The Signorile Report

Thrilled to collaborate with Lincoln Square on this live video, with Joe Sudbay. Great conversation and some bells and whistles. Sorry to say that shortly after we taped this live—which some of you might have seen—Virginia Democrats decided not to go with the most aggressive approach we discussed to throw out the Virginia Supreme Court decision. The fact that it was in the discussion at all, however, means we’re at least getting them to consider just what this fight means. But we have to keep pushing. Joe and I talked about all that and much more. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

“I never listen to you, but I do pass in from time to time.”That was how Mark from Texas began in a call to my SiriusXM program as I was discussing the so-called “Save Act” and the GOP’s bogus claim of “voter fraud. “It’s the usual passive-aggressive MAGA approach. They don’t want you to think they care what you have to say—but they care about what you have to say.This one, unlike most, was polite enough, though he did accuse me of “cherry picking” facts when it came to Trump’s brutality. Even just one act of brutally is bad enough, of course. But if we were cherry-picking all the terrible things Donald Trump has done, we’d have over 1000 bushels of cherries!The Signorile Report is free and reader-supported. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism. Thanks!First Mark tried to imply that Democrats want undocumented people to come into the country so that they would vote for Democrats. This, of course, is a variation of the racist Great Replacement Theory. But you can’t vote unless you’re a citizen—by law—yet Mark seemed to be implying these people were, when there’s no evidence, and wanted a law against it (though one exists) and then wanted people to promise not to vote for 20 years. It made no sense!I believe I gently wiped the floor with him in my response, and he then said he just had one thing to add and would get off the phone and “let” me “go.” In fact, he said this more than once, yet just stayed and kept asking questions, all of which I hit back at with truth in my answers.Twice he called me “intellectually dishonest.” I’ll let you be the judge of which of us met the definition of that. Watch and let me know your thoughts! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

Trump’s numbers just continue to plummet. An AP poll now has his approval at 33% among all Americans. A Fox News poll shows even 31% of Republicans disapprove of him, which is massive.The numbers reflect a divide in MAGA, and it has deepened after the war in Iran and events of recent weeks. Trump’s threats to “wipe out” a whole civilization, his attacks on Pope Leo, and his sharing an AI image of himself as Jesus have some in MAGA now calling him the “antichrist.” Some of the same people—and others—are also promoting conspiracies that his assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania was staged.Beyond that, even among those not pushing these extreme narratives, we’re seeing other MAGA figures coming out against Trump, such as Tucker Carlson, clearly worried about their own futures, and the fact that many of their followers are angry at Trump—and they don’t want to be behind their own followers.David Gilbert of Wired, who covers the extremes within the MAGA movement, wrote all about it and joined me on my SiriusXM program to talk about it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

Lisa from Michigan called my SiriusXM program, claiming she accidentally was listening and didn’t know how her radio had been on the progressive channel.You have to watch and listen to this one. I did eventually go from zero to 10, and some listeners thought I should have given her more time to make her positions heard. They have a point. But honestly, I was quite nice—even called her smart—until she refused to agree that it was stupid that Trump attacked the pope (and wouldn’t even even name one thing Trump’s done wrong). That just astonished me, and yeah, the temperature just went up.Watch and let me know your thoughts! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

Joe Sudbay, host of “State of the States” on SiriusXM Progress, where I host my won show each weekday afternoon, joined me in this Susbtack live to talk about the dizzying events of the week. The bottom line: Donald Trump is more dangerous than ever—and losing—while the GOP is in the toilet and Democrats are surging. Meanwhile, Melania’s trying to get out ahead of something while Pope Leo is telling Trump, in the most solemn and pious way, to go screw himself after the Pentagon threatened the Vatican. Watch and join the conversation! Thank you Maura, kathiallyson, Natalie Lago, Karen B, Suzanne Forster, and many others for tuning into my live video with Joe Sudbay! Join me for my next live video in the app.The Signorile Report is free and reader-supported. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism. Thanks! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

John Byrne of Raw America hosted me in a great cross-posted Substack Live. Raw America is from the same folks who bring you RawStory, but now here on Substack and teaming up with Really American .We talked about my piece on the Epstein files about Steve Bannon working with Jeffrey Epstein—per their email exchanges—to take down the Catholic Church by trying to turn the book “Inside the Closet of the Vatican” into a movie.We also discussed the new media landscape for progressives on so many new platforms, some of the history of queer media, and much more. Sign up for Raw America, another great place for news.Thank you Sue Henger, Angel, Deborah Word, Brenda Schaefer, Victoria, and many others for tuning into my live video with Raw America! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

Donald Trump has us knee-deep in an illegal war while his ICE thugs have killed people in the streets and are now at our airports. Meanwhile, the economy is dipping toward recession under the weight of his tariffs and his war.It’s time, once again, to march! Protest always brings enormous attention to the issues, galvanizes more people, and helps turn people out in upcoming elections.Ezra Levin, co-executive director of Indivisible, one of the groups mobilizing people, joined me on my SiriusXM program to talk about the upcoming No Kings protests this Saturday, March 28th. He is expecting it to be the largest of the No Kings events and the largest mass protest in U.S. history, with millions joining in over 3000 events nationwide. You can find an event near you right here.And he has a simple ask. Bring someone who hasn’t gone before or who might not normally attend protests. Make the numbers as big as possible. Bring people together so that they connect and organize, and then help turn out to vote in November. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

The Signorile Report is reader-supported. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism. Thanks!Great conversation with Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove, who represents California’s 37th District in the great city of Los Angeles. You’ll remember when she asked the very relevant question of Kristi Noem in a congressional hearing, about her alleged affair with Corey Lewandowski—a question Noem wouldn’t answer, decrying “tabloid trash”—while Kamlager-Dove read to her some of the headlines, like my favorite, “ICE Barbie's mile high private chamber with alleged lover exposed.”Kamlager-Dove was of course talking about something legitimate: Conflict of interest in having a relationship with an insubordinate. I spoke with Kamlager-Dove about Markwayne Mullin, who Trump is replacing Noem, as well as about the war in Iran and the World Cup, taking place Los Angeles.This interview airs today on my SiriusXM program all across America and globally on the the SiriusXM app. Thank you Cary Grace, Roger Helbig, stephen, Kathleine Cole, Kathryn MacWhinney, and many others for tuning into my live video with Sydney Kamlager-Dove! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

Independent journalist Jonathan Larsen joined me on my SiriusXM program to discuss how the war against Iran is being promoted by commanders to American troops as a full on Holy War—a crusade—which he wrote about on his Substack yesterday. He spoke to an advocacy group receiving complaints from members of the military, and he saw some of the emails complaining about statements to troops pulled right out of the Book of Revelation. Trump, troops were told, was anointed by God to bring on Armageddon.It’s an illuminating and alarming conversation. It underscores how reckless and dangerous the current Pentagon is, and how this will come all back to harm the United States in so many ways. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

The terrific Susan J. Demas, longtime journalist and executive editor of Lincoln Square, a great news site here on Substack with a lot of names you’ll know, interviewed me for Lincoln Square, and I’m cross-posting here for you all to watch. We got into Trump’s attack on the Pride flag, Esptein files and lots more! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

“My faith is what drives to veto anti-LGBTQ laws.”It’s great to hear that from a red state governor. Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky, who joined me in studio for my SiriusXM program, has won statewide twice as governor (last re-elected in 2023) and previously as attorney general—a Democrat in a state that voted for Donald Trump by 31 points in 2024.But he hasn’t done it by being a centrist on issues that MAGA sees as red meat. And the fact that he’s the most popular Democratic governor in the country and is in a deep red state makes him very interesting and surely someone who has a lot to say to other Democrats about how to win.We discussed that, as well as what the next president needs to do—and his own discussion on whether he will run in 2028.The Signorile Report is reader-supported. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism. Thanks! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

Senator Raphael Warnock pulls no punched in our interview, taking on Trump, JD Vance and the authoritarian regime. “They’re people who know they’re losing,” he said. Discussing negotiations in the Senate on funding the Department of Homeland Security, Warnock said, “certainly the presence of ICE around sensitive locations, to including polling stations, churches, schools…those are things I will have my eyes on as we talk about whether or not there is a path to fund the Department of Homeland Security under Donald Trump and JD Vance.” And on House Speaker Mike Johnson pushing back on the demand for ICE agents not to wear masks, Warnock called Johnson, “pathetic.” “Here is a man who is the Speaker of the House, saying without evidence that there are questions about…voting my mail,” Warnock said, calling Johnson, “deeply irresponsible.” Watch the full interview. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

Trump is scared about the mid-terms—let’s be clear about that. He knows if Republicans lose control of the House and possibly the Senate he will be investigated and bogged down, unable to do many dangerous things. He’ll be held in check on much.So it’s not a coincidence that he went on Dan Bongino’s podcast and called for elections to be “nationalized” as he saw more losses for the GOP. As I discuss in this Substack Live, Trump’s threatening proclamations are a measure of our success. His other schemes—like mid-decade gerrymandering—aren’t working out. We’re winning, and he’s going to further extremes.That doesn’t mean, however, that we shouldn’t take him seriously. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

The execution of protester Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse at the VA in Minneapolis, has stunned the country and the world.Ten bullets fired on him AFTER the licensed gun owner was disarmed by a gang of masked ICE goons. (Minnesota is an open carry state, and video shows he never brandished the gun.)Donald Trump is ramping up state terror. Join Joe Sudbay joined me for Substack Live at 2 PM ET today. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

Back from a brief vacation, joining readers in a Substack Live for discussion of the latest madness imposed on the world by America’s debilitating dictator.I’m back on my SiriusXM program on Tuesday, Jan 20th, 3-6ET This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

A lot here as we talk about the MAGA closet today—some the names you’ve heard and much more—as Trump assaults LGBTQ rights. And we look back on the GOP gay scandals of the past. Pam Spaulding was at the forefront of those with Pam’s House Blend, her terrific blog, as was Joe Sudbay, then at Americablog.And for more reading up on our discussion, see below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

Retired Army Major General Randy E. Manner knew many of the generals in the room in Quantico, Virginia when Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth gave unprecedented speeches that sounded alarms throughout the military and the country. For over three decades Manner served the country in many positions in the Pentagon and around the world. Prior to retiring from the Army as a Major General, he served as the Deputy Commanding General of the United States 3rd Army in Kuwait, as the Acting Vice Chief of the National Guard Bureau, and as the Acting and Deputy Director of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. General Manner has come on my program regularly, and this week we spoke about the gathering, at which he said the generals were used as “props” and which he said showed “our president seems to be slipping quite a bit, even from the campaign, let alone from years ago, into the depths of, quite frankly, self-serving dictatorship.”And that was just the beginning. Listen in to the full conversation. The Signorile Report is free and reader-supported. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism. Thanks! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

Joe Sudbay, host of “State of the States” on SiriusXM Progress joined me on my SiriusXM program yesterday to talk about the Trump’s military occupation of DC, where he lives, and where he has experienced the intimidating, chilling atmosphere.And we tried out something new. We did the interview live on Sirius XM and as a Substack Live. Something fun to try out, but of course we had some kinks to work out. For the first minute and a half or so, Joe couldn’t be heard on the Substack Live, while he could be heard on SiriusXM. But in short order we worked it out, and Joe could be heard on Substack. So just realize that, as I’m posting the conversation here. You won’t hear Joe at first, but will you hear Joe after the first couple of minutes—and it’s worth waiting for his take. Always a great conversation and a lot of smart discussion about what’s happening in DC. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

There are so many strands to this discussion with Joe Sudbay, host of SiriusXM Progress’ “State of the States,” and it seems like we’re jumping around several times from the Epstein saga and Trump’s lack of control, to the economic warning signs and the jobs numbers to the GOP’s rigging of elections and the big, bad bill.What ties it all together, however, is both the danger of the moment we’re in and Trump’s unraveling as he has strong headwinds against him while he’s trying to destroy democracy. And Democrats are fighting back!Watch and let me know your thoughts!Thank you Randy Scobey, Hirut Kidane-mariam, Michael deCamp, Jenny Benjamin, Kevin Paquette, and many others for tuning into my live video with Joe Sudbay! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

So glad to have a discussion about the chaos, corruption and brutality we’re all witnessing with the always astute and indefatigable Joy Reid. Since leaving MSNBC, Joy has been doing so much in this multi-media universe we’re all in now, and it’s all great.She came on my SiriusXM program and discussed Trump’s war on Los Angeles, and his the real goal in trying to take over cities, rounding people up and building concentration camps. Joy always brings the history, and the facts, and you’ll want to watch this.Joy launched The Joy Reid Show on YouTube, and you can also get there via Joy’s House, her terrific Substack where you can access her writing, get it in your email box by subscribing and get her takes on every insane thing happening now. The Signorile Report is free and reader-supported. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism. Thanks! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

Earlier this morning, Joe Sudbay and I discussed just how bad all of this is as the GOP rams through the most destructive bill we’ve seen, and how Democrats need to respond to the impact of the big, bad bill.It’s always a great conversation with Joe, who hosts “State of the States” on SiriusXM Progress, and who comes on my SiriusXM show often and guest hosts my show. So please watch our Substack Live and let us know your thoughts! Thank you P. J. Schuster, Jason Dyer, Jools, and many others for tuning in to the live video with Joe Sudbay! The Signorile Report is free and reader-supported. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism. Thanks! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

Thank you Callie🇺🇦🇨🇦🇬🇱🇲🇽, Deanna Laquian, KB, Mona, Cathy Holmes, and many others for tuning into my live video with THE LEFT HOOK with Wajahat Ali! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

My conversation with Joe Sudbay, host of “State of the States” on SiriusXM Progress 127 (every Saturday). We discussed Trump’s war on LA—and America—Governor Gavin Newsom’s response, and the over-performance of Democrats in special elections—and what’s to come. Joe will be covering the No Kings Day protests this Saturday on SiriusXM Progress 127 beginning at 1 p.m.Thank you Charlie, Linda, Jesse bie, Ann Brooke, Nancy Rea, and many others for tuning into my live video with Joe Sudbay! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

President Biden on “Late Night with Seth Myers” last night, joking: “You gotta take a look at the other guy. He’s about as old as I am... but he can’t remember his wife’s name."Last week, Dr. Charan Ranganath, a University of California, Davis, neuroscientist who focuses on the the study of memory, came on my SiriusXM program to discuss the issue that had blown up in the media: President Biden’s age. He’d written an op-ed for the New York Times that was a rare bit of solid media coverage in a sea of sensationalism.There is a lot of misunderstanding—and a great many stereotypes—about aging and the brain. That is certainly clear if the polls are to believed (or even are close) regarding Americans’ concerns about President Biden (even if it’s not going to change the way they vote, according to most of those same polls). And our media hasn’t done much to enlighten people, choosing instead to feed their worst fears. So I invited Dr. Ranganath on my program to give us some insights. You can listen to the full interview here. A transcript, slightly edited for clarity and space, is below. Let me know your thought!The Signorile Report is reader-supported. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism. Thanks!Michelangelo Signorile: I'm so looking forward to this conversation. Why are so many people thinking about President Biden's memory and age, and that includes the majority of Americans—if we're to believe polls—in the wrong way? I'm really glad to have on the program Dr. Charan Ranganath, who is a professor of psychology and neuroscience and the director of the Dynamic Memory Lab at the University of California, Davis, and the author of a book soon to be published, "Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory's Power to Hold on to What Matters." Doctor Ranganath, thank you so much for joining us.Dr. Charan Ranganath: Well, thank you for having me. I'm always excited to share the word of memory with people.MS: Yeah, it's really been dispiriting seeing a lot of the way this has been discussed, because the media coverage has been just overwhelming, the discussion of President Biden's age and then how that connects to the issue of memory and the issue of decision making, which connects, obviously, to memory. And what's been dispiriting is not necessarily the discussion of it, because obviously it's something that Americans are concerned about, at least a certain number of them. But there really hasn't been a sort of moment of education about what it really means. And you provided that in an op-ed that you wrote in The New York Times. Talk a little bit about the way that we're looking at this and why it's not quite getting it right. People are not separating out the different kinds of memory, or, as you say, forgetting with a small f and Forgetting with a capital F.CR: Yeah, I think this is a very important issue. And, you know, I want to be clear that this isn't—this is something that cuts across party lines. I mean, Donald Trump is also fairly advanced in years. And, let's face it, 1 in 6 Americans are over the age of 65. So I think when I read Special Counsel Hur's report, or at least the quotes from it, and have gone through a little bit of it, it just seemed to be hitting at people's stereotypes about aging. And when I actually read the piece, a lot of the examples of what they were talking about with Biden's forgetting were not actually the kinds of things that I would worry about as someone who studies memory. So, as you pointed out, I say that there's forgetting with a lowercase f and there's Forgetting with the capital F. So we all do both. Let me be clear but let's first talk about the first one, which is really what researchers would call retrieval failure. And this is when the memory is there, but we just can't find it. So these would be things like, you know, I had a conversation with you yesterday and oh, what were we talking about again? And then a day later it comes to you. So that's one of the memories there, but you can't get it. That happens a lot as we get older. On the other hand, there's Forgetting with the capital F, which would be like, I had a conversation with you yesterday, and I have no memory of it whatsoever. And that would be Forgetting with the capital F.Everyone who's been studied shows some kind of Forgetting [with a capital F], but it does happen a little bit more as we get older. But really, if it happens a lot and it happens for things that happened just a short while ago, then I would be worried about that. The examples that I've seen from Biden, however, they don't seem to be forgetting with the capital F.So, for instance, there's nothing that indicates that he couldn't remember anything from his last year of his vice presidency or, around the time that his son died. And yet he just couldn't name the years in which these things happened, which is something that does happen a lot with age. People will remember what happened, but they start to lose some of the details about the context, or they just have trouble pulling it up when they need it.Some of the other issues that I think were brought up weren't even memory issues at all. They're things like, you know, mixing up in the media. People made a thing about mixing up, instead of saying the president of Egypt, he said, the president of Mexico. And it's not like as if the president doesn’t know the difference between Egypt and Mexico, right?It was what people would categorize as one of Biden's gaffes, which is not finding the right word when you need it. And again, this is something that happens to many people. As you get older, you make more of these verbal mistakes, and you can't necessarily correct it as quickly. But that doesn't mean that there's a memory problem there.MS: I speak three hours a day every weekday, and this must happen to me every day or every couple of days. I mean, you pull up the wrong word, you pull up the wrong name. I think I just did it with neurologist versus neuroscientist. Right. So, I mean, it does happen to all of us. And there's also, I mean, I speak to people who I've known for many years and tell me about something that happened like 30 years ago. And like, I realize I've forgotten that whole thing. And yet I remember it when they tell me. That’s pretty normal, too, right?CR: Oh, yeah, that's a perfect example of lowercase f forgetting. Because often the memory is there, and we just can't find it when we need it. I have all sorts of experiences like this, too, both with the kind of mixing things up. In fact, just yesterday I did an interview where I was literally talking about Biden, and I couldn't find the right word, and I said the wrong thing, and I had to correct myself and do the take over again, so I can relate.MS: So that's where I think there has been an enormous amount of misunderstanding in the public and not enough educating. And it's such a moment to educate people about memory and about aging and how they are not understanding how it works, because if we're to believe some of the polling or the interviews, people seem to believe that because somebody, doesn't have of the word, you know, correct at a particular moment in talking about a country or, doesn't seem to be speaking at a certain speed or is speaking in a slower cadence or something, that it means that it somehow affects their ability to make major decisions, major, complex decisions about foreign policy, or other issues.I even heard people in a focus group saying,  it makes me worried that he'll forget where the nuclear codes are or something like that. So talk a little bit about that and how that is just a complete misunderstanding of how this works.CR: Well, yeah, I mean, first of all, I don't know much about how the presidency works. I imagine that he doesn't really have to seriously memorize nuclear codes and keep them at a moment's notice. I'm sure there's more of a process to it than that. Right. But I don't know. I think that struggling with remembering the right thing is the kind of thing that we often rely on others, you know, and we can often rely on devices to do these things. And so, we often outsource what we're trying to remember. I don't know about you, but, you know, my phone has a photographic memory. And so I take advantage of that and just put any names, phone numbers, and all these things I need.MS: Right —to that point: There was a time when we all had on the tips of our tongues, maybe ten phone numbers that we could recite, at least those of us who have been alive for a while. And now you couldn't. I couldn't say the phone number of even the people closest to me.CR: Yeah, exactly. And we don't have to. That's the thing. And that doesn't mean we can't. And outsourcing these things doesn't necessarily mean that there's going to be some atrophy in our brains. It's just lightening the load. As long as we can focus on what we need to focus on, we're good.MS: Why do people believe that because somebody flubs words, because somebody, forgets the name of a country, that it somehow means they could not lead the country and make complicated decisions.CR: I think that there's two factors involved. You know, I can't get into the voters heads, per se, but I think there's two factors involved. One is that, I think that there's a stereotype out there, that aging is this progressive, progressive decline, and we just get worse and we're just marching towards dementia. And that's not really true. In fact, if you look at studies where you follow the same person over time, there's some people who do really well and maintain their thinking and memory and so forth, well into old age.And then there's others who do show a decline, and sometimes it can be a sharp decline. And I've seen people who are relatively young, I mean, you know, maybe in their 60s, for instance, who are extraordinarily fluent and can speak, you know, eloquently, but they have clinically significant memory disorders that would lead them to not be functional. Actually, if you even listen to late interviews with Ronald Reagan and, uh, former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher from the UK, what you'll find is, is that when they were probably—and again, I can't say for sure —but when they were probably in the early stages of Alzheimer's, they were still exceptionally articulate. So often people's perceptions don't match up with the realities because we're seeing somebody who might look weak, they might be straining to speak in certain ways, or they struggle to find the right words. But that's not memory. That's something else.MS: When you look at the schedule of someone like the president, any world leader or even any candidate and what they're doing every day and the amount of information they're processing, talk about that and how, again, looking at them tripping up a word doesn't comport with what they've probably been experiencing.CR: I think that one of the things to keep in mind is that when people are under stress, the best way to put them under stress is to have them do a press conference. I mean, literally, this is what we would do in the lab when we study the effects of stress on memories. We tell them they're about to give a speech, and it dramatically raises people's cortisol levels.So, I would say that those, especially that kind of communication, stress will make it harder often to pull up the right word because it tends to shut down areas like the prefrontal cortex, which help us get what we need and focus us on the right information.And the problem is that as you get older, that function tends to decline a little bit, and then you're under stress. And for someone like Biden, he also had a stutter from a very young age. And I think that's relevant, too, because that makes it harder to find the right word. I know listeners will be thinking, Yeah, but the president has to function under stress. So and I totally agree with that. I think, though, that the stress and the situation of public speaking doesn't necessarily comport with many real situations where it's really about the knowledge of how to get things done.And then there's other factors that come into play, like, you know, regulating your emotions as one, emotional intelligence and compassion as another, because a lot of the important decision making is influence, and memory is a very big part. But there's all these other parts, too, that go into making good decisions that are good for the people. And I think we just need to think about this in a more holistic fashion.MS: What you're pointing to is something we've seen in some reports of those who know the president or have been interviewed, who work with the president and say that in private or, you know, in a room full of people making decisions, he’s completely lucid and he's clearly, very much aware of everything he's talking about. He's taking a leadership role. And yet when you're under the pressure of public speaking or the campaign, it is a time when mistakes are made. And it really points to the difference between governing and campaigning and how superficial, in that sense, campaigning is because it is about performing. Right.CR: I mean, I'm a scientist, so I can't tell people how to think about things. But what I would say is that often we miss people, mistake confidence for, you know, cognition. And so sometimes if people are extraordinarily confident and are communicating in a confident way, it's easier to give them a pass on the kinds of gaffes that we've been talking about. And I think if people don't communicate in such a confident way, and then we think, oh, wait, especially if they're older, you know, then there's kind of a tendency to say there's something wrong with them. And I think that's very misleading, and I think it can send people in the wrong path.MS: Well, that's interesting too, because it might explain why some people seem to think that even though Trump makes all of these flubs all the time, that he's not old enough or that he's not too old but they think Biden is. But maybe Trump just says it with more confidence and just brushes past his flubs.CR: I don't want to come off as kind of a partisan person here, but I do know of, like, you know, there's a famous incident where in a Trump speech where he mixed up Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi. Right? I'm sure he knows the difference again, between these two people. But then later, when he was questioned on it, I think he actually had said that, oh, I knew what I was doing.MS: It was on purpose. Right. And he said the same thing about Obama. When he switched up, he mixed up Obama and Biden. He tried to create this idea that he means Obama is really running the country. I guess a certain number of people will believe him.CR: Yeah. You know ,and again I don't necessarily know how people end up coming up with these impressions. What I would say is, if you come off as if you know you have mistakes like that and you can be confident though, and say, well, I really meant to say that, then maybe people like voters will look at that and go, oh yeah, he's this is a strong person. This is a person who really is with it. And they're just messing with us or something. You actually see this in older adults—-that some are just very good at being able to mask some of the difficulties they're having and some are very not good at doing that. And so we just don't know from external appearances.MS: Well, I really appreciated this conversation and really glad to have you on the program to help people understand it. Thanks so much for coming on today. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

Time for another dose of the MAGA mania I sometimes experience on my SiriusXM program when Trumpers call in. Not sure why they listen, but they’re always pretty feeble, even though I’m happy to have a normal conversation.Just a warning that this one is a bit loud and full of F bombs. It’s hard for that not to happen with MAGA!Robert from Massachusetts called in during a discussion about the nauseating media saturation coverage of President Biden’s age after Special Counsel Robert Hur’s political hit job.And yes, I went really hard at him.That was partly due to strategy: I wanted to put Robert under the pressure that politicians and policy figures are under to see if he made a flub.And boy did he, when he told me about what Donald Trump did—or wasn’t able to do—in his second term.Except Donald Trump didn’t have a second term.The Signorile Report is reader-supported. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism. Thanks!Robert hemmed and hawed but never could come up with anything as I pressed him for one example of a policy decision on the part of Biden that reflected mental decline. His latching on at the outset to the pullout from Afghanistan was ludicrous, since it was a brave thing for Biden to do—supported by the vast majority of Americans—and it was something Trump promised to do himself.In fact, Trump began the pullout recklessly in his last weeks in office, attempting to sabotage Biden, and making it that much more difficult.Robert was also slow on the uptake in responding, as I noted to him, and made a fool of himself.I know there are those who will think I’m too tough on people like this. But I’m not going to put up with idiotic logic. Listen in and let me know your thoughts!  This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

It’s Friday, dear readers, always a fun day to look at the twisted logic of MAGA—and also how they often reveal their worst fears when they call into my SiriusXM program!Patrick from Cape Cod called in as I was discussing Nikki Haley verbally wiping the floor with Donald Trump in recent days.The Signorile Report is reader-supported. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism. Thanks!First, he tried to hit me with hypocrisy for holding up Haley. But I had already explained that I believe Haley is as bad as the rest of them but is very useful—certainly to Joe Biden—right now.And that simply gets to the fact that Trump is weak. Patrick couldn’t grapple with that, as he insisted that Haley drop out but couldn’t explain why it was so critical for her to do so.I haven’t called on Maryann Williamson or Dean Phillips to drop out, after all. Let them stay in until the end. Same with Haley—unless, of course, she’s a threat to your candidate!This was a funny call, but it also showed how scared they are of Haley because she’s exposing how weak Trump is. (One correction: I meant at the end that Trump lost Iowa and then came back and “won” New Hampshire and South Carolina—not lost, just jumbled my words—meaning to underscore that he didn’t drop early either, even though he lost the first state.)Listen in, and let me know your thoughts! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

What would a Friday be without a little bit of MAGA idiocy to laugh at?While discussing the war in Ukraine, Billy from Oklahoma called my SiriusXM program to say the world wasn’t “on fire” under “45.”Really?Of course, the world is always “on fire,” as it’s a complicated planet with many conflicts, some of which get little attention. So the statement itself is just plain dumb.I seem to remember a once-in-a-century global pandemic, however, that became a raging inferno for the world, one that included massive lockdowns, a disruption of trade, horrible losses of life, and terrible economic decline—all of which Donald Trump mismanaged.The Signorile Report is reader-supported. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism. Thanks!We all remember Kim Jong Un firing missiles even after Trump’s love letter to him.And we can’t forget how Trump attacked NATO, trying to break up the coalition. There was also the botched Yemen raid early on—Trump’s first military action, which cost the lives of a Navy Seal and civilians—and the continued war in Afghanistan, which ground on and cost many American lives.Trump only decided to move on ending the war weeks before he left office, in what appeared to be an attempt at sabotaging President Biden (who promised in his campaign to end the war) by withdrawing troops too quickly—and Trump was intent on then inviting the Taliban to Camp David.There was so much more. And of course, as I mainly focused on with Billy, there was Trump’s embrace of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who would become emboldened to go on to invade Ukraine.Have a good weekend. And listen in and let me know your thoughts! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

On my SiriusXM program, I discussed an astounding report from the IRS: it has already collected $520 million from millionaire tax cheats, using money for tax enforcement allocated from the Inflation Reduction Act, which Republicans have been intent on cutting.Michael from Florida called in to say, “I am skeptical about numbers coming from the IRS” and that he'd like to see a “spreadsheet.”This was pretty rich because Donald Trump makes a zillion false claims and no one in MAGA asks for a “spreadsheet.” And the information came from data that was audited and checked inside the IRS and via the IRS commissioner, who was confirmed by both Republicans and Democrats in the Senate.The Signorile Report is reader-supported. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism. Thanks!Then Florida man said that with what’s happening in “cities with crime,” the money would be better spent on “beat cops.” When I explained that crime is down dramatically and murders are at a low not seen in decades—with the largest one-year drop in history from 2022 to 2023—he went into his grab bag and pulled out, “Then why are businesses and companies pulling out of buildings in downtown Chicago?”I had to educate him on the ludicrousness of that too. Many businesses are shrinking their office space in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic as more employees are working from home, while office buildings are now being converted into residences.This was a textbook example of how the MAGA arguments are crumbling beneath their feet, as the economy surges and consumers are now saying they feel it, and as crime is way down. Not to mention the hypocrisy of trying to halt money for the IRS that is bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars. They’re scrambling, and calls to my show like this help to clarify that.Listen in, and let me know your thoughts! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

Another one of those gems called my SiriusXM program. But first, some background.The New York Times columnist Ross Douthat has been banging the drum on how Donald Trump supposedly can’t be removed from the ballot per the 14th amendment, as the Colorado Supreme Court ruled—something that the U.S. Supreme Court will decide—because January 6th wasn’t an insurrection.He goes on about the “lawless mob” not being organized and not out to subvert the Constitution. Many people took him to task on social media, and as Greg Sargent noted, “You have to be in willful denial to not see that Trump initially summoned the mob, incited it, pointed it at Pence, and ignored entreaties to call it off *as part of* his scheme to illegally sabotage the transfer of power.”Douthat is one of a cadre of conservative pundits who put forth the same argument. And clearly, Paul from St. Louis, who called my SiriusXM program to argue that “you guys” have to stop calling those who pleaded guilty and were convicted "insurrectionists,” even if Trump is wrong in calling them “hostages,” is been parroting those pundits.The Signorile Report is free and reader-supported. If you aren’t a paid subscriber, please consider taking advantage of the New Year’s special. For less than the cost of a cup of coffee per month, you can help support independent, ad-free opinion journalism. Thanks!Everything that critics hit back at Douthat with regarding Trump and his intentions—and his being an insurrectionist—is true. But there is one other element as well that underscores it: Organized militia and white supremacist groups, whom Trump had summoned to the “Stop the Steal” rally and who we know Roger Stone was working with, were plotting an insurrection.As I told Paul, the Oath Keepers leader, Stuart Rhodes, convicted of seditious conspiracy, bought an arsenal of weapons before January 6th. The Oath Keepers had a “Quick Reaction Force" that had put the weapons in a Comfort Inn in Virginia. The plan was to ferry the weapons up the Potomac after the Capitol was secured and hold the building. Per CNN, covering the trial: Up until now, it hasn’t been clear whether the QRF was aspirational or was a real-world effort to stockpile weapons to be potentially used in the streets of Washington.Harrelson texted a group chat on January 5, asking for the location of the “QRF hotel,” according to court filings. Kelly Meggs, another alleged co-conspirator, said they should talk over private messages instead of the group chat. Hours later, Harrelson arrived at the Comfort Inn, prosecutors said.Prosecutors have obtained text messages from Oath Keepers discussing their plans and their goal of ferrying weapons across the Potomac River. Prosecutors later told a judge that they believed the planning turned into action on January 6, with real weapons at the ready in Virginia.Were there people who attended the “Stop the Steal” rally who didn’t intend to be part of an insurrection but were used by the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, Donald Trump, John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani, and others, and found themselves assaulting the Capitol and calling for Mike Pence to be hung? Yes (though they are responsible for their own actions). But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a planned insurrection, as I told Paul.Listen in, and let me know your thoughts! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

It’s Friday, so yeah, some fun. During a discussion about the dangers of Donald Trump, Joe from Texas, a hard-core MAGA Trump supporter, called me on my SiriusXM program and asked, “What privileges or rights did we ever lose under Donald J. Trump?”I gave him a quick answer, offering just three examples of how Trump stripped the rights of groups—and it took all of 30 seconds. I then said, “But I’m not here to answer your questions—you’re here to tell us your thoughts,” giving him the stage to offer an opinion.He responded by saying, “Well, you went on a diatribe there!”And yeah, I just blew my stack at that point. I mean, I was answering a question he asked me in 30 f*****g seconds!The Signorile Report is free and reader-supported. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism. Thanks!As he tried to inject MAGA b******t and disinformation, I directed him to tell me what rights Joe Biden took from him. He then proceeded to claim that his wife lost her job because she wouldn’t get vaxxed.I then had to attempt to educate him about public health and ask if he got a measles shot and if his children did—or were they thrown out of school?Of course, he didn’t answer any of these questions as the f-bombs flew from both of us. That’s because he wasn’t interested in having a discussion—he was just interested in pushing garbage. And I wasn’t having it.I’m sure I sounded a bit nutty to some, and this did get very silly by the end! But when more MAGA called in but didn’t want to come on the air—cowards!—and just told my producers to relay that I’m a “dick,” I knew it was mission accomplished.Listen in, and let me know your thoughts! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

Another Friday, and, like last week, I’m ending with a laughable example of the MAGA mindset.So, Brian from Wisconsin called my SiriusXM program, and he took a slightly different tack.First off, he was civil. And he falsely posed as non-MAGA, saying he was going to try to help me make sense of why Republicans still support Donald Trump. (He even went so far at one point as to call Trump an “egotistical, maniacal lunatic” and “probably a jerk.”)You have to stick with it a little bit, because at first it seems like he's in agreement with me.The Signorile Report is free and reader-supported. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism. Thanks!Then he began to make his case, and it was sounding like the same old crap. Trump is an “anti-establishment guy” and an “outsider.”“If he comes back a second time,” Brian said, “knowing how the levers of government work,” he “could be more effective.”Ok, that’s when the MAGA cult was totally evident. I, of course, refuted the nonsense about Trump as anti-establishment and an outsider.And I asked Brian what Trump did for the average person. At first, he didn’t come back right away, so I asked again, and I asked him to list five things Trump did for the average person. I swear it seemed like he then read them from the Trump campaign web site—or they were just well-rehearsed mantras in the cult brain.I told him all were completely false—including Brian’s claim that Trump “brought peace and prosperity,” and I asked about COVID and the over a million people dead from COVID and the economic calamity that ensued.Just a couple of things I want to point out: Sometimes when I have calls like this, I’m obviously responding rapidly and collecting all of my thoughts—and yes, getting worked up in the face of someone throwing out distortions—and later I think, wow, I should have said this, and this, and this!So, in that vein: President Obama didn’t just grow the economy dramatically, as I told Brian when he said Trump grew the economy faster than any president; he took us out of the Great Recession, which George Bush and the GOP helped create by deregulating banks and pouring trillions into Iraq.Brian also said, as one of the five great things Trump did, that Trump allocated money to historically Black colleges and universities, and I pointed out that so did President Obama and even President Bush. But in fact, Trump simply signed a bill “restoring” $250,000 million that lapsed when Republicans in Congress failed to renew it, and Democrats in the Senate pushed for it. (This came after Trump himself threatened to cut $20 million from HBCUs in 2017 and backed off after supporters implored him not to do it.) President Obama, over the course of his presidency, allocated $4 billion to HBCUs. And Bush actually increased funding by 30% in his budgets, which recklessly cut many other programs.Also, when I said that if Trump had actually handled COVID well, he’d have won in a landslide, just like Bush after 9/11, that obviously was a misstatement. Mea culpa. Bush didn’t run right after 9/11 (he’d just been elected to office the year before); his approval, which is what I meant, soared because of the way he spoke to the nation about 9/11, unlike the way Trump spoke about COVID. (Bush of course would see that approval tumble because of the reckless, criminal Iraq War, and he barely won re-election in 2004.)Also, I don’t really think Trump would have won if he handled COVID well, because of all the other terrible things he did as president. It is, of course, unknowable, because if Trump had handled COVID well, he’d likely have handled a lot of other things better, as it would have shown him as a better president and a better person. He is simply a horrible human being.All of that said, listen in and let me know your thoughts. And have a great weekend! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

Happy Friday! Always a good day, as we end the week, to check in on the idiocy of the MAGA cult, as I try—try is the key word—to make sense of these people.David in Nevada called into my SiriusXM program this week and showed us another example of how the MAGA base not only thrives on misinformation but really doesn’t care even if you get them to admit the truth about Donald Trump’s horrendous actions.“Apparently, I'm one of those people that you're saying is a cult member,” he said, adding, “The more I listen to you the more I want to support Trump. Just because you say it was an insurrection doesn’t mean it was.”I love when they tell me I’m the reason why they’re supporting Trump! Sorry, don’t blame me for your willfully giving yourself over to a con man. (And why are you calling to tell me this anyway?) “Well, that's the cult speaking,” I told him. Then I recited all the crimes Donald Trump has been charged with or found by a jury or a judge to have engaged in. Those are facts, David, I said. Are you supporting a rapist and a man who engaged in massive fraud?David had no idea that in fact a jury and a judge ruled on those issues in civil trials, believing it was still all to be decided.Cornered by the truth, he switched to…the worth of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, and the judge in the New York fraud case concluding it was worth $18 million rather than, as David said, “hundreds of millions.” The Signorile Report is free and reader-supported. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism. Thanks!David didn’t know that Trump had actually said it was worth $1.5 billion, which I informed him about. I asked him, Do you believe it’s worth that much, yes or no? He replied, “I don’t know and I don’t care,” even though he was the one to bring it up, switching to that topic just seconds before.That’s precisely it, I said: you don’t care—even if Trump engaged in crimes. And that’s the cult speaking.David even had to admit that Trump said he grabs women by their genitals, when I asked him about it. “If he said it, he said it,” David replied, but “here’s the thing: in 2019, the gas prices was less than…”Gas prices? I had to cut him off on that one, and I took it back to the insurrection. He was forced to admit he was “not okay” with it, but, but, but….Joe Biden blah blah.Listen in and let me know your thoughts. And have a good weekend! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

Ron from New Mexico called into my SiriusXM program as I was discussing George Santos and the newest indictment against him, positioning himself as above it all.Ron remained calm and cool, as he tried mightily to promote a false equivalency between Democrats and Republicans, claiming that "it's all politics” and they’re all the same. “I’m not a Trump fan, by the way,” he said. Yeah…right.He kept this up for quite a while—focusing on newly-indicted-again Senator Bob Menendez and what he believes Democrats would be saying if the New Jersey governor were a Republican. Ron believed he was duping us into thinking he wasn’t MAGA and was just a “they’re all corrupt” guy who is disgusted with “both sides.”I let him continue to put out his claims, as he was just giving me more to work with. I debunked them while also asking him to give me evidence of them—which he never did—and he just kind of had to quietly concede on this or that point, though he wouldn’t give up, continually going on to something else.Eventually, Ron’s true inner-MAGA surfaced after he was getting nowhere, and he desperately switched to—you guessed it!—Hunter Biden and “shell companies” and “how did Joe Biden make all of his money?”Honestly, this call went on for a while because he was probably the most reasonable Trumper I’ve had in a long time—even if he was dishonest, posing as a “both sides” non-MAGA guy.I’m happy to speak with people who are oppositional, as long as we can have a civil conversation. It does get tedious, however, when they’re clearly just trying desperately to find something, anything they think can’t be debunked, and going into the grab bag. I had to eventually let him go.Listen in and let me know your thoughts! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

