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“Hello and welcome to need to know, I am David Rothkoff here host and this week like”
every week we're going to talk to somebody who can help you make sense of what's going on in the world this week we are especially lucky to have the fabulous the one and only perver of insights and also healthy dose of pissed-offadness. Gen Welch of the I've had it media empire, Gen Welch also who has a book coming out, not too long for now called that today fascists, which people could order right now, I mean would
it distract them from listing to us if they were ordered at the same time, probably not
right, probably not, I mean you can walk in chew gum right, these are our listeners can walk in chew gum, they can't and so then so they should be ordered because the books come out in October, it's August this practically next week, so look, Gen I'm a problem, I live in Washington, fortunately for you you don't and I'm constantly running into what we call establishment democrats and I've noticed that none of them have like the
top of their head anymore, because it's blowing off what happened in New York, what has happened in Michigan now we're recording this on a Monday and tomorrow in Wisconsin there's
gubernatorial candidate named Francesca Hong, who's a progressive and they're freaking out.
They're like oh my god these people want to give people health care and good government services and I don't know what to say to them and you're very sensitive so I was wondering what you would say to them. I would say that we appreciate your service but we are in the throws of taking the democratic party back to the party of FDR, you have been to corporatists, you are servicing corporations, you are maga, lie, you are fascist collaborators, you incubated
this with your servicing of corporations that people have to quote the title of my podcast, the people have had it and we want to go back to being so successful and pissing off Republicans so much, they have to make a constitutional amendment to stop us like they did
“with FDR. I don't think that would calm them down. I mean honestly, you know, I mean I”
think you're 100% right but in the wake of for example the victory of Dr. Abdul Elsayed in Michigan. This lovely guy who grew up in Michigan who got a degree at Columbia, got a degree at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar as a doctor as a public health professional and he just wants to make life good for like Michiganers, for his kids were growing up there, get healthcare and stuff. People freaking out, they're freaking out and all of a sudden I have this sort of
sense that we are about to get into, you know, this kind of strain of racism that gave us Barack Hussein Obama that made them flip out of Resouran, Mamdoni because they think every American should be named Smith. I don't know what it is, but have the people you've been talking to have been freaking out about Michigan? Yes, I mean I've heard some people freaking out
“about Michigan. I think what it is, David, in real time, Candidate like Zoran Mamdoni or Candidate”
like Dr. Abdul Elsayed is completely disintegrating and dismantling decades of propaganda that even I myself have fallen prey to, ambient Islamophobia, all Muslims are blank. The way I see it coming from a red state, now I live in New York as you know, but I lived in Oklahoma for 50 years. They use the Salat red states. They use this Sharia law, like the state of Oklahoma's Bansharia law, like 25 times. Sharia law is not a problem in Oklahoma. The problem in Oklahoma,
the problem in this country, if we want to talk about subjugating women, the only people I see that want to do that are Republicans. The only policies I see that want to do that are magp policies. And so in real time, you have these two candidates, Zoran and Abdul, who are for universal human rights. Not only did they go to a pride parade, but they're carrying a trans flag, because they're not going to be one M.F. or behind. And they are not going to be bought
and paid for. And so this is really terrifying when all of a sudden propaganda gets dismantled
That.
crush on Zoran. I mean, who probably two years ago were completely Islamophobic, because in real time, this sort of bigotry is getting dismantled. It's not just those bigots. It's people selling different forms of bigotry, because one of the things that has triggered people about Omdani
and L.S. it, is that they were targets of APAC. It's spent a ton of money, $30 million in the
case of L.S. it. Because he once said, you know, what happened in Gaza is genocide, and that the people of Palestine ought to have betrayed it, okay? You know, which seems to me to be pretty common sensical, but APAC will have none of that. But I kind of think they're on the ropes. I mean, you know, one of the things that I find kind of encouraging, and I've written a little bit about, is, you know, putting tens of millions of dollars into campaigns doesn't work if the voters
don't want it to. They have the ability to sort of nullify citizens united. You know, this happened must go on it to, you know, get a certain kind of Supreme Court justice in Wisconsin. It's spent tens of millions of dollars in the voters. It was concert said no. No. And the
voters of Michigan went somewhere between $30 and $60 million went to the Haley Stevens campaign
from APAC and APAC related place. The voters said, no, no, we're going with this other, at least majority of the voters did. And I see that as a kind of encouraging sign too.
“Yeah, I think it's incredibly encouraging. And I think that Democrats have got to start playing”
offense and stop playing defense. And our offensive strategy needs to be if somebody is taking money from APAC, from big oil, from big format. They are a prostitute. And those packs are their pimps. And it's that simple. It would be a lot cleaner if they just earned their money on their backs. So we all knew what they were. But instead, they do something completely duplicitous, which is they go and say, Oh, the good Lord sent me here. And I'm working really hard for you. Meanwhile,
they're taking millions and millions and millions of dollars from very, very bad actors. And this is where these democratic establishment people that we know are really finding themselves, you know, out to see without a buoy because the public has evolved beyond what they were willing to do. They want to stay, I call them preservationists. They want to preserve this system, where they personally can excel, where these policies personally don't affect them. They want to preserve that.
“And you have in Maga the overt lies that they tell. But I think in a lot of democratic establishment”
people, they tell more covert lies. And the democratic establishment, I have a opinion about like living in a red state, a democratic establishment corporate politician can mean the difference between life and death. For if you're a young queer kid or if you're a woman that needs abortion care. And so I have really, really struggled with where to be on this. But I do think that we need to
always try to push the most radically normal candidates. And what I think is radically normal is healthcare,
not selling yourself out to corporations. We need to try to get them elected. And then if we can't, then we'll have to settle for, you know, an establishment candidate. Like, I think it's going to be interesting. If we take the house and how keen we can speak of the house, he's not super popular with the base at all. And so as the base, we have to keep pushing these politicians away from corporations into service us and thus save the country from corporate rule. But you know, I don't think a lot of people
see how Washington really works. Say your consultants, your advising campaign. Well, what do you want the campaign to have? A lot of money. Why? Because you get a percentage of the money if they spend money on a TV ad, you get a percentage of the money. If you're going some grassroots thing where you're just using social media and you're a consultant, you know, get paid. So you like big corporations.
“You like big corporate donors, because that's what pages for the beach house in Rojo with Beach.”
And, you know, the same is true with politicians in Washington. And you know, they all come in. And, you know, they make lots and lots of money in Washington. And part of it is insider trading because that people they hang out with and the corporations give them some insights.
Or part of it is, you know, that they're able to leave and come back into Was...
into consultancies or law firms or whatever. And those consultancies and law firms are where they
make their big pay days and they pay for their college education for their kids. So to go against the corporations is to go against their lifestyle. And, and I think that's, that's been really hard for these people to adjust to and seeing a mom donny or other, there's a times article on this today. Seeing that, you know, democratic candidates winning in this way that doesn't cost a lot of money is freaking them out because they don't know how they're going to make their bank next year.
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I think it's great, and I think that we need to make it so bad that if a candidate is taking Pac-Money, it is the akin to being accountable. I think we need to be go on offense and brand it's so bad that it's just like, "Oh, I mean that everybody has a recur, like, "Oh, she takes Pac-Money.
“It is our only way to course correct because we know John Roberts and all of the rest of the”
criminal Supreme Court. They are there to service corporations. More than they're there to service Donald Trump, it's corporations first and foremost. And the same with the Republican Party, and the same with a big fraction of the Democratic Party. But I know for your audience and for you, and for me, sometimes you just wake up and the news is so horrible. And sometimes you feel like there's no hope in the corruption and the grifting and the, uh, God, all the stuff they're doing,
the, all the people in the regime, rigging the markets and all the stuff. It feels so overwhelming. But then you see these little glimmers of hope in New York City in Michigan. And you realize,
okay, we still have power. And then I always think about the Jimmy Kimmel thing. When they put
Jimmy Kimmel in Timeout because Trump got his feelings hurt, people canceled their Hulu accounts. People spoke out who did the corporations been to, not to Trump. They bent to their customer base. So we still need to remember this that we still have a lot of power in our darkest days when the new cycles, they're flooding the zone and it's just, I know you feel it. I know I feel it. I know your audience feels it's just like, oh God, this is awful. We still have power and
our side of the electorate, we're smart. We figured out, no, we're not doing this anymore. Disappreme court, MAGA, why would we want politicians that side with them? How does it help us if Hawking Jefferies takes money from the same people that funded MAGA? It doesn't. He's bought and paid for it. That's not helpful. And so we're figuring this out in real time and we're getting
“little sparks of hope thrown at us and it's going to be exciting, I think, heading to the midterms.”
Yeah, I think it is. You know, one of the things I hear a lot is well, you know, all these progressives, you know, this is an East Coast phenomenon and it's a New York phenomenon. And of course, what's changing right now is that that narrative is changing because you've got Michigan, it's gone a certain kind of a way, Wisconsin is going to go a certain kind of a way, there's West Coast races, there's a Demperex Socialist mayor, it's Seattle now,
the California race is going that you're from a red state and I don't expect Oklahoma to go Democratic Socialist overnight. But, but, but, but, but I do sense that Heartland Americans are open to the idea that maybe the government doesn't have to serve the rich and maybe it can take care of some of their core problems and maybe they don't have to go bankrupt every time a member of their family gets sick and maybe that they might have
some dignity in their retirement. In other words, it's, it's not Democratic Socialism or Trump, you know, saying, oh, it's communism. What it is is people running for office saying, I want to fix things so it works better for you. It's, it's real practical nuts and bolts,
Retail politics and, and to me, I don't think that that's something that won'...
but that's where you're from, what do you think? I agree with you and I have some anecdotal
evidence to bring along with me for your hypothesis. So, Kylie, the producer of our show, she is from a small town called Stillwater, Oklahoma where Oklahoma State University, as she was born and raised there, her parents lived there. Her mother, five or six years ago, Republican, Housewife, conservative woman. Now completely radicalized has a crush on Zoron Maldoni. I mean, this is somebody in a completely red county and then I can tell you about a lot of my
friends in Oklahoma. This most recent presidency has radicalized people,
“Trump to point out, but I think that the nail in the coffin for the radicalization”
was the do nothing Democrats that voted 99 and 0 to confirm Marco Rubio,
them not fighting Trump 2.0 has radicalized people and just like corporate Dems incubated this fascism by not delivering for the people. Their impotence in this moment is incubating an electorate that is saying, I'm not doing this anymore. You have your hands and both cookie jars here. And so anecdotally, I'm seeing it from people in red states that want something completely different. I mean, one thing, nobody knew at least that I knew what a pack was a couple of years ago.
And now I have all these friends from Oklahoma City that I play pickleball with or like, I'm not voting for that person. They take a pack money. I'm like, look, look, look, I mean, everybody is really educating themselves on what is happening here. And that's the difference between our base and the Maga base. A lot of the Maga base, they're just cultists. They take marching orders, America furs, we're, you know, no war, no war. Yep, we need to go to war with Iran.
And they just jump on board with it up with whatever Trump and the sick of fans delivered to them.
“But I think our base is a little more clever. And I think that corporate Democrats are going”
to continue to spin out more and more when you're, when they're sitting around talking about Hassan Piker more than they are, Maga, it tells you they're really going through some things. Hey, I don't know. I get triggered by people. You know, I was doing the Daily Beast podcast. I do everybody with your friend Joanna calls this morning. And I know you've been on it before. And we were talking, they had James Carvella. And I was like, why did you do that?
Oh, my God. I mean, this guy hasn't had a new thought in 30 years. And he's like freaking the fuck out about every, you know, every progressive thing. And it's like, well, I'm going to quit the Democrat party if these kind of people win. And it's like, what kind of, I mean, as you put it, at the very beginning, this is not radical. This is a, this is FDR. This is just, you know,
“fix the damn school buses and give people, you know, healthcare when they need it. But put”
somehow these guys, and by the way, DC think test, you know, there was a New York Times article a couple of days ago where they said moderates are planning a campaign against the progressives.
And it was all about how third way, which is as corporate as a place, is going to raise 15 million
dollars to combat progressives, which, you know, when the alternative is freaking fascism and it's unbelievable. Prision nationalism, it's like, you know, get with the program, but they figure they can raise money doing it. Because they know there's some corporation that's like, hey, we've got to have some Democrats that are going to keep us from getting regulated properly. But anyway, this, this, this, this, this group, it's, it's, it's kind of like a tumor on the American
body politic. It's just, it's dying tissue. It's not growing. It doesn't understand what's going on. I don't know, maybe love James Carval. I, at this kind of stuff drives me nuts. It drives me nuts. It's not helpful. And he, he, he, he doesn't, graphs the concept of evolution. You know, what, what I don't like about conservatives is they're stagnant. They want to preserve. They want to conserve. They want to go backwards. We're
supposed to be more of a, a party that evolves. If you look at former President Obama and Joe Biden, when they ran a post gay marriage, I don't think they did behind closed doors, but that was the what they said to get elected. Then they came out, we're for it. And then we evolved. The whole problem with the bed wedding with progressives by hyperfocusing on Hassan Piker is by doing that. They are squashing out a huge swath of the electorate. I have two sons
that are 20 and 23 and them and all of their friends. This is the way they get their news from
Streamers and from different things.
men back and we need to know how to talk to the youth and then Hassan Piker, I mean, I know Hassan,
“he's a friend of mine. He is on Twitch, nonstop, like seven or eight hours a day, seven days a week.”
It's insane. I mean, I can't even believe, I love him to pieces, but I can't believe people sit down and listen to him for that long. But his message, he says a lot of stupid shit, but his message
is always for workers, for universal human rights, for progress, for it calls out the Democrats like
you wouldn't believe the way you and I are doing now. And this is very threatening, but when we think about a big tent and we think about building coalitions, you know, you and I are reasonable enough that we would know in order to defeat fascism, we would have to partner with some corporate Democrats that we don't particularly like. Like Cory Booker or Chuck Schumer or Hawking Jefferies. I'm going to be like, wow, this kind of sucks, but we're going to have to do it because we need
“to defeat fascism and you just do it. They're inability to welcome people in and all of Hassan's”
audience in. It's just going to exacerbate the Democrats' youth problem, which we used to own the youth during the Obama era. And so it just looks like to me like when you see it's like Neera
tandem, she's always meltin' down about him and Bill Marr and James Carvel. It's like,
you guys are just like stuck in this do-nothing politics that's not appealing to anybody. It's really not appealing. They have an evolve. A lot of them have not evolved. And, you know, a lot of them are not paying attention. The reality is, though, and this is what's, you know, I've been on some of all these threads with former people in the Kamajaris campaign and other kinds of groups where they're talking about these things. And they're like flipping out about
Osiah and they're like, well, he's too close to Hassan Piker, whatever. And I'm like, guys, fascism, you know, like, like, come on. You know, you would have a fight, have it in December. You know, we have to win the house. We can win the Senate. You know, as, you know, you say,
sometimes they have to swallow hard. But, you know, the reality is, there's another thing happening,
which is that there's a sort of new breed of moderate Democrats coming down the pipe, the James Talarikos, who are young, who have a different message, who can win in a place like Texas. And, and, and who are at least more cognizant of the fact that this is a period of generational change. This is a watershed, you know, in our history. And, you know, unless we can adapt like that, we are, we are gonna lose out. But I have to say, I'm kind of, I mean, I shouldn't say this. I'm too
ashamed. In the fact that I'm gonna say it as terrible. I'm kind of optimistic. You know, I mean, I know that when you say good things are going to happen, only bad things happen. But, but I'm kind of optimistic. Because state after state, there's progress, there are new voices, and I saw this poll about the Hampshire and AOC was the leading candidate in the poll. And, and, and I've been saying for a long time, she's like, these single-must important new voice
in the Democratic Party. And, and, and, and, and I'm like, you know, what you and I started talking about this, like, two years into three years at whatever we met each other, it wasn't like this. Something has happened. I, you know, probably all the credits should go to I've had it, but, but, but, but, but, but, but something is happening. And, you know, I, everyone's in a while in American history. The, the established power that controls the government. And, and typically, the rich and powerful
“control the government. That's what always happens. Goes too far. And, there's a correction. And,”
at the end of the robber barren era, you got the reform, Teddy Roosevelt, trust-busting, and so forth. After the, the great depression and the excesses of the 20s, you got Franklin Roosevelt. And, you got a new approach. And, I think we've had 40 years of growing inequality, more and more power going to the billionaires than everybody else, less and less benefit going to everybody else. And, I just feel like this election, next election, we could be at one of those moments of
correction. Um, I, again, you know, because of being Jewish, I'm not allowed to enjoy the possibility of the future, but, but it's possible. No, I agree. I, I, I, I feel hopeful too. And, I see that
There is a definite change in the electorate.
Kamala lost, maybe a couple of months after that I could tell just from personal conversations,
I was having and then reading the comments. People were like, how the fuck did we lose to this man again? That requires deep, deep, um, analysis. And then the people who promise to bring us that analysis, the DNC, buried the autopsy. And then you start getting treated like, wait a minute. And, again, I say this all the time. We have a thinking base. We have a base that likes to critically think. And I think, as a means of survival, we have been able to sniff out. Um, corporate news is
“kind of full of shit. That's why spaces like this are really thriving right now. Um, corporations”
are full of shit. They'd be fine if they paid their employees more. All of these billionaires would be just fine if they had to pay more in taxes. And I do think that there is a correction slash reckoning that is happening right now. I would hope that, you know, some of these corporate times realize that they like beating Republicans more than they like handling and they jump on board. Because I think this progressive train is really, really gaining steam. I filmed with a dual
outside earlier today in a little drop later tonight. And he's just a really good candidate. I mean, he is excellent. He is an excellent candidate. And they're freaking out. And sometimes the freak out, I have to call out both ways, Kamala endorsed him after he won the primary. And there's some people on the far left that were like, you know, fuck Kamala, she endorsed too late. And I'm like, you know, what, this is a good thing. This is a good thing. I agree. She should have endorsed him before, but
she didn't. She's on board now. That's a good thing because we have to beat fascism and the more moderate mainstream establishment people that jump on board with candidates like Abdul,
“the better our chances are in the future. So I think there's the joking that's going on the”
Democratic Party as annoying as it is. David, I think it's actually going to be helpful. And it
reminds me of where the Republican Party was when Trump first came out. Fox News hated him.
The establishment hated him. But something was cooking in the right wing media ecosystem. The people liked him. They wanted change. Now, of course, he was full of shit and a pathological liar. But he was the anti status quo candidate. Likewise, that's happening in the Democratic Party right now. Mainstream media doesn't like what's happening. They're handringing the establishment doesn't like it. But in the left wing media ecosystem, we are cooking over here.
And we're getting everybody organized. And we're exposing the facts. We're spitting facts. And we're spitting the truth. And they're starting to find out. They're fucking around. And they're finding out. The base has moved. The base has educated. The base is calling their bullshit. And that's just
“the evolution of the way I think this is happening. I think we're a little late to the party. But”
I think the Democratic Party, I still believe in. If we go to the left with all of the FDR style back to our roots with FDR style governing, I think we can govern for a really long time again. Yeah. And also, you know, these people that, you know, they're stuck in the mud. But new ideas work. And, you know, before mom Donnie, nobody said affordability. Now, everybody is talking about affordability. You know, people didn't talk about, you know,
fixing basic government services. And now they're talking about it. The centers talking about it as well as the progressives are talking about it. And moves the whole party. But, you know, I do think there's one other thing I'd like to get off my chest so that then you could purge me here. But, but you were talking about the legacy media. And I was thinking about this the other day because somebody was, I don't know, I was sprayed somebody talking about the progressive
media out there. And, you know, and they met MS now and CNN. And I was like, MS now and CNN are not progressive. You know, these, these, these places are the bastions of corporate Democrats. And occasionally, somebody is a little progressive including, you know, us, you know, go on there. But for, for the most part, the interesting thing is that the movement the information about this progressive change is coming from independent, new,
non-traditional media. But it's reaching huge numbers. I mean, we have the smallest media
company in the world. We're reaching maybe three million downloads a month. You have a bigger
media company, reaching millions and millions. The point is, when you take all of this progressive little, you know, new media outlets together, we're the force. It's, it's not the old media.
It's not the ones that the Carveaus of this world said, well, you need to boo...
Morning, Joe, doesn't know what's happening. You're completely right. And I think that
the way we built a coalition, all of us on the left from channel the channel. And we all do such a great job. You come on my podcast, I go on yours, et cetera. And we all have this free space where we, you know, help each other fill airtime because the public has this, um, itch. You know, this, this, um, unease about what's happening. And so people are turning to voices that they can trust. People that can express their opinion, people that can look in the camera and say,
that guy is full of shit. He is lying, whether it be a Democrat or a Republican, um, as a
means of therapy, people are turning in education, turning to us. And cable news is the way I see it
right now, cable news is it's a corporation. And right now, we're in our etherech stage era, you know, where it's let them make cake. And the corporations are all lined up right there with meta and Apple and all of that. And so this is where it's happening. But most importantly, we have evidence that this is where it happened when Trump built his big mega coalition. He didn't build it on Fox. They rejected him initially. Nobody wanted him. He built it an independent right-wing media ecosystem.
“And that's what we're doing now. And I, um, I really don't hardly know anybody that watches”
cable news anymore. I see in the comments all the time. I gave up cable news. And I'm sure you
see it on your comment channel. Ben, oh, nobody watches it. But the interesting thing is and you and I've talked about this online a little bit. But you know, I can make a list. You can make a list to talk about how, you know, these, these new progressive platforms are working. Tara McGowan and career. Lee McGowan and politics grow. Watch a hot Ali. Mary Trump is doing our own thing. It's certainly Joanna, you know, the biggest podcast they do every week is the
one on the daily beast. And there's a lot of stuff that's happening there at the, at the, at the daily beast, um, you talk about how Sunpiker. There are a lot of the, I don't know him. But all these other people, I actually know them. And I like them. You know, these, you know, these are a group of people who are have a common goal and are creating an alternative platform. And it's not small anymore. It's big. It's reaching tens of millions hundreds of millions of people every single day
who are saying, I'd rather listen to this than, you know, the canned corporate stuff that doesn't
“work anymore. And I think there's a little bit of a media revolution going on inside all this.”
There totally is. And, and I agree with you, the people I collaborate with, I really like as people. I like them as human beings. You and I, when your wife is in town, we go, you know, we go on double dates with my husband and, uh, and by the way, we talk mostly about tennis. So I just, we do. I want to be clear about that. Yeah, we do. We talk a lot about tennis. We have a shared love of tennis, which the U.S. Open is coming. So maybe you all need to come up to New York
to mom Donna stand and experience the work Sharia of the U.S. Open. That will happen. I, I guarantee that will happen. But, but, you know, I, I, I think it's a great
“moment. I think you're a leader in all this. I really do hope that people will go out at right now,”
pre-order, not today, fascists because, you know, oh, look, how coincident, um, uh, which is coming out, not sober and is going to be great, because Jenna's smart, which is also funny. Um, and we need boats right now. Um, so I hope they do that. I hope Bill come back. We'll keep talking with each other for now. Thank you so much, Jen. Thank you, everybody, for listening. Uh, and try to make it through August. We've got like 85 days to go until this. If you can do a little bit more every day.
Just 20 minutes more every day to help a candidate who can make a difference here. Do it just 20 minutes. Anyway, thanks very much. Bye, bye, bye.
