Abolish ICE
America has long been on a path toward authoritarianism, as Gaslit Nation warned for years. We also warned the only way out is accountability: abolish ICE and prosecute their crimes against humanity to the fullest extent of international law.
In this week’s Gaslit Nation, we examine the normalcy bias that many in white America, especially within the mainstream media, cling to. We also celebrate the defiant voices on the frontlines in MAGA-besieged cities like Portland and Chicago, who are calling this what it is: fascism. Joining us to discuss how to rebuild American democracy, and make it truly democratic this time, is Zerlina Maxwell, host of Mornings with Zerlina on SiriusXM’s Progress Channel and author of The End of White Politics: How to Heal Our Liberal Divide. Find her weekday mornings 7am to 9am ET on SiriusXM Progresss, channel 127.
As always, we offer solutions and ways to stay grounded amid the terrorism sh*tshow and chaos deliberately engineered to confuse and demoralize us. The way we win is by staying focused and committed to doing whatever we can–wherever we are, with whatever we have–to plant seeds of hope and change. No act is too small.
If you want to make a difference, join us for the Gaslit Nation x Sister District Halloween Phonebank on October 22 at 6pm ET. We’ll be calling voters in must-win Virginia races, some of which could be decided by just a handful of votes. Yes, your time and voice still matter. Stephen Miller doesn’t want you to go to our phonebank–so be sure to RSVP here.
Thank you to everyone who joined the Gaslit Nation Salon on Monday at 4pm ET. Join us again this coming Monday for a special session featuring our friends at the Media and Democracy Project, as we discuss how to push back against mainstream media capitulation.
largest mass-murder of Jewish life since the Holocaust. Our hearts are with those impacted by that day and Netanyahu's genocidal war to cling to power that followed. For an important discussion for how to build peace, listen to our interview with the Jewish and Palestinian led Alliance for Middle East Peace from December 2024.
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Show Notes:
RSVP to the Gaslit Nation Phonebank w/Sister for Virginia! https://www.mobilize.us/sisterdistrict/event/847185/
‘Impossible’ for Trump to escape Epstein files being exposed | John Bolton https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lvWbM2g31A
The End of White Politics: How to Heal Our Liberal Divide by Zerlina Maxwell https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/zerlina-maxwell/the-end-of-white-politics/9780306873591/
“There’s a baby!” ICE agents stop Alamosa family at gunpoint, smash car window Immigration arrest last week in southern Colorado follows national trend of escalating force from ICE agents https://coloradosun.com/2025/10/01/ice-alamosa-arrest-gunpoint-infant/
The Fading of the Red, White, and Blue by Zach Bryan: https://www.instagram.com/p/DPWkQ4CEcNp/
Country Music Star Zach Bryan Turns Political With Anti-ICE Ballad https://time.com/7323600/zach-bryan-ice-song-trump/
Opening clip https://www.youtube.com/shorts/AbqZxPsP91I featuring: https://www.tiktok.com/@of_earth.and_seed
Trump’s NSPM-7 Labels Common Beliefs As Terrorism “Indicators” https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/trumps-nspm-7-labels-common-beliefs
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Malu Kanoa (00:00):
The interview that Ezra Klein did with Ta-Nehisi Coates reveals some things. The first thing, and I don't want to generalize, but it seems like we are living in a time right now where whiteness, especially in liberal progressive or leftist basis, lacks moral clarity. We are living in the Equinox right now. We are in the equinox where the subconscious, the shadow, is coming up and revealing itself. And in that you are seeing that white men, a lot of white men have never really wrestled with how this system would come and affect them the same way that historically it has affected black people, brown people, people of color, women, and so you're watching in real time people like Dean Withers, Ezra Klein and other white people and well-meaning liberal white people, leftist, progressive struggle to have moral clarity. Ezra Klein goes on in that interview to say something along the lines of, he's not using the historical context to examine this moment, and Ta-Nehisi Coates is saying, but how can you not?
(01:00):
And it also reveals that maybe for a lot of white people and a lot of liberal or progressive or even leftist folks, is that as a white person, is this all just philosophical to you? Is this all philosophical to you and what you're more afraid of losing is your moral hierarchy as a white person in all of this, which to me reveals that it's really time for us to reorder the hierarchy, to reorder who we put trust in. My trust is going to go more often to black brown people of color who live a very real experience of this authoritarian regime that has always been there. It has always been here for black people. There's always been here for people of color. We have always lived under an authoritarian regime. It is only now that white people are waking up and said, oh shit. As Martin or as Malcolm said, the rooster will come home to roost.
