Systemic Error Podcast

What happened AlterNet reports that psychiatrist Dr. Henry Abraham described President Donald Trump as displaying numerous clinical “red flags,” including disrupted sleep, daytime drowsiness, tangential speech, disinhibition, rage, grandiosity, apparent disorientation and declining verbal fluency. Abraham called Trump a “maniac” in reference to what he characterized as manic nighttime behavior, bu...

What happened AlterNet argues that economic pain from Republican policy has made Kansas’s traditionally safe Senate seat competitive. Democratic candidate Adam Hamilton received endorsements from two former Republican governors, including Mike Hayden, while a leading Republican Senate super PAC reportedly redirected money from North Carolina to defend incumbent Senator Roger Marshall. The outlet a...

What happened In November 1976, the school board in Drake, North Dakota, unanimously ordered Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five removed from school premises after a parent objected to its profanity. AlterNet reports that officials demanded students surrender their copies, searched the lockers of those who refused, and burned 32 copies in the school furnace. English teacher Bruce Severy had assign...

What happened AlterNet reports that President Donald Trump plans to host the G20 summit at Trump National Doral Miami on December 14–15, 2026, directing world leaders and their entourages to his privately owned resort. Trump abandoned a similar plan for the 2020 G7 summit after Republican opposition, but the new arrangement has reportedly produced little protest. Citing New York Times reporting, A...

What happened AlterNet reports that Republican strategists are warning President Donald Trump and GOP candidates that claims of a strong economy are colliding with voters’ experience of high grocery, fuel, utility, and housing costs. Consultant Jason Cabel Roe said candidates risk appearing out of touch if they answer affordability concerns with favorable economic statistics. The warning is suppor...

What happened AlterNet reports that the FBI is confronting two separate crises: internal turmoil over the removal of two veteran counterterrorism supervisors and a breach exposing tens of thousands of personnel files. Deputy Director Andrew Bailey resigned after the personnel dispute, but the reporting does not establish why he left or whether he opposed the removals. Michael Burgwald and Courtlan...

What happened AlterNet reports that clinical and forensic psychologist John Paul Garrison interpreted Donald Trump’s hand movements during a recent meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the United Nations General Assembly as possible involuntary muscle contractions resembling effects sometimes seen after a stroke. The footage does not establish that Trump suffered a stroke, and th...

What happened AlterNet reports that Senator Eric Schmitt accused former special counsel Jack Smith, during a Senate hearing, of attending an Atlanta Hawks game to coordinate with Fulton County prosecutors pursuing Donald Trump. The evidence did not show that: Schmitt had confused the Atlanta Hawks with the Iowa Hawkeyes. Senator Amy Klobuchar exposed the error during the hearing, while Schmitt dec...

What happened RawStory reports that Sen. Eric Schmitt presented a false claim during a Tuesday Senate Judiciary Committee hearing: that former special counsel Jack Smith had attended an Atlanta Hawks game in 2024 as cover for a secret meeting with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. Smith had actually attended an Iowa Hawkeyes game in Maryland. An unnamed senior Republican senator told Ra...

What happened RawStory reports that Fox Business host Larry Kudlow dismissed the inflationary risk posed by diesel prices during his Wednesday program, only for fellow Fox Business personality Dagen McDowell to challenge him. McDowell said diesel costs would flow through goods and services, raising consumer prices in the coming months; she described the issue not as hypothetical, but as a question...

What happened RawStory reports that President Donald Trump narrated three taxpayer-funded television ads resembling campaign material. The latest, aired during major weekend programming, attacks the “deep state,” “globalists,” “communists,” and news media before promising to “liberate America.” Each ad identifies the U.S. government as the payer. Several Republican senators objected to the financi...

What happened AlterNet reports that Republican strategist Matthew Bartlett warned a midterm “wipeout could be coming,” arguing that President Donald Trump has given Republican candidates neither governing results to promote nor an agenda to offer voters. Bartlett said GOP officials fear support could deteriorate further before Election Day. That warning rests partly on two polls: a Wall Street Jou...

