The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3604 - War With Venezuela?; Zohran On Fox News; How The US Legalized Corruption w/ David Sirota

Episode Date: October 16, 2025

It's Emmajority Report Thursday on the Majority Report On today's show: Trump openly admits to authorizing covert CIA actions in Venezuela at a White House press conference. On an episode of Triggered with Don, Jr. in February of 2025, Recent Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado vows to privatize Venezuelan oil and offer lucrative partnerships with American corporations After the U.S. bombed a fifth boat in the Caribbean Sea, we watch a Trinbagonian news segment that reports two of the slain men we're simply fishermen. Rand Paul comes out against the U.S. summarily killing people in the Caribbean Sea, citing Coast Guard statistics that show that 25% of alleged drug-running boats boarded by American forces are not in possession of drugs. Founder of The Lever, David Sirota joins the program to discuss his new book, MASTER PLAN: The Hidden Plot to Legalize Corruption in America. In the Fun Half: Emma is joined by Brandon Sutton and Matt Binder Brandon provides a quick update on where Candace Owens' show has been of late. The leaked Young Republican group chat leak exposes the arrested development of GOP men. JD Vance calls the Young Republican's "kids" despite the chat being comprised of mostly men in their 30s All that and more 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 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: ZOCDOC : Zocdoc.com/MAJORITY and download the Zocdoc app to sign-up for FREE and book a top-rated doctor. #sponsored SUNSET LAKE:  Head to SunsetLakeCBD.com and use coupon code “Left Is Best” (all one word) for 20% off of your entire order  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.co    

You are listening to a free version of The Majority Report. Support this show at join the Majority Report.com and get an extra hour of content daily. The Majority Report with Sam Cedar. It is Thursday, October 16th, 2025. My name is Emma Vigeland, in for Sam Cedar, and 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, David Serota will be with us to talk about his new book, Master Plan, The Hidden Plot to Legalize Corruption in America. Also on the program, Trump is installing loyalists into the IRS criminal.

division, making it easier to target liberal groups. This is expressly illegal, by the way, part of what Nixon got in trouble for. Trump also confirmed that the U.S. is conducting covert actions in Venezuela, making them not so covert. The U.S. also bombed another boat the fifth time they've done this off the Venezuelan coast. trying to goad Maduro into a conflict as a pretext to regime change, and Trump declines to rule out bombing the country. Today, or I guess it was yesterday, maybe into today,

but the Supreme Court is hearing a case out of Louisiana. I highlighted this maybe two weeks ago, a hugely important case that could destroy the Voting Rights Act and cost Democrats over a dozen seats in the South. The White House is doubling its bailout to Argentina and Trump's billionaire friends' investments, $40 billion now. Meanwhile, 75% of Americans say monthly household costs have increased from last year, per a Harris Guardian poll. Israel continues breaching the ceasefire. At least three Palestinians were killed by Israel over the past 24 hours.

Explosive robots remain in Gaza. The family of one of the Israeli hostages whose body was just returned to them confirms that he was killed by the IDF bombing. Trump proposes a bailout for struggling farmers that he caused, the struggle that he caused with the tariffs. It's in the middle of harvest season right now, but that would require the government to reopen. Pennsylvania Democrats have begun to organize a primary challenge to John Federman in 2028. Capitol Police are launching an investigation after an American flag with a swastika on it was found displayed in Ohio Republican Representative Dave Taylor's office.

He's just a kid. This is the week of all of the Republicans. revealing themselves to be Nazis, which is kind of every week. And lastly, the New York City mayoral debate is tonight, folks. Get your popcorn. All this and more on today's Majority Report. Welcome to the show, everybody. It's an M Majority Report Thursday.

Hello, Matt. Hello, Brian. Excited to talk to our friend David Soroda about his book in a little bit. But as always, we have a lot of news to get to. even though the first I AMER of the day is trying to troll me. Emma, what do you think has a better chance of happening? Cuomo beating Mamdani or the Rangers scoring a goal at the garden this year. You are the second to troll me.

Brian, as a Boston fan with his Red Sox hat on, had already beat you to the punch, okay? Yeah, the Rangers are in a rebuilding period, and they traded away a lot of skill. This is what's going to happen. I'm not happy with the team. But that's the most important thing we had to get to. Top of the show. Top of the show. Haley says, is this year's Nobel Peace Prize winner still praising Trump's bombing of her fellow citizens?

That is going to be where we start the show today. Because on truth socially yesterday, Trump basically boasted again, posting that he had extrajudicially murdered more people off of the coast of Venezuela. This is the fifth boat that he has bombed. The death toll is now 27 in total. Also, there were U.S. Air Force B-52 bombers were tracked in international airspace yesterday off the coast of Venezuela. I mean, major escalation, major escalation, an attempt to get Maduro to respond because he's not doing so. so far. That's why they keep ramping up their actions. I mean, this is already a war. Yeah.

Blowing boats out of the water. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's criminal. Um, and the New York times reported yesterday that Trump, the Trump administration had secretly authorized the CIA to conduct, uh, covert actions in Venezuela. And that felt like a deliberate leak when I read it, you know, to the times, okay, they're, they're, they're, it's not covert if they're leaking it. But it didn't even need to be a leak because Trump just admits, oh, we're doing something secret in front of a microphone at the White House yesterday. Why did you authorize the CIA to go into Venezuela? And is there more information you can share about these strikes on the alleged? Well, I can't do that.

But I authorized me for two reasons, really. Number one, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America. they came in through the, well, they came in through the border. They came in because we had an open border policy. And as soon as I heard that, I said a lot of these countries, they're not the only country, but they're the worst abuser. Does the CIA have authority to take out the door? Oh, I don't want to answer a question like that.

That's a ridiculous question for me to be given. Not really a ridiculous question, but wouldn't it be a ridiculous question for me to answer? But I think Venezuela is feeling heat, but I think a lot of other countries are feeling heat too. We're not going to let this country, our country, be ruined because other people want to drop, as you say, they're worst. They have given us their worst. As you say, right. No, that's as you say, buddy.

Venezuelan immigrants in this country are coming here because of United States policy, policy that Trump and the Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who's a major player in this, have championed for decades. Regime change. They tried it under Trump's first term. And now they're escalating those tactics. He's using drug trafficking here, obviously, without any finesse. Tentanyl does not come from Venezuela. That's a lie. No, it's a lie. And he's using it as a pretext to regime change. And he's not doing it in a very artful way. And we should be clear, too. Marco Rubio, this is as foundational to his career as anything, the secretary.

of state. Since he joined the Senate, I think like around 15, 14 years ago, he has been arguably the leading champion of sanctions against Venezuela, which emiserates the population. It is a tactic to hurt the people of Venezuela economically, to put pressure on them to overthrow their government. And it has been an abject failure. It's been a failure in the context of Iran, too, and other places that the sanctions regime has targeted. It massively contributed to the problem that they're all lighting everyone's hair on fire with regards to, say, people fleeing certain countries. Like, yeah, you're fleeing Venezuela.

You destroy a country's major export economy. And, yeah, there's some disruption to the society that spills over into other ones. And guess what? The Pentagon and the ice folks at the top, they knew that. and they knew it would justify more action on their part. It's a self-licking ice cream clone, as Sam says. Yeah, that's right. And that's why there were hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants

who came into this country on temporary protected status because they had to flee because of the policies that we have implemented in our hemisphere or in our backyard, rather. And in 2019, people may forget this, that Rubio tweeted out a side-by-side photo of bloody Mulmar Gaddafi, either before or after he was brutally, I mean, killed. You could look up how that happened. It was very, very violent, the manner in which he was killed. And he tweeted out a photo of that with a side-by-side of Maduro, basically implying,

we're going to kill you. and he was one of the leading figures to recognize Guaido as the leader of Venezuela and trying to whip up support across other countries in Latin America to recognize that even though he was just not. You can, Maduro's anti-democratic tactics are a problem, but for the most part, there has been scant evidence to show the amount of, like what the United States is alleging in terms of how he's so repressive of the popular will. He's continuously gotten elected, and they've been trying this for decades.

Yeah, I mean, and what's the solution to somebody who is rigging elections? It's not overthrow and installing some puppet figurehead. Like, we run the world, like it's 1950 still. Like, we have to engage the wider community of states, of governments, and they might have some input on how to deal with that too. Like not every Latin American or Central American government loves Maduro, but

let's just start using the Pentagon to shoot boats, shoot like boats out of the water around it because we want to invade it and have another colossal calamity. Because of the oil, by the way. And they are upset that Venezuela has state control of their resources in that

way. And there is a desire to exploit that. by American capitalists. And to Matt's point, like, none of this was effective. Like, the opposition to Maduro is probably a lot more fractured than it was five years ago, 10 years ago. And that's in part because the United States's hand in this is so heavy and so obvious, and they're making it so abundantly clear that they are behind people like this.

This is Maria Carina Machado. You might know her as the recent Nobel Peace Prize winner. On Don Jr.'s show in February, just to, this is the new Guaido, the new figure that, and by the way, not new. I mean, Rubio had hosted her in the United States previously, and they've had a relationship. She's been a figure for really like 20 years connected to the U.S. government, connected to NGOs. I'll read a part of this nation article that lays it out in just a second. But here she is, in February, just to give you a sense of the kind of person that they're trying to install. Untriggered with Trump Jr.

Forget about Saudi Arabia. Forget about the Saudis. I mean, we have more oil. I mean, infinite potential. And we're going to open markets. We're going to kick off the government from the old sector. We are going to privatize all our industry. Venezuela has huge resources, oil, gas, minerals, land, technology.

And as you said before, we have a strategic location, you know, hours from the United States. So we're going to do this right. We know what we have to do. And American companies are in, you know, super strategic position to invest. This country, Venezuela, is going to be the brightest opportunity for investment of American companies of good people that are going to make a lot of money. I love. You're playing the game called capitalism.

Thank you. Thank you so much. I love how explicit that was. That's the one thing about the Trump era is he's going up and praising Miriam Adelson for the money and showing it's a transaction. I gave her goal on Heights. And you have people like this. Like back in the day, if you're talking about the 1950s, Matt, there was a little bit more plausible deniability.

But now you just got to go on the Nepo baby podcast. We're going to be so rich. No FOIA is required. Exactly. I mean, this is exactly the Iran, the Iran, you know, the country that Trump bombed earlier this year that we have to apparently be so preoccupied with because of our ally, the genocidal Israel has a big. problem with them. Why, how did they become the way that they are? Yeah. This exact same shit. By the way, speaking of Israel, this is a part of this piece in the nation that if you want more familiarity with this figure, Machado, it's by Gabriel Hetland in the nation.

Machado is openly aligned with far-right figures in Latin America and beyond, including Brazil's J.R. Bolsonaro's Argentina's Javier Malay and Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu. Machado even penned a letter to Netanyahu in 2018 asking for Israel's help in forcefully overthrowing Maduro. Pashists. I wonder why he thought that would be a good guy to go to.

I mean, Israel, if I wanted to do some really shady espionage, I think Israel would be my number one call. It's easy mode. It's like if you're a politician, you're running for office, well, do you want to play this on hard

or do you want to play this on easy? If I'm playing out easy, make a call to A-Pack and you got just an extra, it's like in a video game when you get like those add-ons. Yeah. $100,000 in the bank at the start. Machado's political career

began in 2002 when she co-founded Sumate and NGO with the explicit mission statement of recalling former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez from power. Research shows that the National Endowment for Democracy and USAID provided immense financial

support for Sumate. Any pretense that Machado supported peaceful change alone was rendered moot by her support of the 2002 coup against Chavez, with Machado's signing the notorious Carmona decree dissolving Venezuela as Congress, Constitution, and Supreme

Court for democracy. So, that just gives you a sense. Over the next two decades, she's been a supporter of regime change in a bunch of different contexts as well. And so... Yeah, Iraq, is that a democracy now? Right. Like, there's

figures like Machado. I mean, I can't remember what's name was code named Curveball. I remember. I figure what the guy's name is. Do you remember that? But like just feeding intelligence and then like, I'm going to be in charge of this country because America's guns are going to put me there. And how does that work out? Right.

El-Janavi. Yeah. Unfortunately for the Trump administration, there is like a rich understanding in Venezuela and in different countries. Like you see how popular Claudia Scheinbaum is in Mexico. and like she in she regularly rails against neoliberalism and like interference in that way and that's not even you know the country like Guatemala or other nations that have very much their politics centered around like with that history in mind of the United States interference and capitalist interference and just to remind people that these are human beings this is a local report from CNC C3 news network in Trinidad and Tobago. And the Trump administration keeps calling these boats that they're extrajudicially bombing, you know, narco-terrorists.

Not according to this local news report. We'll just play the first, like, minute of this. Two men believed to be Trent Begonians were killed in the latest U.S. strewn strike of Venezuelan waters. And now Alaska's family is demanding answers. They say Chad Joseph wasn't a trafficker. Just a young man trying to come home. Jensen Levent went to the fishing village to speak with the family.

Like most of the men gathered here at the Las Cueva's fishing depot, Chad Joseph was a fisherman. Both his relatives and residents are denying strenuously that he was involved in drug trafficking. They say his killing was unjust. When Prime Minister Kamala Posad Bissasor said the United States should kill alleged drug dealers violently, no citizen was listed among the dead.

On the U.S.'s fifth airstrike, Trinidadian's Chad Joseph and another man identified only as Samaru were among six people killed on Tuesday, taking the number of alleged narco traffickers killed by the U.S. since September 2nd to 27. Joseph's grandfather, Cornell Clement, who denied his grandson was a drug trafficker. Yes, so they interview the family. It's more of just this guy was a fisherman. This was the same story with the first boat, the second boat. A third boat, the four... I mean, they're just knowingly murdering people. And they know this. They know this.

I mean, these kinds of actions, right? Like, the... Bay of Pigs, they were trying to be secretive about it. Or on contra, they're trying to be secretive about it. They're so crude and stupid, but they're also so bloody and willing to go anyway. and that is what's horrifying about this situation. Let's turn quickly now to... You know, actually, sorry, I found a thing I was looking for here.

This is a Rand Paul. I don't normally like to play Rand Paul stuff, but on this issue, I'll take it. Here is him laying out the sort of math here and based on how likely it is, and I would say 100%, but this is just, this is from a libertarian's perspective. I think it's worth putting on here. This is on Newsmax. I think blowing up speedboats in the Caribbean though isn't necessarily the answer. About 25 percent of the time that the Coast Guard boards a vessel in the Caribbean looking

for drugs, about 25 percent of the time the boat that's boarded doesn't have drugs. So we've blown up for boats, statistically speaking, what are the odds that one of the boats didn't have drugs? We haven't heard the names of who these drug dealers are. How do you know for certain who they are before you kill them? I'm not in favor of the current policy. I'm in favor of the continued policy. There you go.

Indiction of drugs, which is that we do search ships. Yeah, search, exactly. Search the boats. Process. Process. I mean, and this is the entire sort of fascist playbook right now. Like, why aren't we doing due process for undocumented folks? Because Jadie Vance got an argument with the people like Zaid Jolani on Twitter saying,

there's no time for that. We just got to start caging people. There's no time for searching boats. We've just got to start blowing them up. And you know what? Who cares because the missile makers, they get a lot of money for it. The cage makers, they get a lot of money for it. Everyone's making money.

Is it making anybody less safe? Is it actually making people more safe? Yeah. Or even like, I mean, say from fentanyl, of course not. Of course. It's just a lie for fascists to make money for war and cage industries. Absolutely. For a little bit more fun in this first hour, let's turn to Zora Mamdani's appearance on Fox News yesterday.

This was just such a phenomenal performance by him. I know we keep singing his praises, but this is important beyond, in my view, the context of the city that we all live in here. Because he's been providing a blueprint for many Democrats in terms of, you know, the city that we all live in here. for many Democrats in terms of their answers on a variety of different issues, not just about the blanket affordability, which is what Hakeem Jeffries wants to, you know, kind of narrowly focus on, but not even like affordability about what Democrats will do. It's more just like, we have to address affordability this time. Zoran is very specific.

He treats the voters like they're adults. explains everything to them and how he's going to do it. And what he's going to do for New Yorkers comes up in this interview in the second part. But this is how it opened. Didn't realize this because it was clips separately, but Brian watched it live like a sicko. You're really getting on board on my level here. And you mentioned that this was how they opened it in the segment and they went to break and came back. This is just... You just start with the most important thing. Yeah, you want to guess where Fox News went with this? Brown guy, you must be an anti-Semite.

