Roger Stone: Democracy's Undertaker

Welcome to a very angry episode of Gaslit Nation! The government may be back open, but the US is not out of danger – we are merely in the eye of the hurricane as damage from the shutdown mounts and Trump threatens both another shutdown and a scheduled "national emergency." Sarah and Andrea discuss the toll the shutdown took on workers and how the broader ambition of the GOP – to strip the US down and sell it for parts – continues unimpeded. We note how female representatives like Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez grasp the stakes and are acting as responsible leaders while Congress and the justice system, on the whole, continues to fail citizens.  We rejoice in the indictment of the grotesque Roger Stone but wonder why it took forty years to stop him, and we break down the exploitative synergy between Stone, Wikileaks and the mainstream media. We wonder yet again how many indicted campaign associates it takes for someone to arrest the remaining complicit players who are actively abusing executive power (like Trump and Kushner) or who are building worldwide fascist movements (like Bannon). Finally, we take a long look at the citizen uprising in Venezuela, its exploitation by both the Trump administration and the Kremlin, and the promotion of harmful Russian state propaganda by members of Congress. Kleptocracy should be acknowledged as an obvious enemy of justice, and it is disappointing to see those who purport to represent the people instead parrot the rhetoric of a mafia state.