May 20, 2026
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1:03:00Now PlayingLincoln Project's Reed Galen on Trump's "White Reparations", Midterms & Our Broken System
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Hawk sits down with Reed Galen, one of the founding members of the Lincoln Project, for a wide-ranging conversation about the Trump administration's $1.776 billion reparations fund for January 6th participants, and what it signals about a presidency that has consistently outpaced even the darkest imaginations of its critics.
Galen and Hawk break down the mechanics of the fund, how it is structured around a secret five-person commission appointed by acting Attorney General Todd Blanch, and how Trump's known appetite for financial self-dealing raises serious questions about where the money actually ends up. The conversation moves into Trump's polling numbers, now hovering around 37%, and what that floor means for the 2026 midterms.
The two examine the Democratic Party's structural failures, from the DNC autopsy that may never see the light of day, to Chuck Schumer's pattern of extracting nothing from Republican negotiations, to the rise of left populist candidates like Zohran Mamdani and the corporate establishment's coordinated effort to crush them before 2028.
Galen draws on his experience inside the 2004 Bush re-election campaign to explain how the MAGA base mirrors the Christian conservative movement that was underestimated for decades, and connects that history to why the Democratic Party keeps treating its own base as an inconvenience.
The conversation covers the Harris campaign's failure to counter the trans ad that aired nationally during college football, Thomas Massie and the Epstein files, Ken Paxton's endorsement by Trump over John Cornyn, voter suppression mechanics in Texas, the 2028 presidential race, Galen's new organization civicforum.org, and whether the entire American political system is even fixable from the inside.
#ReedGalen #LincolnProject #TrumpReparations #January6 #Insurrectionists #Midterms2026 #MAGA #DemocraticParty #ChuckSchumer #KenPaxton #ThomasMassie #ZohranMamdani #KamalaHarris #DNCAutopsy #Epstein #PoliticalSatire #BreakingNews #CurrentEvents #Politics #Democracy #Government #TrumpPolling #2028Election #HawkPodcasts #MDG650Hawk
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