Sarah Kendzior

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Steps podcast.
My guest today Sarah Kenjo, who is not only a
writer in the PhD Nea for Apology, but the guru
when it comes to the political world, especially from the
view in the heartland, from the gen X millennial borderline. Sarah,

(00:28):
good to have you here. Oh, thank you so much
for having me on. So let me be clear here,
because things change every day that we're doing this Tuesday,
the nineteen of May. But what's the viewpoint of the
coronavirus from your location right now? I mean allegedly from
my location. We don't have a high amount of cases,
and we've opened up the state, but they're not really

(00:49):
testing people. So people are kind of just, you know,
stumbling in the dark and hoping to not get infected.
But we're certainly not in as bad a position as
New York or l A or San Francisco, are these
big cities. Well, since in your new bestseller, Hiding in
Plain Site, you drilled down into the politics of Missouri,
now should I be saying Missouri or Missouri Missouri? I'm

(01:10):
in the Missouri part, trying to drive an hour south,
I'll be in Missouri okay, uh, the governor and the
legislature presently of what political party, oh, Republican, and our
governor is a non elected governor who replaced the previous
governor who had been tying up a woman in his basement,
photographing or a half naked embezzling funds, committing fraud, and

(01:33):
doing other stuff. So you know that this guy is
just more of a run of the mill Mike Pence
Aclyte type GOP guy. Well, you know, living on the
West Coast and tuning into national media on a regular basis,
like the New York Times, Washington Posting Walls Rejournal. Maybe
it's the news cycle, but it doesn't seem that there's

(01:54):
been a whole hell of a lot of news about
the scandal and the governorship in Missouri. Now I'm in
there briefly, was in eighteen, you know, the first time
he got arrested. Second time, it kind of you know, faded. Um.
I mean I thought it was a big deal, not
just as a resident of Missouri, but because I think
of Missouri as a microcosm for the US, which I

(02:14):
write about in Hiding in Plain Sight, but also the
governor Eric Righten's as a microcosm for what could happen
for Trump because he had just, you know, brazenly committed
a series of crimes. Everyone wanted him gone, his own
party wanted him gone because of the intensity of the corruption,
and he was just refusing to leave. And eventually, you know,
they did manage to get rid of him. And it's
really something when someone is too corrupt for the Missouri

(02:37):
goop um and and he left. However, I don't think
that will necessarily be the case with Trump, but I
saw it as kind of like a test run of
abusive power and criminal impunity. Okay, well, let's just start
with your state. What degree is jerrymandering a factor. It's
a huge factor. I mean, I think that's true with
almost any Republican state. But even more than jerrymandering, dar

(03:00):
money is a factor. We have the highest amount of
dark money, and we are both you know, pretty expert.
Not all my audiences please explain dark money. Dark money
is just money that gets poured into a campaign where
you don't know the source. You don't know where it's
coming from, so you don't know what kind of special
interests or individuals are deciding to back this particular candidate.

(03:23):
And after citizens United Supreme Court ruling in two thousand
and ten, they basically decided there weren't going to be
limits on dark money, and until that point, states had
decided it individually. Missouri was particularly corrupt, to the point
that they said, you know, in Missouri, there's not even
such a thing as quid pro quote corruption because it's

(03:43):
so rampant. So we were kind of, you know, the
bell weather ahead of the curve on that one. UM.
And that's really what's infested our politics on a national levels.
It's not just that that politicians can be bought. We
don't know who's buying them. We don't know who's behind
find Uh. You know those billions of dollars. Well, since
you're an expert, the average person would say, wait, can't

(04:07):
people and companies only donate a limited amount? Can you
explain a little bit further, especially in Missouri, who is
raising these funds and how they're being dispersed. I mean,
there are certain big players. Um, you know, the the
guy in Missouri probably heard heard of Rex Sinkfeld. But
you know, you see this um with other mega donors

(04:30):
throughout the US. UM. You know, there's ways of circumventing
these laws. There are loopholes, there are limitations, Um, if
you're an individual as to how much you can donate,
but you can form packs, you could form you know,
other kind of corporate bodies in order to get that
money flowing. And so that's been a problem nationwide and
they tried to clean it up in Missouri. They actually

(04:52):
the citizens of Missouri passed an initiative called Clean Missouri
that was supposed to get rid of jerrymandering, dark money,
all these other obstacles to democ grassy. Unfortunately, the legislature
is right now trying to strike it down. You know,
there's a trending hashtag You're called dirty Missouri, and you
know that's what that's what we are. We're dirty Missouri. Okay,
So the dark money coming into Missouri, does it tend

(05:15):
to be state money or national money? Well, it's hard
to tell, in part because it is dark money. UM,
I do think that, you know, there is a high
conglomeration of state interests. There are people in particular from
outside St. Louis that are interested in buying up properties
in St. Louis, managing the politics of St. Louis. I've

(05:36):
noticed that the national GOP kind of uses Missouri UM
as an experiment, like as a Petri dish for their operations.
This was true with Ted Cruz before it was true
with Trump. You saw Cambridge Analytica, you know, which is
that big company um, you know, located in the UK
and involved in Brexit that was doing data mining, UM,

(05:57):
you know, targeted ads, propaganda so forth. They were involved
in Missouri experimenting in Missouri. UM. And we've also just
been kind of, uh, you know, a litmus test for
the country. You have every kind of political um extreme here,
you know, from extreme left across the spectrum to extreme right.
It's where Phillis Schlafley was from. It's where the Tea

(06:19):
Party emerged. It's also where the Ferguson movement emerged. UM.
So you really get a bit of everything. And I
think a lot of political actors and donors see it
as an opportune place to experiment. Think, well, you know,
how is this going to play out on a national level, Like,
let's see what happens in Missouri, the state that barely
gets covered, where people won't really notice if we get

(06:40):
up to something dirty. Let's go back to Cambridge and
political from my for a moment on the Michael Lewis podcast,
the guy was in charge of Cambridge Analytica said it
didn't work, that the profiling didn't work. What's your view
point on that? I mean, did did he say what?
It didn't work? At the In terms of targeting, I

(07:02):
think it's hard to tell. I don't think that there's
been a qualitative study, like in terms of you know,
looking at people's social media profiles, trying to guess their tastes,
trying to guide them to a particular candidate. I think, uh,
you know, it might have worked, it might not have,
but to my knowledge, there hasn't really been a study
of it. You know, I looked at a lot of
those uh you know, Russia backed propaganda groups, although it's

(07:24):
not solely Russia, um that was doing things like this
as we know, it was actors from the US, the
UK and so forth. Um, And you know, it did
seem to persuade some I did think that it's influence
in terms of like political advertising was overstated. I think
there are a lot of things at play in the
twenty sixteen election that helped sway it. But when people

(07:45):
talk about foreign influence, they often focused on bots and
troll farms and the kind of things associated with Cambridge Analytica.
There's a British journalist, UM Carol called Wallader who's studied
it in detail. Um, and whistleblowers that have come forward,
and I really worry about that that company, and one's
like it is privacy is the fact that they've assembled

(08:06):
this giant database full of identifying details that can be sold,
that can be used by different actors for different means.
You know, we don't know what the future of that
information is going to be, and a lot of people
put their data on the internet unknowing that this would
be its ultimate destination. And I do think that that's
a violation of our privacy. Let's go back to Missouri.

(08:30):
Uh So at the present time, uh, what's the makeup
of the legislature, right versus left, Republican versus Democrat. It's
almost entirely Republican. Uh In terms of the main positions
in the legislature that are filled. There's one the state auditor,
and she's running for governor against our current Republican governor

(08:50):
and she's the sole Democrat that's in power. And that
was not the case when I moved here. That was
back in two thousand and six, it was pretty even.
You know, it's fifty fifty. We had to democratic, uh,
a democratic governor Democratic senator with Clara mccaskell. There's this
belief that Missouri has always been a you know, quote
deep red state. Uh, that's not true. But I also

(09:11):
just don't think any state is red or blue. Um.
You know, as I said in the book, that every
state is purple. It's purple like a bruce. Um. You know,
it's a state that's dealing with its own pain, its
own problems. Um. And it's a lot more complex than
the media LA is out. And I think because the
national media has now become conglomerated in just a few cities,
like in you know, New York, l A, uh, sometimes Chicago,

(09:34):
I guess for the Midwest, it's had this kind of
unrealistic portrayal of how states relate to each other and
how politics play out within states where it's really a
big mix. Um. And it's not so easy to type
cast anybody California or Missouri. Now in some of these
gerrymandered states, I believe, like in Wisconsin, in terms of
sheer numbers, the Democrats are victorious, but in terms of

(09:57):
the elections because of jerrymandering. The Republican's rule. Is that
a similar situation in Missouri. Yeah, although the the issue
with Wisconsin that worries me a lot is voter disenfranchisement
because after the partial repeal of the v r A,
the Voting Rights Act in two thousand thirteen, there were
new ID laws. And back in twos sixteen you add

(10:19):
the Wisconsin election for the presidency, where you know, Trump
won that state by about thirty thousand votes I think,
and over two hundred voters were turned away because they
were told they didn't have the prerequisite identification. Uh. And
there's a lot of question as to that, as to
whether that was legitimate, and as to whether these voter
ID laws, um you know, are keeping people from voting.

(10:41):
You know, it's clear that they are. Missouri has since
passed a law, um you know, requiring voter I D
that can result in people being turned away. But at
this point, you know, I'm worried about coronavirus, I'm worried
about whether there's going to be an election. I'm worried
about whether we'll be able to safely vote. So a
lot of that stuff is h is up in the air,
I think for everybody, but certainly for us. Okay, let's

(11:02):
just stay with the safely vote. Certainly here in California. Uh,
whatever elections we have will be by mail. Do we
anticipate that will be a fifty state situation or not.
I think it should be. I think for public safety,
it should be by mail and it should be easy
to do. We just finally in Missouri how to ruling

(11:23):
that you'll be able to vote by mail as long
as you have some sort of medical rationale, you know,
I think, including if you fall into the category of
seven year older you're a high risk person for coronavirus.
The rest of us, I think, need to go see
an auditor if we want to vote, um, you know,
via mail, which I think is ridiculous. I mean, people
are not going to put the time and effort into that,

(11:45):
and it's a risky disease. You know, we don't know
what the hell it does. We don't know what the
ultimate effect is. And you shouldn't be asking people, I
think too, you know, potentially put their life on the
line to go vote. It should be simple. Um. You know,
Oregon and other states have been doing voting by mail
for a while. But this is why the GOP wants
to shut down the post office. That was one of
the first things they announced had to go in March, um,

(12:08):
you know, in in their new little budgetary cuts. And
that's a you know, the movement of an aspiring autocrat.
That's the move of a party that does not want
free and fair elections. Now, like you, I grew up
in Connecticut, but I'm obviously older than you. But the
first thing I remember Trump doing was saving Wollman Rink, Okay,

(12:29):
and he got out a lot of press. And I
was under the impression that the guy was smart. Certainly
I no longer have that impression now that he is president.
So when it comes to the post Office, in these
other uh plans, do you think he's aware? Do you
think it comes from him who is generating this behavior now,

(12:53):
not something that has to do with bureaucracy, not something
that has to do with all the little details. You know,
what Trump wants is a guaranteed win. You know, he
had said that before. Like people tend to not realize it,
but Trump ran or nearly ran for president five times,
almost ran in a d A in ninety six, he
ran in two thousand, he ran two thousand twelve, if

(13:14):
he ran in two thousand sixteen, he had set for
about thirty years that he would only run and not
drop out early if the win was predetermined. Um, and
you know how literally you want to take that, I
don't know, but basically that's what he cares about. He
cares about winning, about power, about money, about immunity from prosecution.

