In a wide-ranging interview with MeidasTouch anchor Luke Radel, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg discusses the government shutdown, Trump’s escalating attacks on universities, and more.
For the past couple of years, before I disconnected from the MSM, John Dickerson was my go to for real news. I always felt like I learned something from him. Dog only knows how CBS will choke him off now. We cannot have sane, truthful reporting from corp news. I'm not watching.
In order to be a great President, one must first be elected, and doing great things for red states is not a politically successful method, as we saw all too clearly in 2024.
Why? Because the lying Repuglicunts take the credit for the Democrat's projects that they voted against. And the gratitude the red states show in the voting booth is in the form of a big middle finger to us.
This isn't 1983 anymore, and it's time to stop speaking in consultant-crafted politi-speech by pre-censoring the plain truth until it's bland pablum-yak that nobody wants to listen to.
Although I agree with everything Pete said regarding policy, policy does not win elections. A look at the House, Senate, and Oval Office and the proof is in plain sight.
If policy does not win elections, what does in your opinion? Railing against the opposing candidate didn't work for Kamala -- what advice would you have given her to craft a winning strategy? Or was she a loser from the beginning due to Joe effectively just handing her the nominations and the Dems -- including Pete -- going along with it?
I never heard Kamala “railing” about anything but the policies she would try to initiate if elected, such as child credit for families, student loan relief, new businesses start up be increased to $50,00 instead of $5,000, help with first time home buyers, etc while Trump yelled the big lie “ they’re eating the dogs & cats” like a fool and never stated one word of doing anything for everyday Americans. He only had “concepts” of plans. Duh 🙄 🤪 But I doubt any crude uneducated MAGA morons watched the presidential debate. 🏴☠️
she lost because of long time and ongoing GOP voter suppression and cancellation and perhaps (still to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt) outright tampering (by Musk and Thiel) with voting tabulation machines, targeted terrorist threats to Democratic polling places.... ElectionTruthAlliance.org and the This Will Hold substack have the receipts....
I don't know whether Kamala herself railed about Trumpty Dumpty's character as I'm quite sure I haven't seen every second of her publicly speaking. However, personal attacks on TD were a huge part of the Dem playbook. From one perspective, rightly so: there's a lot to attack. However, going after The Golden (Orange?) Calf wasn't going to work with the cult-like devotion of the MAGAts. I'm not sure anything would have worked to get Kamala elected. She was the wrong candidate for the time, chose the wrong running mate, and was not willing to break away from the Biden shadow that stuck with her as his anointed rather than elected candidate.
We frame economic power as a contest between capital and labor, but the real star of the American economy is consumer spending, which accounts for 68% of GDP. The Great Recession saw a 3.4% drop in consumer spending — at the time, the most severe year-over-year decline since World War II. The U.S. economy registered a 9.8% drop in consumer spending during the second quarter of 2020, when Covid shut down the world as we knew it. In both instances the U.S. government responded aggressively, spending hundreds of billions, primarily on bailouts, to pull us out of the Great Recession, and trillions, primarily in direct aid, to get us through the pandemic. The lesson? When consumers stop spending, American leaders start listening. As Geo Hussar explained to his YouTube followers at the end of September, “this is not seizing the means of production, but seizing the means of consumption,” adding that if every American dropped their consumption, on average, by 2%, “that would be the most loud and potent form of protest.”
What is interesting to me is the stupidity of Republican policies which aggressively funnel the wealth of the nation into fewer and fewer hands each year, with less and less money in the hands of everyone else. That means the primary engine of any economy, which is the consumers is reduced every year. While they take all they can, thinking it is all a game of monopoly that they are focused on winning, they keep forgetting that at the end of the game of Monopoly, everyone else has no money. The game is over because there is no more money to take. In the real world that translates to a collapse of the economy.
'...the means of consumption...' - that's a powerful phrase! I quit Amazon...but yesterday I looked, but did not find, and felt relieved that I did not break my pledge to stay out of amazon.
There are so many enabling corporations that a general Spending Strike is necessary. Attack the economy, not individual corporations. Please Spread the Word!
I also regularly see: "I didn't see that", "fake news", "Trump is being Trump", "It was just a joke"...
or where they accuse Democrats of a crime they had already been committing, mind you they NEVER provide any evidence, whereas the Democrats always 'bring the receipts'.
Well, I despise what Musk has done to this country and I will never buy a Tesla. And I got off Facebook in 2020. And my family changed our summer plans to exclude FLA. Don’t know what Thiel is selling but hopefully I’m not buying. Bezos/Amazon-trying to break that addiction.
I don't know if Thiel sells anything directly to consumers, but he is invested in government contracts. He is "co-founder of Palantir Technologies, a data analytics company that specializes in software for data mining and analysis," says Wikipedia (and other places). The US, UK, Japan and other countries use Palantir software for mining data. Yahoo finance says the company is worth $443.75 billion as of 10/3/25. I haven't seen a recent figure, but in 2021 Peter Thiel owned over 7% of the company shares, which would today be worth over $30 billion, but I also read that Thiel has been selling some lately. (You have to get your money to support your standard of living somewhere, but there can be other reasons to sell, including if you think the share price will drop soon.)
DuckDuckGo AI says, "Palantir Technologies has secured over $1.9 billion in U.S. federal contracts since 2008, with the U.S. Army being the largest recipient, awarding approximately $730.3 million. The company has been involved in various projects, including a recent $10 billion contract to enhance military software and data capabilities over the next decade." That $10 billion 10-year contract is echoed in mainstream media including CNBC.
When I look up overall ownership of Palantir, top of the list are a number of institutional investors. That means people could be invested in it without realizing it, but you don't get a direct vote in the company unless you own shares directly. Retirement plans often invest in various funds, and those funds could be investing in Palantir also.
I have read that Thiel is a follower of Curtis Yarvin's ideas.That worries me greatly. (Yarvin also writes under the pen name Mencius Moldbug, according to Wikipedia.)
Fishlips and his clowncar posse are trying to complete Project 2025 before their frontman kicks the bucket or goes completely insane, whichever comes first. And it appears his "family" don't give a crap how bad he is, as long as they get their payday.
True! Trump is clearly not in control or running the government. It is in their best interest to keep him propped up and alive to continue with their plan which a large percentage of the population dislike. They are racing against the clock and their time is running out.
We All deserve Healthcare & Congress should Not get HEALTHCARE if their constituents who Literally pay their Healthcare & salaries don’t get healthcare Health=Happiness, leads to HOPE
There should be Outrage over the fascist overreach of this regime. Schumer and Jeffries and all the Democratic leaders should be shouting from the rooftops. Meanwhile, No Kings 2 rally/march will happen all over the country on October 18. AND RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES!
January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed the 15th chancellor of the Weimar Republic. [On January 31, 1933, A Schiesserlass, or “shooting decree,” followed. This permitted the state police to shoot on sight without fearing consequences. “I cannot rely on police to go after the red mob if they have to worry about facing disciplinary action when they are simply doing their job,” Göring explained. He accorded them his personal backing to shoot with impunity. “When they shoot, it is me shooting,” Göring said. “When someone is lying there dead, it is I who shot them.”
Put into effect just a week before the March [1933] elections, the emergency decree gave Hitler tremendous power to intimidate—and imprison—the political opposition. The Communist Party was banned (as Hitler had wanted since his first cabinet meeting), and members of the opposition press were arrested, their newspapers shut down. Göring had already been doing this for the past month, but the courts had invariably ordered the release of detained people. With the decree in effect, the courts could not intervene. Thousands of Communists and Social Democrats were rounded up.
On Thursday, March 23 [1933], the Reichstag delegates assembled in the Kroll Opera House, just opposite the charred ruins of the Reichstag. The following Monday, the traditional Reich eagle had been removed and replaced with an enormous Nazi eagle. ... “Treason toward our nation and our people shall in the future be stamped out with ruthless barbarity,” Hitler vowed. “The big joke on democracy,” [Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels] observed, “is that it gives its mortal enemies the means to its own destruction.”
Sources: How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy in 53 Days, The Atlantic, January 8, 2025 https://tinyurl.com/mr3brmku and 92 Years Ago, today, Adolf Hitler Was Made Germany's Leader. How is Donald Trump Celebrating?, Daily Kos, 31-Jan-25 https://tinyurl.com/zxmwxcut
What does Pete think about BESSANT THEIL GRENELLE COOK- All hypocritical gay men. Three are married. Don’t they understand that it was us woken people who fought for their right to get married
I suspect he would say that being gay does not mean you are a Democrat and that there are good gays and then there are gays that are not good, because they are people.
Republicans have always enjoyed the benefits of living in a country with functioning government making the country better for all of us, while struggling to tear it down so they can amass more power, more wealth... Some are evil, some merely lazy or greedy or cowardly.
If Pete were to speak for all gays, to denounce their right to be gay, who would you say holds the similar position among straights?
