Gaslit Nation Transcript 21 October 2020 “John Roberts Gave Us Trump”

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse: ... to me, pretty big deal. I've never seen this around any court that I've ever been involved with, where there's this much dark money, and this much influence being used. Here's how summed it up: "This is a conservative activist, behind-the-scenes campaign to remake the nation's courts, and it's a $250 million dark money operation." $250 million is a lot of money to spend if you're not getting anything for it, so that raises the question, what are they getting for it?

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse: Well, I showed the slide earlier on the Affordable Care Act, and on Obergefell, and on Roe versus Wade. That's where they lost. But with another judge, that could change. That's where the contest is. That's where the Republican Party platform tells us to look at how they want judges to rule. To reverse Roe, to reverse the Obamacare cases, and to reverse Obergefell and take away gay marriage. That is their stated objective and plan. Why not take them at their word?

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse: But there's another piece of it. And that is, not what's ahead of us, but what's behind us. What's behind us is now, 80 cases, Mr. Chairman, 80 cases under Chief Justice Roberts that have these characteristics: One, they were decided five to four, by a bare majority. Two, the five to four majority was partisan, in the sense that not one Democratic appointee joined the five. I refer to that group as the Roberts Five. It changes a little bit, with Justice Scalia's death, for instance, but there's been steady Roberts Five that has delivered now 80 of these decisions. And the last characteristic of them is that there is an identifiable Republican donor interest in those cases. And in every single case, that donor interest won. It was an 80 to zero, five to four partisan route. Ransacking.

Sarah Kendzior: I'm Sarah Kendzior, the author of the best-selling books, The View From Flyover Country, and Hiding in Plain Sight.

Andrea Chalupa: I'm Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker, and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones.

Sarah Kendzior: And this is Gaslit Nation, a podcast covering corruption in the Trump administration and rising autocracy around the world. So, last week, I took a few days off, which is roughly a century in Trump time, so Andrea is going to be leading the discussion today on current events from the last week, and she has a lot to say. But one thing about going offline for a few days, is that it gives you clarity on some of the big-picture issues that are often played down or ignored, not because they're not important but because they are so horrific, and so consistent, and have gone on for so long with no meaningful pushback, that Americans have either accepted them, or are so paralyzed and frightened by the lack of accountability that they just don't want to think about them at all. Sarah Kendzior: But you need to. As I wrote back in 2016, you need to keep track of how expectations change over time in an emerging autocracy, and you need to keep your original expectations intact, even if you do not think they will be met. So here's a quick refresher on what Trump has been up to when I finally checked the news again yesterday after a few days off.

Sarah Kendzior: Trump is still threatening to jail his opponent (Joe Biden), his opponent's family (), his predecessor ()...

Andrea Chalupa: Projection!

Sarah Kendzior: [laughs] And his former presidential opponent (). Trump is the first U.S. President to ever threaten any of those actions. And yes, Trump's rise was made possible due to pre-existing institutional failures. And yes, he builds on a long history of corruption in U.S. government, but the U.S. has never had anything approaching this situation. We have never had such a fundamental abuse of power and threats of violence against political rivals from the executive branch. Because that is what dictators do.

Sarah Kendzior: Sometimes it's not even what dictators do, because it's too fucking obvious, and those dictators fear pushback from citizens, or the courts, or political opponents, or from international observers, but not here in the USA. The world's last superpower is on the road to becoming the world's first super-dictatorship. In addition to his unprecedented threats to incarcerate his political rivals on baseless grounds, Trump is the first president to encourage Americans to vote illegally, both so he can win illegally, and so he can contest the legitimacy of the vote if he loses. He is the first president to order the destruction of election infrastructure (in this case, the United States Postal Service).

Sarah Kendzior: He is the first president to be impeached for soliciting illegal election assistance from a foreign state, the first who has continued to solicit illegal assistance from hostile foreign states, the first who receives assistance from a hostile foreign state to win the previous election in 2016, which should have led to his timely removal (but nobody would actually act on that), and the first president to pressure a foreign leader to get dirt on the aforementioned current rival (Joe Biden) that he seeks to imprison.

Sarah Kendzior: Trump is also the first president who has said he will contest the election results if he doesn't win, the first who has threatened to postpone the election, the first who has said he should serve three terms, instead of the constitutionally-mandated two terms. He is spelling out dictatorship in the most obvious way possible and folks are just kind of treating it like those are the daily headlines because he's been doing it for four years, but that is how dictatorships emerge. Andrea, I know you have thoughts on this.

Andrea Chalupa: Lots and lots and lots of thoughts. I wanted to add to that by preparing everyone for a crash landing this November. What we have to remember, given everything that Sarah just outlined, at the heart of it, it's normalization. It's normalization, right? American democracy is the proverbial frog in a pot of boiling water that slowly becomes hotter, hotter, hotter. We're boiling right now. Because of this normalization and all the institutional failure and corruption and greed that got us Trump in the first place, I want everybody to emotionally prepare themselves now, and accept the fact that and the Trump crime family could very well “win” this election.

Sarah Kendzior: Be reinstalled in this election.

Andrea Chalupa: Yeah, exactly. So, prepare yourself for that. Prepare yourself for that. I know that there's a lot of polls that are giving people false and harmful sense of cautious optimism, but the reality remains that the Republican Party has made it a core of their existence to engineer the stealing of elections, and engineer a takeover of information spaces, and I'm going to go through some of that now.

Andrea Chalupa: This is what we're up against. It's this disinformation virus. You have big tech which has been profiting off of the slush fund of Republican and Kremlin disinformation––Facebook, , YouTube, and Google. This has all run amok. This has given birth to the monster of QAnon, which the Republicans are now actively weaponizing, including in the Hunter Biden nonsense. You had Senator Ron Johnson, who surprisingly won his election in Wisconsin as Senator of Wisconsin. People expected him to lose in 2016.

Andrea Chalupa: The election security advocate, Jennifer Cohn, has pointed to that, at how there were some strange patterns in the vote for Johnson in Wisconsin. And then Johnson goes and takes a trip to for Fourth of July. That's a very symbolic, kiss the ring gesture to Putin. Since then, Johnson has been a reliable disinformation weapon for the Kremlin. He's been pushing that in Congress, trying to investigate the investigators of Trump's Russia corruption, and going after people like my sister, Alexandra Chalupa, the consultant for the DNC who warned both Democrats and Republicans that Russia was attacking our democracy in 2016 and that running Trump's campaign was proof of that. Ron Johnson has gone after her, and now he's on TV saying that Hunter Biden had pedophile videos on his computer.

