The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3592 - Trump's Government Shut Down and Argentine Bailout w/ Frederico Finchelstein

Episode Date: September 30, 2025

It's News Day Tuesday on the Majority Report On toady's show: Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries held a post-meeting press conference with Trump, where they declined to warn the public about the dangers of the spending bill and instead focused on procedure and decorum. Hours later, Trump posted a racist AI-generated video depicting Jeffries in a sombrero. The next day, Jeffries responded with a hollow display of self-serving bravado. Argentine historian and chair of the History Department at the New School, Frederico Finchelstein joins the program to discuss the Trump's administrations bail out of Milei's Argentina. In The Fun Half: Illinois governor JB Pritzker urges people to film, document and narrate ICE activities as the only way to hold these abusers to account is to have it on film. Pete Hegseth holds military top brass hostage as he performs his one-man show on the Warriors Ethos. Trump closes out the Hegseth rally with a sleepy, confused ramble about stairs and fascism. Ezra Klein doubles down on his claim that Democrats should run pro-life candidates in red states in a conversation with Ta-Nahisi Coates. Become a member at JoinTheMajorityReport.com: https://fans.fm/majority/join 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 AMQuickie 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: NAKED WINES: To get 6 bottles of wine for $39.99, head to NakedWines.com/MAJORITY and use code MAJORITY for both the code AND PASSWORD. CURRENT AFFAIRS: Go to currentaffairs.org/subscribe and enter the code MAJORITYREPORT at checkout. The offer expires October 31st FAST GROWING TREES: Get 15% off your first purchase.  FastGrowingTrees.com/majority SUNSET LAKE:  Head to SunsetLakeCBD.com and use the code FlowerPower25 to save 40% on all their sun grown flower, pre rolls, and even vapor cartridges. Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech 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 show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza’s music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com/

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Now time for this show. The Majority Report with Sam Cedar. It is Tuesday. September 30th, My name is Sam Cedar. This is the five-time 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, Federico Finkelstein, an Argentine historian and chair of the history department at the New School for Social Reuters.

church, also director of the Jamie program in Latin American Studies, on our Belling out of Javier Malay. Also on the program today, government slated to completely shut down in almost exactly 12 hours from now, or at least it's going to be an explicit shutdown as opposed to the one we been living through. Also, Hegsseth's military gathering happens in D.C.

amid reports that he is acting increasingly erratic. Netanyahu already planning to break the supposed peace deal he says he agrees with. Oh, so like the last time in January,

the exact same thing. And probably the two times before that, I would say. YouTube pays $24 million in tribute to Donald Trump. Meanwhile, the Trump regime deports a plain loan of Iranian asylum seekers back to Iran. Conservative eyebrows are raised as J.D. Vance and Donald Trump Jr. move to control T.P. USA. 154,000 federal workers officially take their buyouts this week.

And the Trump regime defends government, I should say, defunds the government inspector general organization. All this and more on today's majority report. welcome ladies and gentlemen thanks so much for uh joining us it is newsday tuesday yes and uh there's obviously um some big news we've been seeing this coming for a while uh chuck schumer has been desperate to float all sorts of different ideas on how to avoid um a government shutdown and i should say those ideas are really how to cave to a Trump and Republican demand on not just the budget, but also the way that they're governing. And for the most part, I think a lot of people in the House are really burned from the last time that Schumer caved on them at the last

minute. And so they're... Because they kept the caucus together. I mean, they all voted against in unison in the spring. So, yeah, there you go. The heat is on them when they do this. That's right. And so here we are. I mean, like I say, you know, Chuck Schumer, it's hard to imagine a Senate leader less up to the moment than Chuck Schumer. The last Senate leader we had was Harry Reid. Harry Reid would come off as rather genteel, like an infirm old man, and he was hiding a knife under his coat pocket. I did not agree with a lot of his, well, I shouldn't say that.

There were some positions he had that I did not agree with. He was personally, personally, so-called pro-life, but never pushed that in his position as a senator. He was a staunch defender of Social Security and Medicare wanted to increase those. And he was a very aggressive fighter. He was undercut. There was a story. I think it's in actually one of Ryan Grimm's books about how he was undercut during the Obama years by Joe Biden when he was trying to go hard at the Republicans. Chuck Schumer, on the other hand, both appears soft on the outside and is even softer on the inside when it comes to aggressively confronting this moment.

And he can barely do it. Here is a prime example. He walks out of the White House today, and this is what he says in his press conference. I should say this was yesterday. I play this. They come out of the White House. Of course, he's projecting nothing but strength. As he approaches, he's not sure where he is.

He lost the game there. We need some sexy music here, right? He's looking like a snack. Well, we met with the president for the first time since all of these issues started. Pause for a second. Now, understand, this moment here is one of the few that it's guaranteed he's going to get TV time. It's not always a, you know, like a lot of people, a lot of us assume, like, where are these people? How come there's no, you know, why aren't they out there doing politics?

It's because the media doesn't necessarily cover them and doesn't get that much play. When you walk out of the White House 24 hours before a government shutdown, you know you're going to get it. So understand, to the extent that any of the American public sees anything, they're going to see this. And he comes out, and the first thing he says is we haven't, I mean, forget the fact that he's lost. Okay. We are weak, he says. And we haven't been able to get in to see. the president. The president allowed us to come and talk to him. That's the subtext of what he's

saying here. But go ahead. Because listen, the American public doesn't care that you're whining, that you're getting bullied by a bully. That does not give them confidence that you know what you're doing. Good. Okay. Well, we met with the president for the first time since all of these issues started, even though we have requested repeated meetings with leader Thune, Speaker Johnson, and the president. We have very large differences on health care and on their ability to undo whatever budget we agree to through rescissions and through impoundment, as well as popular decisions. Go ask your mom or your friend if they know what impoundment and rescissions mean.

you do because you hear us talk about it all the time but if you went out and had a beer with one of your friends it's like the impoundment law from 74 in recisions people would look at you like they look at me how about you have no friends right but but but you could say the we have not we have deep disagreements um the the the white house is trying right now to undercut the core power of congress right now the ability to craft a budget he is refusing to move on that very point even i mean trump has been good at this part which is that you maybe you say something in private in the midst of your negotiations but use the bully pulpit to aggressively advocate for your stance of course you come out and you say one of the problems we've had making a deal is that

don't trump doesn't follow the rules and he's breaking things for the american people and we want him to stop right like this should be about the democrats are saying like he's doing bad things to Americans. We want him to stop. And that's why we're making demands. Go ahead. On health care and on their ability to undo whatever budget we agree to through rescissions

and through impoundment as well as pocket rescissions. And I think for the first time the president heard our objections and heard why we needed a bipartisan bill. Okay. Stop it. Okay. So

the president was very reasonable. He listened to us, and I really think I'm getting through to him. That's what's going on here. Instead of, like, saying something like, I don't know if the president understands what he's doing to the American public, but it's quite clear that he's doing damage. How about that? How about that? How about point out that he's dementia done and he's tweeting out AI videos or something like that?

Well, this is what Donald Trump posted two hours after they walk out of there. He heard them? I guess he did. Maybe he respects them. Maybe he thought they made progress. Here's what he put out. Yep. Look, guys, there's no way to sugarcoat it.

Nobody likes Democrats anymore. We have no voters left because of all of our woke trans bullshit. Not even black people want to vote for us anymore. Even Latinos hate us. So we need new voters. And if we give all these illegal aliens free health care, we might be able to get them on our side so they can vote for us. They can't even speak English.

So they won't realize we're just a bunch of, old pieces of shit, you know, at least for a while until they, they learn English and they realize they hate us too. Okay. So, aside from the blatant racism, I mean, aside from all the lies, aside from the fact that it's a, he's basically saying, you're my bitches. Look, this is how much I have respect for you. I appreciate you saying that I listened and that I was polite and that, uh, that

that I treated you, well, and here, you are my bitches. That is what he's saying. I mock you. I laugh in your face. I mean, this is what happens when you show this level of weakness. This is what happens when you assume that the fight is not something that you need to take to the American public, but it's something you need to show Joe Scarborough that you're being responsible. You need to show Ezra Klein that you're taking.

this seriously? You need to show your donors, because the problem here is that Schumers and Jeffries, of course, are beholden to donors, and the donors are panicked about the government shut down. When the government shuts down, the stock market collapses. And that is primarily what they're concerned about. It's what he was concerned about in the spring, and it's what he's concerned about here. And, of course, the Beltway opinions. This is just bad politics.

He's doing bad politics. And then, you know, Hakeem Jeffries was marginally better because he actually talked about what the issues were. Schumer's just here, like, desperate to, I mean, play the original one back to the press conference. Yeah. Good. Just played a little more. It's not one iota of democratic input. That is never how we've done this before.