(01:54):
The rooster has come home to roost and a lot of white people are in a moral quandrant. They are in a free fall of moral clarity. I studied my history. My ancestors wrote about this again and again and again. So to me, there's nothing surprising about what's happening at this moment. The only thing that I'm surprised about is that white people are surprised. And then again, I can't be that surprised because white culture has been ignoring the canary in the coal mine for a long time and it also reveals the knowledge supremacy that whiteness thinks that it has. People like Ezra Klein, Dean Withers, a lot of these well-meaning white people are still function under knowledge supremacy as if they know instead of saying, you know what? I don't have the moral clarity that I thought I had. I don't know. Let me listen to people who've actually lived through horrific things that have lived through authoritarian regimes that come from a culture that has had to deal with what we are faced with right now, but he didn't.
Andrea Chalupa (02:59):
Welcome to Gaslit Nation. I am your host, Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones, the film The Kremlin doesn't want you to see, so be sure to watch it.
(03:12):
Our opening clip was Malu Kanoa, a death doula known as Of Earth and Seed on TikTok, in a video duet by Hawk Podcasts. I'll link to both of their socials in the show notes so you can check out more of their work.
(03:29):
It sounds like some in White America may be waking up. Zach Bryan, one of the biggest names in country music who or once appeared in photos of Donald Trump, released a clip of an ICE protest song on his Instagram. The song, which I'll link to in the show notes, is called The Fading of Red, White and Blue.
Zach Bryan (03:54):
(singing)
Andrea Chalupa (04:43):
According to Time Magazine, Zach Bryan released his anti-ICE song just days after setting a record for the highest attended ticketed concert in US history with over 112,000 fans coming out to see him in Ann Arbor, Michigan. So let's hope there's more of that please. Needless to say, MAGA is now treating Zach Bryan like a race traitor. But Maga's white rage is about to deepen their economic pain as well as for the rest of us forcing more white people to wake up to what they've done. Here's economist Justin Wolfers talking to CNN.
Justin Wolfers (05:26):
We ask deeper, harder, more important questions. Why is the United States rich? Why is Argentina poor? Even though a hundred years ago it was nearly as rich as the United States was.
(05:38):
Why is the country I was born in, Papua New Guinea, in grinding poverty? And we've studied this, we economists for decades now, and the overall answer this complex way of saying it a simple way is what matters is the quality of our democratic political and economic institutions. And so that's things like having an independent federal reserve board. That's things like having the Bureau of Labor statistics, being independent and reporting genuine and true data to each of us. It's allowing people in markets to pursue their passions and pursue their great new ideas rather than have the president suddenly decide that he wants to tell Coca-Cola how much sweetener which sweetener to put in its beverage, that he wants to tell Intel that the government should own 10% of it. That he wants to tell Harvard who to hire and what to teach. And he wants to tell Cracker Barrel what its logo is. This is an encroachment of the government into economic life that we've seen many times before in many other countries. This plays out very, very slowly but has very, very large impacts. It's the reason some countries are rich and some are poor. It's not going to show up in tomorrow's economic numbers, but it will show up by the time our kids get to the table and discover the pies are bit smaller than they were hoping.
Andrea Chalupa (06:53):
And sometimes the giant corporations destroy themselves. Republican mega donors, the Ellisons, now own CBS after merging their Skydance with Paramount. To make matters worse, they installed high brow Charlie Kirk, one of those East coast elites that they're always calling us. We're all a bunch of East coast elites for wanting to have clean air, clean water and funded public schools. But no, they turn to an East coast elite Bari Weiss to become the Roger Ailes of CBS. So you know what that means? RIP CBS.
(07:33):
We had an amazing salon on Monday with the Gaslit Nation community, thank you to all who attended. We came together, processed our grief and rage over the ICE raid in the middle of the night in Chicago that ripped babies from their parents, tied the hands of children, arrested Americans, arrested black Americans. Here is a clip from that salon on Monday.
(07:59):
I haven't felt this level of grief since the full blown invasion of Ukraine. It was like, holy shit, this is like February, 2022 and it's on US soil. It's like that level of horror show and we acclimated to that. It took a while, but the shock obviously knocks you over, but then you have to get back up. We kept saying on the show all those years we're like in authoritarianism. Life goes on. That's why no saying no one puts a lay of barbed wire around your neck and goes, welcome to dictatorship. It's not like that. It's the creepy normalization of it. Such a Twilight Zone episode in Oregon. Ice pepper sprayed a protestor point blank in her face when all she was doing was standing there talking to them In Alamosa, Colorado. ICE agents pulled over a family, smashed a car window over a newborn baby and dragged the father out of the car.
