Cliff’s Note
Today’s episode is why we do this. Where else can you get a nuclear-expert to explain how Trump’s making the world more dangerous, followed by a former MAGA insider exposing how it works—in one show?
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Trump’s Iran “deal” is already falling apart—and the consequences could be nuclear. On today’s AMPED UP, Cliff Schecter and David Shuster break down how Trump’s threats of annihilation against Iran have backfired spectacularly.
Iran is now charging a $2 million toll on ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, effectively boosting its own economy by 15% while American consumers foot the bill. That is, as Cliff said on the show, “just a wholly absurd outcome from a wholly absurd President and a wholly unnecessary attack.”
Then Dr. Rebecca Lubot, author of Keeping a Finger on the Button: Presidential Continuity in the Nuclear Age, joins Cliff and David to explain why Trump’s nuclear brinkmanship has crossed a threshold no modern leader of a nuclear state—not even Putin!—has crossed.
What he’s done is so ridiculous that China, Russia, and France are all now changing their nuclear doctrines in response to the irrational ravings of the Queens-bred, brainf*k. A man who somehow finds a way to do something more knuckleheaded each day than he did the last.
She also explained the context for the 25th Amendment, which was after JFK’s assassination. But the real context is that you could end up with a President who is lacking some marbles—perhaps the whole set like the current jack-in-the-box—and this amendment was of course put in place for specifically this purpose. But, then again, did anyone image we could make Minnie Mouse the Speaker of the House?
Which with him is quite the accomplishment.
In the second half of Amped Up, former MAGA activist Rich Logis tells a powerful story of escape. Of going from writing for Fox News and The Federalist, to beginning to doubt his path and reaching out for new information, to publicly breaking with the racist Munsters and founding Leaving MAGA. Logis shares all the dirty details in his new memoir, One Betrayal Too Many.
Leaving MAGA is a nonprofit that helps people escape this movement. A Trump campaign volunteer who once called Democrats “worse than Nazis,” Logis describes how diversifying his news sources brick by brick dismantled his worldview—and why the Uvalde shooting was his final breaking point on his road away from perdition. Rich’s message to those still in MAGA?
You’re not alone, and there’s a way out. This is essential viewing for anyone trying to understand how people get pulled down an extremist rabbit-hole, and how they can find their way back.
Combined, these two guests made this a helluva episode.
