The Inevitability of Luigi Mangione

Jordan Chariton of Status Coup News questions why murder by policy is more acceptable than murder at gunpoint.

Click the image to listen / read along on the RP website

When there’s an attack on a high profile (read: white) target in the US, media attention is aimed at the perpetrators. If the act was politically motivated, that fact is either used to explain their psychopathy or dismissed altogether. The December shooting death of a UnitedHealthcare CEO has had a different reaction. As soon as the news broke, public sympathy was drawn to the shooter. The American people have too many horror stories about being denied medical coverage.

Jordan Chariton, of Status Coup News, joins Steve to look at the significance of this story as representation of people’s outrage against a system designed to ignore people’s needs and reward the economic elite. As Jordan suggests, Luigi Mangione, the alleged perpetrator, wasn’t just attacking the health insurance industry, he was attacking predatory capitalism.

Steve and Jordan discuss events of the past few decades, the futility of traditional political avenues, and the inevitability of a public breaking point and working-class uprising. Jordan’s coverage of the Flint and East Palestine crises have brought him into the lives of Americans who have been lied to and left to suffer the consequences of corporate malfeasance.

If murder at gunpoint is immoral, can you keep making excuses for murder by policy?

Jordan Chariton, Status Coup CEO, is an independent progressive journalist who has worked inside and outside the belly of the corporate media beast for over a decade. He worked at Fox, MSNBC, and TYT, before starting Status Coup. He is the author of the 2024 book, “We the Poisoned: Exposing the Flint Water Crisis Cover-up and the Poisoning of 100,000 Americans.” statuscoup.com

@JordanChariton on X

Status Coup News

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FULL TRANSCRIPT with EXTRAS

Steve Grumbine
00:00:42

All right, folks, this is Steve with Macro N Cheese. The year is 2025, and I am bringing on my good friend Jordan Chariton of Status Coup News to break in the new year with me.

We are going to be talking about Luigi Mangione, and we are going to be talking specifically about when you take away the normal pathways to getting things done, when you take away the people's voice, when you make elections a joke, when you make democracy a false promise, when you see people struggling and you walk right over them, when you are in such elite circles that you ignore the suffering of the people below you, when the working class finds it more acceptable to move in the direction of Donald Trump, then you know something has gone drastically wrong. Drastically wrong, being that we the people are not getting our needs met. And so Jordan has been covering the Luigi Mangione trial, the entire story.

He's had folks covering it on the ground out there in New York City. And I felt like this was a great opportunity for us to take all the macroeconomic understanding that we have and, and realize with all the best plans, with all the big hopes, with all the dreams of all the people selling us democracy and everything else, that the lie bubble has burst. And here we are now watching people take matters into their own hands. A CEO was shot and killed. You know, no tears spilled over here.

And the reality is, is that we should never be at a point where death is just sort of like, no big deal.

But when you recognize the austerity, the absolute capture of our government, the disgusting, disgraceful largesse of these corporations that are in business purely to deny us any form of health care, it becomes a pretty obvious outcome, right? This is the world that we now live in, whether we like that or not. So without further ado, I bring on my guest, Jordan Chariton.

Welcome to the show, sir.

Jordan Chariton
00:02:54

Thank you, kind sir. Happy New Year.

Steve Grumbine
00:02:57

To you as well, man. I appreciate you coming on talk about this, because this issue, I mean, you hear everybody trying to figure out, is it really Luigi, is it this, is it that? And they're talking all the, the technical details and stuff. I'm interested in that, I really am, but I'm more interested in why something like this even has come to be, why something like this has legs.

And, you know, we've both been around people that are very establishment friendly, and we've also been around people who have not been so establishment friendly. I think I fit into that category more so than establishment friendly.

But there are a lot of people out there who just think we're going to just vote a few more AOCs in the door and everything's going to be perfect and we're going to be all happy and life is going to be grand. But lo and behold, people are getting denied healthcare day in and day out. And some are tired of seeing their family members die.

It seems like some are tired of suffering while CEOs are making $30 million off the service denial business. What are your thoughts on this, man?

Jordan Chariton
00:03:58

Yeah, I think in the last four years, I guess you could say post Bernie-Neoliberal-Empire-Strikes-Back Era, you know, Biden presidency.

I think that among the mainstream media and all the infighting in the left, I think it's kind of just been hiding in plain sight that neoliberalism is still killing a lot of people.

And what I mean by that is a lot of the focus among mainstream media has been saving democracy and all that jazz, and the left has largely been kind of in a circular firing squad.

So I think a lot of the things that kind of animated us in 2016, 2020, you know, Medicare for All, and the horror stories of the predatory capitalist system - not that we didn't all feel it, but it wasn't being talked about as much. And I think that what happened with the killing of the UnitedHealthcare CEO [Brian Thompson] kind of just woke up the hibernating sleeping giant.

Because all of that, that brought so many people into the Bernie movement. Even before that, Occupy Wall Street, not just about the health insurance industry, but just predatory capitalism in general.

I think that kind of goes in waves. And the last few years, there hasn't been as much protest, there hasn't been as much organizing, not just on the left, just working class.

So I think this woke people up, for lack of better word, because a lot of people in our sandbox have been angry, cynical, and kind of fed up. So I think this has brought out a lot of people, not just on the left, but even the right. The predatory health insurance industry affects all of us.

I'm seeing it just in my viewership and the comments. It's not just lefties, it's people on the right and libertarians and no labels and people not even that interested in politics.

So I think that's why this has just animated the whole country. I think people, whether you agree or don't agree with what the alleged shooter did. Everybody loves a Robin Hood, right?

Steve Grumbine
00:05:57

This is true. There's no question about it. I find it humorous. Recently, James Carville wrote some op ed and you probably covered this as well.

But he's basically saying, "hey, I was wrong about Kamala Harris. It's the economy, stupid" all over again. And lo and behold, you and I, whenever we get together, it's always been the economic Hunger Games.

