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- [00:00]
Lee McGowan
Hello and welcome to the Politics Girl podcast. I'm your host, Lee McGowan. Let's get into it. Well, I had an amazing conversation with Deborah Archer, the president of the ACLU this week to discuss the fantastic work they're doing to protect our rights against illiberal actions of this administration. But as you know, over the weekend Donald Trump attacked Iran, dropping three giant bombs on their nuclear facilities. Which means you're going to have to wait to hear from Deborah because today we're going to have to focus on this horrifying and unprovoked attack that has put everyone in danger. Moving forward with this crisis, please understand that there is going to be a vast amount of deliberate propaganda and misinformation thrown at you. So it will be essential that you double check your sources. I do not believe our federal government can be trusted to give us the right information. I believe they will give us the story that they want us to know. And moving forward, I believe there's going to be a big push to make anyone who disagrees with this war appear to be un American or anti Semitic. Let's try really hard not to go down that path. I would also like to apologize ahead of time for there being ads in this podcast. This is just how podcasts are made. There is no other way to keep this kind of work going outside of a subscription model with sponsor support. I understand it might seem distasteful when we take a break from such a serious topic to discuss a product or a service, but please know the companies who have chosen to support this show are making a conscious effort to support Truth in the Time of Lies, and I deeply appreciate them for doing that. If you really hate ads, you can always sign up for Politics Girl Premium and get every show ad free along with my rant sent directly to your inbox. But if that's not for you, then just understand why the sponsors are an essential part of this show and allow me some leeway when I break from the conversation. Okay, so now that that's out of the way, let's move forward. Here is what we know as of Monday, June 23. On June 21, Trump preemptively struck Iran with three bunker buster bombs, officially bringing the US into direct conflict with the Middle Eastern nation. The Trump administration is calling this a preemptive strike. But since we were not in direct conflict with Iran ourselves, and Iran was in active peace talks regarding their conflict with Israel, preemptive in my opinion, really feels more like unprovoked. One thing I will say off the top is that you can be a patriot, you can love America and also be ready to stop seeing the US as the perpetual good guy. I think it's essential that we really start seeing things for what they are and not what we wish they were. If somebody bombs your country without provocation while you are in active peace talks, the country who dropped the bomb is the aggressor. In this case, that is us. There is no other way to look at that. Yes, the government of Iran is terrible. The regime running the nation is brutal and violent, cruel to their own people. Arguably the world's largest funder of terrorist groups including Hezbollah and Hamas. But America also played a role in that government coming to power. We are not innocent in creating the trouble the Middle east now finds itself in. The innocents are the civilians of the nation of Iran who have been treated appallingly by their own government. The facts remain the same. Trump bombed Iran. He was not acting in self defense. He was not acting with congressional authorization. He did not confer with our allies. He didn't even inform the leaders of our own country's opposition party. Democratic members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, the very people who, along with the Republicans on that committee, who are responsible for the leadership behind this kind of international action, were not even told this action would be taken, let alone asked about it. In fact, most people, from experts to journalists to Congressional members, only found out that we had attacked a foreign nation from a Trump truth social post which is a completely unacceptable way for people to find out about such a world changing action. The American President went rogue. Against logic, against intelligence reports, against constitutional law and against the majority will of the American people. We did not consent to war, we did not vote for it and we did not need it. And moving forward, we can't allow ourselves to be gaslit by anyone into believing that we did. We have seen this movie before. This is what the Bush administration did to us in Iraq in 2003. We were told by the same Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, I might add, that there were WMDs or weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and it was essential that America go in to protect international peace. Back then George W. Did the same thing Trump is doing now. He hit the people of Iraq hard, claimed victory early, then funded decades long conflicts in the Middle east which cost the US trillions of dollars, thousands of soldiers lives, hundreds of thousands of civilian lives in Middle east and gave an entire generation of US veterans ptsd. For what? To feed the war machine? To fulfill our 911 revenge fantasies? To please Israel to increase the wealth of a teeny tiny group of people and expand the US Influence in the region. But what did the American people get out of it? Debt. Debt that we are still trying to pay off. Debt that we are now paying off on the backs of people who need health care and Social Security. On money that we want to take from infrastructure and education. Unless you were an arms dealer, an oil and gas company, or a war hawk American politician, the decades of war in the Middle east should really be considered a costly failure. And we can't possibly want to do that again. As one smart veteran wrote about the US Bombing Iran, this is not the kind of thing you should be