Krystal Kyle & Friends

We’re thrilled to have Former AOC chief of Staff, Saikat Chakrabarti on the podcast this week! Saikat is a co-founder of Justice Democrats as well as AOC’s former chief of staff. That’s to say that he’s played a hugely important role in progressive politics over the past years and has his finger on the pulse. By his own account, he decided to run when he saw Democrats doing nothing as Trump ascended to power a second time. Now, with an authoritarian in power, Saikat is both a talented, experienced progressive activist and an observer of everything that’s failed about establishment, gerontocratic politics in California’s 11th congressional district. Unlike Pelosi, who has refused to assess how the Democrats let the people down leading up to and after the 2024 election, Saikat is ready for the Democratic Party to hold itself to account.

By his account, the way for Democrats to move forward isn’t denying that this erosion of the Democratic voter base is happening; the Dems need to confront the erosion head-on in order to win people back. In the age of Trump, and especially as Trump destroys our social support system, filling in political potholes won’t be enough. Renewing faith in our political institutions, as he suggests, will. Getting money out of politics will, too. Those are the things Saikat is interested in accomplishing in office, and we’re excited to see the rest of his campaign.

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In this conversation with Naomi Klein, we identify the destructive rampaging of the Trump government as an incredibly nearsighted political program: it’s not building a sustainable and just government for the well-being of future generations. On the contrary, it’s running everything into the ground for a quick buck. Naomi mentions that even though aforesaid tech overlords have no scruples when it comes to wreaking havoc on the earth for working-class people everywhere, they harbor a strange obsession with surviving the downfall of Earth through technological advances. There may be an afterlife for those who can pay their way. But for everyone stuck here and doomed to go down with the ship, end-times fascism may well be our death sentence.

That’s why, with our brilliant guest, we take on the topic of what political strategies will be necessary to combat this newest stage in our country’s political development. How can a grassroots left, disassembled and demoralized post-Sanders and in the wake of a second Trump win, circle its wagons and pose a real threat to the tech goons stripping our world for parts? Naomi sees an opportunity for people to “get out of our little comfort zones” and build a broad coalition that pits the many against the few.

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Kyle asks our guest Omar Baddar in this week’s episode whether a recent growing consensus in the international community (outside of the U.S) that Israel’s genocidal actions must be stopped is cause for hope. It’s true that countries like the U.K. and France have offered, as Krystal puts it, “strongly worded letters” reacting to the IDF shooting at ambassadors in Jenin, to new and horrifying information about the starvation campaign Israel is imposing on Palestine, and more. Could it be that the world leaders are finally waking up?

To Omar, the hard truth is that these measures as they exist right now constitute a “fig leaf” — not enough to put actual pressure on Israel to change, but enough to allow these leaders, down the road, to claim that they stood up to Israel. What would standing up to Israel look like? Omar suggests that cutting off diplomatic relations — ostracizing Israel until it stops killing Palestinians — is the step these countries will have to take if they actually support the Palestinian cause.

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On this week’s episode, Hasan Piker gives us a bombshell report of his recent detention by CBP during his return to the U.S. from France. Like us, he’s heard the stories about people getting stopped at the airport and being asked invasive questions about their support for Donald Trump. On his way out of customs, CBP stopped Hasan and took him to a detention area in the airport, where they proceeded to interrogate him about his views on Israel, his allegiance to Trump, and, of all things, his Twitch fans.

It’s a harrowing story that, according to Hasan, likely doesn’t have to do with just one individual agent pursuing an agenda; Hasan felt like they knew who he was. We hope you enjoy this exclusive episode, and remember, you can listen to it as a podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and more.

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Lisa Gilbert joins the podcast for Episode 225 to help us understand how Trump is pulling a scam right out in the open with his crypto coin. Right now, Public Citizen is calling for Trump’s crypto activities to be investigated, because it’s clear that as Trump hawks crypto, a small fraction of wealthy investors actually see returns on the coin, and (to top it all off) a bill goes through Congress to provide barely-there regulation of cryptocurrency, there’s a whole lot of shady, back-room dealings going on between the people who are supposed to crack down on shady, back-room dealings.

Lisa points out that crypto accounts for a significant amount of recent election spending, even though it’s relatively new — and the lack of regulation of this scam means people like Trump can get away with using it to buy power and influence. Under the auspices of a meme coin, Trump is able to line his own pockets, as he tried to do via a crypto-friendly executive order that Public Citizen called out in January, during Trump’s first days in office. The whole thing is a disgusting racket of billionaire self-interest and self-promotion using our own government as a means to private wealth, and we’re grateful to advocates like Lisa who have spent the first days of Trump’s administration calling out his abuses of power.

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According to many political commentators, a liberal victory in the Canadian election wasn’t in the cards. So why did it happen? We tackle this question with this week’s guest, David Doel of The Rational National. The answer has to do with Trump. Trump’s trade wars and tariffs on Canada; his repeated jabs about Canada the 51st state; and his isolationist vision of the U.S.’s role on the global stage all made Trumpism deeply unappealing to Canadians. Pierre Poilievre, with his history as a union-buster and a friend to big business, fit into the Trumpian mold. Mark Carney, with his steady hand and focus on key voter issues like affordable housing, offered a viable alternative.