Andrea Chalupa: They're weaponizing that whole QAnon. QAnon–that cult–is how they're going to drive out their voters. And it's big tech. It's big tech that has profited from all of that, and whatever they're doing now is just a little too late. Then you have hedge funds that have been destroying newsrooms across America, gobbling up all of these legacy newspapers and local broadcast networks and so forth, and laying people off. And some of the first units to go are the investigative units, because investigative journalism is costly, it's time-intensive, it's resource-intensive, and so for a hedge fund, it's not profitable. So that's been weakening us over the years.

Andrea Chalupa: And then you have this consolidation of far-right media, like Murdoch's , and the , which ran that shoddy, shady, weird Hunter Biden head piece. Fox News didn't want to touch it, but the New York Post did. Sinclair Local TV Broadcasting now owns or operates around 300 TV stations across the U.S., Sinclair being a staunch, Putin-like disinformation arm of the Republican Party. You have OneAmerica as well, and of course, all these trollbots, Cambridge Analytica––we all remember them, the militarized propaganda firm that helped tilt the scales of both Brexit and the 2016 election––they, of course, illegally stole Facebook data from 87 million Facebook users who were then bombarded with messaging to help Trump win.

Andrea Chalupa: They were central to Mueller's report, including how the CEO of Cambridge Analytica tried to get Hillary's emails––the so-called hacked Hillary's emails––from the Kremlin tool, Wikileaks. There have been many reports that former Cambridge Analytica employees are now working for the Trump campaign, okay? Employing those dark arts that have worked so hard for them in the past. And you have the President of the United States himself, as a disinformation machine. The 2020 U.S. presidential election is going to come down to this disinformation virus. That is what can very well can tip the scales, along with hard-fought vote suppression by the Republican Party, and then added to that, ongoing Russian hacking attempts, however they're going to be successful.

Andrea Chalupa: But we're not going to know if the Russian hacking attempts are successful because the officials in charge don't like to tell us about this. They refuse to be transparent about these attacks on our political infrastructure. So all of these factors combined could very well tip this election to the Trump crime family. It would, of course, be a stolen election. It would be another illegitimate election, and it would be, of course, an ongoing constitutional crisis.

Andrea Chalupa: So, we're calling on all of you to prepare yourselves for that now, because as we keep saying on this show, the war is in the mind. They're trying so hard to demoralize us and take away our hope, and the more prepared you are for the reality up ahead, the faster you will react and show up where you're needed, and take actions that are needed. And this is really to inoculate you to the worst happening.

Andrea Chalupa: We are the ones that warned that will not save you. I was the one that predicted Comey was going to be fired. We've been telling you from the beginning that is next for president, and that's the endgame of this, because they want to keep this dynastic kleptocracy in power to enrich themselves and avoid accountability. We're the ones that have been warning you of all these “crazy things” since the very beginning, and they've been proven correct. So now, please prepare yourself that all of these rosy polls are going to be shown to not factor in how desperately weakened our institutions have been all this time.

Sarah Kendzior: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, we've seen over the last few weeks, record voting turnout, record voter registration, people waiting 11 hours in line–in some states–to vote, which in itself is a very depressing thing. That's a sign of voter suppression, or at least attempted voter suppression. But you're seeing people being incredibly determined, incredibly resolute, expressing their desire to vote and their determination to get the Trump crime family out of office. So this all speaks to the fact that this was never a both-sides situation. This was never a 50/50 American situation. Sarah Kendzior: They like to say 45% of Americans support Trump. I have always felt––and I say this from Missouri, a state that did vote for Trump––that the number of supporters he has was small starting out and has dwindled since. The ones who remain tend to be more fanatical, which is a problem in and of itself. And that from the beginning, any Democrat who runs against Trump in a free and fair election would beat him, and that, of course, includes Joe Biden.

Sarah Kendzior: And so the question was never, will the Democrats beat this president who is less popular than any president in the history of our country? The answer is very likely yes. The question is, will the election be free and fair? And then, secondarily, if Biden does win––for example, in a landslide––will Trump concede, or will he contest it and then go to the courts, which Mitch McConnell and others have worked to carefully pack (before Trump arrived with Merrick Garland and other situations like that, but of course, have gone into overdrive recently after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and will we have a repeat of Bush versus Gore, only on much more dangerous grounds, where they're just outright saying they do not want the U.S. to be a representative democracy?

Sarah Kendzior: They don't want it to be a democracy at all. We had Senator Mike Lee saying that outright, and so all of the agendas of the Republican Party that they used to try to gloss over with patriotism or with constitutional rhetoric, that illusion will be gone. They're going to be openly criminal. Openly autocratic. They already are to some extent, but I think it's going to go into turbo drive, and so we just have to be prepared for any possible outcome.

Sarah Kendzior: I mean, I hope I'm wrong and I hope that there is a Biden landslide, and that they get out, and that they're held accountable for their crimes. But you need a plan for, what if he stays in? And as we've said before, the plan is not to then flee the country. The plan is not to throw your hands up in despair and cry. The plan is then, well, how do we remove him? And then it depends on the balance of the House and the Senate, which is why it's another reason it's very important that you vote, and that you vote Democratic down the ticket.

Sarah Kendzior: It's important that we, in the future, try to replace some of our weak Democratic ”leaders”, people like Diane Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, all of these people who have been incredibly ineffective at battling the Trump crime cult and have, in fact, enabled it and are doing nothing to stop this erosion of democracy. We can replace them with young, good, determined, pro-democracy leaders, people like Katie Porter, or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. There's a lot of potential to turn this situation around. It's just going to feel like hell.

Sarah Kendzior: It's just going to be a slog through absolute misery and hell, because we're in a war. We're in a war with our own government, led by a Kremlin asset at war with his own people, using any means possible. Using a pandemic against his own people. I don't even want to use that phrase, because we're not his people. We are Americans, and this is our country, and we've basically been hijacked from within, and that's part of the pain of this situation, is realizing that all of these institutions that are designed to protect us from foreign threats that are being fed by our tax money to serve us, are being used to kill us. And that's not a metaphor or an exaggeration; that is a literal statement of fact, and we'll get into what's new with the coronavirus later in the show.

Sarah Kendzior: You need to look at what the worst-case scenario could be––which, of course, is another term of Trump––and then think what are you going to do in that scenario, and what mechanisms are at our disposal? And what kind of leverage do we have? And think about things like protests, and think about things like what kind of power your local officials hold, and also about documenting all of that, because one thing I do see coming around the bend––and this is something that would almost definitely happen under a Trump second term, but may just happen as a result of the demise of media, the rise of social media monopolies as an even more all-encompassing force––is we may lose our freedom of speech. We may lose our ability to document things digitally. We may lose access to digital archives.

Sarah Kendzior: So no matter what happens, write down what you see going around you, keep records. Be a vigilant citizen. Be an engaged citizen. I know everybody is tired. Andrea and I are both very, very tired. We've been having this discussion for five years, but the next few months are going to be very critical––chaotic, but critical––so please try your best to do everything you can to preserve our democracy as a whole, to preserve the United States. Don't let it fall apart. Don't surrender. Don't give in.

