The Lean to the Left Podcast

President Trump appears to be driving at least some of his supposed supporters in the United States Senate crazy as he makes comments and sends out tweets that are irresponsible and obviously racist. That’s what happened when Trump tweeted the other day that the 75 year-old man who was knocked to the pavement with a bleeding head wound by Buffalo police must have been a “set up.” In other words, a...

Police departments across the nation are being subjected to intense scrutiny in the wake of the George Floyd police murder in Minneapolis, and, indeed, it was reported today that Minneapolis plans to totally restructure its law enforcement efforts. And the news continues to bring us reports of instances where police officers themselves have crossed the proverbial “thin blue line” as they deal with...

After slavery was abolished, lynching emerged as a vicious tool of racial control to reestablish white supremacy and suppress black civil rights. More than 4,000 African Americans were lynched across 20 states between 1877 and 1950, according to “Lynching in America” from the Equal Justice Initiative. These lynchings were public acts of racial terrorism, intended to instill fear in entire black co...

When I saw Donald Trump brag about the fact that the unemployment rate had declined to 13.3 percent and say that George Floyd would, thus, be having a good day even though he is dead and his little six-year-old girl is fatherless, I was appalled. No, I was disgusted. That is despicable, I thought. How can this man say such a thing? How can he twist the tragedy of Floyd’s death and the racism and p...

Donald Trump’s Bible-toting photo-op and his use of force against peaceful demonstrators is causing some Republicans to question their support. Oh, it must be difficult to find the courage to speak out against a president who is openly willing to use the U.S. military against his own people. Who is willing to tear gas and shoot with rubber bullets those who are crying out for fairness and equality...

Besides all of its devastating and deadly consequences, Covid 19 can also affect brain function – make you feel like you’re in a fog, confused, even worse. We’re exploring that in this video with Dr. Henry Mahncke, a neuroscientist and CEO of Posit Science. In the interview, Dr. Mahncke says it is possible that people of color may be especially vulnerable to suffering from brain disorders as a res...

Donald Trump’s cruelty and cynical hate for anyone who gets in his way has been increasingly evident as the tragic events in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis have unfolded. His name calling, his belligerence, his hate mongering have only fanned the flames of pent-up emotion as protestors have cried out for justice for the black man who was literally smothered by a whit...

Last week when America recorded its 100,000th death from covid 19, it was big news, and was yet another reminder of the inept response to this pandemic by Donald Trump and his administration. And then, Minneapolis happened. A black man was brutally murdered by a white police officer, and now violence has spread to countless communities across the nation. In today’s podcast, Not Fake News columnist...

America has gone through what really must be described as a horrible, tragic week. The coronavirus continues to claim victims, with the death toll exceeding 100,000 with no signs of slowing down. A black man in Minneapolis, George Floyd, was brutally murdered by a police officer, despite his pleas as the cop continued to press his knee against the unarmed suspect’s neck. And, predictably, riots er...

America is reeling…deaths rising from the coronavirus…and now rising protests and riots in the aftermath of the police killing in Minneapolis of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, who died after an arresting officer kneeled on his neck as he pleaded, “I can’t breathe.”In today’s podcast, Not Fake News writer Stacy Fitzgerald talks about the aftermath of that killing and answers the question of wh...

Donald Trump has misused Twitter for his entire presidency, spreading lies, misinformation, exaggerations, attacks on his adversaries, name calling, and on and on. Finally, the people at Twitter grew some cahunas and called him out – first, attaching a fact-check memo to his tweets claiming mail-in voting causes fraud, and then, flagging a tweet about the Minneapolis rioting for “glorifying violen...

The question of testing for covid-19, the availability of test kits, Trump’s promises that everyone can be tested, and promises that those tests will be free to everyone…is at the heart of the nation’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. And when Congress passed two laws that said patients would not have to pay for coronavirus tests, that question, at least, seemed to be put at rest. But apparen...

Ever since he became president, Donald Trump has made it a priority to withdraw America from the rest of the world, apparently a foundation of his so-called “America First” philosophy. But that action is dangerous and irresponsible and has far-reaching implications. Pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord, for example, sets back the worldwide effort to combat climate change, which, of course, Trum...

The fact that the coronavirus is causing more deaths among blacks than whites is just another example of the disparities that exist in today’s America. Stacy Fitzgerald follows up her podcast from last week in which she discussed the key reasons why this is true, and in today’s podcast, she discusses what needs to be done to eliminate the fundamental inequities that are at the root of this situati...

For more than three years now, America’s president has had one focus, and only one, despite his rhetoric to the contrary – and that focus has been Donald J. Trump. No matter the problem, the issue, the crisis, the pandemic – for those three-plus years, it has been all about Trump. That’s been seen in his every action, including those relating to the coronavirus. A demonstrable lack of caring and e...

President Trump hates the idea that several states are allowing people to vote by mail because of the coronavirus pandemic, claiming that it will lead to massive voter fraud. That's interesting from a politician who was fraudulently elected in 2016 because of Russian-induced voter fraud. Trump's argument is a fraud. He is simply afraid that by making it as easy as possible for people to vote, even...

Well, folks, we have a president who is such a brilliant man that he knows more than all the scientists in the world and is willing to put his own life on the line just to prove a point. Not only that, but he’s so brilliant – must be his genes, I guess – that he’s found a way to practically eliminate the number of coronavirus cases in this country. Take a listen to “Dr. Donald’s Foolproof Cure-all...

With the coronavirus pandemic grinding things to a halt, it’s been tough to just do ordinary, everyday things – like get a haircut, for example. In fact, I’m probably going to need to use my wife’s curling iron if I don’t soon get to the barbershop! Well, the same thing goes for dogs. It’s been impossible to get an appointment with a dog groomer, and I have a red husky named Sundance with long, th...

I have no idea, really, what it must be like to live one’s life as a black man, not a white man. We all hear stories, and we see reports on the news about how young black men, especially, are subjected to unfair treatment simply because people are afraid of them. Why is that? Young whites commit just as many crimes of violence against people as do African Americans. According to the FBI, in fact,...

Why is it that African Americans are dying at a much higher rate than other races, especially whites, from the coronavirus? Oh, you don’t believe that? Well, you can’t argue with the numbers and the facts, and there is a whole host of reasons why that sad fact is true. Stacy Fitzgerald examined that in her blog on Not Fake News.biz, and brings it to our podcast. Take a listen to “Black Deaths and...

This morning I woke up to a tweet from President Trump calling the coronavirus “the plague from China.” It was another step in his determined campaign to brand China as the perpetrator of the pandemic that has so far cost upwards of 85,000 lives in the U.S. alone. That got me to thinking. In my view, America has been beset by "the Plague of Trump," a plague that is evident in the divisiveness amon...

In an effort to distract from his inept coronavirus response, Donald Trump launches a racist attack on a female reporter of Chinese heritage, and presents a new conspiracy theory he called “Obamagate”, claiming the former president was guilty of a crime that he could not identify. As the pressure mounts with his prized economy plummeting and people suffering and dying unnecessarily, Trump continue...

It took 74 days from the time Ahmaud Arbery, a young African American jogger was murdered by two white supremacists in Atlanta until authorities finally charged them with a crime. Why did it take so long? There was no doubt about what happened or who pulled the trigger. Was it simply because of Mr. Arbery’s race and the racial distrust and hatred that continues, seemingly unabated, in our country?...

Remember…just a little over a month ago when there was near panic because we didn’t have enough life-saving ventilators for the ever-increasing numbers of coronavirus patients? One of the reasons, of course, was that the Trump administration poo pooed the seriousness of the virus, with the president saying it would magically go away, and so no new ventilators were ordered until late March. Then, a...

President Trump ordered a flyover to celebrate Not Fake News' 1000th blog. It was incredible! What an experience! As of yesterday, May 8, Not Fake News has published 1,007 blogs since its inception in September 2017, and we are still on a roll. This podcast is the story about how that blog came about, and how it is now reaching readers around the world. Check it out! Become a supporter of this pod...