(13:34):
He's not thinking about the organization of our bureaucracy. I
don't think he necessarily knows the law except for the
extent that he needs to break it to accomplish what
he wants. And as president, he can break the law
by rewriting it, having his lackeys like Bill Barr rewrite it.
So that's kind of how he operates. And he's always
surrounded himself with people who are a lot smarter and

(13:56):
savvier at handling these details, especially legal details, whether Roy
Khon or Michael Cohen, or Bill Barr or Mitch McConnell.
You know, those are the ones that work it out.
He just has his own self interest, and you know,
that's primarily what what he's there, you know, to accomplish. Okay,
let's go back to twenties sixteen since you mentioned that,

(14:17):
uh needle to say nately Silver called the previous election
and it he did a little bit of a maya culpa,
but then he kind of explained, well, really the polls
were right, okay, and certainly the New York Times missed it.
This was before Bezos had brought the Washington poster injected
a lot of money, so it wasn't of the profile

(14:39):
it had now, needless say, the Wall Street journals on
the other side of the fence. What are the reasons?
And one of the primary reasons you believe Trump was
victorious in Um, well, I had anticipated he was going
to win, uh you know, and there are a number
of reasons for that. I mean, one was he did
have a base of support. People refused to recognize that

(15:02):
that base existed for a long time. They treated it
like a joke. They treated his candidacy like entertainment. Um.
I saw him as an American demagogue, and as time
went on, I saw him as having, uh, you know,
similar style to the kind of dictators that I had
studied in the former Soviet Union for most of my career.
And you know, for those who don't know my degree

(15:23):
in anthropology, UM you know, I spent that studying uz Pakistan.
I sent that studying some of the most brutal dictators
and flamboyant dictators in the world, and Trump reminded me
of them. Then I realized that this was not a
metaphorical connection. You know, Trump was literally connected to the
former Soviet Union through his financial dealings, through his hiring
of Paul Manafort, who had worked for the Kremlin, as

(15:44):
his campaign manager. And I realized Russia had a real
investment in Trump winning, which you know, people in government
also realized. What they didn't seem to realize is that
they could pull this off. That they were not stupid people.
These are skilled operatives with the long history of you know,
these kind of designs. And I think, um, that combined

(16:05):
with I mean, it was a perfect storm of a
lot of things. You know, there were flaws in the
Clinton campaign. I think people underestimated, you know, how widely
she was disliked. Um. But yeah, you know, the polls
were wrong. I never really trust polls. I don't trust
polls now. I think polls are used to construct narratives
by people who are savvy at manipulating the media. They're

(16:28):
used to tell people that things are popular even when
they're not. And from that, you know, actual popularity grows
because people feel like it's acceptable to like this thing.
It's acceptable to like Trump, to like a white supremacist,
to like a big etcetera, etcetera. It opens, uh you
know that that Overton window, and then our country gets
defonstrated through it. But uh yeah, anyway, Okay, I want

(16:52):
to get back. I want to get Okay, we have
endless debates. It looks like Warren's leader. People start to vote,
and Bernie Sanders is doing extremely well and Biden is
doing poorly. Needless to say, going back to the d
n C is clueless and out of touch with their constituents.

(17:14):
But as a voracious reader of the New York Times,
in the Washington Post as well as the Wall Street Journal,
it seemed to me there was a concerted campaign in
the media to make sure that Bernie did not win. Okay,
and then it seemed to me there was a plot
has too many negative connotations, but there was a decision, Okay,

(17:37):
Bernie is doing so well that we're gonna get all
the other candidates to drop out. Well, only have Biden
South Carolina, and we'll give it to him. What's your
viewpoint on what happened with Bernie? Yeah, I mean, I
I do think that there was a plan, um that
there was, you know, a concerted action from more centrist
Democrats to prevent Bernie from getting the nomination. And I

(17:59):
think there is a move in the media against both
Bernie and Warren. You know, there would be polls for examples,
is a use of them? Is something other than a
actual measuring tool where they'd say, who are you going
to vote for? They would just leave her out, you know,
they're trying to make her candidacy vanish. And then yeah,
you know, Biden won South Carolina. You know, I think
he won it legitimately. But after that it was like

(18:21):
centrist vultron assembled, where you had all the other candidates
dropping out at once and throwing their support to Biden.
And that's what secured the nomination for Biden on Super Tuesday.
And what concerns me, you know, isn't so much. Um,
I mean, they're there are things that concerned me beyond
just Biden being the candidate. But the Democrats, you know,
don't seem to feel obligated to recognize the widespread support

(18:45):
people have for the policies um that are endorsed by
Sanders and Warren, especially economically, even though coronavirus is happening.
I think Biden might be more receptive to these policies.
I don't think the d n C is and I
think that the leaders ship of the Democratic Party, people
like Pelosi and Schumer, have been incredibly timid and bad

(19:06):
at fighting Trump, at realizing that they're up against an autocrat,
they're up against a mafia state. They have not been
you know, taking them on with the urgency that's necessary.
And so all of that makes me worry because I
do at least feel that Bernie and certainly Warren recognize
that we're in a crisis and that's going to be

(19:26):
very difficult to get us out of that, economically, politically,
and in every other respect. Let's go back to needless
to say, the New York Times it was weird. You know,
they had that meter on the front page of the
paper and online, and literally, as I'm watching the results,
you watch the meter go in the other direction. Then
became an era of self flagellation, okay, which the left

(19:49):
wing narrative at this point in time is twofold. They
say it's white nationalism, and then they say, let's look
at the numbers. In reality, the upper middle class were
the voting for Trump. My question is to what degree
is globalization an issue? Now? One of the problems I
have with globalization is that every says, yeah, bring the

(20:10):
jobs back home, but they don't want to pay two
thousand dollars for a flat screen. Okay, And I believe
globalization is inevitable without going down that path, my point
being that one thing is clear. We did not take
care of the people who lost during globalization. So the
fact that people were screwed by globalization, to what degree

(20:34):
them wanting to put a spanner in the works was
a factor in Trump's victory. I think it was a
factor in just a general sense of disillusionment that you
see across the political spectrum, and it was there before.
I think that Trump is very good into tapping into that.
You know, he's like a vulture that praise on people's pain.

(20:55):
And I remember that. I remember during the campaign. Um,
I think at that point, you know, my has been
had been out of work for a long time, you know,
or he was actually working multiple minimum wage jobs. I was,
you know, struggling to get by take care of the kids.
And Trump comes along and announces that there's actually forty
five percent unemployment, you know, under Obama, and all the

(21:15):
pundits start laughing and they're like, my god, what an idiot, Like,
who's going to believe that? And I was like, you know, consciously,
of course, like I know that that's not true. I
know that it's not you know, technically after the country
is unemployed, but it felt like that was the case
because people are struggling, because people can't pay their bills,
because they're working gig jobs, they're you know, working these

(21:36):
side hustles, and they can't get by. Trump in reality,
you know, couldn't give a shift if people survive. He's
not looking out for their welfare, but he's at least
aware of that suffering and how he could exploit it.
On the other end, you know, you had Bernie who
also recognized it and did have ideas and how to
fix it. And then you had Hillary who gradually began

(21:56):
to recognize that everybody was not so happy un or
the Obama administration, especially younger people economically, uh, and she
began to kind of you know, turn her campaign in
that direction and ultimately did so, which I thought was
a good move on her part, But yeah, you know,
it was a mess. And I think people are worried
not just about globalization, but about automation and with coronavirus.

(22:19):
I'm very worried about that because there are all these
jobs that I think people will say, for safety reasons
need to be replaced by, you know, robots, basically any
kind of like cashier position something like that. I don't
know where all those people who need those jobs to
survive economically are going to go if that kind of
decision is made, because I don't feel like like anyone

(22:41):
in the government is really looking out for them. Another
criticism of the left is that it is too is
become an elite like the traditional Republican and doesn't care
and has contempt for lower economic people. The other thing being,

(23:02):
when I grew up, there was not this level of
income inequality in the fifties and sixties and up into
the mid seventies, certainly, but if you were rich, uh,
you had inherited the money. Where is today? Most of
the very wealthy people earn the money, and they worked
very hard to earn the money, but they've got no

(23:23):
time for the people hooked on I'm talking about people
on the left. Forget the people on the right. They
got no time. For the people on opioids, they got
no time. And I think those people recognize that contempt.
I I think that's true. I mean I recognize that contempt.
You know, I've been the subject of that contempt. You know,
despite having a good education, um and whatnot. You know,

(23:46):
it's frustrating, like they they seem to want to be idolized.
There's this cult of personality thing that's been forming. I
think Trump made it a lot worse because he really
does want natural cult to surround him. But you know,
when I makeicisms of people like Pelosi or Schumer, I
get bombarded um with you know, how dare you critique

(24:06):
our our side or critique this or that. And I'm like,
that's literally why they're there, Like this is a representative government.
These are public servants. They're supposed to be doing their job.
I'm not hurling at hominem comments. I'm not saying anything
that's you know, honestly all that harsh. I'm saying, you know,
you're screwing up at your job, and you're jeopardizing my
life and my country's future as a result of it.

(24:26):
But yeah, there's there's a timidity there. I think that
people have stopped expecting uh, public servants, expecting elected officials
to do their jobs competently, to represent them, to stand
up with people who don't have much, you know, are
just struggling to survive. They they've lost that, and I think,
you know, for people younger than me, they've never even

(24:47):
seen it an action in their lives. I mean, that's
why Warren's campaign fell almost shocking to me, because she
was addressing those issues and she had these very detailed
plans and I could see how they would be carried
out in action, and I'm like, oh my god, you know,
I mean it's almost overwhelming to read all that. And
of course, um, you know, she didn't win, and that's
that's too bad, because I think she would have been

(25:07):
a great president. But um, it's a it's a very
frustrating thing because I do think they care about their donors. Uh,
they are in their bubble um and they're not you know,
on the ground even aware of what's happening to ordinary Americans. Okay,
as someone who follows is closely certainly not a scientific expert.
As I was describing him my shrink, it's just raw insanity. Okay,

(25:32):
But yesterday, and Lord only knows what will happen before
these airs, it truly took another leap. Okay, with Friday,
we had the firing of the inspector, which was insane.
But Trump taking the chlora queen, I mean put that
in context for the rest of us. Oh, I mean,
this is like the second time he's told Americans to

(25:55):
take a potentially dangerous such a substance to cure coronavirus.
The first time around it was drink bleach. So I
guess there's been a you know, an improvement. Honestly, um,
you know, I usually don't buy the whole it's a
distraction thing from Trump because I think it's important to
examine everything. It's important to look at what he's doing
behind the scenes, and it's important to look at, you know,
what kind of propaganda narrative he puts forward. But as

(26:18):
I say in the book, he tries to hide crime
with scandal. And so while I would look at, you know, one,
the irresponsibility of recommending a drug that could potentially kill you,
there's that there's probably a short term kind of profit
margin for him, since he seems to have investment in
the company that produces a drug. But I'm more worried
about the complete chaos and the apathy toward Americans suffering

(26:42):
an American death demonstrated by this administration. Because as people
are panicked, as people are going through the worst economic
crisis of our lives, as they're wondering if they're going
to get this you know, fatal disease that that many
don't understand how it works. Uh, they're capitalizing on that.
They're wording medical equipment, They're making the situation worse. Um.

(27:03):
And I think that, you know, that is a way
that Trump has personally behaved his whole life. You know,
when nine eleven happened, his gut reaction was, now my
buildings look taller during any financial crisis two thousand eight,
he was like, this is fantastic. Now people like me
can make more money. You know, he's a disaster capitalist.
He's a corporate raider. He was trained, you know by

(27:26):
New York Wall Street corporate raiders like Carl Icon to
carry out this kind of uh, you know, loot and redistribute,
destroy this, and then you know, sell it off for parts.
That's what he wants to do to the United States,
and I think he does not want us looking at that.
He'd rather have us you know, talking about his irresponsible
snake oil peddling than about the fact that he's you know,

(27:47):
looting the country essentially and also not helping Americans, uh,
you know, during a massive public health crisis. But in
this particular time, he is actually doing just like he's
not wearing a mask, he's actually taking the drug. Even
Neil Cavudo, I'm sure they're slapping him today, came out
against it. Uh. You know, if the Russian goal is

(28:10):
just to create chaos so people tune out, does because
this speaks to row credibilities just insanity? Okay, So does
this just demonstrate how the government has no credibility? Does
this actually work for him? Does it make people detach?
I don't know what exactly he's trying to accomplish with

(28:32):
the I don't even how to pronounce the hydraulic queen um.
You know. I do think that it's somewhat of a
distraction thing because there are very serious things, you know,
going on in the government, both with economically but also
things Pompeio is getting up to bars, getting up to
I don't think that the intent is just to cause chaos.
There is something weird about Trump, um, which is that

(28:53):
he's a lifelong germophobe. You know. You could read articles
about him going back about over three decades saying how
he compulsively washes his hands, he won't shake hands, he's
terrified of getting a terrible virus. In one article, it's
even named as coronavirus. There's an article from seventeen, i think,
in Politico called the pure Le Presidency, and it's about

(29:14):
he forced everyone around him to use perel to keep
off germs. Suddenly an actual pandemic emerges, a very contagious one,
and he's running around shaking everyone's hand, sharing microphones, you know,
disobeying all these rules, refusing to wear a mask. It's
very weird because he's acting like he's immune or that

(29:34):
at the least someone has told him that he is
immune to this virus, despite being in a target demographic
of men over seventy years old, you know, very very
likely to get it and to be severely affected. So
I have found that strange from the moment I heard
about the virus back in January, and it only gets
weirder when he's recommending this drug that doctors and scientists

(29:55):
say doesn't actually work as a treatment. So I don't
know whether he believes it, or whether they're something else
going on or or what um. But I do think
the entire medical situation with him is bizarre. Well, certainly
this drug can have negative consequences speaking to the heart.
But from my viewpoint, the right defines the debate and

(30:17):
the left reacts, why do you believe that is? And
could there be a u turn such at the left
defines a debate. It's a very frustrating thing. There's a
tendency in the life to just not speak bluntly about
any of this. You know, they won't call lie a
lie or a crime a crime. It shouldn't be easy,
I mean, it shouldn't be difficult to criticize Donald Trump.

