In January, journalist Austin Ahlman’s mother took her own life with the eviction notice still in her pocket.

She was a proud, hard-working Nebraskan who moved from the factory floor all the way up to management. She took the burden upon herself instead of reaching out and asking for help. It’s familiar to any of us who come from families where we’re taught to put your head down, work hard, keep quiet, don’t whine, and eventually, inshallah, things work out.

That was part and parcel of the American dream, which is a fiction for most Americans who are struggling to make ends meet as the country just birthed its first trillionaire, Elon Musk.

Austin had already moved back home to take care of his father, who was diagnosed with cancer, and to help his elderly grandmother. Then, this tragedy happened. He has endured a blitzkrieg of crises and tragedies over the past month, but through resilience, grit, and community, he’s been able to keep the house.

Unfortunately, Austin’s story is far too common in America.

The 28-year-old wants to write a new narrative for future generations, and last month he threw his hat in the ring as an independent taking on the GOP and Democratic establishment. Inspired by his mother’s loss and family’s hardship, Ahlman is running as an independent, populist, “anti-monopoly crusader.”

Ahlman wants to tax the broligarchy, end forever wars, stop Israel’s genocide, get corporate money out of politics, and expand Medicare to cover all citizens. He wants people like his family to have a legitimate shot in a system that has long been rigged by the rich and for the rich. Alman rejects the coastal stereotypes of Nebraska as knee-jerk MAGA country. He believes people are sick and tired of the broligarchy and will back independent fighters willing to take on the system.

Ahlman joined The Left Hook to share his platform, why he’s running, and how he believes he can take on and defeat the establishment in Nebraska.

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To celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States of America, Donald Trump, a convicted criminal and rapist who has made billions for his family through crypto, grifting, and lucrative trade deals, will host a UFC fight on the White House lawn.

Years ago, this could’ve been a deleted scene from the movie Idiocracy, a satire depicting an America of morons ruled by President Camacho, a former wrestler and porn star who uses Gatorade instead of water to fertilize the soil and can’t understand why all the crops are dying.

Thanks to Trump’s presidency and the ascendence of the world’s worst people to power, we don’t need fictional dystopias because we’re living in one.

On Friday night, the Trump Administration approved the $111 billion merger between Paramount and Warner Bros., thereby giving a media monopoly to his allies, Larry and David Ellison.

The father and son team are right-wing billionaires who are also friends with Benjamin Netanyahu, with Larry Ellison being the largest private donor to “The Friends of Israel.” They’ve also acquired TikTok, which establishment talking heads blamed for radicalizing young people against an ongoing genocide. If the merger goes through, the Ellisons will control Paramount, Warner Brothers, CBS News, HBO, Comedy Central, and CNN.

Oh, the Ellisons through Paramount also paid over $7 billion to acquire streaming rights to UFC fights.

The CEO of UFC, Dana White, a degenerate gambler, is the public face of the sport and was next to Trump on election night, where he was invited to address the crowd. From the stage, White thanked another face of the UFC, podcaster Joe Rogan, and thanked him for helping Trump secure a win.

However, we’re missing all the main players, according to investigative Nate Wilcox of MMA Draw, who has been writing on combat sports for decades and bringing attention to the exploitative, corrupt industry that profits off of pain and misery.

Hollywood superagent Ari Emmanuel of William Morris Endeavor is one of the men making the moves behind the scenes. He controls the UFC and WWE, two major platforms that have tilted the cultural playground towards MAGA and Trump. Oh, he’s also a top Democratic donor and alleged “liberal” in Hollywood.

He joins The Left Hook and connects the dots.

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David Sirota feels a tinge of optimism.

The progressive commentator, editor of The Lever, and Oscar-nominated co-writer of Don’t Look Up, believes that a majority of Americans are finally waking up to the cruel, ugly reality that was always staring them in the face, whitewashed through corporate propaganda and political talking points.

The truth is that the system is broken for the majority of Americans and works perfectly for the Epstein class. It’s designed, maintained, and propped up by the elite and for the elite. Those who echoed this sentiment in the past were denigrated as hysterical radicals and doomsayers.

Now? They’re prescient Cassandras.

The supervillains have come out of the closet and no longer even feel the need to cover their murderous tracks. They openly flaunt the crimes. Earlier today, Elon Musk was minted the world’s first trillionaire. A few hours later, the Department of Justice approved the merger between Paramount and Warner Bros., giving Trump ally, The Ellisons, a massive media monopoly. They’ll now own CNN, CBS News, and two of the five Hollywood studios. They’re also completely in bed with Benjamin Netanyahu and supporters of his fascist regime. After all, Larry Ellison made his money through Oracle, which is going all-in on AI and whose first client was the CIA.

It all seems lost.

However, there are several signs of hope.

Today, Trump’s name was scrubbed off the Kennedy Center. Another judge extended the court-ordered block on his $1.8 trillion terrorist slush fund. The Epstein cover-up is back in the news and implicates the entire Trump Administration. A giant elephant peed on the Texas GOP convention floor. A majority of Americans are united against AI data centers. People loathe Elon Musk, Trump, and the techno fascists.

In Maine, Graham Platner defeated the entire establishment’s coordinated attack and won over voters with his populist message. Progressive candidates across the country, such as Abdul El-Sayed, Mamdani, and others, are bucking corporate donors and the establishment by speaking to the people’s rage against income inequality and a rigged system. They’re catching fire.

For Sirota, this represents hope that the upcoming 2026 midterms can finally loosen the establishment’s stranglehold over our economy and our futures. Give us a listen and tell me if you agree!

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The world witnessed the birth of its first trillionaire, Elon Musk, a manic white supremacist and obsessive eugenicist who was created by American capitalism and our bipartisan political establishment.

Without a $38 cash injection from taxpayer dollars, Musk would have never been able to build his empire of monstrosity and bullshit. Throughout the years, Musk and his tech bro friends could have been regulated or held accountable by both political parties, but they decided to hype them up as innovators and job creators who later turned into full-blown fascists.

To make it worse, it’s all a big Ponzi scheme.

SpaceX is now valued at $2 trillion even though it hasn’t turned a profit and has made only $20 billion in revenue. For comparison, Microsoft has a valuation of $2.5+ trillion and made $300 billion in revenue. His Tesla cars are mediocre compared to Chinese competitors, and so many other car companies, such as Toyota, make more profit, but Tesla is worth more than every other car company on the Earth - combined.

Musk has never truly created anything of value that has helped humanity, but spending $300 million to buy a Presidency gives you a massive return on investment. Musk was able to gut regulators, punish his critics, and steal data through DOGE. This included dismantling USAID, which has led to at least 600,000 deaths worldwide.

Now, Musk’s future is directly intertwined with our futures. If Musk fails and the AI bubble bursts, which it will, then we will be asked to “bail them” out.

It’s a rigged, incestuous ecosystem that benefits the Epstein Class.

They win, we lose. They fail up and parachute on top of a pile of money as the rest of us get buried under debt. Again, both political parties have contributed to this corruption and fraud. Democrats agreed to “bail out” our financial institutions and refuse to hold any of these criminals, including Trump, responsible. The GOP is now nakely and shamelessly ripping off America in service of their Mob boss Trump, who treats the White House as his ATM.

Meanwhile, the billionaire tech bros are creating super PACS and using them to purchase Democrats as well. Check out the “Leading the Future” co-funded by Palantir’s Joe Lonsdale, and “The Next American Era,” which is being run by former DCCC Chair Cheri Bustos. If a Democrat continues taking money from AI, Crypto, and AIPAC, then you have to ask yourselves, “How can they reform a broken system? Why would they?”

You know the answer already.

Progressive organizer and former Bernie Sanders campaign aide Corbin Trent, founder of A Fight Worth Having, joined me to discuss how the American establishment created the world’s first trillionaire and how we, the people, still have a chance to fight back and dismantle the Epstein Class that benefits from a rigged economy.

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Breaking: The Justice Department just approved the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger, which gives Larry and David Ellison control over two of the five Hollywood studios, HBO, CNN, and CBS.

Please support independent media!

Here’s Danielle with today’s Democracy-ish writeup!

The Rise of the Trillion-Dollar Pharaoh

We are told that the global market is a meritocracy—a finely tuned machine where hard work yields wealth and brilliance elevates humanity. But the reality breaking around us is far more grotesque. We have crossed a terrifying historical threshold: the coronation of the world’s first trillionaire.

This milestone is not a monument to human innovation or the triumphs of labor. It is a siren blaring the ultimate collapse of systemic accountability.

When an individual’s wealth triples in a matter of two short years, it is easy to mistake them for a god amongst men. This is the exact illusion the tech oligarchs wish to project. They want the public to look upon their empires with a sense of theological inevitability, treating them as chosen figures who have rightfully earned the keys to our collective future.

But this is all smoke and mirrors. This is a highly sophisticated, state-sanctioned Ponzi scheme designed to concentrate ungodly amounts of capital into the hands of a microscopic elite, while the rest of the world is left to fight over the crumbs.

The Myth of the “Self-Made” Oligarch

The great lie of modern American capitalism is that these modern-day Pharaohs achieved their status through rugged individualism. The truth is much more transactional: they were built by us.

The tech “broligarchy” did not surpass normal human wealth because of a free market; they did so because the political establishment rolled out the red carpet. Decade after decade, across multiple presidential administrations—Republican and Democrat alike—the government has funneled public tax dollars directly into the pockets of billionaires.

The Cost of Corporate Welfare: Consider the scale of government handouts. A single billionaire’s network of companies can swallow upward of $38 billion in public subsidies.

This isn’t innovation; it’s tech welfare. Our public funds provide the essential leverage these oligarchs use to secure international contracts, dominating infrastructure from the United Kingdom to France and Germany. They walk the earth like a new wave of imperial explorers, collecting the hard-earned resources of global citizens while paying nothing back into the system that created them.

Distraction as a Political Tool: Weaponizing the Bottom

How does a system so blatantly rigged keep from imploding? It relies on the oldest trick in the political playbook: strategic division. When income inequality reaches a breaking point, the wealthy class requires a scapegoat to deflect the righteous anger of the masses. They weaponize the media platforms they have swallowed whole—from Twitter to TikTok—to control the cultural narrative and actively flood the digital ecosystem with far-right, misogynistic, and xenophobic vitriol.

The mechanics of this manipulation are devastatingly effective. When a violent crisis occurs, the algorithm doesn’t ask for logic; it demands a villain. Low-income, disenfranchised communities are systematically told that their lack of opportunity, their failing healthcare, and their empty pockets are the fault of someone who looks different.

[The Cycle of Manufactured Division]
  Oligarchs Amass Public Wealth 
         │
         ▼
  Economic Deprivation of the Public 
         │
         ▼
  Media Algorithms Amplify Rage & Scapegoating 
         │
         ▼
  Horizontal Violence (Race Riots / Culture Wars) 
         │
         ▼
  Systemic Focus Diverted From the Top (Repeat)

We see the tragic results in real-time: race riots tearing through cities like Belfast and Southampton. The public is manipulated into attacking a Turkish barber shop or terrorizing Muslim and immigrant communities over the actions of an individual, while completely ignoring the rampant domestic violence and systemic neglect perpetrated by their own lawmakers.

As President Lyndon B. Johnson famously observed, “if you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you picking his pocket”. Today, that playbook has been upgraded for the digital age, expanding into a complex caste system where marginalized groups are continuously pitted against one another, buying proximity to power by pulling up the ladder behind them.

A Broken Moral Compass and the Price of Priorities

The true metric of a nation’s morality is not found in its rhetoric, but in its budget. The math of our current reality paints a damning picture of structural decay:

While public healthcare infrastructure fractures and preventable diseases like measles make a resurgence, the elite invest heavily in private prisons, detention centers, and gambling mechanisms to keep the populace distracted and exhausted. We are fed digital gladiator sports and algorithmic outrage to keep us too tired to look up.

This systemic rot forces an uncomfortable question: Did the nation ever possess the moral center it claims to have lost? A clear-eyed look at history reveals a legacy built on the exploitation of the vulnerable—from the transatlantic slave trade and the theft of Indigenous lands to the internment of Japanese citizens and the continuous erosion of bodily autonomy. The current era is not a sudden departure from our values; it is the natural consequence of unchecked systemic sins.

The Breaking Point of the Dunya

There is an ancient theological framework that offers perspective on this grotesque concentration of power: the story of Moses and the Pharaoh. The Pharaoh possessed the palace, the riches, and absolute control over the land. He believed his hubris would shield him forever. But his empire was temporary, devoid of genuine peace or contentment, and ultimately destined to turn to dust.

The modern tech oligarchs may have bought up the media, the data, and the politicians, but their power rests on a fragile foundation of artificial valuation. They sit on a mountain of paper money, yet remain visibly miserable, consuming their own lives in a loop of digital rage.

History shows us that human societies have a breaking point. When the facade finally cracks, and the public realizes that they cannot eat racism, put bigotry in their gas tanks, or use hatred to fund their children’s education, the focus will inevitably shift from the horizontal fights at the bottom to the oligarchs at the very top. The modern Pharaohs may believe they are kings among men, but they are drowning in a sea of their own hubris.

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Once in a while, it’s acceptable to be romantic about sports.

You don’t have to follow basketball to appreciate how New Yorkers are losing their minds over the Knicks being in the Finals for the first time in 27 years.

Progressive organizer and commentator Jess Craven understands the moment, and she can barely tell the difference between football and baseball. However, even she realized she saw something special when the Knicks overcame a historic 29-point deficit to beat the Spurs at the last second.

For Jess, this was a metaphor for our current political moment.

The world’s worst people are in power and continue raping our children and our Earth without accountability. Donald Trump, a criminal, is the President, and he’s actively covering up the Epstein Scandal because it will expose him and his billionaire friends. His biggest donor, Elon Musk, is going to become a trillionaire after SpaceX went public. Jimmy Dolan, the billionaire owner of the Knicks, would rather side with Trump than Zohran Mamdani and his team’s own fans.

It’s a big club, and they’re spending billions to buy both political parties ahead of the elections. They’re also deeply invested in forever wars, securing massive contracts from the military-industrial complex.

However, there are signs of quiet and loud revolutions around the country. People are waking up to the greed and calling out billionaires, AI data centers, and corruption. We see voters rejecting the establishment in Maine and New Jersey. Yes, the Epstein Class will unleash hell to bring us all down, but we have the numbers.

Jess joins me to discuss all of it and the developments of the day.

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The world’s wealthiest racist and biggest Trump donor, Elon Musk, inched closer to becoming a trillionaire thanks to his SpaceX company going public in the largest stock debut in history.

Musk has spent his time tweeting white supremacist conspiracies, complaining about declining birth rates, and egging on race riots in Belfast. His colleagues and friends, including Palantir’s Alex Karp and Peter Thiel, continue making millions by investing in the military industrial complex and promoting their deranged, fascist worldview. Another billionaire, Larry Ellison, is buying up U.S. media and neutralizing any critique of Trump, billionaires, and Israel.

All of these individuals have one degree of separation from Jeffrey Epstein, the notorious pedophile who was Trump’s closest friend. Many of Epstein’s associates were present at Madison Square Garden, seating courtside as diehard Knicks fans were priced out of the game. The Knicks’ owner, Jimmy Dolan, also tried to do business with Epstein, and he was willing to jinx his own team and its positive vibes by attacking Mamdani and siding with Trump.

After all, it’s a big club, and you aren’t in it.

That club includes Democratic donors, leaders, and pundits, who have spent more time attacking progressive candidates and pro-Palestinian activists than the genocide in Israel, billionaires, AI, or Attorney General Ken Paxton, who released a pedophile in Texas.

So where the hell is the good news, Waj?

Despite billionaires strangling us with their corrupt power, the people are finding ways to fight back, create community, and express joy. Politics is downstream from culture. Just look at NYC last night. People created watch parties, rejoiced, and overcame the Trump Curse, helping their team come back from a historic 29-point deficit. Mainers rejected the establishment and sided with Graham Platner, who is running a populist campaign. A majority is turning on CBS News and refusing to lend their eyeballs to Bari Weiss’s billionaire hatchet job. More than 75% of Americans are now against AI data centers, and graduating classes are openly booing whenever they are mentioned.

I invited Jared Yates Sexton to help me find moments of light in such perilous times and explain how we’re witnessing the rise of a powerful revolt against corrupt institutions and the Epstein class.

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When I was growing up, we were taught that there were only two things inevitable in life: death and taxes.

Well, rich people found a way around taxes, but they’re still trying to hack death.

Now we’re told the only things that are inevitable in life are death (for the 99%) and Artificial Intelligence. The Singularity will descend upon us regardless. Resistance is futile. Skynet and HAL will emerge and revolutionize every aspect of our life, whether we like it or not. Billionaires are preaching this sermon at graduation ceremonies, but young people aren’t buying it. Instead, they’re loudly booing.

AI Data Centers are popping up around the country, abusing our land, polluting our water, and draining our resources all in the hopes of eventually scooping up our data. Again, it’s inevitable, and we have to just sit there and take it. Why? Because it’s here and it’ll be awesome! Just trust us, bro!

Well, what happens if most of this is bullshit?

What if these sociopathic billionaires are creating the world’s most epic Ponzi scheme and overpromising without the slightest know-how on what they’ll deliver? What if they're ingratiating their Big Con with international governments and private businesses knowing that they will eventually be “too big to fail” and the rest of us will be left holding the check?

Again, I’m a simple English major and an unfrozen caveman. Numbers and charts confuse me. But my spidey sense doesn’t buy what these tech bros are selling. If indeed AI is successful, then we’re losing white-collar and blue-collar jobs, and it’s a wrap for a significant portion of humanity. If, however, the bubble bursts - what then?

Whistleblower Alexis Goldstein has spent her career trying to regulate these corrupt industries. She left Wall Street and organizing to join the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where she confronted DOGE employees and demanded they explain why they were accessing sensitive information. For her efforts, she was fired. Now, she’s running as a Democrat for Maryland’s 6th District and promising to ban AI Data Centers.

She joins The Left Hook to connect the dots and explain why the AI gamble reminds her of the 2008 recession but only dumber and bigger.

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If you were to believe establishment pundits, experts, and consultants in mainstream media, then Zohran Mamdani should not be the wildly popular, Democratic Socialist, Muslim American mayor of New York City. After all, there’s just no way that an outsider who is so “radical” in his politics could win over one of the greatest cities in the world.

NY Knicks billionaire owner James Dolan just accused Mamdani of not being a Knicks fan and is canceling the Madison Square Garden watch party for his own team. This is after he cursed his own building by inviting Donald Trump and the Epstein class to attend Game 3, which the Knicks lost and Trump fell asleep. But it’s Mamdani who is the villain, folks.

Over in Maine, Graham Platner, a former vet with no political experience, should have barely squeaked by in the Democratic Primary. After all, he endured numerous “scandals” over the past weeks and was hit with widespread condemnation. If you’re on BlueSky and Twitter, then Janet Mills and write-in candidate Andrea LaFlamme should have dominated. Except that didn’t happen, and Platner sailed with over 70% of the votes with his progressive, anti-billionaire agenda.

Now, the target is Abdul El-Sayed, the progressive candidate running for Senate in Michigan. For the past two months, Democratic donors, leadership, and corporate media have tried to shamelessly smear El-Sayed as a radical for doing one campaign stop with progressive commentator Hasan Piker. Instead of hurting his chances, El-Sayed is now leading the pack. Mallory McMorrow is all but toast, and Haley Stevens, the AIPAC-backed candidate, is trying to consolidate the center and the right.

What unites these candidates, including members of The Squad, is that they are not beholden to the Democratic Establishment, their corporate donors, super PACs, or some strange fidelity to ICE or Israel, which is a foreign country in the Middle East. They are willing to take on billionaires, end forever wars, and fight for massive reform that will benefit the masses. Unfortunately, this makes them massive liabilities for a bipartisan political system that is handsomely paid by some of the worst people on Earth.

However, the masses are finally waking up. A majority of Americans are against AI Data Centers, giving unconditional aid to Israel, or bailing out sociopathic billionaires. They also want to abolish ICE and hold criminals, like the Trump syndicate, accountable. The primary season is where we can choose our fighters, and the people are responding to a message that protects the majority against the elite.

I break down the Maine election results and scout the political landscape with progressive host and commentator Krystal Ball.

***Give us a listen, but first consider trying Ground News, which is a partner with The Left Hook for this conversation. They’re an independent, grassroots media aggregator and auditor that pools stories worldwide into one central hub. More importantly, they tell you the political bias of each news story, the media outlet’s ownership, and their level of factuality, so you can be informed and aware about who is telling you the story and from what angle.

For The Left Hook readers, Ground News is offering a special 40% discount. Use this link and give them a spin: www.groundnews.com/hook

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Here’s Danielle’s write-up from today’s Democracy-ish featuring special guest Danielle Moodie!

We have broken past the sub-basement of political absurdity and entered an era of unmitigated institutional rot. To observe the current landscape—where economic volatility, rogue military engagements, and the systemic shield of a transnational predator class operate simultaneously—is to realize that the traditional metrics of governance have not merely failed; they have been intentionally dismantled.

What we are witnessing is the consolidation of an architecture of impunity, a coordinated effort by a billionaire oligarchy and its political instruments to insulate themselves from accountability while the public inherits the compounding debt of their corruption.

The Economics of Indifference

The baseline of daily survival for the average citizen has become an exercise in managed decline. With inflation spiking aggressively from 3.8% to 4.3%, the domestic economy is flashing warning lights that can no longer be ignored by anyone—except, it seems, the executive branch. When asked directly about the compounding financial strain facing working families, the presidential response was an explicit, unvarnished declaration of affection for the crisis: “No. I love it. I love the inflation.”

This is not a gaffe; it is a confession of alignment. For the hyper-wealthy, inflation is not an existential threat—it is a wealth transfer mechanism.

[Traditional Economy] ---> Inflation Spikes ---> Consumer Hardship
                               |
                               v
[The Oligarchic Reality] -> Asset Values Rise -> Greater Consolidation of Wealth

Before the current geopolitical flashpoints erupted, the domestic market was already destabilized by isolationist, unilateral tariffs that functioned effectively as a direct tax on the American consumer.

By inflating the cost of basic goods under the guise of nationalist economic strategy, the state prepared the ground for a permanent state of artificial scarcity. When the executive class tells you they love the mechanism driving you into precarity, we must believe them.

Unwinnable Wars and the Shadow Budget

This domestic economic erosion is inextricably linked to an unauthorized, unconstitutional foreign policy. The current military engagement—initiated without the statutory consent of Congress—has already drained an estimated $29 billion to $30 billion from the public treasury.

As geopolitical tensions escalate following the death of the elder Ayatollah Khamenei and his replacement by a more militant successor, the strategic vulnerabilities of American hard power have been laid bare. The opening of the volatile Strait of Hormuz has immediately triggered energy and food shortages, driving fuel costs to punitive highs.

The Cost of Imperial Hubris: While the Pentagon enforces a strict lack of transparency, hiding the bodies of fallen service members and concealing the true extent of damages to Middle Eastern bases, the asymmetric reality of modern warfare has become undeniable: billion-dollar American military installations and personnel are being systematically neutralized by $20,000 off-the-shelf drones.

This is a war of attrition where the American public pays twice: first at the tax pump to fund the military-industrial complex, and second at the gas pump to survive its consequences.

The Situation Room as a Public Relations Firm

Perhaps the most damning indictment of this era is the total subversion of national security infrastructure for personal and criminal preservation. Recent investigative reporting has revealed that the White House Situation Room—the geographic heart of American crisis management—was transformed into a literal public relations war room.

Its objective? To mitigate the fallout of the bombshell exposure of the executive’s deep, decades-long proximity to international sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Faced with a mountain of evidence, including an explicit, lewd 50th birthday greeting appended to a commemorative book assembled by Ghislaine Maxwell, the Department of Justice did not act as the nation’s chief legal shield. Instead, cabinet members and legal advisors huddled to engineer a rapid-response media spin strategy.

====================================================================
               THE SUBVERSION OF NATIONAL SECURITY
====================================================================
[ Constitutional Mandate ]       | [ Actual Execution ]
                                 |
- Address foreign threats        | - Suppression of the Epstein Files
- Manage domestic emergencies    | - Protecting high-net-worth friends
- Defend constitutional law      | - Engineering a PR shield for criminality
====================================================================

When an administration openly admits to congressional allies that it cannot release the full volume of the Epstein files because “some of my friends will get hurt,” the illusion of the rule of law is entirely shattered.

The Microcosm of Madison Square Garden

To see this elite alignment in its purest form, one needed only to look at the sidelines of Madison Square Garden during a recent high-profile basketball game. The arena was transformed into a physical manifestation of the oligarchy.

As public workers were displaced by extreme security measures and lifelong sports fans were priced out by tickets inflated to $30,000 and $100,000, the luxury boxes were occupied by a specific, interconnected class of power brokers:

• Billionaire financiers implicated in the Epstein registers.

• Media moguls overseeing the consolidation and gutting of historic news networks.

• Foreign policy donors actively funding external military forces.

This is the transnational alliance that dictates public reality. They do not view the state as a sovereign entity to be governed, but as a host organism to be hollowed out.

From the tech-billionaire “PayPal Mafia” manufacturing political candidates to media executives intentionally dismantling journalistic integrity from the inside out, the goal remains uniform: protect the billionaire class, silence systemic critique, and enforce compliance.

The End Game: Managed Pardons and Total Immunity

The trajectory of this corruption points toward a dark, inevitable conclusion. Ghislaine Maxwell’s swift transfer to a low-security facility in Texas—following an unprecedentedly rapid transcript release engineered by state actors—signals that the ultimate transactional play is already in motion.

In a system where financial fraudsters, corrupt foreign heads of state, and disgraced politicians receive routine executive clemency, Maxwell holds the ultimate leverage.

She remains an active trustee of the shifting, untraceable Epstein wealth, and more importantly, she possesses the diagnostic data of a global network of compromised elites. Whether through an explicit executive pardon or an engineered arrangement as a state witness when the political winds shift, the architecture is designed to ensure she never serves her full sentence. The system protects its own because to expose one pillar is to bring down the entire canopy.

We are no longer facing a broken political system; we are navigating a fully operational, post-democratic kleptocracy. The inflation, the unauthorized wars, the media purges, and the suppression of the Epstein files are not disparate events—they are the coordinated components of a ruling class that loves our precarity because it guarantees their supremacy.

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The Establishment’s non-stop attack on Graham Platner actually boomeranged and helped him win the Democratic Senate Primary in Maine.

It wasn’t even close.

He won nearly 72% of the votes.

Clearly, Maine voters weren’t paying attention to mainstream media, the pundits, the GOP, or centrist Democrats. Platner’s populist message promoting a progressive economic agenda resonated with people who feel they’ve been left behind by the Epstein Class that continues to profit at their expense. Platner is also against forever wars, criticizes Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, and wants to tax billionaires. These positions, although increasingly popular with the American public, put him at odds with corporate donors and Democratic leadership.

However, Congressman Ro Khanna sees where the wind is blowing.

He flew from California to support Platner’s campaign and publicly stood by him. Khanna tells me Platner’s win is an example of “movement politics” gaining ground on the traditional power structures upheld by establishment politics. It’s grassroots and reflects a growing rage against what is perceived to be a privileged class of outdated individuals committed to protecting billionaires and corrupt institutions.

Khanna joined me to discuss how the Democratic Party must change its positions on billionaires, Israel, and ICE to court a disaffected majority that no longer trusts it to provide clear, moral leadership and progressive reform.

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The Bari is so low that it’s in hell.

What else can explain the fact that self-described “Zionist fanatic” Bari Weiss is rumored to gain editorial oversight of CNN after single-handedly destroying CBS News and 60 Minutes?

Well, how about some facts?

Larry Ellison, one of the richest men on Earth who made his money off of Oracle, and his nepo baby, David Ellison, already control Paramount and CBS. They are set to take over Warner Bros. and CNN. This means these two pro-Trump, pro-Netanyahu freaks will control two of the five major Hollywood studios. Ellison is the single largest private donor to the IDF. For the past two years, the establishment, including Hillary Clinton, blamed TikTok for radicalizing a young generation against Israel and not, you know, a genocide.

So, Ellison just bought it and now controls that as well.

David Ellison overpaid for Weiss’s The Free Press blog, which served as an establishment mouthpiece to defend Israel, promote billionaires, and attack “the woke.” One of its biggest supporters was David Sacks, Trump’s Crypto and AI Czar and part of the PayPal South African Mafia, alongside Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. Another major donor to Trump is the pro-Israel fanatic, Miriam Adelson. Currently, Israel is continuing its genocide while also extending its terror across the West Bank and Lebanon, where 1 million people have been displaced. Israel’s criminal government also dog-walked Trump into an illegal, unwinnable war with Iran.

Meanwhile, Israel’s supporters, through AIPAC, continue giving money to both sides of the aisle. They spent a record amount to dislodge GOP Rep. Thomas Massie. Along with Crypto and AI money, AIPAC spent more than $90 million in the Illinois Primary. AIPAC also spent more than $2 million to remove a pro-Israel, Zionist moderate Democrat, Tom Malinowski, from the primaries because he barely bucked the hardliners.

Regardless, Democratic leaders like Jeffries still take money from AIPAC! Recently, Chuck Schumer and other NYC Dems marched alongside war criminal Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s fascist foreign minister, in the Israel Day parade. Apparently, these aren’t red lines, but Mamdani has to apologize for pro-Palestinian chants he has never uttered.

All of this for a foreign country in the Middle East that is taking billions of our taxpayer dollars to occupy Palestinians and implement apartheid policies.

It’s madness.

When progressives and even some Republicans speak out against billionaires or Israel, they are crushed under an avalanche of super PAC money and establishment criticism. Just look at what happened to Mamdani, Abdul El Sayed, the Squad, or Dr. Adam Hamawy.

I joined Joy-Ann Reid to discuss all of this on the anniversary of her show.

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Two middle-aged men with former heart problems team up to share receipts of Donald Trump’s endless corruption and how Americans can finally hold him accountable.

Former prosecutor Glenn Kirschner returns after a successful ablation surgery that fixed his atrial fibrillation. When I was 31, I had the same procedure after surviving a freakish, near-death experience where they had to cardiovert me (3-2-1 clear!) three times.

Although it might look like our democracy is on life support, some exciting developments might resuscitate our comatose state. Judges are slapping down Trump’s authoritarian efforts left and right. He was forced to remove his name from the Kennedy Center last week after a federal court order. Another judge balked at Trump’s ballroom construction, which is now costing taxpayers $1 billion. A U.S. Court of Appeals is currently reviewing the merits of the case.

Meanwhile, Trump’s lackey, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, publicly said the Administration is not moving forward with its $1.8 billion terrorist slush fund at this time, but reaffirmed the IRS will never audit Trump or his family’s tax returns, which is totally normal and not a massive red flag of criminal activity. However, a judge has reopened a case investigating whether the Trump Administration committed “fraud on the court” by using his IRS lawsuit to create his $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund.”

Trump has already lost the unwinnable and illegal Iran War, but he sadly hasn’t realized it yet, so he doubles down. He’s negative on nearly every issue except border security, where he’s hovering around zero. Gas and grocery prices will only continue rising, and there are small cracks in the MAGA base as Trump turns on MTG, Tucker Carlson, and Candace Owens.

But it’s not enough to defeat Republicans at the polls. Kirschner argues that America has to learn from its previous mistakes of applying kid gloves to criminals, such as Richard Nixon and Jefferson Davis. There needs to be a massive accountability project that is committed to investigations and due process, which will inevitably rope in not just Trump but his entire MAGA criminal ecosystem.

Give us a watch!

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The Supreme Court.

That’s one of the main prizes for anyone who cares about saving our fledgling democracy from technofascists, white Christian supremacists, and corrupt sociopaths who want to undo the second half of the 20th century.

If you think that’s hyperbole, then clearly you haven’t paid attention to the Roberts Supreme Court populated with six right-wing hacks in Black robes who have been groomed by conservative billionaires. They have undone the Voting Rights Act, killed Roe, allowed dark money to buy our elections, eliminated Affirmative Action, deregulated industries, and given Trump a blank check for his numerous crimes. Their end goal is power for rich, white men by any ridiculous means necessary.

Just look at their recent cases in Louisiana and Alabama in which this very same Supreme Court went against its own reasoning and allowed for an intentionally discriminatory map to pass. Who cares about the Constitution or precedent? This Supreme Court doesn’t! However, weak, delusional Democratic leaders still believe that civility and finger-wagging will somehow win over a right-wing movement that is utterly committed to destroying them.

It’s a sin that Democrats have not made Supreme Court reform a major plank of their 2028 campaign. They’re still afraid of embracing bold ideas because many of them are not built for this fight or made for this moment. Without reforming the Court, either through adding extra seats and/or term limits, America will remain hijacked by an increasingly extremist minority that wants to undo all the progress made after Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. In fact, all the advances made after that fateful decision were due precisely to having a Supreme Court that invalidated “separate but equal” established under Plessy v. Ferguson.

You better believe that Supreme Court Justices Alito and Thomas are going to retire before Trump’s term ends, which will ensure two new right-wing extremists who will continue to dominate the Court and American politics for decades to come.

This is why we need to capture the Senate and play hardball against Republicans. They did the same to deny Obama a Justice, so it’s about time for Democrats to put on the brass knuckles.

Law Professor Leah Litman breaks all of this down in her fantastic book, Lawless, which was just released in paperback, and she joins The Left Hook to give us the Cliffs Notes.

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Called it.

The Trump Curse would affect the New York Knicks and ruin their chances to win Game 3 at Madison Square Garden. You don’t have to follow sports or be a fan to appreciate how last night’s spectacle was another exquisite example of Trump’s corrosiveness and the shameless apathy and greed of billionaires.

Trump, who couldn’t be bothered to attend his own son’s wedding, decided to attend the game and inconvenience an entire city, delay entry into the stadium due to intense security measures, and jack up already astronomical ticket prices. Not to mention, he hexed his own team. To make it worse, the world’s worst people were in attendance. It’s like half the Epstein List, as diehard, middle-class Knicks fans were priced out and forced to watch it at Bryant Park.

Finally, Trump couldn’t even bother to stay awake during a raucous game. The rapidly decaying vulgarian fell asleep - yet again. Clearly, this man is unwell, but there’s no book written by Jake Tapper about Trump being too sick or too old. The entire system bends to accommodate bad faith right-wing grievances and narratives, and Democrats and liberals are eager to have their alleged civility weaponized against them.

Just look at Senate races around the country. For the past two weeks, there has been non-stop coverage around Graham Platner and his alleged controversies. Whether you approve of him or not, don’t you think it’s more damning if a sitting Attorney General allows a child rapist to walk free and not register as a sex offender? Well, that’s what happened in Texas thanks to Ken Paxton and Republicans, but there’s barely a mention of it in the mainstream press. Regardless, Platner seems to be advancing against Susan Collins, and the fate of the Senate is at stake. That means the future of the Supreme Court as well.

Finally, the white supremacist regime of Trump and Stephen Miller has decided to win over the world by being overtly racist against Black people who are attending the World Cup. This includes humiliating Somali referee Omar Artan, who was denied entry and sent back. Why? Because he’s Somali. That’s it. This also includes humiliating the Senegalese soccer team and treating them like criminals at the tarmac. Did this happen to white soccer teams? Nope. Why? Because they’re Black. According to Trump, Black people have “low IQ.” That’s how he described sports commentator Stephen A. Smith, who criticized Trump for ruining the Knicks’ mojo.

Allison Gill and I get into all of it.

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Donald Trump is really winning this war, isn’t he?

After all, he’s the only President in the past 47 years to be foolish, reckless, and adventurous enough to disregard his own national security advisors and common sense to follow Israel into an unwinnable, illegal war with Iran.

So far, he’s replaced an elder, dying Ayatollah Khameini with a younger, more militant Ayatollah Khameini. The Strait of Hormuz, which was once open, is now closed. Gas prices have gone up, and now there are threats of food and energy shortages around the world. Iran, which was weakened, is now emerging and flexing as a major player in the Middle East, and our allies continue to lose faith in American hegemony and are seeking safety with China.

However, don’t trust the evidence of our lying eyes! Believe Donald Trump, people!

He just gaslit the world multiple times in his interview with Kristen Welker, where he claimed that he never promised “no new wars” even though that was one of his major selling points to his base. Also, he assured the world that he is the one “calling the shots” and not Benjamin Netanyahu. Well, Israel just openly defied Trump by continuing its assault on Lebanon after Iran retaliated after a Beirut attack. Trump will respond with a strongly worded check, I’m sure.

Meanwhile, Israel’s entire political establishment is openly committed to occupation, apartheid policies, expansion in Gaza and the West Bank, and doubling down on war against Hezbollah. Netanyahu, who is fighting for his political life, is not an outlier, folks. Even though the war is unpopular and a majority of Americans are reconsidering unconditional aid and support for Israel, both Democrats and Republicans continue to take money from AIPAC and refuse to hold Netanyahu’s criminal government accountable. Over the weekend, the Defense Department increased Israel’s counterintelligence threat assessment to its highest level.

Why? Because Israel is openly spying on America!

What’s Washington, DC’s answer? Give Israel more money and support!

This is madness, but the game is changing, and the players are evolving, according to Iran expert Trita Parsi. He joins The Left Hook to break down the latest developments.

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Joy-Ann Reid is on her way to New York after using all of her contacts to score two tickets for tonight’s Finals Game 3 in Madison Square Garden.

During our live, Joy was about 90% sure she had the tickets. By the end of the conversation, it was confirmed, and she left for her flight, only after calling out the feckless complicity of corporate media in normalizing Trump.

Over the weekend, Trump had a remarkable crash-out during an interview with Kristen Welker, the host of Meet the Press. For her part, Welker actually engaged in basic journalism and did some solid pushback to Trump’s deranged claims about rigged elections and fraud. After insulting her, he stormed out of the interview, crushing his mic on the process. MAGA can always dish it, but they can’t take it. It’s safe spaces for them, no safe spaces for us. They perpetually claim victimhood, and they victimize everyone else.

This is how Welker described the interview.

Unfortunately for corporate brass that probably wrote that gaslighting life for her to post, the rest of us have eyes and ears and saw what actually happened.

We saw numerous examples of this bad-faith whining as Spencer Pratt and Republicans are shocked that the thoroughly incompetent and unqualified celeb failed to advance in the LA Mayoral race. (Maybe they should learn to count?) GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna claimed that activist Medea Benjamin, who is in her 70s, assaulted her when her hand briefly brushed up against Luna’s arm. (You can’t make this up!) Former 60 Minutes anchor Scott Pelley told the NYT that CBS accused him of physically assaulting one of Bari Weiss’s new Reek Nick Bilton. Pelley merely grilled him and asked him about his non-existent qualifications to run 60 Minutes.

There are losses and humiliations for Trump and MAGA across the board, which probably explain their respective freakouts. The worst one was probably Israel and Netanyahu openly defying Trump and escalating their ongoing bombardment against Iran and Lebanon. Trump assured the world that he was in charge and “calling the shots,” and then Israel turned around and said, “Nah.” The question remains - will Trump respond by simply writing them a sternly worded check?

Joy and I get into all of it before she left for her plane!

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Former National Security Advisor and President Obama speechwriter Ben Rhodes is a long-suffering, superstitious, die-hard New York Knicks fan.

For those who don’t know, the Knicks are in the Finals for the first time in 27 years. They’re up 2-0 against the Spurs. New Yorkers have lost their minds. Tonight is their first finals game in Madison Square Garden, which was screening the games for free. However, the area is now fenced off because Donald Trump has decided to descend upon New York and make it all about himself.

The perpetually needy, insatiable, insufferable vulgarian is like a rabid dog in heat who must piss on everything. After he was forced to remove his name from the Kennedy Center, and his $1.8 billion terrorist slush fund was rejected, he’s trying to put the spotlight on himself even if it means inconveniencing a city of manic fans and increasing security costs. Of course, Knicks Owner, billionaire James Dolan, doesn’t care. Trump is his guy. It’s a big club for the rich, with tickets selling anywhere from 13K to 30K.

If anything, it’s a microcosm of America.

The true patriots are priced out, and the cheese and cracker elites are arriving to insert themselves into history at the expense of everyone else’s comfort and happiness.

Trump is also hijacking America’s 250th anniversary. Instead of celebrating this nation’s flawed democracy, Trump will make it all about himself with a UFC fight on the White House lawn. He’s wasted taxpayer dollars to create a stadium, and tickets are also insanely unaffordable. This is the type of stuff that Roman Emperors used to do with Gladiators and Coliseums. But, then again, this too is America - or a version of it.

In his new book, All We Say, Rhodes looks at America’s history and national identity through 15 different speeches. For some, like Trump, America is a monolith with one clear protagonist that is white, Christian, and male. For Ben Franklin, it was more noble and idealistic, even though he was also a rich landowner who didn’t care too much about the dignity and freedom of Black people. Meanwhile, MLK and Frederick Douglass fought for the promise of America by calling out her hypocrisies and weaknesses.

A new generation is now challenging accepted narratives. They aren’t listening to the establishment or swallowing talking points out of Washington. They are rebelling against forever wars, AIPAC, AI, and the broligarchy.

All of it is coming to a head.

Ben joins me to discuss his book and the latest news.

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There is an unwritten rule in the sleek, brightly lit studios of modern mainstream news: the primary goal of getting on television is to be invited back. To secure that invitation, you must learn to navigate a precise choreography. You must not speak too loudly over your peers, you must not push too deeply past the surface, and above all, you must never disturb the architecture of the game.

But when a news ecosystem prioritizes access over accountability, the truth ceases to be the goal. It becomes a casualty.

