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PODCAST

The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich exposes where power lies in our system — and how it"s used and abused. robertreich.substack.com

news politics

All Episodes

9:30

The roots of Trumpism (Part 1)

The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich ·

2022/06/28

Donald Trump’s legacy — a proto-fascist movement we might call Trumpism — includes a Supreme Court rapidly taking America backwards, state legislatures suppressing votes and taking over election machinery, and an emboldened oligarchy taking over the economy. While the January 6 committee is doing a fine job exposing Trump’s attempted coup that culminated in the attack on the Capitol, it is not part of the committee’s charge to reveal why so many Americans were willing — and continue to be willing —

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3:15

When I was Baby Jesus

The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich ·

2022/06/27

When I was in kindergarten in 1951, I was the shortest kid in all of Lewisboro Elementary School, Public School #1. Not surprisingly, perhaps, I was cast as Baby Jesus in the annual school Christmas pageant. My role didn’t require much preparation or talent. I just had to lie on some straw strewn on the stage and look at children playing Mary and Joseph, the three Wise Men, and assorted angels, and then sit up and join the rest of the school in prayer and carols. The problem for me was that even at

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4:37

The rogue court and the fight ahead

The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich ·

2022/06/27

Friends,Like many of you, I found it a difficult weekend. As Friday’s decision by the six Republican nominees on the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade sank in — along with Clarence Thomas’s threat to use the same logic to put a whole range of other rights on the chopping block, including marriage equality and full access to contraception — I became aware once again just how fragile are the rights we assumed we had. In just two days last week, the court deferred to the states on reproductive

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11:25

The extreme right on the Supreme Court and the Big...

The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich ·

2022/06/25

My informal weekly coffee with Heather Lofthouse (Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action, and my former student), discussing the past week. Today we talk about three things giving Heather a headache and making Bob’s blood boil — the Supreme Court become so radically rightwing that even John Roberts has lost control over it, a Republican Party become so nuts that it’s impervious to the January 6 committee hearings, and economists and policymakers at the Fed become such apologists for

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4:32

The shame of the Supreme Court

The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich ·

2022/06/24

If there’s any doubt about the extremism of the Supreme Court’s six Republican appointees, it was on full display today with their opinion in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overrules Roe v. Wade, establishing the right to an abortion. Roe had been the law of the land for almost fifty years.Even more ominous is Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion, in which he argues that the same rationale the court used to overrule Roe should be used to overturn cases establishing rights to

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Who should benefit from fighting inflation? Average...

The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich ·

2022/06/23

Yesterday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell, testifying before the Senate Banking Committee, said outright that the Fed’s higher interest rates won’t lower the prices of gas or groceries. Hello? Gas and food prices are the two items hitting families the hardest, and the Fed is openly admitting that raising interest rates will do nothing to ease the burden? What rate hikes will do is force millions of Americans into joblessness and make families poorer. As Senator Elizabeth Warren said during her questioning

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0:55

Office Hours: Breaching the wall between church and...

The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich ·

2022/06/22

Yesterday, the Supreme Court knocked down part of the wall between church and state with a ruling that’s likely to force taxpayers to fund religious indoctrination at Christian schools. So, today’s questions: (1) How much do you think the same conservatives championing this decision would freak out if they thought their tax dollars were being used to fund Islamic madrasas? And (2) if religious institutions can receive tax dollars and make partisan political endorsements, while receiving billions in

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6:31

The real drama behind today's fourth hearing

The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich ·

2022/06/21

Today’s fourth hearing focused on how Trump corruptly pressured state legislators and election officials to change election results — leaning on state officials to alter the vote and to create slates of fake electors pledged to Trump — and their unwillingness to go along with Trump. But under the surface of today’s hearing and its revelations lurks the civil war that Trump has created within the Republican Party — between the dwindling number of Republican officials who maintain their oaths to the

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How to end corporate welfare

The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich ·

2022/06/21

Friends,As Congress prepares for summer recess, average working Americans are facing increasingly hard economic times — including a likely recession (see here). Yet Congress has so far failed to provide most Americans with what they need to weather the storm — subsidies for childcare and eldercare, paid sick leave, an increase in the federal minimum wage, lower pharmaceutical costs, additional help with the next strain of COVID, and so on. At the very same time, American corporations are lining up

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9:06

Why the January 6 committee is failing to slow...

The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich ·

2022/06/20

We fool ourselves if we believe that the televised hearings of the January 6 committee are changing the direction of the Republican Party, or that the hearings will end the attempted coup that Trump launched immediately after the 2020 election. The G.O.P. is becoming ever more divorced from reality. Trump’s attempted coup continues unabated. The first three hearings of the House January 6 committee demolished the myths of voter fraud repeated incessantly by Trump and his supporters and amplified by

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14:36

Will Merrick Garland prosecute Trump? Is Ginni toast?

The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich ·

2022/06/18

My informal weekly coffee with Heather Lofthouse (Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action, and my former student), discussing the past week. Today we cover the third hearing of the January 6 select committee, why the committee isn’t turning over its transcripts to the Justice Department, what’s the connection between Ginni Thomas (wife of Justice Clarence Thomas) and John Eastman, the Fed’s dangerous decision to raise interests rates by another 0.75 percent, and celebrating the summer

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3:56

How much I owe Alice Camp

The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich ·

2022/06/17

Today marks the end of the school year for many public schools. Every year about this time I think of Alice Camp. I arrived in her third-grade classroom in Lewisboro Elementary School, in South Salem, New York, as an extremely short, shy, insecure 8-year-old who was often bullied and mocked on the bus and made to feel like a loser on the playground, and had no particular interest in school. But she saw in me something I didn’t see. She fed me books, projects, ideas. She challenged me and praised me

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5:05

The mysterious John Eastman connection

The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich ·

2022/06/16

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol held its third public hearing today — focused on Trump's efforts to pressure Vice President Pence to refuse to count lawful electoral votes on January 6: the gonzo plan that lawyer John Eastman came up with. But where did John Eastman come from? And how did he ever reach Trump in the first place? The committee didn’t touch on this today. (When Eastman appeared before the committee he invoked his Fifth Amendment right

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8:51

What the crypto crash tells us

The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich ·

2022/06/16

Last Sunday night, as cryptocurrency prices plummeted, Celsius Network — an experimental cryptocurrency bank with more than one million customers that has emerged as a leader in the murky world of decentralized finance, or DeFi — announced it was freezing withdrawals “due to extreme market conditions.”Earlier this week, Bitcoin dropped 15 percent over 24 hours to its lowest value since December 2020, and Ether, the second-most valuable cryptocurrency, fell about 16 percent. Last month, TerraUSD, a

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1:57

Office Hours: Is there any way to push Garland to...

The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich ·

2022/06/15

Friends,Bennie Thompson, chair of the January 6th Committee, has told reporters that the committee has no plans to make a criminal referral to the Justice Department. This strikes me as absurd. The major purpose of the committee’s carefully constructed prosecutorial brief is to clear the runway for indictments. The pushback on Thompson’s statement was instant, beginning with vice chair Liz Cheney, who put out a statement flatly contradicting Thompson: “The January 6th Select Committee has not issued

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8:21

What you really need to know about the likelihood of...

The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich ·

2022/06/14

Last Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its May Consumer Price Index (CPI) report, which showed inflation worsening. Yet the bigger story — and bigger worry — is not inflation. It’s the distinct possibility of recession. Or perhaps both (what’s termed “stagflation.”) Here are the questions I’m getting asked most often, and my answers.1. Are we heading for a recession? Many signs point in that direction. New home construction slowed in April. Mortgage demand continues to decline. Some of

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9:32

Liz Cheney for President?

The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich ·

2022/06/13

Friends, I trust Joe Biden’s steadiness and judgment, and if he runs again, I’ll probably back him in 2024. But today I want to suggest someone who isn’t even a Democrat, and whose positions on many issues I (and I suspect you) strongly disagree with — but who could possibly be the best president of the United States for the perilous time we’re entering.I’m referring to Liz Cheney.Before you reject this idea out of hand, please bear with me. Even if you still end up thinking it’s a ludicrous notion,

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How do we measure the success of the Jan 6 hearings?

The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich ·

2022/06/11

My informal weekly coffee with Heather Lofthouse (Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action, and my former student), discussing the past week. Today we cover how to measure the success of the hearings of the House January 6 committee, which began Thursday night; inflation (the Consumer Price Index came out yesterday, showing that inflation continues to increase) and its impact on the midterm elections and on the rest of the economy; and — in the midst of all this — Salsa dancing and

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2:16

A final thought on the hearings: How Trump will be...

The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich ·

2022/06/10

What’s the use of the hearings by the House committee to investigate the January 6 insurrection —hearings that began last night and will run for the next several weeks — unless they lead to criminal prosecution of Donald Trump for his patently criminal actions? In a word: History. We tend to underestimate the importance of an historic record. But it is vastly important. It charts the course of the future by illuminating the course of the past. It is literally the final word. I don’t know whether

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4:43

For me, the 2 biggest questions about tonight's...

The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich ·

2022/06/10

Tonight, we learned several things from the first hearing of the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol:1. After the riot began on January 6, many White House officials, including members of Trump’s own family, urged him to call off the rioters. He did not. Presumably the committee will provide detailed evidence of this. 2. When told that the rioters wanted to lynch Vice President Pence for being unwilling to stop the certification by electors, Trump said

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