Trump's Dirty Secret Exposed and the Democrats Who Let Him Get Away With It

26 Mar 2026 · 16 min · 8 chapters

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In short

The episode argues that Democrats failed to hold Donald Trump accountable for classified-document theft and other alleged crimes, and that Democratic “corporate moderates” enable fascist or authoritarian politics. It also warns that this dynamic could incubate a future far-right president.

Guests

Wajahat Ali, a left-leaning writer/commentator and host of the “Left Hook” Substack.

Key claims

New Jack Smith documents (via Jamie Raskin/Judiciary Democrats) allegedly show Trump stole classified documents, displayed a classified map on a private plane, and had materials accessible to only six people; prosecutors warned of aggravated national-security harm. The episode blames Biden-era DOJ inaction, especially Merrick Garland’s “slow-walk,” and criticizes Democratic leaders (e.g., Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries) for prioritizing private money and maintaining the “capital” system over accountability.

Notable examples

Trump’s alleged Mar-a-Lago document handling and FBI lying; pardons of convicted figures (including a money-laundering case and a Binance-related crypto partner); Benghazi hearings used to damage Hillary Clinton; references to Gaza/Israel funding and “pro-AI/pro-crypto” spending; Henry Cuellar voting for the SAVE Act and DHS funding after a fatal incident.

Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.

Chapters

Tap a time to open that second in VO

Democratic Accountability and Fascism

1:07 to 2:26

Discuss the failures of the Democratic Party to combat fascism under Biden.

“I get so angry every day that the Democratic Party, during the tenure of Joe Biden and his DOJ, that they didn't stop fascism.”

Criticism of Democratic Leadership

2:29 to 4:12

Explore the need for healthy criticism within the Democratic Party.

“These are three major sins since Gaza, which we're still suffering with right now.”

Hypothetical Scenarios with Obama

4:48 to 6:20

Discuss the implications if Obama had committed similar offenses as Trump.

“if, let's say, Obama's vacationing on all of this shit is in Honolulu?”

The Role of Accountability in Politics

6:21 to 7:27

Examine the consequences of a lack of accountability in political processes.

“If you cannot criticize the Democratic leadership, you're in a cult.”

Moral Collapse in Political Leadership

7:48 to 10:34

Analyze the moral compromise of Democrats and its impact on governance.

“fascists to keep the capital intact, to keep a corrupt economic system intact.”

Rising Threats in American Politics

10:36 to 13:14

Identify the dangers posed by far-right movements and the Democratic response.

“The great George Carlin quote, it's a big club and you ain't in it.”

Calls for Progressive Action

13:14 to 14:01

Discuss the need for progressives to take decisive action against the establishment.

“Because I don't think they realize the rage.”

Political Accountability and Democratic Strategy

14:01 to 17:04

Discussing the need for Democrats to assertively challenge their leadership and connect with voters.

“The Democrats have to have moral clarity.”
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Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

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1:07I get so angry every day that the Democratic Party, during the tenure of Joe Biden and his DOJ, that they didn't stop fascism. That they didn't stop a criminal from taking the country back over again. And I'm joined today as a therapy session, my friend Wajahat Ali, to discuss these things. And Wajahat, there is some breaking news coming out. Kylie, pop this up. Damning new documents from special counsel Jack Smith's investigation obtained by Representative Jamie Raskin and Judiciary Democrats reveal. Trump stole classified documents to advance his, quote, business interests. Trump showed a classified map to unnamed passengers on a private plane.

1:57Trump stole documents so sensitive, only six people in the entire United States government had access to them. Prosecutors warned that some of the materials posed, quote, an aggravated potential harm to national security. This is the shit, Wajahat. when I see this stuff, I'm like, why when you went to Mar-a-Lago, didn't you go in and get the motherfucker in bracelets and take him back and throw him in a cell?

2:26Wajahat Ali:We should be shocked, but not surprised. I've always said there's three major sins of the Biden administration. He did many good things. These are three major sins since Gaza, which we're still suffering with right now. The fact that he didn't leave and only gave Kamala Harris, what, two months. And then the third one, and I said this even yesterday in a speech, is the appointment of Merrick Garland, a human sloth who slow walked for four years what should be perplex, where like you said, Donald Trump and a cabal of Republicans who openly participated in a violent insurrection should have been prosecuted, should have seen the inside of a courtroom, should have been taken away in bracelets.

3:00Wajahat Ali:And this is what happens without any accountability. They were free to literally crime again. Everything that was just heard right there, I read it with you and I'm like, yep, that tracks. This is a man who stole classified documents, kept it in the shitter in Mar-a-Lago, lied to the FBI about keeping it right. The whole time we've seen him openly trade information, right, openly sit there and talk to Russia and Putin, openly grift. Right now, he's made$5 billion for him and his corrupt Tweedledee and Tweedledum son. And people are like, oh, I wonder, is he corrupt? He's pardoned CZ, the man who was convicted of money laundering, his freaking crypto partner, right, in Binance.

3:40This is a man who's so corrupt that literally, as we're talking about breaking news during this completely failed, unwinnable war in Iran, we're seeing them grift with insider information, Jen, right? We saw the violent insurrection. We saw him pardon the violent insurrectionists. And what did Joe Biden and Democrats do? I'm sorry. I know a lot of people love Joe Biden and Democrats. They deliberately slow walked it with Merrick Garland, who chose restoration instead of transformation. And they still haven't learned yet. And here we are. Here we are. And I think it's important that in order to have a healthy political party, you cannot be a Democrat and then say, oh, my God, MAGA is a cult.

4:21And one of the one of the signs that people look to from a cult is criticism is not welcome. And then you can't be on the Democratic side and then not openly, healthily criticize your political party. Every presidency, if you run for the big boy seat, you're going to be worthy of a lot of criticism. You have to have thick skin to do it. Every single president needs to be criticized so that each time we can hopefully move to a better country. I just want to ask you this. If it had been Barack Obama, the black guy, that had stolen documents that only six motherfuckers in the entire federal government had seen, and he shows them off on a private plane to earn more money, and the FBI finds out about this, and a Republican attorney general finds out about this, what do you think their next move is?

5:16if, let's say, Obama's vacationing on all of this shit is in Honolulu? What do you think a Republican DOJ would do in this situation?

5:25Wajahat Ali:We don't have to even think. I want to remind everyone that Kevin McCarthy, rest in peace, Kevin McCarthy, you were supposed to be the future leader of the GOP, the world's smallest violin. Remember that he openly said in 2015, Jen, that we did the Benghazi hearings to hurt Hillary Clinton ahead of the 2016 elections. Like a Bond supervillain, he openly tells you the plot. They did nonstop hearings, right, about Hillary Clinton, and she answered those questions. It was complete bullshit, but they tainted her. They would use full court press, even through the minority, to attack, attack, attack, control the narrative, hurt, hurt, hurt.

6:02These slots, Chuck Schumer, a somnambulist who sits there, I want to talk about accountability and affordability. my number one job is to give Israel all the aid that it needs right this is what we have Jen like literally the world is on fire like literally there's an illegal war these mother efforts are grifting like you said we just found out he stole classified documents who did he show it to I don't know let me just throw it out there maybe BB maybe Putin we have no idea maybe he sold our national security in a quid pro quo would it be I don't know outside the realm of imagination and then you have these weak, feckless Democrats.

6:40And I'm with you. If you cannot criticize the Democratic leadership, you're in a cult. You're in what I call blue anon. I don't need you anymore. And the Democratic establishment, Jen, has had us in a headlock for 10 years, and I'm tired of it. What they say is the following.

6:53Wajahat Ali:You're going to vote for us anyway. You're going to vote for us or this guy who stole classified documents and is a rapist and did a violent insurrection. You're going to vote for us. So shut your mouth. And I think you're with me, Jen. I'm done with it. we need to cull this party of these weak, feckless mother effers, the Jeffreys and the Schumers. And we need fighters. We need people who put on their freaking, what do you call the brawling brass knuckles and punch these guys. When they go low, we go high. No, when they go low, you take them out by their goddamn knees, which is a very legal UFC fight.

7:24And so it goes back to the Merrick Garland of it all. Because I see the Merrick Garland mindset still with this

7:30Wajahat Ali:democratic establishment. You can't tell me, Jen, after 10 years, Donald Trump is a unique existential threat to my democracy and the GOP is fascist, and then still vote and confirm his members. Make that make sense. I completely agree with this. You cannot, I believe that what we have, and scholars point to this a lot, you see that in autocracies that liberals will collaborate with fascists to keep the capital intact, to keep a corrupt economic system intact. So it's mainly to protect private equity, to protect private money. And so that's what we're seeing right now. And we have to be clear-eyed and we have to criticize the Democrats that are fascist collaborators.

8:15There's no question that Chuckles and Hakeem are fascist collaborators.

8:19Wajahat Ali:Absolutely. But what makes them that? This is something I'm interested in because I was talking to Kyle Kalinske the other day and he said, you know, maybe BB has, you know, compromising Epstein footage on all of them. And I said, you know, that's what we think it would take for us to be able to do that. I think that what it is, is that once you start taking, you sell out your moral convictions and you take a little bit of money from this lobbyist, the gun lobby, big oil, big pharma, Israel, et cetera, it starts breaking you. And so we, The collapse, the moral collapse that scholars talk about starts with our lawmakers and then it trickles down.

8:58That's one thing that actually does trickle down is the moral collapse. And this is where I am traumatized kind of right now. And so we can, you and I can work through this together, Waj. I'm with you that they know that at the end of the day, we're not going to vote for Donald Trump or for little Moses Mike Johnson or Josh Hawley or any of these fascist Christian nationalist guys and that would end up voting for the Dem. And we have to say, no, you take our vote for granted. As a person who lived in a red state for 51 years, I really struggle with this because the harm reduction of a corporate Dem for the young queer person or for a black woman, a poor black woman in Oklahoma, which that's where these draconian abortion laws affect.

9:49They don't affect wealthy women because they'll be able to fly to another state and have an abortion. They affect poor women. And I just, I really struggle with this. I really, really struggle with what I just fucking live out and vote for the lip. And I kind of think I would, even though currently right now I'm doing everything I can do to fight and get the Democrats off the corporate tit. But this is a big conversation that our party needs to have right now. Because for marginalized people in red states, I can tell you firsthand from experience, a corporate democratic federal government is life-changing for marginalized people in red states that live in MAGA supermajority states.

10:33Wajahat Ali:Yeah, it's a very good question. And this is where I'm at right now. The great George Carlin quote, it's a big club and you ain't in it. And that big club consists of complicit Democrats who take money from AI, crypto, Palantir, and also AIPAC. I'm sure you've seen that clip of me and Hakeem Jeffries where I ask him, you know, why. Yes, so good. And he was more angry at me for asking him that question than he's been angry at actual Republicans. I don't understand what you said. I don't understand what you said. And I'm at that position right now where for the past decade, Jen, they have held us in a headlock, like I've said.

11:09Wajahat Ali:And they honestly believe that we'll vote for them no matter what. And here we have literally an illegal war. Here we have pro AI and pro crypto groups spending half a billion dollars in California after a poll came out that showed two to one Californians want to tax the billionaires. We have Gavin Newsom when he's given a softball down the middle with this interview with Aaron Sorkin Ross. Hey, will you tax billionaires? What did he say? They're part of the big tent. And just this week, he said, I love Israel. I am a Zionist. I revere Israel. I walk back my criticism of calling it apartheid. I was just quoting a Thomas Friedman article.

11:47Wajahat Ali:And then you see these centrists, right? They keep saying, well, don't you want a centrist Democrat instead of, I don't know, Republican? And I tell you, Henry Cuellar voted for the SAVE Act. Henry Cuellar, the centrist, voted to fund DHS after they killed Renee Nicole Good. With centrist like these, Jen, who needs MAGA? And so I say we have six months. This is it, folks. This six months, the culling. We got to do it now. It's primary season. We only have six months. We have to put the fear of God in these Democrats. And I see where they see where the tea leaves are going. I think they realize it.

12:24Wajahat Ali:I'm sure you read about that Axios news article that said that they want to get chuckles out. There's something called the Fight Club, and apparently there's Senator Schatz. Yeah. They think, wait a second, we can play possum. That's what the Crypt Keeper James Carville said. Play possum. Don't fight. Say nothing. Oh, look, you're winning these special elections. And look, Ken Martin said, oh, we're winning. We don't have to release the audit. We don't have to change. We can do reformation instead of transformation, and we can back a Gavin Newsom, and guess what? He'll be pro-AI, pro-crypto, he'll give them some crumbs, and it'll be fine.

12:59Wajahat Ali:My fear is, Jen, if we have free and fair elections, I don't know if we will, and suppose you get a Gavin Newsom type of centrist corporate moderate, and we get a 2028 Gavin Newsom presidency, I will guarantee we will get our first Nazi or first America, first Tucker Carlson presidency. Nick Fuentes. Because I don't think they realize the rage. And I don't know if we've talked about this. The type of folks who are going to Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, listen, this is my warning to your audience. You're not taking that threat seriously. They're moving further to the left of the DNC when it comes to criticism of Israel, criticism of wars, criticism of military industrial conflicts, and criticism of AI.

13:37Wajahat Ali:And by moving to the left of the DNC on these core issues, they're gobbling up so many disaffected Democrats, Jen. They are. And my fear is, and you know this, you hear this, and you see that they go on the WhatsApp, they get these little clips, and like, I think Tucker's changing. I think Candace is on to something. And me and Mehdi, I talked to Mehdi Hassan about it all the time, we're like, bang your head against the wall trying to de-radicalize people. People are radicalized, Jen. And we got Frank Schumer on February saying, my number one priority is to make sure Israel gets all the funding that it needs.

14:10Jen, what can I do? They listen to you. They don't listen to me. No, I've been warning my listeners that we are incubating a president, Tucker Carlson, or even later in the terms, Nick Fuentes, because they are getting – when Marjorie Taylor Greene is outflanking people in 30-second soundbites, that's a real problem. problem. The Democrats have to have moral clarity. The best thing the Democrats could do right now, in my opinion, would be for the progressives in each, the House and the Senate to go nuclear and say, we're done with Chuck Schumer. We are done with Hakeem Jeffries. We're going to have press conferences every single night, updating the American public on what we're doing and have a split screen, you know, Pudding Boy, whose brain is cooked, stroke victim, talking about Hannibal elector and then have, you know, Democrats, Chris Van Hollen, Chris Murphy, Senator Warren, sitting there spitting facts and saying, we're not going to do this.

15:05We're going to fight tooth and nail and really putting up a resistance and quit letting these morons control the narrative. So we're in, we're in the same place. I just feel like everybody's out here right now. You know, we're all getting mass abused and these are the big questions that are coming, but I'm a hundred, 100 % with you, we have six months to make our party better. And to the Democrats that get their panties in a wad because other Democrats are getting criticized, you're no different from MAGA. I mean, one of the earmarks of a cult is you can't criticize within the cult. And so we have to be the party of free thought, free thinking, not censoring criticism, because that is the exact opposite of what we want to project.

15:50Okay, Waj, tell my listeners where they can find you.

15:53Wajahat Ali:You can find me on the left hook sub stack. I'm a terrible capitalist. Everything is free. There's no paywalls. I'm like a non hysterical Blanche Dubois. I depend on the kindness of strangers. So if you want to become a paid subscriber, great. If not, it's fine. It's free. Just listen and share the content. I hope it helps. And the last thing I want to say is someone told me, well, what can we do? We can't do anything. We're helpless. I disagree. I believe, again, we have to put the fear of God in these Democrats. We have six months, and I'm telling you, they're looking at the polls, and they're seeing in these special elections, Jen, I think people are misreading the special elections.

16:30People aren't voting Democrat. These are Trump voters so pissed off at Donald Trump that they're going to Democrats against Trump, but they're not actually becoming democrats which explains why the democratic party has a lower favorability rating than this rapist vulgarian so democrats you better wake up and you better sell us something and i want a fighter who promises accountability and affordability affordability and gives me specifics

16:53Wajahat Ali:and if you ain't willing to put on those brass knuckles get the f out and if you don't get out we're gonna call you love it love it go support my buddy and we will see you all soon thanks for coming on.

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From the publisher

We are joined by Author Wajahat Ali to discuss Trump's increasingly blatant theft from the American people and the Democratic response to it.


Order our new book, join our Substack, shop our merch, and more by clicking here: https://linktr.ee/ivehaditpodcast.

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