Ring of Fire is a podcast hosted by Sam Seder that began as a radio show in 2004 by Mike Papantonio. The show focuses on exposing corporate fat cats, polluters and media spinmeisters. Members get our full 3 hour radio show commercial free! [Become a Membe
This week on Ring of Fire!
As he prepares to leave the Senate, and possibly American politics as a whole, Republican Senator Mitt Romney offered a warning to America: You don’t get to complain if Trump does what he said he will do. There is a lot of apprehension around the country right now as people reel from the thought of Trump’s economic policies, but Romney reminded us that Trump was very clear about what he was going to do, so we have no rooms to complain.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders urged President Biden to seriously consider issuing some preemptive pardons to the people that Donald Trump is threatening to go after once he returns to office. Sanders made the comments during an appearance on CNN this past Sunday, while adding that Trump’s rhetoric is making him sound like a “tinpot dictator.” Preemptive pardons could be risky, but it may be a risk worth taking.
Judge Juan Merchan this week made the decision that Presidential immunity does NOT cover the crimes for which Donald Trump was convicted in New York. The day after the decision, Trump got on Truth Social and had the meltdown of all meltdowns, ranting that the judge was “psychotic” and throwing a massive tantrum. But Merchan made the right call on this matter.
Marjorie Taylor Greene managed to unite both the Right and the Left this week when they joined forces to ridicule her relentlessly after she went full anti-vaxxer on Twitter. Greene proclaimed that she fully believes that vaccines cause autism in spite of the mountain of evidence that has not once found a single link between the two. She even earned a massive fact check from Twitter (X) itself on top of the ridicule that she experienced.
All that, and much more, on this week’s Ring of Fire Podcast!
This week on Ring of Fire!
Donald Trump has finally announced where his failed attorney Alina Habba is going to land in his new administration, and she will be serving as the new Counselor to the President. This position was previously held by Kellyanne Conway, meaning that Habba has officially become the new Kellyanne. Her job, just like Conway’s, will be to give Trump advice but most importantly to go out and do interviews about how awesome he is.
During his interview with Meet The Press on Sunday, Donald Trump served up an incomprehensible word salad where he appeared to imply that he invented the word “groceries.” He was asked about prices and inflation, and instead of giving a coherent answer, he went on a long rant about “groceries” and then pivoted to how amazing tariffs are – but he still wouldn’t say that consumers will NOT pay higher prices under his policies.
All hell broke loose during a recent city council meeting in the small town of Middleton, Ohio, when JD Vance’s mother demanded that the city honor her son and recognize the “role” that he played in Donald Trump’s reelection. The city plans to honor him, but they don’t want to rush to any conclusions just yet because he hasn’t even been sworn in. This is now the second time in as many weeks that a Republican had his mommy go out and advocate on his behalf.
All that, and much more, on this week’s Ring of Fire Podcast!
This week on Ring of Fire!
A new piece from The New Yorker has revealed some shocking allegations about Donald Trump’s pick for Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth. The report, which was based on a whistleblower’s report from Hegseth’s time in the military, claims that Hegseth was frequently intoxicated, made comments like “kill all Muslims,” and had complaints about misogynistic behavior. If these allegations are true, Senators need to make it clear right now that they won’t vote to confirm him.
Donald Trump has issued a strong statement AGAINST President Biden’s pardon for his son, Hunter, even though Trump said that he was open to giving Biden’s son a pardon just a few months ago. The media played right into Trump’s “disgust,” and they are going to be the ones that weaponize the pardon long before Trump even has the chance to do so.
Republican Congressman James Comer has spent the past 2 years investigating Hunter Biden to no avail, and now he’s apoplectic that Hunter has received a pardon from his father. Comer posted a scathing message on social media, accusing the President of lying for years about pardoning his son. The rest of the MAGA world is also furious, but it doesn’t matter. This whole thing is only a shock to people who have their fingers far removed from the pulse of American politics.
Ted Cruz has emerged as one of the biggest butt-kissers of Donald Trump, and he’s apparently refusing to let anyone else take that mantle away from him. During an interview this week, the irony-proof Cruz actually criticized the Morning Joe crew on MSNBC for not just kissing up to Trump, but “kissing even lower” than anyone else. But the crude sexual innuendo completely ignores Cruz’s own history.
All that, and much more, on this week’s Ring of Fire Podcast!
This week on Ring of Fire!
It’s Thanksgiving week, so we’re doing another Ring of Fire Q&A session featuring questions from our YouTube Community members.
Will Trump make it to the end of his term?
How did Harris lose to Trump?