(30:39):
You know, it gives you a lot of material to
work with. I think some of the hesitancy comes from
this both sides style of journalism that's been, you know,
very popular over the last twenty years, where Trump is like,
you know, I want a new hurricane, and they're just like, oh,
will it work? Will it not? You know, instead of
just addressing the issue as a a sign of a
great threat now national security. We see that's not just

(31:01):
with Trump, but things like climate change, and it causes
incredible damage when people refuse to acknowledge a blatant threat.
I think that this elitism in the media is one
of the causes of this. I think that the media
and our political culture and these overlapping circles have become,
you know, dominated by people from very wealthy backgrounds, from

(31:25):
you know, sort of very very narrow geographic focus. There
have been all these credentials now required, all these prerequisites
to get your foot in the door, and that means
that they're reluctant to report on each other. Honestly, you know,
they want to keep this illusion going. They don't want
to out people like Ivanka and Jared as grifters when

(31:46):
those are their sources. And they're just thinking of things like,
you know, access and prestige and reputation and of themselves.
You know, they're not thinking about the country. They're not
thinking about how does this affect ordinary Americans. They're thinking
about their selves and their insular little world. And that
applies to the Trump camp and to the people working
at Fox News and it applies to people working at

(32:09):
the New York Times and other allegedly liberal outlets. It's
just a failure to value truth, to value honesty, um,
and to just you know, tell people what's actually going on,
and you know, tell it like it is. I went
to the Holocaust Museum in Los Angeles a year ago,
and I was stunned that they had the reprints of

(32:30):
all the papers, that the information was there and no
one acted. Now, we can certainly talk about degree quantity
and whether they avoid certain nooks and crannies, but there
is a lot of information that has been printed. Now.
Although one of the critics said when Trump got elected

(32:50):
that the uh on NPR that the press should take
a viewpoint, which they haven't. Okay, you say something fascinating
as time I heard anybody else say this, that we
all have a feeling as we're living our regular lots,
that there's somebody out there, there's somebody who's going to
take care of it. And you say there isn't. Okay,

(33:11):
So what can be done about truly blowing the whistle
on this all insanity in our country? Yeah, it's a
very frustrating thing. You know. I think the scariest part
of my book is the fact that there's like thirty
pages of end notes from all the other reporting that
has been done on all these massive crimes being carried
out by Trump and other members of this administration. You know,

(33:33):
as is in the title, it's in plain sight, and
it's the failure to act that's been very frustrating. Everyone
thinks somebody else is going to swoop in and save us,
or they think, Okay, you know, if this is really
so bad, if this is really so dangerous, people would
be behaving differently. They'd be acting with urgency, they'd be
speaking out strongly. But they don't um and that's unfortunately,

(33:55):
very typical when a democracy transitions into an autocracy. That's
why newspapers of the nineteen thirties, you know, leading up
to the time of Hitler's domination, World War two, the Holocaust,
you will see similar styles of articles. You'll see puff
pieces on Hitler and on the Third Reich that resemble
the kind written about the Trump administration, where people just

(34:16):
refuse to see what's right in front of them. They
refused to see cruelty or evil or to acknowledge it
as such. They're they're afraid of being seemed as alarmist
or as hysterical. But I think that you really need
to error on the side of caution here, especially because
there is such a historical precedent for this. And I
don't just mean Nazi Germany, but you know, looking at Milosovich,

(34:38):
at put In, at anybody who's risen to power, the
path is very similar to Trump. It's easy to predict.
You know, it's the dictator's playbook, and we're watching it
play out in a kind of American pop culture infotainment
kind of way, you know, a tabloid kind of way
that I think people don't recognize it because they think
autocracy means like tanks appear on the street. They don't

(35:00):
understand that a very American root autocracy is to have
a reality TV star inhabiting the White House and deceiving
people and you know, using is considerable media spin and
propaganda skills to get this horrific agenda accomplished. Let's one
thing we know about Trump, as I stated previously, he's
really not that intelligent. However, the Republicans in Congress and

(35:25):
pretty much are a few, you know, never Trump people,
but they don't have that much traction. So these people
look at the impeachment et cetera. They all line up
behind Trump. Let's just say, for this sacred to me discussion,
you know, Trump gets hit by a car tonight dies,
what will perpetuate the autocracy? I think that well, Trump's

(35:48):
skill always is to keep it in the family, and
the fact that Jared and Ivanka are in the White
House should have been just a giant red flag that
this is an aspiring autocrat. This is a colectocrat, you know,
who need to keep the money flowing through the family.
The cryme flowing through the family. That's what he wants.
I don't think that the GOP as a whole is

(36:08):
that enamored of them, but they'll certainly try to take power. Technically,
I guess the reigns of power will go to Mike Pence.
But I think the Republicans have seen Trump as a
vehicle for desires that they've had and have been honing
for decades. You know, he didn't come out of nowhere
like on one hand, you have you know, the foreign
aspect of this, where not just Russia, but Russia, Israel,

(36:30):
Saudi Arabia, all of these different countries realized that Trump
has no baseline loyalty to the United States, and so
it's pretty easy to get him to do things that
are damaging to the United States and beneficial to them.
The Republicans see it as a way where, you know,
as I think, as Grover Norquist said, you can drown
government in a bathtub. That that's what they want to do.

(36:50):
They want to have this libertarian or ultra libertarian agenda
where you just basically don't have government, you dismantle it.
It's everybody for them selves. You let the poor suffer
and starve. There's a you know, white supremacist aspect to it.
That's that's pretty blatant. Um. You're seeing all of that
play out with the coronavirus, by the way, because it

(37:11):
is disproportionately black and Native American communities getting hit by it.
And if that weren't the case, um, you know, maybe
they would be more assertive at combating it, but not
necessarily because I don't think that the Trump administration cares
about poor white people either. Um. You know, there's a
genocidal quality to it. So if he were gone, the
same tendencies would continue because so many people have managed

(37:35):
to you know, pack the courts purge agencies, get money,
get power, violate, and then rewrite the rules. They're not
going to give up that opportunity. They're going to hang
on to that power, you know, with all they've got. Okay,
let's go back to you. You're from Connecticut. And for
those people who well, first of all, it's on Wikipedia whatever,
and you're forty two. So for forty one, there's some

(37:57):
stuff in that Wikipedia page where I was like, wait,
old mind, now I'll be forty two later in the year. Um,
but yeah, I'm from Meridan, Connecticut. They got that part right. Um,
you know most of it, most of it's correct. Fit
I didn't got the authority here on it. So how
many kids in your family? I have a younger sister,
younger sister, what's her life look like. She lives in Texas,

(38:18):
she's married. Uh, you know, she's got two kids of
her own. Uh you know right now. I mean her
her life is just taking care of the kids who
are home from school because we're living through a pandemic.
So okay, so your parents, how many generations was your
family in America? Uh? My great grandparents were the ones
who came from Poland. From Poland on both sides. Uh, yeah,

(38:41):
Poland and you know, a couple other Eastern European countries
thrown in, but mostly Poland. So how did your parents
meet in Meriden? Like everyone's from Meridin. I'm the one
who left. You know, my grandparents also grew up in Meridin.
Before that, I think, you know, the great grandparents lived
in New Britain, you know New Britsky, um in the
Middletown and you know, places near Meridan. So that was

(39:04):
those the big adventurers going from there to Meridan. Uh,
they're not the most adventurous family. Like I was sort
of the odd one out and that you know, I
liked to travel. Uh, you know, I like to move around.
I was much more of a restless person. But yeah,
you know, my parents met each other in middle school. Uh,
started dating in high school. And I've been together for like,
I don't know, fifty years. And people are like, you know,

(39:25):
what's the secret to your marriage? My mom says like
inertia and propinquity or something. It's not not so romantic,
but you know they are together. So and what did
they do for a living. My mom was an English
teacher at the one of the public schools in Meridin,
and my dad was first the corporation council for Meridin,

(39:45):
like the city attorney kind of, and then late in
life became the city manager for Meridin, like before his retirement.
He kind of he went in to fill in for somebody.
I mean, this is long after I left home, so
I don't completely know happened, and then ended up just
stay there for about eight years until he was hired.
So he is an attorney, yeah, yeah, yeah, well he

(40:05):
has a law degree, but he ended up going into
city management. I have a law degree to it. It's
like I'm not practicing. Oh yeah, the year in the
music industry. I'd be glad to tell you my story,
But I grew up at first of all, I grew
up in a completely different era where everybody wanted their
kid to be a lawyer or a doctor. I know people.
I was talking to a friend of mine. He's got

(40:26):
a friend who I know pretty well myself was a
doctor and he said his sixties. Now, when he first
got out a medical school, he was making two hundred
and forty grand. Today he's making two hundred and forty grand. Okay,
so it used to be your upper class and not
to tell you know, they're certainly surgeons of making a
million dollars a year. That's not my point. But your
parents wanted you to work hard to make sure that

(40:49):
you know, you could feed yourself, do things, etcetera. Unfortunately,
what they were unaware of they had hard lives through
during the Depression. We grew up in the sixties, which
was all about you know, the uh. The Army stole
our slogan, you know, be all you can be, okay,
And my mother is a real cultural vulture. So after college,

(41:10):
I was a starving freestyle skier and I got the
world's worst case of mononucleosis. And I went to law
school and I would have dropped up, but I used
to tell people all the time it was the worst
year in the history of skiing in Utah, which no
one knew until two thousand eleven and twelve. It was
also bad, and they had the statistics. So I went
through law school. If I go through law school, I'm

(41:30):
gonna take the bar and pass it. Otherwise you know
why I burned three years. But I never had an
intention of practice law. I did a little bit, remember
going to court once because my boss had o c
D and couldn't drive on the freeway, and I got
the temporary ruling overturns and I said, I never have
to go again. But I always wanted to be in
the music business. And this is important only because music

(41:53):
drove the culture in the sixties and seventies. And there's
one canard which drives me crazy. Is that okay, and
this isn't all fields. Everything is the same. You're just
too old. You don't get it. Music is a big business,
but it is not the driver of the culture the
way it was in the sixties and seventies. I say
the same thing about tech, and they're starting to be

(42:14):
a turn from to tech. Was everything drove the culture.
I don't hear people dropping out saying, oh, I'm gonna
I'm gonna write an app today. Okay, but I think
there's a backlash against tech. But people are invested in
the past. But you're growing up in the eighties and nineties.

(42:34):
You go to public school. Did you fit in? Were
you popular? Were you No? No? I was like like
a nerd with an attitude problem. So you know, it's
think the worst of all worlds, right, you know, grades wise,
I did fine, But you know, I was bored. I
was restless. Uh you know, I was a big music fan.
I was like big Guns and Roses fan. I heard

(42:57):
you were I heard you were a metal head. Oh
yeah yeah. I mean it was funny because today, um,
Alex Skolnik from Test of It was like, oh, I
saw that you were in the Pop Upsets letter. I
was like, yeah, you know, I'm gonna be on the show.
And he's like, that's great. Yeah. He interviewed me too.
And you know, Decibel wrote a profile on me, and
that's fine. I like all kinds of music. It's not
just metal. You know, my tastes are pretty broad. But um,

(43:19):
you know, I was a piano player and a guitar
player and you know, not that great musician. But I
always loved music, Um, and it was important to me,
and I think even back then, music drove the culture. Certainly,
MTV drove the culture for my generation, and it was
very weird to me when they stopped playing videos and
when FM radio kind of ceased to have meaning. And

(43:39):
I was in college during Napster, so obviously I enjoyed
that you know, Napster free ride experience, but um, you know,
music and journalists and began to overlap quite a bit
because everyone was expected to work for exposure and everybody
was getting you know, their content you know, kind of
stolen or you know, was having difficulty finding opportunities in
their fields. And I think that that created a culture

(44:01):
of conformity. And I don't think that that's the whole culture,
but the sort of people who rise to the top
a lot of the times are the people who will embrace, uh,
you know what a shrinking industry demands of you, which
doesn't always produce, you know, the highest quality, or it
doesn't allow a lot of space for unconventional people to

(44:21):
be able to financially survive. And so I just look
at the sixties and seventies where there's all this you know,
political turmoil, you know, a pretty horrible time politically, but
at least there was music and you know in movies,
like a great, great pop culture. So I get kind
of jels of that, you know. I was looking at
like the Watergate Watergate hearings and thinking about the albums
that came out in those years, and I was like, wow,

(44:42):
like what incredible comfort in that time. Whereas I mean
I do like, you know, bands that are out now
I'm not completely dismissive of it by any means, but
it isn't that driving force. There isn't that that feeling
of being part of something bigger, you know, something that
that like gets your soul, I think, and maybe the
way there was back then. What's your favorite guns and Roses? Long?

