Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Hello and welcome to the Politics Girl Podcast. I'm your host, Leigh McGowan. Let's get into it. The pod looks and feels a bit different today because I am doing this from the road. I am in Michigan right now because something wasn't right. In this case, it was my son's appendix. We were on a university tour, and while we thought he had food poisoning, it turned out to be something a bit more extreme. So, as he recovers from emergency surgery, I am coming to you from the incredible Ann Arbor, Michigan. And if I may say, should your child suddenly need to have an organ removed, may you be as close to such an amazing hospital as we were. So I have decided the point of this pod is that we have to be aware when things aren't right. We have to pay attention to the signs, to take the information we're given seriously and be ready to act on that information as things change. Things are going wrong, not just with my teenage child, but with America. The wrongness is all around us. We are drowning in it. Nothing is as it's supposed to be. Right now, our Congress has abdicated its responsibility to act on our behalf. Our laws are primarily being made by executive order. Our Supreme Court has abandoned precedent, overturning long established laws and acting as an enforcement arm of the executive branch. And every day we move one step further from democracy, personal freedom and human rights. Look no further than the American military currently occupying D.C. the Trump administration has deployed at least 800 National Guard and military members to federalize the D.C. police force. Those numbers have been further supplemented by hundreds more from West Virginia, Ohio, and South Carolina National Guard as part of what they're calling a broader federal crackdown on crime and homelessness. The Trump administration has said that this is a necessary action to restore order. But in reality, D.C. crime rates are the lowest they've been in decades, which has caused experts to point out that this move wasn't so much a response to crime as an authoritarian push to capitalize on Trump's power and authority over the city. Now, this was only really possible because D.C. is a federal district, not a state. Its status as a district gives Trump special powers to activate the National Guard and control law enforcement. Despite what he did in Los Angeles, which was a gross overstep of federal powers, this is not a power the president has in the states. I think it is fair, however, to say that he appears to be using DC As a testing ground for what he wants to do next, which is to send the military and National Guard into other democratically controlled states and cities. He's like a raptor at the fence, seeing what he can get away with before he comes for all of us. We now know that Trump is seriously considering similar troop deployments in other major cities to, quote, get things under control. The cities that have been mentioned are New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Oakland, California, Baltimore, Maryland, and Newark, New Jersey. Trump has called these cities very bad regarding crime and homelessness and said that their Democratic mayors and governors are going to learn a lesson. To quote Trump himself, we're not going to lose our cities over this. We are starting very strongly with DC but we will go further. It should be noted that the President of the United States has no authority to do any of this, which is why the mayors from these named cities have been pushing back very publicly, calling out Trump's attempt to undermine their authority, not to mention democracy and the Constitution itself. If we trusted the Supreme Court or the Justice Department, we would expect to see them stop this, but under this regime, we can't trust them. We know that Trump is going to overstep and exert his power and his will, but we can't stop talking about how unjust and unconstitutional it all is. We also can't stop talking about how this excuse of cutting back on crime cannot possibly be the reason that this is happening, as the top cities for crime in America are Memphis, Tennessee and St. Louis, Missouri, which are not being threatened with federal troops. And if we're being honest about crime, according to the Morgan Law Group's list of 10 most dangerous states in America, they are all Republican controlled states. Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Montana, Alabama, Florida and Missouri. So if this was about crime or violence, we would expect Trump to be sending his taxpayer thugs to these red states. Instead, every single city the administration has mentioned invading with the military is a Democratically controlled city with a black mayor. The exception being Eric Adams in New York, who recently changed his affiliation from Democratic to independent after Trump had his federal corruption charges dropped earlier this year. But Trump has said that perhaps Zoran Mondami, the Democratic candidate for mayor in New York, should be denaturalized and deported for being a communist. So New York is definitely on the board. Let's be clear. None of this is right. None of this is fair, none of this is just or good for the people of America. Lest we forget, this president who has the National Guard patrolling the streets of D.C. is the same president who refused to send the National Guard into D.C. on January 6, 2021. The same man who called the event where a mob of his supporters violently attacked the Capitol, looking to overturn the election, harm Congress members and hang the Vice President a of love. And when he returned to office he mass pardoned every single person involved, including those who had violently harmed and beaten D.C. police officers. So if you find yourself talking to someone who is defending the current administration's actions in D.C. ask them why he didn't take the same action when the biggest crime DC had seen in years was actively taking place. Other big news that feels wrong is the Putin Trump meeting in Alaska on August 15th in what people are calling the summit. That could have been an email. America embarrassed itself by literally rolling out the red carpet for a murderous dictator who is currently at war with an allied nation, which he attacked unprovoked. We have images of American soldiers in full uniform on their hands and knees rolling out a red carpet to the stairs of Putin's plane. The optics of the event are as shocking as they are indicative of this moment in American history. As the news is reporting, Trump greeted President Vladimir Putin with an unusually warm welcome, including hand clapping, handshakes and the aforementioned red carpet. They even shared a ride in the presidential limousine called the Beast, which is something that rarely happens but certainly doesn't happen with a hostile world leader who used to be a leading member of the kgb. Again, the whole event was great for Russia and terrible for America. As expert on authoritarianism Ruth Ben Guyot wrote in her terrific lucid the US Focused on Vladimir Putin's power, flattering him with a spectacle that legitimized the Kremlin's geopolitical aspirations, while neglecting to mention that Russia is a failed state and a kleptocracy. More precisely, as Ruth pointed out, Russia is a failed state because it is a kleptocracy. Putin's massive corruption and plundering of state agencies and institutions has destroyed the Russian economy. The Russian military itself is in such a sorry state that it became necessary to use a draft prisoners and to import North Korean soldiers to have enough bodies on the ground in Ukraine, despite the fact that Russia is 28 times the size of the nation they attacked. The summit itself was a total wash. The two leaders talked for three hours and ended the event without the planned luncheon between the two nations. The press conference afterwards was brief and awkward. Neither leader took questions and even Fox News described the post meeting remarks as lopsided, with Putin appearing to steamroll Trump in the public narrative. There were three people from either country in the room where it President Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and American Special envoy Steve Witkoff. Putin brought Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and adviser Yuri Yuzhikov. What we are hearing now is that something went wrong with the talks. That Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt, who had been very bullish on this meeting, lashing out at people for undermining Trump and calling them names, left the event looking visibly shaken. Leading up to the summit, she was calling people pathetic losers for giving Trump bad coverage. But post summit, she was totally clammed up. She appeared tight and stressed and refused to elaborate on the outcome of the meeting or take any press questions. As I said, even Fox News noted that the leaders took no questions and only gave brief remarks, with Putin speaking first and dominating the narrative. The scheduled press conference was scrapped, the luncheon was scrapped, and as far as we know, America got absolutely nothing out of the meeting. No agreements were made, particularly not the ceasefire that Trump was hoping for. Vladimir Putin, on the other hand, got major legitimacy out of the event. He was given deferential respect and a lot of unearned American press. He was able to stage a photo op where he publicly placed roses on fallen Russian soldiers graves, which apparently really impressed the hyper Christian American community. And he turned around and went home as soon as he got what he needed. Many Russian experts have pointed out that Putin essentially used the entire meeting to reiterate his position that Ukraine should belong to him and stall because America can't very well put sanctions on Russia in the middle of peace talks. But we should point out that since Trump took office, Russian attacks on Ukraine have increased, not decreased. And even as the talks were ongoing, Russia was still actively attacking Ukraine. The big takeaway here is that our president was nicer to a war criminal who murders his political enemies than he has been to our allies. And whatever went down in those three hours was only good for Russia. The general atmosphere and MOOD among the U.S. officials after the event was described as uneasy. So despite the public show of optimism and the spin in the following days on right wing media, there was very little celebration. Every statement was muted. There wasn't a press conference. No one offered any details, any progress that might have been made. Essentially, our president, the dictator wannabe, got ruled by a smarter dictator president that had no intention of giving him anything he wanted. Behind the scenes, it seems as if there were some major concerns and the Trump advisers were not at all happy with the results of of the summit. I should point out that if these leaders were really negotiating peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, they would have included the Ukrainian president in the summit. But neither Volodymyr Zelensky or any other European leader who would be directly affected by the outcome of this summit were included in the talks. We have been told that Zelenskyy will be meeting with Trump later this week and we are now hearing that European leaders will be joining him as well as a show of force, because you might remember the last time President Zelensky. Zelensky was in D.C. he was verbally attacked by our president, vice president and right wing media for everything from his actions to his clothes. He is now coming with backup. Putin ended up leaving Alaska moments after the press statements were done, suggesting in English, which he never speaks, that their next meeting should be in Moscow, which would be highly unusual. But it does go with Putin's goal to make the Kremlin seem more powerful than it is. And it seems that Donald Trump is more, more than happy to help him build up that image, which for any American who understands geopolitics is highly distasteful. Obviously, the biggest thing America wanted from this was for Putin to agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine, but we didn't get it. Clearly, Trump and his team are terrible at this and Putin had absolutely zero intention of changing course. And the entire thing came down to a celebrity photo op with Putin looking important on U.S. soil. Our president, who fancies himself a dealmaker, but who in reality is no such thing as he was given extraordinary amount of money to start his businesses, ran almost every company he had into the ground, declared bankruptcy six times, was convicted of 34 counts of financial fraud, and has never had a boss or been responsible to a single shareholder, does not really know how to negotiate. It's his way or the highway. And if things don't go his way, he just lies and says that they did. And that might work if you own your own company and most of your employees are your family. But in the real world, you cannot pretend you got something when you didn't, especially if we can all see it. Speaking of Trump telling us he got something when he didn't, the administration and their right wing propagandists are currently telling the country that Trump has stopped six or seven wars since coming into office. The White House is trying to sell this narrative that Trump is the peacemaker in chief because he is clearly angling for a Nobel Peace Prize, which he was nominated for by Israel's President Benjamin Netanyahu, as the two of them oversee an ethnic cleansing in Gaza. But despite running on ending the war in Ukraine on day one, if not earlier, we see what happened with the summit. And despite the fact that Trump promised to get all the Israeli hostages home and stop the Israel Hamas war. We still have Israeli hostages and the people of Gaza are being starved and bombed by the hundreds of thousands. So the six or seven wars that Trump and his people are claiming to have stopped, they keep changing. But it appears that most lists include the Israel Iran conflict after the US Bombed the Iranian nuclear sites where the Iranians may or may not have moved their weapons. Prior there was a peace deal signed in Washington with the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. There were U S backed talks that led to a temporary ceasefire at the border of Cambodia and Thailand, but it's unclear how much the US Was involved in that. Trump is claiming responsibility for the temporary ceasefire between India and Pakistan, despite the fact that Indian leadership denies any outside mediation. Trump claims to be responsible for a ceasefire between Serbia and Kosovo, but there's little evidence of an imminent war there or any decisive American action regarding that conflict. Conflict and finally, the administration is claiming responsibility for ending a dam dispute in Ethiopia and Egypt, although neither country has publicly accepted the Trump narrative. Ultimately there might be some basis for the claim that the US has played some part in ceasefire negotiations. But most experts note that Trump is perpetually exaggerating his role and impact in all of these conflicts, and that many of his administration's statements around the conflicts are are rated as mostly false by fact checkers. There's just so much corruption and lying with this administration. Everything is transactional for what makes him feel good or look good and not what's best for the American people or the larger global community. Look at what's happening with our business community. Have you ever tried to buy wine and have no idea what to get? There's just too much to choose from and you end up standing there looking at a giant wall until you end up with the same three bottles of wine you already know. Well, that's why I'm excited to talk about our sponsor, Naked Wines. Naked Wines is a wine club that directly connects you with the world's best independent winemakers so you can get world class wine delivered straight to your door. Naked Wine brings you amazing wines straight from the winery for up to 60% less than you would pay in the store. By cutting out extra costs like the middleman markups, winemakers can pass the savings directly onto you without skimping on any quality. The company has been around for 15 years and it backs over 90 independent winemakers around the world to make wine you love to drink. For my first order, I filled out a form to explain the kind of wine I liked the kind I didn't like what I was looking for, how many bottles of each I wanted, and they did all the work for me. It was so easy and the wines were so good. Nothing says summer like a good bottle of chilled rose. And nothing makes you a better guess than showing up with a beautiful bottle of wine wine. So join me in the naked wine community. Head to nakedwines.com politicsgirl Click enter voucher and put in the code politicsgirl if you put in both the code and the password, you can get six bottles of wine for just $39.99 with shipping included. That's $100 off your first six bottles of wine at nakedwines.com politicsgirl using the code ANN password politicsgirl Six bottles of wine for $39.99 Frankly, I can't wait till I get home and can have a nice glass of wine in my own backyard. And that will be wine from Naked Wines Today's episode is brought to you by HoneyLove, the brand redefining modern shapewear with real comfort and serious support this has been a hot summer, and I don't know about you, but as the temperature and particularly the humidity starts going up, I don't want anything bulky or tight or uncomfortable comfortable on my body, Especially in the bra department. You want to be able to stay cool and comfortable while being supported, which is where Honeylove's cutting edge bra innovation comes in. Are you still dealing with underwire that pokes or bras that feel like body armor? Then it's time for a serious upgrade. Honeylove makes the best wireless bras. Lightweight, breathable, perfect for hot summer days. Whether you're wearing a T shirt or a tank top or a sundress, these bras give you just the right amount of lift without all that squeeze. Thanks to years of research and development and testing, HoneyLove's signature support comes from smart design, not stiff wires or puffy padding. It's all the shape and hold you want without any of the stuff you don't. In fact, HoneyLove recently launched their new Cloud Embrace bra, which sold out in days, but it's a modern wireless T shirt bra with lightly padded foam cups that feel like a cloud against your skin. It's a wireless bra for those who love love Underwire. It's in stock now, but it is bound to sell out again. So go ahead, ditch the discomfort. Treat yourself to the most comfortable and innovative bras on earth and save 20% off statewide@honeylove.com politicsgirl use our exclusive link to get 20% off at honeylove.com politicsgirl and after you purchase they're going to ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and and tell them that we sent you Experience the new standard in bras with honeylove. Right now the headlines are packed with data breaches and regulatory rollbacks and phishing expeditions that make us all vulnerable. But you can do something about it. Deleteme is here to make it easy, quick and safe to remove your personal data online. The fact of the matter is we are all at risk. How many times have you gotten a text or an email or a letter saying that your data had been called compromised? It's very upsetting. But the good news is DeleteMe can help. Delete Me does all the hard work of wiping you and your family's personal information from data broker websites. Sign up and provide Deleteme with exactly what information you want deleted and their experts will take it from there. You will then get personalized privacy reports showing what they found, where they found it and what they removed. DeleteMe is constantly working for you, monitoring and remaining, removing the personal information you don't want on the Internet. It is not a one time service. As someone with a very active online presence, privacy is obviously very important to me. But you don't have to do what I do to feel this way. You hear these stories about these hackers obtaining names and addresses and phone numbers and Social Security numbers plus family member information. So I'm just very grateful that there are groups like Deleteme available to help keep our information from falling into the wrong hands. So take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me now with a special discount for our listeners. Get 20% off your delete me plan when you go to JoinDeleteMe.com politicsgirl and use the promo code politicsgirl at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to JoinDeleteMe.com PoliticsGirl and enter the code politicsgirl at checkout that's joining DeleteMe.com politicsgirl with code politicsgirl while I know that coffee is the go to for most people, me included, for some it can cause crazy jitters or a massive crash. Which is why I am pleased to tell you about Mud Water. Mud Water is different than coffee. It's a mix of cacao chai, turmeric and adaptogenic mushrooms to help you feel focused and balanced rather than wired. It is smooth and steady and honestly, according to my husband gives you tons of energy. Plus it's ridiculously easy to make. It takes about two minutes with hot water or milk and you're just ready to get back to your day. Each ingredient in MudWTR serves a purpose. Their OG blend contains cacao and chai for a hint of caffeine and a hot chocolate flavor, lion's mane for focus, quadriceps to promote natural energy and chaga and reishi to support a healthy immune system. Maybe you want to try a starter kit. They have a Matcha starter kit, a turmeric starter kit, a rest starter kit which will help you unwind and sleep better with their rooibos, floral, chamomile and Thai spices at the end of your day. So if you're ready to switch to cleaner energy, head to mudwater.com and grab your starter kit today. Right now our listeners get an exclusive deal of up to 43% off your entire order, plus free shipping and a free rechargeable frother when you use the code politicsgirl. That's right up to 43% off with the code politicsgirl@m u d w t r dot com and after you purchase, they're going to ask you how you found them. Please support the show and let them know that we sent you. Keep your energy natural and refreshing all year long with mud water because life is too short for anything less than clean, delicious energy. There's just so much corruption and lying with this administration. Everything is transactional for what makes him feel good or look good and not what's best for the American people or their larger global community. Look at what's happening with our business community. Axios recently reported that the Trump administration has developed a confidential Loyalty scorecard ranking 553 companies and trade associations based on their support for the President's agenda. The internal spreadsheet rates organizations as strong, moderate or low supporters and is being circulated among senior White House staff to guide their decision making on corporate requests. Internally, this ranking system is known as the OB3 Scorecard, which evaluates companies based on their promotion of President Trump's one big beautiful bill, which includes massive corporate tax cuts and safety net cuts for regular Americans. The evaluation criteria includes social media posts, press releases, video testimonials, paid advertisements, attendance at White House events, and other public displays of support for the administration's policies. This is just like full on dictatorship. This is what got Colbert canceled so that the Skydance Paramount merger could be approved. This is why Trump now has final say on what CBS News can tell us and why it was such a big deal that Paramount signed a billion dollar contract with the creators from south park before the merger went through, so that Trey Parker and Matt Stone already had the money in hand before they released their season premier, mocking the President mercilessly. That never would have been allowed to happen if Trump had known about it. This White House scorecard is already giving major benefits to companies who publicly and significantly support the Trump administration. Apple recently announced a $600 billion US investment to accelerate artificial intelligence to development and established domestic supply chain production, which helped them avoid a potential tariff increase on their overseas manufacturing. To get this perk, Tim Cook donated a million dollars to Trump's inaugural fund and presented the President with a customized glass plaque mounted on 24 karat gold stand. Because if you bring your gifts to the King, the King will grant you favors. May I remind you that this is America, a country that was created in opposition to a king. You know who's not giving tributes to the King? Governor Gavin Newsom of California. Or as his tweets utterly trolling Trump on X, call himself America's favorite governor. Governor Newsom has recently gone all in as a real competitor to Trump, unafraid to take him and his terrible anti Democratic policies. On Newsom has been relentless trolling Trump on social media, which if you've read any of the tweets, are clearly deliberate satire of Trump's own tweets. And it has been very funny to watch because a lot of people don't understand his social media team is simply holding up a mirror to Trump's own behavior. Fox is calling Newsom immature and unprofessional, saying tweeting like this is undignified for someone in such a high office with little to no awareness that this is what Trump does every single day. And Newsom isn't just talking the talk, he's walking the walk. After years of the Democrats playing by the rules while the Republicans keep breaking them, Newsom has decided to fight fire with fire and has proposed gerrymandering five seats in California to counter Governor Abbott's plan to gerrymander five seats in Texas to keep the House of Representatives in Republican control. Think of it like competing with a team who continually uses steroids. You can say it's not fair, they're cheating, but if the judges don't care that they're using steroids, steroids, then the rules have changed. You either take steroids too, or you keep losing. And as I said in a recent rant, I think I speak for a lot of us when I say Democratic voters are sick of losing. California warned Texas that if they were going to mid decade redistrict to gerrymander their state to steal seats from Democratic voters, they would do the same. Texas Democrats tried to call attention to this blatant disenfranchisement of Texas voters by leaving the state so that the state House couldn't take a vote. But ultimately we know that Governor Abbott is going to go through with it because if he doesn't, Donald Trump is going to lose the House. So Newsom is meeting him where he is. He said, you do it, we'll do it. You've left us no choice. And for all of us who have waited for Democrats who would stop bringing a knife to a gunfight, here we go. I can only hope that other Democratic governors will match Newsom's energy. I want to be really clear that despite the pushback you will hear on Governor Newsom's actions, I believe this had to be done. I