Lever Time with David Sirota

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Lever Time with David Sirota Podcast

From LeverNews.com — Lever Time is the flagship podcast from the investigative news outlet The Lever. Hosted by award-winning journalist, Oscar-nominated writer, and Bernie Sanders' 2020 speechwriter David Sirota, Lever Time features exclusive reporting from The Lever’s newsroom, high-profile guest interviews, and expert analysis from the sharpest minds in media and politics.

  1. 6 DAYS AGO

    The Secret Plot To Buy American Democracy

    In 1971, Lewis Powell, a tobacco industry lawyer and future Supreme Court justice, penned a memo calling on conservatives and business interests to make the nation’s legal system far more friendly to corporate power. A few years later, a lawyer named Michael Horowitz penned a follow-up memo calling for conservatives to indoctrinate generations of lawyers as the right’s foot soldiers on the ground.  Today on Lever Time, senior podcast producer Arjun Singh talks to David Sirota and Jared Jacang Maher about their deep-dive investigation into this 50-year plan in the hit new Lever  podcast Master Plan. Then, he sits down with journalist David Daley to discuss his latest book, Antidemocratic: Inside the Far Right's 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections.  Daley’s book centers around Chief Justice John Roberts, whose ascent to the high court — and the conservative rulings he’s handed down — was the culmination of decades of work that began with Powell and Horowitz’s memos.

    50 min

  2. 13 SEPT

    Will The Real Kamala Harris Please Stand Up? (Part 2)

    When Kamala Harris first ran for president in 2019, she promised to deliver Medicare for All to the people — but that changed. Early in her campaign, she frequently referred to a 2017 bill she co-sponsored with Sen. Bernie Sanders that would have effectively abolished private health insurance. But when political winds didn’t look good, Harris changed course, and ultimately released her own, very different version of the bill, which sought to bolster and support private insurance companies by expanding their role in Medicare.  It wouldn’t be the only time Harris bucked a campaign pledge for political gain. Today on Lever Time, senior podcast producer Arjun Singh looks at two defining moments in Harris’ career to understand how the presidential hopeful acts when forced to choose between the values she campaigned on and political gain. In her current campaign, Harris has tried to play it safe. She’s consistently pushed the Biden administration’s agenda while remaining vague on how she’d respond to key issues. One of those issues has been how to handle Israel’s invasion of Gaza, a disaster that Harris will likely inherit if she wins the presidency. If so, the Gaza crisis will present one of the first tests of what a President Harris would do in office, but even close observers are unsure what the vice president ultimately believes is the best course of action on the matter.

    41 min

  3. 6 SEPT

    Will The Real Kamala Harris Please Stand Up? (Part 1)

    In television commercials, at speeches, and on the campaign trail, Vice President Kamala Harris frequently boasts that she stood up to big banks as California's attorney general. But her sloganeering obscures a sometimes-ugly record. Today on Lever Time, Arjun Singh looks back at Harris' early years as a district attorney and then state attorney general to see what they show us about the president she may soon become. When Harris first ran for District Attorney of San Francisco in 2003 — a time when prosecutors rarely described themselves as “progressive” — she campaigned as a crime fighter with few qualms about putting criminals behind bars.  Later, as California’s attorney general, Harris continued to lean on her role as a tough prosecutor, vowing to go after mortgage lenders who utilized abusive tactics to strong arm Californians. But when it came time to fight the banks, did Harris let them off easy? Harris’ actions in that moment have left some observers with a pressing question: What does Kamala Harris actually believe?

    35 min

  4. 30 AUG

    Master Plan - The Other Watergate (Preview)

    This week, we’re sharing a preview of episode two of Master Plan, our new investigative podcast series, which recently hit the top ten on Apple Podcasts. In this episode, "The Other Watergate," a Nixon plot to circumvent new campaign finance rules backfires, leading investigators to discover how America’s biggest companies were involved in the illegal campaign donor scheme. Listen now to full episodes of Master Plan wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe to our Premium feed to hear episodes early and access exclusive bonus content.

