Sane(ish) with Jo Carducci

Isaiah Martin joins Jo Carducci on this episode of The Siren Podcast. Gen-Z isn’t buying what Donald Trump is selling. The job market for recent college graduates is almost non-existent. Business are laying off employees en-masse. Grocery and gas prices have skyrocketed. And Donald Trump has not delivered on his promise of bringing down housing costs, let alone being able to jump start a family. In other words, everything we expected from a second Trump presidency. But still, millions of young people bought into the grift, driven in large part due to the massive right-wing media ecosystem feeding “manosphere” content to disillusioned and confused young men through predatory social media algorithms. In the end, Kamala Harris did win the Gen-Z vote, but not by much. Young people only voted for Harris/Walz by 4 points in 2024, down significantly from Biden/Harris’ 25 point victory in 2020. Cut to 2026. In the midst of a turbulent economy and growing discontent among young people with current political leadership, recent polls show a staggering 76% disapproval rating and a net approval of -53 among 18-29 year olds for Donald Trump. Isaiah Martin, political commentator and former Democratic Congressional candidate in TX-18, joins this episode of The Siren Podcast to discuss all things Gen-Z and more. Jo and Isaiah also get into the latest surrounding the Republican effort to gerrymander the South, cutting large groups of voters and key demographics out of holding political power. Isaiah also discusses his latest appearance on Abby Phillips, where he delivered a smackdown to George W. Bush’s former spokesperson. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Trump family’s attack on the freedom of speech rights of private citizens continues, as today, we learned that Trump’s FCC plans to challenge ABC station licenses amid Melania’s feud with Jimmy Kimmel. For the administration that was apparently going to “make comedy legal again,” it seems that only applies to people they dislike. This is not the first time Donald Trump or members of his family have resorted to authoritarian tactics to silence comedians who make jokes at their expense, or reporters who publish stories that particularly upset the regime Kimmel took to the air to respond to the GOP’s wild accusations against him, saying “It was a very light roast joke about the fact that he's almost 80 and she's younger than I am,” Kimmel said. “It was not by any stretch of the definition a call to assassination, and they know that I've been very vocal for many years speaking out against gun violence in particular.” On this episode of Big F*ing Deal, Jo and Tara also dive into the attempts by Donald Trump and his Republican Senator lackeys in Congress to pay for the White House ballroom with taxpayer funds. Going back on a statement is nothing new for Donald Trump and the GOP, for whom practically every word of out their mouths is a lie. But at a time when Americans struggle to afford grocery or gas prices due to his illegal and costly Iran War, this should be a step too far. They also discuss Trump’s absurd call to rebrand ICE agents as ‘NICE Agents,’ in an attempt to salvage the agency’s abhorrent public perception. The Trump midterm message is as follows: We will hide the Epstein Files from you that we promised to release, while bombing children’s elementary schools during our illegal war and raising your gas prices in the process, cause the job market to crash and inflation levels to rise. And while we’re at it, we’re going to send thousands of masked secret police agents into your communities to kidnap your family members and keep them in a concentration camp while denying them medial resources. And then we’ll use your money to pay for a lavish, Victorian-era ballroom so Dear Leader can throw his Mar-a-Lago parties for his billionaire friends at the People’s House. Great midterm message, Donald. No notes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices