The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 2711 - Iran Ceasefire Ends; Our Cynical Era of Imperialism w/ Daniel Bessner, Elijah Manley

Episode Date: August 17, 2026

It's a Fun Day Monday on The Majority Report On today's program: Donald Trump threatens to bomb the s*** out of Oman if they get in the way of a deal in a phone call with Fox News correspondent Trey Yingst. JD Vance says on the Fox News that the number one goal for the Iran war is to keep gas and oil prices lower for Americans. Trump must have been listening to the Vice President as he responded with a post on Truth Social that says the number one goal is to make sure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon.   Daniel Bessner, co-host of the American Prestige Podcast and publisher of the Imperialist Realism newsletter or Substack, joins the program for a conversation about his new book: "Imperialist Realism: Politics and Culture at the End of the American Century". Elijah Manley, candidate challenging Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz in the Democratic primary for Florida's 20-Congressional District, joins the program for a conversation about his campaign. In the Fun Half: Fox News' Joey Jones calls the sailors on the USS Lincoln that are complaining about being on the longest deployment in modern history sell outs. Trump says that he will never apologize for raising the cost of gas prices because it was worth it for Iran to never get a nuclear weapon. That message should play well during the midterms. Trump's polling with Hispanic men has drop 51 points since 2024. RFK, Jr. debases himself while trying to defend Trump's claim that he saw a baby getting a vaccination the size of soda bottle. Tim Pool tries to play the moderate on Jubilee's Surrounded. all that and more. To connect and organize with your local ICE rapid response team visit ICERRT.com The Congress switchboard number is [phone]. You can use this number to connect with either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. Follow us on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the AM Quickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors: ONESKIN: Get 15% off OneSkin with the code MAJORITY at https://www.oneskin.co/majority WILD GRAIN: Get $30 off your first box + free Croissants in every box. Go to Wildgrain.com/MAJORITY to start your subscription. SUNSET LAKE CBD: Head to SunsetLakeCBD.com and use code BIRTHDAY26 at checkout to save 25% on everything sitewide. Spend over $100 and get a bonus gift on top of it all. Sale ends August 17th at Midnight. Please fill out this form to request Bryan to come to your town to do stand-up comedy @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech On Instagram: @MrBryanVokey Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's YouTube channel: https://ww.youtube.com/Th3Discourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here: https:/www.youtube.com/@avaraiza

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and restrictions. Now, time for the show. Majority report with Sam Cedar. It is Monday, August 17,

2006. My name is Sam Cedar. This is the five-time award. award-winning majority report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, USA. On the program today, Daniel Bessner, historian, journalist, and associate professor of American foreign policy at the University of Washington.

Daniel here to talk about his new book, Imperialist Realism, Politics and Culture at the end of the American Century. Then, in anticipation of primary day in Florida and Alaska tomorrow, Elijah Manley, challenging Debbie Wasserman Schultz in the Democratic primary for Florida's 20th Congressional District will be here with us. also on the program Trump scales back military exercises with South Korea and Trump threatens Oman as Iran's ceasefire ends and Iran new reports says that Iran plans to both negotiate with Oman cut the U.S. out and expand its war against the United States which of course you do

when you're losing, right? U.S. Strategic Reserve hits a four-decade low as experts warn of damage to the reserve caverns. Meanwhile, Jared Kushner in Egypt meeting with Hamas, and the U.S. Treasury announces it will destroy the government database of shell company ownership, obliterating for future administrations a key anti-corruption tool that is statutorily bound to maintain. A third way

leak shows the organization to be helping the Trump administration demonize the left. You know, vote blue. Trump blaming mysterious vandals for the damage his July 4th disaster did to the National Mall. Meanwhile, Trump losing ground with Republican voters as the midterms are only 10 weeks away.

And Todd Blanche, the top law enforcement officer in the country, refuses to say the DOJ will maintain its independence from Donald Trump. All this and more on today's majority report. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. much for joining us, Emma Viglin out today. We've got primary day tomorrow in Florida and in Alaska, go out and vote. If you have the opportunity to vote early, do so. If not, vote tomorrow. We should also tell you that I know many of you, maybe 99% of you have joined us today with hopes that will be going over the Tim Poole Jubilee episode. We will be covering parts of it,

but we're going to do more over the course of the week. But we will get to that. Going to milk it a little bit. We're going to milk it a little bit. And I don't know, based upon what we saw there, Tim may not be around for much longer. So, you know, we want to savor the moments, but we'll see. And I don't mean that he's going to pass away. I just think that like it's all

passed him by. It's time to retire. He had his moment. And now I think he's going to wrap things up. Meanwhile, the 60-day Iran ceasefire ended today with Donald Trump and we will get to this threatening Oman for making a deal with the Iranians, essentially what's happening. is Iran has decided the U.S. has lost the war, and we're going to react in such a way that we're going to, A, start to negotiate with Oman so that we can open up the Strait of Hormuz on our terms. B, we're also going to make plans to widen the war if the United States does not essentially surrender.

That's basically where we're at. And with our strategic reserves, not only at one of their almost like a record lowest number, but understand they are held in massive underground caverns, which apparently cannot be drained dry or they will corrode and suffer serious damage. So there has to be a certain amount that's maintained in there. And there's now concerns that we're getting precariously close to that amount to the extent that like even if it's drained quickly, people have to be careful that it might cause like essentially caveats. You sound like you want Iran to get a nuclear weapon, Sam. It is, I am on the side apparently of the, of the terrorists. If I keep talking, the terrorists and the mullahs win.

Here is Donald Trump. This is clip number three. I should say, Trey Yinks, the Fox and Friends reporter, reporting what his conversation with Donald Trump was. today. Chief Foreign correspondent, Trey Yeeks, just spoke with President Trump and joins us now from Tel Aviv. Trey. Yeah, hey guys, good morning. I just got off the phone with President Trump, who discussed the situation with Iran as the 60-day memorandum of understanding expires. The president told Fox News, Iran should raise the white flag of surrender. He went on to say, I have no time schedule.

I'm not in a hurry. The president indicating that the U.S. naval blockade is continuing to put new economic pressure on the Iranian regime, despite what the Iranians have said publicly. He said they're good poker players, but they're dying and that the midterms in the United States have nothing to do with the president's thinking. Now, I asked the president about these parallel talks that are taking place between Iran and Oman about control of the Strait of Hormuz, and the president told Fox News, if Oman gets in the way, will bomb the S out of them. We went on to talk about a variety of different regional topics, including the U.S. stockpiles. of weapons that are currently stationed in the Middle East.