believe the Democrats thought they could lead by example, that integrity would ultimately matter, that over time voters would recognize their respect for the Constitution, their respect for the rule of law, and then reward them for it. But it didn't work. It just lost them the House, the Senate and the presidency. We now have military occupied American states, cities, masked kidnappers rounding up our neighbors. Tens of millions of people about to lose their health care and most basic human rights are on the ropes. So enough is enough. There is no point in saying those aren't the rules of boxing when the other team keeps roundhouse kicking you to the face. It doesn't matter that that's not how the sport is played. If it is being allowed, then you either kick back or you get beat. And our democracy does not have the luxury of getting beat in 2026. If Trump is allowed to keep this up, we won't have a democracy to speak of by 2028. So something has to be done. The truth is California Democrats are making these changes as legally and constitutionally as possible. They could have changed the districts by just using the legislature like Texas is going to do, but they are going through the voters by putting redistricting on the November 4th ballot in order to give the people, not the party, the final say. The maps are entirely transparent. You can go online and see them Right now. What they are proposing will be temporary because the long term goal for Democrats is for there to be no gerrymandering at all. And you know this because the Democratic House voted unanimously to make gerrymandering illegal with the for the peoples act in 2019 and then again in 2021 with the redistricting Reform Act. Both times the Republicans voted against it. I should also note that when my book was published last year, I put in that 47% of Congress was controlled by Republicans in gerrymandered seats, while only 11% of Congress was controlled by Democrats in gerrymandered seats. So while yes, both parties do gerrymander, it is not remotely the same same when it comes to power. And California, which has 52 seats in Congress, could easily gerrymander the entire state so that no Republican could ever get elected and Republicans could never win the House. But they don't. They use an independent commission so that the maps are more fair. This time they're just meeting the Texas Republicans where they are and refusing to continue to roll over and play dead. Like I said, California will only redistrict five seats and only for Congress. No other offices will be affected. Republicans currently hold a narrow 2019-2012 majority in Congress, but that majority has abdicated their responsibility to act as a check on the President. So the only realistic way to give the people back their voice in the federal government is to get the House back into Democratic hands. Without the Democrats in power, there won't be any leadership left to stand up for the people, and we will completely lose our democracy to a dictator. We simply cannot afford to leave Trump and the people actually controlling Trump. The Heritage foundation, the Federalist Society, Russell Vogt, Stephen Miller, and all the tech bros like Peter Thiel. Unchecked, our nation is at an absolute crossroad and California is simply stepping up to meet the moment. We can only hope other leaders will stand up to join Newsom in fighting back. This is why we need to get governors like Abigail Spamberger in Virginia and Mikey Sherrill in New Jersey and Jocelyn Benson in Michigan elected this year and next. It's why it matters that governors like Illinois's J.B. pritzker and New York's Kathy Hochul and Maine's Janet Mills continue to be vocal opposition to the Trump agenda. Governors are the ones holding the line for democracy right now as autocracy and dictatorship take root in our country. The next election will determine the fate of Trump's agenda for the final two years of his presidency. Though if we let Republicans win, I don't think Trump is actually planning to leave. I mean, he is currently building a $200 million ballroom at the White House. And let's be honest, who renovates a house they are planning to move out of so California Democrats aren't trying to cheat, they're trying to win. Because winning is the only way to hold Donald Trump and his completely unhinged, unchecked government accountable. Congress is supposed to act as a check on presidential overreach, but the Republican Congress and the far right Supreme Court have proven to be nothing but a rubber stamp on Trump's Project 2025 agenda, which has led Americans to lose everything from cancer research to health care to civil liberties. One positive outcome from this news is that Texas House Democrats are finally heading home after leaving their state, their families and their jobs to draw attention to Governor Abbott's disenfranchisement of voters. As they come home, I would like to publicly thank them for taking such a brave stand for democracy. So that is the news from the past week. Stay aware, stay informed, stay hopeful, and if you need a good laugh, then check out some of the new social memes currently making the rounds on social media as he trolls Trump because they are absolutely hilarious. Now, I should be back in LA next week to do the pod from the studio, but until then, peachy out. The Politics Girl podcast is written and performed by me, Leigh McGowan and produced and edited by Happy Warrior Entertainment. All rights reserved.