The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich

Friends, Today Michael and I take a deep dive into ABC’s decision this week to fire late-night entertainer Jimmy Kimmel — and why ABC caved to Trump and Trump’s FCC. The decision came barely two months after CBS canceled Stephen Colbert’s contract, for similar reasons. What’s the underlying story? Are we on the verge of an authoritarian clampdown on criticism of the Trump regime? If so, what are o...

Friends, Today Heather and I take a hard look at political violence in America — not just this week’s heinous assassination of Charlie Kirk but other violence I’ve witnessed, and the nation’s history of violence in politics — and we ask whether there’s something unique to American culture that harbors such deep hatred that people feel compelled to murder others for their political beliefs. Yesterd...

Friends, Trump’s economy is going down what he describes as a “sh*thole.” Job growth has stalled and prices continue to rise. The problem is it’s not just Trump’s economy; it’s also our economy. Today, Heather and I try to give some context to the bad economic news — looking at what it means politically, who is suffering most, and how it can possibly be turned around. Along the way, we talk about...

Friends, Today Heather and I come to you from one of our favorite local bookstores to emphasize the importance of free speech, free expression, and freedom to criticize the current regime — even as it seeks ever-greater control over the media, universities, museums, and our cities. Our neofascist emergency worsens. Please pull up a chair, grab a cuppa, take our poll, and join in the conversation....

Friends, Michael and I are coming to you today from the Empire Café in Houston, Texas, where the coffee is superb and the service comes with a smile (the café’s motto is “corporate coffee sucks”). It’s a bit noisy here (for which I apologize) but, hey, that’s what you get when you mix it up with real people. While I’m apologizing, I also want to apologize for the petition that was inadvertently po...

Friends, Today, Heather and I discuss Trump’s occupation of Washington, D.C.; his meeting with war-criminal Putin; his takeover of key industries; his demands that Republican governors gerrymander their states to find more Republican seats; and his widening corruption. (If I had written the previous sentence several years ago, I would have thought it a parody. But it’s not. It’s real, and it’s fas...

Friends, Today Heather and I look into Trump’s efforts to get payoffs (such as the 24-karat gold bar that Apple’s Tim Cook gave him apparently in return for exempting Apple from import taxes on semiconductors); Trump’s attacks on facts he doesn’t like (such as the latest jobs report); and his methods of achieving political outcomes he wants (such as instructing Texas to come up with five more Hous...

Friends, Today, Heather and I look at how Trump has moved almost all law and policy into personal deal-making — whether it’s what tariff rate (that is, import tax) is to apply to which country, which corporations will be exempted from import taxes, which universities have to do what to satisfy him, which law firms have to do what to avoid his penalties, which media corporations have to genuflect i...

Friends, Today we take another deep dive into the murky world of Epstein and Trump, looking at how Trump’s consolidation of power has made it harder for him to rebut charges of a cover-up. We also look at the stories that “Epsteingate” has crowded out this week: Palestinian children starving in Gaza because of Netanyahu’s policies (backed by Trump), more than a third of all federal judges complain...

Friends, Today, Heather and I explore why Jeffrey Epstein’s death in 2019 is now shaking the foundations of Trump and his regime. Why now ? What is there about this alleged conspiracy that has made Trump so vulnerable ? What does it tell us more broadly about the soaring distrust in our society toward elites that Trump exploited to get elected in 2016 and then again in 2024? What does it suggest D...

Friends, Today, Heather, Michael, and I do a deep dive into the cruel incompetence of the Trump regime — how Trump is hurting millions of people for no reason, whether he’s doing it because of cruelty or incompetence, and what all of us can do about it between now and the 2026 midterm elections (including not calling him “President,” because he considers himself president of only the people who vo...

Friends, Happy Fourth of July weekend. Today Heather and I examine Trump’s newly enacted Big Ugly Bill — its record-breaking redistribution of income upward , its budget-busting deficits, and its creation of an anti-immigrant police state. And we explore whether there’s anything positive that could possibly come of this. Please pull up a chair, grab a cuppa, take our poll, and join the conversatio...

Friends, Today, Heather and I come to you from Central Park in New York City, where we assess the remarkable upset victory of 33-year-old Zohran Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, over former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, in the race for New York City mayor . We also take a look at the bind Trump and his lackeys have gotten themselves into — with an attack on Iran that the Defense I...

Friends, Today Heather and I look at the war in Iran through the lens of Donald Trump’s insatiable need to expand and display his power. How can he even consider getting America into this war without consulting Congress? Doesn’t doing so also violate his promise to the American people in the 2024 election that he would avoid foreign entanglements? And who is advising him, now that half of the prof...

Friends, Today, Michael and I take a deep dive into Trump’s most authoritarian week yet. (Heather will be back next week.) We ask: Why did he choose this week to escalate his dragnet raids? From what does he want to deflect our attention? What kind of trap is he laying? What must we be careful to do and avoid doing today, as he conducts a military parade in Washington to celebrate his military mig...

Friends, That any of us have to care about the messy breakup of these two malignant narcissists — and that they both individually wield such massive power — is an indictment of our political system and further proves the poisonous influence of Big Money on our democracy. That’s today’s Coffee Klatch theme. Please pull up a chair, grab a cuppa, take our survey, and join the conversation. This is a...

Friends, Today Heather and I examine whether the three big political events of this week — Musk’s leaving the White House, the U.S. Court of International Trade’s striking down Trump’s tariffs, and Senate Republicans’ being stymied over Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful” (actually Ugly) budget bill — signal the beginning of the end of Trump. Is Elon really gone for good? Are Trump’s tariffs in real...

Friends, V Spehar invited me to join them today to talk about how we should deal with America’s aging politicians — our “gerontocracy.” I’m something of an expert on the subject because I’ve been around politicians for over 50 years. Also I’m getting up there (I’ll be 79 years old soon). And I recently retired from teaching because I didn’t want to give students anything less than my best. So I kn...

Friends, One of my favorite people in the world is the Reverend Dr. William Barber, whose moral and strategic insights at this horrific moment in our nation’s history are invaluable. I asked him to join me today to talk about what all of us can do to unite people in America in pursuit of social justice and against Trump. Barber is a Protestant minister, social activist, professor in the Practice o...

Friends, Today Heather and I look at the Trump regime’s decision to bar international students from Harvard and ask, what’s the difference between a neofascist diktat and Trump’s orders? As in fascism, Trump arbitrarily targets particular institutions and people, then takes away their freedoms for no reason other than that they’ve opposed the regime. (In recent days, the regime has also charged, i...

Friends, Today, Heather and I look into the schemes that Trump and the people around him are using to make themselves rich at the expense of the American people — starting with Trump’s business trip this week to the oil-rich kingdoms of the Middle East. Please pull up a chair, grab a cuppa, take our poll, and join the conversation. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other...

Friends, Today Heather and I take a deep dive into the most corrupt presidential administration in history. We look in detail at Trump’s crypto deals designed to enrich him and his family and milk the presidency, and Musk’s deals to enrich himself by, for example, having the State Department push other nations to use his Starlink satellites. The stench from these and other examples of self-dealing...

Friends, Today Heather and I examine the outlook for Trump, the Trump White House, Congress, and the economy. Now that we’ve finished the first hundred days, where does America go from here? Is there room for hope? I’m more optimistic than Heather because I believe opposition to Trump is growing. And it will become even larger if Trump and Republicans in Congress cut programs most Americans depend...

Friends, Today, Heather and I take a look at the shi*tstorm of Trump’s first hundred days (which doesn’t officially conclude until Wednesday), and ask what happened, why it’s so horrible, and how we’re likely to look back on it. Along the way, we examine whether its major theme has been chaos or cruelty, what’s happened to the economy, and why Trump’s polls are taking a dive. In sharp contrast, we...

Friends, Today Heather and I take a deep dive into Trump’s three escalating confrontations — with Harvard University, China, and the Supreme Court — and ask what Trump’s strategy might be. He can’t “win” any of these because Harvard, China, and the Supreme Court are all large and powerful enough to force him to blink, but nor can he afford to “lose” and maintain his credibility as an invincible fo...