The president says what we've used so far is peanuts. He went on to say the United States has a lot of mid-level weapons and that many of the more advanced systems, the president says, were given away by President Biden to Ukraine, for example, when we're talking about air defense that is needed right now in the Middle East. The president also spoke about U.S. ally Israel. Remember his son-in-law and top negotiator Jared Kushner is in the region. He met yesterday with Khalil Al-Haya,

the current Hamas chief in Egypt. And the president said that they have a different channel with Hamas and that ultimately they are giving up their guns, talking about the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip. I asked the president about the upcoming Israeli elections in October, and President Trump told Fox News, I think it's most appropriate for me to stay out of Israeli elections, but I may endorse somebody.

And so a lot of headlines here, the president talking about the latest. It'd be appropriate, but I'm not going to do this. Yes. I think the chances of Iran waving the white flag are pretty thin right now. The white flag of surrender. We are precariously low on our strategic reserves to the point where the caverns are going to implode. We have U.S. military personnel on a ship for something. something like about 290 days now, a record number of days, who have not been able to get resupplied

because Iran destroyed so many of our bases in the region that we were not told of. These bases would have supplied this ship, undoubtedly, and that's gone. So essentially, like, I mean, contemplate who is sitting in their lap a ticking time bomb? so much so that here is J.D. Vance, who is now expressing the reality of the conversations that are happening in the White House.

In a moment, we'll explain to you why we know that he got out ahead of his skis, maybe, or told stories out of school in a way that the principal was going to call him into the office. But here he is with Will Kane, making it absolutely clear.

showing the value of this war, the number one goal of this war is to get back to where we were before we started this war. Go ahead. For the benefit of the American people, and it really is twofold. It's ensuring that the Gulf countries continue to send oil and gas to the world economy so that we have energy price stability. That's obviously important for the American people. I know that oil is down today, and it's way down from the highs in the world.

early days of the conflict. That's goal number one. Keep oil and gas cheap for Americans all over our country. And then obviously goal number two is ensure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon. I feel confident we're accomplishing both of those goals, but it's inherently an unpredictable thing because the Iranians themselves are unpredictable, and they sometimes don't honor the commitments they've made to us. Fascinating, fascinating. So the people that we attacked are completely unpredictable. We had no idea they would respond. in this way. It was also unpredictable that we would exhaust all of

our weapons on Iran and nothing would change there. Despite the fact that on this very show and I'm sure in a million other places, we had experts on months, years, throughout any conversations we've had with Iran, we say you cannot

decapitate Iran like you could some Latin American country or frankly, other countries in the middle east because the Iranian Guard is so decentralized. And apparently now the hardliners in Iran have given the Iranian Guard even more control of the military. But again, it's decentralized. So it's completely unpredictable that they would do this.

And our goal, number one, is to make sure that we get back to where we were months ago when we started this conflict. And then, you know, number two is the fake excuse. why we had this war. Remember when we got in this war because of the people of Iran deserve freedom? The who? We're going to punish them now for their lack of freedom. And apparently Donald Trump was listening last night because as he said, you know, when he said in his comment like, I don't care about the midterms, I don't care about any of it. I have no timeline. And he's saying this because he thinks he's being clever.

And he's going to fool the Iranians into thinking like, wow, this guy can wait us out. Like when he said the USS Lincoln people haven't been there long enough. Right. Exactly. Like he. And his whole theory of the case is if I pretend that I'm completely not, I just don't care, then Iran will cave. And so here's Donald Trump, obviously, very angry that J.D. Vance has given away the store on Fox News by telling everybody that, hey, we don't really care about the nuclear thing. I mean, it's number two, but here it is. Oh, and pause it. Yeah, take that down because I just want to say apologies to those listeners of ours who pay $100,000 to see Trump's, truths in advance. You've probably already seen this.

Yeah, I put 50G down on the number one goal shifting to not having a nuke. Well, that's on Kalshi. You make those bets. But this is just... But I had got the info. This is, yeah, just to get the inside track so you can invest properly. Donald Trump truthed out this morning. The number one goal is, and you should read that as the number one goal JD is and always will be JD that Iran cannot have JD. He just puts in commas when he wants to make it clear he's talking to.

In any way, comma, shape, comma, or form, comma, a nuclear weapon. Thank you for your attention to this matter. President Donald J. Trump. J.D. Stats for giant douche. Yes. Truth that out.

You just gave away the store. I had them on their knees. I had Iran on their knees, and you gave it away. It's the Vandals and J.D. Vance who are ruining everything. In a moment, we're going to have Daniel Bessner on. The story in, journalist,

associate professor of American foreign policy on his book, imperialist realism, politics, culture at the end of the American century. And also the co-host of American prestige, right? Yep. And he wanted me to plug his new substack, which is also imperialist realism. Oh, okay. And his substack imperialist realism.

Ooh, talk about, um, branding. Talk about real politic. Do my substack and not my podcast. We'll be with him in just a moment. And then Elijah Manly, uh, but first a, a, word from our sponsors. We have two of them today. Shouldn't have read this before the show.

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them support the show tell them we sent you and we'll put all the information in the podcast and youtube uh descriptions quick break when we come back daniel bessner on his book the uh imperious realism politics and culture at the end of the american century we are back sam cedar on the majority report emma viglin out today it is a pleasure to welcome back to the program Daniel Bessner, historian, journalist, associate professor of American foreign policy at the University of Washington. This new book, Imperialist Realism, Politics and Culture at the End of the American Century, which has both been born out of and given birth to his substack, Imperial Realism by the same name, and, of course, also a co-host of American prestige.

Danny back on the program. Thanks so much for being here. Thanks very much for having me, Sam. It's a pleasure to be back. Let's start with Mark Fisher and capitalist realism, which is a concept that he developed and you have sort of like extended or at least borrowed like sort of the dynamic in some way to explain the era we're in now. So give us a sense of that.

And then I want to go to the era that preceded this one, and then we'll get to the era we're in now. Well, yeah, no, let's do it. So Mark Fisher wrote kind of a blog post that became pretty popular, and it was published as a book called Capitalist Realism, colon, is there no alternative? And so realism itself is a concept

that has a deep history and philosophy and intellectual history and sort of the notion of looking at the world as it is. But Fisher, building on the work of Frederick Jameson, a famous literary theorist, and also flound of the pod, Slavo Gijijek, reappropriated that to talk about what it felt like to be living in a capitalist world in the 2000s and 2010s, effectively after the end of the Cold War, although I don't think he really periodized it. He was more of a literary theorist, wasn't a historian per se. And he argued famous phrase,

that it's easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism. And so I actually came to my own concept of imperialist realism from a bit of a circuitous route. I was tasked with reviewing a video game, the Call of Duty, Black Ops, Cold War video game. I'm sure people know Call of Duty is a very famous first-person shooter. And I imagine, like many lefties and liberals,

