246 episodes
Useful Idiots with Katie Halper and Aaron Maté Cumulus Podcast Network
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4.5 • 4.3K Ratings
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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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Norman Finkelstein: UN ceasefire resolution shows that Biden is scared
Click here for the full interview with Norm Finkelstein: https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/norman-finkelstein-un-ceasefire-resolution?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
For $6 a month, become a Useful Idiot! Get extended interviews, Thursday Throwdowns, and bonus content at www.usefulidiotspodcast.com
Watch this week's Thursday Throwdown: MSNBC's Hypocritical Meltdown Over Ronna McDaniel's Hiring https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/msnbcs-hypocritical-meltdown-over?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Israel is confronting a legitimation crisis, political scientist and prolific author Norman Finkelstein observes, as international pressure on Israel grows from both global protesters and the UN.
He flashes back to before the current war for context: “Another war was inevitable, senior Israeli officials observed in 2016. We cannot conduct a constant war of attrition. Therefore, the next conflict has to be the last conflict.”
This conflict will be the last one. They’re not going to mow the lawn again, Norm explains. They’re going to extirpate every blade of grass from Gaza.
“It’s not about Hamas,” he says, shedding light on Israel’s real plan to solve the Gaza question. “It’s about the refusal on the part of the people of Gaza to accept the fate that has been meted out to them by the state of Israel to languish and die in a concentration camp.”
That’s the dark part, but Norm also gives his reason why we can’t give up.
“During the Iraq War, many young people concluded in despair that here are the largest anti-war demonstrations in world history and nonetheless the Cheney-Rumsfeld administration goes ahead with the war in Iraq. That to me is a naive understanding of how formidable and concentrated the power we’re up against is. It’s a very long battle.”
But though it’s hard to see, the protests are working: “The pressures on Biden gradually accumulate and accumulate until they reach the proverbial critical mass and have a real political impact.
“You’re not going to see it. You’re not going to see the connection between your demonstration in your town square and the abstention in the UN Security Council, but it’s there. And so we should always remember not to despair.”
Subscribe for the full interview with Norman Finkelstein where we discuss Bernie Sanders’ recent comments on Israel and Golda Meir, the history of Israel’s occupation of Gaza, and what comes next in this genocide.
00:00 Intro
00:39 The Four Food Groups of News
12:29 Norman Finkelstein interview
13:12 UN Security Council ceasefire resolution
20:43 Why did the US let it pass?
31:14 Biden vs Netanyahu?
52:57 Bernie Sanders on Israel
53:32 Katie tells Norm a joke
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John Mearsheimer – Full Interview on the US role in Gaza and Ukraine
For $6 a month, become a Useful Idiot! Get extended interviews, Thursday Throwdowns, and bonus content at www.usefulidiotspodcast.com
Watch this week's Thursday Throwdown: US Politicians Ban TikTok to Save Free Speech https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/us-politicians-ban-tiktok-to-save?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Preorder Karina N. González’s new children’s book “Churro Stand” here: https://www.abramsbooks.com/product/churro-stand_9781951836955/
Our full, unpaywalled interview with John Mearsheimer from 02.23.24:
Professor John Mearsheimer, whose political analysis predicted today’s horrors in Ukraine and Palestine, joins Useful Idiots to give his take on what’s next in the world’s biggest wars.
And since he’s been largely excluded from corporate media for his dissenting views, it’s more important than ever to get his word out.
“What you have here is a real disjuncture between what the elites think and what the publics think,” he says of the two conflicts, in what is already a clear affront to the narratives of elitist western media. “There are recent polls produced by the European Council on Foreign Relations and the Quincy Institute that show that only 10% of Europeans and 12% of Americans think that Ukraine can win the war.”
And when it comes to Israel, Mearsheimer explains that US policy is even further from what the people want. It’s not the voters who have a say, and even Congress (as pro-Israel as they are) isn’t in control: “I believe that 90% of it is accounted for by the [Israel] lobby.”