Andrea Chalupa: And, with all of this said, understand that there are millions of people who are showing up to vote, and volunteering, and fighting like hell to prevent this outcome. Just know that you're not alone. None of us are alone. We're all connected with a larger force for good in this world, so please have confidence in that. One thing that you must do to stand up to normalization and to refuse to be demoralized, is to claim your power. Stand in your power. The way you need to do that, now ,is to get out the vote.

Andrea Chalupa: We have here on Gaslit Nation the Save Democracy Challenge, where we're asking you to go to the 2020 Survival Guide on our website (gaslitnationpod.com) and just treat it like your checklist for standing in your power and fighting for our democracy. And that's how we're going to ultimately win. Sarah and I have been bringing you all of this under a microscope, and if we felt that there wasn't a path, if there wasn't hope, why would we have this show? The fact that we keep showing up again and again for each other––for you––means that we refuse to give up our power, and we're going to stand in our power, and that is how we all win.

Andrea Chalupa: So go make phone calls. Go send texts. Go knock on doors, safely, if you can. Go talk to your family and friends, and make sure they have all voted. Go vote yourself. Vote early. All of these things you absolutely must do, and you must do it again, and again, and again, election cycle after election cycle, because all of us being on autopilot is how we got here.

Sarah Kendzior: Mm-hmm.. Andrea Chalupa: The Republicans have been very proactive, and very creative, and relentless. And they didn't do this overnight, so we're not going to defeat them overnight. It's going to take time. It's going to take bold moonshots, and running in races that we know we can't win just to create a progressive infrastructure on the ground. So, think big. Think with your heart. Put your heart out there and fight like hell, and commit––along with us––for the rest of your lives, to this fight. And those who come after us will stand a much stronger chance, and that's how we win.

Andrea Chalupa: Just know that we're still doing this Save Our Democracy Challenge. We're challenging you to make 1,000 phone calls. Send 1,000 texts to get out the vote. If you look at the electoral map, the states that Biden absolutely must win are Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona. We can absolutely, and should try for Florida. We can, and must, absolutely try for Texas, but the states he absolutely must win are Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona, Florida, Texas, but the first ones I listed, especially Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, if those go blue and he wins the states that Hillary won, he ekes through.

Andrea Chalupa: And even if it's close, you know they're going to try to challenge the results and do what they can with their far-right Republican judges that have packed the courts, and it's going to be a battle, and it's going to be scary, but fight like hell. Make calls for Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona, Texas, Florida. Go make those phone calls. Try to make 1,000 by November 3rd. Even make phone calls on November 3rd. Make sure everybody shows up and votes and waits in line as long as they need to.

Sarah Kendzior: Yep. I agree, and I've said this before on this show, if you're listening to us discuss all the ways that they plan to manipulate and steal and lie about this election, it's because we're being honest with you, and we want you to understand what's coming. But, even if those things happen, remember that transparency is what's needed, and turnout is transparency. Turnout is the visible demonstration of the people's will and you're seeing that right now.

Sarah Kendzior: We do not have a mainstream media that accurately expresses the political proclivities of American citizens, the desires of them. We have a gutted local media. We have a media that, in many ways, wants a second term of Trump, or is being threatened or intimidated, or sees this as... I mean, it's beyond money. I've talked about that before. It's not just about money and clicks and ratings, because you can get those things by discussing the crimes that Trump has committed, particularly topics that interest a wide variety of people across the political spectrum, like Jeffrey Epstein and the fact that, for example, Trump was accused in court of raping a 13-year-old procured by Epstein.

Sarah Kendzior: They stay away from all those topics even though they're ratings bonanzas so there's something much worse going on there. Something much darker that, I think, has to do with the fact that Trump was immersed for 40 years in the news media, and entertainment, and organized crime, in politics. He was not a neophyte. So you're not going to necessarily get an accurate sense of what is happening to us as a nation from the mainstream media. You're not necessarily going to get it from social media, which is a disinformation minefield, and lately, because of the pandemic, you're not getting the on-the-ground reports of public sentiment that you would normally expect to see during an election cycle because people aren't out and about like they usually are and also, people are frightened.

Sarah Kendzior: We're going through a collective trauma as a nation and I don't think anyone is thinking clearly. We're all just basically fighting for our lives, fighting for survival. But nonetheless, that's why turnout is important. It's because it lets everybody see where you stand and if there is a landslide, that is leverage. If they try all these tricks, whether it's prolonged court battles––whether it's propaganda tactics like the kind we're seeing right now related to Hunter Biden, all these October surprises, and whatnot––they'll pull out everything they can to stay in power, because they need to.

Sarah Kendzior: If they're not in power, they risk prosecution. They lose their money. We have a crime operation being carried out that's threatened by actual democracy and they want to take it to the limit, and our job is to stop it. And so a landslide is one form of leverage, particularly in a pandemic when demonstrations become more difficult. It's harder to do those sorts of public gatherings that are common in situations like this. We haven't really had this kind of situation in the United States, but we do now. Anyway, just please let your voice be heard. Don't be shy about it. This is definitely not the time to be shy.

Andrea Chalupa: And tweet at us @GaslitNation on Twitter and tell us the calls you're making, the texts you're sending. Tell us how you are talking to voters directly to get out the vote. From the responses we receive on Twitter, we're going to select three people to come on the show in the new year and chat with us about our dreams for taking back our democracy. So you can join Gaslit Nation's ongoing slumber party and stay in the fight with us.

Andrea Chalupa: And I want to say to the media... Sarah, you were blissfully spared this when you were away on vacation, but there was this really annoying viral video by a CBS reporter, Bo Erickson, who, at a time when it was quickly confirmed that Giuliani and his Russian agent Ukrainian goon squad had planted Russianist information against Hunter Biden, it was widely confirmed at that point in the media that this was Russianist information, this Hunter Biden story. Bo Erickson did not get that memo and asked Joe Biden about it, and Joe Biden gave him a gruff response. And Bo Erickson and a colleague at CBS––this woman Paula, I don't remember her last name, but her first name was trending on Twitter––because she tried to say that Biden snapping back, or just being gruff with Bo Erickson was how Trump treats reporters.

