The Professional Left Podcast with Driftglass and Blue Gal

Average voters stay permanently undecided because they get their information from toxic media sources that have been poisoning them against Democrats for decades, making "running to the center" mathematically impossible and politically useless.

Links for this episode: 

Volts ϟ 1.30.2026 – Michael Hobbes (All About "Reactionary Centrism") https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5cFRQtPbcM 

Ian McKellen (on Colbert) 'u...

The legacy media's "Both Sides Do It" conventional wisdom is a rotting corpse they've been sleeping with for decades while pretending they couldn't see Trump's fascism coming. David Brooks gets rewarded with cushy jobs at The Atlantic and Yale after being spectacularly wrong for 22 years, while PBS replaces him with a right-wing nobody who praises Trump as "the voice of reason" because of cou...

The amnesia machine is already warming up as Republicans rehearse their "I was never really MAGA" speeches while Trump falsely claims Ilhan Omar staged her own chemical attack by a convicted felon Trump supporter. The episode tears apart the advice that Democrats should run against their own party to win over "average voters" who get their information from toxic sources that have been poisoning them against Demo...

The killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti are called what they really are—lynchings carried out by Trump's armed thugs who were then protected from investigation and sent back out on the streets. A direct line connects decades of right-wing hate radio promising to eliminate liberals to today's fascist violence, explaining why there will be no magical "national awakening" to save us. Never Trump pundits who now ...

Welcome to 'The end of the world [order] as we know it' in which we defend anti-ICE protesters who disrupted a church service in St. Paul, Minnesota, after discovering the pastor moonlights as an ICE official, calling out the shocking hypocrisy of a supposed man of God working for Trump's deportation machine.

Contrast this peaceful protest with ICE's actual fascist behavior—armed agents terrorizing churchgoers in...

The greatest political mirage in modern American history returns as Trump's second term reveals that while the ingredients stay the same, something fundamental has shifted. Driftglass and Blue Gal dissect how corporate media like Newsweek hides its appeasement under the banner of "Courageous Centrism" while Republicans once again flee the scene of their crimes by rebranding as independents—though this time, many seem...

We start with some personal news: Blue Gal's father passed away on January 9.

In other news, she's leaving Crooks and Liars after 18 years for a day job with health insurance—thanks to Republican healthcare f*ckery. The podcast continues twice weekly, just dropping later in the day with Driftglass handling all the prep work.

Then we dive into why Trump's regime is doubling down on violence and lies about Renee Good&apo...

John Amato of Crooks and Liars discusses his journey from music to political blogging, including his early experiences with video content creation and sharing during the 2000s. Our convo covers the evolution of digital media in politics, with particular focus on the early days of blogging and the collaborative spirit among left-leaning bloggers who shared content through blog roundups. We conclude with reflections on media credibil...

We start with the ICE murder of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis and the Trump administration's obvious lies about what happened, despite clear video evidence. Then we cover the shocking news that nine House Republicans actually broke ranks to force a vote on extending healthcare subsidies that keep insurance affordable for 22 million Americans—will the Senate kill it anyway? Plus our news roundup, including the dissolution of...

We open on the fifth anniversary of January 6th by examining MAGA's stunning overnight flip-flop on war and foreign intervention. How did "America First" isolationists like Matt Walsh, Laura Loomer, and Cat Turd suddenly become cheerleaders for regime change in Venezuela? Why are pundits so confused by this reversal when we've seen it all before?

Using clips from The Lion in Winter and Lawrence of Arabia, we expl...

In their final episode of 2025, Driftglass and Blue Gal try to sum up the entire awful year in just a few key words or phrases. 

As they close out nearly 16 years of podcasting together, the hosts reflect on the core lies drilled into Americans' heads so long that people automatically reach for them whenever the truth becomes too uncomfortable to face.

Stay in Touch! 

• Email: proleftpodcast@gmail.com
• Website: proleftpod.com
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Driftglass and Blue Gal bring their epic year-in-review series to a close, covering September through December and finally boxing up 2025 to send it to hell. The hosts examine the final months of a year that saw legacy media trapped in their own 'Both Sides Do It' prison, DOGE's promises evaporate into nothing, and the Epstein files get a (incompetent, but still) cover up.  But there's also hope in this finale—a...

Driftglass and Blue Gal continue their review of 2025, covering May through August in this second part of their series. 

The hosts show how the Republican Party's corruption and chaos isn't something new or unexpected—it's exactly what the party has been building toward for decades through right-wing talk radio and Fox News. They walk through major events from those months, including media companies giving in to Trump...

Driftglass and Blue Gal reflect on what they call an "annus horribilis"—a genuinely awful year that fundamentally changed America as Trump's second term brought unprecedented corruption, chaos, and the erosion of democratic institutions. From Qatar's $400 million Boeing 747 bribe to Trump's crypto schemes and the $300 million White House ballroom boondoggle, they catalog the scandals that made 2025 feel lik...

Trump's "affordability" tour crashes into reality, with the president telling struggling Americans to buy fewer pencils and dolls while his own supporters admit they can't afford groceries. David Brooks' embarrassing 2009 love letter to John Thune as the GOP's wholesome future collides with Thune today holding the biggest bag of political excrement in modern history as the ACA subsidy vote collapses. R...

We examine the difference between political "weather" and "climate" this week, starting with Trump once again bribing farmers with $11 billion after his own tariffs destroyed their markets. We play audio demonstrating Trump's cognitive decline and discuss his increasingly unhinged Truth Social posts, including a bizarre rant about Marjorie Taylor Greene. The Republican Party is now held together by violence...

The dangerous convergence of Trumpian immunity and media complicity creates for Trump an imaginary “kingdom” once reserved for anointed kings.  Our Constitutional form of “government of the people” has been corrupted by both MAGA's belief that Trump operates with divine authority above the law and a mainstream media that protects its own incompetent insiders at all costs.  As a side quest, what does Mark Halperin's endles...

In this week's episode, we experience the whipsaw—that aggressive, back-and-forth sawing motion that's now a perfect metaphor for what Republicans are doing to millions of American families over the Affordable Care Act.

We watch in real time as Trump's promised two-year ACA subsidy extension is announced, then delayed, then killed by Mike Johnson—all within 48 hours. Why did Republicans pull the rug out from under ten...