Systemic Error Podcast

What happened AlterNet reports that a Senate hearing intended to discredit former special counsel Jack Smith instead exposed Republican senators’ factual sloppiness and fixation on defending Donald Trump. Senator Eric Schmitt accused Smith of lying about attending an Atlanta Hawks game in February 2024, but the messages Schmitt displayed reportedly placed Smith in College Park, Maryland, for an Io...

What happened AlterNet, citing Adrian Carrasquillo’s reporting for The Bulwark, says intensified federal immigration enforcement has emptied restaurants and damaged commerce in Doral, Florida, a heavily Venezuelan community that Donald Trump carried by 23 points in the 2024 election. A worker at El Arepazo estimated business was down 80 percent. The owner of Central Park Food Station reported a 40...

What happened Former South Carolina congressman Bakari Sellers laughed at Republican commentator Scott Jennings on CNN after Jennings blamed weak job growth and declining consumer sentiment largely on economic conditions President Donald Trump inherited from former President Joe Biden. Jennings argued that inflation had mostly normalized but that earlier price increases still shaped voters’ percep...

What happened AlterNet reports that AL.com fact-checked remarks President Donald Trump made Friday night in Mobile, Alabama, and found numerous claims false, exaggerated, contradictory, or unsupported. Among them, Trump linked an Interstate 10 bridge groundbreaking to “$3 billion” in administration funding, although AL.com reported that no single grant or appropriation of that size existed. The pr...

What happened RawStory reports that Democratic challenger Cait Conley leads Republican Rep. Mike Lawler 48 percent to 46 percent among likely voters in New York’s 17th Congressional District, with 7 percent undecided. The Emerson College Polling/PIX11 News survey of 400 voters was conducted September 27–29 and carries a credibility interval of plus or minus 4.9 percentage points, so it does not es...

What happened AlterNet reports that Steinway grand pianos were removed from the Kennedy Center and moved for sale while the building was closed. A Washington Steinway representative said the instruments were being offered at heavy discounts; photographs taken by mover Van Lewis showed the removal, and Kennedy Center harpist Susan Robinson said musicians had noticed the pianos disappearing. The clo...

US President Donald Trump looks on next to a bust of Benjamin Franklin during the announcement of a Minnesota company’s plan to build a $15 billion steel mill in Iowa, from the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., US, September 28, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque What happened RawStory reports that President Donald Trump announced a proposed $15 billion steel plant in Iowa, with the Wh...

What happened AlterNet reports that President Donald Trump’s insistence that the economy is strong has collided with intense dissatisfaction among voters in four states he won by double digits in 2024. Navigator Research managing director Melissa Toufanian said polling in Alaska, Ohio, Iowa, and Texas put Trump’s net approval at minus 14 across the four states and underwater in each one. Toufanian...

What happened AlterNet reports that Republican strategist Rick Wilson called Ohio “one of the shock stories of 2026” after a Marist poll placed Democrats ahead in two major statewide races. Sherrod Brown led appointed Republican Sen. Jon Husted 51% to 43% among registered voters, while Amy Acton led Republican Vivek Ramaswamy 50% to 44% in the governor’s race. The September 24–27 survey of 1,298 r...

What happened AlterNet reports that Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt accused former special counsel Jack Smith of lying under oath about attending a basketball game on February 3. Schmitt suggested Smith had attended an Atlanta Hawks game and implied the trip connected him to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. Smith said he was actually in College Park, Maryland, watching Caitlin Clark and t...

What happened RawStory reports that the American Restoration Coalition, a network of Florida Republicans using “Heritage American” rhetoric, is recruiting candidates and placing allies in local government. ARC leaders openly described a strategy of winning seats on planning and zoning boards, city councils and state legislatures. Its members helped Marshall Rawson win a Republican primary for a no...

What happened RawStory reports that video from a White House appearance on September 29, 2026, showed President Donald Trump standing awkwardly and apparently struggling to walk after a luncheon with technology executives. Commentators reviewing the footage said he seemed to drag his right leg and have difficulty walking straight. The reporting cites social-media speculation about physical injury...