cheering. It doesn't matter if you're a Republican, a Democrat, an Independent or a non voter. This is the kind of action that rewrites history and not for the better. We have been told this action was a military operation because the Iranians have or are close to having nuclear weapons. But we do not know that. In fact, our own intelligence agencies and allied intelligence agencies say that they do not have it. The US Secretary of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, a woman chosen by Trump and confirmed by the Republican Senate, testified to Congress in March that American intelligence did not believe Iran was building nuclear weapons. And yet we went ahead and bombed them anyway because ultimately Trump did not care. Marco Rubio, our Secretary of State, when asked about the intelligence reports that showed Iran had not ordered nuclear weaponization, said that the intelligence was irrelevant. That was the word he used, irrelevant. When the host of the Sunday show he was on pushed back and said no. If Iran had weapons or not was exactly the point. And Rubio said no, it's not. Forget about intelligence. Forget about intelligence. That's where American foreign policy is now. Forget about congressional approval, forget about the Constitution, forget about the international rule of law. We just do what Donald Trump wants us to do and rules and fallout be damned. And that is not right. The administration is claiming this preemptive strike made Americans safer, but all they have done is make us less safe, even if we aren't talking about retaliation and we're just considering a nuclear armed Iran. If anything, this action has given the Iranian government government every motivation to develop a nuclear weapon as soon as possible. Donald Trump ran on the idea that he was the President of peace, that Kamala Harris and the Democrats were warmongers who would only get us into more endless wars. But he was the anti war candidate. And here we are six months in, at war in the Middle east again over weapons of mass destruction. That don't exist. Again, how are any of us better off for that? Now, you, like me, might question why America keeps getting to tell other countries that they can't have nukes. Or. Or they have to give up their nukes when we get to have them. I mean, isn't that a bit like, I got mine and I get to bully you with them, but you can't get yours because you might level the playing field? Yes, it is, and it does feel weird and kind of unfair, but the history of this idea is not new post World War II. In 1965, the UN started talks about nuclear weapons and how to make sure the technology wasn't getting out of hand. At the time, everyone knew that five countries, the us, the uk, France, China and Russia, the big allied winners of World War II, already had nukes, and they probably weren't going to give them up. So the UN created a treaty that said those five countries could keep their nuclear weapons, provided they agreed to share the knowledge they had around nuclear technology for peaceful means, for things like energy that were essential to benefit the rest of the world. In 1968, the Non Proliferation Treaty, or the NPT, was signed, which allowed those initial five countries to keep their nuclear weapons, with the rest of the UN nations agreeing that they would never try to build a nuclear weapon of their own. There are only four countries who never agreed to sign the npt, and those countries are South Sudan, which is a pretty new nation and far more geopolitically important, India, Pakistan, and Israel. Now, we are pretty sure those three countries do have their own nuclear weapons, but they're not telling us, and they never signed the npt, so they're technically not breaking any agreement. But when it comes to Iran, we know they are developing a nuclear program, but according to them, it is just for energy, which is allowed under the npt. And while other countries might believe the Iranian program is for weapons, we need to be clear that we have no actual proof of that. What we did have is a deal with them. In 2015, when Obama was president, his team negotiated a new agreement with Iran along with a number of other nations called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, jcpoa, more commonly known as the Iran Nuclear Deal, which limited the Iranian nuclear program. Under the jcpoa, strict limits were put on what Iran could do with its nuclear program in exchange for lifting international economic sanctions that were really crushing the nation. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran was in full compliance with its obligations. When Trump decided to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, and reinstate economic sanctions on the country. War hawks, along with countries that see Iran as a threat, like Israel and Saudi Arabia, were like, woohoo. We weren't being hard enough on Iran. But most of the US allies, along with most of Trump's highest level advisors, from General H.R. mcMaster to Rex Tillerson, were like, this is a mistake. Do not back out of this deal. You are going to destabilize the whole region and restart their nuclear program. So to be clear, we had a deal with Iran that was working. We were getting what we wanted out of it from diplomacy and without violence. The Iranian nuclear program was limited, and as Senator Tim Kaine recently said on the Senate floor, we did that without dropping bombs or assassinating scientists or killing civilians. Iran promised to never seek to acquire, purchase or develop nuclear weapons, as well as a whole series of limitations on their nuclear research and activity, and agreed to have the most comprehensive inspection regime come into their country to make sure they were living up to their promises. As Senator Kaine said, the agreement didn't turn Iran from a bad actor into a good one, but it limited the very nuclear program that everyone from the original agreement, from the U.S. france, Germany, the UK, Russia to China wanted to keep under control. So when the US