This was the hard one. David Shuster and Cliff Schecter—joined by Canadian writer Dean Blundell—open Amped Up on the fight tearing the Democratic coalition apart: a new crop of primary winners rewarded for rhetoric that slides from criticizing Netanyahu, a war criminal, into blaming an entire people.
Cliff, a Jewish father, refuses to play along. “My humanity is not up for sale,” he says, and lays out why collective blame is the oldest trap there is—and why the Russian disinformation machine has been running this exact play to split the left since the 1960s.
Then the show turns to the threat hiding behind the infighting: while progressives wage a purity war over a conflict an ocean away, the Trump administration is quietly seizing the machinery of American elections—the DOJ targeting election officials, DHS holding tens of millions in security funds hostage until states surrender their voter rolls, a getout-the-vote leader put on a no-fly list.
It’s a heated, honest, sometimes raw hour about the difference between fighting each other and fighting fascism. Watch the full conversation—then tell us in the comments where you land.
Cliff’s Note: Here’s the deal. We don’t have a billionaire behind us. We don’t have a corporation behind us. We have you.
Today’s show was a hard one—the kind most outlets won’t touch because it makes everybody uncomfortable. We touched it anyway. That’s the job.
That’s what your subscription pays for: the freedom to tell the truth when it isn’t convenient, to nobody but you.
The vast majority of what we make stays free. Paid keeps the lights on—and right now a subscription is 40% off: $36 for the year. Three bucks a month. A latte.
If this is the kind of media you want to exist, help it exist.
—Cliff