What happened AlterNet, citing Politico, reports that Ethan Harper, general counsel to Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri, was expected to leave the senator’s office on Friday and join the White House Staff Secretary’s office the following week. After a Tuesday Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, however, three anonymous sources said the move was in doubt. Neither outlet established that the...

What happened RawStory reports that Time fact-checked 12 claims President Donald Trump made during a Sept. 28 White House interview. Trump said he won 86% of the popular vote in 2024. He actually received 49.8%, against Kamala Harris’s 48.3%; the figure 86 referred to his Electoral College margin, 312 votes to 226. Trump also claimed 99% popularity in Israel and 107 million views for a September R...

What happened RawStory reports that the White House’s “Trump TV” stream, launched after President Donald Trump barred Politico, CNN and MS NOW from the White House over what he called “fake news,” has attracted strikingly small audiences. According to a Daily Beast analysis cited by RawStory, viewership opened as high as 8,500 but later fell to 91 people at 2 a.m. Eastern. The stream runs continuo...

What happened RawStory reports that President Donald Trump claimed on October 1, 2026, that he had always said eliminating Iran’s nuclear threat would take four to six weeks—and that he had instead done it “in one night.” CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale disputed that account, saying Trump’s March remarks described the expected duration of the Iran war generally, not a separate timetable for neutraliz...

What happened RawStory reports that the Trump White House planned to mail roughly one million ACA marketplace customers $500 checks bearing Donald Trump’s signature, accompanied by a letter claiming the Biden administration had overcharged them and withheld the money. Trump repeated that accusation in a video, but the article says the administration supplied no supporting accounting. The outlet ci...

What happened AlterNet reports that James Fishback, a far-right Republican who lost Florida’s 2026 gubernatorial primary to Byron Donalds, mocked the Trump administration for failing to act on its own hostility toward H-1B visas. After Vice President JD Vance called the program “completely broken” and suggested abolishing it, Fishback replied on X: “Then do it. What are you waiting for?” H-1B visa...

What happened Sen. Eric Schmitt withdrew from a planned C-SPAN appearance with Sen. Chris Coons one day after his attempt to accuse former special counsel Jack Smith of lying collapsed during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, according to AlterNet’s account of Mediaite’s reporting. Schmitt claimed Smith attended an Atlanta Hawks game on Feb. 3, 2024, and used that claim to imply Smith was in G...

What happened AlterNet reports that President Donald Trump’s low approval ratings were weighing heavily on Republican candidates in the closing weeks of the midterm campaign. Polls cited in the report placed his approval between 32 and 38 percent, gave Democrats an eight- or nine-point advantage in congressional preferences, and showed especially weak public confidence in his handling of affordabi...

What happened RawStory, summarizing reporting by The Atlantic, says the Trump White House has pressed FBI and Justice Department leaders to pursue indictments connected to President Donald Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election. More than 40 current and former officials, FBI employees, and congressional staffers described demands relayed as coming from the White House, while FBI Director Kas...

What happened RawStory reports that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth selected SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Anduril founder Palmer Luckey, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich for Project Meridian, a four-month initiative intended to shape the Pentagon’s view of future warfare. Musk and Luckey lead companies with billions of dollars in active Pentagon contracts. Nine current and former officials reportedl...

What happened RawStory reports that Texas Republican Senate nominee Ken Paxton released an ad on October 2, 2026, acknowledging that groceries, rent, and insurance “keep climbing,” then blaming “liberal politicians” for worsening the strain. The ad features Paxton’s daughter, Mattie Hayworth, presenting him as the politician who will fight back. Critics pointed to the obvious problem: Republicans...

What happened RawStory reports that retiring North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis used an excerpt from his forthcoming book to attack Donald Trump’s advisers and supporters as “MAGA morons,” “sycophants” and drivers of what he predicts will be severe Republican defeats in 2026 and beyond. The excerpt was supplied by publisher HarperCollins ahead of the book’s scheduled Oct. 6 release. Tillis...

What happened RawStory, citing The Bulwark, reports that El Arepazo in Doral, Florida, has lost roughly 80% of its business as immigrants frightened by the Trump administration’s enforcement campaign stay home. An employee said prepared specials sometimes spoil because customers do not come. Owner Maximo Alvarez had welcomed Donald Trump to the restaurant seven months earlier and pledged his loyal...