The Signorile Report is reader-supported. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism. Thanks!Image by rawpixel.comWarning: I really became kind of crazy and aggressive with this guy who called my SiriusXM program.But there is a method to the madness!I wouldn’t treat a guest to the show this way, even if they were a conservative. But a caller who represents himself falsely? Sorry, he’s not getting any such courtesy. And, again, there was a reason why I went in this direction.James from California claimed to be a Democrat and said "we" were treating Donald Trump terribly. But it became clear he was not only a lying Trumper; my radar was detecting a major league far-right Christian nationalist extremist and Qanon cultist.The conversation on the program at the time had been focused on the GOP’s bogus impeachment inquiry of President Biden, but James brought the discussion to the impeachments of Donald Trump—of course—and then shifted to election fraud.I can’t say I knew exactly what he’d eventually blurt out, but something told me if I took him on hard, he’d crack and reveal his true agenda. And sure enough, when confronted forcefully, he went there: "Democrats are legislating abomination. You’re legislating homosexuality and the murder of innocent babies." Just some nutty fun for your Thursday. Listen in and let me know your thoughts! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

The Signorile Report is reader-supported. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism. Thanks!After the GOP debate, Don from New Orleans called my SiriusXM program to say, well….a whole bunch of stuff.And really, it was a sort of wacky and meandering six minutes, though interesting and not heated, unlike what almost always happens with Trumpers.Just about every question I asked was like giving him some more rope and letting him hang himself.Don eventually claimed that he is suspicious of everyone who goes into politics as a career, versus those without political experience. That’s why he thought Vivek Ramaswamy won the debate, he said, because he’s an "outsider" and thus isn’t power hungry (like Trump). I know you’re probably laughing hard about that one. Don explained why: I'm a local elected official. Okay. Very local. Elected official. Um. And I am very skeptical of anybody who spends a lifetime in politics.So, the argument he’s making, I said, is that there’s something sinister about someone who made politics their life. But, I asked, there’s nothing sinister about someone who achieved wealth and fame, like Donald Trump, and then used that to get into the White House and grab power?He responded by saying, "by the way, I’m enjoying this conversation"—which I don’t think was true—and then went on:The way I look at it is, if you've been in politics and you've worked your way up and you've spent all of this time in the Congress, the state legislature, the federal legislature, and the executive branches, you've become so accustomed to power. You're more concerned with keeping that job and keeping that power than just doing the job.“Come on Don,” I responded, then rhetorically asking, "Trump was not obsessed with power? And keeping power?" explaining to him that he was completely undoing his own argument."He helped other powerful people,” I went on. “How many people did he pardon? They did a lot of sleazy things, didn't they? Terrible things. Even the guy who was governor of Illinois, what a terrible thing he did. He sold a Senate seat to somebody. Right. Wasn't that terrible that Donald Trump used his power to pardon that guy, Rod Blagojevich?"Don responded that, it’s "not right," and then added, "they all do it." Which again, completely undermined his case. Listen in and let me know your thoughts. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

The Signorile Report is reader-supported. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism. Thanks!Is Donald Trump already ineligible to run for president in 2024, no matter what happens with regard to any of the 91 counts against him in four indictments?Delightfully, there’s been so much discussion about it! Surely that alone is riling Trump, which is always a good thing. The talk really ramped up in recent weeks after two conservative Federalist Society constitutional scholars’ pending law review article—concluding that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution disqualifies Trump—went public.Section 3 of the 14th Amendment states:No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.Former judge Michael J. Luttig, a respected conservative jurist who testified before the January 6th committee, and the esteemed legal scholar Professor Lawrence Tribe also agree that Trump is ineligible under the 14th Amendment.And there has been some movement in the states. In New Hampshire, an effort is already underway within the GOP itself—with Republicans feuding—as the secretary of state is seeking legal advice from the state attorney general on removing Trump from the ballot. A Florida attorney has filed suit in that state, seeking to disqualify Trump. For months, two civil rights organizations have been pressuring secretaries of state in several states—Nevada, California, Oregon, Colorado, and Georgia—to disqualify Trump from the ballot.All it will take is one state to remove Trump for the issue to be challenged in court and get to the U.S. Supreme Court, which would have to rule that Trump is disqualified in all states—or in no states. It’s high stakes, as no one knows what the court will do, and there are definitely scholars and political strategists who have their doubts. So what is the most ironclad way to go about it and get the Supreme Court aboard?Professor Edward Foley, Ebersold Chair in Constitutional Law at Ohio State University, former Ohio solicitor general, and contributing columnist for the Washington Post, believes the strongest case would come from a state where the state legislature gave express powers to the secretary of state or other election officials to remove a candidate under the 14th amendment. And he says that it’s thus imperative that a state legislature pass that law now and a governor sign it well before the 2024 presidential election.Foley points out that the Supreme Court in the recent Moore v. Harper decision—in which the high court thankfully in large part ruled against the dangerous "independent legislature theory," the idea that state legislatures, not state courts, decide elections—left too much wiggle room. Others have agreed that the Moore decision wasn’t a complete win for those who want to protect elections, as it left too much open.Foley wrote in the Washington Post that the Moore decision signaled that "if a state statute has not already authorized administrative officers to seek disqualification of presidential candidates," then the Court might view an attempt by a state official to do so as a "usurpation of the state legislature’s prerogative to determine the ‘manner’ of conducting presidential elections."So again, he believes a blue state that has complete control of the legislature and the governor’s mansion—say, Michigan, California, or New York—should pass a law right now, well before the 2024 election. Professor Foley joined me on my SiriusXM program last week, and you can listen in here to the fascinating and important discussion.A transcript is provided below, slightly edited for space and clarity.Michelangelo Signorile: We've been talking about this for a for a while and discussing it with those who've written on it from a more left political perspective or progressive, looking at the Constitution. And then we had two Federalist Society constitutional scholars who you talk about as well in the piece that you wrote, who are publishing an article in a journal, making the argument from obviously a very conservative point of view. Talk a little bit about their piece.Edward Foley: As you mentioned, these two scholars, who have a high reputation in the law school world in general, but are known to be on the conservative side of the perspective on things, are using the methodology of what's called original meaning of the Constitution to interpret it according to how the framers or authors of the Constitution understood it at the time it was adopted. And so they're applying that approach to this part of the 14th Amendment. The 14th Amendment was adopted during Reconstruction after the Civil War, has lots of important provisions in it, like the equal protection clause and the due process clause. But it also has its Section 3, which is this disqualification provision aimed to disqualify people who joined the Confederacy during the Civil War, betraying their oaths to the country because they had served in the federal government and then betrayed their oath to the Constitution. And so this provision disqualified them from ever serving in government again at the the end of the Civil War, as part of Reconstruction. But what this law review article does with these two authors, from this original meaning perspective, they said, looking at the text, it's not just about the Civil War, it's about any insurrection or rebellion. And so that has meaning and they said that the [framers] meant it to apply broadly and in perpetuity, if you will. For as long as we have a Constitution and as long as this provision is in it, it means that if anybody, having taken an oath to uphold the Constitution and served in government, betrays that oath in a way that's engaging in an insurrection, then they can no longer serve in government again.So they go over it—I think it's about a couple of hundred pages—their law review article, explaining all the original intent behind that language in terms of its drafting during the reconstruction era, after the Civil War. They go into great detail about its initial applications and then explain why the January 6th attack on the Capitol qualifies as an insurrection event. And then Trump's role, because he obviously wasn't one of the people who breached into the Capitol that day, but his fomenting of the riot and the insurrection and then his role, in particular, as commander in chief and as president on January 6th, 2021, he had a constitutional responsibility to to take care that the laws were faithfully executed, including to stop that kind of riot and to stop people from preventing the lawful counting of the electoral votes. And he did none of that. He tweeted some [comments] that seemed to encourage the folks who were against Mike Pence at the time, as I know you know. And so these authors say that both his actions ahead of the riot and the insurrection and during it constitute engaging in the insurrection for purposes of the original meaning of this provision.MS: Right. And they certainly responded to what they knew would be the criticism of their argument. And they clearly see it—that Donald Trump did engage in incitement, did engage in fomenting that insurrection.EF: Yes, I think it's correct to say that from their perspective, they see it as clear. I think at one point they say it's not a close case from their perspective. That's where I would differ with them a little bit, although I'm of the same view that, properly applied, this provision should be understood to disqualify Trump because of his conduct that's on the public record as a result of the January 6th committee hearings and so forth. I think it is more debatable than they characterize it. You know, there are plausible arguments on both sides in particular of whether what Trump did was sufficient to count as engaging for purposes of this provision. Again, I come down on one side of that debate and the same side that they do. But I think I've got to be candid to acknowledge that there are already other people in response to this article who are coming down on the other side of that issue.MS: And so it would be something that the courts would decide. And ultimately the Supreme Court, which has not ruled on this particular issue and this interpretation of the Constitution, because obviously we haven't been at this place before. And so what you write about in the piece, which I found very informative and fascinating, is that it basically needs to get to the Supreme Court. And the process to do that would mean that a state would have to move to take Donald Trump off of the ballot, arguing that he's not eligible to be on the ballot. And that sounds easy, but in fact, it means that a state legislature actually has to give the power to an elected official, a statewide elected official, to do that. Thus, it really needs to be a blue state, a state that at least has a legislature that is in control by the Democrats and and an elected official who is a Democrat as well. Talk a little bit about that.EF: Yes, I think that's right. Unfortunately, it's not so easy. Maybe it should be in our democracy that all the rules for running elections should be pretty straightforward. But unfortunately, our rules for presidential elections in particular are very complicated because of the whole electoral college mechanism. And also, you know, we should—even though it's important to go down this road—we should recognize the momentous nature of it. If you believe in the right of citizens to vote, as I do, and the equality of voting rights, you want to be careful about denying the right of citizens to vote for the candidate of their choice. But we have provisions in the Constitution that do that. In other respects, there may be many Americans today who would like another opportunity to vote for Barack Obama, who think he was a great president and he'd be great again and maybe would prefer to vote for him as the Democratic nominee instead of Joe Biden next time. He's younger than Joe Biden, but he's not eligible because of another part of the Constitution that is much more straightforward. If you have two terms, that's it. And so there's no factual dispute about that. We're not allowed to vote for Barack Obama for president anymore. The question about whether or not Americans are allowed to vote for Donald Trump if they want to is more complicated because the only basis to disqualify him would be this provision that was in the aftermath of the Civil War. And that does require applying this old text to a new problem, as you said, that we haven't faced.So the question is, who in American government should make that determination if indeed he's not allowed to be on the ballot? And one point that I really tried to stress in The Washington Post piece is that it's imperative, I think, to decide this in advance of the November 2024 election, because I think it would be terrible for Congress afterwards in the next January 6th [certification] meeting. This would be January 6th, 2025. If you think, hypothetically, that Trump is on the ballot, perhaps wins the Electoral College narrowly, but the Democrats controlled the House of Representatives, as they may well do. The House is very much in play for 2024. The Senate is very close. I think for Congress to try to disqualify Trump on the grounds of this Section 3 of the 14th Amendment provision would be terrible because that would be taking people's votes away from them after they've cast them. And I just think that would make the next January 6th even more perilous than the previous one. So I think the time to do this is now, before the Republican convention in July of ’24. And the method, as you say, needs some clarification. I think we're going to see litigation on this issue anyway. There are a couple of interest groups that have announced in effect publicly—there’s news reporting on this—that they're going to try to get election officials to do this. So this is going to happen one way or the other.MS: They're pressuring election officials in Nevada, in Georgia, Michigan, places where they hope to have, you know, somebody obviously thinking in the same way. And these are battleground states.EF: Correct. And so what I tried to contribute was the best method to do this in an orderly way, in a fair way, would be for a state legislature to establish with a new statute exactly how this gets to court. So there's rights to cross examination and due process and so forth. That would then give a finding, you know, one way or the other: Trump is eligible or he's not eligible under this provision, and that would be immediately appealed and would quickly get to the US Supreme Court, which I think is the institution that has to decide this for the entire nation. Because if one state like Nevada does it, you know, he should either be on the ballot in all the states or not all the states. And if the U.S. Supreme Court was to say he is indeed disqualified, the supremacy clause of the Constitution would require other states to follow that. So let's get one state to create a good procedure, a clear procedure, because there's also the possibility that if you don't have this kind of new law, state officials will interpret existing law—it’s not really suitable for this kind of factual issue. I mean, yes, they can tell pretty easily if a candidate is 35 years old or not. That's an eligibility requirement to be president.The issue of citizenship, you know, is pretty straightforward factually, but this one would require a more lengthy trial.MS: A state official like a secretary of state couldn't do this on his or her own? And the legislature would have to pass a law giving them that power? And then it would obviously be appealed and go through the courts.EF: Yes and no. The state official, like the secretary of state, absolutely has to have this power from the legislature. No question about that. Under Article 2 of the Constitution. The trickier part is whether any existing law—without a new law—could be interpreted as already granting that power. And that's on a state by state, 50 state basis. And that's also a debatable proposition, I suspect, in some states, given the way they write their rules. There's a more plausible argument that an existing official already has that power. But this is an issue of such importance to the country. I don't think we should leave it in doubt. Right. And it's easy for a legislature to clarify that they want their officials to have this power.MS: So you say a swing state controlled by Democrats such as Michigan could and should do this, but any single blue state would suffice because even if New York or California did it, it would be challenged. And as you said, if the Supreme Court ruled that he were ineligible, that would be it—ineligible in every every state in all 50 states.EF: Exactly.MS: That would be quite a task for the Supreme Court. Going by this Supreme Court's track record, what do you think they might do?EF: Yeah, I think it could go either way. I think these two [Federalist Society] scholars who have written this new article are very, very respected. One of them clerked, I believe, for Chief Justice John Roberts. Now, that doesn't mean, you know, Chief Justice Roberts is necessarily going to agree with everything he writes. But, you know, independently of that, he's known as a very respected scholar. Both of them are in the conservative legal world. You know, the court today is 6-3 in terms of conservatives to liberals. And, you know, Justice Roberts is the one who’s not often, but sometimes, with the liberals on the four side of 5-4 splits. So it's not a guarantee either way. But I think this argument would be taken seriously, very seriously. I agree with you. The court would probably be reluctant. I mean, this is a momentous issue and they would, you know, tread carefully, but they are the highest court in the land and they exist for difficult cases. And so I think if a lower court, say the Michigan Supreme Court, for example, disqualified Trump, I think they would feel that it's incumbent upon them to resolve the question.MS: And you're so right about it needing to be done now because not just looking back at, 2020 and of course, what happened there and what might happen. But also even thinking back to 2000, having the Supreme Court coming in at the very end after voting had happened, and then basically saying, sorry, it ends right here. Obviously, that left a very bad taste and a lot of people's mouths and real division in the country.EF: Right, Right. I mean, sometimes disputes after the voting are unavoidable. I mean, the Bush versus Gore situation was obviously very difficult and did leave a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths, as you say. But in that context, when you're fighting over 500 or so votes in the swing state of Florida with hanging chads, I think it was going to be a difficult issue, whatever. And the goal is to try to avoid difficult issues. And with hindsight, we know we should have replaced the kinds of voting machines with hanging chads to avoid the problem in the first place. Right. And sort of what I'm trying to do is, I'm imagining there could be a problem afterwards that can be settled in advance so that we could avoid the worst kind of problems. So I think your reference to Bush versus Gore is correct in that sense. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

