Krystal Kyle & Friends

Investigative journalist Greg Palast is rejoining the show to discuss the dire straits into which a recent Trump executive order is putting our country. Each week has its fresh horror, and Krystal’s conversation with Greg delves into the latest. Greg has a seriously impressive background in shining a spotlight on the Republican agenda of making sure people can’t vote so the far-right oligarchs can entrench their minoritarian rule. You hate to see it, and you certainly hate to see the newest policy, which, as Krystal points out, would basically let Elon decide who gets to vote, both in the midterms and in the next presidential election, if you can even call them elections.

All states’ voter files, as Greg explains, would be open to Elon under this order, since he’s the DOGE (ugh) administrator. The point is to stop “aliens” from voting in elections, removing them from voter rolls, and the extent of the voter suppression will clearly go well beyond this stated goal to push Trump and Elon’s bid for endless power. Greg gives us some necessary background on the history of voter suppression that has actually done very little to address the tiny number of so-called “illegal aliens” who do vote in American elections, facing massive consequences. He reminds us that Trump can’t name three people who voted illegally, not to mention three million. Yet these people are the scapegoats for the Republicans’ ugly project of making sure working people can’t vote for their own interests. What remains to be seen is how the political establishment absorbs this news and how the so-called opposition party chooses to fight back.

You can listen to this episode as a podcast on Spotify, Pandora, Apple Podcasts, 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

In a special episode featuring your two hosts, we discuss Trump’s long game for a regime: taking the so-called presidency again in ‘28 and continuing to wreak whatever havoc doesn’t fit into the next four years. (Not to be too doomer about it — don’t mourn, organize!) He’s got the usual cast of characters running amok, from Steve Bannon telling Chris Cuomo that Trump will take that third term (and then who knows what, right?) As Krystal brings up, destroying Medicare and Medicaid will be so politically disastrous that Trump will basically have to be in a situation where he doesn’t care what voters think anymore.

Yes, it’s bleak, but people are fighting back — from government employees getting fired left and right to grassroots organizers watching their communities face instability and lose important resources. We’ll continue to cover the developing story of Trump’s post-’28 ambitions, and we’ve also got plenty of lighter material to cover. Plus, Bernie’s increasingly urgent call to progressives to run as independents could mean there’s some hope for a real opposition. We’ll talk about all this and more in this week’s episode of KK&F. You can listen to this episode tomorrow as a podcast on Spotify, Pandora, Apple Podcasts, 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

This week’s guest, Robert Weissman, walks us through the current climate of grassroots and organizational pushback against our government’s current self-destruct mode. To make a long story short, it’s not looking easy on the ground — but essential victories prove that there’s a limit to the number of times Trump and his cronies can buy out justice and rely on a conservative Supreme Court to do the heavy lifting.

A particular important victory comes in the form of the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision to rule Trump’s freeze on USAID funding unconstitutional. Weissman tells the amazing story of how Public Citizen and other groups are suing Trump for violating the Constitution, but that in general, Trump’s powerful and endlessly wealthy machine can simply wait out and run red tape around these completely legitimate cases. However, in the case of USAID, something different happened. Multiple courts found that Trump’s team had defied court orders and potentially the Constitution, and even though the government tried to ignore a temporary order from a judge demanding that the USAID funding be unfrozen, they were eventually held to account by (of all things!) the Supreme Court.

This is a story of hope and, for both existing and nascent political organizations opposing Trump fascism, inspiration. We’re glad to have Robert on the show to shine a light on this important story in hopes that it’s one of many. You can listen to this episode as a podcast on Spotify, Pandora, Apple Podcasts, 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

For Episode 216, we dive into the dumbest trade war ever with political writer Lule Savage. Trump has promised to go full steam ahead with tariffs that could devastate industries and cause massive job loss in Canada. Leveraging 25 percent tariffs on most exports would significantly affect the Canadian economy and destabilize the relationship between the countries. Trump has since pulled back some of the tariffs but the remainder are supposed to be put back in place on April 2nd.

What is Trump actually trying to accomplish here? Will he follow through next time at a time when the US is also in danger of slipping into recession? Is he actually trying to annex Canada as he has frequently insisted? Luke helps us explore the question of what the hell Trump is actually thinking with this disastrous policy.

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

As Krystal puts it in this week’s episode during a discussion of the latest in Elon Musk’s quest for world domination, Elon thinks he’s Ready Player One, and we’re all NPCs. Rep. Maxwell Frost joins us to assess the damage. As our conversation takes a deep dive into the insights Maxwell has to offer into the psyches of two billionaire egotists, we talk about one of the biggest shockers of the Trump presidency so far: that Trump has finally found someone he’s willing to play second fiddle to, it seems.

Looming over Cabinet meetings and following the president around like a shadow, Musk seems to be setting the terms for what the Trump agenda has in store. Which leads us to a disturbing conclusion: Because Trump is so “nakedly transactional,” what are the chances an actual transaction took place? We don’t think it’s that hard to imagine Musk, the richest man in the world, buying out the highest position of power in the world in exchange for infinite campaign funds. We get into this and plenty of other shockers on this week’s episode of KK&F. You can listen to this as a podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and other streaming services.