What happened Paul Krugman’s “really, really bad news” for Donald Trump and Republicans is the widening gap between the administration’s economic sales pitch and voters’ reported experience one month before the midterms. As AlterNet reports, Krugman pointed to worsening economic sentiment, perceptions of a weaker job market, and a sharp rise in mortgage rates. In an AP-NORC survey of 2,140 adults...

What happened Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick told The Washington Sun that he considers himself “an independent who is registered Republican.” He said he would formally leave the GOP if Pennsylvania allowed independents to participate in party primaries, describing himself as politically “homeless.” AlterNet reports that Fitzpatrick is defending his seat in Pennsylvania’s competitive 1st Congressional Dist...

What happened AlterNet argues that the Kennedy Center’s reported financial collapse followed President Donald Trump’s takeover, not a preexisting fiscal catastrophe. Citing Washington Post reporting based on 15 years of confidential board records and tax filings, it says the center was solvent before Trump removed professional staff, asserted control over programming, and watched revenue, donation...

What happened RawStory, citing Politico, reports that President Donald Trump rolled out major infrastructure proposals in Alaska, Iowa and Alabama shortly before the midterm elections. Republican strategists described the move as “too little, too late” because early voting was already underway, Election Day was four weeks away, and none of the projects was expected to become operational before 203...

What happened AlterNet reports that CNN’s John King said some Trump voters reacted with disbelief to reporting about President Donald Trump’s cryptocurrency ventures. One voter called Trump “out of his mind,” then asked whether the story was legitimate. CNN’s Anderson Cooper cited financial filings that he said show the ventures putting more than $1 billion a year in Trump’s pocket. King also desc...

What happened RawStory, citing The PunchUp and federal procurement records, reports that the Department of Homeland Security replaced Salus Worldwide Solutions as the contractor running Project Homecoming. DHS awarded Virginia-based Response AI Solutions the program’s next phase—worth up to $2.062 billion over three years—after Secretary Markwayne Mullin reopened the contract to competition. DHS h...

What happened RawStory reports that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used a Wednesday “State of the Force” speech to declare that the Pentagon was no longer “woke” or “weak,” while deriding categories of people he considered physically or culturally unacceptable. On Friday, MS NOW’s Joe Scarborough and Willie Geist mocked the presentation as insecure and “really weird,” answering the headline’s teas...

What happened AlterNet reports that Sen. Eric Schmitt accused former special counsel Jack Smith of coordinating with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, relying on the false claim that Smith attended an Atlanta Hawks game in February 2024. Smith denied it, and Schmitt escalated by accusing him of perjury. The game was actually an Iowa Hawkeyes women’s college basketball game. A local news...

What happened RawStory reports that the FBI demoted two veteran counterterrorism supervisors in its Washington Field Office after a dispute over an investigation into alleged harassing phone calls to Katie Miller, the wife of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller. The FBI confirmed the personnel moves, but the report does not establish who ordered them or whether formal disciplinary pro...

What happened RawStory reports that President Donald Trump pressed Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas to support legislation making daylight saving time permanent, casting the bill as a political victory Republicans needed ahead of the midterms. Cotton said he would oppose it because Arkansans did not want children traveling to school “in the pitch dark.” Trump answered by attacking Cotton’s ego and elec...

What happened RawStory reports that President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that his administration would “immediately” send checks of nearly $100 to more than 20 million seniors to help cover Medicare Part B premiums. The report, published five weeks before the midterm elections, says Trump did not explain who would qualify or when payments would arrive. Trump said the money would come f...

What happened AlterNet reports that Mary Lou, a Trump supporter who appears with her children Chad Kultgen and Hailey Pop on The Necessary Conversation podcast, said during a Friday MS NOW segment that she might not vote for Trump again. Asked about a hypothetical future election, she answered that she would first have to see his opponent—a response that visibly surprised her children. Pop called...

What happened AlterNet’s headline overstates the evidence: the Fox Business segment did not identify a “Trump debt bomb.” Host Liz Claman and Empower strategist Marta Norton discussed rising corporate borrowing for artificial-intelligence infrastructure. Norton warned that heavy capital spending had depleted cash flow at major technology companies and could require still more debt. AlterNet also c...