I am sure if you were to ask for Pete's opinion about their positions on a wide range of issues Pete would be well informed enough to give thoughtful answers, including on their alignment with Trump who leads a party singularly intolerant of "DEI" which in their mind includes all gays, along with women, blacks, etc... Trump is long past shame or introspection and does not himself care about such things, because his universe is all about himself and everyone else is lesser by definition, and he denigrates all of them at one time or another (Except for dictators, he LOVES dictators). The people you listed are certainly flawed people, but so is everyone in his cabinet and pretty much everyone voting Republican in the congress, not to mention several on the Supreme Court.
"including on their alignment with Trump who leads a party singularly intolerant of "DEI" which in their mind includes all gays, along with women, blacks, etc..."
Yes, we know Trump is BAD and his MAGA base is BAD. We also know they have a strong bias towards bigotry against Blacks and Hispanics and yet a lot of people of both those groups voted for Trump. You started off with trying to place the responsibility for rich gays who supported Trump somehow on Pete. Pete effectively denounces Trump and what he stands for, but from what I have seen, he does not try to demonize Trump supporters or make it impossible for them to turn away from Trump. Calling out people, confronting them generally just forces them to dig in deeper. Rather it is better to just let them see the news, which will only get worse, about how 'their kind' is not tolerated in MAGA world.
Pete is so impressive to listen to! He would be a wonderful President!!
Luke Radel gave an informative and professional interview. I see a great career ahead.
Absolutely! He and Aaron Parnas are the voices of journalism for the next 50 years.
For the past couple of years, before I disconnected from the MSM, John Dickerson was my go to for real news. I always felt like I learned something from him. Dog only knows how CBS will choke him off now. We cannot have sane, truthful reporting from corp news. I'm not watching.
"Dog only knows" I freaking love that!
I wish all of our voters could be relied upon to see that, as we do.
In order to be a great President, one must first be elected, and doing great things for red states is not a politically successful method, as we saw all too clearly in 2024.
Why? Because the lying Repuglicunts take the credit for the Democrat's projects that they voted against. And the gratitude the red states show in the voting booth is in the form of a big middle finger to us.
This isn't 1983 anymore, and it's time to stop speaking in consultant-crafted politi-speech by pre-censoring the plain truth until it's bland pablum-yak that nobody wants to listen to.
Although I agree with everything Pete said regarding policy, policy does not win elections. A look at the House, Senate, and Oval Office and the proof is in plain sight.
If policy does not win elections, what does in your opinion? Railing against the opposing candidate didn't work for Kamala -- what advice would you have given her to craft a winning strategy? Or was she a loser from the beginning due to Joe effectively just handing her the nominations and the Dems -- including Pete -- going along with it?
I never heard Kamala “railing” about anything but the policies she would try to initiate if elected, such as child credit for families, student loan relief, new businesses start up be increased to $50,00 instead of $5,000, help with first time home buyers, etc while Trump yelled the big lie “ they’re eating the dogs & cats” like a fool and never stated one word of doing anything for everyday Americans. He only had “concepts” of plans. Duh 🙄 🤪 But I doubt any crude uneducated MAGA morons watched the presidential debate. 🏴☠️
She lost because she is a black woman, IMO.
she lost because of long time and ongoing GOP voter suppression and cancellation and perhaps (still to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt) outright tampering (by Musk and Thiel) with voting tabulation machines, targeted terrorist threats to Democratic polling places.... ElectionTruthAlliance.org and the This Will Hold substack have the receipts....
I don't know whether Kamala herself railed about Trumpty Dumpty's character as I'm quite sure I haven't seen every second of her publicly speaking. However, personal attacks on TD were a huge part of the Dem playbook. From one perspective, rightly so: there's a lot to attack. However, going after The Golden (Orange?) Calf wasn't going to work with the cult-like devotion of the MAGAts. I'm not sure anything would have worked to get Kamala elected. She was the wrong candidate for the time, chose the wrong running mate, and was not willing to break away from the Biden shadow that stuck with her as his anointed rather than elected candidate.
Thank goodness. Constitution holds today
From No mercy/No malice
By Professor Scott Galloway
We frame economic power as a contest between capital and labor, but the real star of the American economy is consumer spending, which accounts for 68% of GDP. The Great Recession saw a 3.4% drop in consumer spending — at the time, the most severe year-over-year decline since World War II. The U.S. economy registered a 9.8% drop in consumer spending during the second quarter of 2020, when Covid shut down the world as we knew it. In both instances the U.S. government responded aggressively, spending hundreds of billions, primarily on bailouts, to pull us out of the Great Recession, and trillions, primarily in direct aid, to get us through the pandemic. The lesson? When consumers stop spending, American leaders start listening. As Geo Hussar explained to his YouTube followers at the end of September, “this is not seizing the means of production, but seizing the means of consumption,” adding that if every American dropped their consumption, on average, by 2%, “that would be the most loud and potent form of protest.”
