Episode Details

Days before the 2016 election, Rudy Giuliani went on Fox News promising a "big surprise," emphasizing his point with a Crypt Keeper cackle. "We've got a couple of things up our sleeves that should turn this around." The vast majority of the polls had Hillary Clinton comfortably winning.

Paul Manafort, the Kremlin's longtime operative in Ukraine and Trump's longtime friend and neighbor, had laid low in recent weeks following a bombshell report out of Ukraine that he took millions of dollars in off-the-books payments from Ukrainian kleptocrat and wannabe strongman Viktor Yanukovych. However, Manafort broke his silence days before the election and wrote on Twitter: "Battleground states moving to Trump en masse. Media not liking the pattern. By Sunday, Trump will be over 270 in polls." But the polls said no such thing.

Why were Giuliani and Manafort suddenly so confident Trump would pull off an upset? The 400-page Mueller Report and the bipartisan Senate Intelligence report both exposed how the Trump campaign and the Kremlin came to power in 2016: through pumping out disinformation to suppress the vote, cyberattacks stealing sensitive data, and hacking the voting systems of all 50 states. That very illegal strategy has been in play ever since and is mainstream for the MAGA fascist movement openly trying to overthrow our democracy and install a Christian nationalist dictatorship, with Trump as their long-awaited strongman, a perfect God's imperfect vessel.

This special episode of Gaslit Nation looks at the ways Trump is trying to steal the election and what must be done to stop him. This is an episode you're going to want to share with your family and friends. Terrell Starr of the Black Diplomats Podcast and Substack also joins the show to discuss the US election in the context of global affairs. This week's bonus show, available to subscribers at the Truth-teller ($5/month) level and higher, answers questions from our listeners at the Democracy Defender ($10/month) level and higher, including on how to hold Rupert Murdoch accountable and reasons why Ukraine must join NATO. Thank you to everyone who supports the show – we could not make Gaslit Nation without you!

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