Why won’t Farron run for public office?
All that, and much more, on this week’s Ring of Fire Podcast!
This week on Ring of Fire!
According to “Trump whisperer” Maggie Haberman, Donald Trump isn’t harboring any delusions about Matt Gaetz’s chances of being confirmed as Attorney General, and she claims that he’s admitted in private that the odds are below 50% right now. But he’s not giving up, according to Haberman, and he is on the phone with Republican senators constantly begging them to get Gaetz through.
A federal judge appointed by Donald Trump has blocked an overtime pay rule from the Biden Administration that would have guaranteed overtime pay for more than 4 million salaried workers across the country – and millions more would have been eligible next year. The rule has been stalled as employers were trying to prevent having to pay workers for their time, and now millions of people will be forced to work longer hours without any overtime.
Members of the Trump transition team are currently discussing plans with Republican members of Congress to expand the 2017 tax cut package that mostly went to wealthy Americans. In order to pay for this extension, they are discussing cuts to social safety net programs like Medicaid and SNAP benefits. To put that another way – They are going to take money AWAY from poor people so that they can give themselves and their donors a fat tax break.
Marjorie Taylor Greene is bitter about the election for some reason, and she’s now at the point of saying that Democratic governors are possibly committing “treason” by enacting plans to protect their states from Trump’s policies. She said that she’s still open to the idea of a “national divorce,” which she claims would be horrible for Blue States. The stats don’t back that up, and Red States would be the ones to suffer the most.
All that, and much more, on this week’s Ring of Fire Podcast!
This week on Ring of Fire!
There are still a few House races that have yet to be called, but Republicans have already secured enough wins to maintain a majority of seats in the US House. With their flipping of the Senate and the White House, along with their control over the Supreme Court, this means that Republicans will control EVERY single branch of the federal government for at least the next two years.
According to Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, Donald Trump may already be breaking the law by refusing to sign an ethics pledge that was part of a legislative effort that Warren herself got through the Senate. The pledge is required by law, and it is intended to prevent conflicts of interest and profiteering off the presidency, something that became a hallmark of Trump’s first term in office.
With every pick announced for Donald Trump’s cabinet, a lot of people are thinking “it can’t get any worse than that.” And then the next pick comes along shattering that idea. Trump is managing to pick worse and worse people with each passing day, from a Fox News host that was labeled an extremist to the world’s richest and most immature man, Trump’s picks are scraping the absolute bottom of the barrel.
All that, and much more, on this week’s Ring of Fire Podcast.
This week on Ring of Fire!
Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election, shocking most of the country by tearing down the “Blue Wall” that was supposed to keep him from returning to power. But unlike 2016, Trump actually won the popular vote (as of right now) and he officially got his mandate to return to power. To make things worse, Republicans also retook control of the Senate, giving Trump a blank check on judicial appointments.
From Elon Musk to Alina Habba, some of the dumbest and biggest crackpots in the country are going to wield a lot of power. In fact, Trump made sure to point that out during his victory speech on Tuesday evening. This is going to be a rough time for people with common sense, but this is what the people voted for.
Donald Trump has been far more incoherent and unintelligible during this year’s campaign, and now that he’s heading back to The White House, one has to wonder what is going to happen to his mental faculties. The man was already unstable, but his increasing cognitive decline is going to present very real problems that he’s not prepared to face – and those around him aren’t prepared to handle. This is going to be rough.
All that, and much more, on this week’s Ring of Fire Podcast!
This week on Ring of Fire!
Donald Trump is falling apart with less than a week to go before the election. His Madison Square Garden hate rally is obviously getting most of the attention, but both before and after that his campaign was already descending into madness. He has called America a “garbage can,” fantasized about Marjorie Taylor Greene blowing up in a car accident, and even got called out by Joe Rogan for his lies. This is a campaign that is fumbling at the goal line.
A financial analyst for Fox News said on the air this week that the idea of people investing in Donald Trump’s media company was “laughable.” Even the stock price has rebounded after bottoming out in the teens just a few weeks ago, the analyst believes that the company is still headed towards disaster because there is no real way for it to sustain itself. The revenue stream for the company is virtually non-existent, and their expenses are through the roof.
During his rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday, Donald Trump teased that he and Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson had a “Secret” that they can’t share, but they would reveal it after the election. This led many to believe that Trump was suggesting that Johnson was going to vote to NOT certify the election results if Trump loses. Johnson is now in damage control mode, and he insists that this “secret” is just a “get out the vote effort.” That seems highly unbelievable.
All that, and much more, on this week’s Ring of Fire Podcast!
This week on Ring of Fire!
Cities across the country are struggling to pay their own bills after ponying up tens, and sometimes hundreds, of thousands of dollars to cover the added costs that Donald Trump’s rallies bring to their cities. And since Trump’s campaign is still refusing to pay the bills that they owe, these cities are often left with few options other than to just cut their losses and hope they can survive.
The administration of Ron DeSantis was slammed during a recent hearing with a federal judge over their attempts to silence a political opposition group that was running ads on local TV stations across Florida. The judge told the defendants from the DeSantis administration, “It’s the First Amendment, stupid,” as he blasted their attempts to silence political opposition. This came as an official for the administration resigned last week and through DeSantis’s underlings under the bus as directing him to threaten the TV stations.
A leaked “spoof” video that was sent out to workers with Elon Musk’s America PAC tells door knockers how they can get around the system and “fake” their jobs. In the video, that allegedly made its way to hundreds of PAC workers, they are shown how to use a GPS spoofing app to fool the door-knocking app they use, and then they were told how to fake the responses on the survey (but to make sure that they varied the responses so that they each seem unique.) Elon has a lot of answers to give about what’s happening at his group.
During a recent interview, Donald Trump falsely claimed that “nobody” has ever been treated worse in this country than the hundreds of people that have been convicted for storming the Capitol on January 6th. He then amended that to say that MAYBE Japanese Americans that were forced into internment camps during WWII were treated as bad. This comment drew immediate backlash from people who understand the history of the United States.
All that, and much more, on this week’s Ring of Fire Podcast!
This week on Ring of Fire!
According to a new report from The New York Times, the Trump campaign colluded with Elon Musk to suppress the release of information that had been hacked from the Trump campaign. This is what led to the Twitter ban of investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein (who has since been reinstated on the platform.) But this is EXACTLY what Republicans accused the Biden campaign of doing four years ago, and now they are the ones who actually worked with social media companies to remove unflattering content.
During a recent interview with The New York Times, Republican vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance was asked five times in a row to admit that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, and every time he deferred and changed the subject, or he engaged in attacks to deflect the question. This type of denial is incredibly dangerous to the safety of our elections, and it is further evidence of why Trump picked Vance to begin with.
Ted Cruz went on Sean Hannity’s program on Fox News on Monday evening to beg viewers for more money. This pitch for cash was timed perfectly with the release of internal polling from a Republican Super PAC that shows that Cruz is flailing in his Senate race against Democrat Colin Allred, and the two remain in a statistical dead heat with three weeks to go before the election. Cruz is getting desperate, and his pitch for cash is proof of that.
And Majorie Taylor Greene has spent more than a week trying to convince America that the government is creating hurricanes and sending them to attack Republican areas of the country. That’s why her recent post on social media made everyone laugh at her. Greene posted a picture of a man in a giant tinfoil hat that had the caption “everyone in America right now,” to which Greene added “Yep.” She didn’t realize the irony of her post and got immediately roasted by the internet.
All that, and more, on this week’s Ring of Fire Podcast!
This week on Ring of Fire!
The release of special prosecutor Jack Smith’s new evidence against Donald Trump made one thing absolutely clear: Rudy Giuliani’s incompetence may have been what saved the country. Giuliani, while working on Trump’s behalf to get Congress to NOT certify the election results, accidentally texted his plan for Congress to the wrong number, which then prevented Congress from getting the plan. Had this not happened, January 6th could have turned out very differently.
Not long ago, Donald Trump promised to release his full medical records to prove that being the oldest presidential nominee in history wasn’t that big of a deal. And now that we’re a month away from the election, the media is calling him out for failing to do so. Voters have enormous concerns about Trump’s fitness – both physical and mental – and releasing those records could go a long way to easing fears – or confirming them.
Tim Walz, without even doing anything, has managed to drive Republican House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer insane. Comer is abusing his power to launch an investigation into Walz’s connections to China, and right before the recent Vice Presidential Debate Comer sent a subpoena to the Department of Homeland Security for information about Walz. This investigation will end the same way that all of Comer’s other investigations ended, which means he’ll look like a complete fool again.
Donald Trump’s dumpster fire of a campaign is now burning through cash faster than money can come in. For the past two months, the campaign has spent more than it brought in, dropping Trump’s total amount of cash on hand to a little over $230 million (which is still a lot, but not nearly as much as the Harris campaign has.) The biggest problem, however, is that Republicans have no idea where Trump is spending the money.
All that, and much more, on this week’s Ring of Fire Podcast!
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