Trump can win this election. Here’s what MAGA is hiding.

On November 2, 2024By Karl

The MAGA movement did not disappear after Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election. On the contrary, Republicans and extremists outside the party have learned in the intervening years how to organize effectively and seize power. To understand what might come from Trump’s victory next Tuesday, we can look to Florida and Texas, and even smaller-scale examples like Shasta County. The Marc Steiner Show captures important interviews conducted over the past two years with journalists, academics and activists who are dealing with the growing threat firsthand.

Listen to the full stories here:

JD Vance is a creature of Silicon Valley, not Appalachia (August 2024) With Mother Jones’ DC Bureau Chief David Corn

Trump, Project 2025 and his plan to bring autocracy to the US (November 2023) Paris Marx with tech writer and host of Tech Won’t Save Us

Democrats need to ‘stop talking nonsense and do something’ (November 2023) with former Texas State Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower

Studio Production: David Hebden, Cameron Granadino
Audio Post Production: David Hebden, Alina Nehlich

Transcript text

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. The corrected version will be published as soon as possible.

Marc Steiner: Welcome to a special edition of The Marc Steiner Show on The Real News. I’ve been following the rise of the right for a while. Sometimes it can be frustrating to witness the power of the right, but we must know what is in front of us, how to confront it and how to stop it. As someone who was part of the civil rights movement in the early 60s, the John Birchers, the segregationists we once defeated, seem to have risen from the ashes in the MAGA we face today. As we face this election in which the power of the right wing emerges, we bring you these conversations, this story that emerges from conversations we’ve had with activists across the country over the past few years.

In August, I spoke with Paris Marx, who wrote the book Technology Will Not Save Us, so we could explore the power of the right wing in Silicon Valley, the environment from which J.D. Vance was born and brought us.

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Paris Marx: A lot of these people in Silicon Valley, a lot of the investors and billionaires and CEOs, are saying, “We support Donald Trump. We support the Republican Party. We want them to win,” but we know it’s a much longer campaign going on, more in the shadows, more behind the scenes, especially when you consider how someone like Peter Thiel and his circle operate. Peter Thiel doesn’t happen very often… 2016 was an exception. Right? He’s not the person who’s in the spotlight most of the time, who you see doing all these interviews, who you see tweeting a lot or doing things like that. Someone who works in the background. He’s someone who moves money around to serve broader goals that people like him have, and makes sure his network does the same.

And as you said, that’s exactly what you see in JD. Vance. Vance first met Peter Thiel in 2011 when Thiel was speaking at Yale Law School and felt truly inspired by what he said. When she published Hillbilly Elegy in 2016, which was when her best-selling book officially entered Thiel’s network, she first worked at Mithril Capital and then started her own venture capital firm, later called Narya Capital, funded by $100 million from Thiel and his network. To get started. And of course, Vance received $15 million from Peter Thiel when he ran for Senate; this accounted for a large portion of the funds he needed for his campaign.

So you can see very clearly how that connection happens, and apparently when Donald Trump was at a fundraiser in San Francisco before he picked his vice presidential candidate, there were reports that David Sacks co-hosted that event. He was sitting with a group of these tech figures, very wealthy people, and he was simply saying, “Who should I choose as my vice presidential candidate?” And they were all saying J.D. Vance because they wanted him in that position because he’s very much a product of their network and they know that if he’s in the White House, if he’s vice president, they’re going to have a lot of influence over the policy direction that the Trump administration or a second theoretical Trump administration will take. on.

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Marc Steiner: Last November, I spoke with Mother Jones Magazine’s DC Bureau chief, David Corn. He has worked on Capitol Hill for almost 40 years. He knows all the details and doesn’t indulge in hyperbole, but he’s clear-eyed about the workings of the Hill and the White House. Let’s talk a little bit about what you see as a clear investment danger here that we’re going to face in the coming years, if they actually win the next election?

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David Egypt: The ultimate danger is that they will continue to rig the political system to hold on to power, and this can be done with more rhinoceros. This can be done by trying to pass laws in states or by trying to win court battles that would allow state legislatures to decide who wins a state’s presidential election and not be bound by the wishes of voters. So ultimately the threat is that they will blow up or pervert parts of our democratic system. I know there are a lot of problems with American democracy, so don’t come at me, but they’re making it harder for anyone but them to win elections, and they’re making it harder than it already could be. Thus, they maintain their power and we move further away from being a democracy.

And underneath that, there’s everything that can be done, like reversing important aspects of foreign policy, trying to use power, because if you can control who gets into Congress, then you can control whether there’s a national decision. abortion ban. I think one of the most important things about the election, whether it imposes an authoritarian regime or not, is that Joe Biden will reverse all the climate change actions that he’s taken with the Democrats and that Congress has been able to implement. And that was a pioneering policy that no one else had…not that far ahead of what Barack Obama had. And of course we all know it’s not enough, but it’s more than anything any politician in America has accomplished, and we certainly need to do more. And certainly, going backwards, as Trump would do, would further endanger the planet and its inhabitants—us and others—and create a regime in which political opponents are openly targeted by the president for criminal prosecution.

I know Republicans claim this is what happened to Donald Trump, but we can argue this over and over again. And it’s clear that the Biden Justice Department is trying to use special councils and do it the right way. Trump wants to be able to snap his fingers and openly say “Mark Steiner should be investigated” and dammit, it’s happening.

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Marc Steiner: Last November, I traveled to Texas with my colleagues Max Alvarez and Kayla Rivara to meet those organizing workers and communities to fight for a just future amid the deep-red world of the right. One of the people we sat with was legendary author, organizer, commentator, and former Texas State Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower. We talked about how they won before and how the movement is working to take back the future.

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Marc Steiner: Yes, you said this great quote: “Dreams are no longer marginal. “He came from the margins to sit in the seat of power, and that’s where we find ourselves.” And when I read that quote, when I thought about coming here today, I thought about how, even as Commissioner of Agriculture, you have spent your life fighting for a world that is economically, racially, politically, and environmentally just. As Agriculture Commissioner, you fought hard to make this a reality in Texas. And now you’d be sitting on your porch. You are 80 years old, I am 77 years old and you are watching what is happening around you. So what are your thoughts on the struggle so far from the populist Party to see this happen, and how we’ve worked together to influence other people to fight back and create this change?

Jim Hightower: It’s the struggle that matters, and we had that in Texas, where, as we noted, the populist movement in the 1870s was basically crushed by the banks, railroad companies, and others by 1900. But then the progressive movement emerged. One of them, Fighting Bob La Follette in Wisconsin, is a terrific move. Then the labor movement rose up and the civil rights movement came to the fore. The women’s movement came to the fore, the environmental movement came to the fore. So we’ve always struggled, and bringing that to the forefront, there were times when I ran for Commissioner of Agriculture in 1980, ’82-

Marc Steiner: And you won.

Jim Hightower: Yes. Yes I won. Ann Richards ran the Treasurer. He won. Jimmy Mattox, Attorney General. He won. Gary Morrow, Land Commissioner. He won. We were all young people with our own individual constituencies to add to the mix. Then we ran together. We campaigned saying, “It’s not just about electing me, it’s not about electing a government, we will put this government on your side,” and we did that. And then money came in the late 1980s and corporate money began to dominate all our politics. So grassroots organizing was left aside.

Now the good news is that organizing continues. What encourages me most in my travels across America and across the country and here in Texas are grassroots progressive movements. For example, the environmental justice movement. A Gulf Coast woman named Diane Wilson, a shrimper, fourth-generation fisherwoman, fought this massive plastics conglomerate out of Taiwan for 40 years, 40 years. He fought and fought and fought and lost and even progressives, some environmental groups, gave up on him and said: “Maybe he’s too crazy. He just keeps fighting.” And then suddenly he won. Two years ago, he won a case that brought the Formosa Plastics Company to its knees, and they had to bow to the demands of the fishing community there and begin to make change. And the judge put the focus of compliance not on some government, but on local grassroots people And so they were in a position to implement it and make it happen.

Family farmers are doing the same thing right now, reviving, reviving, and we’re electing people. Greg Casar was elected here from Austin, San Antonio County; a young Latino labor advocate, a big, big change, who has already become a force in his first term in Congress, or a force in the Democratic caucus saying, “Stop talking nonsense.” . Start doing something.” And that’s change. When people get angry and start organizing and creating their own networks of power, that’s what creates change, and that’s what happens.

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Marc Steiner: I produce and host this series called Rise of the Right so we can all clearly see and understand what we are up against. This is not an anomaly. It’s nothing new in American history. When we had a Civil War that ended enslavement in Africa and tried to create a true interracial democracy in the South, it was eventually defeated by the political resurgence of the Confederacy and their northern allies who brought us legal racial segregation, giving birth to Ku. The Klux Klan aims to maintain racist domination and control through terrorism.

Now we are faced with the re-emergence of that moment in the 21st century. Here we are once again, after civil rights union movements gave us a more egalitarian America that had difficulty organizing. We at Real News will continue to cover this issue, bringing you stories about people standing up to the racist right and revealing what we face as we fight for our future. Please write to me at [email protected] and let me know what you thought of this post and share your ideas about what you think we should cover.

On behalf of Kayla Rivara, Cameron Grandino, Rosette Sewali, Max Alvarez, and the team at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Thanks for joining us. Stay engaged, keep listening, and take care of yourself.

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