The Gulf Between Rhetoric and Reality, As One Presidential Candidate Drones on Disavowing his Plans While the Other is in a Bunker Not Listening
We begin with the gulf between rhetoric and reality as the Trump/Vance campaign goes to desperate lengths to distance themselves from their own plans and platform laid out in the Heritage foundation’s blueprint for a second Trump term, Project 2025. Joining us to discuss the rhetorical gymnastics underway as Trump talks of unity and the billionaire-backed Vance reaches out to workers while sucking up to Trump, who he once called an “American Hitler and “cultural heroin,” is Jennifer Mercieca, a professor in the Department of Communications at Texas A&M University, where she teaches courses on Political Communication and Presidential Rhetoric. An historian of American political discourse, she is the co-editor of The Rhetoric of Heroic Expectations: Establishing the Obama Presidency and author of Founding Fictions, as well as Demagogue for President:The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump.
A Recap of the Republican Convention and What it Tells Us About a Future Trump Presidency
Then we get a recap of last week’s Republican National Convention from Will Bunch, an award-winning national opinion columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer who covered the convention in Milwaukee and blogs at attytood.com. He is the author of The Bern Identity: A Search for Bernie Sanders and the New American Dream and, most recently, After the Ivory Tower Falls: How College Broke the American Dream and Blew Up Our Politics — and How to Fix It. We discuss his latest article at the Philadelphia Inquirer, “Unity at the RNC Looks a lot Like Jonestown.”
How a Handful of Tech Billionaires Are Poised to Enact Their Techno-Fascist Fantasies with Their Bro in the Oval Office
Then finally, we look into how a handful of tech bro billionaires in Silicon Valley have bought an ambitious senator and then leveraged him into the Oval Office, a heartbeat away from a fading reality TV star with no interest in governing, to enact the techno-fascist fantasies of the “Dark Enlightenment,” in alignment with Project 2025. Joining us is Jacob Silverman, a contributing writer for The New Republic and a contributing editor for The Baffler, covering tech and national security. He is the author of Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection. His latest book, an instant New York TImes bestseller, co-authored with Ben MacKenzie, is Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud. He also blogs at jacobsilverman.com. We discuss his article at The Nation, “It’s Official: Silicon Valley Is Fully MAGA-Pilled.”