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In just five days President Biden has reversed much of Trump’s agenda from the building of the boarder wall to rejoining the Paris Climate Accords with a flurry of executive orders aimed at dismantling his toxic agenda. Mea Culpa welcomes Ben and Brett Meiselas the duo behind Meidas Touch. Chances are you’ve seen their viral videos which have been viewed hundreds of millions of times during the campaign and post-election chaos as they pilloried the former president and advanced the progressive cause. For cool Mea Culpa gear, check out www.meaculpapodcast.com/merch To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policyLearn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

With the official purging of Liz Cheney, the GOP is now the party of the lunatic right. Gone are the moderate voices in favor of accused sex trafficker Matt Gaetz and QAnon Queen Marjorie Taylor Green. We get the inside scoop on her aggressive confrontation with AOC and her stalker level obsession with the Congresswoman. Finally, Donny Deutsch joins Mea Culpa to discuss the GOP brand in the age of insanity and much, much more.To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policyLearn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The nation collectively exhaled a sigh of real as Joe Biden was inaugurated the 46th president of the United States. His address was a marked contrast from Trump’s dystopian American Carnage speech four years prior. But the new president inherits a nation beset by crisis and pandemic with bitter internal divisions. The elephant in the room remains the now former President Trump whose impeachment trial looms. Meanwhile America waits for justice to be served. David Enrich from the New York Times joins Michael to discuss Trump’s perilous financial future and is own date with legal jeopardy.For cool Mea Culpa gear, check out www.meaculpapodcast.com/merchTo learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy

Tomorrow's inauguration may spell the end for Donald Trump's disastrous presidency, but the monster he unleashed upon us January 6th will be with us for a generation. Michael discusses how the rioters were not some extraordinary group of hardened extremists, but rather, they come from our own communities; representing, as writer Hannah Arendt noted in her landmark 1963 New Yorker essay about the trial of Adolf Eichmann, "the banality of evil." The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson joins Michael to discuss how we go about dismantling Trump's ugly legacy and hold the rioters and those who supported them accountable. For cool Mea Culpa gear, check out www.meaculpapodcast.com/merchTo learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policyLearn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On Wednesday, Donald Trump became the first President in US history to be impeached twice, this time for inciting an insurrection and sending a mob to attack the US capital in a desperate move to remain in power. The impeachment saw rare bi-partisan support with nine GOP representatives joining the democrats in calling for the president's ouster. The trial now moves to the Senate. MSNBC host Ali Velshi joins Michael as they analyze this unprecedented moment.

The January 6th MAGA riots that saw thousands of Trump loyalists ransack the Capitol Building will stain the President's legacy and will likely shadow the GOP for decades. The revulsion for Trump has grown to a fever pitch with scores of lawmakers calling for his removal from office. This was always the inevitable end for Donald Trump, the violence a by product of the lies and divisive rhetoric he used to stoke fear and foment rage. The only surprise is that it took this long to happen. It was a heavy day and hard to watch. So we decided to lighten the mood by reaching out to Ben Stiller. Check out Michael's hilarious conversation with the movie funny man to soothe your soul after so much chaos and insurrection.

Norm Eisen is back with us today to unpack the repercussions of Mark Meadows testimony against Donald Trump along with a slew of recent defectors from Sidney Powell to Jenna Ellis. Each one of these is a body blow to Trump's weakening defense. But Meadows could put the smoking gun in his hand. If you happen to be tuning in for the first time, Eisen is a CNN Legal Analyst and the founder and executive chair of “States United Democracy Center”, a nonpartisan organization advancing free, fair, and secure elections. His articles for the Brookings Institute and elsewhere have made the case for why Trump and his band of criminal conspiracists represented a clear and present danger to democracy. The former Obama Ethics Czar and Ambassador to the Czech Republic joins us today to get to the heart of what’s going on.

Mea Culpa welcomes the Lincoln Project advisor Stuart Stevens. Regarded as one of the Republican Party’s most talented political gurus—a body of work that includes steering Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign in 2012—Stevens may also be the GOP’s most prominent defector when he abandoned his party as Trump rose to power. He despises the former president in a way that feels strikingly personal. While the Lincoln Project argues that Trump is perverting the Republican Party, Stevens doesn’t think Trump has perverted anything: Trump is the Republican Party, Stevens believes, and the Republican Party is Trump. Stuart believes there is no reclaiming his former party, it must be burned to the ground. Or to use a Vietnam-era metaphor, the Village must be destroyed in order to save it. Reflecting on a four-decade career in American politics, Stevens is convinced that Trump was not an aberrant zigzag. He was fate. “I saw a lot of this stuff, but I just chose to believe that this kind of dark side was the recessive gene, not the dominant one,” he says. “I was wrong.” Stevens joins Mea Culpa to discuss his fabulous new book “The Conspiracy to End America: Five Ways My Old Party Is Driving Our Democracy to Autocracy.” The book is part memoir and part Jeremiad as Stevens unpacks how we are moving towards an autocratic end.

Mea Culpa welcomes back to the show, legendary newsman David Corn, the Washington DC Bureau Chief of Mother Jones, and an on-air analyst for MSMBC. Corn and Michael Isikoff “co-authored, “Russian Roulette, The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump”. He’s also the author of four New York Times best-selling books and was the long-time Washington editor for “The Nation”. For a good read, check out “Our Land” — his twice-weekly newsletter that covers everything from news of the day to entertainment, but all told in Corn’s no bullshit style. Corn has been published multiple times, but his latest bestseller,” American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy” is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding our unprecedented times. He joins us today amidst unprecedented dysfunction in American government as the GOP continues for a third week without a House speaker, paralyzed by infighting between moderate and extremist factions of the GOP. On top of this, former President Trump awaits four separate criminal trials and has all but dared Judge Chuktan to jail him for violating his gag order. All the while war rages in Israel and Ukraine. It seems we are drifting without a rudder and American credibility is suffering.

Mea Culpa welcomes back our old friend Malcolm Nance. You may know Nance as the globally renowned expert on terrorism, extremism, and insurgency from his stunning new book, “They Want to Kill Americans: The Militias, Terrorists, and Deranged Ideology of the Trump Insurgency.” It became a New York Times best-seller as was his last book, the Plot to Hack America. He’s the counter-terrorism analyst for NBC and MSNBC. Nance is considered one of the "Great African-Americans in Espionage” by the International Spy Museum. But he is also extremely well-sourced on what’s happening in the armed forces and has spent time on the frontlines of Ukraine. Today he shifts his expertise and perspective to Israel and the readiness of the IDF to invade Gaza and perhaps face Hezbollah on its northern border with Lebanon. Nance joins us with answers to our most burning questions, like “how did this happen?”