So, How is that protest vote over Gaza working out for you?

[0:02] Why does Musk want to shut down USAID?

[0:07] Ohio Attorney General David Yost wants to run for governor, but he’s a terrible human being, not to mention a Trump boot-licking Christian nationalist. And how did that protest vote over Gaza turn out?

[0:24] Music.

[0:25] I’m Doug Berger. And this is Secular Left.

[1:00] I just finished writing a book, Lessons from the Cold War, for how to deal with China and Russia. And one of our big superpowers, two of our big superpowers then, were allies and our ideals. We had great allies. The Soviets didn’t. We had better ideas. Democracy is better than dictatorship. And yet President Trump so far, what is he doing? He’s alienating our democratic allies, and he’s not doing anything to support democracy. Just on the contrary, shutting down USAID. You know who shut down USAID and Russia when I was the U.S. Ambassador? Vladimir Putin. He’s doing what Vladimir Putin did in his country for the entire world. And that was Michael McFaul. He was a former ambassador to Russia from the United States, talking about Putin shutting down USAID while he was the ambassador. It hasn’t even been a whole month before.

[1:57] And President, what’s his name, Orange Guy, has been trying to cram as much crap into his administration as he can by the use of executive orders. He signed over 200 executive orders on day one. And it’s kind of ironic because that’s what the MAGA people bitched about with Biden is his executive orders. And it’s just funny to me that Trump thinks that it’s like his business and that he’s the CEO and what he says goes. And so he does these executive orders that maybe might be legal, maybe not. Who knows? You know, it’s like the Wild West right now in the government, federal government. What bothers me about it is that he so far has done everything that was detailed in the Project 2025 book that people like me were complaining about during the election season and warning people, this is what they plan to do.

[3:14] If you vote for Trump, this is what will happen. And it’s pretty much happening exactly how they detailed it in the book. And the thing is, it’s because Trump is a puppet. He doesn’t know half the things that’s going on. He believes whatever it is that the last person tells him. And his flunkies The people that we really should be worried about Like Musk and some of the other people That are in his administration Stephen Miller, the Nazi, Those are the people that are doing all of this And they’re getting Trump to agree to it, You know, and he just Has his Adderall brain and Eating his crappy food and just doing whatever somebody tells him to do. And then he pretends like he’s doing it on his own. One of the things that is pretty significant is the attack on the independent federal agency called USAID, USAID.

[4:26] And I know some people who don’t follow politics or tend not to follow politics don’t know what is going on with all of that. You know, what’s going on? You know, part of it has to do with the conservatives’, adversion to federal, not federal, to foreign aid, giving money to other countries, you know, because the conservatives want to use that money to give their billionaire class buddies tax breaks. And so they think it’s always a waste to give money to other countries. For those that are not familiar with USAID, it was formed by an executive order by President Kennedy, John Kennedy, in the 1960s. And it was basically what it would do is it was supposed to help other countries with direct assistance of some kind, either money or technology or medical, environmental, that sort of thing. And as USAID people would go into these countries that are having issues and take care of it or help take care of it. And what this would do then is this other country would be like, oh, man, those USA people are pretty cool. I think I’m going to be a friend of the USA.

[5:55] See, that’s how we make friends.

[5:59] Without military, without doing it through the gun, is you get their hearts and minds. And it has a long history. Herbert Hoover ran an agency that helped alleviate starvation in Belgium during the First World War. You had the Marshall Plan after World War II. It got food and other assistance to countries that had been torn up by war. And then you had, it went into Vietnam during the Vietnam War to try to help the people not support the Viet Cong, the insurgents during that time, et cetera. And so Musk, for some reason, hates that agency. It’s pretty clear why. because Musk, we know, is an asset of Vladimir Putin in Russia. He pretty much has done Putin’s bidding so far.

