Useful Idiots with Katie Halper and Aaron Maté

We did Idiots Live this week instead of the Four Food Groups. Let us know what you think of it. “We're at the beginning of the fourth quarter.” This is what The Intercept’s D.C. Bureau Chief Ryan Grim predicts for the play unfolding in Washington: Will Biden get his bill passed? He analyzes the major players. The Dems. 48 of them want a bill that has free college and a whole bunch of other Sandersian provisions. This really confuses us after they spent the last two elections trying to bury Bernie and his ideas. Grim explains: '“Hugo Chavez had this funny quote, ‘I saw a revolution coming and it was either going to wipe me out or I was going to carry out a revolution. So I figured I'd rather carry out a revolution.’” Maybe the Dems realized they were falling behind, so they (conveniently) changed their principles. The Villains. Manchin and Sinema. Do they really oppose the bill or are they just cast as the foils for the Dems who don’t really want to pass their own bill? The Republicans. Or are the Villains serious? Could Sinema switch to the Republican party? Will Manchin really defy Biden’s angry tirade: “Joe, you're going to take my fucking bill down. You're going to destroy my fucking presidency.” We’re closing in on the end of the infrastructure and spending bill saga. Maybe we’ll finally get some answers (and get to talk about something else.) Plus, Ryan talks the two Useful Idiots unfairly stuck in prison, Assange and Donziger. It’s all this, and more, on this week’s episode of Useful Idiots. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesOur Sponsors:* Check out Quince: https://quince.com/USEFULSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/useful-idiots-with-katie-halper-and-aaron-mate/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

See the extended interview at http://usefulidiots.substack.com Josiah Zayner wants to teach you genetic engineering. For two reasons: 1. He thinks it’d be awesome. And 2: It would hurt Big Pharma. “Gene therapies can cure and treat diseases,” he explains. “We can engineer animals and plants to make fuels and food and crazy stuff. The applications are limitless. We just need people working on it. And the only reason people aren't is because there's that knowledge gap.” But the knowledge gap is something that can be fixed, right? All we have to do is educate people. And that’s the mission of Odin, Josiah’s company that helps you become a scientist without huge grants and a PhD. And if regular people learn how to make this stuff for themselves, we can stop relying on pharma companies. “The drug market is so messed up. These companies are only trying to make drugs that make money,” he laments. “We literally have a cure for a disease that is not being provided to people because drug companies think they can't get the price they deserve for it. How fucked up is that?” Josiah’s latest venture, which got him heavily censored on the internet, was engineering a Covid vaccine. “We found that those who had the vaccine were protected. And it was pretty crazy because I was like, wow, that's amazing data, right? Why isn't everybody jumping on this?” He and his team created a DNA (easier and cheaper than mRNA) vaccine and proved its effectiveness. This was in the summer of 2020. But it wasn’t the big drug companies’ vaccine. So they suppressed him. And only now, over a year later, are other countries finally starting to use it. About time, right? It’s one of our most interesting interviews with a curious experimenter who wants to teach us all to be scientists. It’s worth a listen. Plus, new Russiagate docs, Trump’s toad penis, and throwing shit at politicians. It’s all this, and more, on this week’s episode of Useful Idiots. Check it out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesOur Sponsors:* Check out Quince: https://quince.com/USEFULSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/useful-idiots-with-katie-halper-and-aaron-mate/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Subscribe at http://usefulidiots.substack.com During the first Gulf War, there was a transformation to an era of constant new news. The face of this change was CNN reporter and Useful Idiots Hero Charles Jaco. Views went from checking the news once or twice a day to constantly staying plugged in, anchors got famous and the whole thing became a spectacle. Jaco’s response? “What the devil is going on?” Jaco, who’s the star of the weekly UI segment "Jaco of the Week,” discussed the negative impacts of unending news. “We should've put up slides that said, ‘Look, this is being brought live. The first draft of history is always wrong. Take this with a grain of salt and we'll try to sort this out.’” With the need to always have fresh news, time for fact checking went out the window. And since the early 90s, trust in media has plummeted. Jaco says that’s why. We also discuss the shift from focusing on in-the-field reporters to idolizing talking heads in the studio: “One of the things that really annoys me now is that