Protesting the Smash-and-Grab Presidency With Nikhil Pal Singh

About this episode

Nikhil Pal Singh discusses the chaotic nature of Donald Trump's presidency and the implications for protests and movement-building.

Donald Trump’s second term has been broadly defined by an overwhelming sense of chaos. Every week the U.S. finds itself in a new crisis of the president’s making. The war in Iran and the broader Middle East is stretching into its fourth week, as the administration prepares to send thousands of troops to the region for a possible ground invasion . The U.S. oil blockade on Cuba has plunged the country deeper into a humanitarian crisis. The Department of Homeland Security sent ICE to airports across the country on Monday to allegedly assist TSA agents who have gone without pay due to a partial government shutdown over congressional efforts to apply the most minimal of reforms to ICE. Meanwhile, Trump’s sons are backing a new drone company vying for a Pentagon contract as the president and his family have amassed about $4 billion in wealth this term, according to the Wall Street Journal .  “It’s a constant stream of violence, corruption, spectacle,” Nikhil Pal Singh tells The Intercept Briefing. “They smash, grab, move on. But I think now they've actually broken something.” The professor of social and cultural analysis at New York University and the author of several books…

People in this episode

Host: Akela Lacy

Guest: Nikhil Pal Singh

Topics covered

• Trump presidency
• chaos in politics
• protests
• movement-building
• humanitarian crisis
• government shutdown
• military intervention

Keywords

• Trump
• protests
• chaos
• humanitarian crisis
• government shutdown
• military
• ICE
• Cuba
• Iran

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: The Intercept, Department of Homeland Security, ICE, Wall Street Journal

Books & works: Race and America’s Long War

Places: Cuba, Iran, United States

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