Gaslit Nation

Dictatorship doesn't always look like tanks and troops in your city. It's the everyday lawlessness and looting spree in the White House, the draconian persecution of activists exercising their Constitutionally protected rights in Republican-hostage states like Texas and Tennessee. It's routine executions by the police.  None of this is normal, which is why we must reject it, and learn how we resis...

Happy birthday, America! Our democracy has been hijacked by a convicted criminal, sexual predator, Russian mafia goon. We are fighting back like Ukrainians: by rebuilding from the wreckage. That means forcing every single 2028 Democratic presidential hopeful to publicly commit to appointing a mob-busting Attorney General who will actually take on the mafia instead of emboldening it. This week, All...

Benjamin "Champagne" Song, a U.S. marine reservist, got 100 years in prison in Texas–no air-conditioning, sweltering heat–for saving a protester's life. So why are Democrats like Hakeem Jeffries busy battling social democrats rather than unifying resistance to Trump behind this urgent cause for freedom and the U.S. Constitution?    In Texas, eight political prisoners recently received a combined 4...

How do we fight back? This week on Gaslit Nation, Tad Stoermer, author of A Resistance History of the United States, explains how true resistance is built by communities like ours. Looking at the Underground Railroad and the French Resistance, Stoermer digs deep on what Gaslit Nation has said for years: grassroots power is the most reliable power we have left. Small acts of individual resistance c...

Today is Orwell's birthday. We're celebrating with the recording of the Mrs. Orwell live-taping – available in full this Sunday, only on Patreon and Substack for our supporters who make Gaslit Nation possible. For now, here's our special primary election recap.  The message from New York's elections is clear: voters want fighters. Brad Lander built trust by showing up at immigration court to prote...

Ten years after the Kremlin helped tip the very close Brexit vote, Nigel Farage is shockingly leading UK polls. The Putin fanboy, bankrolled by a crypto-king in Thailand tied to Putin's propaganda machine, is making false promises like Donald Trump in the 2024 election. Farage and his billionaire backers want to install a Kremlin Trojan horse to dismantle the rule of law, enrich themselves and the...

Americans have been so beaten down by corruption, ramped up since the Reagan Revolution, that many act like they forgot their rights. Gaslit Nation is here to remind you: Trump's UFC cagefight White House party is illegal, and so are likely many of the events of Trump's Freedom 250, his shell company for illegally collecting bribes and selling access to the White House in the name of celebrating A...

The barbarians are inside the gates and throwing a toxic masculinity pageant on the front lawn. While the United States should be preparing to honor the 250th anniversary of our democratic republic by working toward a more perfect union, Donald Trump has hijacked the historic milestone to throw corrupt, all-caps "TRUMP RALLIES" and UFC cage matches to distract from his economic warfare on the Amer...

We dive into Ivanka and Jared's Albanian nightmare. What were they really up to while trying to develop a private island in Albania on protected land, and what are the ramifications of this secret operation in the broader war of democracy vs. fascism? Why are they trying to buy an island in a part of the world notorious for sex trafficking?  These questions matter in light of Ivanka's brother marr...

Think of the 2016 U.S. presidential election as a marriage between the Russian mafia in the West and the Russian mafia in the East. Now, there's talk out of Moscow that Trump has agreed to build a literal tunnel connecting Alaska to Russia, with Elon Musk's help. Russian mafia expert Olga Lautman of the Trump Tyranny Tracker joins us to ring the alarm on this MAGA-backed project, an insane move ri...

We need to talk about the "creator economy" and the stylish influencers pushing disinformation and misinformation directly into our feeds. The more glossy you are, the more attention you get–and attention is the new currency. That is the same ethos of the princess-haired women swanning around Mar-a-Lago. It's a deliberate dumbing down of society. When gloss replaces the time-intensive grind of inv...

Trump is what happens when a bunch of slave owners set up a government to protect their wealth by establishing elite rule through the Senate, Electoral College, and no one fixing it for 250 years. We can and will build a better country from the ashes of MAGA's dumpster fire. We return to our summer 2025 conversation with Osita Nwanevu, a contributing editor for The New Republic , a columnist for T...

In this week's Gaslit Nation bonus show, we dive deeper into the "Iron Triangles" of corruption that enabled Epstein's network, with a special focus on the women co-conspirators. Like Trump is the rotting face of a death cult fascist movement that will outlive him, Epstein was a figurehead of a sprawling transnational crime syndicate, one enabled by powerbrokers still operating in plain sight.  Jo...

Who were the women who worked with Jeffrey Epstein? In Part I of this series, we look at Ghislaine Maxwell, transnational crime royalty as the daughter of MI6/Mossad double-agent and disgraced British media mogul Robert Maxwell, whose dying wish was to connect Maxwell with a young upstart in New York named Epstein.  Joining this discussion are investigative filmmaker Dave Pederson, the producer of...

With convicted felon, six-time bankrupt trust fund kid Donald Trump illegally looting $1.8 billion of our tax-payer dollars for violent traitors who tried to overturn our democracy on January 6, it's time to dream big for our country. All ideas are on the table, including a Maidan-style revolution, as we must rebuild from the ashes. Gaslit Nation is here to tell you that a better world is possible...

Ukraine is winning, and a botox-bloated Putin looks like a dead-man walking. While the spineless MAGA right still tries to block aid, Ukrainian innovation has turned Russia's imperialist delusion into an embarrassing nightmare, as predicted on Gaslit Nation at the start of the full-scale invasion. Award-winning war reporter James Verini, author of The Theater: Courage and Survival in the Defining...

Convicted felon Trump went to China and brought his son Eric along on the nepo-baby express. Eric runs the family business. And by "family business," we mean a transnational crime network of bribes operating like a geopolitical yard sale, selling out our country to the highest bidder. While they were there, Dictator Xi Jinping told the U.S. to back off defending Taiwan. And Trump, in defiance of d...

Gaslit Nation unmasks the real villain: the corporations hijacking our democracy, using Trump as a distraction as they loot and destroy our country. Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a Brennan Center fellow and professor of law at Stetson University College of Law, and author of  Corporatocracy: How to Protect Democracy from Dark Money and Corrupt Politicians , explains how corporations funded Trump's viole...

Today is Andrea's birthday. Gaslit Nation is celebrating the only way we know how: by re-reading Dorothy Thompson's 1941 essay, "Who Goes Nazi?" , on how to tell who among you at your next dinner party would become a Nazi if given the chance. How does she know? She met these types during the Nazi takeover of her beloved Austria and Germany, hotbeds of intellectual thought and progressive movements...

In this special bonus show, Gaslit Nation reminds you that Hitler and Trump rose to power in very similar ways, and why we must stay grounded in that historical truth. The fate of the world literally depends on it. The Holocaust and World War II happened, because people didn't want to believe it would be so bad. Normalcy bias is a dangerous coping mechanism.  As the world marks the 81st anniversar...

On this hopeful Gaslit Nation, we confront the MAGA fascist takeover with a look at the ultimate antidote: how to be a dissident. Andrea talks with The Atlantic's Gal Beckerman about his inspiring new book, How to Be a Dissident. While the establishment chooses conformity to protect their wealth, we explore the rare, stubborn individuals—from the abolitionists to the neighbors in Minnesota forming...

Here's what you missed at last week's Gaslit Nation Salon: a lively debate among our listeners over whether Trump, or his allies, somehow staged the WHCD assassination attempt. The discussion opens with a look at the same heightened "unreality" created by Putin in Russia, thanks to a well-funded propaganda operation and conspiracy theories to come to power and stay in power. To join today's Gaslit...

In this week's Gaslit Nation Bonus Show, Daniella Mestyanek Young, The Knitting Cult Lady, author of the new book  The Culting of America , explains how to get justice for survivors and protect children from Christian nationalist cults to Epstein's transnational crime network–better laws, better leaders, and ban home-schooling. "When countries outlaw homeschooling, it is one of the best protection...

Is America a cult? How can we help those trapped in cult-like thinking? Discussing her new book  The Culting of America , Daniella Mestyanik Young, a US Army veteran, intelligence officer, and survivor of the notorious Children of God cult, joins Gaslit Nation to help us identify coercive control in our own lives, and in our White House.  Daniella breaks down the "sex cult math" of her upbringing,...

We've received questions and comments from Gaslit Nation listeners about the assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents' Dinner over the weekend. Here's our response. We can discuss at today's Gaslit Nation Salon at 4pm ET, along with whatever is happening in your neck of the woods. Sign up on Patreon.com/Gaslit to join the discussion: https://www.patreon.com/posts/zoom-link-for-15636...