The Signorile Report is reader-supported. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism. Thanks!When last I spoke with Wayne State University translational neuroscientist, psychologist and PTSD expert, Dr. Seth Norrholm, he explained how the entire country was suffering from a collective trauma. We focused on how the GOP, following on Donald Trump, became the party of Marjorie Taylor Greene and George Santos, and the psychological toll MAGA has had on us all. It was an illuminating discussion that made sense to so many listeners to my SiriusXM program and subscribers to The Signorile Report—putting it in the frame of PTSD and collective trauma—about what they’d been experiencing.We discussed toward the end of the interview what would help people to recover. And the answer came down to one word: justice. This is so true, he’d said, of those who’d suffered physical and psychological abuse for so many other reasons—including many of the people he treats—and it’s true in this case as well.“You need to have Trump face consequences for his role in the insurrection,” he told me. “So without some kind of sweeping accountability to remove what I've called the cancer that is in our political system, there's not going to be any meaningful healthy change.” Now that we have seen Trump indicted four times I decided to check in with Dr. Norholm about we were stand now, and if people were viewing possible recovery and better mental heath. We also discussed a concept he wrote about in a recent article, “contagious sociopaths,” who include those politicians who know better—or once did—but who mirror Trump because of the benefit they see, like Ted Cruz, Lindsay Graham and Josh Hawley. Clearly we’re far from out of the woods, and the GOP has only gotten more extreme. But do the indictments give us hope and thus help us recover? Listen in and let me know your thoughts.Below is a transcript lightly edited for clarity and space. Michelangelo Signorile: When my guest last came on the program, we discussed PTSD that has lingered collectively since Trump's presidency that so many people were experiencing. And, of course, those who experienced the brunt of Donald Trump's brutality experienced that even more deeply. [And we discussed] what is the best the way that people could heal? Justice is what we talked about [as a way to heal]. And maybe we're starting to see that a little bit. So I thought it would be great to speak with Dr. Seth Norholm once again. Welcome back to the program. Dr. Norholm.Seth Norrholm: Hi Mike. It's good to be here again.MS: I invited you on the program [in January] and you talked about how Americans on the whole had really experienced PTSD, Trumpism, the Trump era, Covid, all of it, and what impact it had on them. And I just want to recap that before we go further. Talk a little bit about that.SN: Well, when we think about traumatic stress, you know, you think about the events that lead up to somebody experiencing a post traumatic stress response. And these are things like, you know, terrorist attacks, natural disasters, obviously war time conflict. And we know that in the population, about 70 to 80% of us are going to experience a traumatic event in our lifetime. And then the question is whether or not that traumatic event leads to mental health problems, psychological distress and things like that. So what we discussed last time was in the face of these potentially traumatizing events like the pandemic and like the natural disasters like Hurricane Maria that hit Puerto Rico and the hurricanes that have really devastated large parts of our Gulf Coast. These are all events that can lead to mental health problems. And if they're severe enough and impairing enough, post traumatic stress disorder. And so what we were seeing in that administration was that any kind of buffering against those traumatic effects that may be provided by the government, maybe provided by FEMA or the Red Cross was really being thwarted from the top. And so what we discussed was, rather than providing a lifeline or a support system for us as citizens, we were getting an antagonistic response. And this antagonistic response was really based on where you came from, where you lived, whether you were in a red state or a blue state, whether or not you were a female of color leading a particular place like Puerto Rico. And so suddenly there was a targeted approach as far as who we're going to protect and help and who we're just going to continue to traumatize and continue to do harm upon.MS: And you talked about your concerns that Trump had ushered in so many other people, a Republican Party that had become a place for people who are engaging in pathological behavior, who were just exacerbating that PTSD, people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, people like George Santos, people who had the same kind of extremist tendencies and personality issues as Donald Trump.SN: Correct. And if you look at the evolution of the Republican Party since 2015, you know, initially during the run up to the election, you had other candidates on the GOP side who were saying it like it was. They were telling you exactly who Trump the candidate was and who potentially Trump the president would be. And that he was somebody who was galactically unfit, who didn't have the temperament, who had criminal tendencies already, and had the qualities of what we call malignant narcissism. So at that time, the GOP was really calling that out. And then when it became clear that Trump was the frontrunner, you saw many of these same individuals fall into line behind him to the point where they became enablers. And as you mentioned, you know, they began displaying these really—what we call sociopathic tendencies, which is inflicting harm upon your fellow man for some sort of gain without showing any kind of remorse. And so, what we saw over the last month now with these indictments and now the one that just came down last night [in Georgia] is you see glimmers of hope, right? So you saw a tweet or an X or whatever we're calling tweets now  from [Georgia Governor] Brian Kemp and from [former Lt. Governor] Jeff Duncan, saying, look, this this is criminal activity. The election was not stolen. This was all a big lie. So you're getting some glimmers from individuals who identified as Republicans and members of the GOP. But I really draw your attention to the responses of Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio and individuals who intellectually know better. Ted Cruz being another example, who intellectually know better, but are continuing to perpetuate the big lie; they’re pretending, continuing to act in this sociopathic manner. So I wrote a piece a couple of weeks ago where I talked about this concept of “contagious sociopathy.” And the idea was they saw that it worked for this individual who was a frontrunner in Trump. They saw that this MAGA approach, this sociopathic approach, was working. And so they decided to mimic it. And so I make the point in this recent article: it doesn’t matter if you are a true sociopath with a personality disorder who's inflicting harm on on somebody else, or if you're pretending to be a sociopath for political gain. The end result is the same, which is bringing harm upon us as American citizens.MS: It can be learned behavior and obviously people can see rewards that come with it in that party. And certainly, as you pointed out, that party has a long way to go. I wanted to ask you, though, about what we are seeing with the indictments and what it may be doing for the majority of Americans who have experienced this PTSD. Because when we spoke the last time, at the very end of our interview, I asked you, what is it that could help people heal from this collective post-traumatic stress? And you said justice one word, right? People need to see justice. And all people were seeing and this is back in January, it seems like not long ago, but really at that time, all people were seeing was you know, a lot of foot dragging or nothing happening in the Justice Department. We hadn't seen any real action and there was a lot of anxiety. People were talking about that. And now with these indictments coming down, and we were able to see how Jack Smith has operated and certainly Fani Willis and Georgia, people do seem to be feeling differently. And I'm wondering if you're seeing at least the beginning of that healing. And obviously it's going to depend on what happens next.SN: Yeah, that's right. And I think the example I used last time we spoke, you know, I deal a lot in my field with individuals who have been victims of of abuse. And the analogy I gave was, you know, you've got this abused spouse who calls law enforcement and they come to the House and law enforcement says something to the effect of, you know, we spoke with your husband and, you know, we just don't see enough to do anything about it. And, the abused spouse watches out the window as law enforcement pulls away and just having this profound sense of dejection because of this injustice. And so what we had to observe for at least four years was, the Mueller report was a potential inflection point for accountability and justice. And that was watered down by Bill Barr. And then there was the first impeachment where there was compelling evidence provided that there were high crimes and misdemeanors, and he was acquitted in the Senate. And then another impeachment after inciting the insurrection on the Capitol on January 6th, which also did not provide any conviction by the Senate. And as you noted before I came on today, you know, Mitch McConnell gave a very spirited rebuke of Trump and said, let's leave it to the legal system. And so for that few minutes when McConnell gave that speech, there was this idea that, well, wait a second, maybe the tide has turned and we're moving towards accountability and justice. And then there really nothing happened. And like you said, there was foot dragging. So when you talk about what the response is to this latest round of indictments, I really look at it in terms of three camps, and these are loosely defined, but three general camps.One is those of us who knew all along what was happening, you know, those of us who had been gaslit into thinking that, you know, we were we were crazy and we were, you know, “libtards” and all these other terms that were applied to us. And we were just, you know, we were the ones that were out of our mind and these things weren't happening. So for that camp, who knew the criminality and corruption was there all along? You know, this past month has been vindicating and validating in the sense that much like the abused spouse, somebody has called out what has been going on for years and we're finally starting to see some accountability. So for a lot of people, especially last night [when the Georgia indictment were handed down], there was this validation, this big collective, I told you so about what was going on. The second camp would be those who identify as Republican or GOP, who have been toeing the line and really closing their eyes and holding their nose at what's been going on to to stick to that party line. And I think it's that second group that is probably the most able to see the sea change that is occurring and potentially, you know, the more moderate Republicans to see as Jeff Duncan said yesterday, it's time to separate themselves from Trump. And then the third camp. I had described this a few weeks ago in an article as being really much like a cult. And I even went as far as to say it was, you know, the largest and most dangerous cult in American history.And it is because it is tearing at the fabric of our democracy and really jeopardizing what has been built for over 230 years. And I describe it in this these cult terms, because what you'll see in this third group after these indictments and again, call your attention to the Lindsey Grahams and the Ted Cruzes, they're going to dig their heels in to this cult like thinking. And they’re, regardless of the objective evidence that's presented in front of them, they're going to dig in their heels. They're still going to cry foul. They're still going to cry rigged election. And, you know, you might ask, well, how can they still cling to this in the face of all these indictments? And all of this evidence? All they need is a just a shred of some possibility that there was wrongdoing or there was some malfeasance with the election to to cling to the overall big lie. So it really is a matter of closing off whatever remnants remain. As far as you know, I think Trump put on his his Truth Social today that, you know, he's going to have a big press conference on Monday to present all this evidence of how it was a rigged election. And we know that's a lie and there is no evidence otherwise it would have been presented. But that still provides red meat to the cult following that we still have hope in our our lord and savior who's going to, you know, show us the the way, even though he's hit some obstacles along the way.MS: They are not getting out of this anytime soon. I ask you this as somebody who's a member of the first group, as you are, too, and many of our listeners. I've seen in the media and I've not  been someone who has believed we've been served well by our media in covering a lot of this. But I've seen this line, in the last indictment and this one ,that Americans are becoming immune to it all. You know, they're becoming numb to these indictments. They can't tell the difference, this or that. And, you know, I think each time [there’s an indictment] we see something unique and different and new allegations and certainly the way Jack Smith went about it and certainly what we learned now in Georgia. [The media] are not using any empirical evidence. They're just claiming this. I feel like it's probably illuminating for a lot of people. But I wonder if am I overplaying that? So I just wanted your thought.SN: You know, the fact that they've come, you know, sequentially in a rapid fire fashion, can be overwhelming. But I think you're right. I think the details are different enough. You know, one was classified documents. One was, you know, business fraud, one was the insurrection. And now we have specifically the efforts that were done in Georgia. So I think they're different enough that if you're paying attention and you're digesting, you know, the media reports as they come out, you can make that distinction.I think what is really more of a danger than that first group becoming numb and immune to it is that third group becoming numb to immune to it and or not necessarily numb and immune, but avoiding the topic altogether and kind of lumping all of these indictments into, you know, political persecution and election interference by the left against the right. And so I think there's a tendency more to lump them together and have them be kind of this amorphous thing on the the extreme right and then on the more left leaning individuals. I agree.MS: And I think sometimes the media is paying attention only to those people. Obviously, to heal further we need more justice. We need closure. We need to see convictions. And nobody knows if that will happen. Nobody knows if Donald Trump will actually serve time or if he will go to jail. And of course, if he does and this does bring him down, that third group that you're talking about is really going to have a complete and total meltdown. So just give us a thought about where we go from here and and what happens with regard to what may happen.SN: Well, I would agree with you that that third group would have a meltdown. But I do want to point out that, you know, the law enforcement in Atlanta are really preparing for much more than what is transpired so far since this fourth indictment came down. I mean, they had barricades erected and they were, you know, priming for some smaller version of January 6th. And the honest thing is we just haven't seen that. So getting back to what you were saying a second ago, there is some, again, numbness and and lack of reactivity on that far right group because they're not responding the same way. Some of that has to do with the fact that time has elapsed. I mean, it's been two and a half years since January 6th, and they've heard a lot of the same rhetoric but seen no differences in terms of results. So I think they'll have a meltdown of sorts, but I honestly don't think it's going to be as extreme as anything we've seen before. Now, if there is some sort of incarceration, maybe that changes. You know, there's the real possibility because of Trump's continuing to badger witnesses and intimidate prosecutors and DA's, that maybe he's remanded into custody in Georgia because of the risk that he poses to the case and to the security of witnesses and and grand jurors who will be identified.Maybe an incarceration or jailing him will tip the scale. But again, if you read the comments and if you read the revelations of those who have been indicted following January 6th, you'll see a lot of them have come to the realization that we would hope they would come to, which is, you know, “we believed the big lie. We thought we were the ones being patriots.” And then when they're slapped with prison time, they're slapped with fines, they're slapped with court cases. That realization becomes that much clearer. So I think you're right. I think there is going to be some element that loses their mind and tries to act out. But I also think there's going to be some element that says, “wait a second, you know, court cases and prison time are real. We can no longer live in this fantasy world because look at these real world consequences.”MS: Obviously, that’s why we need justice, and closure. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

The Signorile Report is reader-supported. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism. Thanks!I don’t even know why I engaged in a discussion on my SiriusXM program with this guy, as he had no facts—literally didn’t know the names of players or politicians, just referring to them as “that guy”—but he is emblematic of many in MAGA world. So sometimes you do have hear them, so we know what we’re dealing with, as painful as it is. They will just defend Donald Trump no matter what, even if it means calling a radio program and embarrassing themselves.And you have to just call them out. (I’m from Staten Island and am Italian-American, so, yeah, I can call him a “goombah.” And I did.)He is every stereotype of place, the only borough of New York City that voted for Trump—and where there was a rally over the weekend to stop migrant asylum-seekers from being sheltered there even though just about everyone living there, a place dominated by Italian-Americans, descended from immigrants. (And let me tell you that not everywhere there is like this!) This exchange, by the way, took place on Monday, as the grand jury in Georgia was meeting but before the Trump indictment came down.Listen in and let me know your thoughts! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

The Signorile Report is reader-supported. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism. Thanks!Programming note: I’ll be a taking a vacation from July 19th through July 28th, and won’t be posting to The Signorile Report. In a discussion on my SiriusXM program recently after the damning recording surfaced in which Donald Trump admits he’s sharing classified war plans with people —and said could have declassified them when he was president, but didn’t—Jeff from Richmond, Virginia called to defend Trump.He had to concede begrudgingly that it was all not good, that indeed Trump left the White House with classified documents and didn’t give them back….“but, but, but….”But, but, but…if they were so worried about secret documents or highly classified documents in those boxes then they should not have left the White House...They should have gone through those records and made sure there were no top secret records….They? Who is they? “The archives people,” he responded.This was ludicrous because Trump isn’t a five-year-old. He’s an adult—who was the President—who should be honest and certainly responsible with government documents, and in fact must be so by law. It was the job of Trump, sorting through all boxes before he left the White House—and we may find out that in fact the staff who were helping him tried to stop him—not to take the documents with him. And then certainly to give them back.Jeff was simply infantilizing Trump—the latest excuse.He then began quoting Trump’s lawyer as the authority—which was hilarious—and had a lot of non-facts, clearly not having read much about the case. had to bring him up to speed and say good-bye. At least this one remained civil.After the call, I explained that it’s not the government’s job to make sure Trump doesn’t rob a bank either. He simply shouldn’t rob a bank.Listen in and let me know your thoughts! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

The Signorile Report is reader-supported. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism. Thanks!Eleanor Clift was a groundbreaking journalist for publications such as Newsweek in its heyday—she is now a columnist at The Daily Beast—and who many will remember on TV’s The McLaughlin Group every Sunday in the 80s, 90s, and beyond. There she battled, often as the only woman and a liberal feminist, against Pat Buchanan and other conservative white men.Clift comes on my SiriusXM program every Friday, and it’s her experience and knowledge of history that are so fascinating and interesting when we talk about the issues of today. She’s covered every presidential campaign and every presidential administration since 1976.So on the anniversary of the Dobbs decision, she gave us the long view of how Roe v. Wade was handed down and how conservatives accepted it—including the Southern Baptist Convention. But she also remembers how evangelicals, coopted by Ronald Reagan from Jimmy Carter and making an alliance with conservative Catholics, soon began organizing fiercely to reverse it.Listen in to the interview and let me know your thoughts. Below is a transcript edited for space and clarity.Michelangelo Signorile: So on this day, the anniversary of the fall of Roe v. Wade, lots of discussion looking back on how things have changed in a year. And we now have 15 states that ban abortions completely. I wanted to ask you as a journalist who's covered this issue for many years and as a woman, about your experience looking back at the trajectory of this issue, going back to, of course, when Roe v. Wade was affirmed, was decided by the Supreme Court, and then, as you saw, that movement within the conservative movement and the Republican Party. And if you ever thought we'd come to this, this day that happened a year ago today.Eleanor Clift: Well, to start at the beginning, I guess, when Roe v. Wade was passed, it was not all that controversial in the sense that you didn't have two very distinct camps that saw each other as enemies. You had the Catholic Church clearly opposed, but you had the governor of California, who was Ronald Reagan, sign a very progressive abortion rights law. New York also had legislation along those lines. And the Southern Baptist Church even put out a statement sort of acknowledging that. For some people, ending a pregnancy was the right thing to do, considering their circumstances. I don't remember exactly how it was phrased, but they basically gave a positive nod to the legislation. And there it was for some time until the conservative right recognized that they could bring Catholics and Southern evangelicals together on the issue of opposing abortion. And those were two powerful blocs of voters that were then politicized around this issue. Before that, the right had been campaigning against tax exemption, ending tax exemption for, in particular, Bob Jones University, the evangelical university that was getting huge tax breaks. And that came to an end, actually, when Gerald Ford was in the White House. But Jimmy Carter was kind of blamed for it. And when Carter ran for re-election in 1980, he realized that his whole base of evangelical voters had drifted away or been stolen away by the Reagan camp. And that became the beginning, in my mind, of the partisan right division on this issue.MS: A lot of people don't know that Jimmy Carter was an evangelical Christian, and that evangelical Christians had not really been involved in politics much before that because they saw politics as, like, the devil's doing, right? And he brought them in, you know, because he was an evangelical Christian. And then the Reagan Republicans really saw them as an organizing force.EC: That's right. And I think in 1984, when Reagan ran for re-election, the Republican platform was much clearer in its opposition to abortion rights than it had been before. And then in 1994—now we're sprinting ahead here in terms of politics—but when the Republicans took the House for the first time in 40 years, they elected a lot of women, or certainly compared to previous standards, and women who had been trained as activists in the anti-abortion movement. Before that, as a reporter covering these issues in Washington, there was kind of an assumption that the women who made it to the House of Representatives were generally liberal on what we call women's issues. The Republican women were pro-choice. And that began to change when you had pro-choice being on the Republican side, being challenged from the right. And so, you know, it was both gradual and it was sudden that this issue became incredibly partisan. But what you said at the beginning of our conversation here, there was an assumption that Roe v. Wade was here to stay, that it was nailed down into our constitutional rights.And so Republicans could say the most outrageous things about abortion rights, knowing or believing that they would never be held accountable for those statements. And Democrats were nervous about shining too bright a light on the issue because they didn't want to lose more moderate voters. And they assumed again that Roe v. Wade was here to stay. So when Roe was overturned, I think that was an earthquake for both parties. And politically, it has benefited the Democrats. And I hope that continues into the next election. And certainly, Democrats are doing everything they can to highlight all the problems that these really draconian laws about abortion have brought upon women. And Republicans are trying to squirm their way out of the worst impact of the Roe decision. And politically, it's a problem for Republicans. But beyond the political problems, every day women really have to fight in some of these states to get basic health care because clinics have shut down, not only because they provide abortion care, but because when they're gone, they don't provide any other kind of care either. So it's really created a lot of health problems in certain areas of this country.MS: I want to come back to what's happening now among Republicans, but I wanted to ask you again, as a journalist covering this and,  obviously, as a woman, did you believe that Roe v. Wade would be overturned? Did you think we'd ever meet this moment? And obviously, we saw it coming for some time. I guess my question is, at what point did you start to think, Wow, this could really happen?EC: I think at the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court and [Maine GOP Senator] Susan Collins’ really over the top half hour speech, insisting that she had gotten private assurances from him that he would not vote to overturn Roe because he was the fifth vote. Right. But that was not enough until Amy Barrett got on the court. And she, being a woman, kind of gave the male five some cover. And Justice Roberts tried strenuously to narrow the decision to keep it at 15 weeks and not completely uproot Roe. But anyway, you could see it coming with Kavanaugh. And I think Senator Collins later said she—used the word lie—that she was lied to. But looking at Kavanaugh's background, his religiosity, even the way he framed some of his responses, you could get a good sense of where he was going. And it seemed only a matter of time. And then getting the woman on the court, rushing her through in the wake of Justice Ginsburg's death, really, really set the stage for this court to take this lurching turn to the right. And in terms of just doing away with precedents, which they had all said they were committed to, you could say they were all lying or maybe we all should have known better because they were all on the lists provided by the Federalist Society. Right. Which was committed to fulfilling Donald Trump's pledge that anybody he put on the court would vote to overturn Roe. So you're right. It was right there written quite plainly, except it still seemed unbelievable to a lot of people that it could happen.MS: When I think back to the McLaughlin Group, and you on The McLaughlin Group with Pat Buchanan, if you were to say to me, okay, whose  political worldview is going to be the one that dominates and which one's going to shrink, I would have said yours would and Pat Buchanan's would shrink. Of course, yours has [dominated] in the sense that we know where the majority of people are. But Pat Buchanan's agenda has really, much of it, largely come into being a success, being successfully implemented.EC: Now, as Pat has often said, I didn't make it to the White House, but my issues did. And on trade, on nationalism, on isolationism, and certainly on the issue of abortion. Yes. All of those issues made it to the White House in the body of Donald Trump, who in many ways was the most unlikely carrier of these issues. I mean, he didn't show any signs of being anti-choice when he was, you know, gallivanting around New York. And so there's that. And as an aggressive businessman, he didn't hold the views on international trade that he later exhibited. And who would have thought that he would end up being, you know, pro-Russia and that this would be a significant element of the Republican Party as it's newly constituted by Donald Trump? And I guess I would put Buchanan in that camp.MS: Absolutely. But of course, as I said, your views are where the majority of Americans and certainly the majority of Democrats are today. And that gets to the problem that the abortion issue is for the GOP.EC: And the only thing that changes it is if you can get the turnout of voters that is out there and just be mobilized.MS: And we saw Republicans initially very afraid of this. The extremists now want a full abortion ban in the country, a federal abortion ban.EC: Right. And the Susan B. Anthony group—you know, liberals feel like they have, you know, stolen her name and that she really wouldn't be where they think she was then and would be today. But they have been considered a kind of moderate, big umbrella group on the right. They are now really forcing the agenda further and further to the right with the apparent goal of virtually eliminating abortions in this country. Chris Christie, he's an anti-abortion Catholic from a pro-choice state. And he seems to think that a 15 week federal ban would work, but there's no way his party or the Democrats are going to get there anytime soon. Short of that, the safest position for Republicans is one that they have held on a variety of issues until they don't hold it: And that is to leave it up to the states. So I think those are the two positions that the candidates are going to hold, and they're going to be pushed towards the federal abortion ban by the anti-choice groups. They have a bigger problem on their hands.They're divided, and anytime the opposition is divided, that's a good thing. Democrats are very united on this issue and just about every other issue because they realize that their strength comes from unity. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

The Signorile Report is reader-supported. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism. Thanks!In the wake of the killing of Jordan Neely, the homeless black man who was choked to death in a New York subway car, MAGA extremists online have not only made the killer, Daniel Penny, into a hero; They’ve also promoted vigilantism and violence.And John Knefel, a writer who covers national security and writes for Media Matters, has been monitoring them, and reports that they’re deciding that certain people should actually be killed and are becoming increasingly open about it.He joined me on my SiriusXM program to talk about it. Listen in here. Below is a transcript slightly edited for space and clarity.—-Michelangelo Signorile: You did a lot of research, obviously listening to a lot of these people, these pundits who, as you say, they're very upfront about who they think should be killed.And you point out that while there is seemingly more of it now, it's nothing new. Talk a little bit about some of these pundits, what they've done in the past and how it's kind of built to a head now.John Knefel:  So the viciousness and sort of semi overt calls for violence from right wing media is nothing new. One of the standout historical examples, of course, was when Bill O’Reilly, when he was still at Fox News, went after abortion providers, especially Dr. Tiller.But what we're seeing right now is really much more comfort with an open embrace with the vigilantism that we saw Daniel Penny enact against Jordan Neely.But then in addition to that, there's another story that I think hasn't received quite as much attention that makes the point. [In May] Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill that would expand the death penalty as an available option to people who have been convicted of child sexual assault and child rape. And this new Florida bill was cheered on by many, many figures on the right. And so what I did was, I looked at the way that they were openly embracing this expansion of the death penalty. One of the pundits I looked at at The Daily Wire, Matt Walsh, said, "Just execute them all. This is the first right step. There's a lot more that needs to be done."So you get that kind of rhetoric around this expansion of the death penalty. And it maps almost exactly alongside all of these right wing figures on Fox and The Wall Street Journal op-ed page and elsewhere who are calling Daniel Penny a hero for committing this homicide against Jordan Neely. And I think that what they both show together is a really, really dangerous escalation of the anti-LGBTQ and anti-Black rhetoric that is really always present in right wing media. But it's taking on an increasingly openly violent, and you could even say sort of murderous, angle to it.MS: I want to talk about DeSantis and that law that he signed in a little bit, but I want to focus in first on Jordan Neely. Tell us some of the things they were saying, almost rationalizing or legitimizing what Daniel Penny did.JK: Yeah, it’s really been quite astonishing to see and this kind of rhetoric was there both prior to Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg bringing charges against Penny and afterwards. It's accelerated. So early on you have Heather McDonald who frequently is an apologist for racist policing. She's of the conservative think tank, the Manhattan Institute. She was on Laura Ingraham's podcast. Laura Ingraham, of course, is the Fox News prime time host as well. And she said—I’m just going to read a quick quote here because I think it captures the overall tenor —McDonald said, "For these activists now to be playing the race card here is preposterous. The government is unwilling to protect its citizens. You are going to have a certain degree of vigilante justice, as far as I'm concerned. And from what we know, this guy is an urban hero."And that is the kind of rhetoric that we saw on Fox News as well. A contributor named Leo Terrell said that the Marine is a hero. You have people like Charlie Kirk, who is the founder of Turning Point USA, which is this sort of youth outreach group, who called Penny a hero. And the list really just goes on and on.The Wall Street Journal op ed page, after charges were brought, published a piece called “Free Daniel Penny” by William McGurn. The Wall Street Journal's editorial board wrote a separate piece referring to Penny as one of the good Samaritans, echoing DeSantis’ own tweet about Penny. And so it's essentially ubiquitous in right wing media right now that not only was Penny sort of like forced into what he was doing but that there is a full on endorsement of his actions.You're not seeing very much hedging of it, like, "Well  this is a tragedy', or "Any loss of life is tragic." You're seeing, "We need more people to do exactly this kind of thing." And that, I think, is different than what we have seen in the recent past. And I think it's very alarming.MS: Right, Because, as we've explored it and as has been reported in much of the media. Jordan Neely was loud. He suffered from mental illness. He was abrasive. He was saying a lot of things that obviously might have unnerved people. But he never raised a hand to anyone, from what any witness said, and never threatened any one person directly.And Daniel Penny went up from behind him and took him down. And the fact that he died. The fact that he was killed—these people find that it's totally legitimate, that you don't need any due process. You shouldn't even have a trial to look at it. It's really quite alarming.JK: Yeah, absolutely. And what you're seeing from some corners of the right is not only a defense of Penny, but actually celebrating the fact that Neely is dead. And just to give you one example, again, to cite Matt Walsh here, Walsh responded to Neely's death by calling him and I'm quoting here "a terrible person." And Walsh continued, "The community is better off without him. Everyone is safer without him."This is an affirmation, an endorsement of a white ex-Marine killing a Black person and saying that society is better because of this act. And I think that opening the door to that kind of response is just incredibly dangerous. And I think that one of the things that Matt Walsh has really been doing in the right wing media for the last year and a half or so is he's been leading the charge against LGBTQ people and has really defined a lot of that. And so hearing him say things like the community is better off without Neely I think may be a kind of preview of the kinds of things that we will hear more and more from other conservative pundits.MS: And then DeSantis, with that bill that he signed, which, like some of the other bills he signed, is unconstitutional, according to legal scholars. But he admitted he wants to bring that back up to the Supreme Court—having the death penalty for sex offenders. And as you point out, several of these pundits, Alex Jones, Steven Crowder, Matt Walsh, Michael Knowles, they really glommed onto it. And my first thought when he signed that was how he spent the last two years demonizing LGBTQ people as pedophiles, as groomers. And so has Matt Walsh and the rest of them. And then you come to now—here's what should be done to these people. It's basically promoting open season on LGBTQ people.JK: Absolutely. There's the long history of conservatives saying gay people are a threat to children that dates back decades but the more recent history, really in the last couple of years, is they have escalated so much, where you've seen openly fascist gangs disrupt pride events, threaten drag performers.And DeSantis has been absolutely leading that charge from his seat in Florida. I think you're right in terms of signaling to the broader public that not only will the state attempt to carry out this violence, but as we've just been talking about, any vigilantes or fascist groups who, you know, take the law into their own hands, are also almost certainly going to be welcomed by the conservative movement. And so I think that's another absolutely crucial aspect to keep in mind.MS: You point out, Alex Jones said to Steven Crowder: hang them in the public square as a deterrent because these damn predators are everywhere.JK: Yeah. What you're seeing already from Jones is threat inflation. "These predators are everywhere.” Certainly wanting to kind of make a spectacle of this and targeting demonized populations.It never stops with that. They always go after the most hated and maligned parts of the society first. And I think that's what also is important to remember here is that what DeSantis is doing runs absolutely contrary to what advocates who actually work in the best interest of of sexual abuse survivors want. You know this will make it much worse for children. It will make it much more likely that children wouldn't want to come forward. We know that the vast majority of sexual abuse happens either within the family or the friend of the family or somebody who's known to the family in the community. And it's already incredibly difficult for survivors to come forward. And the idea that somebody that their family knows could be potentially put to death because of them coming forward--it's completely contrary to what you would want to do if you were actually addressing the mental health of the children and of society at large.It's purely about vengeance. And so I think that kind of gives up the whole game here.MS: And the way they discuss it — you rape a child, you deserve to forfeit your right to life. Nothing about due process, the fact that there are often charges that aren't true and there are, you know, mistakes made and misidentifications. And we've certainly seen that with regard to rape and DNA evidence that comes back and shows that people have been completely innocent and put in prison.JK: Right. The entire premise of the the DeSantis bill and of the right wing media response to it, I think is completely flawed and is based on an understanding of abuse of children that is essentially adjacent to the kind of QAnon conspiracy, the way that the  right wing media has defended this is that there's a kind of external evil that is out there that can be found and punished in this spectacular way as a deterrent. And that is that a cabal of child traffickers can be killed. And then that eliminates the problem.And, that is a completely  incorrect assessment  of what actual child abuse is. It's this bizarre QAnon adjacent almost fantasy that externalizes the problem, that blames it on some liberal elites or something as opposed to understanding the actual dynamics here. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

photo: Tyler MerblerThe Signorile Report is reader-supported. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism. Thanks!Ruth Ben-Ghiat, New York University professor and author of "Strongmen: Mussolini to Present," is one of the most important scholars on autocracy and fascism and continually gives us a window into the authoritarian mindset. Her newsletter on Substack, Lucid, is always enlightening. I invite her on my SiriusXM program often. And I spoke with her last week to help us make sense of what’s going on at this time as a MAGA-radicalized GOP holds the debt ceiling hostage while Donald Trump and his imitators like Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis are running for president.Listen to the full interview. Below is a transcript slightly edited for clarity and space.Michelangelo Signorile: So we've been talking about the debt ceiling and what's going on, of course, and what Republicans are doing and how the president is interacting. And this is something that has a history going back to the Obama years. Previously, the debt ceiling was routinely raised. And it was routinely raised even under Trump. But in terms of Republicans using it in this way, that is about hostage taking. It's been something that's gone on back into the Obama administration. How does it fit into this authoritarian absolutist mindset that we're seeing, and how is it different now, perhaps than it was earlier?Ruth Ben-Ghiat: Well, unfortunately, we're dealing with extremists and Trump, you know, most of all. And these are people who have no moral code. Trump himself does not care about mass hardship. If you recall when he was asked on camera about when COVID hit a death toll of 100,000, he just shrugged and said, "It is what it is." And he didn't care if Americans lived or died. So the kind of care, that they couldn't possibly do this because it would cause too much hardship, does not factor into the thinking of somebody like Trump and his extremist MAGA faction. So there's that. The other thing is extremists who already had a violent coup to try and step around the  system of democracy to get to power. These are people who will do anything, including crash the economy, to hurt Biden. And I firmly believe that. And the other thing is that there is a precedent for a Republican administration crashing a national economy to prevent socialism from taking hold. And that was in Chile in the 1970s. I write about it in my book, Strongmen. Nixon and Kissinger, they had a meeting, and they said, "make the economy scream." And so they used truck convoys disrupting supply chains. They used every possible economic warfare and political warfare, psychological warfare tool to create a system of a situation of crisis. And they crashed the economy. And these were Republicans not so long ago. Kissinger is still around. So think about that as well.MS: I think hitting his 100th birthday as well. I saw you speaking about some of the hearings we've seen that have been all about the weaponization of the government supposedly, by the Republicans, you know, their point of view, against Donald Trump, against Republicans. And how much of this is about them trying to undo the history, the documentation, the facts of January 6th and the insurrection, and rewrite what happened. You talked about how important that is to strongmen to do that, to control that narrative.RBG:  Yes. And one of the reasons the GOP is so dangerous right now is they are a party in damage control mode, in panic mode, and they're doing like this. Jim Jordan, Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government —its purpose is to weaponize government, to shut down any exposure of secrets, any exposure, further exposure of complicity of the party in the coup attempt. And that's why they're going after the "deep state."And Donald Trump has said, and I believe him, if he comes back to the White House, there are going to be massive purges. I'm writing about that today. I’m going to publish tomorrow for Lucid an essay about how intelligence agencies who have, you know, they have their own history of anti-democratic activity of course, but with the right or wrong leader, they can become targets because they are dedicated, dedicated to investigation and inquiry so they can become targets just like journalists and prosecutors. And so we saw this last week when they were trying to kind of taint the FBI and they consider it part of the deep state. So is just the start of all kinds of waste of taxpayers money and time. It's supposed to exhaust you. It's supposed to distract you from the GOP's corruption. And I call this garbage politics. And Jim Jordan is the perfect person to strew garbage. And by the way, these talking points are circulated all the way to Moscow. So it's a kind of a larger crusade to take down Biden's administration, to take down any non-loyalists of Trump that's going on.MS: And people should go to lucid substack.com. They can read that piece but also subscribe to Lucid. Ron DeSantis is going to announce any day now his run for the presidency. We've talked about him before and you've talked about what motivates him and what he's doing. He just finished signing a slew of extremist bills worse than the previous batch. You know, a license to discriminate law that allows doctors to turn people away based on their moral beliefs. They can turn away gay people if they want. Of course, the six week abortion ban, the horrible bathroom bill, the anti-trans bill, the anti-drag queen bill, all of it. And a lot of people talk about whether he believes these things or not, if he's just posturing for the base of the party. But in terms of being an authoritarian, that doesn't really matter because he's willing to do it, right?RBG: Yes. It doesn't matter. I've been writing about him since 2021. And one of the things that worried me is that I saw him as a kind of empty shell of a person who, in the classic strongman tradition, would become anything that he needs to become in order to get power. And Trump is like this too. Trump's a marketer by profession, among other things, as well as a money launderer, etcetera. And Trump kind of read the political marketplace, and he found he could, you know, kind of sell his product as white grievance, etcetera. And Ron DeSantis studied this very carefully. And he has made himself, of course, a mini Trump, but he has no moral scruples either. And so both of these people are letting themselves be led by the most extremist tendencies of the Republican voters. And once you go there, you see that. Trump’s become more and more extreme. He's now, you know, he always was soliciting, soliciting neo-Nazis, telling them they were good people. But now he's like exacerbated this. And that's what Ron DeSantis is doing, too. They double down even though it's unpopular what he's doing. And I think there's a whole kind of grassroots and lawmaker alliances that have come out in Florida. It's becoming actually a laboratory of interesting resistance, but they don't care. They'll do anything they need to do, no matter how how many people they demonize to get power.MS: Well, and it's similar to what we're seeing in the states. And you said Florida is the laboratory. We've seen, of course, other states now pushing the same horrible don't say gay laws and anti-trans bills. And of course, we've seen anti-abortion bills and bans on abortion all through the states. And there's a lot of discussion about how Republicans, a lot of them know this is disastrous for them and they saw what happened in 2022 and how, you know, Roe v Wade being overturned really galvanized Democrats. And yet they still, at least in many of these states, in fact, even after some abortion bans were beaten back, South Carolina, North Carolina, Nebraska, they went back and they got it done, pushed it through, and used procedural moves. Talk about that. How even the environment and the political reality, at least how it seems, doesn't really matter to them.RBG: Well, there's two things going on. One is their profound arrogance, and often authoritarians’ arrogance does them in. Not before they've, you know, caused enormous grief and often loss of life, unfortunately.  But they don't understand that or they think they can just have more and more repression, more criminalizing protest. They're not seeing; they're so blinded by their arrogance that they are causing an enormous army of resisters to come to the streets to be allying with lawmakers, as in Tennessee. They're sparking this whole countermovement.The other reason they don't care is that they have doubled down on what we call electoral autocracy. Now, when you keep elections going, but you game the system in myriad ways, which the GOP has a long history of doing because of racialized voter suppression for many decades. And it's all about this trickery. And so they feel that—they don’t care if things are not popular because they're not depending on the vote anymore. That's where [Alabama Senator] Tommy Tuberville, when he said, well, we should just not have elections anymore. You know, he said the quiet part out loud because they're not depending on the popular vote anymore. They just become like autocrats, like in Turkey and in Hungary. So in that sense, they don't have to care either. So it's quite a fateful moment we're in.MS: What should political leaders and Democrats be doing? I mean, certainly we see the movement and, as you said, the resistance. And we're seeing incredible people like Justin Pearson and, you know, Justin Jones, and people who are just galvanizing people across the country. But then you see President Biden, you know, going into these talks with McCarthy, still trying to talk about bipartisanship, negotiation, giving things up, give and take, compromise. Is that the way to do this?RBG: I think it's not either/or. And he has a different role. He's been so strong on democratic ideals, both in terms of keeping the U.S.—he’s tried to repair the U.S.'s profile abroad. He has all these democracy summits, and I know that people will be like, okay, well what about us here? You know? But I think that it's not either or. I think he's doing what he has to do now as the head of state. I do find really interesting, you know, Nikki Freed, the chair of the Florida Democrats, who was recently arrested. It was very interesting to see her and the Florida state minority leader. They were arrested, and they were locking arms with activists. And this kind of optics of this lawmaker and grassroots activist alliance was very strong. And we're seeing this in Tennessee, too. So I think that we know from studies of nonviolent protest, you have to ally with what's called the pillars of society. If you're a grassroots activist, you have to get people who have power, influence, and money involved, and you create a broad based coalition, and that's how you succeed. There's all kinds of research about this in different countries, and that's what's going on here slowly. So that's one thing. And what Biden is doing right now with the debt ceiling is another. It's a very specific and scary circumstance.MS:What is your thought on these other candidates who are putting themselves out there? Tim Scott, the South Carolina senator, put his hat in the ring. Chris Christie is going to jump into the Republican primary. DeSantis has kind of deflated, but I don't know that anybody should rest on their laurels. And of course, Donald Trump is still there.RBG: Yeah, it's really interesting. I think they're all quite deluded. Maybe for good reasons, because Trump is a is a cult leader. The thing about Trump, and I have an essay on this, and he's not a conventional politician. He's a cult leader. And everything that's going on in the GOP is because they are a party domesticated by this cult leader, and they became his personal tool. I mean, it's incredible. The guy hasn't been in office for a long time, and they're still taking orders from him. This is not normal. Except if you're a cult leader. Jim Jordan is like a total—these people are lackeys of the Trump cult, and they can't seem to find a way out. So it's really interesting that anybody at all is declaring, DeSantis aside, because DeSantis, you know, a long time ago, he already had like 40 or 50 billionaires backing him, and a few of them have left. But he's always had a big war chest. And so he's a little bit different than the others.But Chris Christie etcetera, I don't know how they would go up against the Trump cult or the alternative of DeSantis, who somehow, some people, it makes me crazy this, they want so badly to have a, quote, normal politician that they want him to be like the moderate one. And you still see, like, even New York Times headlines that say, "Oh, he's he's very conservative." Well, there's nothing conservative about him. He's like demonizing, LGBTQ populations so that there will be violence against them. That's not conservative. That's extremist. So it's a very interesting dynamic field right now. But the cult leader dynamics show that it's very difficult for anybody else to prevail.MS: And Trump certainly was able to just use CNN in that town hall, have a platform to cement that cult status even further and sort of set the terms of this Republican field and the nomination fight.RBG: Yeah, and the thing is, if we look at everything he does, start with and being a cult leader. His campaign events have a different function than other politicians. His campaign events are radicalization venues for people to become radicalized. Since 2015, he's been telling people that they should be full of hatred, that they should hurt each other, that, you know, compassion is bad. So he's emotionally retraining them. He's radicalizing them. And he's circulating his propaganda. And they have to have loyalty to him. So those are what he uses his rallies for, as well as, you know, fleecing people, you know, ripping them off, of course. And that's a little different than other politicians. That's because he's a cult leader. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

The Signorile Report is reader-supported. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism. Thanks!In a discussion on my SiriusXM program about Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ attack on civil rights and free speech—from criminalizing drag shows to his war with Disney over its criticism of his “don’t say gay” bill—John from North Carolin called in to say I have distorted the First Amendment.But he had nothing — truly—and was a textbook example of the ignorance we’re dealing with. John claimed I ignore part of the First Amendment when I discuss it: Why is it that you always ignore the second part of the religion clause in the First Amendment, which is “nor restrict the free exercise thereof?....Every time that you talk about religion and government, you say there's a separation of religion. The First Amendment, when it was written—I jumped in, stating, “Let’s be clear,” and paraphrasing the First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise. Right. That's the part you're saying that I'm ignoring?Yes, he said, I do ignore it. I denied that, saying it was a given: Of course you can worship whoever you want in your church, synagogue, mosque, wherever. But you can’t force your religion on others and use it to pass laws, I told him. Then he claimed that that I say “people can’t do anything with their faith in public” and that I “shout down anyone who mentions God.”That is preposterous, since many people of faith are regular listeners to the show and call the program, including pastors of churches who embrace full equality and work on behalf of the poor and the sick, and who talk about their faith.John gave no examples, even after I said, “You have to give me an example.”I then asked if he agreed with the bill Ron DeSantis signed into law in recent days that allows doctors and all medical professionals to turn away any patient, even in an emergency, based on their religious or any other “moral” or “ethical” beliefs.John replied:I have to admit, I had not seen any of that.“Well I’m telling you about it now,” I said. “He passed a law that allows doctors to turn away anybody who they believe is is against their religious faith. Could be an emergency. Someone needs a doctor. They can turn them away.”John then just slunk away: I come to take anything that you say with a grain of salt. I'll look it up. I will give you a call back. Okay.This is a primary example of how most of what these people believe are distortions and conspiracies—and the rest is simply about not even knowing what it going on in the world.Listen in and let me know your thoughts! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

photo: Tyler MerblerThe Signorile Report is reader-supported. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism. Thanks!There’s a great mash up of Fox News hosts saying no one was charged with “insurrection” or “sedition” on January 6th, part of Fox News hosts’ attempts to say an insurrection never happened—before some of the major players were charged.But then came the Oath Keepers leaders’ charge and conviction on seditious conspiracy, and then just recently four Proud Boys convicted of seditious conspiracy.You have to watch the mash up to see how foolish the Fox News hosts look now—it’s on Twitter and I can’t embed it here as Twitter is fighting with Substack, so you just can go to this link to Twitter and watch it. But what’s pathetic is that Trump followers still believe that the fact that no one was charged with “insurrection”—even though several have now been convicted of seditious conspiracy—proves there was no insurrection. What it actually proves, however, is how stupid they are!And Mark in Kansas, who called SiriusXM program, thought he was engaging in a gotcha moment when he actually was showing his ignorance. Insurrection is simply the act of overthrowing the government, even if spontaneously, while the charge of seditious conspiracy involved, well, a planned out conspiracy that is premeditated. Seditious conspiracy is worse than insurrection: Q2: Is it a federal crime to commit “sedition” and “insurrection”?A2: It is a serious federal crime to commit seditious conspiracy or to participate in an insurrection against the government.Under 18 U.S.C. § 2384, “seditious conspiracy” occurs when two or more persons:conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof.Individuals charged with seditious conspiracy can be fined and could serve up to 20 years in prison.It’s the part about preventing or hindering the execution of any law—in this case the certification of an election—that is also a serious part. Seditious conspiracy includes insurrection, but conspiring to do it.Insurrection alone, however, is a lessor offense: Insurrection is captured by 18 U.S.C. § 2383 and applies to “[w]hoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the law there, or gives aid or comfort thereto.” Charges of insurrection, or the incitement of insurrection, involves fines and imprisonment of up to 10 years. Individuals charged with insurrection are also ineligible to hold public office in the United States.Anyway, listen to MAGA Mark and my response and let me know your thoughts! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

The Signorile Report is reader-supported. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism. Thanks!In a discussion about President Biden’s announcement that he is running for re-election, Joy from California called in to my SiriusXM program.She declared that as a "lifelong Democrat," she would not be voting for Biden because "age is an issue." She said she didn’t vote for Diane Feinstein for re-election to the Senate—and "left it blank"—and she won’t vote for Biden because "the 80-year-olds are a bit selfish" and "won’t turn over power" to a younger generation.Whatever you think of the issue, it’s just idiotic to say you won’t vote for Biden for this reason — not when the stakes are so high and we could have Donald Trump back in power, Ron DeSantis, or another extremist.Readers here and listeners to my show know my stand: Biden has done a great job, continues to do so, and showed his energy by going toe-to-toe with Marjorie Taylor Greene at the State of the Union. So, no, this is not an issue regarding Biden— and besides, we have a qualified vice president who can fill the job immediately should something happen to him.Dianne Feinstein, on the other hand, has shown signs that she cannot fulfill her duties and shouldn’t have run for re-election. And if she’s going to hold up the appointment of judges because she's been out sick for weeks, she should resign.But to say that Biden is "selfish" when he has in fact earned the right to be re-elected, having accomplished so much, just because you don’t like his age, is stupid. And saying you won’t vote for him for that reason makes you the one who is selfish.And that’s what I told Joy. Actually, I called her “f*****g selfish,” to be precise. I was glad she at least didn’t live in Wisconsin or another battleground state where her vote would matter greatly and where it would be profoundly destructive not to vote for Biden.Joy later confronted me on social media, distorting what I said and claiming I attacked her for no reason. So here it is for everyone to hear. Listen in and let me know your thoughts! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

The Signorile Report is reader-supported. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism. Thanks!In a discussion about gun violence—and the shootings last week across the country in which people mistakenly went to the wrong house, opened the wrong car door, or drove up the wrong driveway and were shot—Anthony from Albany called in to my SiriusXM program.He said he lived not far from where a 20-year-old woman who killed recently when she and her friends mistakenly drove into the driveway of a man who came out with a gun and shot at the car. He also said he was a gun owner.At first I didn’t know where he was coming from, but soon it became clear: We were too focused on these shootings, he said, and not focused on urban crime.Of course, the Kansas City shooting of 16-year-old Ralph Yarl, who mistakenly went to the wrong house to pick up his brothers, occurred in a city.But we know what Anthony was really trying to focus on:… Sadly, we start cherry picking the the incidents that kind of meet certain areas. I'll give you an example. What happened in Washington County [New York], which is like 20 minutes from me, was horrific with that teenager who was turning around in the driveway right through the area very well.Horrific. So was the young man who was going in the wrong house. Both of them were tragic, but equally tragic. Look what happens in our city streets each and every weekend at proportions far greater than those of these two individuals. And I'm not dismissing their deaths. They're all horrible. But we don't like to talk about the other ones. The children get mowed down by gang activity every single week.I had to jump in at that point and explain that statistically, there’s more crime and higher murder rates in red states than blue states, both in rural areas and in cities."Well, actually, Anthony, proportionately, it's just not true," I responded. "It's not happening at the same rate. It is much more dangerous to live in rural Oklahoma than in New York City. Do you know that? It is much more dangerous to be living in rural Oklahoma or in Columbus, Ohio, or Cincinnati than New York City."He then asked me for statistics, as he couldn’t believe that to be true, and I just had to tell him, "Google it," since, "I don’t have time for you."I know—it was harsh.I should, as a radio host, give a caller the facts. It’s just that I’ve spent weeks going over the statistics and they’re now all over the place and he could find them.And in truth, I did eventually send him in the direction of some sites, which are easy to find, that show that the 25 states Trump won have higher murder rates than the 25 states Biden won for 20 years. But it does become tiring. And even after I told him of a site to go to, he still didn’t believe me:But what you're doing is you're comparing New York State to certain cities. Well, New York State land mass is huge. New York City, when you start looking at their crime, you are 100% incorrect in saying there's a dramatic drop in crime, crime and violent crime in almost every category in the last two years in New York City is up.Um, no. You can compare New York City to any city or rural area in Oklahoma or Ohio, and New York City is safer.I eventually just had to tell him: "I have the facts and you don't. You just admitted you don't have the facts. I've given you websites. Go and play Google. I don't have time for you now."Too hard? Listen in and let me know your thoughts! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

During a discussion on my SiriusXM program about the expulsion of two Black legislators—Justin Jones and Justin Pearson—Kevin from Bowling Green, Kentucky called my program to make a comparison between the peaceful protests by students inside the Tennessee Capitol and January 6th.This was something we saw the Tennessee Speaker of the House, Cameron Sexton, outlandishly claim following the protest by thousands marching on the Tennesee State Capitol—and he rightly got a lot of pushback.Kevin, right out of the gate, called the protest something that "turned into a semi-riot." I had to stop him in its tracks on that one, as it wasn’t anything near a semi-riot, just a peaceful protest. He continued:But the policemen were there. They let some people get through so they didn't get injured. But on our beliefs of January 6th — and what if a couple Republicans went with those insurgents, quote unquote —What would have happened to them because of their beliefs?"Wait," I interjected. "Are you really making a comparison between this and January 6th? Seriously? ‘We have our beliefs. You have your beliefs.’ Wait a minute…"“…January 6th was an insurrection against this country. People came armed and people came with plans. White supremacist groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers had a plan to bring guns up the river and hold hostage members of Congress."I went on, schooling him on exactly what happened on January 6th.He managed to mumble out:Some were bad, don't get me wrong.Oh wow. I then just had to ask if he was "that insane" or just watches Tucker Carlson. Kevin had nothing more to say, or he realized he was not going to get anywhere, and said, "Thank you for your time," before hanging up. You have to hear this one to get the full sense of it.Listen in and let me know your thoughts! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe