Critics on the left and the right called out Cory Booker’s record-breaking speech this week for being “performative.” But what’s that all about?
Performance matters. Nobody wants to listen to a politician rattle off a list of statistical explanations. When you speak to people about something important, you need to make them feel a certain way, not just think a certain way. Otherwise, they are not going to act.
That goes for Booker holding the Senate floor for 25 hours (and making C-SPAN must-see TV), and that also goes for you, trying to convince your friends and neighbors to get together to go out to a protest if they’ve never been before. And that’s what we talked to political sage Anat Shenker-Osorio about this afternoon, along with what to make of the victory in the Wisconsin supreme court election, how to talk about the tariffs (and how to avoid the trap of explaining too much), why the Democrats missed the mark on the budget, and how to plan for the Hands Off! protests this coming weekend. As with anything Shenker-Osorio has to say, you won’t want to miss it.
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A programming note: More Live conversations!
Join us again next week for two great live discussions. On Tuesday, April 8, at 11:00 a.m. Eastern, we’ll be speaking with the author, documentarian, and political commentator Joy-Ann Reid, and on Thursday, April 10, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, the philosopherand author Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò will join us. We hope to see you for both!
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When we talked to former Donald Trump lawyer and confidant Michael Cohen last week, he spoke to us in a way few people can about how he’s dealing — very personally — with life under this regime. You’ll want to see the entire conversation, but what really struck us was his ability to look back on his own experience of misplaced loyalty (he went to prison on campaign finance charges stemming from the Stormy Daniels payoff scandal) to find lessons for us all about living bravely through this moment.
We know some of you prefer reading to watching, so we’re publishing text excerpts of the conversation below. If you missed our live conversation, we encourage you to watch the video above.
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How do you, given what you're holding… you've held what you've dealt with what you've gone through to fight this administration what you're holding now in terms of all the knowledge and of what's happening and the same way everybody else in this stream and everybody on the stream has not gone to prison the way you have but are experiencing the blizzard of of insanity the way you are. How do you attempt to keep healthy, keep your mind, you know, working?
Like, what do you, at a very practical level, because I think a lot of people are dealing with this just when they open up the news on their phone. What are you trying to do to stay sane, given all of this?
The busier that I keep myself, the less I have time to think. The more time that I have to think, the worse the PTSD gets. Sleeping is a disaster because that's when your mind works overtime. I haven't had a good night's sleep in probably seven years.
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WATCH: Has MAGA peaked?
Tuesday, May 20, 2025 • Duration 01:19:51
We just had a long and very challenging Live conversation with Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, journalist and novelist Ross Barkan, and our friend (and former Trump advisor) Michael Cohen. We talked about how the reality of Donald Trump’s presidency has upended American politics, not least for Trump and the MAGA movement. Rep. Himes, a noted pragmatic centrist, is now willing to talk seriously about progressive ideas like Medicare for All. Cohen’s trajectory out of the Trump orbit has made him a fiery advocate for constitutional rights. And for Barkan, the first months of Trump 2.0 signal that the MAGA brand has peaked and is in decline. Watch the whole video for their thoughts on what’s next.
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More Live conversations this week!
Tomorrow, Wednesday, May 21, at 12:30 p.m.Eastern, join us for this week’s Book Club meeting. We’ll be joined by Abundance authors Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. Then on Thursday, May 22, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, we’ll talk with author and finance expert Ramit Sethi, then at 4:00 p.m., we’ll be speaking with the journalist Jim Acosta. We hope you can make it to all of these great discussions.
To join and watch, download the Substack app (click on the button below) and turn on notifications — you’ll get an alert that we’re live, and you can watch from your iOS or Android mobile device. And if you haven’t already, subscribe to The Ink to access full videos of past conversations and to join the chat during our live events.
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WATCH: The leaders we need
Thursday, May 15, 2025 • Duration 06:03
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit the.ink
We talked about the tension within the Democratic Party between the centrists who feel that they’ve gotten it right all along and only need to tweak messaging to win elections and those who see the need for a real policy change, whether postmortems of the 2024 election have value, how housing is shaping politics and leadership along generational lines, the power of showing up and protesting from the Visibility Brigades hanging signs on freeway overpasses to the activists who showed up to protest Medicaid cuts at the Rayburn Building this week, and the challenges for younger leaders — in Democratic politics and in any private or public organzation — as they try to break with the models of the past and redefine what it is to lead, work, and build in the future.
We hope you’ll check out the full video above and pick up Amanda Litman’s new book for more of her insights — even if you’re not a millennial!
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WATCH: Winning the fight against Trump — and the peace
Friday, May 2, 2025 • Duration 38:56
We just got off another truly inspiring Live conversation, this time with Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the former physician, epidemiologist, and public health official running for Senate in Michigan. He talked to us about what being a child of immigrants taught him about America, why he moved from public health to politics, his vision for the future, and why defeating Trump isn’t just about winning the political fight, but winning the peace with a radical empathy that addresses the insecurity MAGA voters feel, and brings them around to a shared idea of the America that could be.
As El-Sayed told us:
So often we are so frustrated by where we are as a society, about all the pain that we've seen at the hands of Donald Trump, that we want to go to those folks who support him and be like, “Don't you see how stupid this decision was?” And we want to prove them wrong.
And I think if we're serious about the future, we've got to get them to being right. And that's a very different process.
That's not about me being right and you being wrong. That's about you being right because I created a space within which you felt safe enough to have a sense where you could look at facts and reality and say, “You know what? I made a mistake.” Where we're not going to jump on them and be like, “Yeah, you did.” No, no. Hey, we're all trying to move forward here. We get that sometimes when scary, powerful people come along, that they turn other people against the truth. So let's get folks to be right.
You won’t want to miss this one, and we hope you’ll share it far and wide. Let’s keep going. Let’s keep growing. Thank you, one and all.
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WATCH: Is A.I. the new colonialism?
Tuesday, May 27, 2025 • Duration 01:00:05
We just got off a call with the technology journalist Karen Hao, the keenest chronicler of the technology that’s promising — or threatening — to reshape the world, who has a new book, Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI.
The book talks not just about artificial intelligence and what it might be, or its most visible spokesperson and what he might believe, but also about the way the tech industry titans resemble more and more the empires of old in their relentless resource extraction and exploitation of labor around the world, their take-no-prisoners competitiveness against supposedly “evil” pretenders, and their religious fervor for progress and even salvation. She also told us about what the future might look like if we get A.I. right, and the people who produce the data, the resources, and control the labor power can reassert their ownership and push back against these new empires to build a more humane and human future.
You won’t want to miss this, so check out the full conversation above, and click on the image below to get a copy of Hao’s essential book.
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More Live conversations this week!
Join us tomorrow, Wednesday, May 28, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, whenwe will meet Live with The Ink Book Club to wrap up our discussion of Abundance, and on Thursday, May 29, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, when we’ll be back with messaging guru Anat Shenker-Osorio. We hope you can make it to both conversations!
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WATCH: Anand live with Jim Acosta and Aaron Parnas
Thursday, May 22, 2025 • Duration 57:33
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More Live conversations next week!
Join us next Tuesday, May 27, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, when we’ll talk with author and journalist Karen Hao about her new book, Empire of AI. On Wednesday, May 28, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, we will meet Live with The Ink Book Club, and on Thursday, May 29, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, we’ll be back with messaging guru Anat Shenker-Osorio.
To join and watch, download the Substack app (click on the button below) and turn on notifications — you’ll get an alert that we’re live, and you can watch from your iOS or Android mobile device. And if you haven’t already, subscribe to The Ink to access full videos of past conversations and to join the chat during our live events.
The Chief Justice is my friend. He's presiding over the end of the rule of law: Conservative jurist J. Michael Luttig
Thursday, July 3, 2025 • Duration 01:06:46
Sometimes, it’s not what someone says that matters, but who says it.
If I were to tell you that I believe the chief justice of the United States is presiding over the end of the rule of law in this country, you might care, you might not care, you might think, There Anand goes again.
But what if the person saying that is one of the most revered jurists in the conservative legal movement? What if he was considered by Republican presidents as a Supreme Court justice? What if he counted Antonin Scalia as his mentor, and helped ensure that Clarence Thomas ended up on the high court bench?
What if the person, additionally, counted Chief Justice John Roberts as a personal friend? What if they were still friends?
In that case, would it arrest you, would it make you take notice, if that person, with those credentials and relationships and history, were to say he believed his good friend was presiding over the end of the rule of the law in the United States?
I hope it would.
Because that is what just happened in a stark and fascinating interview I just had with former federal appellate Judge J. Michael Luttig.
I asked him what he would say to his friend the chief justice.
We got into it all. I pressed Judge Luttig on whether he believes Trump is a wild aberration, or rather a logical outgrowth of the conservative legal revolution of which Luttig was a card-carrying member.
I asked him whether he believes corporate and oligarchic power have grown unjustifiably in American life, and, if so, whether that, in his view, was a bug or a feature of the right-wing legal revolution.
And, on this July 4 eve, I asked him what he believes Thomas Jefferson would have made of Donald Trump. The judge has been sitting with the text of the Declaration of Independence in recent days, attempting to rewrite it for the usurpations and aspirations to freedom of 2025. I encourage everyone to read that at Telos.
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WATCH: The emerging peace majority
Tuesday, July 1, 2025 • Duration 47:50
We just talked live with Matthew Duss, the foreign policy scholar and former Bernie Sanders advisor. He gave a powerful whirlwind explanation of the recent U.S. war with Iran (remember it?), and we discussed everything from the 14 million deaths the U.S.A.I.D. cuts will reportedly cause, to the effects of the war in Gaza on trust in Democrats, to the new budget bill’s supercharging of ICE, to whether foreign allies will stand with the American people against anti-democratic American leaders.
Most importantly, perhaps, Duss talked about the possibilities for a left-right, progressive-MAGA, keffiyeh-and-cowboy hats coalition against war and for peace.
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We just talked live to our regular Monday guest, the scholar of authoritarianism Ruth Ben-Ghiat, and 2,600 of you. We dug into Trump’s war on reality itself, as evidenced in his lies about the success of his bombings of Iran’s nuclear sites, and the gaslighting of calling Trump’s cruel budget “beautiful.”
Ruth explained how Trump has been able to achieve many of the goals of dictators even as the United States remains a largely free society. The ends may be the same, but Trump is adapting the means to what is legally possible in the United States.
We also talked about how Zohran Mamdani’s victory as an unabashed progressive in New York City may point the way toward beating Trumpism — if the Democratic Party can be pressured to learn any lessons.
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And if you haven’t already, don’t forget to subscribe to Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s newsletter, Lucid.
Join us for more Live conversation this week!
Tomorrow, Tuesday, July 1, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, we’ll be talking to foreign policy expert Matt Duss.
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Remember, as of yesterday, yesterday was the seven-year anniversary of the raid on my home, the hotel room I was staying at, and my law office by the FBI that sparked this entire chaos.
My journey is not a journey that is anti-Trump. I don't care if the last name was Trump, if it was Jones, if it was Smith, if it was Cohen. It makes no difference to me what the last name of the president is. My concern is for what he is doing. So I tried to take my past affection and my loyalty to him. And I have pushed that way off to the side. I don't think of this as a Trump policy. I think of it as a President Trump policy.
And it may be hard for people to understand, but you know, I was incredibly close with him, 15 years basically sitting shoulder to shoulder with him, protecting him from basically everything,
providing him with advice and guidance that would only benefit him, not harm him. And sometimes, as I'm watching and I can't discern the difference between yesterday and then today.
And I'm wondering, where is the Michael Cohen in this inner circle? Where is the Michael Cohen in this administration? To say to him, before he announces this willy-nilly, self-inflicted tariff policy stupidity, “Mr. President, you can't do this. Let me just give you my prediction on how this is going to end up. You, of course, you're gonna do whatever you want, but let me give you my prediction.”
I did that in 2017 after Steve Miller, the immigration ban, which was really a Muslim ban. And I was in the office shortly thereafter, like a day or so, and he asked me what I thought because they were intending on doing a second round of it. And I said, “Mr. President, can I speak freely?”
He goes, yeah.
I said, “You're f*****g crazy.” Just like that, in his office.
Are you f*****g kidding me? You know I have hundreds of friends who are Muslim, right? Some of whom are my best friends since 1984.
So I said, “You're basically telling them they have to leave the country. How is it possible that you think it's OK to ban an entire religion from the country if it has to do with just Somalia? OK, I understand that. But you can't make it this broad.” And he took my advice to heart. And that's why you didn't see a 2.0.
There is no Michael Cohen there. And sometimes based upon my loyalty that I had in my relationship that I had to him going back to like 2005, I sometimes I almost feel like I want to pick up the phone, call him and say, “What the f**k are you doing? Why? Knock it off. Do something that will give you a legacy that future generations with the last name Trump will be proud of. Not wrecking the global economy. Who gives a s**t if Xi Jinping comes on his f*****g knees begging to you, begging you for forgiveness? How does that benefit Trump? Your legacy, how does that benefit the American people? How does it benefit future generations?”
It does not. And that's the problem. This entire group of enablers — they're only worried about themselves. This is all.
Do you think you could break through to him in some way because of that history of loyalty in spite of everything that's happened? If you made that call, do you think it would go anywhere?
Today?
Today?
No, I don't think he would even take the call. I don't think he would even take the call.
If the two of us were sitting in a room, just us, and we both were able to lower the fences that we have built around us to protect ourselves from each other. Yeah, I'm certain he would have listened. It wouldn't have taken a Bill Ackman or a Jamie Dimon to get him to reverse what he was doing here.
Because somebody breathed into his ear this notion that these tariffs are going to be great for him. It's gonna be a major win. And ultimately, America will be better off for it. It's gonna bring back manufacturing.
No, it's not.
We're never going back to being a manufacturing country. Too expensive in this country to manufacture. Other countries do it better and much cheaper.
And so these are the struggles that I live with. I live with anger. I live with sadness. I live with confusion. I live with yesterday being in solitary confinement with no food, no ability to shower, no change of clothing for 51 days, or my 13 months in Otisville, the unconstitutional remand, when they first took me, because I refused to sign a counterfeit document. Imagine how far Bill Barr's administration, his Department of Justice, went in order to unconstitutionally remand me.
They gave me a document that doesn't exist, that they wrote specifically for me. And when the very first paragraph is a massive First Amendment constitutional violation because I refuse to sign that document, I was handcuffed, shackled, stripped out, put into a paper jumpsuit, put into a freezer for three hours to the point I thought my teeth were gonna fall out of my jaw because I was so cold and my jaw was rattling so hard, I thought my teeth were gonna break. I've never felt cold like that before.
And then to be transported back to Otisville to be put back into solitary until, thank God, a million times for Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein and my attorney, Danya Perry, who filed that habeas corpus, and the judge determined it was retaliatory and a violation of my First Amendment, constitutional rights. A federal court judge had to enjoin the United States government, the DOJ, the Attorney General, from continuing to violate my constitutional rights?
How does something like this even happen? So for me, this is what unfortunately is on the loop that exists in my brain all the time.
It's what I wrote in my whole book. Revenge talks about this. And that's why I think it's important for me to continue to speak up so that it never happens to anyone else ever again.
That's almost the journey that unfortunately my life has taken me into. And I'm willing to accept it.
Well, I know everybody watching this joins me in feeling immensely grateful for your truth-telling voice now and sorry for what you have to go through every day, not just in the limelight, but just in your own life and the quiet of your own life to do that.
We are seeing in real time the opposite, generally in this society, a society with no bravery, no courage, people capitulating left and right. So it almost is like an alien phenomenon when you see someone who's willing to tell the truth, willing to stand up.
As you can see from all the hearts there, a lot of people are very grateful. So thank you. Always appreciate talking to you, and always appreciate your voice, and take care of yourself.
Watch the entire show, with philosopher Olufemi O. Taiwo joining Anand and Michael Cohen, at the link below.
And you’ll also want to see the powerful town hall Cohen hosted last night with Jim Acosta. It’s not to be missed.
A programming note: More Live conversations next week
We’re on the road this week, so we’ll be taking a break from our regularly scheduled Live conversations. We’ll be back next week with some very special guests. On Tuesday, April 22, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, we’ll talk with the economist Dani Rodrik. And on Wednesday, April 23, at 1:00 p.m. Eastern, we’ll be speaking with the writer, lawyer, and former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich. You won’t want to miss either one, so mark your calendars now!
To join and watch, download the Substack app (click on the button below) and turn on notifications — you’ll get an alert that we’re live, and you can watch from your iOS or Android mobile device. And if you haven’t already, subscribe to The Ink to access full videos of past conversations and to join the chat during our live events.
Readers like you make The Ink possible and keep it independent. If you haven’t already joined us, sign up today for our mailing list, support our work, and help build a free and fearless media future by becoming a paying subscriber. And if you’re already a part of our community, thank you!And we’d appreciate it if you’d consider giving a subscription to The Ink as a gift. Or consider sharing a group subscription with family and friends. Or pick up a mug, tote bag, or T-shirt! We appreciate it.
Come back next week for a full slate of Live conversations! On Monday, May 19, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, when we will be talking with the great economist Paul Krugman. Then on Tuesday, May 20, at 12:00 p.m. Eastern, we will speak with Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut. Then for our Book Club meeting (open to supporting Ink subscribers) on Wednesday, May 21, at 12:30 p.m.Eastern, we’ll be joined by Abundance authors Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. On Thursday, May 22, at 12:30 p.m.Eastern, we’ll talk with author and finance expert Ramit Sethi, then at 4:00 p.m., we’ll be speaking with the journalist Jim Acosta. And on Friday, May 23, also at 12:30 p.m.Eastern, we will talk to Working Families Party director Maurice Mitchell. We hope to see you all there!
To join and watch, download the Substack app (click on the button below) and turn on notifications — you’ll get an alert that we’re live, and you can watch from your iOS or Android mobile device. And if you haven’t already, subscribe to The Ink to access full videos of past conversations and to join the chat during our live events.
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That’s how we keep the lights on, pay our writers and editors a fair wage, and build the new media we all deserve. When you subscribe, you help us reach more people.
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Join us today. Or give a gift or group subscription.
A programming note: More Live conversation!
Join us again on Monday, May 5, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, when we’ll be back with scholar of fascism Ruth Ben-Ghiat. We hope to see you all there!
To join and watch, download the Substack app (click on the button below) and turn on notifications — you’ll get an alert that we’re live and you can watch from your iOS or Android mobile device. And if you haven’t already, subscribe to The Ink to access full videos of past conversations and to join the chat during our live events.
Readers like you make The Ink possible and keep it independent. If you haven’t already joined us, sign up today for our mailing list, support our work, and help build a free and fearless media future by becoming a paying subscriber. And if you’re already a part of our community, thank you!And we’d appreciate it if you’d consider giving a subscription to The Ink as a gift or for a group you belong to.Or pick up a mug, tote bag, or T-shirt! We appreciate it.
(click on the button below) and turn on notifications — you’ll get an alert that we’re live, and you can watch from your iOS or Android mobile device. And if you haven’t already, subscribe to The Ink to access full videos of past conversations and to join the chat during our live events.
But first: Watch this entire conversation. It is one I won’t forget for a long time.
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Spread the word, and let us know what you think in the comments.
