not enough bad things can happen to Bari Weiss.

Citations Needed Podcast

"An inflation conspiracy theory is infecting the Democratic Party," The Washington Post frets. "'Greedflation' is a nonsense idea," The Economist insists. "Harris' plan to stop price gouging could create more problems than it solves," CNN warns.

Over the last few years, as the prices of groceries, cars, and other necessities have risen, often dramatically, leading news outlets and influential pundits have claimed that these rising prices are simply a matter of supply and demand. Corporations aren't taking advantage of inflation, we’re told; they're simply responding to it. If materials are in short supply, or if there’s a surge in demand, retailers have no choice but to raise prices to control production flows and costs. Likewise, if prices of goods are significantly higher, then the people who want those goods enough to pay higher prices can still have them.

But these pat arguments don't hold up to scrutiny. Since the most recent round of inflation began, multiple studies have shown that corporations are indeed taking advantage of inflation, using tactics like price gouging to boost profits while creating barriers to quality food, medication, and other essentials. So what explains this discrepancy?

On this episode, we examine the tendency of media to defend corporate price-gouging and other inflationary maneuvers, how high status pundits and Serious Economists critique the White House from the right on this issue and condescend to anyone who might be even slightly suspicious that corporations are animated by something other than just the Invisible Hand, painting them as wacko conspiracy theorist who simply need to take the vaulted "Econ 101."

Our guest is the Revolving Door Project's Dylan Gyauch-Lewis.

Ep 210: Seller's Inflation and the Super Serious Economists Mocking "Greedflation" "Conspiracies"

The PC Police Outlaw Make-Believe." "Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web." "The Roots of Campus Hatred." "End DEI."

These articles all have something in common: they were written by Bari Weiss. Weiss, the New York Times opinion editor and columnist turned horseshoe theorist media proprietor, has made a name for herself as a victim, and enemy, of that perennial right-wing bogeyman: so-called wokeness. For over a decade now, Weiss has taken to the pages of major news media to complain, vilified — and sometimes target — college kids and protesters who won’t let her and the fascistic company she keeps, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, and the like, speak their minds as loudly and publicly as possible.

There is, of course, a comical level of irony here. Amid her claims of being silenced and repressed by a hostile left, Weiss has been paid to voice her opinions in legacy paper after legacy paper and been given millions by venture capital firms to start her own media company, The Free Press, and her so-called "university," the University of Austin. And despite her insistence that mainstream institutions are too intolerant of heterodox views like hers, she's warmly embraced on CNN broadcasts, in the pages of her former employer, The New York Times, and has been given glowing profiles in Vanity Fair, Los Angeles Magazine, Ha'aretz, The Information, and the Financial Times.

On this episode, we discuss the rise of Bari Weiss Silicon Valley-funded media empire, the trope of the Iconoclast rebel, truth-telling media lightening rod with banal conservative political positions, and the broader, seemingly uniquely American psychological need, and branding convention, for people with 95% boilerplate rightwing positions to see themselves as persecuted outsiders who don’t fit into any labels.   

Our guest is Discourse Blog's Katherine Krueger.

Bari Weiss, The 'University' of Austin, and the Silicon Valley-Funded Faux-Iconoclast Media Industry

"The Bad Guys Are Winning," wrote Anne Applebaum for The Atlantic in 2021. "The War on History Is a War on Democracy," warned Timothy Snyder in The New York Times, also in 2021. "The GOP has found a Putin-lite to fawn over. That's bad news for democracy," argued Ruth Ben-Ghiat on MSNBC the following year, 2022.

Within the last 10 years or so, and especially since the 2016 election of Trump, these authors — Anne Applebaum, Timothy Snyder, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, in addition to several others — have become liberal-friendly experts on authoritarianism. On a regular basis, they make appearances on cable news and in the pages of legacy newspapers and magazines–in some cases, as staff members–in order to warn of how individual, one-off “strongmen” like Trump, Putin, Orban, and Xi, made up a vague “authoritarian” axis hellbent on destroying Democracy for its own sake.

But what good does this framing do and who does it absolve? Instead of meaningfully contending with US's sprawling imperial power and internal systems of oppression — namely being the largest carceral state in the world — these MSNBC historians reheat decades-old Axis of Evil or cold War good vs evil rhetoric, pinning the horrors of centuries of political violence on individual "mad men." Meanwhile, they selectively invoke the "authoritarian" label, fretting about the need to save some abstract notion of democracy from geopolitical Bad Guys while remaining silent as the US funds, arms and backs the most authoritarian process imaginable — the immiseration and destruction of an entire people — specifically in Gaza. 

On this episode, we look at the advent and influence of MSNBC-approved historians, dissecting their selective anti-authoritarian posture and discussing how their work does little more than polish their careers and provide cover for US and US-allied militarism.

Our guest is historian and author Greg Grandin.

Episode 213: The Shallow, Power-Flattering Appeal of High Status #Resistance Historians

"White House frustrated by Israel's onslaught but sees few options," reports the Washington Post. "White House cancels meeting, scolds Netanyahu in protest over video," announces Axios. "Biden Works Against the Clock as Violence Escalates in the Middle East," asserts The New York Times.

Since Oct. 7, 2023, we've heard seemingly endlessly that the Biden White House disagrees with the violence in Gaza, but can't do anything to stop it. A number of hindrances frustrate the administration, we're told. There are limits to the United States’ influence and power. President Biden is furious and anguished at Israeli leadership. The administration is working around the clock toward a ceasefire, which — we are repeatedly told — will come any day now. 

But, as everyone from the Brookings Institution to the Financial Times to Israeli officials and generals themselves make clear: Biden has been able to, and still can, end Israel's genocidal onslaught whenever he wants. The US has dispositive leverage over Israel, leverage Biden has repeatedly––and openly––ruled out using. 

The stark reality is that Biden simply doesn't want to stop Israel and, while he may have complaints about the excesses and PR around the margins, he largely agrees with the outlines of Israel’s destruction of Gaza.

To obscure this central fact, US media has now spent over a year pushing out three White House and Israeli-curated media genres of hand-wringing deflection: (1) Helpless Biden, (2) Fuming/Deeply Concerned Biden, and (3) Third Partying. 

On this episode, as Biden is set to step down next month, we will go over the media's legacy of covering for the President for 15 months, examine these fictitious reporting genres designed to distance him from the carnage in Gaza, and look at how they worked tirelessly to minimize responsibility and absolve US officials from their involvement in a genocide being live-streamed for over a year.

Our guest is journalist Dalia Hatuqa.

Ep 214: Fake Ceasefire Talks and Feigned 'Concern': How US Media Helped Distance Biden From the Gaza Genocide

In this Inauguration coverage recap we detail how elite liberal resistance to Trump is MIA, how grassroots liberals and leftists are working behind the scenes anyway to fight back and why Trump and the billionaires who back him are simply Too Big To Fail.

News Brief: Media Won't Say a Nazi Salute is a Nazi Salute and How MAGA Became Too Big To Fail

$TRUMP and $MELANIA meme coins compete with $FART, $ASS and $TITS for attention in a crypto industry defined by scams, grifts and financial malfeasance. We cover the intersection of politics with crypto and dive into some of the less savory tokens on pump dot fun, a website where “degens” go to mint, pump and inevitably dump thousands of meme coins every single day. Our guest is Molly White, a journalist, researcher and critic of the crypto and tech industries.

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Editing by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (https://instagram.com/theyylivve / https://sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (https://pedrocorrea.com)

https://qaapodcast.com

QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.

Crypto Crime Season Has Begun feat Molly White (E309)

This week we're covering unwanted ads in your car, plane crashes, American brain drain, staffing and leadership shortages within the American police state, the United States' about-face on Ukraine, and much more

Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Episode 381: Fugue States Of America


It's been about a month since Donald Trump was sworn into office and they've already begun stripping the country of copper wiring, slashing a multitude of government agencies and attempting to facilitate large scale deregulation. This has led to some pretty absurd mistakes by the administration. Like when they fired a sizable chunk of the department of energy, only to attempt to scramble to rehire a group of nuclear safety workers only to realize that they didn’t actually have these worker’s contact information, as they no longer had access to their government email accounts. It appears that no one is at the wheel right now. You are being run by a kakistocracy, or rule by the worst, although given that the vice president and reddit billionaire shadow president both clearly have browsed 4chan too much, it seems more like a “kekistocracy” at the moment. 

Liv, Travis, and Jake discuss the lies that are flying out of DOGE and Elon Musk, the consequences of massive regulatory capture, the Trump admin’s plans to declassify old documents, and what r/conspiracy thinks about the new, "uncensored" version of ChatGPT.


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SOURCES:

Trump froze a bribery law that previously hit suppliers for Elon Musk’s Tesla
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/12/trump-foreign-bribery-law-elon-musk-tesla-minerals.html
SSA OIG: Preventing, Detecting, and Recovering Improper Payments
https://oig.ssa.gov/assets/uploads/072401.pdf


No, 150 Year Olds Aren’t Collecting Social Security Benefits
https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-doge-social-security-150-year-old-benefits/

How Trump’s Firings “Paralyze” the NLRB
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/02/trump-nlrb-firing-musk-doge-workers-rights-labor-unions-paralyze/

Elon Musk's DOGE takes aim at agency that had plans of regulating X
https://www.npr.org/2025/02/12/nx-s1-5293382/x-elon-musk-doge-cfpb

DOGE Claimed It Saved $8 Billion in One Contract. It Was Actually $8 Million.
https://archive.is/tmWZl#selection-4583.0-4586.0


Open AI Tries To “Uncesor” ChatGPT
https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/16/openai-tries-to-uncensor-chatgpt/

FBI says it has discovered new files on JFK assassination
https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/11/politics/jfk-assassination-files/index.html

Scoop: FBI finds secret JFK assassination records after Trump order
https://www.axios.com/2025/02/10/trump-jfk-assassination-records


The Kekistocracy (E312)

Covering some news items from this week, also encouraging Mexico and Canada to invade us, checking in with our old friend Jimmy Page, and speculating on what would happen in Tommy Shelby married Ephialtes of Trachis

Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Episode 383: Projecting Quiet Confidence

Examining the nature and basis of fascism in America in the 2020s

Peter Thiel op-ed we mentioned: https://www.ft.com/content/a46cb128-1f74-4621-ab0b-242a76583105

Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Episode 384: Friction Fire

Semafor reporter Dave Weigel returns to the show to look at the political angles to Trump’s tariff regime and the global economic shocks. We discuss the various attempts to backfill justifications, responses from GOP and Democrats, and how this is all somehow about wokeness and masculinity or something. We also discuss last week’s special election in Wisconsin, and what it can tell us about Trump (and Elon)’s strength going forward.

Find Dave’s work on Semafor here: https://www.semafor.com/author/david-weigel


923 - The Banks Are Out of Money feat. Dave Weigel (4/7/25)

Citations Needed is a podcast about the media, power, PR, and the history of bullshit. It is hosted by Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson, and produced by Florence Barrau-Adams.

Bari Weiss, The 'University' of Austin, and the Silicon Valley-Funded Faux-Iconoclast Media Industry

Citations Needed Podcast

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