I came into the game thinking that it would just be, you know, if not totally, but basically rah-rah US Empire, or raw, raw U.S. foreign policy. But what I actually discovered was that it was much more ambivalent about U.S. foreign relations in the United States' role in the world. It essentially presented the protagonist of the game as, for lack of a better phrase, evil sociopaths, genuine psychopaths, sort of the bad guys in the John Milius film. And I started to think through what did that mean, where you have this really profound

criticism of American Empire as being run effectively by socialists. sociopaths, but no vision within the game of there could be another world, an alternative world as possible. And that just reminded me of Fisher. And basically from there, I started to develop this concept of imperialist realism in a much more historian's way than Fisher did, really trying to periodize it to a particular moment. And I've been talking for a while. I could get into why, but that's basically the long and short of it. No, get into the why. I mean, I think the, and, you know, the the I just want people to sort of marinate in the idea of what that means to not be able to envision the end of capitalism before the end of of the world and uh you know we have a lot of like

a post-apocalyptic movie like it's very easy to to envision the end of the world uh yet it's very hard to envision the end of capitalism and similarly speaking our empire it's very very very difficult to sort of like, and that constrains us in the way that we think about things, obviously. If you don't even have a concept that it could be different, you start, your starting point starts from a different place. Absolutely. And if you want to think about it in pop culture terms, think about how many walking deads there are versus how many Star Trek's. Star Trek is a genuine envision of an alternative post-capitalist future. And there were more than just one Star Trek throughout the history of pop culture. But now something like that.

seems almost unimaginable. And you could even look at the Star Trek movies. They weren't really emphasizing the post-capitals in there, but that's almost a different story. So I link imperialist realism, this notion that it's easier to imagine at the end of the world and the end of the American Empire to two things. First, what I've called the end of mass politics. And what I mean by that is that you could actually trace, beginning from the 1940s

onward, a conscious decision made by the American elite to essentially insulate U.S. foreign policymaking from the whims of the public and even Congress. And the famous quote or factoid there, rather, is the fact that Congress hasn't declared war since 1942. Obviously, the United States has fought many wars since then. And so that's one structuring condition is that people feel oftentimes rightly when it comes to American foreign policy that they aren't able to shape policy decisions and really, really the government doesn't listen to them. You can even look at it with the Iran War, which is unique.

And that is, to my mind, to my understanding, at least the only American War that actually started off incredibly unpopular. Most American wars have a surge of popularity at the beginning, and then they become unpopular. The Iran War, no one wanted that. Didn't really matter. You could even look to the Iraq War, which before it occurred, there was the largest mass protest in history, didn't matter because the elite is insulated from the public when it

comes to foreign policy makers. Trump, I mean, Bush specifically said I'm not, I'm not going to listen to a focus group in response to those protests. Exactly. It's a perfect quote. So that's one condition. And then the other condition, maybe the more approximate condition, because the end of mass politics has been going on for almost a century, is the failure of the global war

and terror. That it's difficult for us to remember now, but Sam, you'll remember and I'll remember because we're a bit older, is that people really really, really. really, an Americans in particular, went into the global war on terror with actual hopes. The Cold War had ended. The United States was a world hegemon. The United States was actually going to make the world more democratic. But obviously, the many failures since then, the failure of Afghanistan, the failure of Iraq, the rise of ISIS, the failure of Libya, as I think given lie to the claim that the United States is able to use its admittedly awesome power

in the service of the greater good. So I think those two structural factors, factors have combined to create imperialist realism, but it's just very quickly as I think defined by three things. First, cynicism about the use of American power. Second, the belief that even though the United States can't make the world a better place, the United States must therefore act in the world. And that is due to two things. One, the sheer reality of American power and two, the Protestant heritage of this country, which has an evangelical tinge to it. And then finally, the 10- You call that in the book missionism. Is that right?

Missionism. Correct. Missionism. Apologies, correct. So, and then cynicism, missionism, and then the tension between cynicism and missionism, but leads to what I think is this notion of tragic guilt, that even though the United States can't make the world a better place, it must act, and therefore we feel guilty about it. And you saw this very much in the Biden administration vis-a-vis Gaza.

and you saw it over the past 25 years vis-a-vis the war and terror generally with Iraq and Afghanistan and all so those are sort of the key features of the of this term imperialist realism which I explore in the book and on the sub-sac both of which have the same name imperialism let's go back to what preceded imperial well before we go back like what what what is the the the who is the who is impacted and who is generating this um uh the imperial realism like like because i imagine that a u.s i suspect the u.s foreign policy impetus has not dramatically changed over the course of our entire history it is somebody has a financial interest, some entity, whether it's, you know, George Washington wants to get real estate in the, what was then the Pacific Northwest, or, you know, somebody wants control of the bananas in Central America or somebody has oil interests or there's, I mean, there's always that

at the heart of what seems like U.S. foreign policy. and then there's this sort of nougat that, you know, surrounds it on some level. Is that what we're talking about? Are we in like the nougat here? Partially. So I think as American foreign policy at sort of fundamental level being driven by two things. And the way that I put it, it's not only Marx, like you said, the economic, but it's also angles the focus on security.

So I think the two primary drivers of most of human history are economic incentives, but also incentives for security. This is really an explanation for westward expansion, the expansion overseas and the seizure of colonies during the Spanish-American War, the domination of the Western Hemisphere, and then the United States going global after 1945. I think it's a combination of both economic interests and security interests. Now, what you and I might define as a genuine security interest differs from what, let's say, a Curtis Lame might have defined a security interest, but it was a real driver. It wasn't just money, even though that's a key feature. But one thing that I do think it is important to understand is that the people who were building the American Empire from 1776 forward

really did believe that they were making the world a better place. Now, defined in various ways by different people over time. But there is this key feature, which I do think is unique, partially to the United States, in this sense of Protestant mission that is embedded in the country's founding from the 17th century forward. The city on a hill speech, which is given by a pastor or lay leader, before the Puritans even reached the United States in the 17th century, they're talking about building a city on a hill. Now that city on the hill changes from something shining the light to going out and forcing

people to become a city on a hill, but it was real. There was this notion that the new world was going to push capital P progress in capital age history in a direction. And I think what has defined really the last 10 years since 2015, 2016, is this total cynicism about that belief, that even that we look at the United States' foreign policy as primarily being driven by cynical incentives or realist objective incentives. And that is true. There is also this ideological, superstructural notion to what's going on here. And I think what's unique about the current era is that we no longer have even that. That George W. Bush really did believe he was bringing democracy to the Middle East.

I know that sounds crazy, but he really did believe this. Like part of the American foreign policy establishment really did believe that going to Vietnam was going, you're going to turn South Vietnam into a liberal democratic capital estate, and that was going to show the world what you can do. It wasn't the major or the sole reason, but it was a real primary reason. And I think we don't live in that world any longer. So that is, I think, what came before, if we're connecting it to your question, what came before this moment of imperialist realism, this profound cynicism about the United States' place in the world.

And how is it spread just very quickly? I think it's spread throughout pop culture. So you mentioned zombie movies. I think there's this notion that there's always an enemy out there. You saw it in basically everything zombie, but think about Game of Thrones. What is the message of the first few seasons of Game of Thrones? is that there's an enemy out there. No one believes the people who are stationed on the wall that these white workers are real,

and then they're basically bitten the ass because of it. And I think this is a metaphor for American foreign policy that you see all over the place. And we could get into more pop cultural examples. But I think it's what the theorist Raymond Williams called a structure of feeling. It sort of limits the common sense of an era. about what is and isn't possible. So really, when we're talking about this new era, where we have, which it seems to be most marked by the shedding of the delusion or artifice,

depending on who wields it, but, you know, it existed enough as a actual delusion that it was able to be wielded as, as an artifice, that we, are going to, in some way, based upon our perception, civilize the rest of the world, essentially. And I mean, people could see this, like, as insane of an idea as it was, they were sending Heritage Foundation interns into Baghdad. And they weren't doing that because they thought, you know, their version of civilization was like, this is going to be a Milton Freedom,

Friedman Paradise, we're going to privatize everything here. Everybody's going to make money and this is going to work. And it's, but it's, you know, they all, these bright-eyed, bushy-tailed Heritage Foundation interns who were running Iraq for 15 minutes really thought that they were spreading democracy and American freedom and Americanism. And so that's gone. And that's a, I mean, that's a, is that a Trump? Like, what accounts for that? Like, you say it's the failures of the, um, the war on terror. We had the longest wars that we've had, essentially in, in this century of American, or I should say, throughout American history happened in this century. Afghanistan is, you know, at least functioning in, and more so than people would have given, Biden credit for, I think.

But what, is it just Trump? Or is it Trump plus, or I should say, is it, is it just the, the failure of the, the, the sort of like, the failure of Americanizing everything? Or is it that plus Trump, who is now just sort of like not even, we just, we like the people do good things for me. We don't like the people who don't. We're going to be buddies with the guy who chopped up. an American journalist into a hundred million pieces because that's what's going to work for

me. Yeah, I mean, to some degree, Trump is the ultimate example of the cynical elements of imperialist realism. And then there are people within his administration like Marco Rubio, who does have an ideological commitment to, for example, preventing Latin America from what he envisions as going communist. I think this is all ultimately, to put it in more of a medium-term frame a come down from the victory, quote unquote, in the Cold War. Because what the victory in the Cold War did is that it essentially, and this is where my story plays into Fisher's story, even though he isn't as explicit about this, it basically removed political, economical alternatives from viable consideration in a real way.

And some people disagree with me, but I think this is increasingly becoming consensus. I think, for example, that basically every country in the world except North Korea has embraced some form of capitalism. China has a state capitalist form. We have a liberal democratic, though increasingly oligarchic form of capitalism. Russia has a kleptocratic oligarchic form of capitalism. Western European states have a more social democratic form of capitalism. But the key feature here is that capitalism after the end of the Cold War and the disappearance or the dissipation of the communist alternative has essentially conquered the globe. So one of the things is that I like to say is that Fukuyama was right,

but for the wrong reasons. Because in his famous end of history essay, Fukuyama says that liberalism will be the last ideology. He thought that every country would become liberal, that once China embraced capitalism, political liberalism would follow. Same for the Soviet Union, Qum Russia. But what actually happened is that once every country in the world embraced capitalism, the justifying ideology of liberalism, which accompanied the rise of capitalism in the 19th and 20th centuries in basically the quote unquote Western world, really the North Atlantic world. It's that liberalism itself that's going away. You don't need that justifying ideology. So I think you see our politics here becoming increasingly illiberal,

becoming increasingly authoritarian. But at the same time, what is quite strange is that there hasn't been another ideology to come up and replace it, even what, you know, Trump ridiculously calls communists or the fact that, you know, many people listening are Democratic socialists, the horizon of democratic socialism is effectively a return to New Deal liberalism. It's not, you know, a transformation of the economy, having it run by various Soviets at the level of the workplace. So I think we have this moment where no alternative world is possible, which is ultimately an upshot of the end of political, economic, ideological challenges to liberal democracy in the Western world.

So if liberalism is sort of like, I guess, wilting on the vine, because there's no incentive structure to promote it, now that there's no competition to capitalism around the world, you don't need to bring up the sort of like, this is how we justify capitalism is because look how liberal our society is and it's, you know, we're making educational gains. We're making sort of thought gains. We're, you know, we're moving civilized. We're evolving civilization in this way. And that's how we justify the sort of the greedy aspects of capitalism because the greedy aspects

of capitalism, a lot. this sort of liberalism to flourish. But once that competition's gone, liberalism dies on the vine. Why does there have to be something that fills that vacuum? I think you're exactly right. People use that famous crompsychote,

like it's an interregnum and now is a time of monsters. The interregnum assumes a coming regnum. Things will change, right? Like, history is never static, Whether it's an exogenous force like climate change or a meteor or an endogenous force that I am unable to see, things will change. But I think what is really unique about our moment is it feels static.

And this is, I think, one of the reasons that, like, I don't know how you feel, Sam, but I feel always a little bit nuts all the time. Because I think about nothing but politics. I'm posting about nothing but politics, but change structurally seems impossible. So we have this strange moment where you have this like extreme. politicization, but there's no way to change things. And I think that has a negative psychic effect on basically everyone. And I think you see it reflected in increased polarization and politics ironically becoming the center of people's lives in a moment when we don't have the actual ability to change policy. It's ironically a function of that. But I think you're totally

right. Nothing seems on the horizon to me. And I mean, the good news is that I think at least in time will tell. I don't think like MAGA is going to create a head hegemony, like the New Deal liberals created a hegemony and the Democrats ran Congress for 50 years. I don't see that happening with the MAGA movement. So that's the good part. But the bad part is I think our politics will be increasingly sclerotic where we'll go back and forth between political parties. Nothing will really change unless there's a genuinely revolutionary leader like FDR who's able to really and willing, ready and willing to take on on structures. Maybe AOC is that leader. I don't know. But I think we need someone like that. We don't need one Lena Con. We need 5,000 Lenacons. And right now, that doesn't seem to be on the

table. I'll all say to be a little bit more positive is sometimes it's darkest before the dawn. Haven't you ever heard of that, Danny? It's beautiful. That's it. I heard it. I heard it, I think, from a dead song, but I feel like it probably has a place in literary history. I mean, that, I mean, it is, is, do you think the increase in engagement? I don't know. I mean, I have some weird thoughts about the increase in engagement in this version of the Trump years. In some ways, it's increased, but it's also sort of like not looking at the right stuff in my estimation, not that there's right stuff, but or it's, there's less awareness of the worst stuff, I should say that, which is, you know, in my estimation, the complete, like, destruction of our

government, you know, in terms of the apparatus inside. People don't pay attention to that as much. There are other sort of like sexier things, but nothing that I think is going to resonate for as long as is that, like to getting rid of the Treasury announces, getting rid of the shelf. company database. Okay, we're just going to do that. It will take a decade or two to get back to if, if, you know, someone starts on day one and they have the resources to do it. Do you think that the increase, is the increase in awareness of politics or engagement? Because we do, regardless of maybe not focusing on what I want people to focus on, people are more engaged. Is that a function of the sort of liberalism dying, or is it coincidental?

I think a lot of things that seem settled are no longer settled. And I think it took many people, including myself, a long time to recognize that over the last 10 years. For example, everyone always talks about the norms. norms are basically just a form of settled social, cultural opinion and what is acceptable and what is not. But clearly Trump has broken dozens, if not hundreds of norms, and no one is able to do anything because the hegemonic ideology that underwrote those, which is small L liberalism, not liberalism in sort of the Democratic Party sense, but a type of procedural liberalism,

which is that you value the institutions, which basically held true from FDR to Trump, even though obviously Reagan and George W. Bush are different than Clinton and Obama, though they did share several similarities to say to the least. They all agreed on sort of the rules of the game. And with the hegemony of liberalism coming apart because liberalism has failed to deliver to enough people, I think those rules are open to consideration again. Now, I mean, to put, this could be positive. I mean, moments of destabilization could lead to moments of transition that obviously in this country,

at least are sorely needed. I mean, famously, we are now living in an era that is more wealth inequality than the Gilded Age, and that oligarchization has come to such a point where a small number of people control an enormous amount of wealth, and this is just unable to last. So I think that this is necessarily an open for a moment for questioning. The problem, though, is that the American state that you just highlighted, Sam, has been designed to prevent people, ordinary people, from accumulating power. So there is this tension where everyone knows it needs to change,

but the people don't have the institutional power to enact the change. Usually in those moments, that leads to some form of revolutionary transformation. But the way that I put it is it's not in 1917 or 1789. No group of citizens is able to take on any modern military in a genuine way, which is why my co-host, Derek, on American prestige, he often jokes like, when are the drone strikes against citizens going to start? Which is just basically saying that it's very difficult to take on an American state

or really any state that has a monopoly of violence, which is why I don't recommend it. I don't think a revolutionary strategy has any chance of succeeding, but then the institutional strategy also seems like a very, you know, Sisyphian path forward. So again, I'm raising questions more than providing. answers. And this is what leads to this realism notion that it's easier to imagine the end of the world than basically any political transformation, whether you're talking about capitalist transformation or talking about imperialist transformation. And I think that's the moment in which we find ourselves. A, I would say, Derek does not know what a joke structure is.

B, I would ask, like, do you think like this, the, this era that we're living in of imperialist realism, and it also exists alongside the other sort of like realism where we can't imagine a broader future, but this, you're specifically talking in terms of foreign policy, which is Trump? a symptom of that or is he a catalyst in terms of like, I mean, is this the is the imperiless real realism experienced just by the people? Or is it also do you think experienced by the people by the people who are in the foreign policy, you know, realm or institutions? Or do they even exist anymore in the same way because of Trump, who is like, I'm just doing whatever, you know, Putin was in my ear.

And then, you know, I was really impressed with the Chinese, you know, dishware. And so, you know, whatever it is. I think Trump is both a symptom and the cause in the sense that he's an intensification. So Trump is obviously like just extraordinarily cynical. He doesn't even make any ideological claims in any way whatsoever. The United States is not, you know, taking down Iran to turn into a democracy, like would have been said during George. Was it not about the supposed 30,000 people that Iran killed?

Yeah, the 5 billion protesters killed. I mean, a lot of people were killed, but not the numbers that were killed. given out. I think what estimates are like 11,000, but don't call me on that. But they said something like, so not no one, but not 40 or 50,000. But anyway, it's not to make the country democratic. It's not to help the green moon. It's to basically get the oil. He literally says that. But you also find that cynicism under Biden. For example, like think about all the tirelessly working for a ceasefire. Right. That the Biden administration was talking about vis-a-vis Gaza. I mean, it just, the more and more information that comes out that just is not true,

that you have Israeli officials effectively saying they never told us to stop. And ironically, from my understanding is that in Israel, they kept on going because they thought the Americans were going to do what they usually do, which is eventually tell them to stop, and they just never did. So they just kept on going. So I think cynicism is something that basically crosses party lines and as is the missionism, which you get less in the Trump administration that you had a lot of invited. in was this notion of guilt, was this notion that we had to act, otherwise someone else would act.

There's less of that in Trump himself and the coterie of people around. But I still think that notion of tragic guilt is a substrate of American politics. But what Trump has certainly done is that he's intensified it. You know, the Biden administration is like, oh, they hem and ha, but we have to give Israel this money and this weapons, but we feel terrible about it. You know, it's to combat terrorism. Trump has none of that feel terrible about it. So in that sense, it's even an intensification of this real, quote-unquote, realism of imperialist realism. And what comes next?

I don't know because I think it might turn out to be that this was an artifact of our gerontocracy, that we have people who came a political age in a very peculiar historical moment of American power and maybe a president Buttigieg or even a president, Vance, would approach things differently, difficult to know. But that remains to be seen. I want to just put a pin in that and get to like what the potential, what it might look like for a different generation. But what is the, I mean, I understand that the, you know, the capitalist realism was a, just a sort of like a metaphor and a structure for you to understand and explain imperialist realism. But how much does where we are in terms of capitalism and maybe this.

also speaks to the absence of another system in the wake of the end of the Cold War that has sort of like made it so unbridled. But like, you know, I'm like, how much of that informs our cynicism today? I mean, I'm thinking of like Brent McGirk, for instance, who I suspect we might find out had even more outsized influence over Biden than we thought. I mean, this is not in any way to exculpate Biden, but that who knows how conscious Biden was of anything. And McGar clearly a serious ideologue and is now working, like he's making reams and

reams of cash for like venture capital and Middle Eastern wheeling and dealing with all of the people who stood to gain from this conflict. I mean, it's just money hand over fist. And I wonder if like that's got to, there is a quality with this generation that has been in power of like, we're getting hours before the bank. closes its doors or whatever it is, whatever the metaphor is. But we're getting hours now. So there's just like mass, almost like getaway car feel where it's like who cares what happens in the wake of this. We're going to have our cash and maybe I'll be living in a bunker in New Zealand or

whatever. Yeah, it's funny with the bunker stuff. Who do you think is going to be the first person to lose power in a post-apocalyptic society, the people who have the money? So that strategy never made sense. There'd be about five seconds before the mercenaries took over those bunkers. But anyway, I think what you're describing, Sam, is that there's been this decrease in the sense of national feeling that if you go back to the 50s and the 60s when the CEOs only made 20 times, as opposed to 20,000 times or whatever the number is in their employees, there was a sense of common purpose and common nationhood. And though I have to explore this in more depth, I think a lot of that is linked to mass participation in war. So you think you think, you think,

Think about Mad Men, right? The show Mad Men. Roger Sterling was a veteran of World War II, and he was about as elite as it can possibly get, but he was a combat veteran of the Pacific Theater. That gave people like that a sense of identity with other people who served in the war, and everyone basically served in the war in one capacity or another.

And so I think this is how, like, empire comes in. Since the decline of mass of war, when the draft ended in the 1970s, and now we're basically 50 plus years. Out of that, Trump brags about avoiding the Vietnam War. What is his famous line, avoiding venereal disease was his Vietnam? I think there's been a decline in a sense of common nation-ness and common nationhood because there's been a significant decline in shared experience.

Again, to go to pop culture, the sort of stereotype of the World War II movies, you have a guy from the South, a guy from Brooklyn, you know, a Puerto Rican guy, a Jewish guy, and obviously there are certain people who are there, namely people of African descent, but that this is still this common coming together across class and ethnicity. And we haven't had any mass experience like that in literal decades. People experience the Great Recession very differently than based on class. People experience the war on terror. I mean, for me, I would experience COVID differently based on those things, too,

which theoretically you could imagine in a different era might be something that would bring people together, I guess, as a shared experience, but no. That's a perfect example. That's a perfect example. And we have nothing like that. So when there's no sense of common belonging in a nation, you get people who are just basically trying to, you know, steal the hubcaps off of the remaining tires that still exist in the American Empire. And we live obviously in an incredibly corrupt, incredibly oligarchic era. And I think the open question for people like us and people coming behind us is how do we change that how do we give a sense of nationhood without fighting devastating wars or going through

terrible experiences i think this is really an open question but it's clearly that sense of common belonging has come apart and that common belonging is was i think a way that capitalism was tempered in a in a genuine way that it was inappropriate to make 40,000 times what you know your your employee made because you were participating in a common project and no one Because that guy, I mean, those guys on the factory floor, they may have saved your life in battle or in some fashion. How much, that's fascinating. It's also, I have to say, a little bit depressing because you don't want to necessarily have a war where everybody's going to have to be enlist to bring the country together. 9-11 did not bring the country together either.

I mean, it certainly, maybe there was an opportunity to do so. The only thing that Bush asked of people was to keep shopping. And they did, you know, to the extent that they could. Does would the emancipation movements of the 60s also have added, if the absence of a shared experience was one factor in, undermining or creating the cynicism of like, we're all in this for ourselves. And so was the emancipatory movements, women, black people in the 60s, did that also contribute to it? The idea that like we got to just get our own on some level?

It's interesting. I think those movements were, to some degree, at least in a formal political sense, quite successful. But two of the largest projects that they undertook beyond this sort of identity-based notions, which I mean, I think are crucial. I'm not a class first leftist. I think it is important to focus on identity, gender, sexual, racial, ethnic identity. In addition to class identity. But what they weren't able to really shift was the class and imperialist identity. And this is, you know, this is exactly what Martin Luther King Jr. was turning to right before he was assassinated. It was the poor people's march. It was the focus now that we've got these civil rights based on race, now we've got to turn towards combating capitalism and combating. The structure that disempowered these people in the first place, yes. And imperialism. And though, you know, for those conspiracy theorists out there, that's a claim as to why he was assassinated because he was now taking on the two fundamental structures.

structures, which were capitalism and imperialism. So I think those movements, while successful in their own right in very significant ways, didn't basically take the two sort of pylons of the United States' global hegemony in the second half of the 20th century, wasn't able to take those two on. It was obviously a very difficult thing. I haven't taken them on either, and no one has since. But I wonder if some of the citizen is also a function of the backlash. I'm not making a critique of the amant.

movements. I am making a critique of the white guy who, you know, what's his face in madmen, he also would have had an issue. Not only does he no longer have that connection to his, you know, fellow man, white man, frankly, because he didn't, you know, we don't have a World War II experience. But he's also now looking around going like, wait a second, I can't comment on my secretary's legs. There's a black guy in the office next door to me, and he's not bringing me my sandwich. Like, what is, what's going on here? I mean, that seems like it's a big part of it that has to also add to this sense of like,

F this, country has gone to hell. I'm just getting mine. I think that's absolutely correct. I think there were, there was a racialist backlash, and there was a gender. backlash against people losing their hegemonic position in society. And this didn't help that this also happened at the very same time that deindustrialization really destroyed the working class amongst large portions of American society. And so I think the sort of gender and racial, and one might also add sexual backlash,

coupled with deindustrialization, created a cynicism amongst the emergent racialized elite that did lead them to just be like, leave behind the sense of common nationhood and common belonging. That was never regenerated because World War II receded further and further into the past. And I actually talk about this a bit on my substack. I published a piece called The End of the Nazi Taboo, which is that we see this emergence of all this Nazi stuff in recent years. And I think that's also partially an artifact of World War II retreating more and more into the past.

that a lot of the norms that were set up by that war, that you don't screw over everyone in your company, that you don't wear a swastika unless you're literally a hell's angel, are starting to come apart as liberalism itself comes apart. So it's just like a totalizing thing that is happening right now. You write in the book, and you give a vision of what a democratic socialist foreign policy would look like, democracy, accountability, anti-militarism,

theft deflation, and internationalism. I know you go through this on the substack as well on a regular basis or a piecemeal as it works. But what do you anticipate will come next? I mean, hope springs eternal. It would be great if we had your prescription of a foreign policy. But what comes next in the, the wake of something like this. I mean, let's presume for a moment that Donald Trump does not run for

a third term, does not win for a third term, maybe even, you know, people pass away, Daniel. And that would be, of course, nature's way of telling us that it was time for Donald Trump to leave. But what comes after this? Like, it seems to me we're at, I guess we're always at a crossroads, but it's almost as if in the past when we are crossroads, there's two paved options that are going. And now we're just at the end of the road. And it's all just sandy terrain or like, you know, like I just imagine like a road that was planned to go through a desert

and halfway through they ran out of money and they said, screw it. We're ending it here. And that we're going to end there. And it feels like we could go in any direction. what's your sense of like, is there a riverbed that maybe we'll follow or what, what do you think it'll be? Well, to some degree, American history is unique because we're a presidential system. And presidential systems tend to have gigantic transformations, much more so than parliamentary systems, which by almost structure, incorporate more radical criticisms into the major political parties.

And to some sense, in some sense, we're overdue. If you think about American history, goes in roughly 80-year cycles from the founding to the Civil War, which was defined by early industrialization and the replacement of the agrarian southern class by the northern merchant class from the Civil War to the New Deal when you have basically the introduction of social democracy in the New Deal. And what we're witnessing now, I think, is a full coming a part of the New Deal order. And frankly, Obama had a chance in 2008 and 2009 to genuinely transform the political economy of the United States by, for example, nationalizing. the banks, not bailing out Wall Street. It's really wild. Not only not bailing out Wall Street, but, you know, having the Fed, obviously he doesn't control the Fed, but the Fed then creating zero interest rates, which allowed surviving companies to purchase every other company. We're in media. That has happened in media. So I think that what could come next to sort of be on a positive, put it on a

positive note and on a positive note here is something genuinely revolutionary, that once the gerontocratic oligarchy of the baby boomers, at least their political hold, strangle hold goes away when they literally die. When younger politicians are elected, even perhaps someone who is a Republican, we could maybe see genuine transformation, or at least transformations that are more in line with the political reality of, you know, the period after 1980, as opposed to the political reality of 1950 to 1975. So we could hope for that. I think a lot of it depends on who wins municipal elections. are there going to be more Zaran Mondani's? Is it going to be AOC or Buttigieg?

Is it going to be a Democrat or a Republican? But I do think that once the gerontocracy itself begins to wither away, literally, we could see some positive changes in a way that we haven't seen in quite a long time. Well, Hope Springs Eternal. That's certainly been the, you know, the read that I've been hanging on to as the water overflows the banks and uh but uh daniel besner uh the book is imperialist realism politics and culture at the end of the american century you could check out uh daniel substack imperialist realism we will put a link to both the book and the substack uh and uh american prestige as well uh the podcast uh thanks so

much for uh coming on really appreciate it and congratulations on the book thanks sam i'm content maxing as you could see. Have a great rest of your. Totally content maxing. Appreciate it. Bye. All right, folks. Edward Gregorian, I can't believe you didn't ask for a Thanos reference when he said I can do more pop culture references.

Seems like a missed opportunity. Sam, I'm not mad at you, but I'm disappointed. I understand. Folks. What's that? Oh, gosh. We're going to take quick break. And when we come back, I'm sorry about that.

I completely blanked. When we come back, we'll be talking to Elijah Manley running for Congress in Florida's 20th district. We're right back after this. We are back, Sam Cedar on the Majority Report. Emma Viglin is out today. Joining us now, Elijah Manley. He is a candidate in the Democratic primary in Florida's 20th. congressional district.

This primary is tomorrow. And Elijah is, his main opponent at this point, is Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who doesn't even live in the district and is threatening to take away what has been a traditionally

black represented district in Florida. Elijah, welcome to the program. why did you enter this race? Yes, Samuel, I entered this race back in January of last year. And I got into it because obviously we saw Donald Trump come back in the office and we saw, you know, affordability crisis. We saw ICE terrorizing our communities. And I made a decision to get into race because I thought our Democratic Party was not doing the right thing.

They didn't have any real leadership. The party was broken. And I wanted to give it a try. This was well before they did redistricting. I was running against a Democrat that had, you know, federal investigations against her for fraud and PPP fraud. So I got in the race. And we had a pretty decent campaign going on for a while. And then redistricting hit us.

That Democrat got indicted. We saw redistrictinging. And then Debbie Washington, Michelle made the decision to come jump over here in a seat in May. We should say that that Democrat, she resigned in April. April, but she's running again in the new district. Is that right? She's still running after resigning in April for essentially stealing $6 million from the state of Florida and the federal government and COVID relief money. And she resigned. She had to resign for it. And, you know, the primary was pretty much over at that point in April because she was the

only real contender against me, the incumbent. And once she got out of the race and dropped out, it was pretty much done deal. And then literally two weeks later, or three weeks later, or not even two weeks later, they dropped the congressional map, a new congressional map in Florida, where they took away four Democratic seats. They chopped the district up a little bit. They kept this district intact, although they shrunk it a little bit. But this is a seat that was created in 1992,

wanted a voting rights act forcibly to make sure that Black Floridians had the ability to elect a candidate of our choice to come. Congress. And it's been that way for 34 years. First with Alcy Hastings, the late Alcy Hastings, and now it was Sheila Surface McCormick. Now the seat is vacant. And Debbie Washington Shultz, she could just run over here in this seat. Yeah, it's, first off, it's shocking to think, like, oh, wait a second, redistricting has helped me with, we have more voters in this district who are excited about somebody who has had to resign because of fraud. But here's Debbie Wasserman Schultz. And she doesn't even live in the

district is that right she lives in western she's not even she wouldn't even be her own congresswoman that's the funny part are you allowed to do that you are allowed to do it you just have to live in the state of florida but the constitution doesn't prohibit someone from represented so what um tell me what you have been doing up to this point and what people can do over the course of the next essentially 24 hours uh to help you win uh because she is basically hoping you for the other four candidates in the race to split the vote and walk into a congressional seat, which it's not even her own district,

with like 35, 40% of the vote. That's what seems like she's like that's what her game plan seems to be. Yeah, that's what she's banking on. But we've been knocking doors and phone banking all day today. and for the past few months to meet voters where they are and communicate with them. And I think we're seeing a surge in the district, but we still need some help. So if you have some time in the phone bank, please sign up. And if you are in South Florida area, you want to join us for a campus.

We have one today. But I get, you know, not everybody can be here for a campus. So the phone banking helps. You can still contribute to the campaign to help us out. But this is going to come down to the wire because every vote literally does matter. This seat was decided by five votes five years ago. So anything could happen here again. Five actual votes.

Five votes in a crowded field. Wow. And that's how she looked at it. So this is about, in many respects, really mobilizing. And I imagine the fact that the districts, where we districts so late, has made it very challenging to inform people exactly, you know, what Debbie Wasserman Schultz is doing. aside from all of the sort of like highly problematic position she has had whether she was chair of the DNC or as a congressperson just the idea that she doesn't even live in the district seems to be just insane to me yeah it was intentional too so she waited um the mat was signed in early may she waited until a week before the filing deadline to officially announce and that was intentional to keep people on edge to hold into her cash to drown everybody else's voice out and give nobody time to react. So, you know, that drowned a lot of donors and supporters. And then she got in the race with, you know, like

$3 million and a ton of APEC support. We didn't have the time to raise enough money to really give her, you know, much of a fight. But we've been doing the best that we could in the field and I think it's working. But we raised about 1.3 mil to her $3 million. and, you know, the 400,000 that A-PAC has dropped in this race in just a week. And so we've been fighting, you know, fighting back on that front. But she waited intentionally to the last week so that she could take full advantage of a split field and make it harder for anybody to raise money. Wow.