Andrea Chalupa: Dear God. It's like, Trump is a wannabe autocrat who would put you guys in prison if he could. He would blow up the cars of the best investigative journalists among us if he could get away with it, like they have in Ukraine and Russia and elsewhere. And so this false equivalency that helped get us Trump in 2016, the media is indulging in that again. Stop with that nonsense, please. You white people, like Bo Erickson and Paula at CBS, you white people are safe. You guys are going to get a ratings bonanza if the horror show of the Trump crime family stays in power. But it's the communities of color whose lives you're desperately jeopardizing, including all of those children who are being sex-trafficked on the border in this deliberately evil system engineered by Stephen Miller, okay? Andrea Chalupa: That is what is at stake here. I know it's not going to affect you, Paula and Bo, but it's going to affect and destroy a lot of innocent lives out there. So stop it. One thing, if Bo Erickson wants to be a real journalist, instead of this guy seen on TV, one thing he should absolutely do is confront Joe Biden, and say, “Joe Biden, what are you going to do about Republican voter suppression? What are you going to do about sweeping Republican voter suppression? What do you have to say to Americans that are concerned that their vote isn't going to count? What are you going to do about Amy Coney Barrett getting shoved through, and that this might get decided by the Supreme Court?”

Andrea Chalupa: Those are valid questions you should be pushing Joe Biden on, because the danger is that the Democrats are going to forfeit the fight before it even starts. We've seen that again and again, where they capitulate. They pre-surrender. So if Bo Erickson wants to do a public service, if Bo Erickson doesn't want to be a waste of space, if he wants to practice actual journalism, get in Biden's face about that. Because that's where Democrats have had a very clear weakness.

Sarah Kendzior: Yeah. Absolutely agree. And then that's one of the things that are lower on my list in terms of are we going to have full fascism, but if Biden does win, one of the things that we all need to push for is accountability of all of the crimes committed while in office and investigation of all of the crimes that Trump and his extended network committed in conjunction with the Russian mafia, with an assortment of oligarchs and plutocrats around the world prior to the time that he took office, because one of the great mysteries of this, as we've spoken about many, many times, is that Trump was embedded in organized crime for decades, yet the institutions that are charged with protecting us had no qualms about letting him have access to classified information, about letting him be in a position of national security, about giving him access to nukes.

Sarah Kendzior: This is someone who, of course, would fail a standard security clearance test. This is somebody whose two children––who he illicitly installed in the administration in violation of anti- laws––also failed their clearances. In a normal situation, they would have been removed. As I've said, Kushner lied on his security clearance form more than any person in U.S. history, in terms of omitting foreign contacts, many of whom, in terms of these contacts, are associated with the Russian mafia, and so that's something that people need to ask Joe Biden about.

Sarah Kendzior: If we're going to be having all these conversations about Hunter Biden, who is a person that I honest to God don't give a shit about. I wouldn't want to vote for Hunter Biden if he was running for office. I would be opposed to that, and I honestly think if we rid these industries of influence––politics, media, and so forth––of nepotism, this country would just improve exponentially. We would just be rid of so many of these problems. And yeah, I do think Hunter Biden has been a beneficiary of nepotism in the way that most politicians and rich people's kids are, but the ultimate beneficiaries are obviously Ivanka and Jared, who came in with criminal ties (Ivanka came in nearly having been convicted of felony fraud) and then went on to abuse their position to have illicit relationships with Saudi Arabia, Israel, Russia, Qatar, to pay off their debts, to make illegal trademark deals. Sarah Kendzior: This has barely been investigated and even now, with Hunter Biden's name just floating through the media, they still will not touch those two. And I have said many times that I feel that Jared Kushner is a bigger national security threat than Donald Trump, and Donald Trump is, obviously, a severe one. But it's this kind of hands-off approach. For a couple of years they looked into it, and then they backed off, and I think the pushing of Hunter Biden as a central figure in this narrative, which started all the way back in 2019, is meant to be something to make it seem like any discussion of Ivanka, Don, Jr., and Jared Kushner is a what-about-ism kind of reaction.

Sarah Kendzior: So when you bring up the crimes of these adult children who worked for the campaign or for the administration, it seems that it's reacting to the Hunter Biden case instead of a severe threat in its own right, and that is something that reporters should be looking at. That is something that affects our lives as Americans. It was Jared Kushner overseeing the coronavirus crisis, especially in the early months. It was him that was holding back needed medical equipment, supplies for doctors, protective equipment, and was deciding to just let people die. That is something that affects you.

Sarah Kendzior: Hunter Biden––whatever the hell he's doing or has done––he is not someone in a position of governmental power. He's not somebody abusing it. He is not evil to the core. We really have a crisis here with Ivanka and Kushner that has not been addressed, and if Trump is removed from office, they all need to be prosecuted, and they need to be investigated, and all of that information needs to be made public to the American people. You cannot just skip over it.

Sarah Kendzior: What they're trying to do, I think, is get the Democrats and get Biden to say, “Children are off-limits. Even adult children. They're off-limits when you're attacking each other. Let's not talk about that anymore.” That does not apply here. That does not apply to people who are being paid by our tax dollars and who are making policies that affect our lives and affect our deaths. So yeah, they need to be investigated. They need to be treated like any other government official that has been engaging in illicit or illegal activity.

Andrea Chalupa: Yep. The Hunter Biden story is 100% a deflection story to protect Ivanka and Jared, and Don Jr., and Eric Trump from facing justice for their crimes. It's a deflection story, 100%. It's a false equivalency narrative that they're trying to spin to protect the children in the Trump crime family. Because they know that after the father is gone, the pigs at the trough are going to be protected by this Trump dynasty that's going to let them escape regulation, and taxes, and accountability, and just let corruption flourish. And remember, corruption is an industry. They're trying to keep the Trump kleptocracy going. Don't fall for it. Every time you see Hunter Biden, immediately switch it in your brain to Ivanka Trump. Jared Kushner. Eric Trump. Don Jr.

Andrea Chalupa: If it weren't for Manhattan D.A., Cy Vance... Manhattan D.A., Cy Vance, could have ended all this. He could have prosecuted Ivanka Trump and Don Jr. for defrauding investors in Trump SoHo. This could have all ended with Manhattan D.A., Cy Vance, and it didn't, because the Trump crime family is so good at buying its way out of justice. You had a Trump family lawyer suddenly show up and make a campaign donation to Manhattan D.A., Cy Vance. So this could have ended a long time ago.

Andrea Chalupa: NBC could have done its due diligence and looked into the Trump crime family and all of their fraud, and all the people they've ripped off, and the fact that they by their own admission rely on Russian funding. That means dirty money that's trying to park itself abroad. NBC normalized this crime family. Made them seem like genuinely rich, successful people. Turns out, thanks to reporting from , and now Forbes––building on that, Forbes has ran now, I think, two pieces now, two articles––saying that, look, Trump is a billion dollars in debt.

Andrea Chalupa: When you have that much debt––a billion dollars in debt––you are an easy mark. You are compromised. To me, it's just... My head's going to explode. But just remember, when you see Hunter Biden, just switch it off immediately and think, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Don Jr., Eric Trump. That is ultimately what this Hunter Biden smear campaign is about, is protecting the children of the Trump crime family.

