Useful Idiots with Katie Halper and Aaron Maté

Useful Idiots, LLC

Useful Idiots is an informative and irreverent politics podcast with journalist Aaron Maté and podcaster/writer Katie Halper. Episodes feature analysis of the political news of the week and exclusive interviews, with humor, commentary and dissection of why both Republicans and Democrats suck. Join Aaron and Katie as they examine important stories that have slipped through the cracks and what the media got wrong – and laugh about whatever is left to laugh about.

  1. 4 DAYS AGO

    Kushner’s “Investment” EXPOSED: Is Gaza Under New Owners?

    Go to our sponsor https://venice.ai/useful and use code useful to enjoy private, uncensored AI. Using our code will get you 20% off a pro plan. Click here for the full interview with Ken Vogel: https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/full-episode-kushners-investment?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false Support local jobs and get variety of high-quality clothing and activewear at https://www.american-giant.com and get 20% off your first order with promo code USEFUL. Thanks to American Giant for sponsoring the show! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Watch this week's Thursday Throwdown: Jared Kushner REVEALED as "Investor" Behind Gaza Reconstruction Plan https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/jared-kushner-revealed-as-investor?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false For $6 a month, become a Useful Idiot! Get extended interviews, Thursday Throwdowns, and bonus content at http://usefulidiotspodcast.com Join us LIVE on Youtube every Monday at 10am EST for Monday Mourning, where we watch the Sunday morning news shows so that you don't have to. New York Times investigative reporter Ken Vogel’s new book, Devils’ Advocates: How Washington Lobbyists Get Rich Enabling Dictators, Oligarchs, and Arms Dealers, unearths the shrouded power that lobbyists hold over the US government, from AIPAC, Soros, and Kushner to powers you’ve never even heard of. We begin with the president’s son-in-law, who was just revealed by Vice President JD Vance to be the “investor” behind the ethnic-cleansing “reconstruction” of Gaza. Useful Idiots: Jared Kushner doesn’t have an official role in this White House, but yet is overseeing arguably the biggest geopolitical issue in the world, and that is the crisis in Israel-Palestine. Steve Witkoff made a reference to a “master plan” for Gaza devised by Jared Kushner. Talk to us about how Kushner has gone from serving in Trump’s first term to his time out of the White House, making a lot of lucrative deals, including in the Middle East, and now being described by J.D. Vance as the “investor” in Trump’s peace plan in Gaza. Ken Vogel: You’ve got to go back even before he entered the first Trump administration when he was in New York real estate. And his biggest project was a massive boondoggle, giant building in Manhattan. And he got bailed out by the Qataris. And then he comes into the Trump administration and he’s helping to navigate this blockade that the Saudis and the Emiratis had on the Qataris. They don’t shy away from it. Maybe in the first term they were a little bit more bashful, but then as soon as the first term ends, Kushner hangs out his shingle, Affinity Partners, and gets a $2 billion investment from the Saudis. On 60 Minutes [this week], Leslie Stahl asked Kushner and Witkoff, “Isn’t this a conflict of interest? You have all this business in the region.” And Kushner said, “Well, we actually consider it a strength. We consider it experience and trusted relationships.” There’s certainly plenty of situations where there is US policy being set in a way that favors business partners of the Trump family or the Witkoffs or Massad Boulos and his family that is arguably not in the best interest of the American people and does seem to be a conflict of interest in the favor of the people who are putting money in the president’s family’s pockets. There are laws and norms that are intended to prevent that kind of thing. And the Trump folks in the second term seem to be fairly emboldened to just test those norms and openly defy them. Useful Idiots: Trump recently gave a speech at the Israeli Knesset where he openly flaunted the fact that he did the bidding of Miriam Adelson, who gave him more than $100 million. How does a group like AIPAC, whatever you think of them, how do they avoid registering as a foreign agent? Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/useful-idiots-with-katie-halper-and-aaron-mate/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