Exactly right! That’s why October 18th has been designated Blackout Spending and No Kings 2.0. Spend locally I’m participating!
What is interesting to me is the stupidity of Republican policies which aggressively funnel the wealth of the nation into fewer and fewer hands each year, with less and less money in the hands of everyone else. That means the primary engine of any economy, which is the consumers is reduced every year. While they take all they can, thinking it is all a game of monopoly that they are focused on winning, they keep forgetting that at the end of the game of Monopoly, everyone else has no money. The game is over because there is no more money to take. In the real world that translates to a collapse of the economy.
Right, as in Turkey and Hungary.
Perhaps the plan is that Government will give them money...like the Nazis did.. Govt & business working together
Hello, soybean farmers
'...the means of consumption...' - that's a powerful phrase! I quit Amazon...but yesterday I looked, but did not find, and felt relieved that I did not break my pledge to stay out of amazon.
There are so many enabling corporations that a general Spending Strike is necessary. Attack the economy, not individual corporations. Please Spread the Word!
Excellent interview, I love Pete
It was really a great interview. They both did a great job!
Thanks for calling it a LIE, Pete.
MAGA ALWAYS responds the same ways:
1. “What about?”
2. An insulting, childish name directed at their opponent(s).
3. A twisted, blatant LIE.
Corporate Media doesn’t call it out, or at the very least, follow-up questions or facts.
It’s so demoralizing.
I also regularly see: "I didn't see that", "fake news", "Trump is being Trump", "It was just a joke"...
or where they accuse Democrats of a crime they had already been committing, mind you they NEVER provide any evidence, whereas the Democrats always 'bring the receipts'.
I would imagine that many would say 'he's not my type.'
Why the heck aren’t Democrats and their supporters protecting their democracy and taking their power back by unsubscribing from Tech Oligarchs?
After all, Disney Boycott caught their attention.
Seems so simple.
Meidas, please ask democrats why they are protecting Musk, Besos, Ellison, Thiel, Zuckerberg.
Well, I despise what Musk has done to this country and I will never buy a Tesla. And I got off Facebook in 2020. And my family changed our summer plans to exclude FLA. Don’t know what Thiel is selling but hopefully I’m not buying. Bezos/Amazon-trying to break that addiction.
I don't know if Thiel sells anything directly to consumers, but he is invested in government contracts. He is "co-founder of Palantir Technologies, a data analytics company that specializes in software for data mining and analysis," says Wikipedia (and other places). The US, UK, Japan and other countries use Palantir software for mining data. Yahoo finance says the company is worth $443.75 billion as of 10/3/25. I haven't seen a recent figure, but in 2021 Peter Thiel owned over 7% of the company shares, which would today be worth over $30 billion, but I also read that Thiel has been selling some lately. (You have to get your money to support your standard of living somewhere, but there can be other reasons to sell, including if you think the share price will drop soon.)
DuckDuckGo AI says, "Palantir Technologies has secured over $1.9 billion in U.S. federal contracts since 2008, with the U.S. Army being the largest recipient, awarding approximately $730.3 million. The company has been involved in various projects, including a recent $10 billion contract to enhance military software and data capabilities over the next decade." That $10 billion 10-year contract is echoed in mainstream media including CNBC.
When I look up overall ownership of Palantir, top of the list are a number of institutional investors. That means people could be invested in it without realizing it, but you don't get a direct vote in the company unless you own shares directly. Retirement plans often invest in various funds, and those funds could be investing in Palantir also.
I have read that Thiel is a follower of Curtis Yarvin's ideas.That worries me greatly. (Yarvin also writes under the pen name Mencius Moldbug, according to Wikipedia.)
I know Musk lost a LOT of customers.
...and brain cells.
Go cold turkey on facebook, just stop and don't look back (but not the Donald Sutherland movie, a truly horror-filled movie).
I really respect Pete.
Fishlips and his clowncar posse are trying to complete Project 2025 before their frontman kicks the bucket or goes completely insane, whichever comes first. And it appears his "family" don't give a crap how bad he is, as long as they get their payday.
True! Trump is clearly not in control or running the government. It is in their best interest to keep him propped up and alive to continue with their plan which a large percentage of the population dislike. They are racing against the clock and their time is running out.
They are AI Keystone Cops, goons that know much less than they can imagine.
Stay the course. National boycott, national strike.
Secretary Pete would make an awesome next President.
We All deserve Healthcare & Congress should Not get HEALTHCARE if their constituents who Literally pay their Healthcare & salaries don’t get healthcare Health=Happiness, leads to HOPE
There should be Outrage over the fascist overreach of this regime. Schumer and Jeffries and all the Democratic leaders should be shouting from the rooftops. Meanwhile, No Kings 2 rally/march will happen all over the country on October 18. AND RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES!
Both of these traitors are running interference FOR MAGA. They neither fear nor respect Schumer/Jeffries.
Excellent interview! Many 🙏. Keep up the great work that both of you are doing. ✌️
How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy in 53 Days
January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed the 15th chancellor of the Weimar Republic. [On January 31, 1933, A Schiesserlass, or “shooting decree,” followed. This permitted the state police to shoot on sight without fearing consequences. “I cannot rely on police to go after the red mob if they have to worry about facing disciplinary action when they are simply doing their job,” Göring explained. He accorded them his personal backing to shoot with impunity. “When they shoot, it is me shooting,” Göring said. “When someone is lying there dead, it is I who shot them.”
Put into effect just a week before the March [1933] elections, the emergency decree gave Hitler tremendous power to intimidate—and imprison—the political opposition. The Communist Party was banned (as Hitler had wanted since his first cabinet meeting), and members of the opposition press were arrested, their newspapers shut down. Göring had already been doing this for the past month, but the courts had invariably ordered the release of detained people. With the decree in effect, the courts could not intervene. Thousands of Communists and Social Democrats were rounded up.
On Thursday, March 23 [1933], the Reichstag delegates assembled in the Kroll Opera House, just opposite the charred ruins of the Reichstag. The following Monday, the traditional Reich eagle had been removed and replaced with an enormous Nazi eagle. ... “Treason toward our nation and our people shall in the future be stamped out with ruthless barbarity,” Hitler vowed. “The big joke on democracy,” [Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels] observed, “is that it gives its mortal enemies the means to its own destruction.”
Sources: How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy in 53 Days, The Atlantic, January 8, 2025 https://tinyurl.com/mr3brmku and 92 Years Ago, today, Adolf Hitler Was Made Germany's Leader. How is Donald Trump Celebrating?, Daily Kos, 31-Jan-25 https://tinyurl.com/zxmwxcut
Excellent synopsis.....
Love me some Pete Buttejuge
What does Pete think about BESSANT THEIL GRENELLE COOK- All hypocritical gay men. Three are married. Don’t they understand that it was us woken people who fought for their right to get married
I suspect he would say that being gay does not mean you are a Democrat and that there are good gays and then there are gays that are not good, because they are people.
Republicans have always enjoyed the benefits of living in a country with functioning government making the country better for all of us, while struggling to tear it down so they can amass more power, more wealth... Some are evil, some merely lazy or greedy or cowardly.
My point is that Pete should denounce these guys since they seem to be holding hands with flagrant bigotry
If Pete were to speak for all gays, to denounce their right to be gay, who would you say holds the similar position among straights?
I am sure if you were to ask for Pete's opinion about their positions on a wide range of issues Pete would be well informed enough to give thoughtful answers, including on their alignment with Trump who leads a party singularly intolerant of "DEI" which in their mind includes all gays, along with women, blacks, etc... Trump is long past shame or introspection and does not himself care about such things, because his universe is all about himself and everyone else is lesser by definition, and he denigrates all of them at one time or another (Except for dictators, he LOVES dictators). The people you listed are certainly flawed people, but so is everyone in his cabinet and pretty much everyone voting Republican in the congress, not to mention several on the Supreme Court.
I don’t think you are getting my point . Some FBI agent was just fired for having a pride flag on his desk.
"including on their alignment with Trump who leads a party singularly intolerant of "DEI" which in their mind includes all gays, along with women, blacks, etc..."
Yes, we know Trump is BAD and his MAGA base is BAD. We also know they have a strong bias towards bigotry against Blacks and Hispanics and yet a lot of people of both those groups voted for Trump. You started off with trying to place the responsibility for rich gays who supported Trump somehow on Pete. Pete effectively denounces Trump and what he stands for, but from what I have seen, he does not try to demonize Trump supporters or make it impossible for them to turn away from Trump. Calling out people, confronting them generally just forces them to dig in deeper. Rather it is better to just let them see the news, which will only get worse, about how 'their kind' is not tolerated in MAGA world.
Pete is a great guy... he is such a great encouragement to anyone with energy who wants to make a difference in this country.