[7:06] And Putin closed down U.S. aid in Russia at one point, and he also wants to see that agency dismantled. And one of the Russian flunkies praised Musk for what he was doing currently with it. And the reason being is because if the U.S. Cannot go into these countries and give aid and help other countries, then that leaves a vacuum because these countries still need help and that opens the door for Russia and China to come in and make friends. And if the country that they help then it’s not the friend of the United States. It’s all, you know, it’s the old Cold War mentality but without the threat of a nuclear annihilation. It’s more with the money. Now USA their mission was to spread democracy and freedom around the world by the use of the aid. And so they would go in and help a country, and then they’d be like, hey, what’s the United States like? And they’d say, well, we do this, this, and this, and we have free elections, and no, no, no, no.

[8:22] Well, USAID also has a dark side that’s pretty well known in progressive circles in that because it’s an agency of the federal government, sometimes it’s been used by the federal government to mess around with countries. The one that is well known is some USAID workers set up an alternative internet connection for people of Cuba and tried to affect regime change, according to the Cubans anyway. And they ended up arresting a subcontractor for USAID that wasn’t released until a thawing of relationships during the Obama administration.

[9:09] And then there’s also the story about trying to undermine the government in Bolivia because the United States government didn’t care for the socialist president of Bolivia. And so they tried to use USAID in order to undermine the government. And then you still have the cases where the conservatives are complaining about waste and fraud. And those things are real. You know, nobody that talks about USAID and tries to defend it doesn’t say it doesn’t need to be reformed. You know, all government agencies, you know, tend to get bigger on bloat and there’s some waste and some fraud. A lot of it has to do with the countries that they operate in have not waste and fraud, but have corruption going on. And so they have to pay off people and things like that. So but the main thing, the reason why that the Trump administration is targeting this agency is to do the bidding of Vladimir Putin and China. I think that that is the main thing. And that’s spelled out, not that specifically, but it’s spelled out in Project 2025 is to eliminate foreign aid.

[10:35] You know, and they claim, well, we got to help people here in the United States first.

[10:40] But, you know, what it is, you know, with Trump being a transactional person, you know, it’s not too far fetched to see a reconstituted USAID where they’ll go into a country and they say, well, you have to do this for us for you to get this aid. And the aid was never dependent on that. I mean, they would help out with like earthquakes and natural disasters and medical pandemics and things like that. Poverty, trying to alleviate poverty. But one of the charges that the Trump administration said is that the Biden administration subverted the mission of that agency and was supporting climate change initiatives. Trying to mitigate climate change because, you know, Trump doesn’t believe that climate change is real. None of the conservatives do.

[11:34] And unfortunately, it’s going to cause more disasters, bigger disasters. It’s going to cost more money. So we’re going to end up paying for it somehow. So the attack on USAID is coming from different angles. You have Musk and Project 2025 that wants to use that $50 billion or so that I guess it gets in congressional appropriations and use that elsewhere. And I’m guessing that they want to justify a tax cut, another tax cut. And then you have the people that are attacking it because of its dark side, its political aspirations. And that’s, you know, also includes Musk. And so I’m not sure how this is going to turn out. Right now, it’s effectively shuttered, closed down. Again, the legality of it is up in the air, believe it or not, because we’ve never had this happen before where an executive branch has unilaterally decided to get rid of something that was appropriated and set up by Congress.

[12:51] And, of course, with Congress being a majority Republicans, they’ve just kind of shrugged their shoulders and said, oh, well. You know, they’ve they’ve obrogated their responsibility to be a check on the executive branch.

[13:09] You know, they have they’ve violated their oath of office by just shrugging their heads and shrugging their shoulders and going, what are you going to do? U.S. House Oversight Committee that was chaired by Gomer Comer or whatever his name is, where one of the ranking Democrats tried to make a motion to subpoena Musk and Comer blocked it. They would never do that. You know, this is the guy that was happily going after what he called the Biden crime family and had multiple hearings and went after Hunter Biden and tried to say that President Biden had committed crimes and and just wasted days and days of hearing time for stuff that he could never prove. And now when a serious issue has come up that needs to be discussed, but because it’s Musk and the Trump administration, Comer’s like, you know, that’s not debatable. We’re not doing it. Again, the Congress, the Republican Congress people have pretty much given up their authority and violated their oath of office by not doing anything.

[14:32] For more information about any of the topics covered in this episode, check out our show notes at secularleft.com.

[14:39] Music.

[14:45] Speaking of executive orders, here’s a segue. One of the people that hated executive orders when President Biden issued them was Ohio’s Attorney General David Yost. He’s a Christian nationalist, doesn’t like women, hates abortion. And he signed he got together with some of his red state MAGA for fellow attorney generals and signed on to lawsuits that challenged many president of Biden’s executive orders and met with some success, especially when they shopped for judges down in Texas, which the Fifth District Court with that one guy, Kaczmarek, or whatever his name was, that always ruled in favor of the Republicans. But, yeah, David Yost, he fought the college loan forgiveness scheme and was successful. He also challenged Title IX and the protections of the LGBTQ community and was successful in that.

[16:04] But because we know that MAGA Republicans and Trump synchophants are incredibly hypocritical, not to mention poor moral people. They make poor moral choices and that they follow a convicted felon. Yost also signed on to a lawsuit, or I guess it’s not a lawsuit. It was a warning letter to Costco demanding that they end their DEI programs to bend the knee to President Trump. Because President Trump has been trying to get rid of DEI, at least the straw man, boogeyman version of it that he claims that he knows it is. But I’m telling you, these MAGA people like Yost, they don’t know what DEI is. You know, I mean, how could you be against diversity, equality and inclusion? How could you? Unless you’re a white man who is a racist. And that fits David Yost to a T.

[17:14] But David Yost announced that he was running for governor or the Republican nomination for governor of Ohio in, when is it? It’s at 2027, 26, one of them. But anyway, so he announced that he’s running. And one of the reasons why he announced now that he’s running is because that Vic Veramsey, who is Trump’s buddy and was working with Elon Musk until he was forced out, also plans to run for governor. So Yost wanted to announce before Vance Ramey announced.

[17:57] And so Yost thinks that he’s got a good shot. Well, I’m telling you, he is going to be bad for, he’s going to be a mini Trump, a mini version of Trump, but without the drug addiction and the sloth. Put it that way. Basically, what it was is that Yost began as a journalist. He began his career as a journalist. He ended up getting his law degree and practiced law for a while and then became a prosecutor, a county prosecutor in Delaware, Delaware County, which is north of Columbus, and parlayed that into becoming the state auditor at one point. And I did a blog post about him as the auditor and that he didn’t know how food stamps worked. And he was at a congressional hearing, obviously telling the congressional hearing for the USDA that he did not know how food stamps worked. And I might throw that link up in the show notes so you can check that out. But anyway, so he did that, and then he moved on to Ohio Attorney General when DeWine moved on to be the governor. And…

[19:23] And Yost has just been a terrible attorney general, you know, just for protecting people’s rights. He doesn’t. And he also is subservient to the corporate oligarchy that exists in Ohio, where we have the gerrymandered legislature. Just to give you some examples, Yost made news when he denied that a 10-year-old girl had been raped and was pregnant and needed an abortion, and she had to go to Indiana to get it.

[20:02] They interviewed him on the news, and he claimed that this girl didn’t exist, that the story was made up, without ever investigating it. He just assumed that it was made up and kind of find out it was not made up and he never apologized. Ohioans passed a reproductive rights amendment in 2023 and Yost is still litigating the six-week abortion ban that should go away, but he’s still fighting to keep it. Just to tell you how bad of a person he is, when he ran for re-election the last time, his children came out with a public statement that they were not going to vote for him and urged other people not to vote for him. You have to be a very terrible person to have your children say not to vote for you. Then the other thing, too, that Yost is known for is that he prosecuted a black woman for making a false rape charge in 2021.

[21:19] Now, what is notable about this case is one thing, it was a local case. It was in Ottawa County. I believe it was Ottawa County, which has Port Clinton, the city of Port Clinton or. Yeah. And what it was is this woman, this black woman, Erica Waters, had filed a report that she believed that she had been sexually assaulted after a party at this guy’s house. He was a volunteer for the Put-in-Bay Police Department, and she was an officer in the Put-in-Bay Police Department. Put-in-Bay is an island in Lake Erie just north of Port Clinton. It’s known for a summer resort, not resort, but it’s a summer place that people go to enjoy the summer, put it that way, things like that. People like to go up there to party. So she was a police officer in the Put-in-Bay Police Department, and she’d gone to this summer party at this guy. He owned a home up there, and he was a Finley man who was rich, but he was a volunteer of the police department. Because during the summer months, they needed extra officers because of the increase in people. So they had these special volunteers that work as cops.

[22:46] And so he invited a bunch of people over to his house, the summer house, and according to Waters’ report, she felt like she had been drugged and taken advantage of and thought that she had been sexually assaulted, and she reported it.

[23:03] Well, the county sheriff’s department investigated it and found no foundation to the claim. They said that it was a consensual relationship. And when it was given to the county prosecutor, the county prosecutor elected not to prosecute anybody in the case. Well, in comes David Yost’s office, the attorney general, and he takes the case and takes it to a grand jury in Ottawa County. And the grand jury indicts the woman for filing a false claim, false rape claim.

[23:49] And again, this was a local case. And it just so happened that the volunteer was a rich white guy. And I’m assuming that he probably called in some favors. He also had a history of sexual assault on women. He had been investigated something like 10 years prior. And by the time that Waters’ case came to trial, a couple of other women had come forward and said that they had also been attacked by this guy or taken advantage of by this guy. So Erica Waters then decides to go with a no jury trial to have a judge decide because she figures she probably has a better chance because she’s black. Ottawa County is a majority white county. So I’m assuming that’s what she decided, that she would have a better chance in court if she just stuck with just having a judge decide. So, again, David Yost puts all his efforts into prosecuting this woman for filing a fake, false rape charge. It was going to be a felony. If she is convicted, she would serve many, many years in prison.

[25:11] And so the judge heard the evidence. And the trial took maybe a week or two. And the judge came back and acquitted Erica Waters. And the reason why she acquitted Erica Waters was because Waters never claimed to have been raped. She never used that word. She never said that this guy, Bremer or Bremer or whatever his name was, had raped her. What she had said was that she felt like she had been drugged and taken advantage of and possibly sexually assaulted. She did not say rape. So the judge acquitted her just based on the fact that the charges that David Yost’s office brought weren’t supportable. There was no evidence to support it, and so she acquitted her.

[26:06] And the sheriff’s office in that county that mishandled the investigation and Yost’s office still refused to comment about the case. He never said why he took the case, why he spent state tax dollars on a special prosecutor or anything. It was a stupid case for him to try. If the county prosecutor isn’t going to do it, then it shouldn’t be done. And that is why I personally think that Yost is going to make a terrible governor and you shouldn’t vote for him, just that alone. But then we have this issue with the bribery scandal that’s still going on because hardly anybody’s been prosecuted for it other than a former state representative with involving First Energy Electric who tried to bribe state officials so that they could get a rate increase. Well, Yost’s office decided that they were going to go after First Energy for the bribery, and they ended up settling for $20,000.

[27:19] You know, Yost could have taken it to trial. He could have spent the same effort prosecuting First Energy that he spent trying to prosecute a black woman who he accused of making a false rape claim. But he didn’t. The office settled for $20,000. You know how much that is to companies like First Energy? That’s like college intern money. That’s the kind of money that they spend on a college intern who goes and gets coffee and donuts for the CEOs and the other C-suite people at headquarters. It’s chump change. It’s change that they find in the cushion. Right. You know, when you prosecute somebody for a crime as serious as bribery, it should mean something. It should hurt them. In the pocketbook, if you’re going to find them, $20,000 doesn’t do any of that. And they didn’t even have to admit any wrongdoing. You know, talk about miscarriage of justice. This guy wouldn’t know justice if it bit him in the ass. Obviously, he’s going to run for governor.

