Donald Trump has run the White House like his family business with one primary aim: to enrich his brand, his family and his cronies. In part six of American Mythology, we examine how Trump and the GOP — at times with help from the Democrats — have opened the gates to the federal feeding trough for corporate greed and unaccountability. Throughout the 2016 campaign Trump claimed that, unlike Hillary Clinton, he was not beholden to corporate or special interests and that he would uplift the working class. Once in power, he appointed record numbers of Goldman Sachs veterans to his administration, passed sweeping tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, attacked organized labor, and chiseled away at an already abysmal health care system. Unprecedented inequality and stagnant wages have persisted. Fewer Americans currently have health insurance than when Trump was sworn into office. These sharp economic injustices have come into clear focus during the Coronavirus pandemic: Corporate robber barons like Jeff Bezos have increased their wealth by billions while 40 percent of Americans say they couldn’t withdraw $400 in the event of an unexpected emergency. In America, eight million more people have descended into poverty in recent months, as the wealth of billionaires grew by $845 billion dollars. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

While all eyes remain on the presidential election in November, Donald Trump has already secured a multi-generational victory with his radical reshaping of the judicial branch of government. In part five of “American Mythology,” we look at how the Trump administration has outsourced hundreds of federal judicial appointments to the right-wing Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation. The appointments made during the past four years will impact almost every aspect of life in the U.S.: health care, marriage equality, worker’s rights, freedom of speech and press, guns, racism, women’s rights, war powers, and others. We dig into the ideologies and organizations at the center of Trump’s judicial strategy, the influence of the Koch brothers, and the corporate and social agenda the GOP wants their new judges to impose. The stakes go well beyond the 2020 election: The impact of an extreme right-wing Supreme Court majority not only threatens reproductive rights, it could shut down any progressive attempts at lawmaking for decades to come. In some ways, confirming Judge Amy Coney Barrett is more important to the GOP than Trump winning reelection. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On matters of war, Donald Trump has consistently spoken and acted in contradictory and unorthodox ways. He campaigned in 2016 with a mixed message of attacking the legacy of the Iraq war and U.S. military adventurism, while simultaneously pledging to commit war crimes and promote imperialism as a matter of policy. On part four of American Mythology, we take an in-depth look at Trump’s war and national security policies. He escalated drone strikes in Somalia and Afghanistan, authorized troop surges and massive bombings in Iraq, launched cruise missile strikes in Syria, and threatened to “totally destroy North Korea.” On the other hand, he signed a deal with the Taliban to withdraw U.S. forces, attempted to end the Korean War, and claims to have fired John Bolton to avoid being in “World War 6.” In assessing Trump’s war policies, we seek to navigate past the rhetoric from Trump and his critics and examine his place in the history of U.S. presidents. In many ways, Trump has represented a continuity of U.S. policy with largely tactical differences from his predecessors. Overall, Trump built on some of the worst excesses of the Bush/Cheney administration and took advantage of the weak guardrails left behind by the Obama administration. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On the campaign and as president, Donald Trump has worked hard to resurrect the George Wallace strand of U.S. politics: He has consistently used racist and bigoted language to accompany his policy onslaughts. In part three of American Mythology, we examine the ways Trump has used racialized fear-mongering and incitement in both word and deed; from his Muslim ban, to his denigration of immigrants, to his attacks on the Black Lives Matter Movement. Trump has openly encouraged police to act extrajudicially, brutally, and with impunity, while simultaneously emboldening violent white nationalists and militias. He has even defended a young man accused of shooting and killing BLM protesters. As he campaigns for reelection, Trump is hedging on many of his 2016 tactics, but now is backed by the extraordinary power of the executive branch. The Justice Department, virtually privatized by Trump, appears to be coordinating its official functions with his reelection effort. Trump is intensifying his voter disenfranchisement operation and he has threatened to remain in office regardless of the election results. We dig deep into Trump, race, and the wars at home. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the nearly four years that Trump has been in office, his administration has transformed U.S. immigration at a breakneck pace and governed with an overtly xenophobic posture toward immigrants. In episode two of our audio documentary series “American Mythology,” we chronicle the Trump administration’s war against immigrants from the southern border to the Muslim ban and beyond. Trump has already implemented more than 400 changes to immigration rules and regulations, changes that will impact millions of people. But to portray the extremism of this administration on immigration as an entirely radical departure from decades of policy under Democrats and Republicans is inaccurate. While Trump has wielded his signature cruelty in implementing new policy and has made some far-reaching changes, significant aspects of his policy are rooted in the agendas of his predecessors, from Bill Clinton to George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Trump inherited an already punitive and authoritarian deportation machine constructed by both his Democratic and Republican predecessors and has taken it to new extremes. This episode offers an overview of what has changed and what has remained the same, featuring the voices of lawyers, immigrants, activists, journalists, and others who are on the front lines of the battle over immigrant rights. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Donald Trump is often portrayed as an aberration of U.S. history, an outsider who seized power and is intent on destroying democracy as we know it. In the premiere episode of American Mythology, we examine the ways that Trump has proven to be a particularly dangerous autocrat who doesn’t believe in any semblance of a democratic process. But that story cannot be told without also exploring how various U.S. systems and the policies of Trump’s predecessors carved the way for many of his most dangerous actions. Featuring interviews with lawmakers, journalists, activists and dissidents, world renowned historians, and constitutional scholars and lawyers on the front lines of scores of battles against the Trump administration, this episode offers an overview of how the Republican Party has embraced Trump as a Trojan horse to ram through its most extreme — and long-standing — policy agendas. It also probes the role of Democratic Party leaders in facilitating some of Trump and the GOP’s most dangerous policies and lays out the stakes of the 2020 presidential election, which Trump is already calling illegitimate. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this bonus episode of Intercepted, journalist John Washington, whose latest reporting for The Intercept expanded on an explosive new whistleblower complaint alleging that mass hysterectomies occurred at an ICE detention facility, reads an excerpt from his new book, “The Dispossessed: A Story of Asylum and the US-Mexican Border and Beyond.” And the Colombian-Canadian musician Lido Pimienta talks about her latest album, Miss Colombia, and how the 2015 Miss Universe Pageant inspired her to look critically at anti-blackness in Colombia. She’s currently organizing a relief fund for Colombian families affected by Covid-19, which you can learn more about here.A very special thanks to our friend Francisco Bravo for his help with this episode. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As Washington cuts off desperately needed aid to the unemployed, millions of families face the reality that many K-12 schools likely aren’t reopening, and young adults look ahead to a bleak future, reality is setting in that the Covid 19 crisis was not a blip. This week on Intercepted: guest host Naomi Klein argues that it’s time for some big bold thinking about how we can safely live, work, and learn with the virus — and maybe even enjoy ourselves. She takes us to visit friends in Oakland, California who have been living in a multi-family housing compound for years. Longtime environmental justice organizer and co-founder of Movement Generation Gopal Dayeneni explains that living in a democratic community with friends, rather than a single-family home, has meant far more capacity to deal with the labor of lockdown, and far less isolation for everyone. Klein is also joined by Rutgers University- Newark historian Neil Maher to discuss how a reboot of the New Deal-era Civilian Conservation Corps could provide opportunities for young adults to find work, battle climate disruption, and live in their own communities of peers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As Donald Trump promises the pandemic will “disappear,” the U.S. simultaneously grapples with a public health disaster, economic collapse, and a social crisis. This week on Intercepted: The Intercept’s Murtaza Hussain is joined by military expert and anthropologist David Kilcullen. He discusses the global national security implications unleashed by the coronavirus and the decline in U.S. dominance and the liberal international system. Kilcullen also examines the catastrophic consequences that could come from rising tensions within the country and between the U.S. and China. Hussain is also joined by Indian writer Pankaj Mishra, author of many books, including,“From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia.” Mishra lays out how the rise of free market ideology in the U.S. and Britain has undermined democracy and diminished social protections for ordinary people. He dismisses the idea of a Joe Biden administration as any departure from the status quo and describes how hope lies in the power of nonviolent social movements. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As Trump vows to smash leftist movements, we take a comprehensive look at the life of the revolutionary Black socialist, antifascist, and artist Paul Robeson. University of Houston historian Dr. Gerald Horne, author of “Paul Robeson: The Artist as Revolutionary,” discusses Robeson’s life from his early years to his time in Europe on the brink of a fascist war. The son of an escaped slave, Robeson rose to international fame as a singer and actor, but committed himself to the liberation of oppressed people across the globe and was a tenacious fighter for the freedom of Black people in the U.S. Robeson was heavily surveilled by the FBI and CIA, dragged before the House Un-American Activities Committee and was stripped of his passport by a U.S. government afraid that he would become a “Black Stalin.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.