The following is an abridged transcript from System Update’s most recent episode. You can watch the full episode on Rumble or listen to it in podcast form on Apple, Spotify, or any other major podcast provider.
System Update is an independent show free to all viewers and listeners, but that wouldn’t be possible without our loyal supporters. To keep the show free for everyone, please consider joining our Locals, where we host our members-only aftershow, publish exclusive articles, release these transcripts, and so much more!
Our esteemed host, Glenn Greenwald, is out today. So, I'll be guiding you through the show. My name is Lee Fang. I'm an independent journalist based in San Francisco.
Yesterday marked the hundredth day of President Donald Trump's second term in office. Like many Americans, I tried to keep an open mind for all his very well-established faults, Trump has forged a very new political identity for the Republican Party. One that has drifted away from deference to the business elite and more towards populist economics.
On the campaign trail, Trump promised to protect entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security. Trump and Vance declared last summer at the RNC that multinational corporations would no longer take precedence over the interests of average Americans.
On foreign policy, Trump bristled at the established order and signaled a strong interest in ending America's forever wars, especially the bloody conflict between Ukraine and Russia. Trump promised peace on day one of his administration in Europe.
For a moment after the election, he also seemed committed to negotiating peace in Gaza. His envoy for the region, Steve Witkoff, temporarily delivered a cease-fire, a momentary end to the Israeli military's bloodshed in the confined territory, and a release of hostages and prisoners on both sides of the conflict.
There were other glimmers of positive reform. Trump and DOGE promised to clear out the many bloated government contractors like Booz Allen and McKinsey, and Trump promised to end discriminatory DEI programs. Meanwhile, he announced a new golden era for free speech after years of suppressed speech from pandemic policies to stifling cancel culture, there was hope for a new embrace of free expression from this White House.
But the last 100 days, with some exceptions, have exemplified failure after failure, a series of false promises, lies, and mismanagement. Worst of all, the administration has lurched towards some of the most brazen forms of corruption and authoritarianism in modern American history.
Rather than cracking down on corporate power, we see tariff exemptions and mass pardons for corporate crime handed to Silicon Valley, Wall Street and for major Trump donors.
Rather than an era of free speech, we see a ruthless crackdown on campus expression, unconstitutional arrests of students for criticizing Israel and new speech codes that safeguard the country of Israel.
Rather than a break from the corruption of Hunter Biden, we see new era of graft and influence peddling, especially the self-enrichment of the Trump family using cryptocurrency.
Rather than the moment of peace, we have so far seen the resumption of Israel's war in Gaza and no end in sight to the brutal conflict in Ukraine.
Rather than an end to the weaponization of government, we see partisan weaponization of the government on an industrial scale.
On this episode of System Update, we'll bring on Leighton Woodhouse, a writer on Substack, to further discuss Trump's 100 days. We'll also discuss the latest clampdown on speech related to Israel with Lara Friedman, an advocate who promotes peace in the region.
My guest today is Leighton Woodhouse. Leighton is an Oakland, California-based writer, former union organizer. We often do a weekly kind of recap of the news in politics and other kinds of cultural and political issues on our Substacks and we host a podcast together. Since we are kind of hijacking Glenn's show, I think it makes sense to do a 100-day recap rather than just a weekly recap of the administration.
Lee Fang: Leighton, how's it going?
Leighton Woodhouse: Hi Lee.
Lee Fang: Just yesterday was the 100-day mark of the Trump administration. It's worth kind of just for giving an overview for listeners to the show who might not be audience members of our podcast. I think we have some different views, but we kind of share some concerns in the Venn diagram of people who were associated with the progressive left, who were very badly burned and had a lot of concerns around the last four or five years, around the pandemic, around censorship, around suppression of free speech, around some of the public safety issues that the left kind of ignored.
I mean, you live in Oakland, where it's much worse, but in San Francisco, we've had such incredible problems around kind of de-policing and, out of this kind of left-wing outburst in 2020, a lot of harmful policies that have disproportionately affected working-class people.
So, I've had kind of guarded optimism about the Trump administration. I was hoping for a clean break around some of these issues around speech, around public safety, around some of the illiberalism from the left, DEI and other concerns. In some ways, in the first few weeks of the administration, I think there were many glimmers of hope, but it seems to have taken a pretty dark turn. I think for folks who are feeling very politically homeless over the last couple of years, we're even maybe more homeless, or maybe being pushed back into the left. How do you feel?
Leighton Woodhouse: I feel like we've been consistent actually, because if our reservations with the left back in, say, the period of 2015 to 2024 or so, was its creeping authoritarianism, the way in which dissent was squelched through cancel culture, orthodoxy was enforced, that kind of thing, this is just a continuation of that, with a different political valence.
When I say continuation of that, I mean it's the exact same playbook, specifically around antisemitism and in creating safe spaces on campuses. This is identical to what we saw under the left and so, I think that if you were concerned about that with the left and you're not concerned about it now, then you are inconsistent, possibly hypocritical and partisan in your outlook.
The principal position I think is to be opposed to this kind of authoritarianism, whether it comes from the right or the left and I just see it as a repeat. It's just a fun house mirror of what happened with the left.
Lee Fang: You were told, we were told, everyone was told, if you didn't agree with some of the extreme policies of the left over the last couple of years, shut up, you're a racist. You shut up, you’re a bigot. And now it's, if you don't get onto the agenda of the Trump administration on Israel, you're an anti-Semite unless you agree with us, and we're going to put you in a cage. We accuse you of that even if there's no evidence of wrongdoing.