2394 - Trudeau On The Ropes; US Sanctions & The War Machine w/ Luke Savage, Jeff Stein

It's an EmMajority Report Thursday! She speaks with writer Luke Savage, writer based in Toronto, author of The Dead Center: Reflections On Liberalism And Democracy After the End Of History, to discuss the current state of Canadian politics. Then, she speaks with Jeff Stein, White House economics reporter at The Washington Post, to discuss his recent multi-part series on economic sanctions for the Post entitled "The Money War." First, Emma runs through updates on the GOP’s continuing dysfunction over their spending bill, Trump’s prosecution in Georgia, the Wall Street Journal’s major report on Biden staffers’ extensive work to downplay and hide the state of Biden’s mental decline since 2019, the nomination of Pete Hegseth, Amazon teamsters’ strike, South Carolina’s attack on Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood, Israeli’s continuing offensives in Lebanon and Gaza, the repatriation of the final inmates in Guantanamo Bay, and the confirmed appearance Bird Flu in the US, before diving a little deeper into “President Musk’s” public pressure campaign to get GOP Congresspeople in line with his spending plan. Luke Savage then joins, diving right into the dwindling support for Trudeau’s administration in the wake of a weak, nationalist-oriented response to Trump’s threat of tariffs against Canada, unpacking the growing dissent from within his coalition before Savage and Emma briefly contrast his response to Trump’s threats with that from the US’ other neighbor-under-threat in Mexico’s President Sheinbaum. Stepping back, Luke examines the rise and fall of Trudeau as the leader of the Liberal Party in Canada, coming to power by leading a major win in 2015 and becoming a hyper-public anti-Trump resistance figure in the process, only for growing economic issues coming out of the COVID-19 Pandemic alongside a poor choice by Trudeau to call for snap elections in 2021 putting the Liberal Party in an insecure situation and forcing a deal with the NDP social democrats. Moving forward in the story, Savage walks Emma through the lingering struggles Liberals have faced in the wake of this deal, with their (and Trudeau’s, in particular) refusal to acknowledge the ongoing cost of living crisis and the failures of their economic agenda significantly dragging down NDP’s public standing to the point of pulling out of the deal this past September, issues capitalized on by a Conservative Party that is, at the bare minimum, willing to recognize the issues facing the Canadian electorate. After expanding on the role of Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, his success in hiding his unpopular faux-populist crypto-libertarianism behind direct, issues-based communication, and the pretty clear parallels with Biden and Democrats’ recent failures in the 2024 election, Savage wraps up by tackling Canada’s dearth of an actual system to remove someone like Trudeau from power, and how this situation could (and is likely to) develop. Jeff Stein then joins, jumping right into his extensive research at the Washington Post into the explosion of the role of sanctions in US foreign policy, and the vast material impact they have on local populations, first outlining how this policy proliferated in the wake of the serious backlash to US military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan – with Joe Biden taking Trump’s expansion of the sanction regime to an entirely new level after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – and how it aligns with the increasing power of the executive branch. Stepping back, Stein walks Emma through the role sanctions play in avoiding both military AND diplomatic intervention on the global stage, despite minimal evidence of their efficacy, and the growing worry inside of government of their long-term impacts with limited short-term benefits, before they wrap up with the myriad material issues that have arisen from the expansion of the US sanction regime, with devastating effects on the abused and exploited populations that these sanctions are ostensibly issued in response to, alongside the (less devastating) unforeseen financial costs to US taxpayers.

And in the Fun Half: Emma is joined by Matt Binder as they do a deep dive into the recent Wall Street Journal report tracing Biden’s staffers’ extensive efforts – beginning in 2019 – to hide and disguise Biden’s mental decline from the public, before touching on the continuing cult of senility around Biden. A Jersey caller unpacks breaking through the media’s commitment to Democratic leadership, Alex from Oakland unpacks Biden’s plan to encourage AI data centers on federal land, and the MR Crew explores the NYPD’s ongoing crackdown on Amazon teamsters’ labor action. Timothee Chalamet pitches Theo Von on affordable housing in NYC, plus, your calls and IMs!

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Check out all parts of "The Money War" here: https://x.com/JStein_WaPo/status/1849512230242464154

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