This is just a part of the five-minute piece of this like around 20-minute interview where they press somebody running for a mayoral race that does not involve foreign policy about his views on, you guessed it, Hamas. That's where you give credit. So you've denounced Israel and the United States for the response to the, the slaughter on October the 7th. In fact, at times you've called it a lasting stain, the response,

and at times you have left October 7th out of your statements completely around this issue. Right now, you just talked about Israelis killing some Palestinians, but Hamas is killing Palestinians within Gaza. Can you pause this? All right. Yeah, this needs

a little bit of contextualization. Hamas is, yes, killing Palestinians within Gaza. It is horrible that this, like, health scape has created this amount of chaos. The Palestinians that they're currently executing, um, according to reports, are the people who collaborated with Israel, the gangs that Israel funded to, yeah, to attack Palestinians who were trying to, uh, access aid. Now, any response to what about October 7th should be, and I, there's a viral video of a guy at a protest doing this,

What about October 8th? What about October 9th? October 10th? And by the way, you could say that doubly, right? Because we're two years into this genocide. That's the response. But that's the context. We also have to say the main most important thing you can see from those, again,

horrible images of people who horrifically collaborated with in the apartheid regime, allegedly. No due process again, because this entire region is just basically ant-hill bombed by Israel in time it wants to. But Hamas is still in power. So this entire choice. years that we've seen a fucking genocide with our bombs because the whole reason was because it needs to get rid of Hamas. It was never actually about that and everybody knew it wasn't about that. Anthony Blinken, General David Petraeus knew that actually Hamas was going to be there whenever this ended because you can't bomb groups like this out of existence.

It's the only governing structure. Guess what? They're still there. Yep. And so now what? It's like the Taliban. And Trump is admitting it too. Trump is saying it's actually a good thing. We're giving them temporary policing power over the area. because they're the only group of the capability to do it because despite like all of the fear mongering about this they are a governing structure there in an open air concentration camp the way to end these cycles of violence

is very clearly demonstrated in history Ireland is one example the imperialists have to negotiate with who they call terrorists that has to happen and it could have happened after October 7th what Anthony Blinken said on October 8th there needs to be a cease-reve

fire and hostage exchange. There was plenty of hostages in Israel Palestinians held in cages in Israel on October 6th that could have been very easily used and that would have sort of helped us along to this two-state solution that so many people act like they want to see

but that would have legitimized Hamas as a diplomatic body that would have given Gaza and Palestinians more sort of that starts the process that Israel doesn't want to see. They don't want to see what happened with Ireland.

They don't want to see any of that. They want to conquer every piece of land that is there. From the river to the scene. They're explicit about this all the time. I forgot we had a clip to play. They have not returned the bodies that they promised to return, including two Americans. Yeah, they're under rubble

because Israel bombed everything. Itaichan and Omar Neutra, whose families we have interviewed, over these months. So what is your response to what Hamas is doing now? I think those are bodies and remains that should absolutely be returned. And I think that I have no issue with critiquing Hamas or the Israeli government, because my critiques all come from a place of universal human rights. And my focus, however, is right here in New York City and transforming the most expensive city in America into one that's affordable for each and every New Yorker.

But, okay, and I want to get to that, absolutely. But do you believe that Hamas should lay down their weapons and leave the leadership in Gaza. I believe that any future here in New York City is one that we have to make sure that's affordable for all, as it pertains, to Israel and Palestine, that we have to ensure that there is peace, and that is the future that we have to fight for. But you won't say that Hamas should lay down their arms and give up leadership in Gaza. I don't really have opinions about the future of Hamas and Israel beyond the question of justice and safety and the fact that anything has to abide by international law. And that applies to Hamas, that applies to the Israeli military, applies to anyone you could ask me about.

All right. Move on. Move on. Move on. That was great. And he's provided the blueprint there and in terms of talking about what eventually has to happen is the end of the apartheid and a one state reality from the river to the sea with Palestinians and Israelis in the same protectorate territory, whatever. That is the only solution here. Like in South Africa, it has to be racial and ethnic integration. And he had previously been asked this question in the primary cycle about. Do you believe that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state? And he says, I believe that Israel has a right to exist as a state with equal rights. As a state with equal rights. Exactly. And that's exactly how every Democrat going forward, if they are not an A-PAC shill, should be responding to this. All four of them. Yeah, because if you say, I mean, and even John Kerry had this contradiction out when he was Secretary of State.

You can either be a Jewish state or a Democratic state. You cannot be both. And liberal Zionists have a decision to me. make. And the decision is a pretty, I think, severe one. Are you for democracy or are you for ethno-states and for whatever reasoning you have behind support in other states? And the answer that we have to have is if you are for ethno-states, you join the ethno-state party and go vote for Republicans. Absolutely. Because it's of actually quite urgent importance to have that Democrats change course immediately and absorb and embrace this answer. Because there is, and we'll,

continuing active genocide that we're still not we're still finding out how many hundreds of thousands are dead in Gaza right now in Gaza where they're trying to reduce the population size through genocide of Palestinians to foreclose that opportunity to make sure they're a demographic majority even in the outcome that we're talking about and then they're trying to ethnically cleanse the West Bank so this is a bit of this is a matter of urgency but now to New York City because that's where he's actually running even though Martha McCallum was a little bit slow to that, it seems. Here is, what part

should we do here? We can't. I, of course, like myself, I'm constantly pulling, over-pulling things that I find awesome. But let's do the part where he redirects the how will you pay for it question, part one here, because he actually kind of wins her over by the end of this question. And this

is another way the Democrats should think about responding to this stuff of how will you pay for it? There are plenty of resources. There's an abundance of resources and funds, if you will. They would love to have free health care and free buses and all these things. But the question is, how do you pay for it? The city is already in debt.

The governor says no to new taxes. Like Margaret Thatcher said, you know, socialism's great until you run out of everyone else's money, other people's money. Well, what Andrew Cuomo said is that if he had $959 million, he'd give it to Elon Musk in tax credits because that's exactly what he did. And I bring that up to you to say that it's often a question of whether you have the willingness to spend that money to benefit working class people, not where that money is in the first place.

So what would you cut? What would you draw from to do it? I don't think we have to cut. I've talking about raising taxes on the wealthiest. And frankly, this is an issue that we have here in New York City, and frankly, even across this country, when I've spoken to Trump voters right here in New York City, Hillside Avenue and Queens, Fordham Road in the Bronx, they've told me it was cost of living that drove them to vote for Donald Trump.

They've told me it was a promise of a lower actual, whether it be cheaper groceries, whether it be child care, whether it be rent. And what we're seeing time and time again is we're more focused on the question of billionaires and the most profitable corporations than we are on people who can't even afford to make ends meet in this city. Well, we know affordability is an issue. And I think that all politicians are getting to an understanding of that. And I think that you've done a lot, actually, to bring people to attention to that. I appreciate that. I'm sorry, can we just play the fun. I interjected because I had forgotten he did the, I appreciate it.

Just go back five seconds because he's his... Did he hypnotize him? By the end of this interview, it was like she started asking him about soccer. He's just, the charm is, and just like the common sense of what he's advocating for is undeniable. Just watch this part. Well, we know affordability is an issue. And I think that all politicians are getting to an understanding of that. And I think that you've done a lot, actually, to bring.

bring people's attention to that issue. Let's take a look at the free buses. Okay, okay. So, that part was great. And then this part where he addresses Trump directly is the thing that's really making the rounds. Another incredibly smart move to top, first of all, to look like the fighter against Trump. This is part two.

To look like the fighter here against Donald Trump, understanding that a Fox News interview with Zoran is going to excite democratic partisans. Yeah. And tying Andrew Cuomo to Trump and looking like the fighter people want for Donald Trump in this moment is so potent in his pivot

to a general election audience and is artfully done. This is when I knew he was going to win. The primary was when he went to Cuomo on that debate stage and says, unlike you, Andrew, I didn't sue women for their gynaological records. Yeah.

That is the type of go-for-the-jugular sort of politicking that progressives need and you know frankly I think like Bernie can't really model because he's such a team player right but we need people who are willing to do that well Tim Walls is the number one example and that was the campaign

I mean the Harrison Walls campaign but when he was calling J.D. Vance weird and then immediately abandoned that because he wanted to look more conciliatory in the VP debate that was one of the many like bullet wounds in that campaign that caused the slow bleed out but here

he never let your foot off the gas with these fascists never here's or on uh acting like a leader looking to take these buses i know that you're turning 34 on saturday and i want to talk about your qualifications um you know some say you have never run a business in i'm curious and president that you never worked a day in your life i went you worked as an assemblyman uh and you've had other positions in the government but can you pause just for one sense Like, I'm sorry. I just got to say, like, it's actually, I want all of my public servants to not have any corrupting influence by the private sector. Also, that is a fucking job.