We see this, we see this clearly. And it is unfortunate, but there is a huge segment of society that truly is asleep, that truly slurps up mother's milk.

When they listen to mainstream media, they listen to the extreme party based propaganda, the capitalist propaganda of these mainstream outlets and they are just fine with it. It's just like, that's just the way it is, man. Everything can't be perfect, you know? But they get upset at all the right things.

The right things being the things that they're told to be upset about. And they ignore all the things they're told are, you know, that must be just a right wing whatever.

But lo and behold, you have Ben Shapiro out there trying to stir the pot and even his own people are saying, hey, Ben. Yo. I'm pretty pissed at this shit too. I'm pretty pissed that they're making money hand over fist and denying us healthcare. Right?

What do you make of the tone deafness? Do you think it's tone deafness or do you think it's more of a feature of the role that these actors play on the grand stage?

Jordan Chariton
00:07:23

I think a lot of these people like Ben Shapiro have become millionaires off of the culture war.

And sometimes they get kind of so immersed in their own BS Kool-Aid that they think their audience only cares about cultural stuff and don't realize that actually on the actual policies and issues, the right and left pretty much agree on many things, economically speaking.

I always say when I was covering Bernie and Trump in 2016, Trump's people, I would ask them, not a few, a lot of them said their number two option would be Bernie after Trump. They didn't agree with him on everything, but economically they agreed with him on a lot.

And Trump was kind of co-opting Bernie's policies on a lot, even though he didn't mean it. So I think the Ben Shapiros of the world, even Don Jr. Don Jr. was criticizing Mangione or kind of putting out thoughts and prayers with Thompson's family and his people kind of scolded him too.

So I think these right wing phonies and phony populists, they've been so successful in kind of weaponizing the culture war and bringing their minions along that maybe they misunderstood or underestimated the populist economic rage. It overtakes the cultural stuff a lot of the time.

So I think that's why a lot of those right wing grifters have been caught off guard by the reaction to Mangione.

Steve Grumbine
00:08:41

You know, as I think about it, everybody that voted and, you know, they had all these ideas of saving democracy and they're going to, you know, prevent fascism from coming. Well, I mean, we live in a fascist country right now.

The merger of corporation and state is near complete and you're seeing it like a circus act right now, before Trump even takes office, in the form of Musk prancing about like the court jester, not understanding economics, not understanding anything, but having a lot of opinions on things and Ramaswamy and the whole H1B visa world. I mean, the entire structure of society is teetering on a bunch of fake, silly narratives.

It's very difficult, when you understand the economic system, to listen to this and actually take it seriously. But unfortunately, they've got the ear of millions and millions of people who take this shit very, very seriously.

And as a result of that, you spend all your time being the negative Nancy telling them they're wrong. No, that's not right. No, look over here.

But in reality, the entire economic hunger games that you and I have talked about that quite frankly led to Luigi or any other Luigi in the future, they're happening.

Whether we vote for democracy or whether we show up in phone bank, whether we door knock, whether we lock arms and say this is what democracy looks like at a protest, I mean, nothing has changed anything about our government. Our government literally cracked down on student protesters on campuses begging them to stop funding a genocide.

Why in the world would our government listen to us when we're begging them to give us healthcare, when we're begging them to take the noose of student debt off of our necks, when we're begging them to basically just take care of our basic needs? There's no evidence that I can see anywhere that there is any meaningful, peaceful, vote based, electoral means to satisfy any of these issues?

Do you see a path? I mean, I don't see a path.

Jordan Chariton
00:10:50

I see a path. I just don't see a quick race to that path, if that makes sense. The path would be the general strike, which you and I have talked about quite a bit.

But, you know, we don't just send out fake pixie dust or fairy dust. We're honest that that's not going to happen overnight. And as currently constituted, that's just not going to happen.

I think people have reached their breaking point, but I don't think they're ready to act in the ways that you would have to act for something like that to happen. With that said, I think something interesting about Mangione in particular, that hasn't gotten as much attention. Maybe it will come out in the trial.

It's not clear to me that his main philosophy was about the health insurance industry; I think it was about capitalism.

If you read his Reddit posts, if you read, you know - alleged, I should say - but if you read the notes that came from his notebook, his manifesto, he seemed not to condone what Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber did, but agreed with his mentality on how, basically, technology is taking away our agency. Technology is basically creating a bunch of thoughtless robots who don't think for themselves.

He felt that people weren't actually accomplishing things, they were just kind of hooked to their phones. So I think he had a lot of concerns about capitalism and big tech in general, which a lot of people do.

And you're seeing it. I mean literally, Elon Musk is running the government, like, literally. Not a joke. And he's kind of openly bragged about rigging Twitter's algorithm to elevate right wingers. If you've noticed, your Twitter stream is now flooded by right wing accounts you don't even follow.

So I think that Mangione, obviously health insurance has been the focus, but it seems that he wanted to go after the capitalist order and he chose just a health insurance CEO. You know, from his writings, that's what it seemed.

Chris Hedges talks about this, that this is what dying empires look like and this is late stage capitalism. And I think this was honestly inevitable.

I'm surprised it hasn't happened earlier to a Wall street executive or just more people on Wall street, because obviously we know what Wall street did.

So I think everything you're saying is true, because at the end of the day, yeah, I mean, as good people, you're taught not to condone murder or violence. But I think what this is really starting to establish is kind of redefining what is violence, what is murder.

Steve Grumbine
00:13:13

Yes.

Jordan Chariton
00:13:13

The mainstream media is not going to cover it from that angle because they condone the murder and the violence against the proletariat. They're in on it. But I think that to them, murder is, you know, somebody like Mangione allegedly shooting somebody in the back.