Backed out of the deal in Trump's first term, Iran did the same and immediately began exceeding their previously enforced enrichment limits and stockpiling uranium, only moving them closer to a bomb that everyone didn't want them to have. Israel understandably saw this as a threat, and the erosion of trust between the two nations prompted increased tension. Talks of preemptive strikes became real strikes on June 13, 2025, with Israel targeting Iran's nuclear facilities and military leaders. This attack was a significant escalation in the ongoing conflict between the two nations. Iran then retaliated with drone strikes and missile attacks, which led to a wider regional conflict between the two nations. And as of June 21, the US has joined Israel in attacking Iranian nuclear sites, further complicating the situation. As American writer and professor David Rothkop wrote, the Trump administration has kicked the hornet's nest of the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism. At precisely the same moment, it has gutted many of America's most crucial counterterrorism resources. Rothkop calls Trump's actions stunningly foolhardy and puts America at greater risk today than we have been in years. To be clear, this did not have to happen. There was a working nuclear proliferation agreement with Iran, and they only started expanding their program when Trump tore it up. The expansion of their program understandably concerned their enemy and close neighbor, Israel. Israel attacked, killing innocent Iranian citizens. Iran counterattacked, killing innocent Israeli citizens. And America backed Israel up by roundhouse kicking Iran to the face for having the potential of a bomb that they only had because America allowed them to have it by destroying the deal that said they couldn't have it. Then America's response was we kicked your ass. Stay down. Also, now it's the time for peace. Needless to say, that is not what we're getting. The exact words of Trump's true social post that he put out to inform the nation that he had attacked another nation were were we have completed our very successful attack on three nuclear sites in Iran. Then he goes on and gives the name of the cities. He then says, all planes are now outside of Iranian airspace. A full payload of all CAPS bombs was dropped on the primary site, Fordo. Though we now know that several nuclear experts have told us that Iran likely moved a major stockpile of near weapons grade highly enriched uranium out of Fordo before the strike and they're most likely hiding it now. So it wasn't the complete obliteration that Trump is claiming it was. The true social post continues with Trump saying, all planes are safely on the way home. Congratulations to our great American warriors. No other military in the world could have done this. Saber rattle, saber rattle. Then in all caps he writes, now is the time for peace. His closing line reads like a stick it on the fridge of your office that says if you use the last coffee pod, don't forget to open a new box by saying thank you for your attention in this matter. I think as all the information unfolds and we learn more about what comes next, we have to keep in mind that no matter what you think about Iran, whether you believe they have nuclear capabilities, how you feel about Israel or Trump, that this did not need to happen and quite frankly, it shouldn't have happened. The fact of the matter is the President of the United States does not have the authority to start wars on his own. Only Congress, speaking on behalf of the people and with the power of the purse, can declare war. The President has some war powers, but only if we're already in an active conflict, which we are not. Otherwise, the Constitution is clear that the job of declaring war is very deliberately in the hands of Congress to discuss budget and make decisions. So no matter what you hear, this wasn't some decisive action from our President. This was a reckless decision from a man who was feeling impotent. This is classic authoritarian behavior. Historically, nothing turns around a tanking approval rating faster than going to war, and Trump was baited into doing just that. As writer Tom Nichols writes, there is no case that any rational person could possibly believe, even the most hawkish Bibi fan, that the threat was so instantaneous, literally hours or days, that Congress couldn't come back and vote no matter what the MAGA yes men or GOP sycophants might say. The this was not the right call. We know Donald Trump was embarrassed about his pathetic birthday parade. He's not getting the results he wanted by sending the National Guard and Marines into Los Angeles. He threatened to arrest the California governor and only made him look better. His ICE raids are wildly unpopular, his economy is tanking, people are discovering how horrible his big beautiful budget bill is, and his approval ratings are tanking. So the man needed a win. And boom goes the dynamite. Now the Republicans just have to get their story straight so the right wing media can sell it to us on a loop. This is classic strongman behavior. But the problem is Donald Trump is anything but strong. Donald Trump is a weakling and if anything, he got rolled. As George Conway, former Republican and founding member of the Lincoln Project, wrote on Blue sky, much as I would not dare to predict the consequences of this war, I do think we can summarize it thusly. A smart and evil man manipulated a stupid and evil man into a war against a fanatical and evil regime. What he is saying is Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, a leader currently in international hot water for his actions in Gaza, a man who has been working with Americans since the 90s to keep them supporting Israel fiscally and militarily, who, like Trump himself, would likely be in jail if he wasn't leading his country, tricked Trump potentially with help from the Jewish and Christian lobby groups who are served by a war in the Middle east that advances Israel's interest and Saudi Arabia, whose