This week, we have the pleasure of discussing Abdul El-Sayed’s stunning victory in the Michigan Dem primary for senate, plus the role of independent left media — and we have the special pleasure of doing it with Nathan, who founded and is editor-in-chief of Current Affairs. He’s the perfect guest, and he’s joined us for a wide-ranging conversation this week that we very much hope you’ll enjoy. And, of course, it’s all about the actual hope for change that Abdul represents and has fought for in his community for a long time. We’re used to scolding from the Petes, Hillarys, and Schumers of the world, pointing out the ingratitude of daring to want more. So when a candidate like Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed wins a Dem primary despite massive hurdles like slander campaigns and AIPAC-funded opponents, it’s a powerful message of hope that voters believe they can ask for more. El-Sayed’s victory this week reflects the success of a principled leftist running on addressing “kitchen-table issues,” as Nathan puts it. His win will fuel the battle for Medicare for All that he’s centered in his campaign.

We also discuss the playbook of Islamophobic and red-scare messaging that El-Sayed’s opponents went for. Republican nominee Mike Rogers could not have been more clear when he called El-Sayed a terrorist and claimed his opponent supported 9/11. So a big conversation point for us is how El-Sayed can respond and fight back against these bigoted attacks. Looking at the bigger picture, El-Sayed is a leftist who can actually tap into the kind of public attention given to his political opposite, Trump: that is, smear campaigns that turn the camera on him only end up giving air time to his extremely compelling and well-articulated arguments for the policies working people actually want. AIPAC would rather have Mike Rogers in the seat we hope Abdul El-Sayed will clinch in November. But the more opportunities El-Sayed has to get his message out to the people, the better chance he has of winning.

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Rania Khalek is our special guest for Episode 288, in which we discuss her own experience facing a subpoena from Trump as a reporter at BreakThrough News. As we survey the sorry state of free speech and independent media in a country supposedly founded on those values, we’re also inclined to think about the Democratic Establishment’s lack of support for courageous left-wing independent outlets Trump is now trying to intimidate and silence. It would seem obvious that independent left journalism is the antidote to mainstream media outlets over which — regardless of their political affiliations! — Trump has increasingly asserted control. (Remember Jimmy Kimmel?) Yet Dems are sitting back and watching it happen while reporters like Rania have the courage to call out the b******t that Dems lack the spines to challenge.

It’s part of a bigger picture in which Trump controls the political landscape, tampering (not strong enough a word) with free elections, funneling cash and institutional support from the highest office in the country to get his lackeys into office. We also see how these fascist attacks spread through the world in America’s vast network of imperialist projects, looking at the role our country has played in sustaining political instability in Latin America and the Middle East, supporting authoritarian regimes sympathetic to Trump’s agenda basically wherever it can. So it’s time for the Democrats to stand up! It’s long been time for the Democrats to stand up, but we’re coming pretty close to the actual last chance.

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For Episode 287 with Kentucky Senate hopeful Charles Booker, we debate the possibility that Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell is dead, both in terms of its implications for the future of American politics and in terms of what it reveals about the Republican Party’s true loathing of and lack of respect for the American people, especially working-class voters. The Party wants to brazenly put up a ruse to (unsuccessfully) convince McConnell’s constituents that an elderly man in the hospital, who’s totally disappeared from public life, isn’t already dead, because that’s better for them than the alternative: giving voters an actual say in their national representation.

By contrast, Charles’ vision of “new and bold leaders to stand for Kentucky” reflects his understanding that his potential constituents need representatives they can trust. That’s why Booker was the first to call attention to the Republican Party’s see-through b******t with Mitch McConnell’s abandonment of his constituents. Through the example of this case, he’s made a platform that includes term limits — the importance of which we’re being confronted with right now — and rallied a big-tent organizing operation that has successfully converted Trump supporters into members of a coalition that will fight the oligarchy of the Republican Party and take that struggle all the way to the Senate.

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Episode 286 of KK&F finds us talking with political commentator Joy Reid about her political journey and the dead ends present in the Democratic Party. Joy brings our attention to the powerful connections between the genocidal violence in Gaza and the boomerang that, as we know, leads to American police officers getting trained by the IDF. In her own powerful words, “These are not separate issues. Our moral imagination has to include not being for genocide, and not partnering with a country that trains our police to harm people like me.” And as she tells it, it’s more than disappointing and disheartening that the Democratic Party refuses to acknowledge this imperative and expand its moral imagination.

We’re seeing contests for Democratic Party power — and for the progressive or conservative future of that party — play out right now, as in the Democrats’ race for the Michigan Senate. In this episode, we talk to Joy about what Abdul El-Sayed’s victory would mean and where the party is headed.

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Huge thanks to David Griscom, an expert and historian of left politics, for appearing on the show to help us see a future for Blue Texas. David shows us all the ways that our culture’s perception of Texas politics is deeply flawed, both in terms of Texan radical history (a proud tradition) and as far as the current political scene is concerned. We talk about the linkages between the political style and messaging of Beto O’Rourke and James Talarico. Talarico has made massively successive appeals to working-class people via his support of economic populism and extremely well-executed strategies to reach voters on the ground. He has the chance to bring together a genuine coalition that would tie into a proud history of left dissent in Texas politics, which David walked us through.

On the other end, there’s the Republican Party’s alienation of Hispanic and Muslim voters, plus their constant strategy of sowing fear and despair across working- and middle-class communities. While candidates like Talarico can offer a comprehensive vision of a society that works for the working class, candidates like Paxton rely on a strategy of fearmongering and scapegoating. And while mainstream narratives about Texas project the idea that the Texas electorate —especially working-class people — are a MAGA stronghold, David discusses with us in this episode, a long history of left organizing in Texas.

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Thanks to our amazing special guest Gil Durán for a conversation about the tech overlords taking over American politics with influence on both sides of the aisle. Obviously, especially with the public trading of SpaceX, Elon Musk is our major point of reference in this discussion. Elon doesn’t think of efforts like SpaceX as big intellectual, cultural, and social steps for humanity, especially in an age in which that kind of technology could ultimately be a last resort from the planet that billionaires have destroyed. Rather, his view, and the views of other capitalists who see themselves as jumping off a sinking ship, is that it’s all going to be a pay-to-play system: only the wealthy and elite will have their passport to the galaxy.

On to even brighter subjects, we talk about the anti-humanism of Peter Thiel and how it’s flown under the radar in mainstream media even as it seems more necessary and crucial than ever to call out the contempt billionaires feel toward other human beings — that the richest people in our society actually have no problem with, and may root for, the extinction of everyone but the hyper-wealthy. It’s a larger picture of what we think of as a single phenomenon — Elon Musk regularly using his political and financial power toward the erosion of human life. So we take an unsparing look at the source of these ideologies and address how they’ve infiltrated our society and changed our lives.

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Welcome to Episode 283 of KK&F with reporter Murtaza Hussain, on the penalty of the deal for peace in Iran. After this week’s news of the brokered deal went public, Murtaza wrote a piece for Drop Site News documenting mixed reactions and protests in Iran. He attests to the fact that the deal was largely accepted, but delves into a case that dissenters are making: that the US cannot be trusted to abide by any agreement. Now, Trump has agreed to permit Iran to sell oil and to lift sanctions, provided that Iran cease the development of any nuclear weapons and open the Strait of Hormuz. (It’s a fourteen-point plan, but those points stand out to us.)

Will it all go through? Will this deal be enough? It’s a question we’ve asked before, weeks and months ago on this podcast, when peace seemed right around the corner but the U.S. invariably reneged on a ceasefire or failed to abide in other ways by the terms of an agreement. We’ve also talked about the sabotage Israel could inflict here, striking at Iran by undermining the deal and especially by continuing its bombing of Lebanon. And we’ve certainly touched on the status of this conflict as an utter, messy loss for Trump’s government. So we return to topics like this with totally new and fresh information from this latest development, and Murtaza, who has been closely following and reporting on these questions for months, is the perfect person to lead any conversation on how our sense of what’s possible in this war and what it would take to end it.

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This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit krystalkyleandfriends.substack.com/subscribe

For Episode 282, we talk to journalist Garrison Lovely about the SpaceX IPO and Elon’s new coup as the world’s first trillionaire, as well as the massive impact of that debut on the tech world and on the highest echelon of global wealth. From Starlink to the SpaceX AI project, the SpaceX with stocks currently getting snapped up like crazy is in some ways a mixed bag, and that’s an object lesson for a lot of Musk’s career as a tech innovator. Think of projects like the Hyperloop that never panned out, rockets that exploded, the Tesla sports car that never actually hit the market. Now this guy is a trillionaire? What does that tell us about the concentration of wealth in our society and what it says about the status of that society as a meritocracy?

We also pick Garrison’s brain on the topic of AI’s rapidly improving capabilities and truly skyrocketing presence in our society. There are a lot of deeply bad actors involved in the world of AI and financially invested in it (your Elon Musks, etc), so it’s understandable, as we point out, that leftists come to AI discussions with a highly negative perception. So we have a thoughtful conversation about where AI is actually making some things easier where it matters, and of course, where it seems set to run society off the rails if we let it.

Thank you for listening to KK&F! You can find this episode on major streaming platforms, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and more.

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We’re wading into the trenches of the right-wing influencer flame wars! And while it inspires anything but confidence in the future of American political discourse, it’s also a source of important insight into MAGA world and its craziest, dumbest drama. This week’s guest, Will Sommer, covers the right wing media and influencer ecosystem for The Bulwark’s False Flag Newsletter. Will has kept a close eye on alt-right media campaigns like the most recent one to label Harley Davidson as woke and gay. As Trump 2.0 comes unglued and MAGA grifters search for their next payday, Will has studied their online playbook and can walk us through it.

The facts don’t care about Ben Shapiro’s feelings — The Daily Wire has fallen off sharply, its audience vanishing, and the company was forced to do an embarrassing round of layoffs. Now, Ben has been reduced to tactics such as running his videos as paid advertisements simply to juice the views. What are the factors behind this precipitous fall? We also discuss the failed effort to lionize Charlie Kirk, Laura Loomer’s latest bizarre allegations, and how the right’s virulent anti-semitism is ripping them apart. As Trump does his best to destroy the country and the world, at least we get to watch all of the worst people rip each other to shreds. And we hope you enjoy listening!

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