    31 min
  2. 17 OCT

    Trump’s Fake Peace Plan EXPOSED By Ex-UN Lawyer & Palestinian Analyst

    Go to our sponsor https://venice.ai/useful and use code useful to enjoy private, uncensored AI. Using our code will get you 20% off a pro plan. Click here for the full interview with Mouin Rabbani and Craig Mokhiber: https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/full-episode-israel-will-violate?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false Support local jobs and get variety of high-quality clothing and activewear at https://www.american-giant.com and get 20% off your first order with promo code USEFUL. Thanks to American Giant for sponsoring the show! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Watch this week's Thursday Throwdown: Cory Booker’s Israel Panic Flub Turns Into An ‘Arrested Development’ Moment https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/cory-bookers-israel-panic-flub-turns?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false For $6 a month, become a Useful Idiot! Get extended interviews, Thursday Throwdowns, and bonus content at http://usefulidiotspodcast.com Join us LIVE on Youtube every Monday at 10am EST for Monday Mourning, where we watch the Sunday morning news shows so that you don't have to. This week we’re speaking to two Useful Idiots return guests: Mouin Rabbani, co-editor at Jadaliyya and non-resident fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies, and human rights attorney Craig Mokhiber, who resigned from the United Nations over its failure to act on Gaza. Useful Idiots: What is your response to Trump’s so-called peace plan? Mouin Rabbani: Well, just to say it’s not a peace plan. It’s a proposal to achieve a ceasefire. If you look at the proposal closely, it doesn’t include any enforcement mechanisms, even for those elements that have been agreed. And most importantly, it doesn’t say anything about Palestinian rights. And therefore, if it’s entirely successful, it will at best take us back to October 6 [2023]. Craig Mokhiber: It’s not a peace plan. It’s not a plan for ending the conflict. It’s not a plan that responds to the genocide. It addresses none of the root causes of the situation in Palestine. It is absolutely lawless. This was created in the dark, back rooms of Washington. It makes no reference to international law, and some of the provisions of the plan actually violate international law. Things like conditioning humanitarian aid, implicit threats of collective punishment if Hamas doesn’t agree to something, the explicit denial of Palestinian self-determination, and restrictions on political rights for some Palestinians. It tries to return to a situation where Palestinians have to negotiate for their human rights with their oppressors. And it fails to seek any accountability for Israeli crimes, including genocide. This ceasefire has been repeatedly violated already by Israel. They immediately destroyed the water treatment plant, they killed several Palestinian civilians, and blocked some of the aid that’s supposed to be coming in. It is a certain relief in terms of the amount of bombs and bullets that are flying in Gaza, it allows some aid in, and it has allowed for some Palestinian prisoners to be released from horrific Israeli torture camps. But beyond that piece of the ceasefire agreement, there is nothing here to celebrate. For the full interview with Craig and Mouin debunking terrible takes from Katie Miller and Kamala Harris and explaining the real reason why Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, please subscribe to Useful Idiots. 00:00 Intro 00:49 Obama and Marc Maron 11:49 Trump admits Miriam Adelson owns him 16:55 Antisemitism is "fine" when these people do it 21:27 Zionists cover "Sweet Home Alabama" (worse than you think) 24:51 Mouin Rabbani & Craig Mokhiber interview 25:19 Is Trump's "peace plan" a fraud? 45:12 Trump threatens to kill more Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/useful-idiots-with-katie-halper-and-aaron-mate/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

    47 min
  3. 10 OCT

    Fake Culture Wars, Billionaire Plots, & the Fall of Mainstream Media w/ David Sirota