Yeah, it's actually a tough job where you don't get paid that much. Also, he's a rapper. Yeah. And it comes from show business. He's stablemates with Trump. Right. Well, I mean, I'm not even joking that his rap, like, like, that's what he's so, uh, he has the gift of gab and he's really quick on his feet. And the production of that is impressive.

Right. But anyway, like... Not that I listen to it. But you see how like a pro-capitalist kind of bent. They want you to be in the business community. Why didn't your dad? Why would you board into real estate like our president? Yeah, from your life experience to run the largest city in the country.

You know, I want to take this moment because you spoke about President Trump. And you may be watching right now. And I just want to speak directly to the president, which is that I will not be a mayor like Mayor Adams, who will call you to figure out how to stay out of jail. I won't be a disgraced governor like Andrew Cuomo who will call you to ask how to win this election. I can do those things on my own. I will, however, be a mayor who is ready to speak at any time

to lower the cost of living. That's the way that I am going to lead this city. That's the partnership I want to build not only with Washington, D.C., but anyone across this country. I think it's important because too often the focus on the needs of working-class Americans, working-class New Yorkers, are put to the side as we talk more and more about the very kinds of corrupt politicians

like Andrew Cuomo that delivered us into this kind of crisis. So the question I asked you was what specifically in your background. All right, that's good. Very well done. Very well done. So excited for the debate tonight. But other Democrats take notes. This is what works.

And it's not just crazy, calming New York City. He was able to basically charm Martha McCallum by the end of this. Don't be afraid of making a case. Affordability resonates with her because she's going to get fired for a smile. i know i mean and and and what was funny and watching it in full is like she'll you see her being charmed by the end of questions but then she comes back with another like out of nowhere right wing framing question and it's just in her ear like do not give him a ninch blah blah blah blah um so that's that was my read on it great job zoron um in a moment we're going to be

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com majority and download the Zocdoch app to sign up for free and book a top rated doctor. All right, quick break. And when we come back, we'll be joined by David Sorota. I'm going to be able to be. And so on the I'm going to be. I'm not going to be able to be.

I'm going to be. Thank you. I'm Yeah, and Yeah. Yeah. And Yeah.

We are back and we are joined now by the friend of the show, a friend of the show, founder of the lover, former speechwriter for Bernie Sanders and co-author of the new book, which he co-wrote with Jared Jekang Mayer, Master Plan, The Hidden Plot to Legalize Corruption in America. David, thanks so much for coming on the show today. Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. Of course. So I love your book. I love the subject matter. The fact that you start at the 1970s, really, in terms of tracing political corruption in this country, is it's like the perfect place to start because of those court cases really laying the foundation for Citizens United and just like chronologically that's where corruption really in this modern form

began to take hold um let's start at the beginning um the 1970s uh what what happened there that began got the ball rolling on the legalized corruption racket that we have in this country So I think people might hear the subtitle of the book, the hidden plot, and say, well, I already know about all the corruption that's happened. I know how it happened. And let me just say and ask people to trust me that you don't know how this plot unfolded because it was all secret. But the beauty is in the 1970s is they wrote it all down, right? Like it reminds me of the movie, The Big Short Rate, where he says, you know, They're confessing, and he goes, no, no, they're not confessing.

They're bragging. They wrote down exactly what they were going to do and how they were going to do it. And so for folks who wonder how they've woken up in this corruption dystopia that we're living in, it was a specific plot by specific people with a specific set of goals. And it does start in the early 1970s. I think people obviously remember Watergate. They remember it as a break-in. I think they don't remember it for what it was at its core,

which was the first dark money scandal in modern American history, where bags of cash were being flown into Richard Nixon's campaign, some of it directly from major corporations seeking favors from Richard Nixon's administration. That money, a lot of that money ended up funding the break-in. And this was a moment when we were supposed to, get this corruption under control because it, you know, blew out into the open, into the Watergate hearings, et cetera, et cetera. And then Jimmy Carter gets elected right as kind of a backlash to that. Yeah. Exactly. And Congress passes the Federal Election Campaign Act, which are the basic campaign

contribution limits, disclosure laws. So this was supposed to be the triumph over corruption. But as we report in our book, this was also the moment where the master plan was really hatched. And it started with a memo that I think a lot of people have heard of called the Powell memo. It was written by a tobacco industry lawyer named Lewis Powell, who was serving on the board of Philip Morris. At a time, by the way, that Philip Morris was trying to prevent regulation and prevent people from knowing the link between cancer and smoking. And Powell, who's very upset in specific with Ralph Nader, because Ralph Nader is having a lot of success with campaign finance reform, cracking down on corporate abuse. And he writes this memo that is this call to arms for corporate America, saying essentially

corporate America, billionaires, oligarchs need to invest heavily in American politics, in American media, to protect the free market system from this supposed assault of, I guess, the do-gooders who were trying to, you know, root out corruption, who are making the government do things that the public wants, but isn't necessarily good for the people in power. Now, moving forward from that, a few months later, Lewis Powell gets a call from Richard Nixon to put him on the Supreme Court. So suddenly, Lewis Powell is in a position to execute his own Powell memo. And we found this amazing, you have to see it to believe it, this amazing vinyl record

of the Philip Morris send-off party for Lewis Powell to the Supreme Court. where they give him judicial robes, emblazoned with tobacco industry logos. They are super excited that their guy is going to be on the Supreme Court. And here's the kicker. Within a few years, Lewis Powell engineers a radical Supreme Court ruling that for the first time says money in politics is not influence, it's not vote buying, it's not corruption. Money in politics is constitutionally protected speech. And soon after that, Powell works.

behind the scenes at the court to hijack a case. And we have all these documents with his handwritten scrawls in the margins where he is hijacking another case to then extend those constitutional rights to spend in elections to corporations. The Bellotti ruling becomes the foundation of Citizens United, which is written by the immediate successor to Lewis Powell on the court, Anthony Kennedy. This is all. part of one large plan. Now, you may wonder, you may ask, well, what's the goal of the plan, right? Like, why they want to deregulate campaign finance? Why did they want to limit the enforceability of anti-corruption laws? And I think it comes down to, in a functioning one-person,

one-vote democracy, the powers that be were having trouble getting what they wanted because the public was demanding action from government on basic things like environmental, laws, better access to health care and the like. And so what they understood was they would have to rig the political system to make money, essentially make one dollar, one vote, turn the democracy into something more responsive to money than to people. And can you flesh out a little bit more of some of those Supreme Court decisions and like the different pieces of them, you know, what comes to mind,

here is, you know, Virginia pharmacy, Buckley, you mentioned Baladi, but that that trifecta of Supreme Court decisions is why we have Citizens United to this day. Absolutely. So Buckley v. V. V. Vallejo was about those original post-Watergate campaign finance reforms, and those reforms aimed to cap spending in elections, cap donations, et cetera, et cetera. And the Supreme Court in ruling that overall total spending caps in elections were unconstitutional, based that on this radical theory. And by the way, a radical theory championed originally by none other than John Bolton, who was on the legal team. I mean, the master plan cinematic universe is a very small universe of recurring characters. So the Supreme Court, to get to the idea that

you can't cap spending in elections, came to the idea. that money in politics is constitutionally protected speech. And so, therefore, it is not, you can't limit it. And from there, Baladi was about whether a banking company in Massachusetts would be allowed to spend in an election about a ballot measure to raise taxes on millionaires. The bank goes to the court and says, we want to be able to spend out of our corporate treasury money to influence how this ballot measure turns out. Lewis Powell, it's kind of crazy. Justice Brennan was going to write a very narrow ruling in support of the bank, but very narrowly. And then Brennan, in the process of considering the case, says, and we have the memos here,

says basically, I'm actually getting on the opposing side. This is wrong. I've looked at this case. Now I think it's actually wrong, and the case is about to go down. And Powell then cobbles to together sort of saves the loss for his own side, cobbles together a narrow ruling, he ends up writing the ruling, essentially saying that corporations are essentially people who have access to those same constitutional rights to spend as much as they want. Citizens United, of course, builds on this and goes even further and says independent expenditures, even those by corporations, are not corruption and do not create the appearance of corruption because of this legal fiction that, for instance, super PACs are independent of candidates.

I mean, they want you to believe, right, that if somebody's running for the Senate and there's a super PAC that's all it's doing is spending to elect that person to the Senate, some CEO from a company dumps $10 million into the super PAC. Somehow that super PAC donation can't be corrupting of the Senate candidate. The Senate candidate's not going to owe that CEO anything. What? Because the Super PAC is supposedly on paper independent. I mean, these are the litigations that have created the architecture of corruption.

Well, so, I mean, just I get dorky about this, but I just like laying it out like this. It's basically Buckley says money is an expression of speech. Then you have Bellotti, which basically kind of affirms the corporate right to speech. And then Citizens United in 2010. says, oh, independent expenditures, as long as they are, as you just lay out, independent, unlimited. And this is where you look at the charts about dark money in our elections. Right. Why we are in this situation today is, I would argue, you know, and I'm sure you would agree, David, the rollback of our rights in the war on terror and Iraq.

And that's what Trump is capitalizing on here domestically. But in terms of the corruption piece, that is the story. the 2010 line going exponentially up with dark money where there's no traceability. So the dark money piece, can you explain that to people and why the Citizens United decision and the decisions subsequently too pave the way for this money to have zero transparency as well? Right. So Super PACs, independent groups, 501, C4s and the like, they don't have to disclose all of their donations. You can have groups donating to other groups that are supposed to, political committees that

are supposed to disclose, but all you see is the dark money groups, you know, $200 million donation. You don't get to actually see who is donating because there's no national federal disclosure law on the books, even though it's worth mentioning, even though the Citizens United decision itself says, look, disclosure. is actually fine. The point is that we haven't put in place a disclosure system because the donors who control politics, obviously, they don't want a disclosure system.

It's like tips are appreciated, tips are appreciated, but not required. Disclosure's appreciated, but not required. Exactly. And there's this whole other concurrent line of cases that has to be mentioned, which is about actually out and out bribery. right i mean there's there's campaign contributions and what and the access and the influence that buys then there's like literally like cash in envelopes or gifts to politicians in exchange for various things there's a line of of cases that started with the bob macdonald case remember bob macdonald

the former republican governor of virginia cases about ferrari's and rolexes and a donor giving him and his wife all these like lavish gifts and getting and then being granted like special access to his officials in his gubernatorial administration, the Supreme Court rules they overturn his conviction. They overturned his conviction, narrowing the definition of what an official act is to essentially make it harder and harder to prosecute outright bribery. And this case then becomes the Chris Christie Bridgegate convictions that get overturned, the Andrew Cuomo Associates cases that get overturned. So there's a lot of these anti-bribery law cases, that are whittling down the enforceability of bribery.

And you now have a case at the Supreme Court, an appeal at the Supreme Court. I mean, if you can believe this, this is so Orwellian, where remember the story of Donald Trump reportedly soliciting a billion dollars from oil donors in exchange for promises of favors to the oil industry? Yep.

This appeal at the court now cites that scenario as, not as this is the kind of thing that needs to be prosecuted, it cites it as proof that pay-to-play culture is now so pervasive that the court should not allow it to be considered prosecutable because that would criminalize what we now consider to be normal politics. You're criminalizing politics. I mean, that's where we are right now. And if that sounds crazy, I mean, we just had a Supreme Court ruling last year about the Indiana mayor, right? The Indiana, a mayor gives a contract to a a local government contractor.

The contractor soon after gives that mayor a $10,000 payment. The mayor gets prosecuted on bribery charges. The Supreme Court intervenes to overturn the conviction saying that that sequence of events means that the money wasn't a bribe. It was a permissible gratuity. I mean, this is where we are when it comes to corruption. It's amazing because you just see. see how, like,

gosh, we use the phrase facts on the ground, right? Israel would use it to create their facts on the ground, but this is almost a corruption version of that, where it's like, we've allowed this, so it must be legal. We can't reverse

course now. This is how our politics has oriented itself. Right, and J.D. Vance, this Sunday on the Sunday shows, when he was asked about, this is how it works in practice. Right. J.D. Vance was asked about Tom Homan, the borders are, reportedly being given a paper bag full of $50,000 of cash, caught in an FBI sting in exchange for allegedly promises of delivering favors

to what he perceived to be the donor if he became a government official. J.D. Vance's answer was extremely important. He said, and I'm paraphrasing here, but he said something to the effect of, he didn't deny the facts. He said, you know, there was no evidence of illegal behavior or illegal conduct. And if you take J.D. Vance literally, I read it to be, look, the Supreme Court just said it's not really clear what bribery even is anymore, right? So it's not even clear what's prosecutable. And it's worth adding, of course, the Supreme Court is handing down these decisions, narrowing the definition of bribery, making it harder to prosecute bribery at a time when

some of the justices themselves are accepting lavish gifts from billionaires with business before the court. So they have an interest in making it harder and harder to prosecute bribery. And it's worth mentioning one other thing about Vance. Vance right now himself is spearheading a case that is at the Supreme Court that is designed to eliminate whatever was left of basic campaign finance laws after Citizens United. That sounds like an exaggeration, but his case is literally in court right now that aims to eliminate the restrictions on essentially parties passing donor money directly to candidates to get around existing a campaign of finance laws. Basically, if Vance gets what he wants, parties will end up being, could end up being pass-through

conduits where big donors can just funnel as much money as they want, a huge contributions, much bigger than are allowed now, directly into the coffers of candidates who can then reward them with legislative favors on the other end. My question would be, why bother? Like, the Trump regime and the campaign, like, openly collaborates with their super PAC. I forget, I don't even, I can't remember the specifics of the stories off the top of my head, but like they've been caught doing this repeatedly and they're not the only ones i mean democrats do this too why bother creating a situation where can cash can go directly into bank account i mean they're raking maybe it's because they want to like keep it for i don't know their own purposes

or whatever more control over it it just feels like a hat on a hat yeah it's a great it's a great question i i read it to be that you're right there's no pretense anymore there's no they're no pretending anymore. I think they want to have it all. I put it the other way. Why not try to destroy what's like you. You have the court. You have the presidency. You've got the apparatus of government. Why not try to get it all? Even if it's only icing on the cake. And I think that's, that's essentially their attitude. And here's the craziest part of all, the political, the political side of this. because Democrats have not made nearly as strong an anti-corruption argument as they probably need to make,

the latest poll shows that the voters trust Republicans more on combating corruption than they do the Democrats. And if that doesn't scare you enough, let's remember that in 2016, Donald Trump, the last poll before that election, showed Donald Trump losing to Democrats on every issue except for corruption. it's the same. The Republicans have a similarly sized lead right now on the issue of who do you trust to fight corruption.

So this is a huge problem for the Democrats. And I would say it's, I mean, I mean, it's crazy. Donald Trump is trusted by anyone on the issue of corruption. But I think it speaks to the fact that anti-corruption has not been a central plank and focus of Democrats in their messaging or in their party policy. and they are paying the price for it. And we're all paying the price for that. That's what the APAC tag is a stand-in for, right? Where it's like something that people can easily understand. This is a corrupting body. And, you know, that's why there's this fight over that issue in particular.

And it's becoming toxic to the brand because it's a stand-in for what you're saying. It's filling a vacuum and a lack of democratic fortitude and messaging on this front. And like just to flesh that out a little bit more, David, because, it's so remarkable. You know, Trump in 2016, I guess it would be obvious to me why that was the portrayal, because he was, oh, he was co-opting some of Bernie's messaging after that race. Like, uh, he's right. Hillary Clinton has bought. I've been in those rooms. I cut those checks. I know the system and I can, I don't need the system. So that argument, I, it was obvious on the, in terms of like the facts of his history that that's not the case, but I could see why voters felt

that way. Right now, he's openly doing pay-to-play, stuff like Qatar plane, crypto businesses, infusing that into the government. It's insane that Democrats can't make that case now. It's absolutely insane. And I do think you're right that Trump, like John McCain before him in 2000, I'm old enough to remember that. John McCain was singed by the Keating Five scandal, which was a huge scandal of its time of influence peddle. scandal, a donor comes to a bunch of senators, asked them to push off this regulator. John McCain was part of it. John McCain, singed by that corruption scandal, ends up citing that corruption scandal as reason why he's pushing campaign finance reform. He runs a 2000 campaign, almost

unbelievably, at a certain point, gets close to winning the Republican nomination for president in 2000, talking about the systemic corruption. Not just the Democrats are corrupt. The whole system is corrupt and I have experience seeing it, which gave him a lot of authenticity. And I think Trump did kind of the same thing in 2016. And I think, I actually think even now that because Trump isn't trying to hide it, he's not playing a cutesy game like, oh, I'm like Mr. Clean here. The fact that there is no pretense almost makes him seem, dare I say, like honest. Like he's a pathological liar in his specific statements, but he's not trying to hide that he believes government is a fundamentally transactional enterprise, right? I mean, he's not trying to hide that

at all. In certain cases, he's bragging. And I think it's not that I think the public likes that. I just think the public says, look, he's not BSing me, right? Like, he is who he is. And the Democrats, they're sort of sometimes talking about specific Trump corruption scandals, but they're not willing to be self-critical of themselves, their party, the whole system in the way John McCain was. So the Democrats, when, if and when, in rare occasions, they talk about corruption, it doesn't come off as authentic. It comes off as hyper-partisan, purely anti-Trump. And I was watching, you know, John Assoff, the senator from Georgia, he was on Pod Save America recently. And he actually said something that I'm guessing ticked off a lot of the

their liberal listeners and viewers. Because Assoff said, and I'm paraphrasing here, something to the effect of, look, the real problem in politics is billionaire and corporate money, and we can get rid of Trump, but that's still going to be the central problem. And I say that might have ticked off some of those liberal listeners and viewers, because the Democratic Party is selling the idea that all we've got to do is get rid of Trump and everything will go, and we can all go back to brunch. Everything's going to be fine, right?

Assoff was actually saying, listen, Trump, you know, is a symptom. The real problem is essentially oligarchy. And I think more of that, more of admitting to that is what is going to not only combat Maga and Trump, but will reinvigorate a real opposition party here. Aosov is shrewd. And it is interesting, though, because he would know this better than anybody, given that he voted for that horrible genius act, the crypto bill. Because he was worried about 2026 and crypto money and his. raising, getting Sherrod Brown, basically. And we can have a debate about whether or not that was good politics or not.

Can we talk about that for a second? Sure, go ahead. Something really important here. Yeah, yeah. So you're totally right. That is exactly how I looked at John Ossoff becoming one of the 16 or 18 Democratic senators suddenly voting with the crypto industry. And I think it's an important thing to understand about how corruption works day to day in

American politics. We believe corruption works, you know, money goes in, favors come out. And a lot of corruption happens that way. But there's an entirely other side of corruption that works without money actually being directly transacted. So crypto is the example. The crypto industry spends a lot of money in the 2024 election in a high profile way to target what it calls, it's, you know, it's big critics, it's targets. Katie Porter spends a lot of money in California. to take her out in the Democratic primary. And the point of that spending, in my mind, is not just for the crypto industry to take out one or two or five or ten of its critics.

It's to send a message to everybody else in American politics up and down the ballot that if you get in our way, you may be the next Katie Porter or the next Sherrod Brown that we take out. And so what that does is that creates then a sort of no money is transacted, in the next Congress, not yet, but you're still going to get lots of new voters, the crypto industry is, for its side, because all the senators are afraid of becoming, of being spent against. I had a senator tell me, put it this way. He said, listen, I can come up with a piece of legislation that takes on a powerful industry. And I'm not just, the problem is, I'm not just risking me getting spent into the ground in my re-election campaign, but all that industry has to do

is pull out its wallet and shake its wallet at all of my colleagues in the Senate to keep them off of my bill, keep them from co-sponsoring my bill, keep them from voting for my bill. So at a certain point, the money doesn't even have to be, have to move. It just has to be shown. Right, right. It's the chilling effect that it creates. And that's why it needs to be systemic, systemic change on this front legislation across the board. you know you have a bit more hope in the book towards the end right about somewhat of like steps forward on this front you know my husband was was joking with me uh watching that that amazing interview with corey booker on on i've had it and how you know he's he'll tout 75% or something he says of my donations are for 25 dollars or less it's like okay but what percentage of the money that you raise right like like like like there can be big checks that are cash that are cashed

And then we're not even talking about the super PAC money. And my husband was like, why did all of these corporate Democrats now, like, adopt the Bernie small dollar donation thing in this, like, cynical way? And then it's always a little bit like off because they can't say I'm only raising money from this, but they'll gesture towards it. That's the lesson that they took. You know, it's just interesting to me to see Democrats at least like co-op some of the rhetoric. I don't take corporate PAC money is the other thing they'll say. But, okay, what, what, there's something you're also concealing. But there has been improvement in this area, right?

Even like the embrace of candidates like Grand Platner and people wanting more of that. And you write about how Biden was embraced the Disclose Act. Can you speak a little bit about that and how that was a bit of an improvement for Democrats and a good thing in Biden's presidency, even if it didn't get passed? So to my mind, the way out of this, first of all, let's be clear, there are no instant solutions. So let's just disabuse ourselves of the idea that this is going to change immediately overnight. But I do think there are three avenues that are quite hopeful. I mean, I'm not naive, right, but these are the, to my mind, having studied this, these are the three avenues

where I think we can actually make some progress. So the Disclose Act is the legislation that would require basic disclosure of dark money spending at a federal law requiring that. Sheldon White House has been a big champion of it. You mentioned President Biden came out and actually gave a speech saying it needs to be passed, so putting the actual White House behind it as the leader of the party. That is a good thing. A version of it passed at the ballot in Arizona, not exactly a super blue state, a swing state, passed by 70%.

So this is a wildly popular sort of non-partisan idea that we should at least know who is spending in our elections. And again, this is playing within the legal confines of Citizens United. So this is not like pie in the sky stuff where we know automatically the Supreme Court's going to say no. The Citizens United decision actually has this whole write-up about how disclosure laws should be robust and are fine. So that's one avenue. The next avenue, I think, that's really actually exciting is that this whole idea that corporations are people and thus entitled to free speech rights to spend in an unlimited way to buy elections. that whole idea is predicated on state incorporation laws. So, right, so the court says, okay, states under their incorporation laws,

they treat corporations as the same as people, and therefore we have to operate from that. In Montana, luminaries from both parties are pushing a ballot measure. It says, well, if that's the case, then can't we go back to doing what we used to do, which is changing our incorporation laws, and saying that we grant corporations this, this, and this power, but we don't grant them this, this, and this power.

We used to do that as a country all the time that states granted corporate charters and anybody who studies the law knows that corporations are artificial entities created by states. That is like technically what a corporation is. So human beings have rights. Corporations have powers. It's an important distinction.

And so what they're proposing to do in this Montana ballot measure that should be on the ballot in 2026 is say corporations have all the same powers that they've had except for one power they can't spend in elections now i people may be hearing this and saying well you know okay fine like some company's going to go you know reincorporate in delaware and then like you know come back into monta but here's the thing every state's corporate code says that out-of-state corporations have to play by the same rules as the corporation's instance. states inside the state. So the point is that Montana can't solve the problem for Colorado, can't solve the problem for New York or California. But Montana, if it passes that measure,

can solve the problem or begin solving part of the problem inside of Montana. And so here's the thing. They're going to the ballot for that in Montana because their Republican governor and legislature would never pass it. But blue states right now could pass the same thing. And I want to be clear. I don't think it's a cure-all. Like billionaires would still be able to individually spend money. This is about corporation spending, corporate spending. But billionaires would be forced to spend their money through official political committees,

which require disclosure. Right. Because this would apply to nonprofits as well. So I think there's something really important and innovative going on. Yes, would there be a Supreme Court challenge to this? Yes. But the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that state incorporation laws are what determine what powers corporations have. For the Supreme Court, and I'm not putting it past them, but for the Supreme Court to try to, like, you know, thread a needle and undermine something like this, you know, they would have to really dismantle parts of corporate law that I'm not quite sure the Supreme Court wants to dismantle, right?

Right. And they've also made, I mean, the case law makes the distinction clearly that there is a difference between citizenship and so-called legal personhood. The legal personhood that is applied for corporation, they, you know, applied with the motivated reasoning that you talk about. But it was applied and they talk about it as a useful legal fiction, which creates oxygen or the ability for lawyers to make the case to the Supreme Court, that if it's a. it's basically a vehicle for these cases to be heard or whatever, then the legal fiction that their rights can be abridged in a way. Like there is a roadmap. I go back to the idea of the distinction between rights and powers. Yeah.

We as human beings under the Constitution have rights. Corporations are granted powers. They are artificial entities. And to get into the weeds about it for one sec here, it makes sense. A corporation has, gets things that we as human beings do. not. Corporations get limited liability. If they go bankrupt, if they break the law, the people who are running them in many cases are shielded from themselves personally going bankrupt, at least under the law, right? The point is that states extend that special privilege and they

used to in exchange for, we're going to grant you some powers, but not other powers. And again, this used to be relatively routine, you know, a hundred years of ago. And states never gave up that power. So to me, that is that is really exciting. Now, the final thing that I think is really exciting. And, and, although I think it's not well understood. Take a look at the New York city mayor's race. Okay, Zoran Mamdani. He wins the primary. Matching funds. The front runner. Yeah, exactly. He's the front runner. But what I, what I worry about is that people, you know, how did Zoran Mondani do this? Like, well, he's a great candidate. It's got so much charisma. It's got such a powerful message. And his videos are so slick and well-produced.

All that's true. But I would say this, none of that matters or very little of it matters if he didn't have competitive resources to make sure enough voters saw those other positive factors. And that gets to New York City's public financing system. In New York City is one of, I think it's 26 cities and a couple estates has a system of public financing where a candidate can run for office and have some of their small donations matched at a multiple level. You know, for every dollar he gets seven or eight dollars in small dollar donations, right? And what that means in practice is a candidate can run for office raising small dollar money and ultimately get enough through the matching system enough resources to run a competitive campaign,

not to outspend their opponent, but at least to be competitive. And it gives candidates like Mamdani a way to run for office without having to rely on private donations that come with the expectation of legislative favors. Now, you mentioned Graham Platter and some of the other Senate candidates

who were kind of nationalizing their races, becoming kind of national celebrities to tap into national grassroots donors. I think in this election and under this current system, that's the best you can hope for. But that is not an answer to the current system because for every one candidate who can become a national celebrity, because they happen to be running for an office that people perceive to be a national super important office. I mean, I would challenge the idea that U.S. Senate races are more important than governor's races are more important. But that's the perception.

Can I just interject really quickly, David, just to say that, like, it's because why you're drawing this distinction, it's very important. In New York City, the matching funds only apply to in-city donations. You had to verify your address, right? But that system doesn't exist in Maine. So a guy like Platner has to get a national audience where Zoron didn't have to because he just had to appeal to people within the city. Exactly.

So I'm not right. Obviously, like, I think the way Graham Platner is doing it and the way some of these other, you know, Abdul in Michigan, et cetera, et cetera, like, yeah, they're doing it the right way under the current system because they don't have a matching fund, a public financing system available to them. But what I'm saying is, is that I don't, people shouldn't look at the way Graham Platner or Abdul Al-Sayette are raising money as the solution, as the long-term solution to this problem. Because, again, for every one of those candidates, there are 10, 20, 30, 50, candidates running down ballot that can never nationalize they can never become celebrities right but

and so what happens is is that down the ballot oligarch money has actually more power because it's harder to raise lots of grassroots money enough to become competitive so a public financing system that says if you do if to any uh candidate of any party any ideology if you qualify you get access to to a competitive amount of resources, that is the way to really break the stranglehold here. And again, I go back to Citizens United. Like Citizens United and the Supreme Court have said that public financing systems of elections are fine. They do not create, in the Supreme Court's view, constitutional problems. So those three areas are real, active and live ways to start breaking this hammerlock of money in our politics.

And for people listening, what I would encourage them to do, because I know corruption feels like this impossible problem, if you're sitting there in a blue state or a blue city, ask your local city council person, hey, do we have a public financing system of elections? What can we do to get the ball rolling on that? Hey, my state legislator, we're in a blue state with a Democratic governor. Can we just pass what Montana is doing? You will be surprised the more local you go. you will be surprised at how much more agency you may have with a relatively few number of people. If you're trying to call your senator, if you're trying to call your governor and your one or two or five or ten people, maybe you're going to get ignored.

If you're calling your city council, councilperson, if you're calling your state legislator, you're going to get more attention. And our screens are sort of designed to tell us not to focus on that. We all have our screens. We want to focus on national politics and it's exciting. and we forget the potential agency and power that we have right here in our local communities, where this battle really is unfolding as well. Lastly, David, just because I wanted that we have some viewer questions,

Alex B writes in saying, Ask David about SCOTUS teeing up a case to completely destroy the Voting Rights Act and watch Registry's states draw themselves 19 more house seats. Covered this last week and headlined it. today, but that's arguments were heard yesterday, might be extending into today. This is a little bit kind of a partner piece to your research for this book, but, but it's very important, obviously. Yeah, and I want to, I think we have to see it all as one large master plan. I want to go back to

what, to what we were discussing about the Powell memo, right? Democracy is becoming, is becoming a problem. This is the thesis of the Powell memo. It's getting the government to do things that we, the elite corporate power oligarchs don't want. And this is the central problem. Democracy is the problem. A government responding to the people is the central problem according. Essentially, that's the message of the Powell memo. And to my mind, there are really three pillars of this, and it explains the three pillars. We have to deregulate the campaign finance system, and weaken anti-bribery laws so we can basically buy elections. We can rig that part of democracy. We have to allow for our side when it gets power to rig the maps, to rig the

playing field, to rig the terms of the game, to make small D democratic expression harder and representation harder to happen. That's the gerrymandering piece that we're seeing right now. And then, of course, there's the other piece, which is we have to make it harder for democratic, small D democratic institutions to hold corporations accountable in their direct relationship with corporations. I'm talking about unions, right? We have to go after unions. We have to allow for gerrymandering and the rigging of the rules. And we have to deregulate the campaign finance system to allow for buying of elections. It's the iron triangle of the assault on democracy.

You know, I hear people say, you know, Donald Trump is the crisis of democracy. I see Donald Trump as the culmination, the expression of the crisis of democracy. But if you're worried about the democracy crisis, let me introduce you the master plan that's never before seen the light of day until our book has coming out with all these documents published. this master plan that is allowed for the buying of elections up and down the ballot for the last 20, 30, 40 years. Like this, we are in the culmination of the master plan that created the democracy crisis. This is not something new. It is not something sudden. It is the climax of it.

Very well done. Bring master plan back in. It's seamlessly working that in. It's great. I mean, it was like two years of work. on this book. I mean, really, like, I said, I really mean, I've been, I've been about to turn 50. I've been working in politics for, uh, media for 30 years. This is truly the most important journalism project I've worked on because it really has surfaced information that we kind of,

I think people sort of theorized it was there, but we didn't really know it was there. To see them write it down, it's not just important for history. I want to leave people with this idea. that if we can understand that what's going on is part of a deliberate master plan executed by specific people with a specific goal, what it means is it's not a natural human evolution. It's not a force of nature. It means that it can be reversed. It can be rolled back. It was created by humans. It can be reversed. This is not some divine force here. This is like we have to have our own organizing, our own, our own plans to reinvigorate the democracy. I mean, imagine what they felt like. Back in, it's

1971, Ralph Nader's winning all sorts of fights in Congress. They were a tiny minority that were throwing ideas against the wall. They probably seemed like totally unrealistic, but they worked at it for decades and decades. I'm not taking inspiration from them, but it's only to say, like, they could have been demoralized and checked out too but they they actually figured out a plan they stuck to it and they made it happen and in some ways that should be a reminder to all of us absolutely um and and if you're saying you know this is uh like you've done some great investigative work in the past uh very you know major name on it so uh that's high print makes people should check out the book even more if if uh if that's what you're saying um master plan

is what it's called the hidden plot to legalize corruption in America. David Serota, always, as always, check out the lever as well. Thank you so much for your time today, really appreciate it. And thanks to you,

and I want to add one last thing. Part of what Powell writes about is the infiltration of media, and I will say that one of the things, we've obviously seen that culminate, Barry Weiss, the, you know, the Ellison's, the billion airtime.

Part of the one other thing that I am hopeful about is that the reinvigoration of real independent media is something that is extremely important right now, and you are one of the outlets that is part of that movement. And so for everybody listening here right now, I don't care whether you support the lever,

the majority report, any other independent media, just support independent media, because it is all a part of unwinding this master plan. Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you so much, David. Really appreciate your time today. and we will put a link to a master plan down wherever people are listening to or watching this and at majority.fm, good to talk to you, buddy. Thank you. Thanks so much.