(09:02):
The Colorado son provides this overview and I want anyone specialized in international law or knows anyone specialized in international law to pay close attention because it is Nuremberg trials time again. Here is the Colorado Sun. The arrest in Alamosa, Colorado is one of the latest examples of immigration agents being recorded using forceful tactics as part of the Trump administration's mass deportation policy. During arrests across the US, ICE has broken car windows as crying children and pregnant women are inside. According to an investigation by ProPublica, there have been at least 50 documented instances of immigration agents breaking vehicle windows in the first six months of President Donald Trump's term. Journalists found only eight such incidents from the prior decade, massive massive uptick of police violence under Donald Trump. Why? Because January 6th Trump inciting a violent insurrection was a recruitment tool and now we have his ICE gestapo.
(10:24):
Alright, I'm going to continue reading. Agents are using other kinds of force too. At a New York City courthouse last week, an ICE agent threw a mother to the floor in front of her two children. The Department of Homeland Security initially suspended the agent but then returned him to duty. Of course they did. Earlier this month an ICE agent shot and killed a man in his car who had just dropped off his three-year-old son at daycare in Chicago. The agency said the man had resisted arrest and dragged an agent with his car. The video obtained by the Washington Post shows the man driving away from the officers in his car and later shows an ICE agent with a tear in his jeans say he got dragged a little bit and described his injuries as nothing major. Alright everyone, so we're all Ukrainians now. This hell that Trump has unleashed, this is why Russia backed him.
(11:18):
This culture of normalized violence might makes right and gaudy gold spray painted cheap looking decorations cluttering our white house that we've seen in the Oval Office photos and videos. That is the Russian elite in a nutshell. That is why Russia backed him illegally, helping bring him into power in 2016 and again in 2024 and throwing gasoline on Pizzagate Q Anon and turning up the disinformation divide and conquer strategies every platform. If Trump is Russia trying to turn us into a mafia state, then we Americans are all Ukrainians now and we have no choice but to fight this with everything we've got. And like Ukraine, we need the international community. If you're listening, prosecutors specialized in national law must start building a case now against Steven Miller and Russell Vtt. Architects of Trump's deliberate, cruel, sadistic ice, Nazi fever dream. It's Nuremberg time. Start documenting, start building your cases. America will not get through this alone like every struggling democracy. We need the world's help. We need your solidarity, your legal experts to help us apply pressure and force justice and accountability. It's all hands on deck for our country and the world. Americans are fighting back. There are a lot of viral videos like this one that sound beautifully patriotic.
Unknown Speaker (12:57):
Get the fuck out of here, hurt the fuck out of here. Get out of here. We do not want you in this fucking city. It is time for you and your fucking human trafficking pedophile buddies to get the fuck away from the children. Okay, go, go, go. You see how more and more people are coming out? We don't fucking want you. Here it is. Time to go. You fucking pig. Take a hike. Take a hike. You are terrorizing children right now. You are terrorizing a daycare. Daycare in front of the daycare in front a day. Do you have any fucking humanity left in those withered little hearts that are barely pumping blood in your fat fucking body? Get the fuck out of here. Get out out. We do not want you ice out ice. Ouch. Ice out, ice out.
Andrea Chalupa (14:00):
Thank you to everyone showing up, protesting ICE and learning how to be prepared now so that you don't panic later when they show up where you live. And by doing so, by being prepared, by knowing what to do, you may even save a life. We're all in this together. So don't let the toxic deliberately engineered toxic mess of social media demoralize you divide and conquer. You are a being with agency. Own that agency and be brave now because we are only as free as we are. Brave. Remember, there's a lot you can be doing now. Number one, resist despair. They want you to think you're powerless. Number two, our job now is to make elections harder to steal. So make sure you register, vote, make your vote is make sure you know how to vote. Make sure you help get out the vote If you don't know where to start.
(14:58):
We're having a Halloween phone bank on October 22nd at 6:00 PM Eastern with our friends at Sister District for must win Virginia. Number three, go to a No Kings protest near you on October 18th. Show up. Be loud. Spread your light, spread your courage because that is how we win. No action is too small. Everything you do now sends a ripple effect of hope into the world. When you act from a place of listen, what you think determines what you do. So if you accept the fact that you are powerful, that you have agency even in this moment, if you reject their terrorism, if you reject their culture of fear, if you remind yourself there are a bunch of unevolved mouth breathers, they're idiots. At the end of the day, all dictators are dumb as rocks. They're dumb as rocks. And that's the danger here. It's like they're trying to drag us back, trying to drag us back.
(16:03):
We're not going to go back. So please, you are smarter than them. You're stronger than them. Remind the world of that and all the actions you take, large and small. That is how we get through this.
(16:14):
On the show this week is the great Zerlina Maxwell host of SiriusXM's Mornings with Zerlina weekday mornings from 7-9 AM et eastern time on SiriusXM progress, channel 1 27. That's how you find her because you're going to want to after this interview. Zerlina is the author of the End of White Politics, How to Heal Our Liberal Divide. And she was the director of progressive media for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. All right, so first and foremost, in my hour of grief in February, 2022 when Putin launched his full scale invasion and every single expert was saying, Ukraine's going to fall in a matter of days, RIP Kiev, you had me on your Peacock show, an NBC show, at least twice.
(17:08):
So I would be in a fetal position, curled up in a ball, very pregnant with a high risk pregnancy, and I would drag myself out, put on my makeup and clean myself off to talk to you and your audience. And you gave me such an important powerful platform to say things like this is a genocide. And you even pointed out in real time in our live conversation, you're like, you're the first to call it a genocide. I'm like, yes, because it is a genocide. I spent decades studying the Stalins genocide family Ukraine. This is what the Russians are doing yet again. So thank you from the bottom of my heart on behalf of Ukrainians everywhere for lifting up our voices in that horrible time. So thank you, thank you, thank you.
Zerlina Maxwell (17:48):
Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited for this conversation.
Andrea Chalupa (17:52):
Yes, me too. And it'll be continued.
Zerlina Maxwell (17:55):
Yes.
Andrea Chalupa (17:55):
So I want to ask you, how do you see things looking now in the us? We have people here at home and especially abroad, looking at us in desperation saying, where is the savior? Where is the resistance? Because right now it feels like the Democratic party, the broader left liberal, the whole coalition needed to end this madness, feels like they've been kicked over an ants hill.
Zerlina Maxwell (18:22):
It's a really important question, and it's a question I think about every day because I have a very unique vantage point in this current moment because I do not live in the United States right now. I live abroad and I live around people from all over the world. And anytime what's happening in the United States comes up in conversation, they look at me with one deep concern, deep concern because they understand that what happens in the United States will affect them eventually. And two, with sort of questioning eyes, what are you doing about it? Why aren't you doing anything about it? And I don't really have a good answer for them because I don't know the answer to that question. I think that part of the problem we have right now is everyone is looking at some other entity to solve this problem. So you have voters and progressives that call me every day on my Sirius XM show, say the Democrats need to be doing more, the Democratic leadership needs to be doing more.
(19:24):
And the democratic leadership, they come on my show, Democrats from the House and the Senate come on my show. And they're like, voters have to show up for us in the next election. And voters need to make their voices heard. If they're unhappy with Republicans governing the country in this moment and what the Trump administration is doing, and the voters are saying, well, you guys need to do more. And the Democrats are like, we can't do more. We're not in charge. We're not in power. You didn't vote us into the majorities. And so there's very little that we can do. And then you have grassroots organizers and communities basically getting together themselves and deciding that they aren't going to wait for another election to happen and they're not going to wait for some savior in a blue uniform to come along, a member of the Democratic party to come along and fix the problem because they can't.
(20:19):
So I don't think that there's an answer or one savior. The Democratic party is not going to fix this. The voters can't really do a lot when we're in between election cycles. But people in communities can do a lot. And I think that that's what we all need to be focusing on in this moment. That's what I think the answer is. In part, it's not going to fix the problem quickly. It's not, but it's worth it. And every single expert on authoritarianism and the dismantling of democracy, what experts have said to me on my Sirius XM show is we're living in competitive authoritarianism where there are elections and everything sort of looks the same, but it's not democracy. What they say is it's never too late to push back. And that has to come from the ground up, meaning that it has to start with every single individual person deciding that they want and they want to engage in protecting and preserving American democracy. And that community organizing needs to start on the grassroots level. It's not going to be somebody in Washington DC in a blue uniform, an elected Democrat or leadership member in the house of the Senate that's going to fix the problem. It has to start with the people.
Andrea Chalupa (21:44):
I hear that and I know that from, because Ukraines exist as a country, because they have such a robust civil society so that I know everything you're saying is absolutely historically proven. But here in America and how do I say this? There's a bit of a privileged attitude. Oh yeah. And there's this feeling of I don't want to do this. I'm tired. Somebody else needs to do it. And instead people are just bashing everybody they can bash, they're bashing each other and social media is engineered for conflict. That's how you get attention.
(22:24):
It's very much like being at a stereotypical high school or college party where everyone is drinking from red cups and a fight breaks out and everybody gathers around to watch. And that's the social bonding experience of is very primitive right now in America. And this is all music to the ears of Peter Thiel, who openly is at war for any collective power because he sees humanitarian collective power, literally, literally. He says this as being the antichrist. So there's a reason why the PayPal mafia, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, David Sachs, they are all behind these troll driven, bot driven social networks. So we could feed off of each other's despair, cannibalize each other, and nothing gets built, nothing gets done, and the pattern just gets worse and worse. What are your thoughts on all that?
Zerlina Maxwell (23:20):
No, I mean, I think social media is a huge part of this. And we saw that going back to, I mean before 2016, but in 2016, and I can say this from the experience of somebody working for the Hillary Clinton campaign, and as much as the media or pundits or columnists wanted to say that it was the unique qualities about Hillary Clinton, that is the reason why we are where we are, the unique things about her that made voters dislike her and not want to support her. That's where we are. And it wasn't until later when we found out a lot more about the way in which propaganda was being spread on these platforms and the way bots were being used to propagate false and misinformation, that we realized that we were being manipulated. And I think that that has only gotten worse. And the mainstream press never did any self-reflection on the way they contributed and exacerbated a problem that was happening on social media platforms.
(24:15):
And in some ways, I think part of the reason why is because they're in competition in some ways for our attention. And our attention is going to these social media platforms. So they have their own issues that they need to deal with as sort of the institution of the mainstream press. But that lack of self-awareness and really looking inward and introspection into the way in which they exacerbated the problem, the way they covered some of those pieces of misinformation, making the division worse is a big factor here. And I also think that you don't have elected officials that are following any rules and norms about not spreading misinformation and just straight up lying to their constituents and the American public. And so in a moment we're in right now, I feel like there's an opportunity because the way the media is set up as the fourth of state and the sources of media that people are watching and scrolling through and reading are very different than even going back to 2016.
(25:26):
So there's an opportunity for independent voices and progressive voices to be heard in a moment like this one, back based voices, dare I say, be heard in a moment like this one so that people can get accurate information. But one of the things that drives me absolute patch, it actually most days is the fact that a lot of folks are not paying attention. That's because they're paying attention to something else. That's because they have the privilege to be able to not pay attention. Oh, I don't really follow politics. And one of the conversations I had on my show recently with Jamal Bowie of the New York Times is that some people think about politics as a hobby. I'm really into politics. You're into knitting or paddle or golf or something like that. It's like this thing that I pay attention to. I like this thing for my hobby.
(26:17):
But politics is affecting you whether or not you're paying attention or not. And the fact that you're not paying attention actually demonstrates to me the work that everybody needs to do to capture that attention. Because that's really what this is all about, is capturing the attention. The people that say they're not following politics, but then they're not connecting the dots between the fact that their grocery prices have not gone down, inflation has not gotten any better, they've gone through 50% more of project 2025. They're dismantling the federal government. They laid off hundreds of thousands of federal workers, 300,000 of them being black women specifically. And there's no end in sight. There isn't anything, any institution or entity rising up to resist because there's so many people that are not paying attention. And there's a lot of people that benefit off that large swath of the American public not paying attention. We're not split 50 50, we're like 30% of people like Trump, 30% of people don't. And the rest, the other third, they're watching loud violin. No shade, no shade, but they're not paying attention and they need to be paying attention because it's not ever too late. As so many experts have told me to resist this. But it's harder the longer that you wait.
Andrea Chalupa (27:34):
The sacrifice is greater. That's the problem. That's what we've been saying on Gaslight Nation for years. If we do not stop this, it's an all hands on deck moment. We are going to be driven into martyrdom. There's going to be generations that just have to sacrifice their bodies, their lives. That's how civil rights was born. And so I want to ask you, what would you say to people who are just, oh, the news is so depressing.
Zerlina Maxwell (27:59):
I'm checking out. I mean, look, I can't disagree with that, right? It is depressing, but it's going to get worse if we aren't paying attention in this particular moment and at least doing what we can to talk to people who are checked out, who are like, I don't want to pay attention to that. Eventually you're going to have to, it's like climate change. I always talk about this on my show. I say, you don't have to believe in climate change. It's not really about, the question isn't like, do you believe in it? It's science, right? So eventually it's going to affect you directly and personally, whether or not it's a hurricane that is impacting you directly or tornado is going to take the roof off of your house eventually it's going to show up at your door. And so wouldn't it be better to pay attention now before the crisis occurs and directly affects you?
(28:51):
It's already affecting all these other people, and I wish you would care about that. But since you don't at least understand that if you pay attention now, you can do things and put people in place that would make the potential for that crisis less. And this is such a scary moment because there's so many things happening that even if you are paying attention like we are, it's still hard to wrap your brain around all of the damaging things that are happening on any given morning. When I get up and I'm reading everything, New York Times, Washington, I'm reading everything and I'm putting the dots together, and I'm like, okay, this is not just bad. This is a systemic all out assault on American democracy and the federal government. And I wish more people cared when they were just snatching black and brown people who don't have paperwork to allow them to be in the United States.