Sarah Kendzior: Yeah. I was just thinking to myself how Cy Vance himself, Cy Vance, Jr., is yet another nepotism product. He's the son of the former Secretary of State under Jimmy Carter. You also see Mika Brzezinski's father in that administration. So many of the people you see...

Andrea Chalupa: Mika Brzezinski, who helped normalize Trump in 2016, and is now fighting for her life now, with Joe Scarborough, because they know if Trump gets four more years, they might get purged.

Sarah Kendzior: Yeah.

Andrea Chalupa: Or, they're not going to have an easy time, that's for sure.

Sarah Kendzior: It's just one insular circle of elites, installing their children into positions, helping them get into positions, and he's yet another example. And I wonder, Cy Vance is famous for letting a lot of people off the hook, including Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, and then Don Jr. and Ivanka. And I wonder if part of it is that he just assumes that if you are the child of some sort of wealthy, prominent, East Coast person, then you walk. You get off. You get away from it. It's this whole way of viewing humanity on a hierarchical scale, where people don't have to play by the rules because they've inherited a different set of rules from their parents, and then they go out of their way to be the people who write those rules.

Sarah Kendzior: That is the purpose of Bill Barr, that was the strategy of Roy Cohn. It was always, it doesn't matter what the law is, it matters who the judge is. And so they form these networks and nexuses of relationships that are corrupt to the core. And also, I'd just like to say, I'm trying to think of another way than fuck you, but honestly, fuck you to all the people who were like, “oh, Cy Vance is going to save us with the taxes” after they said Bill Barr will save us, and Mueller will save us, and a secret Senate report will save us.

Sarah Kendzior: The reason I say fuck you isn't because you were wrong, it's because you caused endless threats to me, and to Andrea, and to other journalists who were telling you the truth about these people, who were not trying to get invited to cocktail parties, and who were not working as part-time propagandists for a aspiring autocratic regime. We were telling you who these people were, what their backgrounds were, what they were about, not what they would necessarily do but what they were likely to do based on precedent. And we were relentlessly threatened for that. And now that we are two weeks away from the election, unfortunately, we were right. And the amount of time that you wasted waiting for these false saviors, waiting for somebody like Cyrus Vance, Jr. to just kick into gear and go after Trump, you are deluded.

Sarah Kendzior: You have to look at the people who told you this information, whether they're “legal pundits” on TV, or anonymous Twitter serial harassers (of which there were many, many associated with people like Louise Mensch) who sold you these fairy tales. You have to get past that, and accept the reality, and think about how you were duped, because you caused actual harm to me, to my family, to people around me. The amount of shit that we had to deal with for months on end because of your delusions, it was a pain in the ass. I'll just put it that way.

Sarah Kendzior: Nonetheless, we are still here. We are still doing our show, but it's not fun to have your life consistently threatened. So, I'm just going to leave it at that, because I'm too pissed off, and so Andrea, did you want to go into the courts?

Andrea Chalupa: Yeah. There's a lot to go into. Putin's mass-murdering, xenophobic regime is still working hard to destroy our country from within. They're doing really well so far, right? They've got their Russian mafia asset in the White House, a walking, talking disinformation machine. You have America with skyrocketing deaths while other countries around the world have the pandemic under control. Trump is literally killing Americans, and turning us against each other, and it's horrendous. This is what it is. We're being weakened from within by a Kremlin proxy who's happy to do it, because he himself wants to live large like Putin.

Andrea Chalupa: There is extraordinary reporting that is just coming out that once again, for the millionth time, confirms all this. You have this great piece in G.Q., called The Mystery of The Immaculate Concussion, and I'm going to read from it now.

Andrea Chalupa: "He was a senior CIA official, tasked with getting tough on Russia. Then, one night in Moscow, Marc Polymeropoulos' life changed forever. He says he was hit with a mysterious weapon, joining dozens of American diplomats and spies, who believe they have targeted with a secret device all over the world, and even at home, on U.S. soil. Now, as a CIA investigation points the blame at Russia, the victims are left wondering why so little is being done by the Trump administration."

Andrea Chalupa: And the piece goes on to explain how Gina Haspel, who is the head of the CIA, very much known as a patriot in the agency, there is reporting in this piece that Haspel is trying to put a lid on this issue, because she simply cannot take it to Trump because he will explode on her and anyone who brings him any information on Russia's ongoing attack against America. Some of the explanation includes that Trump “likes Putin, wants to be liked by Putin, and wants to be Putin”. That's all in there. And Haspel is trying to protect the agency, and trying to basically survive until a new administration comes in. She doesn't want to be purged, so she's being very careful which battles she fights.

Andrea Chalupa: So meanwhile, you have Americans, here on U.S. soil, getting hit by this technology that has been known to be advanced by the . Those same microwave attacks that happened in China and in Cuba that have left lasting damage––and the targets have included children––this is now happening on U.S. soil. The Russians are so emboldened that they are testing out their fancy, dystopian death ray here on us, here at home.

Andrea Chalupa: If this can happen to members in government, why couldn't this happen to activists and journalists? Why couldn't this happen to me and Sarah? Understand that this is the beginning. The floodgates are open, and it's time for people in the media and organizations, from top down, to confront this reality that we are literally being invaded by Russian aggression, because we cannot hold them accountable, because that might lead to a purge of patriotic men and women in the CIA. This is as serious as it gets. It's the start of something, and if this trend continues, my God, we're just going to be a Russian proxy state, even more than we already are today.

Andrea Chalupa: And this is all backed up by reporting out, just now, in the New York Times, “U.S. diplomats and spies battle the Trump administration over suspected attacks. American officials in China, Cuba, and Russia say U.S. agencies are concealing the true extent of the episodes, leaving colleagues vulnerable to hostile actions abroad.” And I'm going to read from some of this now.

Andrea Chalupa: "The administration took a softer approach with China. In May 2018, Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, who was a CIA director during the Cuba events, told lawmakers that the medical details of one American official who had fallen ill in China were, ’very similar, and entirely consistent with the syndrome in Cuba’. The administration evacuated more than a dozen federal employees and some of their family members. The State Department soon retreated, labeling what happened in China as, ‘health incidents’."

Andrea Chalupa: "While the officers in Cuba were placed on administrative leave for rehabilitation, those in China initially had to use sick days and unpaid leave, some officers and their lawyers say, and the State Department did not open an investigation into what happened in China. The administration has said little about the events in China and played down the idea that a hostile power could be responsible, but similar episodes have been reported by senior CIA officers who visited the agency stations overseas, according to three current and former officials and others familiar with the events."

Andrea Chalupa: "That includes Moscow, where Marc Polymeropoulos, a CIA officer who helped run clandestine operations in Russia and Europe, experienced what he believes was an attack in December 2017. Mr. Polymeropoulos, who was 48 at the time, suffered severe vertigo in his hotel room in Moscow, and later developed debilitating migraine headaches that forced him to retire. The cases involving CIA officers, none of which have been publicly reported, are adding to suspicions that Russia carried out the attacks worldwide. Some senior Russia analysts in the CIA, officials at the State Department, and outside scientists, as well as several of the victims, see Russia as the most likely culprit, given its history and weapons that cause brain injuries, and its interest in fracturing Washington's relations with Beijing and Havana."