    Click here for the full interview with David Sirota: https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/full-episode-secret-meeting-files?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false Order David's new book Master Plan: http://levernews.com/book You can go to our sponsor https://aura.com/usefulidiots to try 14 days for free. That’s enough time for Aura to start scrubbing your personal info off these data broker sites, without you lifting a finger Support local jobs and get variety of high-quality clothing and activewear at https://www.american-giant.com and get 20% off your first order with promo code USEFUL. Thanks to American Giant for sponsoring the show! Go to groundnews.com/useful for a better way to stay informed. Subscribe for 40% off unlimited access to world-wide coverage through our link. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Watch this week's Thursday Throwdown: Fmr Congressman Reveals What Happens at Closed-Door AIPAC Events https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/fmr-congressman-reveals-what-happens?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false For $6 a month, become a Useful Idiot! Get extended interviews, Thursday Throwdowns, and bonus content at http://usefulidiotspodcast.com Join us LIVE on Youtube every Monday at 10am EST for Monday Mourning, where we watch the Sunday morning news shows so that you don't have to. Useful Idiots fan-favorite David Sirota returns this week with a new book that dives into the dark money plot for elites to take full and final control of mainstream media. Subscribe for the full interview with David on Bari Weiss’s takeover of CBS News, the rise of tech oligarchs in America, and David’s message for disgruntled leftists. Here’s a preview of our chat: Useful Idiots: You have this great new book out called Master Plan: The Hidden Plot to Legalize Corruption in America. It’s really relevant to so much of what’s happening today when it comes to media conglomeration, but it’s also relevant to a scary lawsuit that’s being headed by Vice President JD Vance that could have a damaging effect on some of the last campaign finance laws in this country. David Sirota: Master Plan tells the story of the fifty year secret plot to legalize corruption in a systematic way: deregulate the campaign finance system and make it nearly impossible to prosecute bribery. This plot started in the early 1970s with the Powell Memo, a memo written by Lewis Powell before he became a Supreme Court Justice. He was worried about corporations and oligarchs losing power, and he wrote this call to arms about how corporations, oligarchs, and the like had to invest in politics to make sure, essentially, that democracy didn’t continue to get ‘destroyed.’ There were secret meetings in which some of the most powerful people in the country laid out how they were executing the Powell Memo. There was an effort to take over media, which we’re now seeing culminating in the Paramount-Skydance takeover with Donald Trump and Bari Weiss. Powell writes these memos that have never been seen before: he engineers a ruling extending constitutional protection for money as speech. Money is speech. Right now, as we speak, JD Vance is spearheading a low profile but huge case at the Supreme Court to try to give the now 6-3 conservative court an opportunity to eliminate all of the remaining limits on campaign contributions directly to candidates. Useful Idiots: So what’s the playbook for selling all this to the public? As a victory for the working class? For freedom? JD Vance fashioned himself as being pro-working class, but I don’t see anything in his record that supports that. So is this just an effort to push this through and hope nobody notices? Or is there a massive propaganda campaign to get people to buy into this agenda? David Sirota: I think their theory is: ‘We don’t care.’ There is no public-facing argument in the effort to deregulate campaign finance. They are making a straight up First-Amendment-legalistic-technical-argument to the Supreme Court, hoping the Supreme Court gives them what they want, because once they get what they want, then it unleashes unlimited spending for them. I don’t think they’re going out to the public saying, ‘hey, we’re deregulating campaign finance. We’re making sure the anti-bribery laws can’t be enforced. We’re doing this for some higher purpose.’ They’re doing this expecting that the media and the public will not follow the ins-and-outs of campaign finance law and anti-bribery law, knowing that if they’re successful, it will give them more power under the law to spend as much money as they want, making the political discourse and public policy whatever it is they want. 00:00 Intro 00:42 Fetterman cheers for Trump 04:24 The missing party in Trump's 'peace deal' 07:51 Bari Weiss's TERRIBLE first idea at CBS 11:05 Israeli actress says it all 13:26 David Sirota interview 45:49 Why did billionaires install Bari Weiss at CBS? Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/useful-idiots-with-katie-halper-and-aaron-mate/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

    47 min
  4. 3 OCT

    Flotilla Attacks, Trump’s Ceasefire & America Turning on Israel w/ Lawyer Diana Buttu

