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DMZ America Podcast Ep 177: Interview with Ben Sargent

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Ted Rall

As President-Elect Donald Trump fills out his cabinet and key White House positions, including creating a new government-efficiency office for Elon Musk, the DMZ America podcast’s Ted Rall (from the Left) and Scott Stantis (from the Right) are joined by their colleague, fellow political cartoonist Ben Sargent, formerly of the Austin American-Statesman and now at the Texas Observer.

Republicans are urging a peaceful easy feeling between Americans whether or not they voted for Trump, but is that possible with an ideologically far-right slate of top personnel? On the other hand, many in MAGA world seem disappointed that Trump’s appointees include long-time Washington “swamp creatures.” Whatever happened to draining the swamp?

If personnel is policy, what do these choices harken about Trump’s intended policies for his second term?

Ben Sargent is the Texas Observer‘s longtime cartoonist. He launched his career drawing editorial cartoons for the Austin American-Statesman in 1974. Sargent won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1982. He has also received awards from Women in Communications, Inc., Common Cause of Texas, and Cox Newspapers. He is the author of Texas Statehouse Blues and Big Brother Blues.

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Keywords: Donald Trump, 2024 election results, 2024 election, 2024 campaign, Democrats, cabinet, appointments, advisers, White House officials, drain the swamp, trump administration, Ben Sargent

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Ted Rall

Seems like a perfect time to direct anyone who hasn’t bought my book from four years ago to this detailed and straightforward explanation of how the Democratic Party got itself into its current mess.

Here’s the official description:

There’s a split in the Democratic Party. Progressives are surging with ideas and candidates like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 72 percent of Democratic voters are progressives. But centrists like Tom Perez and the Clintons still run the DNC party apparatus–and they don’t want to compromise. Intraparty warfare exploded into the open in 2016. It’s even bigger now.
The struggle goes back decades, to the New Left and the election of Richard Nixon over George McGovern. It continued with the Democratic establishment’s quashing of insurgent progressives like Jesse Jackson, Ralph Nader and Howard Dean. The vast scale of the DNC’s secret conspiracy to stop Bernie Sanders in 2016 nomination came out courtesy of WikiLeaks.
Will Democrats again become the party of the working person? Or will the corporatists win and continue their domination of electoral politics? Ted Rall gets to the bottom of the story neither the Democrats nor the Republicans want you to know: how the civil war in the Democratic Party poses an existential threat to the two-party system.

 

The TMI Show Ep 19: Trump Won. Will He Bring Peace to Ukraine?

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Ted Rall

As the Russo-Ukraine conflict prepares to enter its third year of grinding warfare that has claimed untold lives and wreaked havoc on people and infrastructure, the election of Donald Trump to the presidency has sparked speculation that a reduction of U.S. proxy support for the Zelensky government might force the Ukrainians to sit down for serious peace talks with Putin.

Russia has gained a clear military advantage in the war. On the TMI Show, co-hosts Ted Rall and Manila Chan dare to ask: Will Trump, as he has promised, end the Ukraine War? If so, how? What role will be played by likely incoming secretary of state Marco Rubio, and European allies? Will the broad contours of a peace deal result in a rump Ukraine and an agreement not to join NATO? Are we looking at a full-fledged armistice, a ceasefire or just continued fighting?

Joining Ted and Manila is Mark Sleboda, an International Relations and Security analyst.

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Keywords: Donald Trump, 2024 election results, 2024 election, 2024 campaign, Second Trump administration, Marco Rubio, Ukraine, Russia, Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelensky, peace talks, Russo-Ukrainian War, negotiations, diplomacy

The TMI Show Ep 18: New Jersey Is Burning

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Ted Rall

“I’m On Fire” by the Garden State’s favorite son Bruce Springsteen could be the soundtrack to a bizarre wildfire season—wild because it’s happening in New Jersey, Connecticut and New York, states that rarely if ever have suffered the extreme drought conditions and sustained unseasonable high temperatures afflicting the Eastern United States and much of the nation. Late last week, New York City was covered with smoke from a brush fire in, wait for it, Brooklyn.

On the TMI Show, co-hosts Ted Rall and Manila Chan ask: Is a five-month drought in a part of the country where rain is normal and standard a harbinger of still worse things to come? Donald Trump has just appointed Lee Zeldin, a right-wing zealot, to head the EPA—will Republican policies accelerate humanity’s attack on the environment? Would people take notice of environmental degradation if temperatures were falling rather than rising? Ted and Manila are joined by Dr. Reese Halter, a distinguished biologist, an award-winning broadcaster, environmentalist and writer who advocates for Planet Earth.

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DMZ America Podcast Ep 176: Can the Democrats Be Fixed?

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Ted Rall

The Democratic Party finds itself in nearly as much disarray as the GOP did following Barry Goldwater’s 1964 defeat to LBJ. DMZ America co-hosts Ted Rall (from the Left) and Scott Stantis (from the Right) turn to American political scientist Charles Lipson to dissect what went wrong for the Democrats in the election and to discuss their prospects for renewal. Can Democrats follow the Republican example and rebuild their grassroots organization from the ground up at the local level? Can they free themselves of their addiction to corporate money in order to increase their populist appeal? Or should the party add domestic policy to a foreign policy that has already moved to the Right of the Republicans, completing a realignment that reverses much of what transpired between 1928 and 1932?

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Keywords: Donald Trump, 2024 election results, 2024 election, 2024 campaign, Democrats, LBJ, Barry Goldwater, political realignment, grassroots organization, Democratic Party, Charles Lipson, party politics, reinvention

The TMI Show Ep 17: Trump 2.0: Big Promises Meet Reality

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Ted Rall

On today’s TMI Show, co-hosts Ted Rall and Manila Chan consider Donald Trump’s campaign promises in the light of the reality he will have to face as he returns to the White House in January. He promised mass deportations and still claims he plans to carry them out, but will ugly optics and economic need for more workers pressure him to back down? Were his threats to impose big tariffs on Chinese imports empty, and negotiating tactic, or to be taken at face value? Trump remarked that he had “a concept of a plan” to repeal and replace Obamacare; if so, what would that look like? Should Ukraine expect to be told to negotiate with Russia?

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DMZ America Podcast Ep 175: Interview with Animated Political Cartoonist Mark Fiore

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Ted Rall

DMZ America co-hosts Ted Rall (from the Left) and Scott Stantis (from the Right) turn to their colleague, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Mark Fiore, known for his hard-hitting animated shorts about U.S. politics, to discuss the fallout of the 2024 election results and to prepare for another four years of satirizing Donald Trump. In what ways can we expect Trump’s second term to differ from his first, and does that mean approaching and criticizing him using a new or different approach? Should we expect the unexpected, and if so what?

The Wall Street Journal has called Mark Fiore “the undisputed guru of the [animated political cartoon] form.” His work has appeared on the San Francisco Chronicle’s website, Newsweek.com, Slate.com, CBSNews.com, MotherJones.com, NPR’s web site and is currently being featured by KQED.  Fiore’s political animation has appeared on CNN, Frontline, Bill Moyers Journal, Salon.com and cable and broadcast outlets across the globe.  Mark Fiore was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for political cartooning in 2010 and the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award in 2004.

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The TMI Show Ep 16: Wounded Democrats Scramble to Regroup

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Ted Rall

On today’s TMI Show, co-hosts Ted Rall and Manila Chan are joined by former Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial cartoonist Rob Rogers to discuss the fallout of Trump’s reelection win, namely: Where do Democrats go now? What will a Democratic Resistance 2.0 look like? How effectively can Democrats block Trump’s initiatives? Are there areas in which Democrats and Republicans can work together in a bipartisan manner? Who are the rising stars within the party? Will Democrats continue to drift right to chase anti-MAGA Republicans, or will they follow the advice of Bernie Sanders and others who suggest that it’s time to either abandon the Democratic Party or take it over?

Keywords: Donald Trump, 2024 election results, 2024 election, 2024 campaign, Rob Rogers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, editorial cartoonist, political cartoonist, interview, Democrats, future, Bernie Sanders, MAGA movement, resistance

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