We also talk with David about Canadian-American relations, strained by Trump’s aggressive and American-exceptionalist leadership, and the threats of annexation and border changes that Trump has suggested he’d like to impose on our neighbors to the north. The elections serve as a sampling of Canadian national opinion on what they’d like the future of their country to be like; ideally, it seems, Trump is nowhere in the picture.

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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

Economics professor emeritus and renowned political commentator Richard Wolff joins the show to turn a critical eye on Trump’s trade war with China. When we think about the U.S.’s unique position in the global economy in the age of Trump, we think about its power to cause harm — to threaten and cow other countries into submission by making them bend to economic pressure. As a nascent economic superpower, China isn’t bending. The 145% tariffs persist, as do China’s 125% tariffs on our goods, meaning a full-blown trade war is still unfolding. Trump is moving the goalposts as he says he claims he’s continuing to negotiate with the Chinese, wavering on the strength of the tariffs he’s projecting into the future.

It’s because he knows that the tariffs are not popular and not working. Dr. Wolff walks us through the tariffs’ reception and effects, and it’s not a happy story, either for American consumers or for foreign governments. Increased inflation and job loss threaten working people in America as a result of the tariffs, and they’re sure not to help Trump curry favor with the working class. Globally, Dr. Wolff also shows how other countries cutting or reducing economic ties with the U.S. to lessen the impact of U.S. tariffs on the global economy will result in increased isolation for the U.S. as China continues to grow its power.

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Ben Norton is a journalist and the founder of Geopolitical Economy Report focusing on international economics, which makes him the perfect guest for an episode centered on why Trump’s tariff tantrum isn’t going the way he hoped. When Trump threatened China with tariffs, many of us understood that of course, his main priority wasn’t the welfare of working people looking for more American jobs — it was just another opportunity for him to throw his weight around and shake a big stick at our enemies — but it’s still important to understand the appeal that he made, talking about re-centering American production and job creation by unseating Chinese imports from their current extremely important role in our markets.

Ben shows in our conversation how these were just more of Trump’s lies, everywhere from the desire of Americans to return to factory jobs (polling shows they don’t want to) to way higher prices, consumer freakouts about loss of access to goods, longer delivery times, and an overall mess in the economy that could have way bigger shockwaves as it continues to grow. Reindustrialization isn’t going to happen like this, and Ben walks us through the how and the why, from the fact that this could result in a global recession to the devaluation of the American dollar that’s happening now.

We hope you enjoy this wide-ranging conversation, which touches on everything from the trade war to Trump’s cruel and inhumane deportation policy, which we’re getting increasingly horrifying news about from El Salvador and from immigrant communities around the U.S. You can listen to this episode as a podcast when it’s released tomorrow night on Spotify, Substack, Pandora, Apple Podcasts, and more.

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This week we talk to two grassroots Dem candidates interested in blazing a new trail for a worn-out, uninspiring party: Jackson Franklin and Kat Abughazaleh. In our interview with Jackson, we hear about the key policies he supports, including Medicare expansion, strengthening unions, banning corporate lobbying, and treating economic inequality as a serious issue. Meanwhile, Elon Musk has “personal beef” with Kat Abughazaleh, an Illinoisan, progressive, and extremism researcher (so you can see why they might have beef) — Kat’s now running for Congress to take on corruption in the Democratic Party as well as to defeat the Republicans’ agenda. She’s drawn attention to the failure of the Democratic Party to function as a true opposition party, capitulating to Republicans’ demands and showing only performative resistance (and lately, not even doing much of that, either). Affordable housing and healthcare are critical parts of her campaign, and she’s pledged to run a campaign with no corporate cash.

These are two examples of the new grassroots campaigns coming up through a withered, toothless Democratic Party to take it on and revitalize it for working people. We hope you’ll enjoy Jackson and Kat’s reflections on what it’s like to imagine changing a party from the inside and how they plan to make it happen if elected. You can listen to this episode as a podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and other streaming platforms.

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Insane escalations in the trade war Trump’s waging with China, grants being pulled from universities in the name of combating antisemitism, and more: it’s been another crazy week under the Trump regime. We got Michael Tracey on the show to talk to us about it.

We could be staring down the barrel of a global recession as Trump slaps trade partners with major tariffs, particularly triggering a crisis in US relations with China — which is reciprocating the tariffs. Then there’s the crazy (big if true???) news that Musk is on his way out. How would this influence the far right’s rampage through our social support network? We chat about it with Michael, who’s heard the rumors and has insight into how the clown car would keep rolling without the attention-grabbing Musk at the temporary helm.

Thanks for tuning in. You can listen to this episode as a podcast on Spotify, Substack, Pandora, and more.

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