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

This week we get a bombshell report from reporter Greg Palast regarding voter suppression that changed the 2024 election results. In our exclusive interview with him, Greg alleges that the 2024 election results are not valid; without the gross Jim Crow-era abuses of voting rights that predominated during this election, Kamala would have gotten an extra 3.5 million more votes, clinching states like Georgia and Michigan. Part of this episode is Greg’s overview of his work reconstructing on a state-by-state basis how Trump and his people relied on Ku Klux Klan legislation allowing for individual voter status to be challenged, laws that haven’t been used since 1946 but came back in a major way during this election and led to Trump’s victory.

We’re grateful to Greg for taking the time to bring attention to this critical story, which could have serious implications for the future of our political landscape and our understanding of the current scope of voter suppression happening in our country. Thanks for listening to Krystal Kyle & Friends. You can listen to this episode as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, 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

With Judd Legum of Musk Watch, we review the highlights (lowlights?) of This Week in Musk and, given the trends in Musk’s escalating power, what a Next Week in Musk might look like. From the insane reveal that Grimes objects to her ex’s bringing their son to hang out with Trump to careful analyses of Musk’s attacks on the various branches of government, we’ve got a full show covering all the points you’re interested in hearing about — so we’re glad you’re joining us.

In case you missed it, Tuesday featured a press conference with Musk and Trump as the latter announced an executive order to give the former even more power over government spending.. In reporting on the presser, our guest Judd notes DOGE’s goal as described by one source close to the organization, “to depress workforce morale and increase attrition” within government employment, basically forcing people out of jobs and making government jobs less tenable, more dysfunctional work environments. Judd breaks the situation down for us and helps us get a sense of where Elon might be headed.

This episode is available as a podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and other major streaming platforms.

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

Welcome to Episode 211 of KK&F, covering the Musk rampage against the federal government with journalist Gil Duran. Reporting on the first weeks of the Trump admin is basically reporting on the unfolding of a coup. Musk has gotten keys to the Treasury systems, and is rampaging through the government. In this episode with Gil, we cover the central ideology that has led to the rise of figures like Musk and now motivates his destruction of our federal government.

Gil offers truly valuable insight into the psychology of Musk’s insane, unprecedented power play: his “shock and awe” tactics, eliciting praise from the far right that has assumed power, are protected by the certainty of a pardon from Trump if his antics go too far. That sense of security is why he felt comfortable doing a Hitler salute at the inauguration festivities, and why he’s empowered to destroy our government agencies for the sake of destruction. Elon’s true danger is that he wants to see how far he can go, and with Trump backing him, the limit to his power to make millions of lives miserable may not exist.

This episode is available on Spotify, Pandora, Apple Podcasts, and other major streaming platforms.

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

Dotcom bubbles, housing bubbles — as this week’s guest, Ben Norton, explains to us, the bubble itself is not new. But as a keen observer of our financial systems and their manipulation by the wealthy and powerful, Ben Norton gives us important insights into what makes this current bubble — and its coming implosion — even more dangerous. For the past few weeks, for example, billionaires like Musk, Zuckerberg, and Warren Buffett have been dumping stocks, keeping an eye on any market instability or potential collapse. At this point, says Ben, the U.S. stock market has hit 200 percent of the GDP — higher than either the dotcom bubble or the Great Depression. At Davos, Jamie Dimon nodded to the bubble by observing that the stock market is very inflated.

Pushing the issue to a potential crisis is the revelation that China can produce cheaper, better AI, and has been able to do so for a while. Air is starting to come out of the U.S. tech bubble already: in one day, over one trillion dollars of market capital in U.S. and E.U. tech companies collapsed. DeepSeek AI, the Chinese company completely revolutionizing the entire lucrative and hot-button field of AI, is open-source: anyone can access the code and understand how it works, for free. In our conversation with Ben, we chat about why this newest development is so important to the story of the U.S. stock market bubble, how and when a collapse could happen, and more. This episode will be available tomorrow on Spotify, Pandora, Apple Podcasts, and other major streaming platforms. Thanks for listening!

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

Our expectations were low, but the first terrifying few days of Trump, round two have been worse than anyone could have imagined. Already we’re seeing the rollback of key civil rights legislation, attacks on immigrant communities, cutting immigration opportunities for refugees, and much more. After Elon Musk’s shenanigans on the Trump 2024 campaign trail, we expected oligarchs — Trump’s fellow elites — to bend the knee. And they have: Musk, Zuckerberg, and Bezos, the three richest Americans, were all in plain sight at the inauguration. What seems even more galling (if not surprising) is that Democrats have bent the knee, too. On a scale of cooked to well done, says Mike Figueredo on this episode, we’re burnt. In his view, electoral change now seems possible: the line has been drawn, we’ve passed the threshold. Whether it’s a violent revolution or national collapse, Mike sees something other than government-led reform as the future of the country. For Kyle, it’s a question of understanding how bad the damage Trump does will be. Market downturns, austerity, economic collapse: these look like they’re lying in our path right now. Amidst all of this, you’d think the Democrats would learn to fight back — assuming they actually want to win.

This episode is available as a podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, 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