Checked In for the Checked Out

This week Rachel and Aaron take a tumble through the spin cycle of Donald Trump's second full week in office, which included chaos and confusion, a stock market nose-dive, another off-the-rails news conference, pissed off allies, economic uncertainty and threats of a new consumer tax. They also take the temperature on batshit crazy Senate confirmation hearings and share some thoughts about the incoming leader of the DNC.

Links:

Letter to senators from Caroline Kennedy re: her cousin Bobby

Our Book: Hit 'Em Where It Hurts: How to Save Democracy by Beating Republicans at Their Own Game (Crown, 2024)

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This week Rachel and Aaron dive into the deliberately exhausting 'shock and awe' strategy by Trump 2.0, drawing comparisons to the "Working Toward the Fuhrer" strategy of 1930s Germany.

They also discuss a powerful warning from the New York Times, coffee, inflation, shrinkflation, what you need to know about ongoing confirmation hearings in the U.S. Senate, and some tough love from... The Daily Show.

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History does not replicate like DNA, but it echoes.

It's echoing now.

Welcome to This is America

Episode 1: Oh s**t, there goes the neighborhood

If you’ve been following the transition of the Republican Party from the party of Reagan into whatever the hell it is now you’ll know that the once “useful idiots” of the Republican Party, the Christian Right, now rule the party and they have big plans for Trump 2.0.

As Dr. Taylor points out in our interview about his book The Violent Take it by Force: The Christian Movement that is Threatening our Democracy, for all the attention January 6th received, a key part of that story has been largely ignored.

Along with bear spray, confederate flags, and combat gear, Christian nationalist iconography was all over the insurrection.

In fact, you might remember watching this motley crew of Trump loyalists anointing their violent take over of our nation’s heart of democracy with a group prayer.

You may also remember the 2023 reporting that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito flew something called The Appeal to Heaven Flag many of us were introduced to for the first time on January 6th flying at the highest peak of the Alito family flag poll at various points since 2020.

Even worse, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson flies on on his office door right there in Capitol Hill.

And worse yet, our likely Trumpian Defense Secretary is an out and proud Christian Nationalist who, I s**t you not, is a fan of the Crusades. THE CRUSADES.

So what in the hell does it all mean??! What are these religious fanatics planning for the rest of us?

That’s why I’ve brought Matthew D. Taylor, a senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies on for a conversation about the Christian Nationalist movement and what we should expect from them as they ascend to power for the first time in American history.

Don’t miss this conversation because the survival of the separation of church and state depends on it.

Today’s pod is with Rachel Maddow producer and editor of Maddow Blog Steve Benen and his important new book Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republican’’ War on the Recent Reality.

Benen’s important book documents how Republicans managed how to rewrite the history of recent events like January 6th and COVID to make millions of people believe in a false reality for something they saw with their very own eyes.

Despite the deserved attention on Republicans efforts to white wash American history, very little scholarship has explored how Republicans use their propaganda system and coordination to shape public narratives that have no basis in reality. That makes this work critical.

Although the presidential race remains a toss up, advantage Harris, I for one think it is prudent to consider a Trump win scenario and what it might mean both in the short and long term.

I want to be clear, by acknowledging Trump can win, I am not suggesting he will win, but as my good friend Edna says “luck favors the prepared.”

Benen’s book documents how Trump and MAGA media disappeared recent history for millions of Americans, right before their own eyes and will be a valuable tool for that brave new world should we end up living in it.

Catch our conversation and buy the book!

Its Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Not only did Hitler and his Nazis murder 6 million Jews in the Holocaust, its HOW they murdered them you should know more about.

After first being dispossessed of their businesses and homes, then being "ghettoized," the Jews began to be "deported East." Deported East meant being packed like sardines into a cattle car sometimes for a week or more with NO WATER, let alone food. People died standing up and the trains were full of excrement.

Once they arrived they walked into a carefully laid trap. They didn't know it, but they faced the first of what would come to define the life of the people who ended up with the Auschwitz tattoos: selection. At Auschwitz, between 10-30% of each train load was "selected for work." The rest, men, women, children, and babies were "selected" to be gassed.

At its height in 42/43, the German's killing machinery was performing at its peak, murdering and burnings thousands of humans a day. To make their murder machine work, they needed to keep their victims docile. So, using Jewish prisoners to unload and process those "selected for death" into the gas chambers, these "Sonderkommando" were forced to calm those condemned to death with lies about getting showered and deloused and about what would happen next. If they did not, they would be immediately murdered themselves.

The Nazis actually staged the train platform with fake "to the showers" signs and even went so far as to tell people with just seconds left to live to fold their clothes and make sure they can refind them. Anything to get their 1,000 or so victims to walk willingly into the shower room with its fake faucets. If you were "lucky" in the Holocaust, the Nazis selected you to be worked till death. Selected for work was what stood for "luck" in Auschwitz.

The most important thing you need to remember this year is that what happened to the Jews happened by the intentional "othering" of the Jews by a tyrannical despot. There was nothing special about the millions of Germans who became silent accomplices to the near total destruction of European Jewry. There was nothing special about the Germans then, or us now. We must stop Donald Trump and his MAGA movement here, now. The whole world is watching.

In Episode 2 of Shadowboxing the Apocalypse Ep. 2: How the Nazis Seized Power I bring historian and author of The Death Democracy Benjamin Hett back onto the pod to discuss how Hitler went from being sworn in as a weak chancellor on January 30, 1933 to suspending the German Constitution and outlawing the opposition in less than 60 days.

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Some of you may know I am also using twitter (which is by far my biggest audience) to try to draw attention to the parallels between our current crisis and the fall of democracy in Germany. This work, which I call Project 1933 is tied to the Republican Party’s Transition to Autocracy plans laid out in the Heritage Foundation’s Manual for Leadership, more commonly known as Project 2025. I’ve been tweeting the Nazi’s quick rise to fascist autocracy in real time as events unfold in Germany in 1933. Please check it out if you are not already and if you are already, PLEASE RT THOSE TWEETS!!

(Editors Note: If you are not familiar with Project 2025 yet, please AT LEAST read this which will cover the most important points).

Have you read my book, which is reshaping how Democrats do elections?! Well, what are you waiting for?!

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https://arkansasadvocate.com/2022/10/05/study-more-republicans-than-democrats-likely-died-of-covid/

Researcher Max Taves closes his analysis in David Cay Johnston’s DC Report by asking a very important question:

“Republican politicians can talk all they want about how pro-life they are, but these data defy and belie their rhetoric. Facts are stubborn things.

So what does it say about a political party which incessantly promotes its respect for life and yet whose states’ policies overwhelmingly and repeatedly produce the highest rates of death from cancer, heart disease, kidney disease, Alzheimer’s, influenza, diabetes, traffic accidents, guns, workplace accidents, suicides and murders?

How pro-life can Republican states be when their own constituents literally get less life?”

Taves’ analysis comparing health and death outcomes between Red and Blue states reveal a shocking and inescapable conclusion: Republican policies kill people.

Pick any metric, from covid death rates, to heart disease and diabetes, cancer, car accidents, to gun suicides, Taves shows that Red State’s offer their residents a plethora of ways to die younger and poorer than folks in Blue States.

As I always say, the data don’t lie.

As soon as Heather Cox Richardson’s new book Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America came across my algorithm I reached out and invited America’s favorite academic back onto the show.

HRC’s newest book lays out how a small group of wealthy men financed and developed a right wing propaganda machine that 54+ years later, stands to topple America’s nearly 250 year old democracy.

But perhaps even more importantly, Cox-Richardson lays out how marginalized Americans of the past have risen up to meet their own historical moments and saved the American experiment in the process.

Heather’s right: if you have ever wondered what you would do during the Freedom Rides, WWII, the fight to end segregation, or the effort to hold America together during the Civil War, Heather deftly reminds us all: you’re doing it right now.

Folks!

We’re down to ONE WEEK before Hit ‘Em Where It Hurts: How to Save Democracy by Beating Republicans at their Own Game is released and I have BIG NEWS for you!

Penguin Random House has given me special permission to give YOU a special preview of the book! Watch for that in the coming days and pre-order your copy RIGHT NOW!!

Like all good lefties, I cut my teeth in progressive politics learning all about the horrors of America’s massive military industrial complex.