But I think this is opening up the discussion of: murder is delaying someone who needs a mammogram - you know, that service - and that delay caught their breast cancer too late and they died as a result. That's murder. We could go through the horror stories that have been out there since this happened, of people's health insurance.

I'm waiting to do an interview with someone whose mom was a diabetic. The insurance company refused to provide the equipment needed for insulin. She died. They sent the equipment the day after her death.

So I think this is really redefining that capitalism - or as you have always said, austerity - is murder. They won't cover it as such. And it's not optically as appealing as somebody being shot in the back. But that's really what's been going on.

I mean, people died from the foreclosures in 2009, 2010, 2011. Homelessness is now up. It was up 12% in 2023, it's now up 18%.

And I think that's an undercount because that doesn't count people couch surfing and living in their cars. So I think the slowly dying masses are starting to fight back.

And I think it's kind of scaring the hell out of the capitalist order, which includes the CEOs, the lobbyists, the think tanks, the politicians and the media.

Steve Grumbine
00:14:46

I agree. There was a guy, his Name's Zachary Levy, MD. And he put a tweet out on the [December] 30th. It said "United Healthcare, UHC, just denied a claim on one of my patients in the ICU with a brain hemorrhage, in a coma, on a ventilator in heart failure, because I haven't proven to them that caring for her in the hospital was, quote, unquote, 'medically necessary.'" And his response was, "tear it all down." I appreciate you bringing up austerity is murder. And I've been saying this, as you know, for over a decade.

And during this MMT push that I've done in my own fashion, because clearly I am the pariah, the black sheep of the MMT community. You can tell that in many ways. But the fact is, is that I have stood on my truth, this truth that they are murdering us by other means.

They are murdering us by denying us healthcare, knowing full well they could give it to us without any problem, but choosing not to. They're denying us basic necessities not just us, but around the world.

And this tool of oligarchy, this tool of the capital order, this tool for disciplining labor, is what's been used to great success to destroy unions, to destroy the ability to unionize and fight back, to create the very conditions that make a general strike far more challenging to engage in. Because people are terrified of what they'll do if they lose their very, very scarce job. And as a result of healthcare being tied to jobs.

Even with theACA [Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare] which has been nothing but a cash grab for insurance companies, a basic income for rich CEOs in the insurance business, the claim denial business, we are watching the redefinition, the coming full circle for people that were previously pissy with me for saying that austerity is murder. No, no, Steve, it's not. It's not murder by policy. It's not murder by proxy. Steve, you're wrong. You're being too harsh, Steve.

And it always comes down to somehow or another I'm just not being sweet and kind enough that I'm not being more gentle.

When in reality, I have been watching this economic game be played to great precision to cull the weak, to cull the poor, to cull the undesirables, and to literally put people in communities where if they aren't killed by austerity, they're killed by the very culture that austerity has bred in their own local impoverished communities. And we sit there and point at them and go, see, there's a bad guy, that's the bad person over there.

When in reality you're asking people that have no means of surviving this, who have to find a way outside of the orthodox economy to survive. And that's a horrible situation. It's an absolutely unnecessary one, but it's one that has been government created, that has been oligarch created, that is capital created because the pursuit of profit is el numero uno.

Whether anyone wants to accept this or acknowledge this, I don't believe you're just going to go ahead and vote for the next Cory Booker and change everything. I don't think you're going to go out after Lizzie Warren and say, hey, you know, make it all better. Because she's a capitalist to her bones.

We are talking about a very system of gerontocracy of wealthy people who literally couldn't give a shit how many of us die.

And yet at the same time, we're supposed to put all our hopes and dreams there while they simultaneously do what Biden did by breaking strikes, by wrecking union actions. How do you envision these things coming to be? I know that you've talked to Shawn Fain.

I know that people like Sarah Nelson and others have tried to pull together combined dates for their contracts in 2028 to provide the foundation for a general strike. What are your thoughts on this? Because to me, it seems like we don't have any power right now. We don't have any collective will.

And the closest thing I've seen to a collective action was Luigi Mangione.

Jordan Chariton
00:19:06

Yeah, I think there's several things happening at once.

One, I think that obviously in the last decade economic conditions were bad even when the media was telling us, you know, the economy is great, but there wasn't the added gasoline of the price gouging and inflation. And I think since COVID and the greedflation and the corporate price gouging, even with gas prices a little lower, gas being still relatively high.

I mean, housing is out of control.

Good luck if you're under 40, buying a house, even if you're over 40, utility bills, expensive, everything, I mean, even your car insurance, everything has gone up. And most of it unnecessarily. It's not the company is passing off higher costs. Maybe at first it was. It's just them, as Jerome Powell told the aforementioned Elizabeth Warren, yeah, companies could raise prices because they can. And I think that at a certain point you could only slap people in the face so many times before they punch you back in the nose.

And I think that's kind of what's going on here.

And again, I've always said I'm not telling people to go get your guns, shoot down CEOs, because even if you think it's righteous, trust me, it'll boomerang back on us way worse if that starts happening en masse. But I do believe people have just been beaten down, beaten down, beaten down.

And how long can you beat down people economically and then say, hey, let's try to squeeze some more? Which has been the last few years of this price gouging. I don't even want to call it inflation because most of it's just companies ripping you off.

So I think that's part of what's going on. And I think also what you're seeing here with the Mangione thing, which is why I think the media wanted to move on from this as quickly as possible.

I mean, Steve, can you think of anything, any issue that has even been close to bringing the left and the right together? I'm not talking about one of these red/brown alliances.

I'm just talking about like legitimately left leaning people and right leaning people, like all agreeing and no gaslighting.

Steve Grumbine
00:21:05

Let's call it the working class.

Jordan Chariton
00:21:07

Yes, the working class. This is the only thing I've seen that's bringing people together.

The left and rght can't come together on mass shootings, can't come together on climate change. This they seem to be coming together on and in total agreement on.

And I think when you add in those factors of the last four years have been the additional slap in the face, you know, beating, which has been the price gouging. I think the masses have had it.

And I think that's why for the first time you're seeing the left and right being able to come together on something, which is why you're seeing the capitalist class and the media trying as fast as they can to break that up and to, you know, throw some more cultural shit out there to divide people.

Because once you take away the veneer of the culture war, you have most people that are experiencing the same exploitation, the same oppression, and would agree if you broke it down in English, what is happening. That's why Trump, I think, excelled in 2016, because he was seizing on that populist outrage that the left and the right both agree on.

Steve Grumbine
00:22:10

I think back to all the conversations you and I have had and you've covered on East Palestine [Ohio] and of course, your great coverage of the Flint [Michigan] water crisis. And these are microcosms of a much bigger problem, right?

I mean, and I don't want this to become about this because we've covered them in great detail in our previous talks. But they're part of this, right? I mean, they're part of this.

They know damn well that they could easily replace every single pipe in all of Flint, Michigan. They could literally shift the water supply back to the clean water that was at least there prior to the switching to the private water.

They could do all sorts of things. The federal government has powers that are so broad and vast, but we have no democratic means of making them do it.

So you watch these things and you see the people suffering and it doesn't matter if they're black, brown, gay, straight, Republican, Democrat. The water is still the water. The problem is whether or not you're rich enough to not live in that space where you have alternatives.

And then you go to East Palestine.

And I know for a fact in the coverage there that you were able to derive a much larger audience because simply covering the truth was not a partisan issue.

You had right wingers, Trumpers, MAGAs [pro-Trump slogan, Make America Great Again], coming out of the woodwork supporting your coverage as well as regular rank and file working class lefty liberals, mainstream people who saw things happening and were like, this is crazy, but the establishment once again covered it up.

And it's the cover-ups, it's the gaslighting, it's the fraudulent storytelling that you hear in the media about the country's broke and it's not able to pay its bills and oh my God, we've got a debt ceiling. However, are we going to survive? And I mean, even Trump of all people came out and said we should get rid of the debt ceiling.

I'm sure there wasn't a noble cause for doing it, but it is still shocking to hear the right answer come from the orange man that everybody wants to denigrate and wants everybody to freaking be, you know, in full Trump derangement over.

But in reality, if they listened, I mean, I can't imagine anybody willing to keep the debt ceiling in place unless it was just for some partisan win to say, yeah, we're not letting Trump get that, or whatever, but these are the very things, all of that, every bit of that is the way the government lies to us, the way the government acts against our best interests.

And then in some extreme, weird perversion, we think we're going to vote out the system, we're going to vote them out of power, we're going to put someone in there that'll do it differently. And I'm 55. I know you're a lot younger than me, but in my 55 years, I have never seen competent governance. I've seen good theatrical performances.

But, you know, Ronald Reagan was loopy, you know that he had dementia, you know that he wasn't really running the show, that his minions were running the show. And we know that Bill Clinton was being jerked around by the third way and his little gang and George W. Bush, the same thing. And on and on and on.

Obama, every one of them, these deep state actors, these folks that are not elected but that run the country because you know damn well Biden, who was drooling in his oatmeal, wasn't running the show. And you knew Kamala Harris, who didn't have a clue about a lot of these things, certainly wasn't running the show.

So you gotta wonder with the conjoining, if you will, of corporation and state. I think it's game, set and match as far as the American project goes in terms of our government being by the people, for the people.

Any mirage of that at all should be wiped out. There should be no credible way of saying that's still in existence. What are your thoughts on that?

Jordan Chariton
00:26:03

Yeah, I think also to that point you gotta look at the kind of lessening power of the mainstream media. I mean, it still has influence, unfortunately, because its core audience is 60 and up. And those unfortunately are the most reliable voters.

Those are who give you Hillary Clinton in primaries and Joe Biden in primaries. And those are the folks that watch CNN, MSNBC, read the New York Times, et cetera.

But those outlets have been diminishing as alternative podcasters and independent channels have been rising. Some less valuable than others, I would say.

But as the power and influence of mainstream media has gone down, I think a lot of people who were either previously not into politics or kind of didn't really get into this are now getting into it and getting pissed off because they're starting to connect the dots of why they're still living in their parents basement talking about Gen Z, why they're shackled in debt, talking about Millennials and frankly, older generations shackled in debt from student loans and others.

So basically, I think people who previously didn't have the information or didn't have the history or didn't have the truth, easily findable and presented to them are now, I don't want to say getting woke because that pisses some people off, but now waking up, for lack of a better word.

Steve Grumbine
00:27:21

Yep.

Jordan Chariton
00:27:21

Uh, the problem is, as you and I have talked about, that we're still in the keyboard warrior phase of things. We don't have an organized anything. Forget organized left. The right is organized.

But that's because a lot of the billionaires and Koch brothers are organizing it. Remember, the Tea Party was really just funded by right wing think tanks. So I think more people are waking up. The problem is there's really no organized vessel for that. There is no organized economic strike going on. There's no organized anything, really.

I mean, you see protesters going out for Gaza, for the latest black man slain, but there's no real threat attached to that. I don't mean a violent threat. I mean a threat to actually hurt the capitalist order.

I mean, protesting in front of Blackrock is fine, but how are you going to hurt their quarterly profits? And that part we don't see. So it's good that more people are waking up, but it's not enough to wake people up.

How do you gather them to actually take action? We're not there yet.

Steve Grumbine
00:28:18

Well, I know for myself, you know, I had been kind of pigeonholed into just MMT, MMT, MMT. And I feel like it's an extremely important subject.

I feel like it's a subject that I've tried my best over the last decade plus to put out there as often as possible, because I, I guess you could say, had an awakening to the futility of what I see as a political system meant to give the veneer of agency while simultaneously giving none.

You know, there was a time where I thought, hey, we could just go ahead and elect a few more progressives and have a Green New Deal and a job guarantee and National Health Service or Medicare for all, whatever. And I was about a pocket full of policies, right? That was the beginning and the ending of it.

But lo and behold, the more you see, the more your eyes are open to the absolute futility of fighting against a captured system, controlled system where people are being paid by people that have pockets so deep that your five bucks a month for, you know, donating to alternative media isn't going to touch the kind of corruption, the kind of payola, the kind of, you know, weird, sick, parasitic nature of the political class that is owned by the oligarchy, old money, the barons, you know, I mean, there is, in my opinion, nobody that is willing to look at that.

Intermission
00:29:51

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Steve Grumbine
00:30:11

You know, we did a video a little while ago, basically talking about riding on a Metro. And we're like, there's eight stops on the Metro, but everybody keeps getting off at the third stop.

Nobody's willing to go all the way to the eighth stop. And they were talking about how some people would, you know, if we went to the eighth stop. That's where the answers lie.

But everybody's afraid to go to the eighth stop.

And when you think about what it would take for us to do something about our situation, to come into an agreement with the facts and actually take action, that's terrifying to people. People are terrified. What does that even mean? They saw police beating the hell out of Ivy League students for protesting against genocide.

What do you think they're going to do to rank and file people who try to take on the Capitol Order and say, we want health care, we want these things? The MMT guys, the activists, they're looking to academics to give them permission to take action.

They're waiting for somebody of higher credibility and credentialism to tell them, hey, listen, we can't vote our way out of this. But unfortunately, I guess academia has its own problems and I guess they would be laughed out of the academy.

So they're busy telling people we can source the vote. We just need enough votes to make the things happen. But we've seen there's always a parliamentarian, right, Jordan?

There's a parliamentarian, there's a rotating villain, there's always some little [Joe] Manchin or [Kyrsten] Sinema waiting around the corner, or Cory Booker, you name it, to deep six anything. It's like a built in safety net to let everybody feel like, no, these guys have fought for us.

But there's always that one thing, the little pebble in the road that trips up the entire thing. I mean, what do you see when you, when you think about what I just said? Where does that take you given all the stuff that you've covered?

Jordan Chariton
00:32:04

I think that at the end of the day, it's just kind of human nature that at a certain point, if you're constantly being fed that same old broken record, at a certain point it's like, fool me once, you know, shame on you, fool me twice. And now we're on fool me, you know, times 100. So I think people are again, I hate to be as simplistic.

I think people are really just kind of starting to wake up because they're realizing, wait a minute, other countries don't have filibusters. Other countries don't have these bureaucratic maze and excuses why things can't be done. Other countries with far less wealth than us provide a whole lot more services.

And again, with the diminishment of the influence of the mainstream media and power of the mainstream media, people are realizing like, things don't have to be this way, things don't have to be this hard. And people are also starting to realize like, oh, wow, sure seems like there's a tale of two cities here in terms of income inequality.

Yeah, I think more people, particularly in the social media age, I mean, yes, there's a whole lot of crap and frankly horrible disinformation out there, but there's a lot of tools and information that have woken more people up.

So I think that along with, again, you know, when you have neoliberalism for 40, 50 years, but you just have a younger generation that clearly is not going to do as well as their parents or grandparents, people get fed up and people want to take action.

And I think that's why so many people are maybe going against what they've been taught in terms of supporting Luigi Mangione because they see Brian Thompson as the murderer. You know, and maybe what Mangione allegedly did is what people, you know, feel like, hey, we've tried it your way.

We've tried exercising, quote, unquote, "democracy" - the protesting and canvassing for candidates and, you know, phone banking and donating and all the levers you tell us to exercise if we want to influence policy. But there's always a parliamentarian, there's always a filibuster, there's always a reason, you know, a rotating villain. A Manchin, Sinema, Joe Lieberman. And I think people have had enough.

And frankly, these corporations, they could build more security, they could get more armed guards, they could build their forts and moats higher and thicker.

But I think Mangione, I don't want to say will inspire more violence, but I do think we're reaching a point where people are not going to just take the excuses anymore, and the parliamentarians, and it remains to be seen what form that action will take.

Will it be an organized strike where UAW and others kind of come together to line up their contracts and go on strike? I hope it's that. But it could be something else which is more violent.

Steve Grumbine
00:34:46

I was thinking about this earlier today. The reality that we're dealing with, I go back, it's much further back.

I mean, you can go back to Bernie part one, where Hillary was blaming Russia, but if you look at Biden's first State of the Union address, his very first one, he was targeting China as the bad guy. We gotta focus on China. But when I look at China and I'm just being a guy that's using his eyes, okay, China takes care of its citizens.

China's got the greatest technology. They got mass transit in ways that you wouldn't believe. The high speed rail they have is incredible.

The amount of technology that they put in, the services they provide their citizens is unparalleled. And you look at the way they've built out the Belt and Road Initiative across the Global South, it's clear that they are trying to build.

They're using goodwill. You look at that and you say to yourself, wait a minute, hold on. And you look down at Cuba and Cuba's come up with frigging vaccines for cancer.

We're looking around and we see everywhere but the U.S. thriving. And then we're looking at the idiocracy of our nation where people think that giving people free stuff or whatever is socialism.

They think somehow or another it's this western Marxism, cultural Marxism, all this nonsense.

Because fake news is news today in the anti-truth world and the anti-empirical truth. People are just rejecting sources because everything's been a lie so far. So they're like, are vaccines good? Was Covid real? Is this that?

I mean, all this bizarre misinformation that has really haunted us, quite frankly, and now people don't know what to believe. And so they're already caught in a skeptical position. And they're also in that weird place where they're like, I don't know what I can do about this.

So there's the other side of that.

Not the people that are enraged, that are ready to take action, but the other side of that where people are overwhelmed with this and they kind of shut down.

And I think that that kind of community that you were talking about, that older community that watches The View and really cares what Maddow has to say and watches the regular Sunday talk shows with James Carville and all the other Clinton machinists, you know, and the Obama boys and so forth, I think that they genuinely don't think there's a problem. They, I mean, it is funny to see guys like James Carville come out and say, hey, we need to stop the Trump derangement. It didn't work.

All the focus on Donnie Tiny Hands was a big failure. It flopped in our faces. It's kind of shocking to me to hear that over and over and over again.

It's like, hey, this is the stuff that the idiots you guys thought were bad lefties, like me, were saying forever. And as a result, now here we are, we've lost years of opportunity to organize, years of opportunity to do stuff.

And which I think at some level is good, because the organizing that took place under the AOCs and under, you know, even under Bernie, quite frankly, it always led back to the Democratic Party, which then led back to not stacking the court. Joe Biden skipped stacking the court, had every opportunity to reform the court and make it so that Roe v. Wade didn't fall.

He didn't do that, chose not to do that, chose not to end the filibuster, chose not to do anything that would have given him the power to thwart all this horrible fascism that Democrats are going to protect us from. But lo and behold, didn't do a damn thing. The best thing he did, quite frankly, was Lina Khan.

And they're doing everything they can to get her out of there. When you think about some of the other outlets, and I understand the Jimmy Dore side of the world, so we'll touch on that after this.

But on the other side, the Majority Reports the pseudo left, the Kyle [Kulinski] and others that kind of coddled Kamala and coddled this kind of fiberoni here. What do you see? Do you see them waking up or is their bread still being buttered by sticking with the establishment narratives?

Jordan Chariton
00:38:50

I don't consume a lot of those. I mean, I like Kyle, to be honest with you. I don't watch Majority Report that much.

But I think at the end of the day, why you and I probably see things a little differently than a lot of the commentators. I could speak for myself. I think 30, 40% of the time I'm not in a studio. I'm out in the country.

Steve Grumbine
00:39:10

Yep.

Jordan Chariton
00:39:10

It's like seeing what's actually going on. I know you've done a lot of activism yourself, so I think a lot of the independent media space is frankly kind of just shock jocks on the Internet. So what you would think of as traditional radio hosts, just on the Internet, some are more nuanced than others. Others are more bombastic.

But, you know, yeah, they call out the Democratic Party to a point, but they still in their bones believe that, like, Republicans are the worst evil. And on some things they are. But the problem is they're not out there in the communities that I'm out there in seeing that evil.

It's so beyond "Blue Team vs Red Team" or "Red Team is, you know, worse." They had. Both teams are basically in on it together. On the economic side, which is what you and I focus on.

On the cultural side, yeah, there might be more Christian fundamentalist nutsos on the right that want to do horrible things, but on the actual demolition of the working class in this country, they're one of the same.

And I think if you are predominantly somebody who sits in a studio living on the coast, that's not something you're going to see or feel because you're not seeing what I'm seeing. You're not sitting on porches with sick people in East Palestine. You're not in Flint with people that are sick 10 years later. You're not going to do reporting trips, seeing the gentrification on steroids in Democratic cities, Republican cities, both.

So, yeah, I mean, I think Kyle is better than most, but I don't think any of them, unless they go do a tour of America, are going to have that rude awakening that, yeah, on cultural stuff, on stuff that is important, you know, abortion and things like that, Republicans are worse. But on the economic order of the day, on climate. I mean, really, you're talking about death.

You're just talking about the choice between do you want to get shot in the forehead or slowly poisoned? Because that's the choice. Democrats are the slow poisoning. I think it's expediting. And Republicans are getting shot in the head. Either way, you're going to die. And that's the problem.

Another thing you mentioned that I want to seize on. I think people are starting to wake up to what the definition of a strong economy is in America.

Steve Grumbine
00:41:28

Yes.

Jordan Chariton
00:41:28

Because you know, you mentioned Cuba and these countries that actually do things for their citizens. They don't only do those things because like the leaders are moral and care about their citizens. That might be part of it.

But they do things because they're intelligent enough to realize, hey, if we have a healthier society, that's better for the economy overall, meaning the wealthy will do better if we have more productive, healthier people that live longer. Cuba seems to get that, China seems to get that if we give more money at the front for electric vehicles and other things, it'll be better for the climate, therefore better for the economy.

In America, there is no long term thinking because America's economy is not run on the long term health of the country or the long term health of the people. It's run on the next three months; quarterly stock performances, the stock buybacks, the dividends, you know, shareholder returns.

That's what a strong economy is in America. It's not the same thing in other countries. Sure, there are greedy people in other countries and there's corruption in other countries.

But there is some long term strategic thinking in China, in Cuba, and other countries because they realize if we educate the masses, meaning we front the money to educate the masses, that's better for the economy long term, even the wealthier people will do better. Same thing with vaccines and other. And that's the gap. I think I would call it the greed-is-good gap.

Those other countries didn't have their 1980s like Wall Street "Greed is good" moment. Yeah, it was a movie, but I think it was more than a movie. It was the Zeitgeist. So I don't know if you agree with that.

Steve Grumbine
00:43:04

Oh, I do.

Jordan Chariton
00:43:05

The other countries are having more long term thinking.

There's still greed as an element, but they get that, hey, if our life expectancy is higher, if people are better educated, if people are not strangled in debt, they could spend more money, thus helping the economy and the wealthier people.

Steve Grumbine
00:43:21

You know, look at the H1B visa discussion. You know, MAGA has been going around telling everyone, you know, make America great again, we're going to bring the jobs back.

We're this, we're that anti immigrant, anti-. And they, oh, no, Steve, it's not anti immigrant. We're, we're pro legal immigration, Steve.