When I was leader, we negotiated. procedure, procedure, procedure, with Republicans, and we never had a shutdown. And so it's up to the Republicans, whether they want to shut down or not. We've made to the president some proposals. Our Republican leaders will have to talk to them about them, but ultimately he's the decision maker. And if you will accept some of the things we asked, which we think the American people are for, on health care and on rescissions, he can avoid a shutdown. See, this is all, like, it's all, like, third-party stuff. We think the American public is for this. We ask for some things on health care. How about just being explicit with the

American public? If Donald Trump, if Donald Trump is not willing to make any changes on behalf of the American public, your health insurance rates are going to go sky high. Donald Trump is not willing to guarantee that the money we appropriate to keeping your kids safe when they eat food, to protecting workers in their place of work, to protecting consumers, and to all of this stuff about tariffs, making all the inflation. We've asked him, you know, we'll work with you, but you need to help these tariffs are killing the American public. and let's be clear there's nothing about this government a budget that has to do with tariffs

but there's also nothing about this budget that has to do with immigrants or uh so-called illegals getting health care or uh hakeem jeffreys wearing a sombrero and mexican music and chuck schumer saying this chuck schumer does not understand where he is or what time is it or what year it is or what's going on. He has been oblivious to the reality that we are all existing in. And it is fascinating to watch it. He is literally in some type of like parallel universe talking to people who don't exist, who are not paying attention.

It is just. But how about saying this? How about if you're not going to fund Americans' health care, if you're not going to promise that you're going to claw back money, which is Congress's authority to create a budget for the American public, We are not going to fund and we shouldn't be funding, although he undercuts his argument by having voted for the budget previously, the ICE agents that are terrorizing our communities. They're still afraid to talk about the major domestic issue that people are experiencing all across the country of thugs going in and beating people up and breaking communities apart. Do they even have a demand on that front?

and and and the idea that this has nothing to do with the budget tell me anything that the that is coming from the vice president the president and every other member of this administration has anything to do with the budget i mean they understand when you have the microphone you deliver a political message the democrats cannot do that because chuck schumer has studiously avoided having any political message that is their stated agenda in the grass, fall asleep in the grass until the midterms, because that's all that matters, right? And whatever damage he does in the meantime is, I guess, just gravy for their hopeful electoral chances, where they can squeak out a victory with, you know, some A-PAC-funded candidate. Can we just play that Jeffrey's response really quickly while we're here? Yes, and so they walk out and this AI video is put out, and how does Jeffries respond? Does he talk about the virulent racism, the demonizing of immigrants, the what is being done to the American public?

And Mr. President, the next time you have something to say about me. Don't cop out through a racist and fake AI video. When I'm back in the Oval Office, say it to my face. Say it to my face. I mean, I'm glad that Hakeem Jeffries protected his own sort of like manhood here. But notice what's going on in the rest of the country. And I'm also glad that Hakeem Jeffries didn't say, well, God'll sort it out. Wasn't that his thing?

The president's come and go, but God's always here. I would have put the over under of me and eyes in a 30-second clip there at four and a half. And he went under at four. or so. I, it is liberals. Part of why liberals are incapable of meeting this moment is because they don't have a politics versus leftists that are collectivists. And I am so sick, so sick of the centering of one's own celebrity. And frankly, Kamala Harris has been engaging in this. It's been since the Obama years that we've been doing this kind of crap. The, like, celebrity Democrat is not, liberal Democrat is not meeting the moment here, where you place the focus on yourself.

The way that Zora Mamdani brings it consistently back to what he wants to do for the, for New Yorkers and what the collective and people in the community are facing is exactly what the message should be. But you have this class of elite Democrats that go into rooms and people are impressed when they'll speak about themselves and that them as a figurehead in the make money that way and how they're going to represent those donors' interests in that kind of thing. But it is, brings so hollow. No one cares about Hakeem Jeffries and himself experiencing a racist meme. The implication of the racist meme is what we should be talking about and the fascist administration. Why are you making it about yourself in that moment? It is astounding.

It's a, I mean, yeah, honestly, the most confident, the most confident, uh, The most confident thing to say at that point is, I don't care what the president says about me. There are American suffering. And he's out there sitting in the White House, making AI videos trying to mock me because I'm supposedly Mexican. I mean, the opportunity available to demonize Donald Trump in that moment, rather than just say, hey, tough guy, I'm here. you know what if you're so tough how about you don't even say anything to us and you go back to the white house and knock on the door and say come say this to my face like if you're really tough like people see through this yeah and and you use the opportunity to to show the

American public that you are protecting them not defending yourself and just before we go just quickly number one that Adam Carlson good follow on Twitter for for some polling stuff just this is the aggregate of who would get blamed for a government shutdown. And each of the six publicly released national polls asking voters, Republicans get more of the blame, the average is 15 points. Now, you will

hear in the pundit class that the opposition party is the one that gets blamed or harmed in the midterms coming up if they help shut down the government. That is a lie that they are

deploying because it's completely counterfact actual. The last government shutdown that was the longest in history, Biden won after that. That was at the end of 2018 going into 2019, Biden won in the fall. The short one previously, there was a blue wave in the midterms. The one under Obama in 2013, the Republicans took back the Senate. And this is not saying it's a causal relationship, but the fact that it, the idea that it hurts Democrats' chances is a fiction and they're using it as a fig leaf to cover up the fact that they don't want to do anything because their donors are afraid of the stock market. All right. In a moment, we're going to be talking to Federico Finkelstein. He is an Argentine historian, chair of the History Department at the New School for Social Research, and director of the Janie Program in Latin American Studies on the bailout that we're going to be doing of Javier Malay and why. But first, a word from our sponsors. I don't know if people have noticed, but I'm getting a little older. And as I get older, I'm always thinking I should go to the doctor more. Deal with all sorts of things. Like when I get, you know, a malady, I go.

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Head over to Sunsetlakesebade.com. Use our code. to save 20% on farmers roast coffee and all their Vermont grown hemp products, see their site for terms and conditions. Okay, quick break when we come back, Federico Finkelstein will be here, Argentine, historian, chair of the history department at the New School for Social Research. Thank you. We are back, Sam Cedar, Emma Vigland, on the majority report.

I want to welcome Federico Finkelstein. He's an Argentine, chair of the history department at the New School for Social Research. and director of the Janie Program in Latin American Studies. And a professor, we were saying just before we came on that I think the last time we spoke was about five years ago. And it was about one of your books. You've written, I feel like a half a dozen books on fascism. And we said, it's still in vogue, apparently, these days. maybe perhaps even more irrelevant, but let's turn specifically to the relationship between the

United States and Argentina. And tell us, just if you can go backwards a little bit, and tell us what Javier Malay has been doing since coming to power, aside from giving Elon Musk a ceremonial chainsaw for musk to tear up our government yes well i mean the all these things are connected because milay is one of the last latest representatives of the one of a fascist trend that trump represents globally and milay actually has been an admirer if not an imitator of trump on so many levels i have often called him a mini-trump uh in the sense that he wants to you know to behave like like uh like his master in a way, and yet he cannot for a variety of reasons,

including the fact that Argentina is not as powerful as the U.S. is. And let's talk about what his economic plans that he put. I mean, this is, he's a, like, straight out of Montpelrin type of libertarian ideologue. Yes, I mean, he claims to be a libertarian, and yet in terms of the economic front, his policies seem to be a kind of very standard austerity measure kind of government. I mean, he has been rather than, I mean, the freedom part of libertarianism, whatever that is, has been absent from Millais' economics, you know, in terms of a lot of controls for currency control. and many other things. That, of course, together with austerity measures, as we have seen here in the U.S.

And so what can you tell us about this bailout? Like, he has already received, I mean, I feel like as late as June in this country, I was seeing people sort of trumpet his economic policies as being sort of like the triumph of free market, you know, neoliberal economic policies. And within weeks after that, he was getting a bell out of sorts from, I believe it was the IMF and the U.S. And now we're primed to provide $20 billion in swaps, which is essentially just like a backstop. Yes, it is very strange when one think about it. I mean, from the position of the U.S.,

a government that has been, like, that had made a point of not helping the world, like I mean, cutting USA and so on, why helping this kind of mini-Trump? So that's the first part of the answer. The first part of the answer is that this, ideologically, these individuals are pretty much connected. Now, on the other hand, you know, Trump and his policies are very U.S. center, and even if they got allies, I mean, generally, like, one should not presuppose that the U.S. will support a given ally, you know, in a country like Argentina. And yet, this is what we are seeing. The context of that is that, although these policies have been celebrated, poverty had increased, you know, incredible levels of poverty and income inequality, and, I mean,

