles together, Fyodor and I talked a lot about the relative state of our two countries. And we agreed that Russia was in much worse shape politically. And he underlined it by saying something along the lines of, until an American president associates with criminal motorcycle gangs, you will never be able to compete with our government's malice and corruption.
- [01:18]
Chuck Zito
The Night Wolves are loyal to the Kremlin, ultra orthodox and convinced patriots. Their president is Alexander Saldostanov. The Surgeon, as he's known, is a close friend of the Russian president. It was a great honor for me to be introduced to Putin, and I am also honored to be regarded as his friend.
- [01:41]
Andrea Pitzer
That kind of stuck with me and I thought of his words again honestly, with a sense of dread. More than a decade later, when last May, Chuck Zito, the former head of the Hell's Angels, sat in attendance at Donald Trump's hush money trial in New York.
- [01:58]
Chuck Zito
Actor and former leader of Hell's Angels, Chuck Zito joins me now. Why did you show up today? To show your love? I, I, I would always support President Trump. We know each other over 40 years.
- [02:10]
Andrea Pitzer
It wasn't just that motorcycle gangs can be Mafia style syndicates or that Trump was associating with bad people, because clearly he's already had some involvement in both those directions.
- [02:24]
Chuck Zito
Ghislaine Maxwell is in prison and a lot of people want to know if she's going to turn in powerful people. I'm wondering, do you feel that she's going to turn in powerful men? How do you see that working out? I don't know. I haven't really been following it too much. I just wish her well.
- [02:39]
Andrea Pitzer
But part of the escalation of the crisis for me was that his association was an embrace of corruption that seeks to supplant independent justice and open society with thug enforcers and a warped economy of bribes and favors. And unfortunately, that sense of dread has only grown since last May. And it's clear that Trump has already taken us a good way down that road and is driving the country farther and further in that direction in just the first days of his second administration. And I would say that corruption is accelerating at an alarming rate. Let's get to some breaking news into us out of the White House and from Silicon Valley. President Trump, we've learned, has signed an agreement with Meta to settle a lawsuit that he filed against the company for suspending his account after the attack on the Capitol on January 6th, four years ago. The settlement, we understand to be $25 million. So today I'm going to talk about the different kinds of corruption happening right now and what we can do about them. I want to say two things before we start.
- [03:54]
Chuck Zito
I think it's a very rude introduction. I don't know exactly why you would do something like that.
- [04:00]
Andrea Pitzer
First is I encourage you very much to subscribe to the newsletter that is sort of the pedestal from which this podcast leaps off. You can find it at my website, andreapitzer. Com. Those paid subscriptions actually help us make the podcast and keep it free for everybody. The second thing I wanted to say was if you haven't seen the show before or listened to it at all, please keep in mind that at the end of each episode, there is always. After all the grim things that I will go through in the history that I will tell you, there is always a list of ways you can absolutely make a difference and very concrete things you can do.
- [04:40]
Chuck Zito
The world is held together, really. It is held together by the love and the passion of very few people.
- [04:46]
Andrea Pitzer
Stick around or skip ahead, but don't just leave in despair.
- [04:50]
Chuck Zito
Of course you can despair. Walk down the street of any city, any afternoon, and look around you. What you gotta remember is what you're looking at is also you. Everyone you're looking at is also you.
- [05:06]
Andrea Pitzer
There is actually room for some hope and certainly for a lot of opportunities for you to do things.
- [05:12]
Chuck Zito
You could be that person, you could be that monster, you could be that copy. And you're to decide on yourself. Not to be.
- [05:30]
Andrea Pitzer
To be clear, I'm focusing on the mechanics of corruption today. But that's not to say that dealing with corruption by itself is the answer. Trump's deliberate invocations of racism, misogyny, and scapegoating queer communities, these are all also a key part of the engine of corruption, and they serve as the rationale by which he can take extreme actions and by which part of the population can be convinced. To let corrupt actors into the system and to let corruption take hold is our duty to fight for our freedom.
- [06:05]
Chuck Zito
In Hackensack last night, migrants, asylum seekers and immigration advocates rallied outside the offices of Representative Josh Gottheimer. They urged the Democratic congressman to vote no on the legislation.
- [06:18]
Andrea Pitzer
Trump has campaigned and won on a politics of division of criminals versus folks that are not. But the Lake and Riley act is an attempt to categorize all of us as criminals. We're going to have to address all that as a country, too. But one way to get people engaged in working together and avoid getting mired in kind of culture war arguments in ways that only help the people deploying hateful rhetoric is to talk about who is paying the price for the policies that these people are pushing.
- [06:50]
Chuck Zito
We've got to take care of each other.
- [06:52]
Andrea Pitzer
This community has lived through the HIV.
- [06:55]
Chuck Zito
Crisis and come together, and we're going to do the same thing now. And especially here in San Francisco, Trump's.
- [07:01]
Andrea Pitzer
Executive order, already facing legal challenges.
- [07:04]
Chuck Zito
At base, it basically says you don't exist and you're not entitled to the protection of the law.
- [07:10]
Andrea Pitzer
That's truly disturbing because a lot of people are going to be paying the price.
- [07:15]
Chuck Zito
The Stop workage order has blown up really important work and hurting a really important institution in significant ways.
- [07:24]
Andrea Pitzer
USAID is responsible for taking care of.
- [07:26]
Chuck Zito
Procuring the drugs and other supplies that are needed that are keeping 20 million people living with HIV alive. That shuts those orders stop going up.
- [07:35]
Andrea Pitzer
Today, I'm going to mostly focus on the causes of and mechanisms of corruption and show how to disrupt them. But there are a lot of different paths to doing that. I want to look at different kinds of corruption first. So I want to look at the corruption of information, the corruption of politicians and the political process, the corruption of the legal system, the corruption of the office of the president and the corruption of everyday life, as well as the straight money grift that Trump is driving right now. That is at the heart of a lot of these kinds of corruption, because.
- [08:10]
Chuck Zito
You are all people that have a lot of money. I know 20 of you and you're rich as hell. We're going to give you tax cuts.
- [08:18]
Andrea Pitzer
We have to sort of say up front, too, that the stage was set for a lot of what's happening long before Trump entered the White House.
- [08:25]
Chuck Zito
This is the debate that Richard Nixon could never live down. And which party do we want to leave the United States? Mr. Nixon, would you like to comment on that statement? I have no comment.
- [08:35]
Andrea Pitzer
One of the most reliable means to corrupt a democracy is through displacing journalism with propaganda or at the very least, deluging the public in a slush of both. That dilutes the ability to know what's happening at any given moment and why. Longtime head of Fox News, Roger Ailes had begun a political career all the way back in 1968 as Richard Nixon's executive producer for television. During Nixon's first campaign as a 27.
- [09:04]
Chuck Zito
Year old producer on the Mike Douglas show, Roger Ailes overheard Richard Nixon waiting to go on the air. Say it was a shame that a man had to resort to gimmicks like television to get elected. Mr. Ailes replied, Television isn't a gimmick, and if you think so, you'll lose. A few days later, Richard Nixon hired Roger Ailes. Mr. Ailes worked on Richard Nixon's 1968 campaign, on Ronald Reagan's 1984 re election campaign, and on George H.W. bush's 1988 campaign. In 1996, Mr. Ailes joined the News Corporation to found a new cable television.
- [09:41]
Andrea Pitzer
Network, Fox News, in between Nixon and the founding of Fox News. Decades later, however, there was this watershed moment that would change the whole journalistic landscape for broadcast media.
- [09:54]
Chuck Zito
This is interesting this day in history. August 4, 1987. The Federal Communications Commission abolished the Fairness doctrine.
- [10:06]
Andrea Pitzer
In the 1980s, the FCC under Ronald Reagan released broadcasters from what was known as the Fairness Doctrine. This doctrine required equal airtime and balanced coverage for conflicting views on issues of public importance. And it had entered law in part with changes that were made to the communications act in 1959. And that doctrine was repealed in 1987, though some elements of it continued to be enforced until 2000. So it's really after 1987 that you see the corruption of the US information sphere take hold in earnest. And it was the following year, 1988, that Rush Limbaugh's political commentary on radio became nationally syndicated, which ushered in Rush.
- [10:58]
Chuck Zito
Limbaugh's polarizing and immensely popular style that attracted 15 million listeners a week who felt dominant media outlets had a liberal bias.
- [11:09]
Andrea Pitzer
That close juxtaposition was not an accident. It was perfectly understood how the two were linked at the time and what the effects would be. With the Wall Street Journal editorial that proclaimed Rush Limbaugh was the first man to proclaim himself liberated from the East Germany of liberal media domination. He would listen to the radio on the long drive. Then he started to change.
- [11:35]
Chuck Zito
The feminazis began their quest to make women more like men, dress like Us acquire power like us, have careers like us.
- [11:42]
Andrea Pitzer
All that Rush Limbaugh is one of my heroes.
- [11:45]
Chuck Zito
I agree with him.
- [11:46]
Andrea Pitzer
In politics, Fox News and other propaganda style reporting outlets weren't far behind Limbaugh.
- [11:54]
Chuck Zito
And then it got worse.
- [11:55]
Andrea Pitzer
After he discovered Fox News, his new beliefs came first. It was almost like he joined a cult or had a new religion.
- [12:04]
Chuck Zito
Frank is the family pest. He has to force his political views on all of us.
- [12:09]
Andrea Pitzer
With Fox, launched by Rupert Murdoch in 1996 with Roger Ailes at the helm.
- [12:14]
Chuck Zito
Roger Ailes was a pioneer in the whole art of the sound bite. He told Nixon that America is dumb. So give him something simple, boil it down and they'll get it. Ailes was so involved with advising the administration, he even outlined Nixon's role in the lighting of the White House Christmas tree. But his designs for the GOP went much deeper. Ailes was outlining a way to avoid the censorship, the priorities and the prejudices of network news selectors and disseminators. Written in 1970, this memo talks about how television had become the most powerful news source because people are lazy and want their thinking done. For them, it became the blueprint for Fox News.
- [12:58]
Andrea Pitzer
Though isn't officially state propaganda, Fox News functioned as effectively working as a propaganda appendage of the Republican party.
- [13:09]
Chuck Zito
They don't know their brains are being changed. They don't know this mechanism. They're just there. They listen to it.
- [13:14]
Andrea Pitzer
With Rupert Murdoch seeming to direct occasional forays against it to pressure the party.
- [13:21]
Chuck Zito
Make no mistake about it, Trump had a bad night. He rose to debate repeatedly when she baited him, something I'm sure his advisors had begged him not to do.
- [13:30]
Andrea Pitzer
But a nation of grandparents minds along with their votes were captured. My father, my stepmother used to be very loving and caring, patient, very kind hearted, Christian based individuals.
- [13:46]
Chuck Zito
And we noticed that they became more hostile towards people that were not believing the way that they did.
- [13:55]
Andrea Pitzer
Their conversation became very hateful. In the midst of all this, the decline of print newspapers began. For reasons unrelated to the Fairness Doctrine.
- [14:13]
Chuck Zito
Over the past few decades, more than 2,000 newspapers across the country have closed, leaving many communities without a reliable source of local information. Researchers say this crisis in journalism, driven by changes in technology, is fueling the country's political divisions.
- [14:29]
Andrea Pitzer
But the catastrophic drop in subscribers and advertising revenue led the footprint of reported actual news to shrink dramatically, increasing the relative roles of propagandized local and national broadcasts in other media. There's also the equally troubling situation that we have with the surviving newspapers where we've lost more than half of the newspaper newsroom journalists that we had just in 2008. We're calling that the rise of the ghost newspaper, in which papers are basically shells of their former selves. In addition, with online technology, the massive production of garbage content has become just unbelievably easy.
- [15:14]
Chuck Zito
I want to thank the Nelpois, Aiden Ross, Theo Vaughn, Bustle with the Boys, and last but not least, the mighty and powerful Joe Rogan.
- [15:24]
Andrea Pitzer
While those names may sound unfamiliar to some, they are all part of a growing online ecosystem that's been dubbed the the manosphere, a term loosely defined as male centered content published on platforms like TikTok, YouTube and the popular live streaming site for gamers. Twitch Depressing is so crooked during his campaign, candidate Trump saw massive untapped potential to reach young male voters by appearing on podcasts like the Joe Rogan Experience. We are drowning in a literal shitload of information, most of it terrible, and more and more of it targeting gullible consumers for financial ends, political gain, or both. The corruption of the information sphere is becoming more and more widespread. For these online content creators, the focus often isn't politics, says Internet and culture writer Joshua Citorella.
- [16:18]
Chuck Zito
These are just general men's interests, sports, comedy, things like this, looking at pictures of attractive women. But if you dig a bit deeper into some of these communities, there are critiques about modernity, women's liberation, women joining the workforce.
- [16:34]
Andrea Pitzer
Now the information sphere is controlled by billionaires, the financial corruption of the billionaire class, and they're cozying up to Trump to further degrade access to news.
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Chuck Zito
Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon Shung blocked his paper's endorsement of Kamala Harris. Three editors at the LA Times, including a Pulitzer Prize winning writer, resigned in protest of that decision.
- [16:56]
Andrea Pitzer
Decision this all matters tremendously. The Washington Post under Jeff Bezos is just one tragic example of really important legitimate reporting being suppressed and honestly distorted because of that billionaire ownership. A longtime cartoonist for the Washington Post has quit working for the paper after she says her latest cartoon design was killed. Ann Telney says she she's never had a cartoon scrapped because of its controversial subject matter in the 16 years she had worked there and because of it, Telnace is criticizing her now former employer, calling the nixing of her political cartoon a danger to a free press. This is a rough draft of the killed cartoon Telney shared on Substack, explaining why she resigned. She describes the drawing as one that quote, criticizes the billionaire tech and media chief executives who have been doing their best to to curry favor with the incoming president Elect Trump. And as JP Hill wrote recently about Zuckerberg and Meta, he noted that Facebook has 3 billion users worldwide, Instagram has over 2 billion, and WhatsApp also has 3 billion.
- [18:14]
Chuck Zito
Yeah, that's so crazy. And it's almost half of Earth. Well, on a monthly basis, it is probably half.
- [18:20]
Andrea Pitzer
This One man has a greater impact on our communications than anyone else on Earth. None of these kinds of corruption I'm detailing today are independent of one another. And it's not just the information landscape that's involved. In a democracy, a core concept is that the leader has to submit to the law, that leaders are accountable to the people in how they rule and carry out their duties.
- [18:46]
Chuck Zito
No penance would ever expiate the sin against free government of holding that a president can escape control of executive powers by law through assuming his military role. I assume you agree with that statement by Justice Jackson. Yes, I do. It simply reflects the basic principle that no man is above the law, not the president and not the Congress. And that's why the courts have the obligation, and have had since Marbury versus Madison, to say what the law is.
- [19:15]
Andrea Pitzer
Due in part to. To a long line of unaccountable presidents. This has become a shocking, unreachable standard right now in the United States. Just think back to the 70s and Nixon being pardoned by Ford.
- [19:32]
Chuck Zito
But it is not the ultimate fate of Richard Nixon that most concerns me, though surely it deeply troubles every decent and every compassionate person. My concern is the immediate future of this great country.
- [19:52]
Andrea Pitzer
Think of the Iran Contra affair, where George H.W. bush pardoned his colleagues from the Reagan administration.
- [20:01]
Chuck Zito
But the larger point is all part of overcoming the Vietnam syndrome. It's all about the executive branch figuring out how it can reassert and project military power free from all of this democratic oversight that Congress had prohibited aid to the Contras, and that was the main kind of prompt that forced the Reagan administration to.
- [20:21]
Andrea Pitzer
That and the main operation run through Vice President George H.W.
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Chuck Zito
Bush'S office and Oliver North.
- [20:27]
Andrea Pitzer
Think of the lack of accountability at any high level for the government embrace of torture and black sites, for detention in the war on terror, or for the launching of preemptive war against Iraq on a false basis.
- [20:41]
Chuck Zito
I hear the voices and I read the front page and I know the speculation. But I'm the decider and I decide what is best.
- [20:47]
Andrea Pitzer
Trump's invulnerability didn't come out of nowhere. And now this basic standard that has been met by so many other countries, the ability to hold a leader to account is missing. Here. France has done it twice.
- [21:06]
Chuck Zito
France's highest court on Wednesday upheld an appeal court decision that found former President Nicolas Sarkozy guilty of corruption and influence peddling while in office.
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Andrea Pitzer
Korean justice took another step in recent days when impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol was indicted, prosecutors accusing him of being.
- [21:25]
Chuck Zito
A ringleader of insurrection, his indictment making him the country's first sitting head of state to face a criminal trial.
- [21:32]
Andrea Pitzer
But here in the U.S. trump has spent the last several years escaping legal penalties again and again and is further corrupting the very ability to ever hold him accountable.
- [21:44]
Chuck Zito
The Department of Justice has moved to drop the classified documents case against President Trump's former co defendants. The two were accused of aiding Trump in concealing boxes of documents from both federal authorities and Trump's own attorney. The move is now the latest signal that the DOJ is moving quickly to clean house on any proceedings that have been associated with Trump's criminal cases.
- [22:05]
Andrea Pitzer
He has pardoned the brownshirt wannabes who tried to overthrow the government on January 6, 2021, effectively extending the lawlessness down to individual and local actors, as well as creating a paramilitary group allied to his political needs.
- [22:22]
Chuck Zito
The Tarrio and Rhodes pardons, in particular pardon planners of the violent overthrow of Congress. They are, in my respectful opinion or disrespectful opinion, the most shameful acts of pardon that any president has ever done.
- [22:40]
Andrea Pitzer
The shackling of the Department of Justice by stripping of an independence and the attempt to remove the inspectors general at various agencies.
- [22:49]
Chuck Zito
Inspectors general are the hope for the American people. We count on them for unblemished analysis.
- [22:56]
Andrea Pitzer
If it is successful, will make the president completely unaccountable in any direct way to the people. Don't get me wrong, political corruption has always existed, but it has expanded dramatically in the last 15 years or so, with the current staggering levels of political corruption, largely made possible by the intrusion of dark money into political campaigning. The Supreme Court decision in citizens united in 2010 overturned a hundred year old precedent and allowed unlimited money in political campaigns, arguing that corporations have speech rights too, as the Brennan center reported. But perhaps the most significant outcomes of Citizen United have been the creation of Super PACs, which empower the wealthiest donors, and the expansion of dark money through shadowy nonprofits that don't disclose their donors. Any of these super PACs were never actually independent. They often work closely with the candidates they support. So are there fig leaf limits that Citizens United supposedly had in place? Of course. Do they actually work to keep corruption from entering the system? Of course not. Donald Trump took this Coordination to the next level. In 2024, not only did billionaire funded super PACs help Trump close a big fundraising gap. A group paid for by Elon Musk even took on core components of the campaign like calling voters and planning speeches. All of this would have been illegal before Citizens United. This, I would argue this whole approach serves to corrupt government, bending it to serve the ultra wealthy and to do it with little or no transparency about harms to American citizens. Who is benefiting from this infusion? How it's changing government, or even that it's happening?
- [24:56]
Chuck Zito
FAA directors are appointed for five year terms, which means explicitly they're supposed to span multiple presidential terms. But that did not happen with this FAA director. This one left the job on Inauguration Day. And until this morning, Donald Trump hadn't gotten around to appointing anybody to replace him. Well, why did the FAA director leave on Inauguration Day in September, while Elon Musk was busy spending the quarter billion.
- [25:27]
Andrea Pitzer
Dollars that he dumped into Donald Trump's.
- [25:29]
Chuck Zito
Campaign to make Donald Trump President Again, Mr. Musk had posted a picture online of the head of the FAA and had demanded his resignation. He needs to resign.
- [25:40]
Andrea Pitzer
Even more dispiriting in terms of corruption is what seems tantamount to open bribery with several Supreme Court justices who have received lavish vacations, indirect financial support or other benefits from wealthy donors.
- [25:55]
Chuck Zito
Here's a quick recap. Island hopping on a super yacht, luxurious jet, rights around the world, private school tuition, and more. These are just some of the undisclosed gifts ProPublica found justices repeatedly failed to disclose from ultra wealthy GOP donors, raising questions about influence and ethics at the.
- [26:12]
Andrea Pitzer
Nation'S highest court, with no mechanism to hold them accountable in ways available for use against sitting legislators or judges at every other level of the country's judicial system.
- [26:24]
Chuck Zito
Among record low approval ratings and public pressure, the Supreme Court released its first ever code of conduct. The code does not include any enforcement mechanism.
- [26:33]
Andrea Pitzer
In theory, the judicial and the legislative branches still have the ability to check Trump. And these are definitely possibilities. We shouldn't surrender completely just because they've become more unlikely now. Yet it has to be acknowledged that the corruption of the Republican Party is complete. Trump picks Hegseth, who is accused of sexually assaulting and harassing women, and oh by the way, has said publicly he doesn't believe women should serve in combat roles. And Joni Ernst is a combat veteran. Trump proved skilled in the way that a neighborhood bully is skilled at bringing to heel anyone of stature in his own party who might have been able to act against him at compromising them. And diminishing their authority.
- [27:20]
Chuck Zito
How does Ernst respond to all of this? I've seen these pressure campaigns before from Trump's movement, and this might be the fastest effect that I've ever seen. Within 72 hours after this campaign really kicked off, she meets with him again and she puts out this statement. And her language was unrecognizable. She's now saying she's supporting him through this process. The second half of the statement was even more remarkable. I look forward to a hearing based on truth, not anonymous sources, so that those last three words, those are the talking points of the Trump team.
- [28:03]
Andrea Pitzer
Think of Mitt Romney's sheepish photo at his fancy dinner with Trump after he'd already called him a con man and a fraud. More recently, recall RFK Jr. Eating McDonald's on a plane with Trump after decrying Trump's food choices as poison and promising to make the country healthy again. Or the generals who stood next to Trump in the moment, perhaps telling themselves they were holding the line from inside the system, only to find their later condemnations of him had no effect at all. Where the portrait hung of the 20th chairman of the Joint Chiefs, there is a blank wall. But now the Trump administration is doing more than painting over Mark Milley's legacy. It's threatening to punish him for comments like this.
- [28:49]
Chuck Zito
We don't take an oath to a king or a queen or to a tyrant or a dictator, and we don't take an oath to a wannabe dictator.
- [28:58]
Andrea Pitzer
Trump insulted competitors Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.
- [29:02]
Chuck Zito
To tell you about the media, they are the most dishonest people. They're worse than Rubio, and they're worse. They're worse than Cruz. They are worse than little Marco, and they're worse than Lion Ted Cruz. I'm telling you. Lion Ted. Lion Ted. What's your name? My name's Lion Ted Cruz.
- [29:24]
Andrea Pitzer
Only to win their unwavering support.
- [29:27]
Chuck Zito
And we will not be alone in this fight. For leading us in this fight will be a man who, although wounded and facing danger, he stood up and raised.
- [29:37]
Andrea Pitzer
His fist after they realized the hold that he had on the party.
- [29:40]
Chuck Zito
You never use words carelessly. And yet you called this a terror attack when by no definition was it a terror attack. That's a lie. You told that lie on purpose, and I'm wondering why you did. Well, Tucker, thank you for having me on. When you aired your episode last night, I sent you a text shortly thereafter and said, listen, I'd like to go on, because the way I phrased things yesterday, it was Sloppy, and it was, frankly, dumb.
- [30:07]
Andrea Pitzer
Through name calling and his own theatrical shamelessness, he has exposed Republican and even in some case, Democratic politicians as cowards.
- [30:17]
Chuck Zito
Thus, conscience doth make cowards of us all.
- [30:22]
Andrea Pitzer
It's not just the legislature and the courts that are furthering corruption. The office of the President itself is being abused like never before, which is saying something because the presidency has overreached on power pretty consistently across almost my whole lifetime and well before it, too. But Trump is really going the extra mile on this. He's abrogating alliances, working against the interests of the United States, ending the Paris Climate Treaty, threatening NATO without any of the kind of continuity that really used to lead the US to be seen as a somewhat stable partner. We just aren't going to have that going forward.
- [31:01]
Chuck Zito
Imagine if Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping threatened a hostile takeover of Greenland or the Panama Canal. So what about the President's elect of the United States? Is Donald Trump serious?
- [31:12]
Andrea Pitzer
But of course, Trump takes that corruption further by mingling nearly every action as the nation's leader with those which will benefit him financially.
- [31:22]
Chuck Zito
Do you intend to continue selling products that benefit yourself personally while you're president? Well, I don't know if it benefited. I don't know where it is. I don't know much about it other than I launched it. I heard it was very successful. I haven't checked it. Where is it today? You made a lot of money, sir. How much? Several billion dollars, it seems like in the last several days. Several billion. That's peanuts for these guys.
- [31:47]
Andrea Pitzer
As has been reported so much, his son in law received a $2 billion investment from the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia who's implicated in the murder of a Washington Post columnist.
- [31:58]
Chuck Zito
Earlier this week, Kushner was asked by Axios about the US Intelligence report which holds MBS responsible for Jamal Khashoggi's murder. Do you agree with the dni? Do you or do you believe that report? Are we really still doing this, Dan?
- [32:15]
Andrea Pitzer
Yeah, absolutely.
- [32:16]
Chuck Zito
So? So I have not seen the DNI report that the Biden administration put out there.
- [32:20]
Andrea Pitzer
The Trump Organization is currently attempting to reacquire their prior location in the old Post office pavilion in D.C. that he had open during his last administration. A list of the ways his family has tried to monetize or benefit financially from the office could go on for hundreds of pages. And perhaps even worse than Trump's personal greed is the way it enables outsized political influence from others. After flattery and million dollar donations to Trump's inaugural campaign, Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos found themselves seated with Musk in front of Trump's Cabot nominees for the event.
- [33:01]
Chuck Zito
America's first populist party, so called, emerged during the Gilded Age, but it was a populist party that was railing against the billionaires. Now populists, American populism, such as it is elected a billionaire president. And this billionaire president is in league with the other billionaires.
- [33:18]
Andrea Pitzer
The pardons that Trump gave on arrival or on return to the White House has unleashed some political extremists who are willing to do violence in Trump's name. We've already seen that Resources tell CNN that Trump administration officials have discussed inviting some pardoned January six convicts to the White House for a potential visit and meeting with the president. One of the officers attacked on January6. Michael Fanon joins us now. First, your reaction to these discussions happening in the White House, Michael, to invite some of the riders to the White House.
- [33:53]
Chuck Zito
I mean, it doesn't surprise me. You know, Donald Trump is, excuse me, ingratiated himself with these violent criminals ever since he announced his candidacy from Waco, Texas. I mean, that being said, it's, it's obviously outrageous, it's an insult. But Donald Trump is an insurrectionist president. And so I think it's fitting to be honest with you.
- [34:18]
Andrea Pitzer
Their freedom now and the lack of consequences for that violence will go further toward corrupting politicians who have already acknowledged in the past that they are afraid for themselves and their families. And that's his Republican supporters.
- [34:32]
Chuck Zito
I had heard from people in his circle that he was really worried about what a Trump reelection would be for him and his family. And I asked him about it and he didn't want to go there at first. And I think it's in part because he didn't want to set himself up as a martyr. I think he also has understandable security concerns about tomorrow talking about this stuff too much in public. But once I did get him talking, it was clear that he had thought through the ramifications of a president being reelected who has said that he will use the office to visit retribution, revenge on his political enemies. And Mitt Romney knows that he would be on that enemy's list.
- [35:07]
Andrea Pitzer
It's easy to imagine the moral corruption of hateful ideology and financial gain through corruption as separate somehow. But in truth, some of the most ideological and repressive regimes were incredibly corrupt and self dealing, just as the countries that we've historically referred to as Mafia states. Nazi Germany, for instance, had tremendous levels of corruption, not only in terms of theft from German Jews, of real estate and Artwork and money, but also in self dealing among the most powerful figures in the Reich. The Soviet Union under communism and post Soviet Russia, one ideological, one hardly. So have both seen staggering levels of greed. And Trump has embraced that kind of greed right here in the US as well, pushing a society which has always privileged the interests of the wealthy, pushing it closer and closer to a pure oligarchy in which the people have little or no means by which to rule themselves. So, in sum, Trump has corrupted almost every aspect of political, social and legal life in America. And all that corruption is aimed at helping to create a political and economic class that controls everything about our daily lives, while themselves being untouchable.
- [36:35]
Chuck Zito
What we are dealing with right now is that the billionaire class, which owns so much of our economy, which owns so much of our media, they are now moving aggressively to own our political system as well. So we got a lot of work in front of us.
- [36:55]
Andrea Pitzer
In terms of what to do about it. First, the bad news. Once a society becomes deeply corrupted so that everyday life is affected across the board, it's very hard to unwind. There's a 2018 report from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and it looked at anti corruption initiatives around the world and successful efforts that had had real outcomes. And they followed seven examples in particular of successful change. And they noted that only one, Burkina Fussel, had successfully implemented actual structural reforms in the country and not just specific, smaller gauge reforms. However, in the years since that report, Burkina Faso has had two military coups. It's Burkina Faso's second coup in just nine months. Army officers addressed the nation.
- [37:53]
Chuck Zito
The national television broadcast ended doubts over who's now in charge. The military leaders had overthrown their own lieutenant turned president and promised to tackle the volatile security situation.
- [38:05]
Andrea Pitzer
That is just to give you an idea that once correction sets in deeply, it is very difficult to undo. On the plus side, even though Pete Hegseth was just confirmed as Secretary of Defense and that's not a good thing for the country, there is still the saving grace that for right now, Trump does not have the kind of access as a leader to the US Military working to enforce his corruption that allowed the kind of coups that we've seen in Burkina Faso. Right about now, you're probably feeling kind of overwhelmed. And so I want to speak to that for just a second. If you find yourself getting too freaked out to function over and over at every new report of corruption or every bad action that Trump takes, you won't be much help to yourself or others. You don't have to keep up with each thing in order to do something. So the good news is that corruption in the US is not yet as widespread and endemic as many of the countries I visited when I was researching my Concentration Camp book. Because of that, I think we have a lot of prospects for stopping corruption in its tracks if we can work together on it. Honestly, it is much easier to limit corruption locally than to than it is to try to tackle it or even keep up with all of it nationally. In that Carnegie study I mentioned, civilians were able to make a difference in a lot of ways on a local level or on specific initiatives. And by building little communities to tackle local transparency and information gathering, you'll be creating potential future networks and leaders to handle the bigger issues. And one area that I think is key is independent news outlets. If you have money, offer financial support to those doing shoe leather level reporting. Boltz magazine has been doing fantastic work on electoral issues and grassroots initiatives for change. Check for local independent coverage like the 51st news, a worker led nonprofit news source about Life in Washington, D.C. or look for outlets focused on specific topics like 19th news, which reports on gender politics and policies. Around both those, look at what's already available in your area. There might be small outlets you aren't even aware of yet that are doing really good work. However, if there's no good coverage of your community, you can create what's missing. You don't even have to start a big publication. Just get a group of friends together and take turns attending school board meetings and writing them up, putting them online. Start a newsletter, a small one, that covers your local services, even intermittently. Look at rules for candidacy in your local elections. Make sure they're being met. Make sure that any public meetings that are required to be open to everyone are in fact held in public. The US has an amazing long history of reforms, from the workplace to voting and almost every aspect of civic life, many of which started on the local level. And there may already be people with experience doing the thing that you might want to do near you. You may have an existing community you could already join. If not, you can talk to others in other places who will help you make that community in your home. And everybody knows that corrupt systems thrive on suckers. There are all kinds of games and all kinds of suckers. Nobody wants to be the dupe. And there are other people, people who.
- [41:44]
Chuck Zito
Stay up nights figuring out how to take away what they've got.
- [41:48]
Andrea Pitzer
The more we can call attention to the corruption in this system on every level and how it benefits the powerful, the harder it is to fool people and the easier it is to get them to join you and demand change. And if we can do that at the local level, we will insulate whole pockets of the country from going over to becoming the kind of nation that Trump would like to turn us into.
- [42:18]
Chuck Zito
Thanks for listening to Next Comes what? Please share this with anyone who's looking for ways to help each other survive this mess. To support this podcast, Please subscribe@Andreapitzer.com and consider giving Next Comes what? A five star review where you get your podcasts.