[28:30] What a putz if you would like to buy some secular left swag to show your support and to express your politics then check out our merch store we have branded items for sale such as t-shirts hats, mugs, and many other unique items check it out at secularleft.us slash shop.

[28:56] Now we all know that But President Trump is known to just say crap at his press conferences, just whatever’s on the top of his head. Doesn’t matter how crazy it sounds or how ridiculous it sounds or even if it’s true or not. He just blathers on. He likes hearing his own voice. And he believes that he’s that the press is lapping up everything he says, which that they are because he happens to be the president of the United States. So Trump held a press conference on Tuesday with Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel. One of the crazy things that Trump said was he had a proposal that the United States take over the Gaza Strip and permanently resettle its Palestinian residents and turn it into the Riviera of the Middle East.

[29:52] And he even promised to do whatever was necessary, including using U.S. troops to support it. Now, why this is crazy talk coming from Trump, which is normal for him, is because clearing out the Gaza Strip and removing all of the Palestinians is one of the goals of Benjamin Netanyahu. And it is probably one of the primary reasons why, even after getting their revenge for the October 7th attack, they continued to decimate the Gaza Strip, knock it back down to the Stone Age, and kill thousands of Palestinians, women and children alike. Because he has said in public before that they want to get rid of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and take it over and turn it back into Israel. So for Trump to say the same thing but claim that the United States will own it, that’s something new, but it’s along the same lines. And my thing is probably what he is thinking.

[31:14] And I know it’s hard to get in the head of Donald Trump, his drug-addled mind, is he’s probably thinking of building a resort with a golf course and put his name on it so he can make some money. That’s probably what he was thinking of. But basically, it would fall into the long-term strategy of Benjamin Netanyahu. You know, and the reason being is he believes that leaving Gaza to its own devices is they’re just going to get attacked by Hamas all the time. And he’d rather just be done with it.

[31:55] So naturally, Trump got some blowback from the Arab Americans, the same Arab Americans that supported him during 2024 election. And the reason why they supported him during the 2024 election was because they were mad at President Biden for still selling arms to Israel that was being used for genocide in the Gaza Strip. And that’s a valid criticism. I did not appreciate that either. And it just seemed like President Biden just didn’t get it. You know, and then again, I also see the other hand is that they were the U.S. Was between a rock and a hard place. If you don’t support Israel, then you get called an anti-Semite, which also happened whenever Biden would take a strong hand with Netanyahu. You know, Jewish leaders, some Jewish leaders would come out and say, you know, you need to support Israel. So a lot of people in the progressive left were also upset with President Biden and American policy towards Gaza. And it manifested itself as an uncommitted movement.

[33:11] And you really saw this in Michigan, because Michigan has a large Arab American population in Dearborn and Hamatrack, suburbs of Detroit. They voted for Trump, but that is where the uncommitted part got started, was in Michigan, in that it was claimed to be a protest vote during the primary where people would vote uncommitted instead of voting for Biden in the Democratic primary. And the uncommitted movement got 100,000 votes, which gave them two delegates to the Democratic National Convention. And then once they got there to the convention, then there was a big kerfuffle because they wanted to have time to talk to the convention, be a speaker, and the Democratic National Convention people refused. And so that led to a lot of animosity. And a lot of these uncommitted people didn’t vote for Harris in the roll call for the states, the state roll call. They put their votes as uncommitted, which means they didn’t choose anybody. And then when we were coming into the election in November, then they thought it would be better to have a protest vote, that it would be better to vote for a third party or to stay home, to send a message to President Biden.

[34:41] Now, I am not sure that they actually thought that Trump would win, but he did. And as we saw with his remarks Tuesday towards Gaza, his idea about, you know, his foreign policy in that area is actually worse than President Biden. Because at least President Biden tried to get Israel to deal with the Palestinians diplomatically and try to end the battles, the war, the shooting. Trump’s not going to do any of that. And so there was an article on MSNBC or MSN, the Microsoft website, that talked about the uncommitted. And the title of the article was, Where the Uncommitted Movement Stands After Trump’s Gaza Plan.

[35:42] And this was published on Thursday at the time that I’m recording this. And it was subheaded. It says, uncommitted leaders stand by 2024 strategy after Trump floats Gaza takeover. And it says, now in the wake of Trump’s comments, which sent shockwaves through Washington, Democrats are renewing their criticism that the movement, the uncommitted movement, weakened their party’s ticket in the presidential election, even though Trump’s record on the Middle East has been more hostile to the Palestinian cause. Layla Elabed, a co-chair of the Uncommitted Movement, said she felt sad, angry, and scared for our communities after Trump’s remarks. Harris left a vacuum, this is her quoting her, Harris left a vacuum by not visiting Michigan families impacted by U.S. Supplied bombs to help create a permission structure for their trust, while Trump visited Dearborn and filled a community in despair with lies, Elabed said in a statement. Trump’s illegal calls for ethnic cleansing are horrific, but as on so many other issues, Democrats had a chance to persuade voters that they were the better alternative, and they blew it.

[36:53] Her comment didn’t set well with some Democrats, deeply unserious people who want to shirk their responsibility. Clowns, a former Harris aide granted anonymity to speak candidly said in response. Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say they were clowns. You know, they had valid criticism of the government. And I would never fault them for that.

[37:18] However, they did not make any good strategic decisions. You know, staying home to vote was a vote for Trump. I’ve said it on many, many of these episodes. Other people have said it. You’re not going to send a message to the powers that be if you stay home. All it is, is it’s going to lessen the number of votes needed by the other bad guy. And I get it, you know, the too bad topic, you know, who wants to vote for too bad choices? I get it. But now we’re reaping all of that. You know, this uncommitted movement thought that they were dealing with a serious political issue, which they are. But the guy that is totally unserious about the political issue that they’re concerned about got elected. And that was a strategic decision that they shouldn’t have made. They should have made sure that Harris got elected, and then they could address their concerns with Harris, and at least they would have had a chance at having it changed or improved or whatever. And now they have none. It is zero.

[38:40] And just to tell you that this has sent a shockwave through the Arab-American community, the Arab-American group that supported Trump during the election changed their name after his comments came out. The group was formerly known as Arab-Americans for Trump, and they changed their name to Arab-Americans for Peace because they rejected what he said. However, they helped Trump win Dearborn.

[39:19] Dearborn, Michigan. He won it by like 20,000 votes. Says in the 2024 election, Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate to win Dearborn, Michigan, home of the nation’s largest concentration of Arab Americans since 2000 on his way to winning the state. And he visited Dearborn on November 1st. Now, I will add, too, just as a side note, that the Arab-American community in Dearborn has also been friends with the evangelical Christians in book bannings in that area. Because they’ve become friends with the evangelical Christians who want to get rid of inappropriate books or what they consider inappropriate books in public libraries.

[40:10] So, you know, they’re not they’re not all liberal. I’m telling you, they’re not there. And some of their views on women is not liberal either. But the fact is that if you’re if you were concerned about the genocide in Gaza, staying home was not the strategic decision to make. And now it’s coming home to roost. And I am not sorry that they are upset. Because I told him, other people told him on the progressive side. And, you know, it’s bad enough that people, some people on the left were bitching about Harris not having a, going through a primary process and supposedly being appointed without any transparency. You know, that’s just a debate on process. But when you’re talking about a debate on actual policy, voting for Trump just because you are upset about the genocide in Gaza was not the strategic move to make.

[41:23] Thank you for listening to this episode. You can check out more information, including links to sources used, in our show notes on our website at secularleft.us. Secular Left is hosted, written, and produced by Doug Berger, and he is solely responsible for the content. Send us your comments either using the contact form on the website or by sending us a note at comments at secularleft.us, Our theme music is Dank and Nasty, composed using Amplify Studio.

[42:09] Music.