The embedded video contains solely the questions that WBAI’s We Decide’s Jenna Flanagan asked me. The entire panel discussion can be viewed here. We Decide is a joint Pacifica Affiliate WBAI production, and the We Decide: America at the Crossroads with Jenna Flanagan.
Summary
A reckoning moment. In this wide-ranging and unfiltered discussion, KPFT’s Politics Done Right host Egberto Willies joins WBAI’s We Decide host Jenna Flanagan to dissect the collapse of Trump’s economic credibility, the dangers of militarized foreign policy, and the accelerating failure of U.S. political institutions. Speaking plainly and historically, the conversation connects Trump’s sinking polls, elite impunity, and economic anxiety to a deeper systemic rot that demands public intervention and democratic accountability.
* Trump’s declining poll numbers reflect economic pain, not media spin or partisan fatigue.
* Militarized posturing toward Venezuela mirrors past U.S. interventions that produced instability, not security.
* Drug-war narratives collapse under basic economic logic: demand drives supply in capitalist systems.
* Congressional oversight remains performative while plutocratic interests consolidate power.
* Electoral action in 2026 emerges as the last meaningful check on institutional decay.
This exchange frames Trump’s economic failures and foreign-policy aggression as symptoms of a captured system. The discussion insists that democratic renewal will not come from elite restraint but from organized, informed public action rooted in economic justice and peace.
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Egberto Willies approaches politics the way engineers approach broken systems: identify the inputs, examine the incentives, and follow the outcomes. In his discussion with WBAI’s Jenna Flanagan, Willies situates Donald Trump’s declining poll numbers not as an abstract popularity problem but as a direct response to lived economic harm and reckless governance. Polling erosion follows reality. When people cannot afford rent, groceries, or health care, slogans collapse under pressure.
The conversation exposes the myth that Trump’s political weakness stems from media bias or voter apathy. Instead, Willies points to material conditions. Inflation, stagnant wages, and the deliberate sabotage of health-care subsidies erode trust faster than any scandal cycle. The administration’s gamble appears cynical: dismantle Affordable Care Act supports, accept short-term political losses, and preserve long-term ideological goals of privatization. That strategy treats public suffering as collateral damage in a partisan war.
Foreign policy intensifies the danger. Willies draws from lived history, recalling the U.S. invasion of Panama and connecting it to current aggression toward Venezuela. The rhetoric of “hard-nosed realism” replaces the language of diplomacy with the logic of domination. Under this framework, drug interdiction becomes a pretext rather than a solution. Willies dismantles the argument cleanly: capitalist markets respond to demand, not force. As long as U.S. demand for drugs remains high, supply will adapt. Militarizing the Caribbean does nothing to address addiction, despair, or economic precarity at home.
The most chilling aspect of the exchange centers on institutional collapse. Willies does not express alarm over a president dozing in public; he expresses alarm over who governs when competence disappears. Power does not vanish—it migrates. In the absence of accountability, plutocrats, contractors, and ideologues fill the vacuum. The result is governance by inertia and opportunism rather than democratic mandate.
Congress fares no better in this analysis. Stock-trading bans, ethics reforms, and oversight promises ring hollow against decades of bipartisan refusal to restrain insider privilege. Willies rejects faith-based politics. Reform will not emerge from goodwill but from electoral pressure. Only candidates who campaign explicitly against corruption can alter incentives embedded in the system.
Yet the discussion does not drift into despair. Willies identifies 2026 as a structural inflection point. As institutions fail upward, responsibility shifts downward—to voters, organizers, independent media, and local movements. Democracy survives not through reverence for norms but through the public's active enforcement.
Jenna Flanagan uses her platform as a knowledge wrapped in a blanket, with her clever questioning allowing a methodical unwrapping. The exchange captures a political moment where illusion no longer suffices. Trump’s polls fall because reality intrudes. Economics exposes ideology. Militarism reveals moral bankruptcy. And institutional failure forces a choice: accept managed decline or intervene democratically. The conversation insists that the path forward requires clarity, courage, and collective action grounded in economic justice and peace.
To hear more, visit egberto.substack.com