you've got these platforms that can give you 24-hour news, but on the three major channels, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox, it's degenerated into just talking heads rather than using the expertise of the reporters in the field. It's irritating as hell to those of us who did it for so long.” It’s a fun interview with our charming and funny UI hero. And check back on Monday for the extended interview where Charles discusses teabaggers, conspiracy theories, and the impending US civil war (sense a trend?) Plus, we find out just how much Dems and Republicans suck as Biden lets Haitian migrants get whipped and McConnell plans to let the government default. Ugh. It’s all this, and more, on this week’s episode of Useful Idiots. Check it out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesOur Sponsors:* Check out Quince: https://quince.com/USEFULSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/useful-idiots-with-katie-halper-and-aaron-mate/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

See the full interview at http://usefulidiots.substack.com “The charade of statesmanship played out by George W. Bush and his enabler, Condoleezza Rice, as they wander the Middle East is a fitting end to seven years of misrule, stripped of power and transformed from monsters into buffoons. One half expects to see him stand up at the next president's inauguration and screech ‘I’m melting! I’m melting!’ as he sinks into a puddle of slime.” This was penned by friend-of-show and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges back in 2008. And at the time, it seemed to reflect the opinion of George W. Bush among Leftists and Liberals. But now, he’s back. Liberals who used to condemn him now love him! He hangs out with Obama, he gives speeches denouncing Trump, he paints! Now that’s a thoughtful and cultured war criminal with whom we’d like to grab a Sauvignon blanc. In addition to blasting the grotesque rehabilitation of Dubya, Hedges shares his experience of 9/11 which he witnessed in New York City where he happened to be for a meeting with his then-employer The New York Times. He recalls those who jumped from the buildings who were edited out because “that mass suicide just didn't fit the narrative that both the media and the ruling elites were propelling.” When we asked him if 9/11 surprised him after years of serving and reporting in the Middle East, watching US bombs fall on cities, he responded, “That is how we communicate with the rest of the world. Huge explosions and death above a city skyline. That's how we have communicated for decades. And the hijackers learned to communicate back to us in the language we taught them. So when I saw the devastation, it was familiar. That was of course lost on most of the public who drank deep from that very dark elixir of nationalism.” Plus, the new Useful Idiots Wigged Moose Party announces a plan to ride in an armored pangolin and shoot Covid pellets at the Pharma companies refusing to share the vaccine. Maybe you have to see it to get it. It’s all this, and more (including a #JacoOfTheWeek), on this week’s episode of Useful Idiots. Check it out. And don’t forget to subscribe to hear the rest of the interview with Chris Hedges, which drops Monday.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesOur Sponsors:* Check out Quince: https://quince.com/USEFULSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/useful-idiots-with-katie-halper-and-aaron-mate/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Subscribe at http://usefulidiots.substack.com Matt lost his voice this week, so we’re unpaywalling this extended interview with Adolph Reed. We’ll be back next week with Monday Mourning and a new UI episode. Subscribers can still get their UI fix with Katie’s attempt at the Taibbi dating app, also out today. “But if that doesn’t happen, then that’s gonna be the end of American democracy in the next year.” Does he mean Republicans taking the senate? The creation of a new religion of Wokery in deference to Robin DiAngelo? Duke winning March Madness in 2022? You’ll have to watch to find out. Professor Reed has big statements and important messages for you in this informative and irreverent extended interview. He shares with Matt and Katie his perspective on the changing progression of civil-rights activism from policy-oriented protest to squabbling over abstract moral superiority. The pre-eminent scholar on this new ideology of course being Robin DiAngelo and her new book Nice Racism, which Professor Reed awards Matt the purple heart for finishing. It’s in this “book” (apologies to Norm Finkelstein for using the term) that DiAngelo calls for such BIPOC-infantilizing ideas as moral reparations, seeing white people collectively while seeing BIPOC as individuals. And this new teaching is quickly becoming the dominant theology. This, according to Professor Reed, is dangerous. “What we need,” he argues, “is having frank conversations with actual people in society, not mediated through mass media, about the problems and policies in their lives that confront them.” And he’s planning to do just that. In a Useful Idiots Breaking News Alert, Reed announced his upcoming podcast Class Matters, in which he and other scholars will discuss what society would look like if it were governed by and for the concerns of the working class. Listen to the interview now. Learn something, laugh, but please, whatever you do, stop telling Adolph Reed he doesn’t understand the depths and intensity of racism in America. Because we’re pretty sure he does. Plus, Matt and Katie break their silence on the Aaron Maté vs The Young Turks feud, and yes, they have some demands. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesOur Sponsors:* Check out Quince: https://quince.com/USEFULSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/useful-idiots-with-katie-halper-and-aaron-mate/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Subscribe for the full interview at http://usefulidiots.substack.com “That was what the unity after 9/11 really concealed: who it was aimed against.” Next week marks the 20th anniversary of the September 11th attacks. And as usual, Obama’s apology-free drone strikes, the domestic racism, the enhanced government surveillance, and curtailed civil liberties will be downplayed, if not completely ignored. “The longer this war on terror circumstance goes on,” says Spencer Ackerman, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of the new book Reign of Terror, “the more and more it's going to be indistinguishable from domestic American politics. And the more the tools of the war on terror are going to be used against Americans.” Will the corporate media outlets discuss liberal complacency and hawkishness in their 20-year-anniversary-paloozas? Will they discuss the fear felt by Americans who were racially profiled not just by other citizens, but by the FBI? Ackerman, whose book lays out how Trump capitalized on the disguised racism in the violent policies of the Obama and Bush admins, worries they won’t. So listen here for the darker side of American unity, and read Spencer’s Substack Forever Wars here. Plus, Texas Republicans try to strip our rights away with their restrictive abortion and voting laws, and new Useful Idiots hero Charles Jaco mocks right-wing teabaggers. It’s all this, and more, on this week’s episode of Useful Idiots. Check it out now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesOur Sponsors:* Check out Quince: https://quince.com/USEFULSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/useful-idiots-with-katie-halper-and-aaron-mate/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Subscribe for full interviews at http://usefulidiots.substack.com After 9/11, the US government jumped into war in Afghanistan, giving shells of reasons for their aggression. But at least they still gave reasons. However, after Bin Laden was killed in 2011, even the illusion of a reason for this war was gone. It’s been time to come home for a while. In an April interview with Matt, Adrian Bonenberger, author and veteran, predicted that Biden would execute the withdrawal from Afghanistan. And like Biden, he didn’t expect the immediate collapse in the region. But still, says Bonenberger, Biden made the right decision. This was a pointless effort wasting time, money, and lives, and after two tours of duty and much reporting in the area, it became clear to him that US presence was doing nothing productive. Ok, so it’s time to leave. But why is it going so poorly? This, he continues, is more of a problem with the State Department than with Biden: “The system is not set up to get people from Afghanistan or Russia or Mexico or China to America. There needs to be some type of capability that we can switch on, some emergency act.” And without that, this extraction was doomed. But Bonenberger, and your Useful Idiots, believe it’s a necessary move. So hear us say it today, because who knows when we’ll say it again: “Good job, Joe.” Plus, we don’t forget Biden’s terrible side in his nomination of Rahm Emanuel, we watch Newsmax’s racist coverage of “Afghani” men, and we side with the woman who’s deep in an affair with a chimp. It’s all this, and more, on this week’s episode of Useful Idiots. Check it out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesOur Sponsors:* Check out Quince: https://quince.com/USEFULSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/useful-idiots-with-katie-halper-and-aaron-mate/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Subscribe for full episodes and extended interviews at http://usefulidiots.substack.com Lesley Blume is a journalist. She married a journalist. Her father wrote for Walter Cronkite. Her whole community is journalists. So, in 2016, when Trump rose to power, her community was suddenly under attack. “All of a sudden to see your entire community be under assault like that and be designated as enemies of the people was so shocking and demoralizing, and it felt like an all hands on deck moment.” The best way to fight back, she decided, was to write a book that proved to America just how crucial reporters are in democracy, to “reinstate this idea that journalism at its best serves the common good.” “And so,” she explains, “when I came across Hersey’s story, which had been shockingly untold, I knew that I had my story.” John Hersey, a Pulitzer-prize-winning pioneer reporter who saw combat to cover World War II, wrote what some consider the most important work of journalism of the 20th century: Hiroshima. In her book, Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World, Blume uses painstaking research to document how the US government obfuscated its role in the deadliest attack in history and comes to the realization that dropping the bomb was not justified, despite what we’re taught in school. Plus, future-ex-Governor Cuomo couldn’t take the heat from last week’s Useful Idiots review, how Trump’s big beautiful tax cut actually (surprise) helped the rich, and the world burns from climate change. It’s all this, and more, on this week’s (gloomy) episode of Useful Idiots. Check it out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesOur Sponsors:* Check out Quince: https://quince.com/USEFULSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/useful-idiots-with-katie-halper-and-aaron-mate/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Subscribe for the full interview at http://usefulidiots.substack.com “America finally had enough media awareness after being taught in high school to look for bias that they suddenly were able to see, with new eyes, just how slanted and silly and contradictory and boring [corporate media is.]” Thus spoke Walter Kirn, writer for Time magazine and author of eight novels including Up in the Air (which was turned into a George Clooney movie), on this week’s Useful Idiots. And, like Matt and Katie, Kirn ditched the mainstream and made the move to Substack. where you can check him out. Years ago, Walter tells us, he would complain that every Time article ended the same way: “Some experts believe this while others believe that, but one thing is for sure, the issue is not settled and only time will tell." But now he yearns for the days of yore when the media would take the burden off of itself and leave readers with vague cliches. But at least the readers were left with a chance to think for themselves. Today there is no two sides. There is no debate. They tell you what to think. And at that point, can it still really be called journalism? The answer to that question is hard to say. Some experts believe it can, others believe it can’t, but one thing is for sure, it’s all a lot of bullshit. Plus, after reading 165 pages of the attorney general’s report on Andrew Cuomo, Katie and Matt come to the (hot take) conclusion that the Governor is, indeed, a sexual harasser and dick. And we mourn the loss of Nina Turner’s congressional campaign. Oh yeah, and a bunch of penis stuff. It’s all this, and more, on this week’s episode of Useful Idiots. Check it out now and stand by for the Substack-only portion where Kirn talks about the novel he’s working on, his parents’ divorce, and the fall of Stephen Colbert. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesOur Sponsors:* Check out Quince: https://quince.com/USEFULSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/useful-idiots-with-katie-halper-and-aaron-mate/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Subscribe at usefulidiots.substack.com for full episodes and extended interviews Even just days before the election in Ohio’s 11th district, Nina Turner is pulling voters to her side. Just this week, an influential city councilman announced he switched his support from opponent Shontel Brown to Turner because on one side he saw angry attack ads, while on the other he saw policy. And this race is centered on policy: Brown, backed by corporate dems like Hillary Clinton and pro-Israel lobbies, represents the moderate side of democrats, while Turner, supported by Bernie Sanders and AOC, is part of the progressive swing led by the Squad. Jennifer R. Farmer, a social publicist and campaign surrogate for Turner, joins the Useful Idiots to share what Nina believes in: This is Medicare for all and “ensuring that a health event does not derail a person’s future.” This is affordable college and equal pay for equal work. This is creating “a future that we’re leaving behind for future generations that ensures climate justice.” And on Tuesday, we have an election. Will Nina Turner use her #UsefulIdiotsBump to become the next member of the Squad? Or does the national Democratic Party still have power to reach voters? Watch along with us. Plus, we watch Biden yell at reporters, Republicans pretend America isn’t racist, and Brian Stelter lose his pants. It’s all this, and more, on this week’s episode of Useful Idiots. Check it out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesOur Sponsors:* Check out Quince: https://quince.com/USEFULSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/useful-idiots-with-katie-halper-and-aaron-mate/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy