RomanHlavatskyy

Are we in a second Gilded Age? Is Trump really a Fascist? Why are we so politically polarized? How did corporations take over our politics? To understand the present, study the past. Please join me as I share 6 crucial lessons from history.

This was not exactly Trump’s best week. New York Justice Arthur F. Engoron found Trump liable for conspiring to manipulate his net worth and ordered him to pay a penalty that will exceed $450 million — which, along with the $83 million judgment against him in the defamation suit brought by E. Jean Carroll — could wipe out his entire stockpile of cash. Meanwhile, a date was set for the hush money trial, in which Trump is alleged to have paid off a porn star to keep her quiet before the election but somehow failed to report it as an election expense. Oh, and a former FBI informant was found to have fabricated the Hunter Biden story — the allegation that President Biden and his son sought bribes from a Ukrainian energy company. The informant has been arrested. Meanwhile, Trump’s favorite murderous dictator, Vladimir Putin, seems to have knocked off his major opponent, Aleksei A. Navalny — an anticorruption activist who for more than a decade led the political opposition to Putin while enduring arrests, assaults, and a near-fatal poisoning — under mysterious circumstances. Navalny was 47. The apparent murder complicates Trump’s efforts to prevent Republicans from giving more aid to Ukraine. Heather and I try to make some sense out of Trump’s week from hell.

Today Heather and I look ahead to Monday’s Iowa caucuses — and ask whether Nicki Haley has a chance to become the Republican nominee in 2024. Or are Haley and DeSantis simply laying foundations for their 2028 runs, assuming Trump relinquishes his dictatorship then?

Welcome back to our Coffee Klatch, where Heather and I consider special counsel Robert K. Hur’s report emphasizing Biden’s age and memory loss. Was it politically motivated? Is Biden really too old to be president? We also examine the Supreme Court’s oral argument on Colorado’s decision to bump Trump from the ballot on the basis of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment; the decision of the three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that Trump doesn’t have broad immunity from criminal indictments; and what this means for whether Trump will be tried before the election. And the GOP’s bad week on the border bill and on trying to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas. And, of course, the Super Bowl. Please grab a chair and a cup of coffee and join us.

This week, Heather and I try to figure out why the Republican Party has become an enemy of democracy — refusing to fund Ukraine against Putin’s aggression, supporting Trump’s invitation to Putin to attack other European countries and his threat to leave NATO if he’s reelected, and giving legitimacy to attempts to substitute scripture for law — as did the Alabama Supreme Court in deciding that embryos are “children” — and embrace White Christian nationalism. So pull up a chair, grab some coffee, and, if you wish, take our poll.