All right, of course. With that, we are going to wrap up the first part of the program, head into the fun half. I just saw we went a little bit over, but when we start talking about things like corporate personhood, that gets me going. And David is always just a great resource on that kind of thing. As David mentioned, the show relies on your support. Join the Majority Report.com. If you can, support us.

You can IM the show. We'll often read your IMs on air. We get a lot. We have a lot today as well. Matt, what's happening on Left Reckoning? Yeah, Left Reckoning. we had a show on Tuesday night, Alex Scopic, talking about Javier Malay in Argentina, and it was at that time a $20 billion bailout extended to the libertarian from Uncle Sam now is at $40 billion.

And Hartzell Gray, who is running for Congress in the, let me make sure it could change. Missouri's fourth district, which stretches all the way from Kansas City to Columbia, a huge square of a district. So he's going to be running in some real areas. This is gerrymandering stuff. So hopefully he can surprise people down there. So check that out at patreon.com. So it's like to recommend it. And now we, I believe, have our friends, Brandon and Binder.

Whoa. Hey, guys. That's right. Hey. I'm doing great. Hey, glad to see you all. I'm happy to see you. Glad to see you.

That's not a phrase. What's happening? on the discourse, Brandon. Oh, so if you hadn't noticed, we are in the march up to Halloween. So along with the news, we've been delving into anti-Hallowing propaganda because, you know, with all the conspiracy theories rolling around out there, anti-vaxxerism, Charlie Kirk, thick-neck stuff, like, it's sometimes nice to go back to the basics and see just some good old-fashioned satanic panic.

Like, where are we with, like, poison candy? Where are we with, like, human sacrifices? So we've been doing that. And also, yeah, we've been, like, really, I think, documenting Candace Owens' dissent into madness after the death of her best friend. So, like, that's also been, you know, a little bit jarring. So come join. I was like, did Brandon freeze? Yeah, she's not doing well.

Yeah, no. I think she's doing really well. You know, ratings, ratings-wise. But, you know, sometimes that's not what's best for us emotionally. But you're free to come over to join the discourse on YouTube, the discourse on Twitch, and, you know, like, celebrate the spooky season. All right. Do it. You're getting me in the mood for Halloween, Brandon.

I want to go watch a scary movie right now. Jeez. Well, just know that if you watch a scary movie, you're opening yourself up to demonic possession. Right. I know that every time I watch one. Right. That's why I watch them, actually. I cross my fingers hoping for it.

I love that those comments are getting more prominent in chat sections and not less in 2025 that people are thinking like, oh, if I watch the ring, I'm actually going to get followed by a demon. It speaks to the lack of like a demon haunted world. Media literacy in a variety of different contexts. I think if you ever want to. challenge your understanding of the world. You should watch my stream and delve into the madness that is modern American culture. And I want to tell you, a lot of people cannot tell fact from fiction. It's scary to admit it, but a lot of people, they watch the ring and they say to themselves,

this is a thing that happened. And it could happen to me too. You never know. Bender, what's happening on your shows and newsletter? Just go to YouTube.com slash Matt Bender. Hit that subscribe button and tune in to Leftist Mafia tonight at 8.30 p.m. Do it. Yes. How's the little one, father three? She's doing good. Everyone's doing really good. They're all getting excited for Halloween on the way.

Speaking of demons this past weekend, they finally got around to watching K-pop Demon Hunters and all they've been doing is singing the songs this whole week. so look even even demons are even infiltrating the youth of america now that's how that's yeah it's probably just a communism vehicle i mean have we ever thought about that that's why trump's slapping all these tariffs on any movies or tv shows produce outside the united states right they even they speak a bit korean a bit of korean in the movie when they sing the songs i mean oh no this is that outside influence this is a global globalism at work folks what uh brandon said about uh you know if you want to test your sanity uh you check into my stream reminded me of this clip of uh oh yes of yes we'll end with this brett winstein where uh a listener wanted him to listen to a podcast called

the telepathy tapes that reported to prove the existence of like secret mind powers i thought i thought sam was going to cry i think about this every day and brett is like i don't trust myself to not go insane with how forceful i'm going to find that argument I'm sure these telepathy tapes are fascinating. What I don't know what to do with is if these telepathy tapes suggest that everything I think is true about the universe is wrong. Does that mean that everything that I think about the universe is wrong? Or does that mean somebody would like me to do that because, you know, I've been a pain in the ass? A puppet master.

So, you know, where am I going to end up if these telepathy? the tapes really upend everything I think I know and the answer is well I'm then I'm in a position of having to uncomfortably question what they are his wife losing patient the moment she's like are you done with this anxiety uh she literally responds with I think you'll be all right yeah I think you could be watching the power of the podcast oh brandon we lost your audio it's gone the telepathy tapes you'll have to rejoin yes we'll head into the fun half that's our teaser get brandon's take on

Brett Weinstein having a psychotic break and being so mentally weak that he can't listen to a podcast without having his whole worldview that that's the type of person I want hosting a show that I look to to interpret the world for me see you in the fun Okay, Emma, please. Well, I just, I feel that my voice is sorely lacking on the majority report. Wait, what? Look, Sam is unpopular.

I do deserve a vacation at Disney World. So, ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to welcome Emma to the show. It is Thursday. Yeah, I think you need to take over for Sam. Yes, boys. Sir, I'm gonna, I'm gonna pause you right there. Wait, what? You can't encourage Emma to live like this.

And I'll tell you why. So it's offered a twerk, sushi, and poker with the boys. Twerp, sushi and poker with the boys Who was offered a tour Yeah, yeah, sushi and poker with the boys What? Twerp, sushi and poker Tim's upset?

Twerp, sushi and poker with the boys It's offered a twer, sushi and That's what we call it, bids. Twerp, sushi and poker with the boys. Right. Twerp, sushi and polo. We're going to get demonetized. I just think that what you did to Tim Poole was mean.

Free speech. That's not what you. we're about here. Look at how sad he's become now. You shouldn't even talk about it because I think you're responsible. I probably am in a certain way, but let's get to the meltdown here. Twir? Ugh. Sushi and poker with the boys. Oh my God.

Wow. Sushi. I'm sorry. I'm losing my fucking mind. So what's offered a twerk? Yeah. Sushi and poker with the boys. Logic. Twerp. Sushi and poker with the boys. Boy, boy, boy. I think I'm like a little kid. I think I'm like a little kid. Dwerp. I think I'm like a little kid. I think I'm like a little kid.

Add this debate. 7,000 times. A little kid. I'm like a little kid. I'm losing my fucking mind. Some people just don't understand. So I'm not trying to be a dip right now, but like, I absolutely think the U.S. should be providing me with a wife and kids.

That's not what we're talking about here. It's not a fun job. That's a real thing. That's a real thing. Willie Walker. That's a real thing. That's a real thing. Offered it.

That's a real thing. That's a real thing. Real thing, boy, that's a real thing. That's a real thing, real thing, real two boys, that offered it word. Ladies and gentlemen, Joe Wilgen has done it again. Offered it, twer, that's a real thing. That's a real thing. That's a real thing. Boy, that's, that's, that, awkward with the boy, that, offered it, twer, that's a real thing.

That's, that poker, let's go, Joe. Twirp, sushi and poker with the boys, take it easy to them. Sushi and poker. Things have really gotten out of pants. Sushi and poker with the boys. Illusional. Twir. Delude.

You don't have a clue as to what's going on. Live YouTube. Sam has like the way to the world on the shoulders. Sam doesn't want to do this show anymore. It was so much easier. One of the majority report was just you. Let's change the subject. Rangers and Nick's going great.

Now, shut up. Don't want people saying reckless things on your program. That's one of the most difficult parts of this show. This is a pro-killing podcast. I'm thinking maybe it's time we bury the hatchet. Left is best. Trump. Violet twir?

Don't be foolish and don't fucking tweet at me and don't get changed. The way Emma has cucked to all these people. Love it.

That's where my heart is, so I wrote my honor's thesis about it. Oh. She wrote an honest desis. I guess I should hand the main mic to you now.

You are to the right of the unformed policy. We already fund Israel, dude. Are you against us? That's a tougher question. I don't have an answer to you. incredible theme song i bumblers emma viglin absolutely one of my favorite people actually not just in the game like period