Gaslit Nation

Gaslit Nation welcomes a special guest whose incredible life story captures the complex, often misunderstood region of the Middle East, the topic of this week's discussion. Iyad el-Baghdadi, whom some of you may know from h i s m u s t - r e a d T w i t t e r account, is a Palestinian activist, writer, and the co-author, with A h m e d G a t n a s h , of the compelling and important new book T h e...

We describe the uneasy interim period of the early Biden era and what's to come when the covid crisis ends – and predict that it's going to look a lot like what happened after the end of the 1918 Spanish Flu: white mob violence, anti-immigrant movements, economic turmoil, rising fascism, and the consolidation of dictator personality cults. Day to day life is slowly improving under the Biden admini...

This week Gaslit Nation welcomes Congresswoman Gwen Moore (D-Wisconsin) who gives us an inside view on the Capitol attack, what steps need to be taken to hold the perpetrators accountable, how the Biden administration can ensure a more just and fair United States, and much more!

Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of Strongmen: From Mussolini to the Present, explains all the ways Trump and Republican leaders rely on the dictator's playbook to weaken our democracy and consolidate power. A Professor of History and Italian Studies at New York University, she provides chilling insights into Mussolini, Berlusconi, Trump, and other strongmen that ruled through destructive cults of...

Wow, something good happened! This week on Gaslit Nation we give credit to (and criticism of!) the American Rescue Plan Act, which begins the process of digging this country out of the giant hellhole we've been plunging into for several decades. The stimulus plan, despite being littered with broken promises, nonetheless will make a tangible difference in the lives of many suffering Americans, whic...

The Democrats have taken the House, the Senate, and the Presidency – yet they are still claiming that they can't pass the policies Americans desperately need. What's stopping them? The filibuster – a weapon of white supremacy used by Southern states to block progress on civil rights. Sound familiar? In this interview, Adam Jentleson -- an expert on Senate procedure and the author of the book K i l...

  This year we've already had a plague, a violent insurrectionist attack, and an unrepentant mafioso president running free. Apparently that wasn't enough so last week the U.S. got a once-in-a-century Texas storm (but sadly probably not once in *this* century) that turned into a humanitarian catastrophe. We discuss the GOP hostage state of Texas, Merrick Garland, Roger Stone's role in the violent...

In this episode, we tackle some of the remaining questions left over from the violent attack on the Capitol and the Senate hearings. Why were Trump's elite criminal backers – in particular, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani and Lin Wood – not mentioned in the hearings even though they served as a bridge between Trump and violent insurrectionist groups? Why is the FBI not givi...

It's Impeachment Week on Gaslit Nation – again! We are covering the (second) Senate impeachment trial of ex-president and eternal traitor Donald Trump both in this episode and in upcoming Patreon-only episodes during the week. If you haven't signed up at the Truth-Teller level to get extra coverage, now is the time!

We look forward to bringing you our coverage of the Second Trump Impeachment Trial which starts next week, including discussing the most vulnerable Republican Senators up for re-election in 2022. This week we highlight the urgent importance of fighting for the most vulnerable in our interview with New York City public defender Eliza Orlins , a staff attorney at The Legal Aid Society taking on Cy V...

Welcome to the first Gaslit Nation episode held in the Biden eras! The Trump administration is no longer a transnational crime syndicate masquerading as a government – but unfortunately there is still a transnational crime syndicate at large. While it's obviously a relief to no longer have a mafia White House, the hostile actors that helped a Kremlin asset to take executive power still remain, and...

Welcome to the final Gaslit Nation episode recorded during the Trump administration! Wow, does that feel good to write. Unfortunately, the conclusion of the most treasonous and sadistic administration in US history is accompanied by a host of other threats which we describe throughout the episode, but take a moment. You voted out an autocrat who employed every mechanism of voter suppression at his...

This two-hour special is the longest Gaslit Nation episode we have ever done, and the most serious. We break down the attack on the Capitol by domestic terrorists, showing how this was orchestrated at the highest levels of power and enabled by complicit actors in broken institutions. We lay out probable paths for the United States at this critical juncture, and discuss what we need to do to avoid...

Happy New Year, everyone -- the hellscape of 2020 is finally over and we've got a whole new hellscape to explore! We take stock of Trump's ongoing coup attempt and his recorded shakedown efforts against Georgia Republican officials, the prospect of violence as the GOP Sedition Caucus and the Proud Boys try to destroy democracy from within, the Trump admin's plans to use Iran for a planned "nationa...

In the second part of this interview with Jennifer Taub, the author of Big Dirty Money, we talk about the legal liability of Trump, Ivanka and Jared, Manafort, Stone, and other walking national security threats from the most corrupt administration of all time. We ask what advice she has for Biden and his administration, and what his new attorney general should do about all these dangerous actors r...

In the first of this two-part interview with Jennifer Taub, author of Big Dirty Money, she breaks down definitions – "dirty money", "dark money", "white-collar crime" – and fields questions about why no one in power is doing much to remedy these crises. Taub explains the devastating impact of white-collar crime on ordinary Americans, and discusses the Sacklers and other corporate criminals who hav...

We are halfway through the attempted coup – formerly known as the presidential transition process – and the United States has not completely collapsed (yet) so, yay? What a way to end 2020! We also discuss the vaccines and Biden's electoral college win, so it's not all bad news, we promise.

As Trump continues to threaten public officials and attempt to overturn the election results, he puts at stake not only our nation's political future, but the literal survival of its citizens. More Americans are projected to die from the Covid-19 pandemic than died during World War II. The majority of those deaths were preventable. Americans are not dying: they are being killed by the malice and f...

Welcome to attempted coup week four! Trump still refuses to concede and meanwhile he is gutting every department in sight. We discuss the new executive order that aims to fire 88% of civil servants and possibly replace them with Trump lackeys (or lead the positions unfilled altogether) and how this reflects the broader goal of Trump and the GOP to destroy the US government from within. 

We make the case yet again for all the criminal actors in the Trump camp to be held accountable. We demand thorough and transparent investigations of the crimes that have occurred and indictments where merited. Unity without justice is hollow. Important Note: Hang out with Gaslit Nation at a letter writing party for Georgia hosted by SwiftLeft on Wednesday December 2nd at 6pm. RSVP here: https://w...

Welcome to week two of the attempted Trump coup! As Trump refuses to concede, his cronies are using mafia tactics to attempt an illegal second term, including threatening secretaries of state and other officials with violence, pressuring bureaucrats to deny Biden's win and thus prevent Americans from getting needed resources, entering drawn-out court battles designed to reach courts packed with Tr...

We have a winner, and it's Joe Biden! And we have a coup, and it's ongoing! We break down one of the most tumultuous weeks in US history, including Biden's electoral college win and the nationwide celebrations that followed; the launch of the long-held plan of the Trump crime cult to stage a coup (which we warned about incessantly for four years only to be dismissed until it began to happen).

Our long national nightmare is finally over – and a brand-new national nightmare has begun! We pick up where we left off after our Election Night Bonus Special, taped on Tuesday night when the initial results were scaring the shit out of us, and discuss the promising developments that had occurred by the time we recorded this episode Wednesday morning.

Gaslit Nation Presents the winner of our radioplay contest for 2020: "BabaVanka" by Jane Willis, starring the great J. Smith-Cameron , star of HBO's Succession. On Succession, J. plays Gerri , the lawyer for the family and corporation based on the Murdochs and News Corp .  So it's fitting that she stars as BabaVanka, the monster next-in-line to inherit the Trump Crime Family from her mob boss fath...

In the last Gaslit Nation episode before the election, we discuss the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett, Trump's blatant desire to have the election decided by courts instead of by the American people, and the role SCOTUS may play in who will be our next president. The dark tactics of court packing, institutional purges, and demoralization are coming to a head this week as the GOP attempts to fulfi...