The Cycle- On Substack

This week Rachel and Aaron chase the firetrucks to the dumpster fire of the Trump Administration and Republicans in Congress who’re trying to defend it. How do you explain an unprecedented security breach involving secret war plans accidentally shared with a news editor? Where do voters draw a line in the sand? Plus, a closer look at why Elon Musk is trying to break the Overton Window. And are spr...

This week Rachel and Aaron explore the good, the bad and the ugly. Why is Schumer’s vote to keep the government open an important political move? What prompted a pissed-off federal judge to issue an order from the bench? And what do the latest poll numbers mean for Trump 2.0? Plus: adios, habeas corpus . And we drop into a fiery town hall meeting in North Carolina’s bright red 11th Congressional D...

As the Trump administration tanks the stock market and sends prices soaring even higher, Rachel and Aaron examine the stupid in “it’s the economy, stupid.” Europe reconsiders a new world leader while here at home, Republican politicians become snowflakes. Plus, a chilling observation from the New York Times’ chief White House correspondent, and how would Rachel have responded to Trump’s boring Joi...

This week Rachel and Aaron cut through the noise as Elon's "Chainsaw for Democracy" cuts thousands of federal jobs, and as Steve "Prison Toady" Bannon massacres the Constitution--surprising even a fellow neo-Nazi. Trump's honeymoon is over though, according to public polling (surprise! Americans don't seem to care about DEI). And members of Congress face the music at public town halls, even in dee...

This week Rachel and Aaron go behind the Resolute Desk with Elon, Donald and "X Æ A-XII." They untangle a "very weird 20 minutes" from failed comedian JD Vance in Munich, start the clock on Marco Rubio's tenuous tenure as Secretary of State, and shine light on the plain-sight quid-pro-quo between Trump's Justice Department and NYC Mayor Eric Adams. Oh... and how does Trump's controversial "Napoleo...

This week, Rachel and Aaron keep up with Trump 2.0's strategy of flooding the zone, resulting in a chaotic political and media environment that can only be described as "everything, everywhere, all at once." They explore the parallels of what's happening now to the rise of Nazi Germany, particularly the "golden age of culture"--which MAGA America desperately wants to control. Rachel and Aaron also...

Checked In for the Checked Out This week Rachel and Aaron take a tumble through the spin cycle of Donald Trump's second full week in office, which included chaos and confusion, a stock market nose-dive, another off-the-rails news conference, pissed off allies, economic uncertainty and threats of a new consumer tax. They also take the temperature on batshit crazy Senate confirmation hearings and sh...

This week Rachel and Aaron dive into the deliberately exhausting 'shock and awe' strategy by Trump 2.0, drawing comparisons to the "Working Toward the Fuhrer" strategy of 1930s Germany. They also discuss a powerful warning from the New York Times, coffee, inflation, shrinkflation, what you need to know about ongoing confirmation hearings in the U.S. Senate, and some tough love from... The Daily Sh...

History does not replicate like DNA, but it echoes. It's echoing now. Welcome to This is America Episode 1: Oh s**t, there goes the neighborhood This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thecycle.substack.com/subscribe

If you’ve been following the transition of the Republican Party from the party of Reagan into whatever the hell it is now you’ll know that the once “useful idiots” of the Republican Party, the Christian Right, now rule the party and they have big plans for Trump 2.0. As Dr. Taylor points out in our interview about his book The Violent Take it by Force: The Christian Movement that is Threatening ou...

Today’s pod is with Rachel Maddow producer and editor of Maddow Blog Steve Benen and his important new book Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republican’’ War on the Recent Reality . Benen’s important book documents how Republicans managed how to rewrite the history of recent events like January 6th and COVID to make millions of people believe in a false reality for something they saw...

Its Holocaust Remembrance Day. Not only did Hitler and his Nazis murder 6 million Jews in the Holocaust, its HOW they murdered them you should know more about. After first being dispossessed of their businesses and homes, then being "ghettoized," the Jews began to be "deported East." Deported East meant being packed like sardines into a cattle car sometimes for a week or more with NO WATER, let al...

https://arkansasadvocate.com/2022/10/05/study-more-republicans-than-democrats-likely-died-of-covid/ Researcher Max Taves closes his analysis in David Cay Johnston’s DC Report by asking a very important question: “Republican politicians can talk all they want about how pro-life they are, but these data defy and belie their rhetoric. Facts are stubborn things. So what does it say about a political p...

As soon as Heather Cox Richardson’s new book Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America came across my algorithm I reached out and invited America’s favorite academic back onto the show . HRC’s newest book lays out how a small group of wealthy men financed and developed a right wing propaganda machine that 54+ years later, stands to topple America’s nearly 250 year old democracy. But perha...

Like all good lefties, I cut my teeth in progressive politics learning all about the horrors of America’s massive military industrial complex. In one of my very first college classes ever at the local community college, a passionate instructor who spent his spare time organizing peace marches against the Iraq War made sure each of his students left his class well-versed in America’s overinvestment...

Throughout 2024 I plan on highlighting core grassroots organizations working on the frontlines of the Democratic Party’s messaging revolution. Now, maybe you think the word “revolution” is too strong, but trust me, moving a party away from approaching voters with wonky policy appeals and achievements to focusing on making sure regular Americans know what the modern GOP has planned for them is no s...

The first time I posted about the harsh reality of America’s collapsing democracy, it seemed like many folks were genuinely surprised to see that America is not actually the Greatest Democracy on Earth. According to the democracy index compiled by the EIU and published annually by The Economist , America is actually a “flawed” democracy. The United States was downgraded from “full” to “flawed” dem...

What if I was to tell you the Republican Party’s villain-in-chief, the main protagonist in the Republican Party’s “Democrats are socialists” Big Lie, Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez is an ideological moderate serving in a likewise still moderate Democratic Party? Understandably, you wouldn’t believe me, so I would have to present some pretty compelling evidence to change your mind. Enter th...

I first learned about Way to Win when they published an analysis after the 2020 cycle empirically demonstrating the weakness of the Democratic Party’s messaging strategy against the GOP’s in the 2020 cycle. While Republican’s focused on branding Democrats as dangerous socialists intent on destroying America, Democrats were branding Republicans as good friends they just couldn’t wait to work with i...

If you want to get someone out of a cult, Dr. Steven Hassan is your man. Inspired to a career focused on cults by his own personal experience being tricked into joining one, Dr. Hassan has spent decades researching, writing, and talking about cults and is skilled at getting folks out of them. In fact, he literally wrote the manual on understanding and breaking cult allegiance, Combating Cult Mind...

Two years or so again I began an extensive research project into the totalitarian movements of the 1920s and 1930, with a heavy emphasis on Germany and Italy whose totalitarians regimes hailed from the political right. When I started this research project I knew very little about the process by which the National Socialists actually rose to power, this despite holding both a college degree and a P...

Leigh McGowen , of IamPoliticsGirl and The Politics Girl pod fame, intrinsically gets the purpose, the proper forms, and the distribution realties of modern messaging. That’s why I was jazzed to bring my fellow messaging (and messy bun) aficionado onto The Cycle to talk about her rise as one of the Democratic Party’s brightest and best messaging stars. Leigh has launched Politics Girl on YouTube s...

If you find polling interesting or frustrating (or both!) this is the episode for you! U-Mass Amherst pollster and Associate Professor Alex Theodoridis is on the pod to talk about challenges facing modern polling and how to properly conduct and present survey results given the impacts on mass behavior of hyperpartisanship, which you should think of as partisanship, but on steroids. In addition to...

When you have to google the spelling of “cuckold",” you know you’re about to drop a hot pod! The Liberty Way reads like some kind of modern Footloose, forcing students to adhere to a moral code so strict, you expect the punishments to include stoning. That’s why the revelation that when “America’s largest Christian university’s” President Jerry Falwell Jr. and his wife Becki Falwell have a “cuckol...

Did you know that in order to advance in ‘degrees’ in the Proud Boys you have to vow to stop jacking off so you can unleash your pent-up violence on your innocent victims?! That’s why you NEED a copy of Andy Campbell’s new book: We Are Proud Boys: How A Rightwing Street Gang Ushered In A New Era Of American Extremism. I haven’t had a chance yet to present the sum of my research into the collapse o...