For episode 291 of KK&F, Wajahat Ali, writer of The Left Hook on Substack, joins us for a roundtable on Trump’s army of creeps, the shambles he’s made of the economy, and the chilling machinery of repression and punishment he’s built to silence religious and political dissidents. As we witness the fracturing of Trump’s façade of power, especially palpable in the open disavowals and criticisms coming from his erstwhile loudest supporters, we can also see new opportunities opening up for the Left through the successes of progressive, anti-establishment candidates — and Angie Nixon’s win in the Democratic primary for a Florida Senate seat is proof of that. Are Democrats actually willing to follow and support the Left when it’s time to win, at the cost of a status quo they can’t stop clinging to? Watch below:

Waj breaks down the major coalition Trump can’t live without: his “broligarch” lackeys, the robber-barons like Musk and Bezos, the white supremacists finding in Trump a vehicle for virulent racism, the religious fanatics whose attraction to Trump (as we point out) feels totally inexplicable. After all, as a grifter, a pedophile, and the architect of large-scale suffering within and well beyond the U.S., Trump hardly exhibits what these people claim as “Christian values” — but then again, they often don’t either. According to Waj, all of these groups have conflicting needs and expectations for Trump, so that he can only serve them as a “flawed instrument.” And while these groups expect to use Trump in different ways to pursue their political ends, we also see that they share the basic political analysis that white men, and white men alone, deserve to wield power over our society and consolidate all of its vast resources for their pleasure. The ugly eugenicist ideology underlying and pervading Trump’s most dedicated, powerful, and controlling supporters reminds us that they see in Trump someone who won’t stop until the oppressed and marginalized people of this country — and of the world — have been wiped off of it. The billionaires are ready to go to Mars and the evangelicals are ready for the rapture, and all of these groups want to leave the rest of us here on an earth they’ve set on fire.

This analysis sounds dire, but things are really that bad, and that urgent: as the American class continues to struggle just to make it day to day, living in fear of a medical emergency, it’s preyed upon and exploited by tyrants and tycoons who want to take every last penny from them in the workplace and leave them with nothing. So with these more sober reflections in mind, we also turn toward a bright light in the growing movement of popular support for democratic socialists running for government positions. The Left’s campaign against the far right can’t begin and end with elections, but those elections have put leaders in office who have committed to using the powers of that office for the lasting improvement of daily life for their constituents. The latest win worth celebrating is (friend of the pod) Angie Nixon’s — because it’s a massive victory when a democratic socialist wins a Democratic primary in what is (for now) a deep-red Trump stronghold state. We spend time with that victory, thinking about it as a new example of a familiar and powerful situation repeated throughout history: during times of profound struggle and desperation for the 99 percent, it’s “a fighter with a bold new vision” — think FDR with the New Deal, think Bernie Sanders, think, in our own moment, Angie Nixon — who ultimately provides a path forward to justice and hope as the conditions of life become ever more untenable.

So, amidst the gloom of Trump’s ongoing war on the working class, we also have cause to celebrate when we find real fighters to show us the way. Thanks to Waj for joining us, and thank you for listening! This episode will be available as a podcast tomorrow on major streaming platforms and here on Substack.