biggest enemy is Iran, into attacking Iran and thinking it was his idea. Now we can't deny Israel has a real reason to see Iran as a security threat. Iran's government supports both Hezbollah and Hamas, who are violently anti Israel terrorist groups. So for the people of Israel, their fear of Iran is entirely understandable and you can see why they would want them defeated. But for the government of Israel, who have sung this WMD song before to get America into a war in Iraq they knew Iran didn't have, I think it's fair to say that if they thought they did, they wouldn't have attacked them. But they needed Trump to believe it. They also needed him to see Iran as his enemy. So they told him Iran had plans to assassinate him, which was probably the most effective argument since the person that Trump cares about the most is Trump. And certainly that's what Ted Cruz was trying to sell in that bizarre interview with Tucker Carlson. Now, no one who can see the facts for what they are can pretend that Iran is perfect. They're not. It's Iran. The world was watching earlier this year when their extremist theocratic government beat a woman to death for showing too much of her hair. It was Iran who had all those protests and mass hung dissidents and journalists. There is no question the government of Iran is absolutely horrific. But that does not mean the people of Iran need to be bombed indiscriminately by America. As a side note, I have a friend who left Iran as a child in 1979 and came to America, where her mother was from during the violent and devastating Iranian revolution. She has spoken about all the friends and family they had to leave behind. The pain she feels for the Iranian people who have lived through years of devastating war and crippling economic sanctions, as well as living under the oppressive and totalitarian rule of what she calls barbaric theocrats. She'd be the first to say resistance in Iran comes with incredible risk. Risk of imprisonment, of torture, of rape, of execution. But the brave people of her country continue to come out and fight for a free and fair future. So, yeah, a regime change there would probably be great for the Iranian people, but that is not why Donald Trump bombed them. Netanyahu is not considering the women of Iran or the people's prosperity and progress. Neither men are considering the civilians at all. Trump told the entire city of Tehran to evacuate in a flip side remark on a press conference on Air Force One. Tehran is a city of 10 million people. Where were they supposed to go? They don't even have Internet in a lot of places right now. Iran's response to the American bombing was understandably swift, with a video message from Iran's Military Central Command spokesperson issuing a direct message to Trump, saying, gambler Trump, you can start this war, but we will be the ones who end it.
- [19:35]
Unnamed Co-Host or Advertiser
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Lee McGowan
Yes please.
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Lee McGowan
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Lee McGowan
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Lee McGowan
Sean has become quite dedicated to mud water as a way to give him.
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It takes about two minutes with hot.
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Lee McGowan
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Lee McGowan
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Lee McGowan
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Lee McGowan
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- [25:30]
Lee McGowan
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- [26:00]
Lee McGowan
As of midday on June 23, the Iranian parliament has already voted to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, which is a narrow body of water where more than a fifth of the entire world's oil supply flows through every single day and it is arguably the sing important trade route in the world. This is expected to be catastrophic to the world's economy as there is simply no comparable way for oil and gas to come out of the Middle east and reach international markets. This is a strategic economic attack and oil and gas prices are already expected to immediately double or triple, spiking worldwide inflation. Right before we started taping, Iran also launched a missile attack on The US airbase in Qatar. Iran said they targeted that base because it was outside of populated areas and Qatar has told us the bombs have caused no injury. We should note that Iran dropped the same amount of bombs on the US as the US dropped on them, which experts say indicates a signal that Iran would prefer de escalation over increased tensions. The Iranian president wrote on X we neither initiated the war nor seek it, but we will not leave invasion to the great Iran without answer. As far as Israel, they have continued to expand attacks on Iran, including what the AP calls targeted associations with the country's struggling theocracy, striking the gates of a Tehran prison known for holding political activists and hitting the headquarters of a military force that suppressed recent protests. Iran is firing back at Israel with missiles and drones, which I'm sure is a nightmare to the innocent citizens in both regions. So while I hope things don't continue to escalate, I'm not seeing how that happens, which puts every civilian in the Middle east, but also Americans abroad, including our soldiers, lives at risk. But if you hit someone first, I think it's incredibly unlikely to think they won't hit back. As many experts say. Wars are easy to start, but they are far harder to stop. And again, what do Americans get out of this? Literally nothing. If we go to war with Iran, we will pay for it with everything from our economy to our lives. What if China joins in to back up Iran, which they have suggested they might do? They are one of those first five countries that have nukes. Iran might not be able to hit us with