And then you realize that ultimately people have been so snowed into a fake economic world where taxes fund spending, this fake world where they think that their hard earned tax dollars are going XYZ. So when they see people come from Mexico or when they see people come from other countries, they think, hey, they're stealing my job.

And they don't realize that that person didn't steal their effing job.

At the end of the day, capitalism, the companies themselves are making decisions to outsource their labor to around the world to cheaper labor centers, and they're literally cutting the people at home off. Now, that doesn't have to be a zero sum game. The government with infinite currency capacity could literally make everyone whole by employing them.

But instead they keep it as austere as possible. They create a scapegoat, which is core of fascism, and then they go ahead and they beat that scapegoat down.

You just see the recent terror attack down in New Orleans where you had a US Vet, literally drive a truck through a crowd, and then you see another one with a Musk cybertruck or whatever blow up outside of Trump Tower. It's kind of funny in its own weird way, but the slaughter down there in New Orleans was not funny in any way, shape or form.

But the first thing Trump said was something about we got to close the border. And there's Mary Tyler Greene or whatever the hell, Marjorie Taylor Greene, bally-achin'. Yeah, we got to close the border.

Every one of them went out there claiming that it was immigrants. And you know what? Everybody echoed it like a freaking trained circus seal. Arp, arp, arp.

Saying the same shit, clapping like wackos, when in reality it was a Texas US veteran that did it.

And so this concept of economic justice has extremely long tendrils, extremely long connecting points that don't always seem like they're a direct connection, but they are absolutely, 1 million percent, a direct connection. Because the reason why people hate immigrants or whatever in these groups is partially because they have my cultural values.

They're into identity politics in the big way. They want their white picket fence, white person identity culture. They want identity politics large and in charge.

There's nobody more identitarian than a MAGA. But in this case, they're out there blaming immigrants for this. And they didn't even correct themselves. They allowed it to go, et cetera.

So this is the fomenting of the enemy. This is the fomenting of a targeted enemy, that this is why you have problems. You have problems because of immigrants. They're your problem, they're your problem.

And this all ties back to Luigi, because what happens if you gave immigrants health care and whatever happens if you gave immigrants education and, you know, and they count on mainstream Americans in flyover countries and everywhere else to be dumbed down. This is why they make owning a house so expensive. This is why they make getting an education so unbelievably impossible to afford.

They do everything to make it so that being an educated, well rounded, sympathetic, empathetic person is the thing that's penalized.

And yet we're supposed to teach our children to be kind and gentle and love one another and all this stuff, but then they go to school to hear all this shit and they read about it and they watch it on television and our politicians do this stuff and all the theatrical performance that creates these buggaboos, these bad guys, these enemies, these... I don't know, they're the fodder. They're the Juden [German for "Jews"], if you will, of the Reich. I mean, they've created another bad guy.

And you could see how people didn't give a shit about the Palestinians. The callus has grown over on some of them.

How do you reconcile humanity with such a callous ability to cut people off like that, to just basically ignore the needs of people? Just be about mining my wants, my this, my that. I don't understand that level of selfishness.

Do you think that's human nature or do you think that's been manufactured by the system?

Jordan Chariton
00:47:50

I think it goes back to, remember I said the Luigi Mangione story is one of the first things to kind of fuse the left and the right together. And that's why the capitalist order is going to try and break that up as quickly as possible.

So Trump, who doesn't care about health insurance or people dying or, you know, corruption... first sign he saw it, even when he didn't have the facts, even when the facts clearly show this is an American city, let's hit on the culture war. Let's blame "the other," right? To again, divide people. That's, to me, what that is.

They want to blame immigrants even though clearly this guy wasn't an immigrant. Also, I don't know the full facts, but does seem, based on the reporting, that this guy was radicalized. But the conditions - he had some financial problems. In a lot of these situations, that's part of the igniting thing that radicalizes people is their floor conditions are not so solid, and he reportedly had financial issues.

So I think this is just more culture war. I mean, that's what the border stuff is. I mean, it's all culture war. These people aren't taking your job. The jobs they're taking, Americans don't want, for the most part. Wall Street is taking your jobs.

Steve Grumbine
00:49:00

Yep.

Jordan Chariton
00:49:01

So the same MAGA fanatics pissed off and joining the cult. These people have nothing to do with why your factories are shut down or your communities have been hollowed out.

But, you know, cults can be a very strong drug. And I think this example is again, trying to inject more of the cultural hysteria to divide people.

Steve Grumbine
00:49:19

I agree. So I want to close this out with a simple question. You and I have been working together for a long time. It's been good friendship. I've really appreciated the exposure that you've given me, and I appreciate the fact that you've allowed me a larger platform to get the MMT message out there. But in that process, one of the things that has been most exciting to me is the fact that you've come aboard with MMT, that you literally - I hear you, I'm not on there with you - I hear you dropping MMT into the commentary. I hear you shifting the way you talk about things.

What would you say is the thing that MMT knowledge now has opened your eyes to in the world that we're in? What would you say, you know, that has done for you? If anything?

Jordan Chariton
00:50:06

I think it kind of just formalized what my instincts were to begin with into a more coherent equation, I guess you could say. It never made sense to me: taxpayer money pays for all this stuff. I mean, I just couldn't imagine, like, how much taxpayer money could pay for 20 years of war.

I mean, the Afghanistan... Washington Post - you know, a broken clock is right twice a day - they did a great story a few years ago showing just in detail the scam that was Afghanistan. I mean, there was reporting in there that generals on the ground were being ordered to spend $300 million a day. On what? Doesn't matter, just spend it. And obviously there's not enough Americans to foot that bill with taxes.

So I think my instincts were always telling me, like, yeah, this doesn't make sense that we could cover all this stuff with taxpayer money. So I think, and the information you've provided and, you know, others I've looked into kind of formalize that. Unfortunately, you know, I think Bernie and others had a real opportunity to connect the moral message that they were pushing in terms of...

Steve Grumbine
00:51:13

Oh yes.