Professor Mearsheimer deep dives into each war: he explains why the US tanked Ukraine’s peace talks to further instigate Russia and what he would do now if he was in Biden’s or Putin’s position. He also delves into the influence of the Israel lobby and how Biden has given impunity to Israel’s killing Gaza killing spree.
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US Media is STILL lying about October 7 after UN debunks Israel
For $6 a month, become a Useful Idiot! Get extended interviews, Thursday Throwdowns, and bonus content at www.usefulidiotspodcast.com
Watch this week's Thursday Throwdown: US Politicians Ban TikTok to Save Free Speech https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/us-politicians-ban-tiktok-to-save?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
“This propaganda is a weapon to kill Palestinians.”
The New York Times, the US government’s most prestigious arm of state media, has continued to churn out headlines accusing Hamas of a systematic and deliberate campaign of sexual violence as a weapon of war. An independent UN investigation, as well as countless journalists and primary sources, has shown these claims to be completely evidence-free. Even factions within the Times have refused to go along with the story.
This has not stopped the paper of record.
Throughout history, rape accusations have been a tool of dehumanization. Claims of sexual violence have been used to justify colonialism, slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, and the West’s violent regime change in Libya.
“The bottom line,” explains guest Ali Abunimah, editor of the Electronic Intifada, “is we are now well into the sixth month of this genocide which is partly justified on the basis of these allegations and other claims of atrocities that have turned out to be false. To this day, not a single specific victim, living or dead, has been identified. We keep hearing the refrain ‘believe Israeli women;’ to this date there is not a single Israeli woman who has come forward to say that she was a victim of this kind of assault.”
So where are these rumors coming from? After the lies were debunked by journalists, a UN report was published though as it admits it was not “investigative in nature.” Ali explains, “What the UN report did was simply to compile allegations from the Israeli military.”
Even this biased non-investigation debunks specific claims of violence and proves that sexual violence was not systemic, and yet you’d never know that from the way legacy media is covering the report.
But while journalists like Ali Abunimah are kept busy debunking these dehumanizing lies, Israel’s assault on Gaza continues. And the independent journalists who are busy covering that are putting themselves in serious danger to shed light on the genocide. Ali reports that four journalists from the Electronic Intifada have been killed and many more are in daily danger.
“People do not know from hour to hour if they will live or die.”
Hear and share the important voice of Ali Abunimah and the reporting of the brave journalists at the Electronic Intifada. Your support of independent media makes a difference.
00:00 Intro
02:59 The Four Food Groups of News
16:20 Ali Abunimah interview
16:51 Claims of sexual violence on Oct 7
21:29 New York Times LIES
26:42 Source revealed: the Israeli government
35:52 Israel can't keep its story straight
45:35 Hillary Clinton and the history of spreading these lies
50:19 Israeli officials in US media
55:41 Digging into the dodgy NYT story
1:06:13 How the justify the genocide
1:17:41 Dems pivot on Netanyahu
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"This is for Gaza" – UK's George Galloway returns to office to challenge pro-war elites
Click here for the full interview with George Galloway: https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/george-galloway-returns-to-office?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
See Katie LIVE TONIGHT in-person or on Zoom: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/laughs-for-good-tickets-793162168397
For $6 a month, become a Useful Idiot! Get extended interviews, Thursday Throwdowns, and bonus content at www.usefulidiotspodcast.com
Watch this week's Thursday Throwdown: "F you!" – Morning Joe gets desperate https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/f-you-morning-joe-gets-desperate?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
“This is for Gaza!” announced the veteran British politician George Galloway in his victory speech, shocking the UK establishment with his win in Rochdale to rejoin the country’s parliament nearly forty years after his first election. He addressed his words to Kier Starmer, the leader of the UK Labour Party: “You will pay a high price for the role that you have played in enabling, encouraging, and covering for the catastrophe in occupied Palestine.”
Galloway explains that the parties in the UK aren’t much different than the Democrats and Republicans: you have Rishi Sunak and his Conservative Party, who send weapons to Israel and prolong the proxy war in Ukraine, and then you have Starmer and the Labour Party, who are in complete lockstep.
After Biden waited until the very end of his State of the Union address to even mention the crisis in Gaza and Trump recently called for Israel to finish the job, the Uniparty is alive and well in both our countries.
And like everyone brave enough to speak out against the War Party and its genocide in Gaza, Galloway gets accused by good narrative-following Twitter users of spreading hate speech. However they, and the entire UK media, were largely silent when George was viciously assaulted by a pro-Israel supporter. He describes the harrowing attack and shares the origin story of how it led to his iconic hat.
Subscribe to hear the full interview with MP George Galloway on his relationship with former Prime Minister Jeremy Corbyn, the immediate goals of the Workers Party, and the smears and lies that he most wants to debunk.
Thank you for supporting independent media.
00:00 Intro
03:13 The Four Food Groups of News
19:51 Something funny
22:00 George Galloway interview
27:53 Rishi Sunak is MAD
31:23 The Hat origin story
34:50 Spanking Kier Starmer
38:27 Running to help Gaza
44:55 UK's role in Ukraine
48:04 BREAKING: Leak from Germany
52:05 Jeremy Corbyn
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“Biden is a senile warmonger” – veteran US Diplomat Chas Freeman
Click here for the full interview with Chas Freeman: https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/biden-is-a-senile-war-monger-veteran?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
For $6 a month, become a Useful Idiot! Get extended interviews, Thursday Throwdowns, and bonus content at www.usefulidiotspodcast.com
Watch this week's Thursday Throwdown: CNN Melts Down Over Uncommitted Voters https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/cnn-melts-down-over-uncommitted-voters?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
“Our foreign policy is diplomacy free.”
As he watches the escalating crises in our world today, this is the main takeaway for Chas Freeman, who, as the US ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War, knows a thing about diplomacy.
“It’s a lot cheaper and more effective to sit down and talk to someone than to pull a gun on them and shoot them,” he says. “But that’s what we seem to have substituted for our normal course of diplomatic interaction.”
Freeman explains the leading cause of forever wars: “There's nobody quite as bloodthirsty as a civilian with no experience of war.” As shown in the episode thumbnail above (side note: you know it’s a bad crew if the most likable character in the picture is Matthew Miller), the warmongers in charge of foreign policy are all civilians. When the top US general Mark Milley called for peace talks in Ukraine, it was these bad actors who shut it down.
“The military know that they can die in a war, that their comrades will die,” says Freeman. “They know that you should never enter a war without figuring out first how you're going to end it, on what terms, and with whom.” But the ‘leaders’ we do have never had to fight. “Civilians typically define no end state, have no war termination strategy, which is why we get forever wars.”
And the future only looks bleaker.
“Here we have an election which is between someone who is widely regarded as a senile war monger and somebody who has been correctly diagnosed as a malignant narcissist.”
Subscribe to hear the full interview with Chas Freeman on why the protest vote against Biden in Michigan was “very significant,” how the New York Times has been complicit in the information war, the main similarity between the wars in Ukraine and in Gaza (bet you can guess it), and the main difference between the genocide in Israel and the one in South Africa:
“South Africa was on the verge of having a race war but it never had one. Israel is having a race war.”
Freeman’s important voice makes this an episode of Useful Idiots you’re not going to want to miss. Subscribe now to hear the full interview and support independent media.
00:00 Intro
00:51 The Four Food Groups of News
08:49 Chas Freeman interview
09:29 Uncommitted shocks Biden
14:01 Our foreign policy is diplomacy-free
20:33 Does Israel have a right to exist?
23:43 Israel vs South Africa
28:08 Aaron Bushnell
33:23 Has this ever happened before?
36:47 Palestine vs Ukraine
41:19 Diplomats kill peace in Ukraine
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"Insanity" – John Mearsheimer on the US role in Gaza and Ukraine
Click here for the full interview with John Mearsheimer: https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/insanity-john-mearsheimer-on-the?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
For $6 a month, become a Useful Idiot! Get extended interviews, Thursday Throwdowns, and bonus content at www.usefulidiotspodcast.com
Watch this week's Thursday Throwdown: Nancy Pelosi needs Russiagate Detox https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/nancy-pelosi-needs-russiagate-detox?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Professor John Mearsheimer, whose political analysis predicted today’s horrors in Ukraine and Palestine, joins Useful Idiots to give his take on what’s next in the world’s biggest wars.
And since he’s been largely excluded from corporate media for his dissenting views, it’s more important than ever to get his word out.
“What you have here is a real disjuncture between what the elites think and what the publics think,” he says of the two conflicts, in what is already a clear affront to the narratives of elitist western media. “There are recent polls produced by the European Council on Foreign Relations and the Quincy Institute that show that only 10% of Europeans and 12% of Americans think that Ukraine can win the war.”
And when it comes to Israel, Mearsheimer explains that US policy is even further from what the people want. It’s not the voters who have a say, and even Congress (as pro-Israel as they are) isn’t in control: “I believe that 90% of it is accounted for by the [Israel] lobby.”
Professor Mearsheimer deep dives into each war: he explains why the US tanked Ukraine’s peace talks to further instigate Russia and what he would do now if he was in Biden’s or Putin’s position. He also delves into the influence of the Israel lobby and how Biden has given impunity to Israel’s killing Gaza killing spree.
Subscribe for the full interview for his full analysis and predictions on Israel’s assault on Gaza.
00:00 Intro
00:53 The Four Food Groups of News
22:17 Professor John Mearsheimer interview
23:17 Schools of political science thought
26:23 Is Ukraine losing?
29:26 What does Putin want?
38:47 Who's the real puppet?
44:07 Why does the US want war with Russia?
51:21 Western leaders screaming the quiet part
59: 42 When will the truth come out?
1:03:43 Gaza and US support for Israel's assault
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Customer Reviews
A Favourite Since Episode One
I have been listening to this podcast since it first started. I am so grateful for these two wry, insightful journalists, and their stellar lineup of guests. Expect incisive critiques of imperialism, US militarism, neocons/liberals, and mainstream media. Despite often heavy topics, they manage to keep the show entertaining — an impressive feat which makes the program feel like time spent with particularly informative friends.
Those trying to smear the show as anti-Semitic are full of bull! Katie Halper and Aaron Mate are both JEWISH. So get outta here with that nonsense.
Started off strong
I’ve been a weekly listener of Useful Idiots since 2019. Back then, the show was funny and irreverent as its description claims. Between Matt and Katie, there was no subject that was safe from a cynical skewering, and the focus on our various domestic political absurdities kept listeners like me engaged. At a certain point in late 2021 or so, Matt clearly ran out of steam and quit the show, leaving Katie to figure things out with temporary host turned insufferable mainstay, Aaron Mate. Since then, the show has become a slog of Aaron’s foreign policy fixations as Katie seems increasingly uninvolved in the show’s production and execution. It’s mostly just Aaron ranting alongside random characters from across the globe who nod along and affirm his worldview. Since Oct 7, the show has been uniformly one-note, highlighting the tragedies unfolding in Gaza. As someone who is sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians, even I can only listen to the same talking points so many times. Irreverence at Useful Idiots has given way to sanctimonious, impotent virtue signaling.
Sad
This show is just another propaganda show it’s getting so difficult to find a show with just facts and not pushing an agenda you never hearing the facts from the horses mouth they always put their own spin on everything like they are getting “facts” from the mainstream media sad but you lost me no big deal but sad