a missile, but China could. Russia is technically aligned with Iran. Will they get involved? They're also one of the original five countries and they need distraction from what's happening in Ukraine. Meanwhile, the people of all of those nations will suffer. And for what? These are big deal questions with world altering answers. This is why the American President isn't allowed to just declare war unilaterally. This is why the job of if we go to war is supposed to belong to Congress where they can debate and discuss and compromise. And there is some accountability to the people. As far as I'm concerned, everyone involved in this strike on Iran, everyone who made the decision to start a war against the rules of the Constitution, which they swore to uphold, should be impeached and removed. That would include J.D. vance, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth and of course Donald Trump himself. None of these leaders did the right thing and who knows what they're going to do moving forward. And for those of you asking, well, what should they have done differently? For starters, we could have accepted the US Intelligence community's repeated conclusions that Iran does not have an active weapons program. We could have acknowledged the fact that our president is not allowed to just bomb a country on the say so of another nation's leader, a leader who also happens to be a known liar and criminal himself. And our president could have lived up to his no new wars promise and not entered us into one without congressional approval. This is the kind of crisis where we depend on the people in charge being competent, experienced, intelligent, trustworthy. Why it is so essential that the President's Cabinet not be filled with yes men, but people who will speak up for what's right, not just expedient. This is why so many of us were losing our minds during Trump's Cabinet confirmation process. Because without exception, the current administration is entirely made up of people who were chosen for loyalty. Most of them are completely unprepared for the responsibility of their jobs, which is why these positions need to be approved by a responsible governing body like the Senate. So we know that the President's closest advisors, the ones making the decisions for all of our health and safety, are the very highest caliber of intellect and character. But that is not what we have. We are being told that Iran told Trump that if he attacked them, they would activate terrorist sleeper cells in America. Now, whether that's true or not, the person in charge of terror prevention for the Department of Homeland security is a 22 year old with zero security experience. This is a kid who barely has any job experience, but he is in charge of counter terrorism for all of the US because he thought Trump was cool. How do we think that will go? Probably as good as having a Fox News Weekend guy as our Secretary of Defense or a thin skinned reality show host as our President. At the end of the day, I don't even think our President cares if we live or die. He brought in his doomsday plane on standby so that he and 115 other people can survive an EMP or a nuclear blast. We know the oligarchs have their bunkers. I don't even think this attack on Iran was about nuclear weapons. We have been hearing that Iran is weeks away from nuclear weapons for decades. Ultimately, the Middle east is just an incredibly important area for global commerce. So much goes through those countries, so much comes out of those countries. The biggest thing of course, being oil and gas. And America likes to control as much of that as possible. As a legal expert on the Middle east said, if the conflicts in the Middle east benefited the people financially. Western governments would sell us on that. They would say, hey, we dominate these people and act like bullies and bomb their nations and change their governments because it ultimately benefits us all. But they don't say that because we don't all benefit. We are not all better off because of what happens in the Middle East. In fact, we send a ton of taxpayer dollars overseas that we could be spending at home money on education, healthcare, infrastructure. We aren't richer because of the Middle East. A select group of people at the top, the people that go to Davos, oil and gas company executives, world leaders, they're richer, but not us. Which is why they have to sell us on the idea of that they're doing this all for safety, that these people are trying to kill us, that everything they do is to protect us, when the truth is it seems like they're just protecting their own interests. This is the same group of people who are cutting cancer research and health insurance and not even telling us if hurricanes are coming so we can get out of the way. We can't possibly believe they are bombing Iran unprovoked for our safety. As that same legal expert on the Middle east says, we've all been sold a story of security to make up for the fact that they have been using our tax dollars, our military and our lives to make billions of dollars that they never planned to share. We know that the Trump administration is going step by step down Project 2025, part of which includes reinstating the draft for things like wars in the Middle East. And as the mother of a 17 year old boy, I'm not buying that propaganda anymore. My son is not dying for billionaires wallets. No one should be dying for this. It feels like we are watching a high risk game where the players won't have to deal with the fallout. If anything, the fallout helps them while hurting us. As Atlantic writer Robert Kagan said, think of how Trump can use a state of war to strengthen his dictatorial control at home. Trump has declared a state of national emergency in response to a non existent invasion by the Venezuelan gangs. Imagine what he can do if the United States is actually at war with a country that many Americans fear. No one wanted a war. As we said, Donald Trump ran on ending all wars on day one. People might be doing full 180s on their positions right now, but most of us are just going to get screwed. I think we can safely say that no American wants our country to go further into debt. No American asked to sell off our public lands to Private companies. I think you would be hard pressed to find Americans who want a federal surveillance state in the hands of the tech bros. And there aren't that many of us who are pro war with Iran wanting the government of Iran to be replaced and the terrorist groups funded by them wiped out. Sure, But I'm not sure bombing them without a plan was the way to go about it. Plus, all of this distracts us from what's happening stateside with Stephen Miller's masked men beating and kidnapping people on American streets. It doesn't change the fact that the President deployed the National Guard against the will of a state government governor or brought in active duty Marines to police a state without cause. It doesn't change the horrible budget the Republicans have passed in the House where they have told us they don't have enough money for health care or cancer research or food assistance, but we suddenly have a blank check for an endless foreign war. This group of people selling us on war with Iran still want to gut Medicaid and SNAP and other essential programs. They still want to give massive tax cuts to the ultra rich. Now they also want more money for war. As someone who wrote, the day we attacked Iran, Trump just dropped $280 million worth of artillery in a war that's not ours. But our grandparents have to live on ramen because America can't afford meals on wheels. Make it make sense. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't. And you should say that. You should say that to all your people. We can want to protect the Israeli people and want a regime change for the people of Iran and the safety of the world, but conservatives are trying to justify bombing Iran by reminding us how terrible Iran is to gay people and women.
- [35:33]
Unnamed Co-Host or Advertiser
Well, so are Republicans.
- [35:35]
Lee McGowan
How do we judge all Iranians by the fact that a gay man was thrown off a building without judging all Americans by what was done to Matthew Shepard? We have to get past this. Them bad us good mentality. Our media is currently trying to rile us up about Iranian terrorists and the damage they might do to us when we have mass shootings in this country every day perpetrated by homegrown white American men. They want us to be scared of what actions an Iranian sleeper cell might take when our streets are already overrun by masked terrorists kidnapping hundreds of people. We are building for profit concentration camps in America right now. We are ripping children out of the arms of their parents. A Democratic congresswoman, her husband and their dog were just assassinated in their home for political leanings. You want us worked up about what the Iranian government might do to us. What about what our government is doing to us? We have to stop pretending the Trump government cares about the people. As smart folks keep pointing out, the United States never has enough money to take care of the people at home, but it always has enough money to kill people overseas. Trump's unchecked actions just put 40,000American troops in the Middle east in immediate danger. Our State Department made it clear that they won't be helping Americans get out of Iran, the West bank or Israel. That they put them in danger without warning, but they're going to need to find their own way home. What kind of government does that? If anything, I hope this bombing is a wake up call. I hope people can finally recognize the luxury of not paying attention to politics is over. That any trust you might have had that Congress will just do their job or you can trust the President to do the right thing and just go about your life is over. That these people are out here making life and death decisions for all of us and we should all have a of sense say in that. Honestly, I also think the days of thinking America is the good guy really have to be over. Our country has always had a lot of problems, but under this leadership we are completely off the rails and we are all going to have to work incredibly hard to get back on track. I understand the tendency in this moment will be to check out, but we can't do that. We must stay informed. Yes, you should pace yourself, limit your news intake, try not to doom scroll because it will only make you feel so anxious and deregulated and you can't do much in a panic state. Panic is unhelpful to everyone, it's unhealthy to you and you don't get much accomplished. What I will say is keep checking in with your morals and values and actively support the people who are reflecting those back to you in the world. Finally, a last reminder to not be swayed by the propaganda that's coming. War will not help the American people. So when you see people trying to sell you on it, consider their motives. It's sad, but many in our government, Democratic and Republican, particularly in leadership, don't really consider the people anymore. Since the Citizens United decision. They really only need to cater to the corporations, the lobby groups and the ultra rich. And we need to decide how much longer we are willing to accept that at the end of the day, a handful of men, many of them criminals, trying to avoid repercussions themselves, are wreaking havoc on the rest of us. While conveniently hiding behind their flags. Those of us who fall under those flags must decide if they continue to get our support or if we collectively demand better. I want to thank you so much for joining me today. I'm sorry everything seems so broken. I wish I had better advice than stay in the fight. Call your representatives, fight this budget, protect the parks, deny ice, remain anti war. But for now, that's what I've got. So stay safe. And until next week, PG Out. The Politics Girl Podcast is written and performed by me, Lee McGowan, and produced and edited by Happy Warrior Entertainment. All rights reserved.