This interview aired on November 6, 2024. I always sound better in Farsi.

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The post Ted Rall Interviewed by IRINN TV about Trump appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

This appearance aired on Friday, November 8, 2024.

The post Ted Rall Interviewed by RT TV About Trump’s Win first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The post Ted Rall Interviewed by RT TV About Trump’s Win appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

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 post DMZ America Podcast Ep 175: Interview with Animated Political Cartoonist Mark Fiore appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

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

The post The TMI Show Ep 16: Wounded Democrats Scramble to Regroup first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The post The TMI Show Ep 16: Wounded Democrats Scramble to Regroup appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

DMZ America co-hosts Ted Rall (from the Left) and Scott Stantis (from the Right) look back at the only other president in history who returned to the White House after having served and then been defeated: Grover Cleveland, the 22nd and 24th Presidents the United States who served 1885-1889 and 1893-1897.

Cleveland was a Democrat renowned for honesty and probity, but otherwise there are some remarkable parallels between Cleveland and Donald Trump. Both were portly, had healthy libidos and a predilection for age-inappropriate wives, were skeptical of military imperialism and favored pro-business policies that prompted a reaction by labor. Listen to these two history buff’s take on a 19th century leader we’ll all be hearing more about in the years to come.

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N.B.: There were significant tech issues in this video feed, mainly Ted’s face freezing. We think we have it fixed for the next time.

 

The post DMZ America Podcast Ep 174: Before Trump, There Was Grover Cleveland first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The post DMZ America Podcast Ep 174: Before Trump, There Was Grover Cleveland appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

As the political world reels from Trump’s come-from-behind victory in the presidential race, The TMI Show’s Ted Rall and Manila Chan reach out to an old friend and colleague who has had a front-row seat at MAGA world and the Trump campaign to gain insights into the ups and downs of this wild campaign year.

Joining us is Angie Wong, a graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. After a successful career as a news editor, reporter and columnist in the U.S. and Asia for publications such as South China Morning Post, Reuters, NY Times and WSJ; she pivoted to politics, working on numerous political races at the local and federal level.

Tomorrow: one of the nation’s top editorial cartoonists will join us to look at things from the Democratic side.

Keywords: Angie Wong, 2024 campaign, MAGA, Florida, Republicans, Trump, GOP, 2024 election

The post The TMI Show Ep 15: A Trump Insider Speaks first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The post The TMI Show Ep 15: A Trump Insider Speaks appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Now that Donald Trump is coming back, there will be one positive side effect: many Democratic voters who sideline protests for social justice when the president is a Democrat, as he is now, will head back to the streets and take up the good fights they’ve been sitting out.

The post Trump Wins first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The post Trump Wins appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Co-hosts Ted Rall and Manila Chan analyze Donald Trump’s reelection victory and the Republican sweep of the Senate, with the House still up in the air. Conservative analyst Malik Abdul and progressive analyst Craig “Pasta” Jardula help break down how Trump pulled off his shocking win, what Democrats could have done differently and what to expect from a second Trump term: A federal ban on abortion rights? Mass deportations? Tariffs on Chinese imports? An end to the war in Ukraine? What about Gaza? Are we really witnessing the end of democracy—and how long can Trump stay in office before his age catches up with him?

Keywords: Donald Trump, 2024 election results, 2024 election, 2024 campaign, fascism, authoritarianism, deportations, migrants, immigration crisis, tariffs, trade, age, elderly, Ukraine, Gaza, Israel, Democrats, blame, House, Senate, House races, Senate Races

The post The TMI Show Ep 14: Trump Reelected! What’s Next? first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

DMZ America co-hosts Ted Rall (from the Left) and Manila Chan (from the Right) analyze Donald Trump’s shocking reelection victory and the Republican sweep of Congress. What should we expect from a second Trump term: A federal ban on abortion rights? Mass deportations? Tariffs on Chinese imports? An end to the war in Ukraine? Gaza?

The Democratic blame game has already begun. Corporate DNC Democrats say Harris couldn’t have done anything differently, but that can’t possibly be true. Were working class voters turned off by glitzy campaign events showcasing Hollywood celebrities at a time when they were struggling with high prices and stagnant wages? Was progressive turnout depressed by Harris’ refusal to throw them a bone, especially on the genocide in Gaza? Did Democrats overreach with lawfare and an endless barrage of attacks against Trump rather than state an affirmative policy case for Kamala?

Or is it just a very conservative country?

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Keywords: Donald Trump, 2024 election results, 2024 election, 2024 campaign, fascism, authoritarianism, deportations, migrants, immigration crisis, tariffs, trade, age, elderly, Ukraine, Gaza, Israel, Democrats, blame, House, Senate, House races, Senate Races, Hollywood, celebrities, lawfare, indictments,convictions

The post DMZ America Podcast Ep 173: Trump Reelected! first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Victory has a thousand fathers but defeat is an orphan. The phenomenon is accelerating as election postmortems that identify tactical and strategic errors in a campaign are going the way of the dodo bird.,

The post Zero Mistakes first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

           The world of politics, as well as the globe writ large, was shaken to its neoliberal foundations this week by the surprise victory of Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who did not qualify for debates and was accorded little media coverage, in the campaign for American president. Stein, a 74-year-old physician, will mark a trifecta of history as the nation’s first woman, Jew and third-party victor since 1860 to become commander-in-chief.

            Going into Election Day, polls as well as Las Vegas odds makers had shown the major-party candidates, Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump, locked neck-and-neck in a virtual dead heat, with seven key battleground states considered a tossup. The polls, it turns out, were dead wrong.

            A majority of American voters, it’s now clear, collectively decided that the two-party system, derided by critics as a “duopoly,” was no longer serving the country or their needs and needed to be sent a message: be responsive to our wants or needs, or we’ll kick you out.

            Pundits, editors and opinion researchers are reeling at this unprecedented and radical turn of events. “Odds that are more likely than not do not preclude an unlikely outcome,” polling expert Nate Silver of The New York Times said. “But this is different. Tens of millions of voters changed their minds, not about which candidate party to support, but about the system itself.” Moreover, voters deliberately misled researchers about their decision to cast ballots outside the two major parties.

            “It is really so shocking?” asked Ted Rall, a gadfly cartoonist and columnist. “Third-party voters have been vote-shamed for so long, it may have been easier to express themselves in the privacy of the voting booth than to fend off vote-shaming critics who told them that, say, ‘a vote for Stein is a vote for Trump.’”

            Shelly Jackson, a 37-year-old dental hygienist who has voted for both Democrats and Republicans, said she decided to vote for Stein after determining that she was unhappy with both Harris and Trump. “Neither of them had much to say, or at least not much to say that was credible or intelligent, about the biggest issues we face as a nation: climate change, stagnant wages, poverty, unaffordability of healthcare. After I did some research, I found third-party and independent candidates like Chase Oliver and Cornel West who were intelligent and thoughtful. Trump was obsessing over a murdered squirrel and Harris—even she didn’t know what she was saying. In the end, I went with Stein.”

            Until late on Election Night, Stein voters believed they were lone voices in the dark, casting protest votes that, as usual, wouldn’t affect the outcome. Typical was JoAnn LeCroix of Baton Rouge: “I told my male friends I was voting for Trump and my female friends I was voting for Kamala. That night, when I saw the results and Jill got to 270 electoral votes and CNN called it for her, I couldn’t believe it.”

            Acting on fears of increased government regulations and the belief that a Stein Administration might reduce America’s military projects around the world and make it easier for workers to organize, join unions and negotiate for improved wages and benefits, the Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled 38% on the news, to recover later during the day after the election as civil engineering-related and green-energy sector stocks surged in expectation of increased government inspection.

            Traditional U.S. adversaries including China, Iran and Cuba expressed joy at Stein’s win, promising friendlier ties with a Stein Administration if it seeks them. Ukraine’s President, Volodomyr Zelensky, said his country would be ready for U.S.-brokered peace talks with Russia. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his intention to launch a nuclear strike in the occupied Gaza Strip in anticipation of a shift of U.S. policy away from military and financial support for Israel.

            One of many signs that something dramatic had occurred took the form of an unprecedented joint press conference between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. “Jill Stein is a hater, a bad woman who totally cheated like a dog. No one has ever seen anything like it,” Trump said as Harris nodded by his side, calling on the Democrats and Republicans to unify against a common threat. “Looking at this holistically,” Harris said, “it’s holistically impossible not to arrive at a holistic conclusion that something has happened that should not have happened. There’s no way that tens of millions of Americans suddenly started thinking for themselves. Stop the steal!” Democrats and Republicans promised to file lawsuits to challenge the results, pressure Stein electors to defect and, if need be, use military force to prevent what they called “a coup from within.”

            Stein’s Green Party, with no members in either the House or Senate, will face challenges in pushing legislation through Congress, long-time Beltway observers predict. One person given anonymity to speak freely, said: “This is an epic disaster for the rules-based order and the stability upon which it relies. Citizens will expect changes to improve their lives—and now we may be forced to give in. This is what happens when you foolishly entrust democratic institutions to protect democracy.”

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis. His latest book, brand-new right now, is the graphic novel 2024: Revisited.)

 

The post Stein Wins! first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Co-hosts Ted Rall and Manila Chan preview the state of the key races for control of the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, and bring you a very spicy Election Day interview with Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai, who claims to be the Inventor of Email and is running for President of the United States, Dr. Shiva holds four degrees from MIT, was a Fulbright Scholar, and started seven hi-tech companies, including EchoMail, CytoSolve and Systems Health. He is currently the Founder and CEO of CytoSolve, Inc.

In the headlines: Ukrainian forces in Russia claim to be fighting North Korean troops. Boeing’s strike is over. The founder of Home Depot has died. And Much More!

Keywords: Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai, 2024 presidential campaign, 2024 election, Election Day, interview, North Korea, Russia, technology, email, House, Senate, House races, Senate Races

The post The TMI Show Ep 13: An Election Day Interview with Presidential Candidate Dr. Shiva first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

On the TMI Show for November 4th, co-hosts Ted Rall and Manila Chan err on the side of bringing you more information than you ever thought you needed. This time, with Election Day tomorrow, we offer you a Voters Guide about the five major presidential candidates: the good, the bad and the ugly about them, their policy stances and their parties. We deride, you decide! The TMI Show airs Monday through Friday at 10 am Eastern live, and streams in storage, on YouTube and Rumble.

In today’s headlines: an art heist, the state kills a squirrel and an icon of the music world sheds his mortal coil.

 

The post The TMI Show Ep 12: Your Voter Guide for Tomorrow’s Election first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

It may feel surreal, but tens of millions of Americans have already voted and the wild 2024 presidential campaign comes to an end in days. The DMZ America podcast, which began at the beginning of the Biden Administration, reviews how we’ve arrived at this unexpected contest between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist David Horsey, formerly of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, joins DMZ co-hosts and cartoonist pals Ted Rall (from the Left) and Scott Stantis (from the Right) to analyze the closing minutes of the race and make their predictions.

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The post DMZ America Podcast Ep 172: Interview with Cartoonist David Horsey on Campaign 2024 first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Remember when you first learned about the Holocaust? You probably wondered how so many Germans could turn a blind eye to the misery to the suffering inflicted by their government. Now, however, Democrats and Republicans are both happy to ignore the Palestinians killed by U.S.-supplied Israeli bombs.

The post Better Than Me first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

A vote for someone who polls say cannot win a campaign, duopolists say, is a wasted vote. But how does one assess likelihood of victory with perfect precision?

The post Vote for a Winner first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Two major newspapers owned by billionaires with business interests tied to the government, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times, prompted reader anger when they nullified their intention to endorse Kamala shortly before the election. More than 250,000 people canceled their Post subscriptions.

The non-endorsement scandals are the latest manifestation of Americans’ longstanding distrust of the news media upon which democracy depends in order to function.

In the 1970s, when the media went after Nixon, Watergate and the Vietnam War, 70% of people told Gallup they trusted the media. Now, just 31% express a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in the media to report the news “fully, accurately and fairly.”

Why so much distrust? What are the different reasons people with different politics cite for their feelings?

What and how can media organizations and reporters do to restore trust?

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The post DMZ America Podcast Ep 171: Why Americans Distrust the Media first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Stream This Episode on: Rumble.

(It was censored on YouTube.)

TMI Show Co-hosts Ted Rall and Manila Chan delve into an almost-familiar acronym: MAHA, which stands for “Make America Healthy Again.” An improbable alliance between former President Donald Trump and Democratic scion Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has culminated with their shared MAHA agenda, which calls for reforming federal regulations on food and pharmaceuticals, switching up farm subsidies, and purging public health agencies.

The still-developing MAHA plan taps into longstanding frustrations with the U.S. healthcare system and issues — such as ultra-processed food, the spread chronic disease and declining U.S. life expectancy — that Democrats rarely talk about—not to mention Trump, whose dietary preferences infamously trend toward fast food. Ted and Manila interview Dr. John Dombrowski, CEO of the Washington Pain Center and a practicing physician, about MAHA. What is it? Is it real and serious? What should we expect from a second Trump Administration, and why haven’t Democrats addressed the issue?

In the headlines: The White House memory-holes Biden’s latest big gaffe. Halloween by the Numbers. And Much More!

Keywords: MAHA, Make America Healthy Again, Donald Trump, John Dombrowski, health, public health, diet, nutrition, obesity, addiction, preservatives, regulations, RFK Jr., Robert F. Kennedy Jr., drugs, pharmaceuticals

The post The TMI Show Ep 11: Is “Make America Healthy Again” Real? first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

           One of the most persistent challenges faced by Kamala Harris’ abbreviated presidential campaign is a vexingly wide gender gap. Men just aren’t that into her.

            Democrats have deployed several approaches to convince male voters to feel the joy.

            Divide and conquer: Harris’ policies divvy up guys by race. Her “opportunity agenda for Black men” would offer special loans and internships to Black entrepreneurs (no word on whether that’s been lawyered for constitutionality), fund federal studies on sickle-cell anemia and other diseases that disproportionately affect Black men and give them priority to profit from the emerging legal marijuana business (note to Democrats: cannabis equity failed in New York). Harris’ “opportunity agenda for Latino men” (see a trend?) would offer Latino guys more small business loans. A Google search for “opportunity agenda for white men” comes up empty but hey, there are still a couple hours left in the race.

Kamala is also playing the class card. A spot for the Pittsburgh TV market features a Steelers fan and maintenance worker who calls himself a “yinzer” (Pittsburgh native). “Donald Trump does not care about the working man whatsoever,” he says. “He’s a little rich kid too; he ain’t me. Little silver spoon boy Donald Trump. How is he relatable to me whatsoever? The guy literally lives in a country club. Do I look like a country club kind of guy?” Don’t tell the yinzers that Harris, worth $8 million and a member of an exclusive country club with a $300,000 initiation fee, is more at home with the Trumps than with them.

            Humor: A Harris super PAC made news with “Man Enough,” an ad that showcases six hypermacho dudes—evoking more than a smidge of homoeroticism (“my full-throated endorsement”)—who say they’re so butch that they eat “carburetors for breakfast” and aren’t “afraid of bears,” but also like chicks and plan to vote for Harris and support abortion rights. An official Harris ad depicts a burly Black finance bro who ditches his plan to refrain from voting after confronted by a passel of disapproving ladies. Ladies are doters for early voters!

            Shame and guilt: Former president Barack Obama called out sexist men whom, he finger-wagged, “just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president.” His wife Michelle helpfully reminded the XY set that “your wife and mother could be the ones at higher risk of dying from undiagnosed cervical cancer because they have no access to regular gynecological care.” As if men didn’t care about their wives, sisters, mothers and female friends.

            This is a portrait of a campaign that wants men’s votes enough to embarrass itself, but isn’t willing to do much, if anything, to earn them. Democrats suffer from a prepositional disconnect: Harris and her surrogates talk at men, not to or, better still, with them.

            If she loses to Trump, a major contributing factor will be the perception that Harris and the Democrats don’t like men.

This is puzzling. Harris knows men. She’s married to one. Most of her Senate colleges are men. Her running mate is a guy, albeit a goofy beta. Why can’t Kamala speak fluent dude?

            A more talented politician would recognize male voters—especially white male voters—less as an obstacle to fool, bully or circumnavigate than as what they realty are: virgin electoral territory.

American men are suffering from a set of very real, very serious problems with which neither political party has begun to identify, much less engage.

            One of Trump’s superpowers in 2016 was his recognition of the pain, frustration and anger of Rust Belt voters (including men) left behind by deindustrialization to wallow in poverty, addiction and dysfunction. Trump, and now his running mate J.D. Vance, described the shuttered factories and the blighted neighborhoods in places like Dayton, Ohio, where I grew up. They argued that American citizens deserved better and promised to fix it. Trump didn’t fix it as president. Maybe he couldn’t.

But he did see the people of Flyover Country. That was enough to take over the GOP, defeat Hillary Clinton and build the MAGA movement.

            Today, boys and men represent an even bigger untapped reservoir of political support for the politician and party with enough vision to recognize it. Males are in crisis. They are angry and confused.

            Men are in crisis.

They are desperate for compassion and looking for leadership.

            Males are far more likely to abuse and become addicted to illegal drugs than females. Boys drop out of high school more than girls. Males are 50% of the population yet account for most fatal cancer and nearly 80% of suicides. Trapped in an increasingly feminized system of primary, secondary and higher education with rules designed for “calmer” females, boys and men are now being taught that they are historically responsible for rape, colonialism, imperialism and every other conceivable form of oppression. They are ordered to sit silently by as they are passed over for jobs, awards and other opportunities in order to make up for the historic sins of systemic sexism and misogyny. Men cannot and should not be proud of masculinity or maleness.

They ought be ashamed. As a liberal pundit put it in 2019, “Old White Men Like Me Need to Shut Up and Step Aside.”

            The Male Problem blows up during adulthood. 58% of college students are women; 42% are men. Moreover, women graduate in higher numbers—68% compared to 61% for guys—so the proportion of women with college degrees in the workforce is even higher. This is not a new problem; colleges began admitting more girls than boys in 1979. Nor is it a correction. Flipping a historical injustice, sexual discrimination, on its head does not redress it; it merely reverses the role of victim and oppressor.

            Cultural progressives posit an identitarian version of trickle-down economics in which equity erases the old gender pay gap that favored men, lifting up women without hurting men. But wages are a zero-sum game that men are losing. “In 1979, the median hourly wage for women was 62.7% of the median hourly wage for men; by 2012, it was 82.8%,” according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. “However, a big chunk of that improvement—more than a quarter of it—happened because of men’s wage losses, rather than women’s wage gains.”

            Gender inequality increasingly looks like a two-way street, with males bearing the brunt not only economically but socially because high-earning women are not willing to marry, support or subsidize lower-achieving men. Trophy husbands, cultural shifts notwithstanding, are not a thing.

            It’s hardly surprising that the unabashedly macho swagger of Trumpism finds a receptive audience among America’s lost boys. As the conservative activist Charlie Kirk told Vanity Fair, guys “want to be part of a political movement that doesn’t hate them.”

            That’s not the Democrats.

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis. His latest book, brand-new right now, is the graphic novel 2024: Revisited.)

 

The post Why Can’t Kamala Talk Dude? first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Pre-BOO! It’s the day before Halloween and The TMI Show is turning dark with DC By Foot tour guide Trevor Comeau, who guides scaredy-cat out-of-towners through the scariest haunts of Georgetown and other terrifying nabes in the city that keeps America’s darkest secrets: Washington. Co-hosts Ted Rall and Manila Chan help remind you that it’s not just the looming showdown between the Orange Ghost of Nativism Past and Present, and former A.G., aka She Who Supplies Old Sparky at San Quentin with new corpses-to-be that ought to scare you.

In the headlines: A leading pro-Iraq War neocon quits the Washington Post for not endorsing Kamala. Georgian Elections on Our Mind. And Much More!

 

The post The TMI Show Ep 9: Halloween Takes the District! first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.