(45:04):
Oh god, that's so hard to pick because I think
of Appetite is kind of its own thing, and then
you know, there I have. I have, like everybody have
a mix tape of the Illusion albums combined, right, I
can't read of some of the lesser tracks. Um gosh,
you know that's uh. I mean it goes by my
sometimes Rocket Queens sometimes it's so easy. Sometimes you could

(45:25):
be mine. But also I don't know. I like Rocket
Queen because it goes through the whole, like through all
the emotions. You know that that you can experience that
that the band puts forward, you know, where they have
that coda and they go out like that. I just
think it's an interesting constructed song. Well, I think Appetite
is certainly the best piece of work they did. My
favorite would be Paradise City and it's a great video. Whatever.

(45:49):
I'm a big busy fan and Dustin Bones and use
your illusion one which begs the question did you go
to see the reunion tour? Of course, like, oh my god, yeah,
I was so excited. Well, first of all, I've had
this feeling it basically since Trump won, Like am I
living in a simulation? Or you know, it's is this
the apocalypse? And I'm in purgatory? And then when G
and R not only reunited but then went to Place St. Louis,

(46:12):
whereas you probably know, they were banned, uh, you know
because of the riverport right, I got tickets immediately, and
I kept thinking, like Trump is gonna install full fascism
before I get to see G and R. But that
didn't happen, and so I saw them in July seventeen.
Then I saw them over the summer, uh, Louder than life.
And then one of the weirder things that happened is

(46:32):
that Duff read my first book. He read The View
from fly Over Country and really liked it, uh, and
it helped inspire you know, his his album that he
put out last year. And so that for me, I
mean if you had asked me when I was twelve,
like what would my dream be, it would be like
seeing G and R writing a bestselling book inspiring gen R.
I mean, like you can't really top that. But then

(46:53):
someone would have had to say to me, like, well, also,
Donald Trump is going to be the president and he's
going to be a dictator, Like will you make this
right now? I'm like, I don't know. I mean, I wouldn't.
I don't want to dictatorship. But it was kind of
like I kind of five peaked now, like there's nowhere
to go but down from care. But traditionally, you know,
in nineteen nine, when led Zeppelin one came out, that

(47:14):
was considered heavy metal and Black Sabbath was too far
out there. But certainly now more metal is its own genre.
But even back then, people listen to that as anger
at society. They felt misunderstood, and they could turn it
up and create their own world. Would that be an
apt description of you? Oh yeah, I mean I'm angry

(47:36):
all the time, and I'm not apologetic about it. Like
I think there's plenty to be angry over, and you know,
I think there's there's an impulse just as a woman,
you're not supposed to be angry, etcetera, etcetera. You know,
people say you're shrill, you're whining whatever. But I think
it's broader than that. I think everyone is kind of
conditioned to not be angry, to not complain. Uh And
you know, in my first book, and if you're from

(47:57):
five our country, I have an essay called and defend
pense of complaining. And I think that anger, in many ways,
it's a form of compassion. You know, It's it's looking
out for other people. It's being angry on their behalf.
You know, I'm off I'm also angry on my own behalf.
But when I write, you know, I tried to think
of other people, think of our society, um, you know,
and as what's happening to it. But you know, I

(48:19):
mean with with heavy melo, you'll get a variety of songs,
and you know, some of them are more overtly political,
you know, lyrically, and a lot of them just capture
and emotion. And I'm in it for both, you know,
I'm in it for the feeling that it conjures, even
if the lyrics have absolutely nothing to do, you know,
with anything that's that's happening. But there's also I think,
you know, great songs like I think Civil War by

(48:40):
guns and Roses, for example, is a great song in
that genre. To what degree in your inbox or your
incoming do you hear that you're too negative? Um? It
depends from the people who agree with me. They think
I'm I'm doing just fine. Um. I I used to
get it more in the beginning of the Trump administration.
It wasn't so much negative. It was you know, pessimistic,

(49:01):
doom and gloom. And I'm like, look, you know I
I spent my career studying authoritarian states. I don't want
to be right. I mean that was something I think
people failed to grasp, is that I wanted to be
wrong about everything. I wanted to be wrong about all
my predictions because you know, I'm a mom, Like I'm
I'm raising my own children in this society I'm living here.
You know, I want my country to be a democracy.

(49:22):
I want it to be free. Uh. And I saw
basically a mafia state forming and it it paralleled both
directly and you know in terms of how you know,
governance was formed the really awful states that I had
been studying and that you know, I had worked with
exiles and dissidence from. And I never took freedom of
speech for granted. I never took free media for granted,

(49:44):
and I've always been worried that those things would go away.
And I think people who weren't as familiar with world
history or contemporary dictatorships, they just get thinking, well, this
can't happen here, So why is she, you know, going
on and on about that, like as if it was
like a stick or something. But it wasn't. Um, you know,
it was a warning. And I wanted the warning to
be heated, and I wanted officials to intervene, and I

(50:05):
wanted them to make me wrong, and they didn't. Uh.
You know, people have sat back and let this happen,
you know, knowing full well what it is, or occasionally um,
you know, sticking their heads in the sand. Uh, and
you know, comforting themselves with denial. And I don't fall
ordinary people for not fully understanding what's happening, because I
think that they've been lied to quite a bit. I

(50:27):
do fall our officials, whether you know, Mueller, Pelosi, Comy,
anyone who could have you know, enforced accountability but chose
to look the other way. So you gotta Sarah Lawrence,
how's that experience? Sarah Lawrence in the late nineties. I
mean it was weird. It was fine. It was a
school that had small classes, a lot of emphasis on writing,

(50:48):
very little emphasis on math. You know, w it's a
very bad at So I was glad for that. Um
I kind of did my own thing. I mean, it's
a weird thing because you you definitely have that class
dynamic where like I was just do and stuff like
renting a video and eating Chinese food in my dorm
room and that would be like a big Friday night
out for me. But a lot of really rich kids
go to that school, and you know, they'd be doing

(51:10):
all these expensive drugs or partying in New York City
or so forth. It was an interesting time to have
access to New York City. You know, it was about
a half hour forty five minutes away, and I got familiar, um,
you know with New York tabloid culture, you know, to
some degree. I always was like, as you know, if
you grew up in Connecticut, you get a lot of
New York media pumped into your home, and so you
get to learn about people like Donald Trump from your

(51:32):
early childhood. But I started reading you know, The Post,
the Daily News, the Times, kind of absorbing that and
then after college, you know, I moved there. I moved
to New York for three years um, in part because
I gained familiarity with it through going through Sarah Lace,
going to Sarah Lawrence. How did you pay for Sarah Lawrence?
Mixture of scholarships, my parents helping me in loans. Okay,

(51:55):
so you go to New York and you worked the
graveyard shift at the Daily News. Other than living in
New York and anything good about doing that, other than
meeting your husband there? Yeah, I mean my husband was
a co worker. That was good. I mean it was
my first, like real job, my first like I'm out
of college and I have a job job, not like
I work at the mall as a cashier kind of job,

(52:17):
you know, over the summer um. So it was an
educational experience, you know. It was just at that point
grateful I was able to pay my bills because I
was worried about that. I was there at a very
tumultuous time, you know. I was there for the two
thousand presidential election, and then of course I was there
for nine eleven UM and that that was a horrific
time to live in New York City, you know, And

(52:38):
it was a traumatic experience, And on one hand, I
was glad to be at a newspaper because I felt
like at least we were contributing something. And at that point, um,
you know, as I described in the book, they made
the decision to make the website a completely different animal
than it had been before nine eleven, where instead of
just being a replica of the print version, you had

(52:58):
breaking news person ended live on the site. And so
that was to be part of that change, which you know,
in retrospect is a very big historic change for media.
And it wasn't just the daily news. It was you know,
basically every newspaper and magazine was making this decision. UM
to witness that was something, but no one ever figured

(53:19):
out what to do economically, um, how to monetize it.
After nine eleven, there are a lot of layoffs, you know,
in in my division, and I eventually, you know, I
left New York UM in two thousand three because it
had gotten incredibly expensive. Uh, there were no raises in sight.
I was always worried that I I too would be
laid off, and I also just felt constricted, kind of

(53:40):
like I I want to go deeper on these subjects.
I want to do more writing. There isn't a path
for me here, There isn't probably a place for me here. Um.
You know, at this point, I was only twenty four
years old, so it's kind of like I've got time
to change my mind, you know. Okay, so you have
your boyfriend, then I don't know if you're married at
that point in time. We quit and then got married
and invited our co workers. They came so and then

(54:02):
you both went were uh. We left, uh, and we
taught English for a year in Turkey. And before that
we did a little bit of traveling. I had been
freelancing on the side at the daily News and saving
up my money, like kind of unbelievably, I wrote for
like a few fashion magazines and neck then they paid well,
and you know that's why I did it. They were
being like a buck fifty word. So I sacked away

(54:23):
about ten thousand bucks. Uh. And then you know, we
went on a honeymoon and then I got jobs teaching
English in Istanbuwl and while we lived in Instan Bowl,
you know, we traveled around. We went to Bulgaria, Romania,
we went across Turkey, went to Georgia, um, Armenia. You know,
I just kind of thought that this is the time
before I have children, like I want to see as

(54:44):
much of the world as I can. Um. And I
had never left the country until I was twenty. When
I was at Sarah Lawrence, I did a semester in
Vienna and I love to travel. You know, I miss
it a lot right now. Um, my kids have never
been outside the country, and I always dreamed of being
able to to have them have those experiences. You know,
since my family was so unadventurous with me, I wanted

(55:05):
to give them that. So the coronavirus, it's hard for
me to think of the future. It makes me sad,
but yeah, that was an interesting point in my life. Eventually, Um,
you know, we ran out of money and I had
applied for a master's program UM in Central Asian Studies
at Indiana University and so Central Asian, uh the stands
the former Soviet Union Central Asian countries, and I was

(55:29):
studying uz Pakistan. And I had a Foreign Language Area
Studies fellowship to to do that, which was very good
because I didn't want to pay for it. And uh,
you know, we we wanted out in New York at
that point. Honestly, we didn't really know what we were
doing and what did um he just looked for whatever
job you could find and ended up, you know, working
in marketing. He had been a journalist with me at

(55:50):
the Daily News, like on the website division. But like
journalism died in our lifetime. Like you know, basically we
our goal is to pay the bills. Our goals did
not have debt. That's the goal of a lot of
people of my generation. You know, your dreams don't necessarily
go beyond that. And uh, you know lately, I mean
until recently, he was supporting my dreams. Um or there

(56:13):
weren't even dreams, my best reactions to difficult circumstances that
I was engaged in, uh, and just trying to keep
us afloat. Okay, So the master's degree takes how long?
Two years? Two years? And during that time do you
go back to Central Asia? Well, I tried. I was
supposed to go to Uzbekistan. I had a you know,
a scholarship and a ticket and everything. And then in

(56:36):
May two thousand five, there is a massacre in Uzbekistan,
um you know, Tienamen Square style by the state, by
the military on a group of protesters that had assembled
in a city called Andi John and they massacred eight
hundred people. UM and so that men. Of course, I
was not going to go to Uzbekistan at that time,
and the country closed itself to westerners. And then at

(56:56):
that point I started to study the massacre from abroad
because I was very upset, you know, that it had
happened just as a human rights crisis, but also what
it had done is sent all these people from Uzbekistan,
all these journalists, all these witnesses, into exile. And at
that point blogging was new. It was basically banned in Newzbekistan,
but they were in exile, so they were able to

(57:18):
put online their recollections of what happened. And through that
and through other documents that I was able to procure,
I wrote papers debunking the uzbek government's version of what
happened in newz Pekistan, where they were saying, you know,
they didn't do it, they weren't responsible, They invented a
fake Islamic terrorist group and blamed them. I was able

(57:38):
to debunk that. Um, that paper was used by the
United Nations. Uh, you know, I'm glad I wrote it,
But it meant, of course that I was never going
to go to Uzbekistan, and I was never going to
probably be allowed into a lot of other countries. So
I shifted my focus onto digital media, into how digital
media was challenging autocracies and whether it would ultimately end up,

(58:00):
you know, making a more democratic political culture. The answer
to that is no, the opposite happened. You know, autocracies
and dictatorships influenced uh democratic political cultures and infiltrated them,
in part using the Internet. So unfortunately, Um, you know,
that's what I started to identify as a trend when
I began you know the next phase of my life,

(58:20):
which was getting my PhD at Washington University. That's what
I was studying was politics, the Internet, dictatorships, Central Asia.
And my conclusions were, you know that we're in free
a rough road because technology could so easily be manipulated
by state powers, and people refuse to acknowledge that possibility.
They always thought democracy somehow just sustains itself. What made

(58:51):
you decide to get a PhD? Uh? Mostly because they
were offering me like a five year, you know, continuous
amount of money, and I at that point I wanted
to have a family. Um, you know, I was twenty seven,
I had started working as a research assistant for an
anthropologist at Indiana University, and I realized that all that writing, uh,
that I wanted to do at the daily news, where

(59:12):
you could write longer articles, you could choose very interesting
but more esoteric subjects, you know, is Pekistan is not
exactly like a popularity winner. Um. You know that I
would have the freedom to do that and to do
the kind of research I liked, and so I applied.
Uh was you offered me, you know, basically a full
ride guaranteed for six years, um, you know, with health

(59:32):
insurance and benefits and free tuition and the whole thing. Uh.
And my sister in law lives here in St. Louis,
you know, with her kids, and we liked the idea
of having her own children near family. Um. And so
that seemed like a good plan. And you know, it
was a good plan. We we moved here. I did
have kids while I was in graduate school. I got,
you know, pregnant right off the bat, as soon as

(59:53):
that fellowship check arrived. Um. And and it went fine.
You know, I graduated actually before my classmates. Um. But then,
of course, the the economy collapsed while I was getting
that PhD, and there were no jobs once I finished it,
So that was its own little obstacle. So your plan
was to be an academic. I mean at that point
in life, you know, I had witnessed the two thousand

(01:00:15):
one economic collapse, nine eleven, um, you know, just a
lot of changes that gave me very little faith on
anything sustaining. So in my head, I always have multiple plans,
you know, and I still in that way. I don't
assume things are going to work out, as have a
backup plan. So I thought, Okay, either I'll go into journalism,
or I'll go into academia, or I'll work for an

(01:00:37):
NGO UM, or I'll do something where hopefully it's interesting
and challenging and creative work and I could provide for
my family and have time with my children. Um and
so it was really just sort of seeing what was
out there. But yeah, I thought academia sounded good. Uh.
You know, I I stayed home with my kids. I
didn't want to pay for daycare, and also just I
like kids, you know, I liked staying home with mine

(01:00:58):
and I thought, well, if an academia I got summers off,
you know, that's good. Like the kids will be home
to will be home together. There's those sorts of concerns
a lot of the time that um guided my career.
You know. It wasn't lofty dreams. It was how do
I make this work? Like what corners can I cut?
Like how do I get creative satisfaction and just survive economically? Um?

(01:01:18):
And you know I figured out ways to do that.
But it's been tough because it's been a tough twenty years.
You know, today is actually the twentieth anniversary of my
college graduation. And I was saying to my mom this morning,
that means it's been twenty years of people telling me
that the economy is eventually going to work itself out,
Like I'm still waiting. It's now been half my life. UM.

(01:01:40):
So yeah, you know I wasn't necessary expecting things to
go well. I know, I wasn't expecting, you know, Donald Trump,
post of celebrity apprentice to be the aspiring dictator of
my country. But uh, you know I definitely didn't see
a smooth road ahead for myself. Okay, so what year
do you get your PhD? Well, technically I finished it
in two thousand eleven, late two thousand eleven, I defended

(01:02:02):
my dissertation, received the actual degree in two thousand twelve.
Um And I was a little sneaky. I wanted to
be I had had a baby in two thousand eleven,
and I wanted to be home with him. Uh and
I had a fellowship and national fellowship, I had one.
So I basically kind of was a stay at home
mom for spring semester and then picked up my degree.
But actually during that time I began writing again. UM.

(01:02:23):
I began freelancing in early two thousand twelve for outlets
who were interested in my work on Central Asia, and
then expanding to write about the United States and about
economic decline, collapse of institutions, politics, areas that I hadn't
really written about. Um it wrote about academia itself. I
wrote about it as an exploitative industry, which of course

(01:02:46):
burnt all my bridges uh in academia, But I mean whatever,
um And I just felt like there's a need to
be honest about this. I felt like I was in
a game that people like me, you know, we don't
win it. I would have better a lot um and
certainly more personal satisfaction, you know, from the perspective of
valuing integrity and honesty by exposing these exploitative practices and

(01:03:09):
these corrupt systems, then trying to participate in them and
trying to be part of it. Like part of that
is I'm not good at doing that. I'm not good at,
you know, faking it and sucking up and doing all
those things you're supposed to do. But I also felt
like this is a systemic problem, and it is it's
hurting our world, like the it's depriving the world of
talent and knowledge and good people because all of the

(01:03:31):
opportunities are being hearded by elites that have this pay
to play system where you basically have to pay to
apply for jobs, or you have to do unpaid internships,
or you have to do very low paid jobs and
expensive cities. I felt like it was all rigged, and
it was you know, I wanted to blow the whistle
on it. I felt at that point, honestly, I had
very little to lose. Okay, so in this era, after eleven,

(01:03:54):
you start writing, is your husband the main breadwinner at
that point? Yeah? Yeah, well he us. But I still
had my I got a fellowship from wash you. I mean,
it wasn't a lot, it was about twenty dollars. But
when the but when the fellowship ends and you have
your degree and you don't go into academia before your
first book is published, how lucrative is your writing career?

(01:04:17):
Not not that lucrative. Probably. I mean I wasn't working
full time because I had two little kids, and so
I was, you know, spending a lot of times taking
care of them. It's probably making like, I don't know,
between twenty five and thirty five thousand a year, which
I'm sure in California sounds very low. In Missouri for
a mom, staying at home is not that bad, you know,

(01:04:38):
combined with my husband's salary, because our rent and all
our expensives are a lot cheaper. And so yeah, I
mean I was always kind of hoping that i'd be
offered some sort of you know, better paying position. Um,
but you know, it was more than I had been
making in grad school, for one. And uh. What I
realized though, was that any kind of position I was
ineligible for because I refused to move to New York

(01:05:01):
or to San Francisco or wherever jobs are based with
a family, because I could never afford that, you know, here,
I could buy a house you know there I could
live in a closet and pay like three thousand dollars
or something, and you do own a house. Yeah, yeah,
you in the bank own a house. Okay, yeah, exactly.
Tell me the story of fly Over Country, how you
get a deal, how that comes out in the reaction
there too, Well, that was just that was a fluke.

(01:05:24):
I mean basically, in two thousand and twelve, I started
writing for Al Jazeera on pretty much a weekly basis,
writing essays. And when I left, I I quit Al
Jazeera in because they were launching Al Jazeera America, um,
and they basically just wanted like hot takes, and uh,
I had a new editor. My editor quit and protest.

(01:05:44):
Other people quittin protests, and so eventually I did too.
And my readers were like, I wish all your essays
were in one place, and I said, okay, And so
you know, I put them together myself, um, in a book,
you know, I called if You for fly Over Country.
I wrote a little introduction and I published it Kindle.
It was a self published book and it was surprisingly successful.
And at this point I had had agents from the

(01:06:06):
publishing world approaching me, you know, wanting to know if
I wanted to write a book, um, and I had
proposed that, actually, I had proposed an essay collection because
I knew there was demand for it. They basically said,
you know, no, no one would want that. Um. Also,
no one understands really what you're talking about. You know,
you're too gloomy. Things aren't that bad? And I was like, well,
you know, these are viral essays for a reason, like

(01:06:27):
they're they're resonating with people. And so then I was
just sort of like, well, screw these New York people
aren't gonna understand what I'm talking about anyway. I'm just
gonna go about my life. Um. I ended up covering
Ferguson from that point on because published the book. What
gains notice for the book, because usually a book doesn't
get any notice unless the author works it. Yeah, well,

(01:06:49):
I I mean I promoted it on Twitter, and at
that point, I had, you know, fairly substantial following. I
think I self published in and I had maybe forty
or fifty thousand people. I mean at this when of
half a million people. So it's changed quite a bit. Um.
You know, Then with that book, what happened was the election.
And so when the election happened. And I had been
writing about the election all year. I covered it for

(01:07:11):
the Globe and Mail in Canada and for other publications,
and I made lots of predictions that people thought were crazy,
but they all came true. And so suddenly everyone was
looking at like, well, what else did she write? And
you know what, what does she study? And they all
wanted this book because the book does describe a lot
of the things that Trump exploited. Economic devastation, political paranoia,

(01:07:32):
hyper partisanship, you know, all these these essays about different
facets of American decline. It became very, very popular at
the end of twenties sixteen, and um, you know, as
you've mentioned in your newsletter, Hillary Clinton was quoting it. Um,
a lot of celebrities were quoting it. Still still self
published it. I was still self published. So then what happens.
And at that point I had an agent I actually liked.

(01:07:52):
It's this guy who's in Canada who liked me, you
know back when uh like, he didn't like me for
like am I popular or not? He liked the quality
of my work. So I trusted him because he liked
me when I wasn't all that well known and he's
still my agent now. So all these publishing houses are
coming to me and they all want to republish View
from fly Over Country, and I'm thinking no, like, I'm

(01:08:12):
never gonna let you republish it, because this is my
book and I wrote it myself, and I'm worried that
you're gonna take my words and you're gonna twist them
or you're gonna cut things out. And this went on
and on, Um, and I kept refusing offers until finally
the Hillary thing happened, and then we got you know,
a lot of interest after that, and I just said, yes, Um,
you know, I'll let you buy the rights to this,

(01:08:33):
you know, and they're paying me in advance as a standard,
and I wrote you know, some new material for the
book as well, and the introduction and the conclusion. But
I'm not changing a word of these essays because they're
quoted all over the place, and they're also emblematic of
the time in which they're written, you know, they capture
that moment between Um and so I somewhat reluctantly agreed

(01:08:53):
to you know, have a flat iron. McMillan published a
paperback version. Uh, you know, there was demand for that
lot of people. They don't like reading things on kindle.
They want a print version. And I understood that, and
I thought, all right, you know, why the hell not.
And to my great surprise, it became a best seller.
And I just did not think that would happen, because
I mean, really, this is the third go round for

(01:09:14):
this essay collection. You know, first there online, then it
was a kindle book, then it's a print books. I thought, well,
no one's going to really buy this, like, and I
don't think that flat. I thought that either, Like it
was understocked everywhere, you know, people were trying to get
copies of it and could and they had to they
had to print more. But I landed on the New
York Times bestseller list, and so then they made me,
you know, another offer for for my next book, um,

(01:09:36):
which again I was a little bit reluctant because of
the chaos that we live in, you know, because of
these times, like how do you write about politics knowing
that your work won't be published for a whole year,
you know, when so much changes every day. As I thought, well,
I'll write a history. I'll write a history of the
last forty years and of all the things that have
transpired that people refused to cover because that will always

(01:09:56):
be necessary and that will be to some degree current. Although,
as I explained in the book A Challenges, there were
new revelations of that history coming hard and fast throughout
nineteen when I was writing it, so that it was
challenging in its own right. But yeah, yeah, that's you know, Okay,
when when you self published the book, were you making
any money selling it? Oh? Yeah, yeah, with Amazon, you

(01:10:19):
get you keep like se well my question did didn't
add up to a decent pile of money. Um, I mean,
I couldn't have lived off it, but it certainly made
a you know, it was good. It helped me out.
I mean, especially during the time, like as I mentioned,
there's like a sixteen month period where my husband had
been laid off, you know, as part of a mass
layoff at his company, was looking for jobs. We were

(01:10:40):
very close to the poverty line. So every little bit helped,
you know, like little sums of money like a hundred dollars,
two hundred dollars, like they would make a huge difference
for us, and so um. But yeah, like in twenty sixteen,
after the election, suddenly the book brought in quite a
lot of money. And you know that was, you know,
by my standards, quite a lot of money. That was
when reasons I was reluctant because I was thinking, well,

(01:11:02):
you know, this is lucrative for me. I want to
hold onto this because what if it doesn't sell anything?
Like what if this advance isn't worth it? So and
and so forth. Um, you know, ultimately I think I
made the right decision by by letting them put the
print one out, But yeah, you know it was I mean,
it had a lot more to do with creative control.
Like I wanted those essays meant something to me, and
I wanted to hold onto them, and I I honestly

(01:11:24):
I didn't trust uh, you know, somebody else managing my
material that had already been read and was quoted and appreciated.
So I thought it would be better. Though. So you
have that book, and you have the subsequent book that
came out about six weeks ago, Hiding in Plane Site.
You if someone were to research you, You're constantly on

(01:11:44):
TV shows, You're constantly being here and there is because
the reason I bring this up is in your book
Hiding in Plane Site, you talk about someone who's a
well known pundit and is essentially broke it. Needless to say,
you're not paid for these appearances or nothing significant. Have
they led to any other economic opportunities? No, I mean

(01:12:08):
I started my own podcast with a friend of mine,
um Andrea Chalupa, who's also an expert on the former
Soviet Union, and we started our podcast, Gasola Nation in
and I think just the fact that at this point
I was relatively well known, especially for you know what
the podcast is on, just corruption and autocracy, and she
was too. That became an an unsuspected hit. Um. You know,

(01:12:32):
we we've done very well with that show and so,
but that again was an opportunity I created myself. It
was like self publishing the book, where I'm not working
for anybody but me on my own boss. Um. But yeah,
you know the interviews I do, it's to get information
out to the public. Like I feel like the media
is not covering a lot of very vital topics having

(01:12:53):
to do with organized crying, with state corruption, with rising fascism,
and so when I get my little minute on MSNBC
or whatever, I try to pack a lot of information
in there because I know it's the only one I'll
get and I feel like, you know, you kind of
need to to cut through the crap um and tell
Americans what's going on. And I'm by no means saying
I'm the only person who knows what's going on, but uh,

(01:13:16):
you know, I think, I guess the way I talk
is distinct from the way a lot of pundits choose
to present themselves. And I'm not interested in, you know,
being an MSNBC contributor or anything like that. That's like
not the kind of job I'd want to do. Although
I guess nowadays you can just do it from your
house and maybe it's more feeling. But um, you know,
that wasn't my goal. My goal is to just kind of,

(01:13:37):
you know, get the word out there, um, and uh,
you know, and sometimes it's it's fun to do that,
you know. I I write to communicate, and so I
like it when my words are heard, and I like
hearing from my readers, and you know, I like having
interesting discussions. Okay, I think it's in no direction home.
Bob Dylan says they asked him what he wants and
he won't tell them because his dreams are so big.

(01:14:00):
But I'm going to ask you and in your mind,
what do you want to have happened for yourself? I
mean for myself. I want this country to remain a democracy.
I wanted to rain free. I want to have enough
financial stability to you know, travel around and raise my
kids and show them in and I, you know, I'm worried.
It's more of what I don't want. That that's what

(01:14:21):
looms largest in my mind, unfortunately, and it's it's a
terrible thing to live through life that way, but I
feel like it's pragmatic. You know, things have changed in
a very dire way over the course of my adult life,
and I feel like I'm constantly, you know, battling these things,
you know, like I have to be hyper vigilant. I
have to fight them off. And so if I were

(01:14:42):
to just have anything, it honestly wouldn't be that much.
I just want my creative freedom, my ability to speak
my mind, a baseline level of income that that keeps
me comfortable. But I don't care that much about you know,
material stuff or prestige to what degreed? Do you care
about the breath of your wisdom reaching the public, which
is not a monetary thing. If people read it, you know,

(01:15:05):
that matters to me. Because you know, I'm especially because
I'm trying to send out a warning about things that
are happening, you know, to our government that in in
our country that I don't think everyone is aware of.
You know, that matters to me. And obviously as a writer,
you know, it's a great feeling to connect with my audience.
And I'm very grateful you know when people say that
they understand something or they're you know, moved by what

(01:15:26):
I wrote, or any kind of emotional reaction. I mean,
I think that's true for everyone, So that's important to me. Um,
you know, But the whole sort of I don't even know,
Like I don't know what the sort of thing I'm
supposed to be striving for for publishing is. You know,
people will bring up like awards or prizes and like
I don't know what they are. I feel like I've
seen this whole rigamarole from academia. Like in academia, I

(01:15:48):
want a ton of prizes and awards and it didn't
mean jack ship. I mean unless unless it gave me
some money, you know, so that I could get by.
It just doesn't matter. Like I just want to put
work out that I'm satisfied it that I think is
actually high quality and good, which is not an easy thing.
You know, I do a lot of rewriting. I do
a lot of harsh editing of my own work. Um.

(01:16:09):
And so you know, it's a matter of meeting those
challenges and also just trying to you know, keep up
with what's happening politically. Uh. And you know, get the
word out to to as many people as I can
so Uh. In one of your podcasts, you say you're
not worried about your reputation. What did you mean by that?
I don't worry about what, you know, sort of fancy

(01:16:29):
people like people in powerful positions what they think of me. Um.
And I in some respects at this point, have the
luxury of doing that because I do run my own podcast,
and you know, as a writer, I'm kind of an
autonomous unit writing a book. I mean, I do have
to deal with the publishing company and the lawyers and whatnot,
and that's not always pleasant. But you know, I essentially
am in a unique position where I could do what

(01:16:49):
I want. I'm not trying to climb some kind of ladder.
I think the ladder doesn't go anywhere. Uh. And it's
also of no interest to me, like, and I get invited.
I mean, this guy sounds so obnoxious. But when I
get a vited to like a lot of these conferences
that people had in the pre pandemic era, you know,
I was uncomfortable. I didn't like the fanciness of it,
the expense of it, the superficiality of it. I sometimes

(01:17:11):
would meet really great people, people I genuinely respect, and
that's always a good thing, but I don't know that
the whole world, it's not for me. Um And so yeah, okay,
let's go macro. Tell us about Putin, the man, Russia,
the country and their plan and interference in the United

(01:17:32):
States and other world affairs. Yeah, well, Putin has basically
been plotting the revenge of the Soviet Union ever since
he was elected UM in New Year's even And I think,
you know, what we're seeing on a global scale is
the influence of not just Putin in the Kremlin, but
of Putin and it's uh, you know, oligarch and mafia

(01:17:55):
kind of tri part um, you know, conglomeration where they
want autocracy, where they're involved in money laundry, where they
see things like NATO and the EU and these international
bodies as obstacles to their own goals, you know, and
their goals. Putin's goals are the same as any dictator.
So he wants money, he wants power, he wants territory,

(01:18:15):
which we've seen with Crimea. He has openly said, you know,
he wants to bring the Soviet Union back together. He
said that the dissolution of it was the great tragedy
of his life. And he sees people like Trump as
useful vehicles for this goal. And you know, the book
lays out how Trump has both had political ambition in
the United States UM and with the Republican Party with

(01:18:36):
operatives like Roger Stone for over thirty years, and has
been hooked up to the Kremlin and to especially the
Russian mafia for over thirty years because there who bailed
him out after his bankruptcies when nobody else, you know,
would would invest in him. The Russians made an investment
in Donald Trump and it paid off very well for them.

(01:18:57):
And I should specify that by I shouldn't say Russians.
It's Aligarcs from the former Soviet Union and mobsters from
the former Soviet Union. And they're not always from Russia
the country. They're not always you know, ethnically Russian. There
are people who profited off the dissolution of the Soviet
Union themselves, you know, which is honestly, that's the model
that I think they want for the United States. They

(01:19:18):
wanted to be weak, they wanted to fall apart, and
then they want to make money, taking resources, taking over businesses,
and so on and so forth. You talk a lot
in the book about a transnational crime syndicate, and you
say in the US, the Italian mafia has been replaced
by the Russian mafia. I don't think the average even

(01:19:40):
though you quote sources in the government warning about this,
I don't believe the average American is aware of this.
How bad is it? It's it's very bad, especially because, uh,
you know, a lot of this kind of happened legally
in a way. Uh. You know, the border between white
collar crime and organized crime really began to blur in

(01:20:00):
the nine nineties, and one of the hot spots for
this was of course New York City, Um, you know,
with deregulation on Wall Street. And then what happened was,
you know, you had Juliani in the nineteen eighties basically
cracking down on the Italian mafia weakening them. And then
after the collapse of the Soviet Union, where people from
that region were able to travel, including its top criminals,

(01:20:22):
they set up shop in New York City. Some of
them had already been doing that in the nineteen eighties.
They were living in Trump Tower. You know. Trump Tower
is basically functioning as a dorm for the Russian mafia.
And they began to move their dirty money in and
out of all these New York properties, including others owned
by Donald Trump, and they gained quite a foothold. And
some of them, you know, went and worked on Wall Street.

(01:20:45):
They worked for these big firms, and that that's what
I mean by that line being very much blurred. And
I think there is a tendency in the United States
to be very forgiving of these figures. They're like, oh,
you know, poor Russians. You know, they were a communists
and now they're just having trouble figuring out this capitalist thing.
It's like, no, these are seasoned criminals. They understand high
finance very well, they understand organized crime very well, and

(01:21:08):
they are duping you. You are thinking that they're playing dumb,
but they're actually very intelligent. And honestly, I don't think
Trump is particularly intelligent, but I think he's intelligent at
playing dumb as well. He pretends to be a lot
stupider than he is because he is smart when it
comes to crime. He knows exactly the amount he needs
to know, and he knows how to function within a
criminal organization. But yeah, the Russian mafia took over where

(01:21:31):
the Italian mafia left off, and they're still very active.
You know, It's true, not just in New York, but
in most major cities. Miami is another hot spot, Southern
Florida in general. Uh, And no one cracked on on them.
There was a crackdown in the late nineties, but once
nine eleven happened, all those resources at the FBI that
we're looking into Russian organized crime, UH turned to you know,

(01:21:54):
Islamic terrorism, preventing future attacks and so forth, and they
forgot about them. But they were still working, and they
realized that one of the wisest things they could do
to keep their illegal operations going was to infiltrate government
and infiltrate institutions and make those institutions work for them.
And so you have, you know, things like the former

(01:22:15):
directors of the FBI in the nineties, Lewis Free, William
Sessions going on to work for the Russian mafia, as
you know, consultants working for various firms. It's it's frightening, um,
And it's frightening to me that people don't talk about
it more because it is a profound national security threat.
Mueller himself in two thousand and eleven wrote a speech
about what a security threat this was to Western democracy,

(01:22:38):
how incredibly dangerous these people are, and now they're in
the White House. Okay, so we covered a little bit
of sixteen in Russia interference with the election, but certainly
the you from this side of the pond, looking at
the government, etcetera, to what degree is it a factor?
To what degree was it bungled by either Mueller, Pelosi,

(01:22:59):
Shoe or what happened? What and what should have happened?
They all really screwed up. Like I was getting incredibly
worried in the months leading up to November twenty six
because I saw clearly what was happening, like when Trump
asked Russia to get him Hillary Clinton's emails at a
press conference and then nothing was done after that. Um,

(01:23:20):
I was like, they're they're not going to do anything
about this. They're going to let this happen. And I
knew that, at least for you know, the Kremlin. The
ambition was to turn the US into something like a
a proxy state of Russia. And I knew that for um,
you know, these organized criminal bodies, this is going to
be a windfall. And I still don't understand the dereliction
of duty in the Obama administration because they were warned,

(01:23:43):
you know, um, they knew that Russia was after them.
They had hacked by that time, the State Department, the
d o D, the d n C, the r n Z.
They had hacked like every governmental body. And then we
found out in twenty eight that Russia had infiltrated the
treasury and twenty I mean you found out in twenty
eighteen that they had infiltrated the treasury. In the Obama administration,

(01:24:04):
for reasons I still don't fully comprehend, did very little
about this, and I don't think they necessarily welcomed it
or approved of it. But they didn't stop it, and
they didn't take it seriously, and the FBI did nothing
to stop it either. Harry Reid, when he was sentate
minority leader, sent a letter to James Comby in the
summer of sixteen, saying you have to warn the American

(01:24:25):
public about Russia and the election because they're planning to
falsify the official results. And so when I saw that letter,
which was an open letter, I was like, my God,
Like for the Senate Minority leader to say that, that's
an incredible statement. Why is no one in the press
covering this or very few people, like why is this
not on television? Why aren't we looking at this in
the context of Trump's long relationship with the Russian mafia

(01:24:48):
or Paul Manafort, who at that point, you know, had
been working as a oligarch lackey for various Kremlin affiliated actors, Like,
there were so many connections to look at. You know,
there was also Wicki Weeks in its connection to Russia,
and no one was doing anything. And I realized in October, like,
they're just gonna let this happen. They're gonna just let
him win. And then I don't know what the hell

(01:25:10):
is going to happen to America, but it's not gonna
be good. And then that's been the pattern since you know, Mueller,
blewett Um. I think possibly intentionally, the Democrats have been
incredibly timid. The Republicans are complicit. So yeah, you know
when I say I don't think anyone's gonna save us,
it's because I've seen all the people who were in
a position to make a meaningful difference to protect us,

(01:25:31):
they all refused to do so. Um And you know,
I know that there are threats involved in bribes and blackmail,
but you know, we're all we're all taking a risk here,
Like I take a risk here just talking about this.
So I kind of look at them with all of
their private security and all their money and all their influence,
and I'm like, come on, like, do the bare minimum
for your country here, Like, I really don't understand how

(01:25:52):
you think this is going to end up, because it's
not gonna end up well for you in the end. Either,
it's not gonna end up well for any of us. Oh,
your book Hiding in Plain Site is very well documented. Okay,
a lot of people they dash off a book, its theories, whatever,
But you literally linking two things. People said, Okay, hey,

(01:26:12):
why did no one pick up on these stories which
you covered a little bit? And do you believe now
that you delineated these things there will be a move
on them. I don't know, because you know, there have
been other best selling books kind of either on the
subject You're related to it by David K. Johnston, Michael
Malcolm Nance, Craig Unger on the Russian mafia aspect. You know,

(01:26:33):
they they've laid this out and there's certainly been a
lot of documentation of Trump's corruption and barkins Trump confesses
to it all the time, like you don't have to
look that hard, you know, he goes on Lester Hole
and he's like, yeah, I committed obstruction and justice. And
you know, Donald Trump Jr. Tweets out his emails that
are very damning. So no one has acted on this
even though it's in the public light. Um. You know,
my book Hiding in Plain Site has has been very popular.

(01:26:55):
It was, you know, it is a best seller on
multiple lists. Uh. You know, I didn't notice though that
you know, no one not no one would review it,
but the standard places that would review a book put
out by McMillan that's the best seller, Like the Times,
with Watching and Post, they're not going near this thing
because I think it's still taboo. And you know, the
same thing is kind of true sometimes with television, people

(01:27:16):
are very afraid of the subject. Like a natural place
for all of these things that are in my book
to be discussed was the impeachment hearings because it directly
reflected what happened in you know, they tried to make
about twenty nineteen and about Ukraine, but the background that
was in Russia and Trump's long relationship with the Kremlin

(01:27:36):
and the relationship of people in his circle like Giuliani,
Roger stone mana for etcetera to the Kremlin, and of
course the Muller Report. If they aren't going to do
it an impeachment, it's hard for me to imagine them
doing it now. And I hope that I am adding
pressure or at least I'm educating, you know, average Americans
on what the government should be telling them. Like I've

(01:27:57):
had people write to me and they're like, this is
what I thought at the Mueller Report would be like
like this is the kind of information that I've been
looking for, And I'm like, yeah, you know, it's been
out there. Like I'm standing on the shoulders if many
other people who have tried to tell this story, you know,
and I'm good, I think at weaving these things together
because they can be very complicated. But a lot of
folks have been trying to get this out and officials

(01:28:19):
have just refused to act on the information. Now, not
only did Trump beat impeachment, he is systematically getting rid
of people who are not loyalists, who are not only
you know what he calls not only elected whatever or
not not only part of his cabinet, but people who
were part of the bureaucracy what he calls the deep state.

(01:28:42):
We're just gonna let him get away with this. I mean,
I wouldn't if I were if I were in charge,
but I'm not. Um, you know, it's frustrating to me
because there they act shocked every time this happens. Like
I see these officials, senators, congressmen, what have you on
Twitter and they're like, oh my god, I can't believe it.
Can you believe that they just fired the ethics investigator?

(01:29:03):
And I'm like, yeah, like where you've been? And I
think that their tactic there is to feign shock, because
if you are not shocked, then you have to enforce accountability.
And if everything is a continual surprise to you, then
no one is going to expect you to actually do
your job. But I do expect them um to do
their jobs, and I wonder what's going on behind the scenes.
You know, as I said, I do have I have

(01:29:24):
sympathy for our representatives because they're dealing with a mafia state.
You know, these are very dangerous people. During the Impatient hearings,
they admitted that Trump essentially ordered a hit on Marie Ivanovitch,
the U S Ambassador Ukraine. The others who testified, Fiona Hill,
Alexander Vinman. They had to have private security at the
hearings for Manaphor and for Roger Stone. The judges were threatened,

(01:29:48):
the jury was threatened, and there have been so many
unexplained deaths, sudden deaths and murders. You know, if people
like Jamalka shogi um throughout this administration. So yes, I
that there are risks, but I don't think that you
should get involved in politics and you know, run for
office if you're not willing to take these people on.

(01:30:09):
And there are exceptions to this. You know, there are
people in government who have tried to take this on.
I think, you know, Warren has been very outspoken about corruption.
I think, you know, Adam Schiff, I've had some criticisms
of him, But I think he was good during impeachment,
and I think he wanted to say more. I often
sensed that tendency from these officials. They want to tell
Americans the whole story. They want to be able to

(01:30:30):
talk about the things that I talked about in my
book and that others have talked about in their books.
And it's astounding to me that since we all kind
of know it, you know, it's out there now, that
they still won't go down that road. And I'm not
completely sure it's holding them back, whether it's greed, you know,
maybe there's donors, donor money um that influences they're thinking threats, blackmail.

(01:30:50):
But at this point, it's like we have a you know,
a surreal, sort of lopsided sense of reality. We're on
one hand, they're acting like everything is normal. We're just
gonna have a reg year old election in November, and
you know, we're not going to talk about this mafia stuff.
And then you see Trump just overtly acting like a
mob boss, you know, shaking people down, like what he
did to the governors, what he did to different states

(01:31:11):
during the pandemic, where it's like you do what I say,
or you don't get medical equipment. It's like, good God,
how much clearer does it have to be that this
is the mindset and that this is the behavior, and
how dangerous this is to ordinary people, to sick people,
to victims of this um and they still just they
won't call it like it is. They won't call him
a criminal. Uh. And then now there's a sort of

(01:31:32):
agenda going on to try to flip this script to
be like, oh, no, you know, it's really Biden that's
the big threat. Biden's the criminal, and the media once
again is falling into the scene trap that they did
in Okay, you're other than Bill Maher, You're the only
public figure I'm aware of. That said, even if he loses,
Trump won't leave. Could he amplify that place? Yeah? I

(01:31:53):
felt that way since because once an autocrat gets into power,
and that is what Trump wants to be, they it's
very difficult to get them out because they'll rewrite rules,
they'll pack courts, they'll purge agencies, they put the conditions
in place to make not leaving much easier. And he
also violates norms. You know, we've seemed countlessly over the

(01:32:14):
last four years. How much American democracy and its stability
rests on norms and expectations of behavior that he has
fine breaking because he has no sense of shame and
he has no sense of you know, this is the
way that things need to be done. This is the
precedent for this sort of you know time. So if
he loses a selection, if by some miracle we have
a free and fair election Biden wins, he's just gonna

(01:32:37):
say it's I legitimate. He's gonna say it's rigged, or
he's gonna say, you know, the country can't afford to
change right now because of coronavirus or whatever. And he
won't go. And I think, you know, Michael cohen Um
during his hearing in early twenty nineteen, he said the
same thing, that Trump is refusing to go. And now
we're hearing Kushner saying, oh, I don't know if there's
going to be an election, and so yes, everyone should

(01:32:57):
be very prepared for the possibility that he won't leave,
and if it gets to the point where they're actually
trying to take him out of power, that there will
be violence on the streets of this country from his supporters.
But I don't even think it's so much from his
voters as from fanatics that have associated themselves with him, uh,
you know, attached themselves to him, using him as a

(01:33:17):
vehicle for their own causes, looking for violence. I think
we're going to have a very very difficult time between
November and January. At the least, you know, if the
Democrat were to lose outright for getting you know, jerrymandering
and voter suppression whatever, it's it's much easier process for Trump.
But if a Democrat were to win, if you were

(01:33:40):
advising Biden appears to be the candidate, Uh, if you
were advising Biden and the d n C, what would
you tell them to do in terms of protecting election
security or just in general in general? Well, I would
tell him right now he needs to come out with
a coalition. Like it cannot be just about Biden. Like
Trump is a he has a personality cold and I

(01:34:01):
think it would be effective for the Democrats if they
presented themselves as a group, you know, including others who
ran for president, people like Warren Sanders, uh, you know,
even the ones they didn't like quite as much, like
Buddha judge, you know, to to present themselves as we
are a group, we are public servants. We are creating
policy for you, we are serving you. And I think others,
you know that would be useful here, maybe Stacy Abrams

(01:34:24):
because she does understand election integrity, Alexandria, Alexandria Acossio Cortes Um,
they should do that. He should announce his VP choice,
he should announce his cabinet, and then they need to
work very much on election integrity. And now we have
coronavirus um, so I think they need to move to
voting by mail. They need to lock that down. It
can't be something we're debating in September October, like gee,

(01:34:46):
am I gonna cast my vote? Like they need to
have that settled now so that Trump can't do legitimize it.
And also just some people can vote without risking their lives.
And then there's the other problems of you know, voter
ID laws being abused for an interference, hackable machines for
those who are voting electronically, like they should have been
on top of this stuff years ago. But you know,

(01:35:08):
I I think that even though they weren't, there's no
time like the president, so I would include I would
encourage them to be transparent with the American public, be like,
this is what's happening, this is the problem, this is
how we're gonna fix it. None of this little behind
the scenes meetings, none of this like we're too good
to talk to her own constituents kind of attitude, Like
just talk straight, and I think people would be appreciative

(01:35:29):
of that. Okay, what about terror read irrelevant of whether
it happened or not. The Republicans do have a good
point that the Democrats squeezed out everybody if there was
a hint, you know, Al Frankin, who was a great
senator or whatever. So what's your viewpoint on this? How
should he the left handle the problem that the right
is very unified for the left to win, it's a

(01:35:51):
big tent. But because of political correctness and all kinds
of subgroups, they end up causing their own problems, which
ali and they're people, never mind the people on the
other side. Yeah, I mean with terror read, you know,
she's a person, and I hate every time this happens.
I hate having to see a woman, having to see
a person being used as a political pawn and this

(01:36:12):
sort of like what about is um and back and forth,
Like you know, I do think with Trump as I
lay out in the book, we have an extreme problem
of sexual abuse, sexual assault connections to people like Epstein.
It doesn't mean, though, that what Biden did is not
a problem, and there is a pattern of sexual harassment,
and I think that he needs to be upfront about that.
I mean, honestly, I am not completely convinced by Tara

(01:36:35):
Reid's story. I'm also not unconvinced by it, and I
don't want to attack her like I hate that. You know,
we're in this position where we have to evaluate, Um,
you know, another person who's put her whole life on
the line by being in the public eye. Um, But
I think that he needs to be uh, you know,
straightforward and not defensive and you know, talk about his
own behavior. I mean, I think, I mean, in a way,

(01:36:58):
it's like I say, honestly, is honesty is the best policy,
knowing full well that the GOP always exploits it. But
I don't see a way out of this. I think admitting, um,
you know, personal or institutional failures can actually be helpful
when you have a population that is so disillusion from
the barrage of lies and propaganda. You know, a lot
of people fell for Trump because they fell for this

(01:37:20):
illusion of authenticity. They thought that he was being honest,
even if he was being awful. They thought it was
some sort of awful honesty, which is not you know,
he's a he's a chronic liar. But I think that
that just uh as a stance is a way to go.
Who should be the vice presidential candidate and who will be?
I don't know. I feel like he's going to make
a bad decision. I mean, I think he's gonna pick

(01:37:41):
like Biden Junior type. A lot of people talking about Warren,
you know, who was my preferred candidate to as VP. UM.
I would be content with that, but I basically like,
I want Warren to be like the Dick Cheney of
this whole administration, Like I want her plans implemented. I
want her behind the scenes calling the shots. One thing
that's very unusual about Biden is that he is so elderly,

(01:38:04):
and he's spoken about how he might not be there
for a second term. So whoever he picks as a
VP is potentially, uh, you know, the next presidential candidate,
and we may be going through all this again in
four years. Honestly, if we're lucky, we'll be going through
this again with having had a democratic um administration. But
I think that she's very knowledgeable and at the least

(01:38:24):
her plans should be implemented. I'm worried that, as usual,
the d N C um in the powers that we
are not going to recognize the need for someone, uh,
you know, who understands the severity of the corruption that
we've experienced, the severity the economic crisis that has plans
to fix it. Uh. They often don't seem to recognize

(01:38:44):
the need to be inclusive in that respect. Like I
don't like how they're dismissing not just Warren, but Sanders
and and his voters as well, because especially during coronavirus,
when you have you know, unemployment hovering around twenty five
per cent, you know, you need people who understand what
it's like to live through poverty and how difficult it
was to get by even before this crisis came along.

(01:39:05):
So I don't know, that's why I want to coalition.
I want as many like good minds out there as
possible and as little ego as possible. Like I'm sick
of these political personality colts. I think they're weird, first
of all, Like, why are you getting like this over
a politician of all people. But they're also just damaging.
They're damaging the democracy. Going a little inside baseball. Is

(01:39:25):
Warren the nonstarter because Massachusetts presently have as a Republican
governor who most probably would uh pick a Republican to
fill Warren's seat. I think if they're looking at at
it that way, then they're nuts. I mean, you know,
I don't necessarily think the Democrats are going to get
the Senate anyway, So you're like placing a weird bet.

(01:39:47):
But you need the top people to be in this
cabinet in some way to make these big decisions because
whoever wins this thing, like if it's you know, assuming
it's fight, and all he's going to be doing is
digging us out of the hell hole that we are
in because of Trump. You know, where you have entire
departments that have been dismantled, Like we don't have a
State Department. We have a zillion acting uh you know,

(01:40:09):
secretaries of this, secretaries of that. We have a gutted
and purged FBI. We have intelligence that's been compromised, like
we've had idiots like Jared Krishner going around selling state
secrets like the ramifications of what they've done are going
to be there for the rest of my life. Like
I don't expect to ever see this stuff resolved. And
we have things like climate change, we have these existential

(01:40:30):
threats hovering abous. We need the top people, and I
think that Warren would be better in uh the government,
whether as VP or treasurer or something. Then in the Senate. Um,
I think in the Senate they need like attack dog types.
I honestly think you know, Sanders is usable in that regard.
In the Senate, they need somebody who will tell Mitch
McConnell to go uh. I don't know if I could

(01:40:52):
swear on your show to to fund himself. I mean
it's like, you know, they need to time to get
lost and that they're not gonna put up with his
ship anymore. Like they need, uh, they need to get
in the ring for the Republican Party. They need a long,
you know, kind of kind of rant and just somebody
to take them down. But when it comes to like
the top people, when it comes to the cabinet, they
need the finest minds and they need the best plans

(01:41:13):
because we are in for such a terrible uh four
years even in the best of circumstances. And I've got
no illusions about that. Let's just assume for the sake
of argument, Biden does win. What happens with all the
Trump constituents. We saw that Trump wanted to open the
country for economic reasons. He got all these crazy people
to protest in uh front of governors, in front of

(01:41:36):
the state houses, even though statistically more people wanted to
stay home. So if a Democrat, i e. Biden, wins
the presidency, I don't anticipate all the Trump supporters gonna
roll over. No, And I think it's less the Trump
voters or supporters than this very fanatical base. And I
was reading an article the other day about how, you know,

(01:41:56):
these little protests like open up Michigan, Liberate this libery
that have spread the virus. But in the article it
was about how it's basically the same band of like
a few hundred people moving from state to state having
these protests. These protests are heavily AstroTurf. Like I don't
doubt that there are people who are genuine you know,
there are people joining in that genuinely they want stuff open.

(01:42:18):
They're very upset, and I understand that to some degree,
but a lot of this is fake. Uh and uh,
I think that that's kind of true of the Trump base.
It's the base is very small. The voters are are
larger group than the base, but the base can be
riled up to violence. I worry about the q and
on phenomenon, where we really seem to have a like
a religious cult forming, not quite around Trump, but about

(01:42:43):
ideas of uh, you know, kind of what's a big plan, uh,
mythical character. I mean, all of these are signs of
like a collapsing society where institutions have completely filled the public.
So I don't completely blame them, but I think that
they could some of them can be spurred to violence.
I think some of Trump's other followers they're already looking

(01:43:04):
for violence. I remember in sixteen when I was covering
the election. You know, here in Missouri, there are a
lot of people that thought, you know, Trump would win,
but he'd be robbed, like Hillary would just take over
and she'd be the president and Trump would be able
to get an office. And they were ready for civil war.
They had bought all these guns, all these weapons, and
what people don't understand, I think is that this is

(01:43:26):
expensive like they made an investment in civil war and
then they didn't get to have one, and all of
those weapons have just been sitting in their homes and
they've been waiting for the opportunity. And you know, Trump
encourages this. He encourages violence, and so do the people
in his camp, and he has a great propaganda apparatus,
and that's one of the reasons I think it's gonna
get dangerous. I think if Biden wins, it's dangerous. And

(01:43:49):
even if he wins, I think it'll be like sixteen
when hate crimes went through the roof. I think he'll
exalt in it and I'll see you as a mandate
for state sanctioned brutality, and he'll get up a notch um,
you know, as soon as that happens, And you know
I do fear for that. Let's, just for the sake
of argument, say that Trump outright wins. Another four years

(01:44:10):
go by, then what happens. I don't think that will
be a democracy anymore. I'm not sure that, you know,
like the conversation you and I are having now, I
don't know if that will be possible. I feel like
there will be an attempt to regulate speech and regulate
the media. And it's not going to be some sort
of rewriting the First Amendment, UM, making new laws. It
will be through excessive LiTi gaiation. It will be through

(01:44:33):
control of social media, of the architecture of the Internet.
It will basically be through severing connections of people, um,
you know, so that we're able to have straightforward conversations
and share information. I worry about digital archives. I worry
about history being rewritten. I mean, one reason I was
willing to write a print book is I wanted it
in print, like I wanted an analog version of my

(01:44:55):
work preserved, because I don't know what the digital future
will hold. And I you know, I'm I'm predicting a
somewhat based on what Trump and his cohorts say, but
also on the path that's been taken in Hungary, in Russia, UM,
in Turkey and other countries that were uh, you know,
democratic to some extent, just as as recently as five
years ago and are now autocracies where journalists and intellectuals

(01:45:19):
and opposition leaders are locked up. I see that as
a possible path here. UM. And we are different, you know,
We've had a long history of you know democratic traditions,
but you know, autocracy moves fast. And the people who
always say it can't happen here, um, they tend to
be the ones that it happens to. And I don't
think that we're adequately prepared. And again, you know, I

(01:45:41):
hope I'm wrong. Um, And then of course I have
to you know, throw the wrench into this, which is coronavirus.
Like we're responding to a pandemic in the midst of
this that makes everything very hard to predict, especially with
the economic devastation. You know that it that it's created. Okay,
how important is privacy an issue? And where should the
line be? According to you? I I think it's very important.

(01:46:05):
It's another reason I like Warren as I feel like
she addressed this. I worry about privacy, uh, in conjunction
with monopolies, with these extremely powerful social media companies that
have access to our information and that don't share with
us how that information is being used, how it's being gathered.
I worry about, um, you know, how kids are growing

(01:46:26):
up with this, Like that's been a challenge as a parent, Like,
you know, what do I allow them to do? What
kind of information is there? And they always think I'm nuts.
You know, like when my daughter wanted to have a
TikTok account and I said, you know, to her and
to her friends who are over, no, you guys cannot
go on TikTok because you know that your information is
going to go to the Chinese government. And they're looking
at me like I'm like Dale Gribble on King of

(01:46:46):
the Hill, like you know, it's crazy conspiracy theory, mom,
And I'm like, no, I'm serious, Like the Chinese on
TikTok and whatever you put on there, I'm not saying
they're going to use it, but you know, they will
technically own your image, they will own your content. And
that's true not just with China, but with UM, you know,
obviously with American companies and with all these international uh
you know, corporations as well. It's very risky. I don't

(01:47:09):
know what they're going to do. But I look at
that states like China, you know, which is a surveillance state,
which is doing stuff with facial idea, UM you know,
which is uh having things like a social credit system,
and I wonder how inspired America is going to be
by those ideas and whether they're going to try to
implement something like that, and that will get used to

(01:47:30):
being tracked. We won't have the expectation of privacy anymore.
I've already watched that happen. I think over the last
ten years, the expectation of privacy has really kind of
slipped away. Um, people don't demand it. They're now used
to having their photo all over the place because people
have digital cameras and that makes it so much easier.
And um, I mean it's a tough thing. I don't

(01:47:51):
like the idea of people living so that they inhabit
a persona. And I'm hoping that the younger generation, the
one that's just sort of used to this, maybe they
just don't give a ship. Maybe they won't be constantly
grooming themselves to please others online. Maybe they'll just feel
like they can be themselves and if someone doesn't like it,
then too bad. Like I hope that that's the attitude
they take, because I've watched my generation could toward itself

(01:48:13):
into trying to fit some sort of image, you know,
for social media, for the public eye. Like we've all
been forced to be micro celebrities. And I don't think that,
you know, anyone really wanted that, so if we look
at the world at large, the thought was with the
fall of the Wall, the breakup of the Soviet Union,
that the world would turn to democracy. That's one of

(01:48:35):
the rationalizations for the abortion in a ran Okay, if
you predict the world at large, is democracy a dying dream?
I mean, I think it's a dream it's worth fighting for.
Like that's, you know, one of those things I don't
give up on. I want a democratic system. It's deeply
important to me, and so you know, I'll fight till

(01:48:56):
the bitter end. And I think that many others will too.
I do think that a lot of countries that people
thought would remain democratic have turned quite quickly, um, you know,
towards authoritarianism. And that includes the ones that you know,
we're dominated by the Soviet Union, places like Poland, um
or Hungry that you know, had a hard fought freedom

(01:49:16):
in nine and onward and then now have reverted, you know,
to this new kind of authoritarian rule. It's easier to
happen than you think. I think that whatever will get
it's not gonna look like a replica of the Soviet
Union or of Nazi Germany. It's going to be a
new thing. And I do think it is going to
have this big digital surveillance component. But I think, um,

(01:49:38):
you know, democracy literally translates to the power of the people,
and I hope that everyone remembers that. I hope they
remember that they, as Americans, are entitled to that. You know,
it's not optional. Public servants exist to serve us, They
exist to uphold the Constitution, and it should not be
something that they can pick or choose to do. They
have to do it. Um. And I think that expectation

(01:50:00):
stations have been lowered in part because Congress has so
completely failed us. But those expectations, uh, you know, those
demands need to be constant, even if they're not being met. Um.
You know, we need to expect more of them, and
we need to be prepared for a long fight ourselves.
You've also said, and I may be getting it a
little bit wrong, that you don't have hope. And it's

(01:50:20):
not about hope. No, I mean, I don't have hope.
I don't have hopelessness. It's just not the way that
I look at the world. I mean, I guess I
think of hope is like sitting around and waiting for
something to change, or just sort of like wishing. I mean,
maybe I have faith, you know, I have conviction, you know, obviously,
I know what kind of governmental system I support, and
I know what my values are, and I know what

(01:50:42):
my morals are, and I know how I feel when
I see people flavorrantly violating them. Um, you know, and
I'll fight, but uh, I just I don't know. It's
hard for me when people are like, what's going to
happen next? Or do you feel you know, optimistic or pessimistic.
That's not the way I view it. I feel like
when everything's collapsing, and I like everything's kind of been
collapsing my whole adult life, then you cling to your principles,

(01:51:04):
you know, you cling to your conscience because you can
control that. Like I can't control, you know, who's gonna
win in November, at least unilaterally. And I can't control
what's going to happen to the economy. But I can
control how I treat other people. And I can control,
you know, what my participation in this kind of you
know world is going to be, and how I try
to leverage you know, what little power advantages I've accumulated,

(01:51:28):
you know, That's what I try to do with my
writing and with my podcast. That's my choice. And so
I would encourage people to think of it that way
because then you you have a little more control over
the situation. You know, you can't control the situation, but
you can control your your part in it. And you're
not just sitting around, you know, hoping that some sort
of savior will intervene. Sir, your revelation and a beacon.

(01:51:50):
You'd be surprised. The nature of being a writer is
you don't really know what people think about your writing.
And I wrote about you, and I was stunned the
amount of feedback I got. People who are not only
aware of you, but passionately aware of you. I mean,
you click boxes that people didn't even think existed, one
being in the Midwest, being of this demo, having a

(01:52:14):
pH d in an era where education and intelligence are
far from primary. So I thank you so much for
taking the time to speak to my audience. Well, thank
you so much for having me on. It's the pleasure
talking with you. Until next time. This is Bob left
Sets

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