The Secret Clubhouse for Reactionary Plutocrats
On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Chris Lehmann on the group chats where billionaires scheme and moan.

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On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Chris Lehmann joins Jeet Heer to discuss the Group Chats where billionaires scheme and moan.
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Entrepreneur Marc Andreessen speaks onstage during TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2016, at Pier 48 on September 13, 2016.
(Steve Jennings / Getty Images for TechCrunch)Silicon Valley has moved to the right in the last few years, with Elon Musk being the public face of a larger trend of tech lords aligning themselves with Trumpism. We now have a window into just how reactionary Silicon Valley has become thanks to reporting about private group chats where the tech elite gather to complain about wokeness and celebrate Donald Trump’s plutocrat-friendly policies.
My Nation colleague Chris Lehmann wrote about these group chats in a recent column. He joins the podcast to explain exactly why these wealthy leaders are becoming open supporters of autocracy.

Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.
Writing in Foreign Policy, Matt Duss argues that Donald Trump’s rush to war is both
stupid and illegal. It is also wildly unpopular with the public. But he also observes that
congress has been reluctant to challenge Trump’s policy, although some progressives
have now forced the issue to a vote. Matt is a frequent guest of the show and foreign
policy expert. I talked to him about the dangers of a new war and also the larger
systematic problems of the imperial presidency.
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Even before February 28, the reasons for Donald Trump’s imploding approval rating were abundantly clear: untrammeled corruption and personal enrichment to the tune of billions of dollars during an affordability crisis, a foreign policy guided only by his own derelict sense of morality, and the deployment of a murderous campaign of occupation, detention, and deportation on American streets.
Now an undeclared, unauthorized, unpopular, and unconstitutional war of aggression against Iran has spread like wildfire through the region and into Europe. A new “forever war”—with an ever-increasing likelihood of American troops on the ground—may very well be upon us.
As we’ve seen over and over, this administration uses lies, misdirection, and attempts to flood the zone to justify its abuses of power at home and abroad. Just as Trump, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth offer erratic and contradictory rationales for the attacks on Iran, the administration is also spreading the lie that the upcoming midterm elections are under threat from noncitizens on voter rolls. When these lies go unchecked, they become the basis for further authoritarian encroachment and war.
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