Gaslit Nation with Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior

We join the women of the great podcast Mueller, She Wrote to debate a matter of vast geopolitical importance – the 1985 black comedy Clue! (In case you are counting, that’s one plus two plus one plus one people appearing on this show). Together we discuss why the McCarthy-era Clue explains so much about our Roy Cohn-created present, including our tenuous grasp on reality and our deep longing for alternative endings.

This week, we interview Billie Winner-Davis, a social worker and the mother of Reality Winner, an air force veteran and the former NSA contractor who provided The Intercept with an NSA report on the Kremlin’s hacking of US voting systems at a time when the issue was still largely being debated and the public kept very much in the dark.

We are back with Part II of our discussion of the 2020 battleground state Ukraine. Our special focus again is on Rudy Giuliani who multiple experts have said should register for the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) given his many clients overseas, including several who serve the Kremlin’s interests. Will 2016 repeat in 2020, with Giuliani filling the role of Paul Manafort who worked as an unregistered foreign agent?

We continue our interview with Andrea’s sister Alexandra Chalupa, the former DNC contractor who was one of the first people in the US to warn officials about Russia’s attack on the 2016 election. For the first time, Alexandra tells her story in depth in her own words, including how she discovered new Riker’s Island inmate Paul Manafort was conspiring with Russian actors to help Trump win, her unheeded warnings to the DNC about email hacks and Wikileaks, and the terrifying aftermath of the 2016 electio

Hey, it can talk! In this episode of Gaslit Nation, we break down Mueller’s surprise press conference on Thursday with a special guest – Alexandra Chalupa, the independent researcher who was one of the first people in the US to warn officials about Russia’s attack on the 2016 election.

Now that Manafort is in prison, Giuliani seems to have taken his place, especially in trying to drum up Democratic scandals to distract from Trump’s many investigations. We examine one of Giuliani's longtime moneymakers: Ukraine.

We start off by looking at The Week The Mueller Probe Died in light of new information that’s been revealed since March. We go on to discuss the 2020 race, threats to election integrity, and the novelty of Elizabeth Warren.

Constitutional law and voting rights attorney John Bonifaz answers our questions about one of the most contentious topics today – whether, when, and how to impeach Donald Trump. Bonifaz is the president and co-founder of Free Speech for People, a non-partisan advocacy group for a new constitutional amendment to limit campaign spending and repeal Citizens United. He is also the co-author of the January 2019 op-ed “Time to Impeach Donald Trump” with Representative Rashida Tlaib.

This episode picks up where we left off last week in our breakdown of the Mueller Report, in particular the role of Paul Manafort who flagrantly announced his crimes and no one did anything to stop him; the constant underestimation of this transnational crime syndicate masquerading as a government that spurred both the press and the Mueller probe to give them a pass; and the revelation that all fifty states were targeted and potentially compromised by Russia in 2016, despite earlier denials.

At long last, the Mueller Report is here, and we are…underwhelmed. In the first episode of a two-part Mueller Report Special, we do an overview of the bizarre sequence of events that led to the Barr Report and the Mueller Report, which have been eclipsed by propaganda and atrocious media coverage. We examine the contents of the report itself, and ask questions like: why did Mueller fail to indict? Since when is obstructing justice openly no longer obstructing justice at all?

We lay out, yet again, the urgent arguments for impeachment, and fact-check those we often hear against it. We also interview Alexandra Flores-Quilty of the grassroots group By the People that works with Rep. Rashida Tlaib and other Congressional leaders to call for impeachment hearings. The worsening crisis at the U.S. border; the continued purge of our government leaving crucial key positions unfilled, threatening our national security and public safety; strengthen the case.

We discuss the Barr memo fallout, the insipid media coverage, the unchecked assassins of Russia and Saudi Arabia, Ukraine's election, FBI purges, and more.

As we’ve said repeatedly at Gaslit Nation, the crisis in the US was never about Trump vs Mueller, but about corruption and exploitation – about massive institutional failure that worsened over multiple decades, culminating in a kleptocracy backed by a transnational crime syndicate. We discuss what’s next for the US and the world as the Trump team ramps up its autocratic goals.

March 2019 marks the five-year anniversary of Russia’s annexation of Crimea. We explain why the fake referendum is called a "referendum by gun point" and provide background on Russia's annexation which had been in the works since the mid-2000s. We share an inspiring update on political prisoner Oleg Sentsov, a Crimean filmmaker held in a Siberian prison on trumped up charges. Sentsov defies the odds by continuing to produce art, including a feature film.

Impeachment sends a message about who we are as a country and what we will accept and abide. The rule of law demands action. Refusing to take action is normalizing atrocity. Lawlessness must be confronted regardless of the outcome, as a matter of principle and conscience. Fighting only the battles that you know you will win is a sure way of ensuring you lose; preemptive surrender, in a rapidly consolidating autocracy, is permanent surrender.