    6 min

  5. 27 AUG

    Introducing Master Plan: Legalizing Corruption

    This week we’re sharing an excerpt of the first episode of our new investigative series Master Plan, which was recently named a must-listen by The Guardian and Apple Podcasts. In each episode of Master Plan, The Lever’s David Sirota and his team of journalists expose the secret scheme that legalized corruption for the wealthy. With the help of never-before-reported documents, we’ll look back at where this plot began, how it is accelerating in the 2024 election - and how it can be stopped. In this epic tale, you’ll learn things you never knew about icons like President Richard Nixon, Senator Mitch McConnell, Fox News founder Roger Ailes, and Supreme Court justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito. You’ll learn how their master plan to legalize corruption affects you and your family - and undermines American democracy today. Listen now to the full first episodes of Master Plan and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe to our Premium feed to hear episodes early and exclusive bonus content.

    5 min

  6. 23 AUG

    Fear And Corporate Loathing At The DNC

    The Lever’s David Sirota reports on his adventures at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, sharing his on-the-ground reporting on Democrats’ fear of another Trump presidency and their rhetoric loathing the corporate takeover of politics. Sirota spotlights the tension between the convention’s populist framing and its corporate sponsors footing the bill. Sirota also talked to Democratic senators about whether any of Vice President Kamala Harris’ policy promises can become reality without the Senate first ending the filibuster.  In her convention address, Harris pledged that as president, she will center her agenda around workers — not the corporations whose executives and lobbyists sponsored and monitored the party’s convention from the arena’s luxury suites. The big unanswered question: Will Harris deliver her agenda when those corporate forces inevitably push back?

    45 min

  7. 16 AUG

    Are We Allowed To Ask What President Harris Would Do?

    Vice President Kamala Harris’ ascent to presumptive Democratic nominee has upended the presidential contest and energized Democratic voters — but what’s the policy behind the vibes? On Friday, Harris unveiled a series of economic policies, including a proposed federal ban on grocery price gouging and plans to lower prescription drug and housing costs. It was a good step, but one that came after Harris faced pressure and criticism for not having a more robust policy platform. But amid viral trends like “coconut tree summer” and Harris’ “brat” era, do voters really care about what Harris actually wants to accomplish in office? Today on Lever Time, David Sirota and Arjun Singh sit down with Semafor’s Max Tani and The New Yorker’s Jay Caspian Kang to unpack why Harris’ great-taste-less-filling campaign has garnered the traction it has.  Despite her twenty years as an elected official, it’s been surprisingly difficult for journalists to know what Harris wants to do with the presidency. In her 2019 presidential bid, Harris ran as a supporter of Medicare for All and an opponent of fracking — two positions her campaign has now renounced. And her approach to foreign policy and antitrust enforcement, cornerstones of the Biden administration, remains a mystery.

    48 min

  8. 9 AUG

    The American Roots Of The World’s Right-Wing Nationalism

    For more than a decade, global politics have been rocked by the rise of right-wing nationalist governments. Similar to Donald Trump’s rise in the United States, countries like India, Hungary, Brazil, and Italy have seen the emergence of far-right governments who’ve channeled popular anger into support for nativist and anti-immigrant platforms. It turns out we’re largely to blame for it. Today on Lever Time, Arjun Singh sits down with Vox senior correspondent Zack Beauchamp to discuss his new book The Reactionary Spirit: How America's Most Insidious Political Tradition Swept The World, in which Beauchamp traces the roots of modern right-wing regimes to an antidemocratic tradition that began in the United States.

    41 min
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Shows with Subscription Benefits

  • How did our democracy get replaced by a kleptocracy? Discover the truth on Master Plan, a new podcast from The Lever. Hosted by David Sirota, former speechwriter for Bernie Sanders and Oscar-nominated co-writer of Don’t Look Up, Master Plan exposes the deliberate scheme to legalize corruption in the U.S., allowing the wealthy to buy policies that benefit themselves and screw everyone else. The Lever has unearthed never-before-reported documents proving this 50-year plot was a coordinated effort by wealthy individuals and political ideologues. Over the course of 10 episodes, the series follows the historic thread from Watergate in the ’70s through the Citizens United decision and the current Supreme Court scandals. It’s a tale of famous villains you already know like President Richard Nixon, Senator Mitch McConnell, and Fox News boss Roger Ailes, plus operatives and oligarchs you’ve never heard of. Listen early and ad-free at masterplanpodcast.com

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From LeverNews.com — Lever Time is the flagship podcast from the investigative news outlet The Lever. Hosted by award-winning journalist, Oscar-nominated writer, and Bernie Sanders' 2020 speechwriter David Sirota, Lever Time features exclusive reporting from The Lever’s newsroom, high-profile guest interviews, and expert analysis from the sharpest minds in media and politics.

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