Useful Idiots with Katie Halper and Aaron Maté

Subscribe for full interviews at http://usefulidiots.substack.com After 9/11, the US government jumped into war in Afghanistan, giving shells of reasons for their aggression. But at least they still gave reasons. However, after Bin Laden was killed in 2011, even the illusion of a reason for this war was gone. It’s been time to come home for a while. In an April interview with Matt, Adrian Bonenber...

Lesley Blume is a journalist. She married a journalist. Her father wrote for Walter Cronkite. Her whole community is journalists. So, in 2016, when Trump rose to power, her community was suddenly under attack. “All of a sudden to see your entire community be under assault like that and be designated as enemies of the people was so shocking and demoralizing, and it felt like an all hands on deck mo...

Subscribe for full episodes and extended interviews at http://usefulidiots.substack.com Lesley Blume is a journalist. She married a journalist. Her father wrote for Walter Cronkite. Her whole community is journalists. So, in 2016, when Trump rose to power, her community was suddenly under attack. “All of a sudden to see your entire community be under assault like that and be designated as enemies...

“America finally had enough media awareness after being taught in high school to look for bias that they suddenly were able to see, with new eyes, just how slanted and silly and contradictory and boring [corporate media is.]” Thus spoke Walter Kirn, writer for Time magazine and author of eight novels including Up in the Air (which was turned into a George Clooney movie), on this week’s Useful Idio...

Subscribe for the full interview at http://usefulidiots.substack.com “America finally had enough media awareness after being taught in high school to look for bias that they suddenly were able to see, with new eyes, just how slanted and silly and contradictory and boring [corporate media is.]” Thus spoke Walter Kirn, writer for Time magazine and author of eight novels including Up in the Air (whic...

Even just days before the election in Ohio’s 11th district, Nina Turner is pulling voters to her side. Just this week, an influential city councilman announced he switched his support from opponent Shontel Brown to Turner because on one side he saw angry attack ads, while on the other he saw policy. And this race is centered on policy: Brown, backed by corporate dems like Hillary Clinton and Right...

Subscribe at usefulidiots.substack.com for full episodes and extended interviews Even just days before the election in Ohio’s 11th district, Nina Turner is pulling voters to her side. Just this week, an influential city councilman announced he switched his support from opponent Shontel Brown to Turner because on one side he saw angry attack ads, while on the other he saw policy. And this race is c...

The press is a crucial part of democracy, checking on the government and alerting the public to what’s going on. The water supply has been poisoned––that's the kind of thing we depend on the fourth estate to report about. But where have they been? The national press was universally late in reporting on the Flint Water crisis, and quickly dropped the corruption, greed, and mismanagement that poison...

Join our substack for the full interview and bonus content http://usefulidiots.substack.com Subscribe for clips and full episodes Follow us on twitter at https://twitter.com/UsefulIdiotpod The press is a crucial part of democracy, checking on the government and alerting the public to what’s going on. The water supply has been poisoned––that's the kind of thing we depend on the fourth estate to rep...

Matt and Katie sit down with Julian Assange’s brother, Gabriel Shipton, and journalist Kevin Gosztola to talk about the astonishing new development in the Julian Assange case, which the mainstream media has kept from you. Namely that the government’s star witness in its extradition case has   admitted  that he lied about Assange in exchange for immunity. Why has mainstream media reported only on t...

In the past few weeks of the crucial case for free speech and press, Wikileaks-founder Julian Assange was granted a new appeal on his extradition trial and it came out that a key witness (who is a diagnosed sociopath) admitted to lying, a smear campaign distorted much of what we know, and psychological torture was reported in the prison where he’s being held. Remember all that? You don’t? Well, do...

As PC culture, led fearlessly by Miss Woke 2021 Robin DiAngelo, moves deeper into decreeing what terms and actions count as racist, Professor Adolph Reed has a warning for us: “Both the discursive and institutional have emerged around a systemic disposition to find ways to evade talking about class and economic inequality, then it just grows in that dark environment with other fungi and so forth a...

As PC culture, led fearlessly by Miss Woke 2021 Robin DiAngelo, moves deeper into decreeing what terms and actions count as racist, Professor Adolph Reed has a warning for us: “Both the discursive and institutional have emerged around a systemic disposition to find ways to evade talking about class and economic inequality, then it just grows in that dark environment with other fungi and so forth a...

What do you do when your congressman is an a**hole who celebrates the January 6 insurrection and uses it to try propel himself to governor of New York? You run against him and f*cking beat him. At least that’s what attorney and former Onion writer Austin Smith plans to do. And he’s using his “furious, blood-boiling” anger toward Lee Zeldin and the rest of Trump’s losers to help the people of New Y...

What do you do when your congressman is an a**hole who celebrates the January 6 insurrection and uses it to try propel himself to governor of New York? You run against him and f*cking beat him. At least that’s what attorney and former Onion writer Austin Smith plans to do. And he’s using his “furious, blood-boiling” anger toward Lee Zeldin and the rest of Trump’s losers to help the people of New Y...

Norman Finkelstein, the prolific (and widely canceled) political scientist, and author of 11 books, joins the show to give us a sneak preview of his new book on cancel culture and identity politics. He explains what makes today's cancel culture new, what makes it not so new, and why it’s worse, in some ways, when the Left does it: “ Obviously there’s cancel culture on the right. But the cancel cul...

Subscribe at usefulidiots.substack.com Norman Finkelstein, the prolific (and widely canceled) political scientist, and author of 11 books, joins the show to give us a sneak preview of his new book on cancel culture and identity politics. He explains what makes today's cancel culture new, what makes it not so new, and why it’s worse, in some ways, when the Left does it: “Obviously there’s cancel cu...

“This is kind of the Holy Grail for the left that can never quite get pulled off,” says Ross Barkan, author of The Prince: Andrew Cuomo, Coronavirus, and the Fall of New York. “It usually gets pulled off by moderates, or Barack Obama.” We talked to Ross about one of our favorite people — the demented neoliberal monster/werewolf Andrew Cuomo — but also about the upcoming New York City mayoral elect...

Subscribe at usefulidiots.substack.com Ross Barkan on the New York Mayoral Race and Cuomosexuals, Plus Whale Mouthwash, Republicans Hit the Pipe, and Jeff Bezos Should Eat the Mona Lisa “This is kind of the Holy Grail for the left that can never quite get pulled off,” says Ross Barkan, author of The Prince: Andrew Cuomo, Coronavirus, and the Fall of New York. “It usually gets pulled off by moderat...

Click here for the extended interview. “Protest with a guitar? Not this candidate.” This, written about a 21-year-old city council candidate with hippy sensibilities and a drive to help the underdog: Dennis Kucinich. Since that article in 1967, Kucinich served 16 years as the US house rep from Ohio, gained national fame in his two presidential bids, and was vindicated by the Washington Post as the...

“Protest with a guitar? Not this candidate.” This written about a 21-year-old city council candidate with hippy sensibilities and a drive to help the underdog: Dennis Kucinich. Since that article in 1967, Kucinich served 16 years as the US house rep from Ohio, gained national fame in his two presidential bids, and was vindicated by the Washington Post as the future of American politics. Now, Kucin...

Click here for the extended interview. Saagar Enjeti tells a story from his time as the co-host of The Hill’s Rising , in which he described the seniority system for House of Representatives Committee assignments. “I did a segment this is all I said: ‘Maxine Waters will be the chairwoman of the Financial Services Committee till the day she dies,’” he recounts. “So her fucking staff called the boss...

After a groundbreaking and enormously successful run at The Hill, Krystal and Saagar have followed the iconic path of a certain former rock music podcast, going solo by launching a subscriber-supported show called Breaking Point that debuts next week. The longtime friends-of-show are true pioneers in the modern media age. At a time when virtually every other political discussion show is aimed excl...

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Click here for the extended interview. We had to speak with guest Aaron Maté of The Grayzone via Skype, because other platforms wouldn’t service his location — he was calling in from the capital city of our sanctioned enemy, Syria. What, you might ask, was Aaron Maté doing in Syria? “I thought you guys weren’t supposed to talk about my real mission here,” he said, “which was to negotiate a co-host...