All right. Well, listen, I know you got campaigning to do. Tell us where people can go to phone bank. for you, or for that matter, you know, Canvas if they're in the neighborhood. I would say go to our mobilized page, or you can go to Elijah Manley.com to sign up for our phone making shift or for Canvas if you're in the neighborhood. And Elijah, just tell us briefly, just give us the top line of your, I mean, you've been endorsed by the P-T-T-C.

You have all sorts of endorsements. your personal story is absolutely just impressive and my understanding is you grew up homeless in Fort Lauderdale you've gone on to be a teacher

but tell us about your positions just inspire people to go over there's many hours left where a phone campaigning can make a different in a race that could be down to five votes, I mean, in the past. That's right. That's right. Literally, I recall. But, you know, in my case, I'm a progressive solidly.

And, you know, I'm a supporter of Medicare for All. I believe in a country as wealthy as ours, there's no reason why anybody should be without health care in this country. So when I get to Congress, I'm going to be co-sponsoring and sponsoring Medicare for all, taking on the drug companies and insurance companies that have been pretty much gouging the American people ending forever wars and genocide in Gaza. and also standing up for our democracy. I think the Democratic Party in many ways have gone silent

and allowed Donald Trump to destroy the country without any real opposition from the weak leaders that we have in Washington, D.C. And so I want to go there and be a part of the resistance to this administration, but also an agenda for the future as well, raising wages, providing people, health care as a human rights, stopping the ending wars, and making sure American dollars go to building America up

and not forever wars overseas. please. Elijah Manley, we will put a link to your sites where folks can go and phone bank or to get in touch and figure out what's the best way to canvas. Good luck tomorrow. Really appreciate you coming on and appreciate the fight that you've been putting up against Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and the other opponents you have in this race. Hopefully, we'll be talking to you on the other side of this as the Democratic nominee. Absolutely. Can't wait for it.

all right elijah manly we will uh put your stuff on uh majority report in our youtube and podcast description thanks again awesome thank you so much bye bye all right folks uh you heard it we will put um uh we'll put links right now in the podcast and youtube uh descriptions and at majority dot fm uh you know make 20 calls it'll take you maybe an hour hour, maybe an hour and a half. Who knows? Wasserman Schultz obviously has the advantage, but next time they won't be splitting the vote like this. I don't think good down there.

The thing about not living in the district, is that different state by state? Yes. Okay. Yeah, a lot of times, a lot of times, you have to live in the district. represent why because i know people yeah who who are like she understands what's best for them you got to trust her yeah she's done such a great job with the national party so um i mean i remember back when she was the dnc chair during the obama years uh there was it seemed to be well known that Obama did not like her.

They wanted her to go away, but they just didn't want to expend any capital on fighting her about it. That was it. That's what I understood it. Nobody thought that she was competent, which is impressive. That's near attendant?

Huh? I think even nearer Tandon probably didn't think that she was competent. Like she couldn't like she couldn't give Hillary the advantage without it being subtle. Like, you have one job to do. Just, you know, do it. Don't leave any fingerprints.

But, Article 1 of the Constitution states, representatives in the House need to live in the state, but not living in the district is not one, not a requirement. Says Brooklyn Progressive. So there it is. Matt can't handle the truth. Matt looks like he's about to pass out. He's so, like, shocked.

It's just like I've heard people that, like, run for office. and they moved to a place that they probably, frankly, wouldn't have lived. Well, you can't. This is the thing. You can't call her. Yeah, my friend Hillary. You can't.

You can't call her a carpet bagger. Because she didn't even pack up. She didn't back up. She didn't bag her carpet. Nope. She at least have a pieter. You would think. You would think.

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Also, just coffee. dot co-op. That's where you can buy Fair Trade coffee, hot chocolate. If you use the coupon code, majority you get 10% off. They have all sorts of blends and single origins. They're a great co-op that really

support their farmers and suppliers of coffee. Just coffee.comop. Matt! What's happening in the Matt Leckian Media universe? Yeah, Left Reckoning on our Sunday show last night for Left Reckoning patrons. We talked about Shrecki Theronian.

Anadar who is taking a loss well by going surfing and quoting Nelson Mandela. And also talking about the Texas races, all the races, the Democrats are looking pretty good there. David says, you know, not to trust polling, but check out where we're talking about Ken Paxton, blaming his primary race for the reason why James Talarico has everyone so nervous on the right side of things down there. I am Congressional baseball fan said, Sam, it's my birthday. All I really want to hear about is your top Apple picks for autumn 2026. They're not terribly different than they would have been from 2025, although I will say that at least in New York State banner year,

but I would go with a Snapdragon or a Crimson Crisp. and if you can get your hands, it's a little bit late on a pristine, I would go for the pristine as well. That's a, you know, I tried to give you a mix of apples there. But Snapdragon still remains my favorite. Don't come at me about Honeycrisp.

I get it. It's nice. It's not terribly sophisticated. Also requires a lot of spraying. That's the dirty little secret they don't tell you about. See you in the fun half Three months from now Six months from now

Nine months from now And I don't think it's going to be the same As it looks like in six months from now And I don't know if it's necessarily going to be better Six months from now than it is three months from now But I think around 18 months out We're going to look back and go like wow What?

What is that going on? It's nuts Wait a second Hold on for hold on for a second The majority. Emma, welcome to the program. Hey. Fun. Hat.

Matt. Who? Fun. What is up, everyone? Fun. No, me, keen. You did it. Fun hat.

Let's go Brandon. Let's go Brandon. Fun hat. Bradley, you want to say hello? Sorry to disappoint. Everyone, I'm just a random guy. It's all the boys today. Fundamentally false.

No, I'm sorry. Stop talking for a second. Let me finish. Where is this coming from, dude? But dude, you want to smoke this? Um, seven, eight? Yes. Yes?

It is you. I'm going to do with me. I think it is you. Who is you? No sound. Every single freaking day. What's on your mind? We can discuss free markets and we can discuss capitalism.

I'm going to go to life. Libertarians. They're so stupid though. Common sense says, of course. Gobbled e-gook. We fucking nailed them. So what's 79 plus 21? Challenge men.

I'm positively clivering. I believe 96, I want to say. 857. 210. 35. 501. 1 half. 3-8s.

911 for instance. $3,400, $1,900. $6.5,4, $3 trillion sold. It's a zero-sum game. Actually, you're making think less. But let me say this. Poop. You can call satire.

Sam goes to satire. On top of it all? Yeah. My favorite part about it. It's just like every day, all day, like everything you do. Without a doubt. Hey, buddy, we see you. Folks.

It's just the week being weeded out, obviously. Yeah, sundown guns out. But you should know. People just don't like to entertain ideas anymore. I have a question. Who cares? Our chat is enabled, folks. Got a jump.

You got to be quick. I get a jump. I'm losing. Clock, we're already late, and the guy's being a dick. So scroom. Sent to a gula. What is wrong with you? Love you, bye.

Love you. Bye-bye.