The Low Bar of ‘Access Journalism’

We live in a political landscape that frequently feels less like an earnest democratic exercise and more like a scene from the satire Don’t Look Up. Major figures make statements that upend verifiable reality, and instead of immediate, uncompromising pushback, the response from legacy institutions is often an eager nod. The machinery demands content, and the most valuable currency in that market is an exclusive quote—no matter how detached from the truth that quote might be.

When a political figure relies on a steady diet of misinformation, basic journalism should be the standard defense. Yet, our current media landscape operates under such a profound deficit of accountability that when a host performs the bare minimum—asking for evidence or pointing out a direct contradiction—the public reacts as though they have witnessed an act of historic bravery.

We have normalized sycophancy to such a degree that standard reporting looks like a revolution.

[Legacy Media Ecosystem] ──> Prioritizes "Access" ──> Protects the Relationship ──> Dilutes the Truth

The deeper danger is that this placation does not pacify authoritarian behavior; it fuels it. When legacy platforms treat bad-faith actors with kid gloves out of a fear of losing access, they teach those actors that the press can be bullied into submission. The interviewer attempts to maintain balance, while the subject safely relies on a simple, predictable tactic: if you do not like the question, attack the credibility of the person asking it.

The Audition Purgatory

Behind the cameras, a parallel system keeps the wheels turning. The public sees an array of experts, strategists, and analysts sharing their thoughts on the screen. What the audience rarely realizes is that many of the faces they see—particularly independent commentators and professionals of color—are working completely for free.

Legacy media networks routinely leverage the promise of “brand awareness,” social media clicks, and career prestige to maintain a revolving door of unpaid labor. The unwritten contract is simple: Give us your time, your insight, and your energy, and perhaps we will grant you a contributor contract down the line.

“They dangle it in front of you. This will be good for your clips, your reputation, your social media. Because apparently, we can all eat and pay our bills off of clicks.”

This creates a state of professional purgatory. Commentators spend hours traveling, sitting in makeup chairs, and waiting in green rooms, all while carefully tailoring their language so they do not seem “too harsh” or “too radical.” The system effectively sanitizes dissent. If you speak too much raw truth to power, the invitations simply stop coming. Meanwhile, the very same networks consistently find millions of dollars to secure high-profile contracts for established, corporate-friendly figures or controversial political operators who pull in high ratings.

The Box and the Narrative

To make the news digestible for a mass audience, legacy networks rely heavily on strict serialization. Guests are rarely invited to be complex, multi-dimensional individuals; they are cast like actors in a play.

Before a show airs, producers routinely map out the political spectrum of their panel:

• The Progressive Left

• The Right-Wing Contrarian

• The Center-Left Moderate

• The Center-Right Institutionalist

[Producer's Identity Chart]
 ├── Box A: Progressive Left (Often assigned to visible minorities)
 ├── Box B: Center-Left
 ├── Box C: Center-Right
 └── Box D: Right-Wing Contrarian

If you are a commentator from an underrepresented community, the pressure multiplies exponentially. You are not just carrying your own reputation; you are carrying the weight of an entire demographic on your back. You are hyper-aware that a single misstep or an overly emotional response can be weaponized to discount an entire perspective. You are boxed in by design, expected to deliver a specific, pre-approved narrative to help the network maintain the illusion of a balanced debate.

The Rise of the Unfiltered Page

The structural failures of legacy operations explain exactly why the media landscape is fracturing. Audiences are moving away from corporate broadcasts because they can sense the exhaustion of the people on screen. They can tell when a commentator is pulling their punches to protect their relationship with a producer.

True journalism requires independence. It requires the freedom to call an absolute falsehood what it is without worrying about whether a political campaign will blackball the network next week.

The future of public discourse belongs to independent platforms—spaces funded directly by audiences who value integrity over access. When writers, broadcasters, and thinkers step out of the corporate studio and onto their own stages, they leave the choreography behind. They no longer have to play a character in a manufactured debate. They can finally put down the scripted talking points, look the audience in the eye, and speak without asking for permission.

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(Photo illustration by Chantal Jahchan)

Five people, many of whom have been described as sociopaths, will most likely determine the course of humanity.

Unchecked, they will shape the country’s economic, social, and political future. Their names are Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Demis Hassabis of Google’s DeepMind, and Dario Amodei of Anthropic. They are leading the rapid growth and deployment of AI even as they admit and warn that this technology could have disastrous effects on the global economy.

We don’t understand or appreciate the consequences this technology will have on national security, the environment, or human relations, but we are told that this is inevitable and the rest of us have no choice but to accept it.

Well, the people would like to have a word.

Young graduates around the country are loudly booing commencement speakers who are telling them to embrace AI and the alleged utopia it will unleash for the elite and privileged. Within the past few months, AI data centers have united a fractured and polarized America in a frothing rage against these gaudy avatars of unchecked capitalism that is taking over their land, resources, and data. Unsurprisingly, some are now resorting to violence. Altman’s home in the Bay Area was firebombed. Tesla headquarters have been vandalized. A majority of Americans view Luigi Mangione, the alleged killer of a United Healthcare CEO, as a hero.

Meanwhile, these billionaire bros are doing everything they can to make themselves more hateable to the public.

Alex Karp of Palantir released a 22-point fascist manifesto that he assumed would win over the masses - it did not. Bezos’s recent interview made him look like a Trump brown-noser who is woefully out of touch with the masses. A damning New Yorker profile of Sam Altman quoted his own co-workers and former friends who described him as a sociopath and pathological liar. Peter Thiel is an outright white nationalist who is now trying to operate from Argentina and telling people that those opposed to AI are agents of the Antichrist. Finally, Elon Musk can’t spend time with his numerous children because he’s busy tweeting deranged, white supremacist conspiracy theories and remains obsessed with the falling white birth rate.

However, these techno-fascist freaks realize the tide is turning against them.

This is why they’re spending an unprecedented amount of money on the upcoming 2026 and 2028 elections. They are openly and shamelessly doling out money across the political aisles. They’re buying up Democrats and Republicans and outwardly promoting a vision of “deregulatiom and economic growth.”

But it’s not working.

The people are waking up. I invited NYT journalist and author David Wallace-Wells to explain how there’s a rising populist revolt against AI and the techno-broligarchs, and what the people can do to reform these sociopaths who are buying out both Democrats and Republicans.

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