(29:44):
I wish they cared when that started happening. I wish they cared when they sent federal law enforcement to Los Angeles. I wish they cared when they did that in dc. I wish they cared when they were like Chicago. Now Portland, even though a judge did step in. Although that may change in the future because that was such a temporary move by that judge. But for some reason, that doesn't get people's attention. It does get the people's attention outside of the United States. They understand exactly what's happening. But inside the United States, I think if you don't live in one of these cities, you're like, okay, well that's over there. That's a problem for those people over there not understanding that we're so interconnected in the way we are as a country, a large country, and that the things that are happening in Chicago and Portland and Los Angeles and DC are eventually going to come and affect you personally just like climate change.
Andrea Chalupa (30:36):
Absolutely. And obviously black women were the early warning system for all of this.
(30:43):
And now everyone is an authoritarian expert. But the danger in that, not listening to the early warning system folks, is that the Johnny come lately, the white men named Tom at the Atlantic, they are now talking out of both sides of their mouths and downplaying things and saying, you can't call it the F word fascism, because if it was fascism, you wouldn't be able to spout off your thoughts on social media. They don't understand how it works. So there is a danger because now that so many rich, powerful, influential voices, white male voices in the media have caught up to what's happening, they're now getting all the attention.
(31:25):
And us early warning system folks, the Ukrainians and the black people are like, wait, you should pay attention to us because we know how to get out of this. We've been fighting this all our lives, our very existence. We literally live with genocide in our DNA. And so it's like literally listen to us. So what do we do about that? Because it's sort of get the fuck out of the way. No one should be listening to you. You were laughing and writing hit pieces against people like us back in 2016, 20 17. Just for warning you, my hit pieces are delicious, by the way. I want to make wallpaper of all my hit pieces that go on. You should I know.
Zerlina Maxwell (32:05):
No, it's such an important point because one of the things that drives me absolutely crazy is that sometimes I'm right about the worst things, but too early. So then what happens is everybody sort of thinks that you're being hyperbolic until later, and then they're like, oh, you were exactly right. Everything you said was correct. And I was like, I wasn't trying to get a pat on the back and I wasn't waiting to be told, you're right. You're very smart. I was actually being like, Hey everyone, five alarm fire. This is a really big problem. And it's not until way late when people are like, oh yeah, you might've had a point, but I don't have to rely upon my own assessment of whether or not this is fascism or authoritarianism. I interview people who study this, right? So on my Sirius XM show, I interview experts.
(32:56):
I had a week of long series earlier this year on authoritarianism. Every single day I interviewed another expert. They all agree. They all agree, okay, so we don't have to rely upon even op-ed columnists or hosts like you or I and our opinions about what this looks like. I can look at all of the experts on authoritarianism and fascism, and if they are saying that we are noticing characteristics in the United States that we have seen in other parts of the world where they succumb to an authoritarian, and those things are happening in the US and we're on step seven of however many, right? You don't have to rely upon my opinion. It's not my opinion. I'm just reading and listening to the experts. Now, I also should mention several of the experts that I interviewed on my show earlier this year now live in Canada.
(33:56):
So for example, professor Jason Stanley, Tim Snyder, they live in Canada. That should have been something that should have alarmed people. Like, Hey, what does it mean if all of the experts on fascism and authoritarianism are moving outside of the United States? That is something that I think people should have paid attention to at the time, and that was in the beginning of the year. So again, it's not really just pundits, pontificating or people like you and I being hyperbolic. We're listening to the people who know what they're talking about, and we're also able to put the dots together, connect the dots and say, okay, this is clearly what this looks like. And just because it hasn't happened here, which is not true, which is not true because black American people up until what, 19? Well, you could argue not even yet, but until 1965, we're not treated the same as everyone else under the law.
(35:03):
And so to say that this isn't who we are, or we couldn't descend into some sort of authoritarian regime when we did treat certain groups of people in this country in unequal and unfair and illegal ways in the past in one generation, it's one generation ago. This is my parents' lifetime, not a long time ago. Then of course we can do it again. I also would say a lot of people like to compare it to Germany. And one of the things I talk to people who are students of history, even certain congresspeople, Sydney Cam Lger Dove said this on my show recently, Congresswoman from California said, we don't have to look at Germany. We have done some of these things. We had Jim Crow, we enslaved black people. We have done horrific things in our own history. That's why they're trying to take it out of schools and ban books and prevent people from learning this history. But we also have learned that we can progress and move forward and evolve in just one generation. And so we can learn lessons from our ancestors, our parents, our grandparents, about what they did to resist those authoritarian moves by the American government just in one generation. It's sort of two things. Yes, this is what exactly what it looks like. And no, it's not completely unprecedented. They're just repeating the historical playbook that they did from before.
Andrea Chalupa (36:41):
And the Nazis, it has to be said for everybody who needs to hear it. The Nazis learned from America's Jim Crow laws on how to tighten the screws on the legal warfare turning Germany into a dictatorship. They learned from the Jim Crow that the Republican party, the John Roberts Supreme Court is bringing back. That's what the Nazis learned from. There's just, so we talk about our historical mentors, I want to ask you who your historical mentor is. I want to point out that the people were up against their historical mentors are full on Nazi jurists. Like Peter Thiel takes a lot of lessons from Nazi jurist, Carl Schmidt, who influenced justified night of the long knives where Hitler, brutally mass killed his political opposition. And Peter Thiel is taking notes from this Nazi. And so who are your historical mentors that you are turning to get guidance in ways of thinking and processing what we're dealing with today?
Zerlina Maxwell (37:46):
Oh, that's a very interesting question because I don't know that I have any mentors per se, but I will say that one of my best friends is a historian. She is an expert in African-American history, so we have some very interesting conversations. Her name is Dr. Kendra Field. She is a professor at Tufts University, which is ironically where I went to school. I also think that we have to listen to folks from the civil rights era. So one of the people that I have on my show, and every single time he's on my Sirius XM show, Congressman James Clyburn, he was a history teacher. He was somebody who was active during the civil rights era as well. And so his perspective on what's going on is something that I think is invaluable. When we had him on before the 2024 election to talk about Project 2025, he said, it is not project 2025, it's project 1825.
(38:44):
And that was a really, really important reframe because I think by calling it Project 2025, it seems like something in the future, like they're trying to do something new that's forward looking when what he was explaining to us, like I said, is that this is backward looking. This is taking us backwards, pre-Civil rights, pre reconstruction, and we have already done this. We did end reconstruction, redemption happened. We did this already. They're just taking us backwards. And so it's really, really important to listen to folks like that who have an understanding of American history. And I think Congressman James Clyburn always drops so much knowledge when he's asked these questions. Unfortunately, in our mainstream press, the folks who are asking the questions themselves are not students of history. And I'm not shading anybody specifically, but I've been in conversation with many of these people in green rooms under on sets for over a decade.
Andrea Chalupa (39:41):
They're dumb as rocks. You don't have to tell me.
Zerlina Maxwell (39:43):
For over a decade as, and they don't know a lot of this stuff. And I don't know why. I don't know how that happened. I don't know...
Andrea Chalupa (39:51):
They just want to be on TV, Zerlina. Anything to be on TV.
Zerlina Maxwell (39:55):
If you're covering American politics in 2025, and you don't understand that part of the reason why this is happening is because our demographics are shifting towards a minority white electorate by 2045. And because there are a lot of white Americans who are very uncomfortable with that idea on the heels of having a black president for the very first time, they are doing all of these things, taking away affirmative action, taking away diversity, equity, inclusion as a response to those demographic shifts. And if we can't talk about that and you don't understand that, then you can't talk about American politics in 2025. You don't understand what's happening if you don't understand that critical piece project 2025 exists because the demographics are shifting towards an America where the minority of voters will be white by 2045. That's already true in certain states already.
(40:42):
And coincidentally, those are the states that, oh, we got to make new maps. We can't possibly have equitable representation. There are too many Latino voters in Texas. We need to dilute their voting power, draw new maps so that white voters literally have more power, even though they're fewer in numbers in a state like Texas. So when these things happen and you're not explaining it with the appropriate context, and that piece is critical, you can't explain it. It's not just a partisan power grab. It's not just partisan gerrymandering, it's racist gerrymandering. And if you're not talking about it that way, so many Democrats did at the time, like Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, for example, then you don't understand American politics in 2025. And in my opinion, you shouldn't be talking about it because you don't have the historical grounding or the appropriate context to be able to explain it to the American public. And one of my biggest pet peeves about the mainstream press right now and for the last 15 years is that they don't explain anything. They're like, oh, it's not our job to explain anything. It's the Democrat's job to explain everything. And I'm like, well, what are you here for?
Andrea Chalupa (41:56):
Exactly, exactly right. And there was a study that came out of an internet and media institution at Harvard that looked at how in the 2016 election that banon sludge of disinformation against Hillary, that she kills people, that she's corrupt, that she's going to unleash a lawless regime. Basically everything Bannon's friend Trump would go on to do all of that. Disinformation was getting amplified by the mainstream media. We had the New York Times gleefully going into Bannon's book, Clinton Cash, I dunno if Bannon wrote it himself, but it was certainly one of his projects. And of course, Maggie Haberman, and that must have been hell going through 2016 on the Hillary Clinton campaign. And you had the whole media establishment after you and waiting to see you fail. Trump is meanwhile getting open mic night left and right from Jeff Zucker and CNN Zucker would even build up anticipation, put a live camera on an empty podium counting down to when Trump would take the stage at a rally.
(43:07):
And then of course, on top of all of that, James Comey breaking protocol with his press conference labeling Hillary Clinton as careless, refusing repeated attempts by President Obama to build a bipartisan statement across government, across parties, saying, the Russians are attacking our very voting system as they have done in other countries to try to rig the outcome of the election. And Senate majority leader Harry Reed, is writing two extremely strongly worded letters to James Comey saying, for the love of God, tell the American people what you know. And James Comey's like, no. Instead, in the final hour of this election, I'm going to unleash the October surprise by reopening Hillary Clinton's non scandal email scandal, which I would give anything to be the scandal of this country at this moment in time. So what was that like from your perspective, living through that? And now I know no one wants to be gleeful over what they're doing at James Comey, because that's Banana Republic level stuff, but let's just take a moment to say that Comey did this to himself. What are your thoughts?
Zerlina Maxwell (44:24):
Look, I mean, it was insane to be inside of that campaign and watch the press. So been a member of Progressive Media before joining that campaign. And obviously in theory you understand that, okay, the media sometimes can be unfair to certain people. But when I was in the campaign, it was like watching, and again, I understand why some people might say the media sometimes can just misreport their facts or make things up. And I was not somebody who actually believed that. I was like, no, these people are operating in good faith and they're doing the best that they can. When I was on that campaign, lemme tell you, we would be minding our business doing our thing, and you would watch a story break and you were like, that's the opposite of what actually happened, right? So what they're saying on this TV is the opposite of what happened.
(45:24):
This happened a few different times. I'm not going to name anyone, but it was almost like you're in a fever dream. And it's so infuriating as a woman, as a feminist, as somebody who cares about sexism and misogyny, that we still actually, we still we're in 2025. We have not had a reckoning around the sex and misogynist media coverage of both Hillary Clinton and Vice President Kamala Harris. We have not actually accounted for the fact that there was bias in the way they were covered. What I mean by that is that I'm not saying that just because you're a woman running for public office or president or vice president or whatever, that you are perfect. You're above reproach. You can't make mistakes, but the mistakes are weighted differently. So in 2016, Hillary Clinton is running her race, and if she said basket of deplorables, that's like the worst thing in the world.
(46:25):
Meanwhile, Donald Trump, Donald Trump facts. But meanwhile, Donald Trump has never made any sense, ever. And I never understood why. We're like, oh, that's just trumping Trump. Trumping Trump is being completely incoherent, unable to put together a sentence that makes any sense ever. And we're going to give the nuclear launch coach not once, but two times to this person who does not make any sense, who does not know anything about public policies and how they actually impact people. That's not a requirement. We don't have to ask him any details about any plan. He can just say, it'll be the best economy. And you just move on to your next question. So this happened so often, not just in 2016, but it also happened during the 2020 primary. I would also say that the coverage of Elizabeth Warren's presidential campaign also was a manifestation of the sexism and misogyny in our mainstream press, demanding that she who had plans for things, which is different than a lot of the men running alongside her or Trump himself, has to explain exactly to the decimal point her plan.
(47:41):
And then she's telling people that if you reduce costs, then that is costing people less money. And they're like, we don't understand what you mean. They're pretending like they don't understand. You have to explain. Meanwhile, they've never demanded that from Donald Trump or most any of the men. So the problem that I have in this moment in so many different ways is there is a double standard. I'm not saying that you cannot be critical and rigorous in your analysis of the public policy platforms of candidates of all backgrounds, but there is a difference when you cover women versus when you cover men. And again, we've never had a woman president in the history of America. And it is not because we haven't had qualified women running for that position because Donald Trump is not qualified. He wasn't qualified the first time, and he is definitely not qualified this time, even though he's been president because he incited, this is my opinion, an insurrection on the United States Capitol on January 6th, 2021. And the fact that that was not the deal breaker is evidence of the fact that there is blatantly a double standard between how we treat him and how we treat everyone else and the women that have run against him. And he's only beat women. Remember that?
Andrea Chalupa (48:58):
I have to point out that. And he's only beat women that, yeah, that's America, everyone. I know people don't want to see it, but that is America. And our democracy, as Erlene pointed out earlier, is not that old. And we're about to celebrate 250 years of the founding of this country. But in terms of us as a democracy, it's just from the Civil Rights movement. And that's getting chipped away. We're here because of the white rage freakout to civil rights.
(49:27):
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(49:55):
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(50:22):
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(50:51):
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