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

Hello Seekers!

Ben here, today Jacques, Hesse and I discuss the American woman who is holding 100 press conferences in Pakistan about how she is refusing to leave, style each other for our inevitable Grammy appearances, and wildly speculate about how tariffs are going to effect the American economy. Also, we discuss how to elevate my years long "harassment" of JVN.

SD 380 - Free Trade?? Where!?

In this News Brief, we interview journalist and author Eoin Higgins about his new book, "Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left," discuss the new model of tech billionaire funding, and detail how some of the biggest names in Left media became MAGA-aligned, Tucker-boosting petty, score-settlers.

News Brief: Silicon Valley Patronage, How To Drift Right, and the New Conservative Media Ecosystem

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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https://patreon.com/qaa




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)

In this Beg-a-Thon live show, "Ancient Rome and the False Histories Inspiring Musk & the MAGA World," with guest Dr. Sarah E. Bond, we discuss Sarah's new book, Strike: Labor, Unions, and Resistance in the Roman Empire, and how Elon Musk and everyone in his MAGA orbit appropriate the aesthetics of Rome while understanding almost nothing about the history they're seemingly so infatuated with.

Originally livestreamed on YouTube on Wednesday, February 19.

Citations Needed Live Show Beg-a-Thon: Ancient Rome and the False Histories Inspiring Musk & the MAGA World

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)

"Senate Weighs Investing $120 Billion in Science to Counter China," trumpeted The New York Times in 2021. "A New Economic Patriotism Can Help Unite Our Divided Congress," argued Newsweek in 2023. "US cedes ground to China with ‘self-inflicted wound’ of USAid shutdown, analysts say," cautioned The Guardian in 2025. 

In recent years, we’ve been exposed to the latest version of a centuries-old geopolitical message: We all have a common enemy, and we all need to unite to fight it by making our own country stronger. That enemy—most commonly China—is threatening to outpace, if it isn’t already outpacing, the US in infrastructural investment, educational programs, technological development, and elsewhere, and we need to devote millions, billions, even trillions of dollars to restoring the vitality of our institutions in order to reverse this trend. 

But why must defeating an "enemy" be the justification for policy that has the potential to benefit the public? Why should we just accept the premise that there must be an "enemy" to compete against and defeat? Why can’t policy be enacted for the sole purpose of improving people’s lives? And how does this messaging about the threat of a looming adversary serve the ruling class?

On this episode, we detail the timeworn trope of the common enemy as a "unifying" device, looking at how increasingly so-called progressives are appealing to feel-good sentiments of unity and to the genuine needs for sound infrastructure, robust social safety nets, corporate regulation, and functional institutions in order to sell the idea that there is, and always will be, a shadowy bad guy that must be vanquished. 

Our guest is historian, professor and author Greg Grandin.

Episode 218: The Siren Song of Rallying Around a 'Common Enemy' to Promote Progressive Causes

Ep 219: How Elites Concern Troll "Waste" to Gut Social Welfare and Divide the Working Class

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.

Ep 219: How Elites Concern Troll "Waste" to Gut Social Welfare and Divide the Working Class

Citations Needed Podcast

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