and all that coupled with the, you know, the kind of typical Trumpist policies of hatred. I mean, homophobia, misogynist, attacking the universities and so on. Unlike the U.S., I mean, in Argentina, when people demonstrate in the street, I mean, the kind of the government receives the message, so they are not waiting for elections. And twice in the last year, Malay, for example, said an awful homophobic comment and hundreds of thousands of Argentines protesting in the streets. He kind of stopped on that one. More recently, he started a la Trump attacking universities

and hundreds of thousands of people in all Argentine cities kind of gave the message that this was not okay. And on top of that, one month ago, there were provincial elections in the most important state, the California of Argentina, if you will. I will even say California plus Texas of Argentina and he lost, like as Trump would say, bigly. And that meant that basically he's approaching the, you know, the midterm elections,

which are very soon in very dire straits. And in that context, it's that Trump somehow, you know, imposing himself in the campaign, trying to, you know, to show that the U.S. support this model. Now, my own guess is that beyond ideological, you know, connections and affinity, is the very fact that Millet probably is Millet has made Argentina into one of the most, you know, yes, sir, allies of the U.S. I mean, both in every sense that the U.S. is promoting, you know, with Trump.

And that also, you know, is important for Trump to have a yes, sir, like in one big country in the world, which is Argentina. What about U.S.-based bondholds? who have interests in Argentina, for whom these type of bailouts actually, like, it's a backdoor bailout of U.S.-based individuals. There's been some reporting that there's a U.S. billionaire that has important holdings there, and that when we are basically backstopping these Argentinian bonds, we're doing a bailout maybe for some of Trump's donors or friends or whatnot?

Yes, I will not discount that possibility. And obviously we saw a picture of a pitcher, that is to say, you know, Mr. Besant reading a message from a member of his own government, telling him that this is not good for U.S. farmers. So my point is like this will be, if that is the case, a typical example of Trump choosing, you know, financial interest over the interest of, in this case, his own voters, for many of his own voters. How does cryptocurrency fit into this, given Javier Malay's obsession with crypto personal investments in it? I mean, I would not be shocked if there are some shared business interests that were not even fully abreast of on that, in that particular. area. I will not be shocked. I mean, I share with you the lack of surprise or potential surprise

because, I mean, what happened is, I mean, and this is a key reason why Milley lost. I would say that lost these, you know, this provincial elections and maybe the next elections. Trump kind of confused this electoral cycle because when, you know, when he made with Millay in the UN, he kind know, said that he supported Millay's presidential bid, which is going to happen if it happens a few years from now. But the point is that basically there was a big, you know, I would say, I don't know if to say corruption scandal, but big suspicions of corruption, when Millet, when he was the president promoted in a tweet, it was called then a tweet, a kind of, you know, crypto crypto pyramid like you know is that the Libra one yes yes yes and also there are like

signs i mean there were internal communications i mean there was a i think a half a million dollar transfer after some communication with with people close to milay i mean and so on and so forth and in addition to that his sister who is basically the you know he he called his sister the boss and this is the person basically running many aspects of Mideast government, more than a kind of cabinet chief or something like that. The sister somehow was also, you know, people very close to Milly, talking an audio about how she was receiving 2% of different contributions and so on. So, I mean, the point is that this is the anti-politics message

that Miley promoted and in a way was a big element in him coming to power. and many people even voters, you know, people that voted for him were really disappointed that this was just another example of government corruption as he has been the case across the island in Argentina. So, I mean, this kind of anti-politics message, you know, made with reality. And the reality is of a really typical politician who is very extreme, who represents Trumpism in Argentina, and no more than that. I just also want to say that his sister and his relationship is extremely weird.

and he had to come out many times to say that they were not in a romantic relationship, which feels like if you have to say it, I mean, there's some weirdness going on there. But, like, I mean, the crypto and the state merging, I think, is something that we need to be on the lookout here in the United States. I mean, it's already happening. But, like, how Malay paired that with his austerity agenda is, I think, important to understand because, you know, when Elon Musk was running Doe, he went out at CPAC with Malay with the, and Malay handed him the chainsaw,

metaphorically handing over this agenda to the Trump administration and to Elon Musk. And so like, I'm just wondering if you could give more detail on that, the crypto piece of that and fitting in with the deregulation and the destruction of the state capacity in Argentina. Well, as you know, cryptocurrencies are great for avoiding, you know, avoid any type of control and historically also they have been linked to crime and corruption. So this is something that, you know, from Argentine eyes looks also very suspicious in the U.S., I think. You know, the fact that Milley apparently, or people have said that there was like perhaps a payment for the tweet, but we are talking out pennies vis-a-vis the increase in billions of the presidential fortune in the U.S.

So the point is like, this is interesting because we are looking not only at a kind of political style, which in my view is want to be fascist and he wants to leave behind, you know, key democratic controls and procedures on one hand and a kind of global corruption on the other, which might be supported or not by cryptocurrency. Again, it's very hard to know, and I guess either, you know, justice investigators in a perfect war or historians of the future will deal with this. at this point we don't know much but but i think it's you know it's important to think about these links i want to just broaden out just a little bit because um you refer to malay as a is a want to be fascist um what's the part that makes him want to be as opposed to fascist and what can And we learn from that in this country to help Trump be more wannabe in that sense. Yes, I think that's the key point because, you know, being a wannabe fascist doesn't mean arriving at the fascist point, often because societies react, either by voting, by protesting, and also by asking for their own institutions to do and to play their role. I mean, like, today, we are seeing, like, requests, I mean, Trump's request for the military to, you know, to participate in internal policies, including by acts of, by mere acts of repression.

And the question is, like, what happens in a democracy when people, including the military, do not follow the constitution and they follow the want to be fascist? I mean, and fascism happens. Now, many times it doesn't happen because of, you know, things like such as, like, the ones we are doing right now, which is asking questions about power and, and being critical regarding what may be going on. Now, in Brazil, which is our neighbor, I mean, sorry, you asked me about Argentina, I would like to start with Brazil. In Brazil, you know, which is our neighbor in Argentina, and they had a similar kind of mini-Trump, which was, you know,

former President Bolsonaro. He also imitated Trump one year later. He lost the elections and he attempted a coup d'etat. And the difference between Brazil and the U.S. is that, you know, Bolsonaro has been put on trial and he now has been, you know, he's a criminal

and he has been convicted of those crimes of attempting to Accudetta. Now, the question is about Argentina and the US. In Argentina, they have seen Brazil. In the US, they don't seem to care or even worse. Trump is like punishing Brazil for the separation of powers

in their own democracy. And all these things are interconnected. And I think, you know, the question goes, In Argentina, you know, it relates to a warning from Brazil, but also a kind of message from the U.S. that everything goes, that everything goes, that, you know, there can be incredible amounts of enrichment by those in power, incredible amounts of unconstitutional acts every single day and nothing happens.

So this is very much in the open, and here the U.S. has an incredible, you know, role to play in either sending a democratic message or an anti-democratic one. I mean, I know it goes that way, right? What does what does history show us about the relationship between a fascist or would-be fascist leader and the, basically the disposition, but the material context of the population at large? so you know following uh world war one germany was in a pretty dark place um particularly following the treaty of versaise and they were put in a position where they were there was like a broad national humiliation and uh material deprivation i get like you know there's two parts of that relationship right there's the fascist and the the fashi i guess um and and

And what in a more modern context where you have, I think like we definitely have a bunch of different strains of complaints by the American public that range from material deprivation to large segments feeling like they've lost social, they've had like, you know, social deprivation loss, like no longer having a certain privilege. We're having to compete across a broader set of people, be they women, be they black or brown. What do we know about where the public sits in our context in the U.S. and what works from a fascist perspective or want to be fascist perspective? Yes. Well, fascists, I mean, they sell hatred, I mean, instead of goods or material improvements. This is the reason why all, you know, many, many, almost a centric, more than a centric, like German social democrats called, you know, the proposal of fascism, the socialism of the imbeciles. Because basically they don't give you anything by hatred, a sense of superiority and so on. And that goes so far. At some point, economic crisis and, you know, poverty kicks. and that is the reason why many people lament, you know, they have supported this kind of anti-democratic choices. Sometimes that takes time and, you know, and society suffers. So I cannot be, you know, extremely optimistic here. I mean, of course we know that once, I mean, this is,

I mean, at least from my position, it's clear that, you know, that people like Trump or Millay are not improving the, you know, the living conditions of the majorities. So at some point that will kick in. But again, it often takes a lot of time, and sometimes we don't have that much time. I mean, you know, the governor of California said, like recently, by 28, we might not have an election, and I'm afraid to say, the want to be fascism, it wants to become fascist, and maybe that would be the case. But it's hard to know, and it depends on all of us. I mean, to really make it clear that we don't agree with this. Well, to what extent can, does social science have a number as to the demand for hate?

There's like, I mean, if they're selling hatred, right? I mean, like everybody likes material improvement. But not everybody is really in the market for hatred to satisfy them even in a short-term basis, right? There's obviously close to half, if not half, based upon the 2024 election. But I would, I would suspect that there's, you know, there's less than half. But I, the question is like, how much less than half? And also, how much do you need to sustain it over the course of an extended period of time? Well, in that, you know, Argentina might be an interesting case to answer the question because

we don't have like this kind of anti-democratic institutions such as the electoral college. You know, we changed the constitution many years ago because, you know, our constitution was very similar to the one in the U.S., but we don't have that anymore. And there were two rounds in the presidential election. In the first round, 30% voted for Millet, I guess, like among those, you know, I mean, homopholes and mischronicistic people were like clearly among those and then like another probably another you know to have the majority another right wing kind of center center right voted for him in the second round now those are easy to peel off in a in a situation like that in

Argentina and in Argentina we have something that that maybe the US didn't have which is a collection of many dictatorships and people I mean some people remember them I was born, you know, right before one of them, and people of my generation remember them. Now, the question is, you know, people that are younger and they have always living democracy, and sometimes they don't realize what they have. And in that context, given another aspect that we need to address, and I'm talking about Argentina, I might be as well talking about the US, is that, you know, there was a failure in Argentine politics by politicians of the center, the right and the left. I mean, they created conditions which were,

which were terrible, socially and economically. And that's when Milley, you know, appear in a kind of perfect storm. Like Argentina, and this is different to the U.S., was the country with the highest inflation in the world. I mean, on the left, on the center left, the economic minister was the candidate. So that was a kind of, you know, in a way, easy, you know, position for Millet to, you know, to represent. That is to say that he was against that. and anti-politics. Now, Argentine voters and Argentines in general are very impatient with this, and already they sent a big message like last month. So the question is in the U.S.,

it might be a little bit different because I think at this point in Argentina is not that easy to tamper with voters as they are doing in the U.S. with gerrymandering and so on. So the question is even if you have the votes, how many votes do you need to win an election if they are all the time dealing with this? And this is a question of, you know, I was reading. I wrote an article for the New Republic before the election about the one-day dictatorship. And I'm curious. Every, you know, 10 days, I go back to the article to see how, how, let's say, which is a percentage in which were, Emmanuel Regissela and myself that we wrote the article, how close we were. I mean, and I think at this point probably

50, 60%, I mean, what, you know, what it takes to have a dictatorship? Like, and we are seeing a lot of that here, a lot. In the U.S. In the U.S. And ironically, in Argentina, less so. Because we might not have, in Argentina, strong institutions, but in Argentina, the popular, you know, let's say, the political culture is that people do not stand by this mix of corruption and lies at this point.

What is it that, I mean, because you said he went after gay people and then hundreds of thousands show up. up and he went after universities and hundreds of thousands show up and he backs off that because of, you know, it doesn't, you have a limited amount of capital, whether it's with the military or politically, and you don't want to expend that on areas if you can find a separate one. Is that just a, I mean, a history? I mean, like, you know, a several. hundred thousand showing up, I would imagine is like, you know, the equivalent of two or three million in this country showing up about something like mobilizing, you know, relative to population

size, you know, is that because there's a, and we don't get that really very often in any type of sustained way in this country, you know, the Iraq war, maybe, you know, during BLM we had that, I think was probably the closest we got to it. What is that a function of in your mind? Well, I mean, the equivalent will be, it's very symbolic, right? Like, it will be as having every now and then the Washington Mall and, you know, and I don't know. and the main squares in every city full of people. I mean, that's the message, like that people mobilize in order to give a message to those, you know,

to those in power. In the U.S., I mean, there is a non-beneffect in which, I mean, things that, you know, that are said and done every day should be, you know, should be provoking, you know, people in terms of reactions and protests. Donald Trump has doubled his network. which means he's made billions in nine months as president that's a little suspect yes yes and even with the history of corruption that we have in argentina i don't think this will be acceptable voters you know express they are they're concerned with you for less than a million dollars how much of it is a

function of simply a sort of tradition or a history or mistrust of politicians and the political system that may exist in Argentina because there is a sort of like a more of a history of having a political turmoil, but also how much of it is like a political leadership that doesn't respond to that? Like I would imagine there are the social structure and fabric of Argentine society, and I don't know this, but I would imagine, is, um, sewn together in a way with more traditions of labor power and solidarity in certain areas than perhaps in the United States, at least in the past hundred years or so.