Andrea Chalupa: We're going to link to these two must-read stories. Please share this with Glenn Greenwald and the other idiots who pretend to be far-left, or whatever they pretend to be, when they're really just disinformation machines. Share this, far and wide. Send this to anybody who is on the fence about voting, or voting for Trump.

Sarah Kendzior: I want to read a little more from the Julia Ioffe piece––the G.Q. one––just so people get what we're dealing with, in terms of this weaponry, and that there is a long history of trying...

Andrea Chalupa: And that's the G.Q. piece.

Sarah Kendzior: Yeah.

Andrea Chalupa: Julia Ioffe wrote that for the G.Q. piece. So there's two pieces: G.Q., and the New York Times.

Sarah Kendzior: Yeah. In Ioffe's piece, she writes, "As the Cold War progressed, both the U.S. and the raced to find military uses for what came to be called directed energy weapons. American researchers had studied things like beaming words into subjects' heads (great for psychological warfare) while also researching the thermal aspects of microwaves. Packaged in the right way, researchers theorized a microwave weapon could be mounted on a truck, where it could cast a beam outward to create an invisible barrier anywhere, anytime, capable of immobilizing any person who got in its range. This research ultimately culminated in the development of a weapon the Pentagon calls an Active Denial System, or ADS."

Sarah Kendzior: "In a video touting its capabilities, the U.S. military boasts that this highly portable weapon can be attached to a military vehicle and used to direct precise beams of electromagnetic radiation at, say, an armed militant in a crowd, or a suspicious person approaching a military checkpoint. The beam would instantaneously produce a sensation of heat on the skin, which would trigger a person's reflex to flee. This summer, a military official inquired about deploying the technology against American protesters who flooded into the streets of Washington D.C. to protest police brutality."

Sarah Kendzior: And then it goes on from there, just a brief description of what happens when they were analyzing the effect of this weapon on animals. It says, "Nerves became damaged. The radiation also showed the potential to disturb the sacrosanct blood-brain barrier, and according to the DIA, resulted in the alterations of brain function. The most common symptoms reported in humans who'd been exposed to microwaves for long periods of time sounded familiar. Headache, fatigue, perspiration, dizziness, insomnia, depression, anxiety, forgetfulness, and lack of concentration."

Sarah Kendzior: "Soviet researchers found that turning the intensity of the beam up or down could produce differing effects in its target. A target's unique physiology––slightly different curvature of the skull, for example––also determined how this directed energy would affect them. A weapon that created an ever-changing kaleidoscope of neurological symptoms would have a powerful psychological dimension. If everyone's symptoms are all slightly different, victims might question whether they'd all been exposed to the same thing, of if they'd been hit at all."

Sarah Kendzior: This was just very striking to me, because we are, of course, in the middle of a public health catastrophe that has been made a catastrophe because of the pathological lying of the officials that are supposed to protect our health, that are supposed to be giving us information on how to protect ourselves from a pandemic, that are supposed to be relaying scientific research about how it spreads. Instead, we have a president who tells us to drink bleach and drown it out with ultraviolet rays. We have a president who is threatening the researchers and scientists who are supposed to be handling this.

Sarah Kendzior: But we also are in a war, and I think that folks don't really accept this because, just like they tend to envision fascism as something like tanks come rolling through and the barbed wires fall and there's some obvious decree that we are now a fascist society, this kind of new 21st-century, digital warfare that also includes new types of technological weapons (like this one being deployed) they're invisible. They're hard to see. It's hard to trace, and it's hard to find the culprit, and it's hard to prosecute. But this is the kind of threat we're facing. And I stress again; we have a government who wants this kind of technology to be used against American citizens, against Americans who are trying to do their job in a diplomatic or military capacity to protect this country, against protesters––that was something that was suggested.

Sarah Kendzior: This is terrifying. This is a step up from the poisoning techniques that we've already seen Russia using flagrantly on foreign soil. We saw the Novichok poisonings in 2018––the lack of response from NATO, the lack of response from the UK––where it killed an innocent passerby. This is very frightening stuff. From there, I have some things to say on the handling of coronavirus, but I don't know if you have more to say on this one, Andrea.

Andrea Chalupa: Yeah, and it mirrors how the Russians keep using banned nerve agents to kill and weaken their opposition, and all the murders they've carried out on British soil. The Russians are emboldened because they keep winning. The U.S. is occupied right now and that divides the Western alliance, and people, when they're fractured like this––when they're shocked by this––it's harder to stand up to them. You even see Macron (the President of France) signing on to statements with Putin, normalizing Putin's terrorist regime that's carrying out all these acts.

Andrea Chalupa: It's a very scary time, and part of holding Putin's mass-murdering, xenophobic regime accountable, is by fighting like hell to ensure that Biden gets elected. We've got a lot of darkness to cover on this show, so I think one thing we want to talk about also is Amy Coney Barrett, because if Democrats can't stand up to her and use every mechanism and process available to them, including insisting on calling quorums constantly, just really putting speed bump after speed bump into the Senate process right now. If Democrats cannot stop the nomination of Amy Coney Barret to the Supreme Court, how the hell are they going to stop Trump from stealing the election?

Andrea Chalupa: It's the exact same thing. The forced-through nomination of Amy Coney Barrett is another attempt of Donald Trump to steal the election. We saw him deliberately purging the U.S. Postal Service, having one of his big donors run it, and purge, purge, purge, and deliberately slow down the mail. It's the same type of mechanism. So Democrats, dear God, please, everybody listening, call Chuck Schumer. It's as important as making phone calls to voters. It's as important as listening to this show and staying engaged. Call your Senator. Call your Senator and tell them that they absolutely must delay. Delay, delay, delay, and they can do that by forcing quorums, by forcing votes, they just need to get creative.

Andrea Chalupa: In a corporation, if somebody was trying to do a hostile takeover of your corporation, there's so many tricks at your disposal to try to fend that off. They need to fight like hell. They really, absolutely do. And the clip we played at the start of the show was by Rhode Island Senator, Sheldon Whitehouse, calling out all the dark money, which is another institutional weakness, right? Citizens United, that has led to this Republican court packing. And that's another reason why we should not be optimistic that Biden is going to squeak through.

Andrea Chalupa: I want to remind everybody that Citizens United, that was another major turning point in our nation's history that opened up the floodgates that got us here. All this dark money. You had reports of how Kremlin-linked money was flowing through the GOP in 2016. Well, Citizens United: whose court gave us that? John Roberts gave us Citizens United. It was his court that said, “Yes, that a corporation is a person, and therefore, they must have their first amendment right of freedom of speech, meaning they can spend all the money they want. All that dark money can flow.” That's not democracy.

Andrea Chalupa: All voices are equal, rich and poor. All voices are equal. That's democracy. When the rich have a louder, more powerful voice, that's corporate fascism. John Roberts gave us that. John Roberts also gutted the Voting Rights Act, saying, “oh, racism is over.” What happened then? Nearly 2,000 polling places across the country immediately shut down, and now you have all these long lines across the country, in primarily communities of color. People waiting half a day just to vote.

Andrea Chalupa: This is obscene. In the eyes of the world, we look like a struggling, developing nation. Our democracy is in crisis. You have, for the first time ever, the Carter Center is going to be monitoring American elections. They monitor elections in struggling democracies around the world, and they're going to be monitoring our election. That's what John Roberts has done to our country. This is all John Roberts. John Roberts, a Bush appointee, a product of Bush's stolen election in 2000, John Roberts. He is the one that helped give us Trump in a very, very big way. John Roberts and Putin are both equally guilty in leading to the Trump crime family stealing the 2016 election. They set the course for that.

Andrea Chalupa: And then, we have this really troubling Supreme Court decision that just came out, where Republicans in Pennsylvania forced a vote in the Supreme Court where they tried to shut down the right of Pennsylvania voters to have their votes counted, even if their ballots were received a few days after actual election day. This decision in the Supreme Court was very tight. It was very tight. It was overturned, and John Roberts––the Chief Court Justice––may be concerned about how he will be remembered in history in this one moment (I wouldn't give him that credit), he sided with the liberal judges in striking this down.

Andrea Chalupa: But, if Amy Coney Barrett gets on the court, she's going to be as extreme as Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, and the others. She's put on the court for that purpose. We have a far-right court that's there, on purpose, to dismantle our democracy, and to allow corporate corruption to flourish. It's corporate fascism that they're going to benefit from. What's really disturbing about this case, as the writer Mark Joseph Stern, who covers the courts for Slate, he points out: “Four conservative Justices supported a radical theory that would empower state legislatures to violate election laws, and engage in voter suppression with impunity. Only Roberts balked.”

Andrea Chalupa: And what does this ultimately mean? Joshua Douglas, an election law and voting rights professor at the University of Kentucky Rosenberg College of Law, wrote for CNN, "The new conservative court could have full power to rule on all election cases, under not only the U.S. Constitution, but also all 50 state constitutions, to ensure conservative rulings on all election law cases for this year and beyond." Basically, this latest Pennsylvania case ruling in the Supreme Court opens up the floodgates that––and I keep talking about floodgates, because this is what it is, right? Citizens United was a big floodgate, and is leading to even bigger floodgates.

Andrea Chalupa: So what this Supreme Court ruling in Pennsylvania means is that if Amy Coney Barrett gets on the court, there is an entrenched far-right majority on the Supreme Court. John Roberts––who's been wishy-washy, right?––even if he dissents, Amy Coney Barrett puts it over. And what this means, is that this far-right, dark money-funded court could then overrule the voting rights protected in state constitutions across our country. So as we're always saying on Gaslit Nation, fight like hell in your state. Protect your state. Protect your own backyard. Make your state bright blue, and functioning.

Andrea Chalupa: But guess what? This far-right Supreme Court can come after you and take away your voting rights now. This is where the wind is blowing. So, if you want to protect the right to vote where you live, if you want to protect your constitutionally-protected...because every state has a state constitution, and the vast majority, I think 49 out of 50 of the state constitutions protect your right to vote. If you do not want the Supreme Court to cancel that out, and to rule in favor of some rabid Republicans in your state that are dark money-funded, we need to do everything humanly possible to stop Amy Coney Barrett from getting on the Supreme Court. And that is possible if Democrats fight like hell, fight creatively, and they use every procedural tool to delay this vote.

Andrea Chalupa: We must delay it to at least until after the election because if there is a blue wave––and there could very well be a blue wave––if there is a blue wave, and let's say Mark Kelly in Arizona wins his race against the very unpopular McSally, Mark Kelly gets seated right away in the Senate. And, if Trump is voted out, the optics are going to look horrendous. It's going to be a huge disgrace against Amy Coney Barrett. Amy Coney Barrett who, herself, is on record in giving an interview, saying that Obama did not have the right to have Merrick Garland on the Supreme Court in an election year. She's on record saying that, and now here she is trying to weasel her way through on the Supreme Court.

Andrea Chalupa: This is crisis time. Amy Coney Barrett getting onto the Supreme Court is going to be as devastating to our democracy as Citizens United has been, and as the gutting of the Voting Rights Act has been. It's just another floodgate that's opening to drown out our democracy.

Sarah Kendzior: Yeah, absolutely. Just to reiterate that, you need to talk about the stakes of our political crisis in plain terms. Early, maybe a year ago, Andrea said, whoever the Democratic candidate is going to be, they will be running against the Russian mafia. And that remains true. And we've been saying from the start that the goal of the GOP is to create a one-party state and autocracy that is married to organized crime, that is married to organize crime in the West, and that is married to organized crime in Russia, and to, of course, just transnational organized crime.

Sarah Kendzior: As we've said many times, this is a transnational crime syndicate masquerading as a government. And you need to look at any kind of political interaction––including something like a Supreme Court hearing, including the appointment of a new judge, things we have had before––in a different light, as a mechanism in the aim of fulfilling that long-term goal, and changing, permanently, the direction of our country. And I don't necessarily mean permanently, but for a long time, for the duration of our natural lives, most likely, should they succeed.

Sarah Kendzior: So you need to be incredibly creative in fighting back against that. You need to be vigilant. And you need to be honest. One story to, I think, close us out, that I saw recently that brings this home, is the threats against Dr. Fauci, who now has to have armed security wherever he goes because he's being threatened by violence, in part because, of course, Trump, as the president, has been encouraging that.

Sarah Kendzior: And so CBS interviewed him about this, and he says, "It's really a magnitude different now, because of the anger. As much as people, inappropriately, I think, make me somewhat of a hero, and I'm not a hero, I'm just doing my job, there are people who get really angry at thinking that I'm interfering with their life because I'm pushing a public health agenda. It's tough. Serious threats against me, against my wife, against my daughters. I mean, really? Is this the United States of America?" And to which I’m like, yes! Welcome to the club. I don't want you in this club, I don't want you to get threatened. I don't want anybody to get threatened.

Sarah Kendzior: The reality is, however, that for the last four years, these types of threats have been part of so many peoples' lives, whether it's the aforementioned political opponents of Trump, people who ran against him, people from prior administrations, against journalists, against public servants. Almost everybody who was testifying at the impeachment hearings had been threatened, many of them had to have armed security as well. Against judges, against juries, against protesters, against voters, against organized citizens. This is a mafia state. This is what a mafia state looks like. This is what it feels like to live in a mafia state, and for the U.S., we have the added twist of our mafia state being led by a president whose loyalty––any loyalty he has beyond just interest in money and power––is to another country, is to Russia, which makes us profoundly disposable.

Sarah Kendzior: Here you have the culmination of that. You have the person who is in charge of advising us on how to combat a pandemic that has already killed over 220,000 Americans, having their own life threatened with physical violence. This is a culture of death. We are fighting an apocalyptic death cult. And I know that this sounds very grim, very dire, but the only answer to that is, you fight back. There's no other choice. You fight back with everything you've got. You look for solutions that maybe haven't been tried before. You have to think outside of the box. You've got to throw protocol out the window. You've got to stop tiptoeing around this, not calling it what it is.

Sarah Kendzior: This is very frightening stuff, but honestly, if you speak about it plainly, if you identify and name the threat, then it is a lot easier to combat it, and it's a lot easier to get people together to work and fight it. And I actually think that the average American citizen understands this threat better than the media or officials. And if those people in the media and officials do understand it, they're refusing to let on. They don't want to seem alarmist or hysterical.

Sarah Kendzior: But we could see this happening with our own eyes. And when we're on the 100th public official who's come forward and said, “yes, this administration and its followers have threatened my life, because I've tried to do my job”, that is a very clear-cut pattern. And we're on year four of that pattern. And if we enter term two of that pattern, the threats are going to be more severe. The tactics are going to be more brutal. And we have to do everything we can to stop that. And I don't necessarily have faith in any good outcome. I don't think we'll necessarily see some rosy ending, but I do have faith in American people fighting back. We've already seen it.

Sarah Kendzior: We've seen it with the protesters, we've seen it with voters, we've seen it with people speaking out, we've seen it with people who aren't giving up on each other. They aren't giving up on their country. They aren't giving up on themselves. So please, just take that defiance, and take that determination, and hang onto it for the months to come, because you're going to need it.

Andrea Chalupa: And we have slowed them down, because things would be a lot worse if we didn't.

Sarah Kendzior: Mm-hmm.

Andrea Chalupa: I just want to point out, this just in, reporting from Josh Amerson, National Politics Reporter for the Wall Street Journal, points out this horrendous story: “Several lawmakers say they were denied entry to U.S. Postal Service facilities where they had been routinely permitted with 14 days to go in an election where mail-in ballots are playing a crucial role.” They are trying everything. They are throwing everything and the kitchen sink at stealing this election. What do we do? We're defiant in response.

Andrea Chalupa: So, go to the Gaslit Nation 2020 Survival Guide. Go there, treat it as your checklist. Make your phone calls, send your texts, and for the love of God, bombard your senator every day with phone calls saying, do everything in your power to slow this down, because if Amy Coney Barrett is on the Supreme Court, that's as bad as Citizens United and the Voting Rights Act being gutted. It's destruction of our democracy. And in tribute to that, here is Keith Olbermann when he had his own show on MSNBC back in 2010, talking about the Citizens United ruling, and what it meant for our democracy. This is just a reminder where we're headed if we don't stop this.

Keith Olbermann: Finally, tonight, as promised, a special comment on the Supreme Court's ruling today in the case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. On the cold morning of Friday, March 6th, 1857, a very old man was born just eight months and 13 days after the Declaration of Independence was adopted. A man who was married to the sister of the man who wrote The Star Spangled Banner. A man who was enlightened enough to have freed his own slaves, and given pensions to the ones who had become too old to work, read aloud in a reed-thin voice, from a very long, handwritten document.

Keith Olbermann: In it, he ruled on a legal case involving a slave brought by his owner to live in a free state, yet to remain a slave. The slave sought his freedom and sued, and looking back over legal precedent and the Constitution, and the America in which it was created, this judge ruled that no Black man could ever be considered an actual citizen of the United States. They had, for more than a century before, been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race either in social or political relations, and so far unfit, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.

Keith Olbermann: The case, of course, was Dred Scott. The old man was the fifth Chief Justice of the United States of America, Roger Brook Taney. The outcome, he believed, would be to remove the burning question of abolition of slavery from the political arena for once and for all. The outcome, in fact, was the Civil War. No American ever made a single bigger misjudgment. No American ever carried the responsibility for the deaths and suffering of more American on his shoulders. No American was ever more quickly vilified. Within four years, Chief Justice Taney's rulings were being ignored in the South and the North. Within five, President Lincoln, at minimum, contemplated arresting him. Within seven, he died in poverty while still Chief Justice. Within eight, Congress had voted to not place a bust of him alongside those of the other former Chief Justices.

Keith Olbermann: But good news tonight. Roger B. Taney is off the hook. Today the Supreme Court of Chief Justice John Roberts, in a decision that might actually have more dire implications than Dred Scott v. Sanford, declared that because of the alchemy of its 19th-century predecessors in deciding that corporations had all the rights of people, any restrictions on how these corporate beings spend their money on political advertising are unconstitutional.

Keith Olbermann: In short, the first amendment, Free Speech for Persons, which went into effect in 1791, applies to corporations, which were not recognized as the equivalents of persons until 1886. In short, there are now no checks on the ability of corporations, or unions, or other giant aggregations of power, to decide our elections. None.

Andrea Chalupa: Our discussion continues, and you can get access to that by signing up on our Patreon at the Truth Teller level or higher.

Sarah Kendzior: We want to encourage you to donate to your local food bank, which is experiencing a spike in demand. We also encourage you to donate to Direct Relief at directrelief.org, which is supplying much-needed protective gear to first responders working on the front lines in the U.S., China, and other hard-hit parts of the world.

Andrea Chalupa: We encourage you to donate to the International Rescue Committee, a humanitarian relief organization helping refugees from Syria. Donate at rescue.org. And if you want to help critically endangered orangutans already under pressure from the palm oil industry, donate to The Orangutan Project at theorangutanproject.org.

Andrea Chalupa: Gaslit Nation is produced by Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa. If you like what we do, leave us a review on iTunes; it helps us reach more listeners. And check out our Patreon; it keeps us going. And also, subscribe to us on YouTube.

Sarah Kendzior: Our production managers are Nicholas Torres and Karlyn Daigle. Our episodes are edited by Nicholas Torres, and our Patreon-exclusive content is edited by Karlyn Daigle.

Andrea Chalupa: Original music in Gaslit Nation is produced by David Whitehead, Martin Visenburg, Nick Farr, Demian Arriaga, and Karlyn Daigle.

Sarah Kendzior: Our logo design was donated to us by Hamish Smyth of the New York-based firm, Order. Thank you so much, Hamish.

Andrea Chalupa: Gaslit Nation would like to thank our supporters at the producer level on Patreon...