In one of my very first college classes ever at the local community college, a passionate instructor who spent his spare time organizing peace marches against the Iraq War made sure each of his students left his class well-versed in America’s overinvestment in defense spending and underinvestment in well, everything else.

20 years ago I had zero appreciation for the reasons why America had amassed such tremendous military might. Like everyone else, I found America’s disproportioned military budget to be one of our country’s greatest sins.

It was only 18 years later, after I undertook my exhaustive study of world history that I came to fully understand the antecedents that led American presidents of both parties to leave something called isolationism behind and lead America into creating by far the world’s most powerful military.

Instead, administration by administration, America fully embraced the concept of internationalism by building and continually reinforcing a military apparatus larger than the next ten countries combined. One large enough to “police” the entire world.

So, before before you dig into this incredible conversation with Politico national security reporter Alexander Ward about his new book The Internationalists: The Fight to Restore American Foreign Policy After Trump I want to be sure you have a solid working definition of both these concepts:

Isolationism: a policy of remaining apart from the affairs or interests of other groups, especially the political affairs of other countries.

Interventionism: Interventionism is characterized by the use or threat of force or coercion to alter a political or cultural situation nominally outside the intervenor's moral or political jurisdiction.

In short, in the early 20th century, isolationism became the dominant attitude among Americans who came to believe U.S. involvement in World War I was unnecessary, a product of messing in affairs isolationists believed had no impact on Americans and killed thousands of American men.

The use of the word ‘believed’ here is intentional because as appeasement (isolationism) failed to stop Hitler’s aggressive plans to occupy and rule Europe it became obvious how war and turmoil abroad impacts Americans. Then the surprise attack by Japan on Pearl Harbor put a finer point on it: America ignores the rest of the world at its own peril.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Throughout 2024 I plan on highlighting core grassroots organizations working on the frontlines of the Democratic Party’s messaging revolution.

Now, maybe you think the word “revolution” is too strong, but trust me, moving a party away from approaching voters with wonky policy appeals and achievements to focusing on making sure regular Americans know what the modern GOP has planned for them is no small reform. It requires a revolution of thought based on the cold, hard, realities of the American electorate i lay out in the book.

In my forthcoming book Hit Em’ Where it Hurts: How to Save Democracy By beating Republicans at their Own Game I highlight the other massive problem that hampers Democrats in terms of message distribution.

You can have the greatest messaging in the world but it doesn’t do s**t if no one sees it and folks, as I keep using google trend data to show how little Americans care about news and politics, no one sees it.

This is the fundamental flaw behind the White House’s efforts to lift Bidenomics: paid ads, speeches, and social content will never replace the ability of the right wing echo chamber to propel things, even false things like Joe Biden has dementia, to top-of-mind awareness which is what Democrats would have to accomplish to make voters responsive to Biden’s record.

Yes, message distribution is a tough nut to crack because it requires money, lots and lots of it. Which is why I want to talk to you today about something I call digital direct mail, but what you likely call memes and gifs.

Direct mail is a staple expenditure for competitive campaigns and often voters in swing contests receive plenty of it even if you never do.

In the book I highlight how much better Republicans tend to do with direct mail because they understand the target, the average voter, knows next to nothing about civics, cares even less, and will give the same direct mail your team agonized over for hours about 3 seconds of a glance before it is tossed directly into the recycling bin.

Republicans understand voters and have constructed their direct mail to deliver the main message in just that one glance using very little copy.

A rigorous direct mail campaign, one that targets voters with the multiple contacts research says voters need to actually show up and vote, easily runs l into the tens of thousands. It is expensive to produce and then distribution direct mail through the USPS.

But when you strip down direct mail to its purpose, delivering a message, it is easy to see that the internet creates a massive message distribution advantage if campaigns choose to see it as such.

That is why I’m delighted to introduce you to the Freedom Writer’s Collaborative and one of their dedicated grassroots volunteers, marketing strategist Yvonne Brandon. Yvonne joins me to talk about the ready-to-use messaging toolkits created with the also awesome folks at DemCastUSA where the meme that leads of this post was pulled from.

I hope you will consider using these toolkits, and even more importantly, getting your friends, family, and followers to do the same.

Whether your network is 150 people, or 150, everyone is an influencer. FWC makes it easy.