But what impact does like political leadership have to do in this respect as well? Well, in Argentina, there is a tradition of, you know, being suspicious of politicians across the aisle. and then again, like our history of dictatorships, we know, I mean, many of us at least know what dictatorship is, we have lived it, and it involved these kind of connections that we are talking about, like, of course, higher level of repressions, of repression, but also incredible amounts of corruption and poverty, because of the result of that also is poverty, and whenever someone or something resembles the past, then many people are worried that, you know, this is just another pattern that we have lived. And I think, you know, Milay was given a vote because it was a

message. There was this satisfaction with, you know, with the typical politicians and people were willing to give a pass to someone who was self-described as crazy. I mean, in terms of, what is interesting is that in terms of practice, Trump is way more, I would say, radical than Millie. In terms of, you know, speech, Millet is way more radical than Trump. I mean, he's even more vulgar. He's basically Trump, when compared to Millet, looks like a stable individual. I mean, which is to say a lot. I mean, you know, Emma, when you were talking about the, you know, the possibilities that, I mean, the rumors, basically.

And who, in a way, like about Millet being involved with his sister, his response as president of Argentina was I would quote, I don't F my sister. I mean, this is the level of Millay's engagement with the public. He has also, he's using all the times this kind of metaphors of violence and even rape towards others. And, you know, but the sad part of it, I think, and this is related to what Sam was saying before, is that, I mean, about this, many people did not seem to care. I do, many others do, but a lot of people did not seem to care about the, you know, the hatred or in this country, the racism. And a philosopher, like a very famous, you know, radical philosopher, Theodore Adorno, said that, you know, when he was, you know, after the Holocaust and so on, in the 1960s, he was surprised about the resurrection of their German right.

And he said that people like us, we care a lot about rights, but many people do not care about that. And the message they get is when economic conditions provoke more poverty. And that's when they realize, you know, what's going on. And sadly, you know, many people will see that part, not the parts about rights. In my view, the two are together. They go together. They are part of an ideological project, which is, as I have called it, want to be fascism. Well, Federico, Finkelstein, we will link to your books, one of which is want to be

fascist um uh at majority dot fm thanks so much for your time today really appreciate it thank you thank you all right folks we're going to take quick break head into the fun half have more fun um the heat is on them when they do this yep feeling the pressure he's just trying to speak it into existence um just a reminder it's your support that makes this show possible you can become a member join the majority report dot com when you do you not only get the free show free of commercials but you also get the fun half and most importantly almost you the exclusive important thing is that you help the show survive and thrive uh become a member today join the majority report dot com also check out the a m quickie am quickie every day email blast in your

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Yes, exactly. Or if you're on Twitch, give us your subscription for the month. If you're a prime member, then you already have paid for it. You can just direct it towards us, et cetera, et cetera. Matt, left reckoning. Left reckoning tonight talking with Gil Duran about Peter Thiel's Antichrist Tour. Also, if you're not subscribed to the Left Reckoning on YouTube, I plug it every day. But anyway, now you can do it.

but uh what's wrong with you today's a great day to you know finally after five years uh hit subscribe on that um yeah i'm shaming them um we are subscribing is subscriber shamer we are 558 subscribers shy of 50 000 so i'd like to hit that and uh you know redeem yourself a little bit so check out tonight yeah grow up seven o'clock eastern time uh patreon dot com says left reckon we're going to get into Ezra Klein's identity crisis, which I think we're going to talk about on here, too. Oh, my God. So that's what I was going to say when you were like the so-called fun half. I'm like, well, we'll make fun of Ezra Klein, kind of getting clowned by Taunahey-C-Cote.

But listening to him is not fun. What Harry Emden. I'm done trying to like Ezra Klein, basically. I feel sorry for him again. A lot of people feel liberated. Oh, I do not feel sorry for him. I'm sure he's fine. Folks will see you in the fun half.

You are in four. All right, folks, six, four, six, two, five, seven, thirty-nine, twenty, see you in the fun now. Oh, no, oh, no. Are you ready? Oh, yeah. Who sent us this? The alpha males are back, back, back, back, boys, back. And the alpha males are back, back, back.

Just as delicious as you could imagine. are back, back, back, back, boys, and the alpha males are back, back, back, back. Just want to degrade the white man. Alpha males are back, back, back. I take all of it to my throat. Alpha males are back, back, back, back, back. Snowflakes has what? The alpha males are back, back, back, back.

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