Jordan Chariton
00:51:14

It's not moral. With just like the obvious, "hey, sorry, taxpayers, you're not footing the bill for this. They're just printing the money."

I mean, he could have quoted from Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke, who have basically said, like, yeah, we're just moving decimals. So I think basically MMT just kind of formalized the gut instinct I always had. But I think you, you know, to kind of reverse it on you.

I think it's been good to see you evolve beyond MMT.

Steve Grumbine
00:51:40

Yes.

Jordan Chariton
00:51:41

Because MMT is. It's about modern monetary theory, but it's also about predatory capitalism, too.

Steve Grumbine
00:51:48

Yes.

Jordan Chariton
00:51:48

You can't.

Steve Grumbine
00:51:49

Yes.

Jordan Chariton
00:51:49

And I think you've evolved in that way too.

Steve Grumbine
00:51:52

Yeah. That conversion right there has been everything.

Because it was one thing to talk about the theoretical stuff, but then it will always come back to this empty, "we just need to source the vote."

And I started looking and digging and thank God for so many people that have brought the class consciousness and class awareness and an understanding of capitalism, quite frankly. I mean, I have an MBA [Master of Business Administration]. You'd think I know capitalism inside and out, but I do, from an MBA perspective, which means I've been propagandized, right.

I've been sold a bunch of lies, and I paid good money for it, too. So the opportunity to blend the two together has been nothing short of necessary, not just something good.

It literally is the natural outcome once you understand how the system works. And then you start asking questions like, why the hell isn't this stuff any better? Why isn't it any better?

You can't tell me everybody doesn't know this shit. It's convenient to say people are just ignorant and whatnot, but the people that are running the stuff, they do know.

And there's no one that can tell me differently, they do know. And this system, quite frankly, it's built to kill us.

It's built to keep wealth happy and to keep us thirsty and begging and desperate to do whatever they want us to do. So with that, Jordan, I want to thank you so much, man. Let me give you a final word.

If you had one thing that you think needs to be told in the framework of Luigi and this cesspool of a capitalist order we live in, what would be your parting shot?

Jordan Chariton
00:53:21

The media focuses on this guy, Luigi Mangione. And I've been covering, you know, his motives that we know, but it's really not about him. It's about people reaching their breaking point.

And we'll find out more about his story and what led to his alleged actions. But this is really about the predators preying on you and me and everyone else.

And that being kind of masquerading as a government, our government is allowing predators to prey on us is the simplest way I could say it. At a certain point, beware, because those you prey on will bite back. And I think that's a more 2025 way of John F. Kennedy's phrasing.

You know, "when peaceful resistance fails, violent revolution is inevitable." And I think you could only squeeze and beat on people for so long until people have nothing left to lose.

And I think that's what you're starting to see.

I hope it doesn't turn into mass violence, but at a certain point, people are not going to accept the mass, systemic, legalized violence that has been perpetrated on them. So I think that's what you're seeing.

But I don't want people to be lost in, you know, the memes are cool and the cult following Mangione is getting is cool, but it's not just about him. It's about the system he's re-exposed. And too many things that are not normal have been normalized.

It's not normal to have this unnecessary middleman which is the insurance companies and pharmacy benefit managers and all this bureaucratic bullshit maze so that these corporations could make money off our backs. It's not normal to have deductibles that reset every year. No one else has this but us. It's all a scam. People need to take action though.

And I don't want it to be violent action, but I hope people start realizing like, hey, we've been protesting now in like the 21st century for like 15, 20 years. From Black Lives Matter to climate to healthcare to you name it, we need to start protesting with our wallets.

I don't have all the answers how that happens, but it can't just be boots on the ground anymore. That's not getting us anywhere.

Steve Grumbine
00:55:25

Agreed. All right, Jordan, so I want to thank you.

Your book, Just so folks know, Jordan is the author of a fantastic book exposing the Flint water crisis, cover up, and the poison of a hundred thousand Americans. We the Poisoned by Jordan Chariton. Forward by Erin Brockovich. We've covered it here. We put the links out there. Please buy this book.

Jordan, where can we find more of your work? Obviously at Status Coup, but you're all over the place.

Jordan Chariton
00:55:54

Status Coup. C O U P. The book is now on audio too, for those that like to listen to books. You could get that at Audible and other places. Where else am I, Steve?

I don't even know these days. I'm so busy.

Steve Grumbine
00:56:06

You're on Substack. You're on Blue Sky. Twitter.

Jordan Chariton
00:56:10

If you could find me I'm on Twitter, but I think I'm shadow banned at this point. But, you know, the main one is YouTube and substack and hopefully, you know, definitely was hard to publish a book right before the election.

Hard to get attention on it with the election and everything. But if you haven't been able to get the book, definitely check it out because same thing, it's not just about Flint.

It is exposing a very, very corrupt government that has poisoned and then covered up the poisoning of 100,000 people who are now being left to slowly die. They're still sick now 11 years later. So thanks for that.

Steve Grumbine
00:56:47

Yeah, you got it, man. Now, thank you for joining me today. I really appreciate you talking through this because this subject, to me, I think of it like this.
The "austerity is murder" narrative coming to roost here. And, you know, we're getting to live it. We're getting to live it. All those people that told me I was wrong, well, hopefully you're not next on Luigi's list, so to speak. You know what I mean? Because this is happening and it's both terrifying and invigorating all in the same breath.

So with that, folks, my name's Steve Grumbine. This is the Macro N Cheese podcast. We are part of Real Progressives, which is a 501c3 nonprofit. Please consider donating to us.
We live and die on your donations. You can go to our website,realprogressives.org. Go to donate. Or you can check us out, Real Progressives at Patreon. You'll figure it out.

All right, on behalf of my guest, Jordan Chariton, and myself, Macro N Cheese, we are out of here.

End Credits
00:58:27

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