    You can go to our sponsor https://aura.com/usefulidiots to try 14 days for free. That’s enough time for Aura to start scrubbing your personal info off these data broker sites, without you lifting a finger Support local jobs and get variety of high-quality clothing and activewear at https://www.american-giant.com and get 20% off your first order with promo code USEFUL. Thanks to American Giant for sponsoring the show! Go to groundnews.com/useful for a better way to stay informed. Subscribe for 40% off unlimited access to world-wide coverage through our link. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Watch this week's Thursday Throwdown: “No More Beardos”: Hegseth’s New ‘Professional’ Military Standards Just Dropped https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/no-more-beardos-hegseths-new-professional?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false For $6 a month, become a Useful Idiot! Get extended interviews, Thursday Throwdowns, and bonus content at http://usefulidiotspodcast.com Join us LIVE on Youtube every Monday at 10am EST for Monday Mourning, where we watch the Sunday morning news shows so that you don't have to. Palestinian lawyer Diana Buttu returns to Useful Idiots, joining us from Haifa, Israel, where she’s based. Diana breaks down Trump’s “peace plan,” which is in no way a peace plan, debunks Israeli talking points, and urges us not to give up, but rather to “disrupt, disrupt, disrupt!” until Palestine is free. We begin our conversation asking about the Global Sumud Flotilla, which, once again, sailed through international waters in an effort to break Israel’s starvation siege on Gaza, this time getting closer than ever before! On Wednesday and Thursday, the IDF kidnapped over 450 Flotilla members including Greta Thunberg and former Useful Idiots guest Thiago Ávila. Useful Idiots: What is your reaction to this news? Diana Buttu: We’ve been spending the past two years watching a live stream genocide. And here we watched 450 people being kidnapped and acts of piracy! And still nobody is doing anything about it. It shows you the lengths to which Israel is willing to go to actually starve the people of Gaza. Useful Idiots: Polls in the US now show that more Americans sympathize with Palestinians than they do with Israelis. After decades and decades of pro-Israel propaganda in the US, which now is only intensifying with pro-Israel oligarchs buying TikTok, CBS, Paramount, and possibly even CNN, a majority of Americans oppose U.S. military support to Israel. But in government, there’s so much to overcome. This week, Trump unveiled a new so-called peace plan to Netanyau. It’s basically a complete surrender for Palestinians. And one of the demands that Netanyahu made was an end to what he called lawfare: no more taking Israel to the International Criminal Court. As a Palestinian attorney, what is your response to this? Diana Buttu: This model of thinking of putting conditions on freedom, there’s a word for that. It’s called colonialism. That model ended a long time ago and the fact that they’re still trying to revive it when it comes to Palestinians is really quite repugnant. The Americans have always treated Palestinians by patting us on the head, like, ‘if you’re good Palestinians, if you do exactly what we say, then maybe, just maybe we will give you the things that you want.’ It shouldn’t be a question of what the United States wants, what Israel wants, or what anybody wants. The fact that the country that has perpetrated genocide and the country that is funding the genocide have anything to say about what Palestinians do is so abhorrent. That’s number one. Two is I absolutely insist that these war criminals be held to account. It is step number one! Useful Idiots: I want to talk to you about Israel’s crimes. There’s a pretty scary statement that was tweeted out by Israel’s so-called defense minister, Israel Katz: The IDF has completed the capture of the Netzarim axis up to the Gaza coast, effectively dividing Gaza between north and south.This is the last opportunity for Gaza residents who wish to do so to move south and leave Hamas terrorists isolated in Gaza city itself, facing the IDF’s ongoing operations at full force.Those who remain in Gaza will be considered terrorists and terror supporters.The IDF is prepared for all possibilities and is determined to continue its operations.So this is ominous. What is your response to this statement? Diana Buttu: They’re openly saying that they’re just going to kill everybody. There are hundreds of thousands of people living in Gaza City. There’s a number of hospitals there. There are old people, there are young people, there are people who are ill, who are in hospital. There are people who are disabled. There’s just a whole range of society. And what he’s saying is, ‘if you remain, you are a fair target.’ Again, it’s like flipping this idea of international law on its head, but they’ve done it now for the past two years. In the way that Israel has been operating, anybody in Gaza equals Hamas. They’ve said this. They’ve warned against this. We’ve been tracking their statements. That’s why it’s genocide. And now they’re coming out very clearly and saying, ‘if you remain in Gaza City, we’re going to treat you as Hamas, and therefore we are going to get rid of you.’ I don’t think they’ve made it any clearer than that. 00:00 Intro 00:58 Hakeem Jeffries loves Eric Adams 04:06 Vance wants to turn away undocumented people at the ER 07:55 INFIGHTING: ADL vs TPUSA 13:30 Israel is paying influencers $7000 to shill for them 18:15 Diana Buttu interview 18:41 Israel KIDNAPPED 450 people 36:06 Scifi-level evil tweet from Israel defense minister Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/useful-idiots-with-katie-halper-and-aaron-mate/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

    1 hr

About

Useful Idiots is an informative and irreverent politics podcast with journalist Aaron Maté and podcaster/writer Katie Halper. Episodes feature analysis of the political news of the week and exclusive interviews, with humor, commentary and dissection of why both Republicans and Democrats suck. Join Aaron and Katie as they examine important stories that have slipped through the cracks and what the media got wrong – and laugh about whatever is left to laugh about.

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