The Big Ben Show: Matt Taibbi and Mark Schlereth

Cartels, censorship, and football

Sep 04, 2025

The latest edition of The Big Ben Show is here! You can watch the full conversations on YouTube below — and I hope you’ll comment, rate, review, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We’re seeing great growth with the revamped format and just want it to continue.

Trump’s Drug War is For Real

Axios:

More missiles. Fewer arrests. President Trump's war on drugs is officially a war, not a mere law enforcement action.
The U.S. has entered a new era in which narcotraffickers are classified as terrorists — and Trump is claiming the right to kill them before they or their drugs reach this country.
"The president's overall perspective is that, if there is a terrorist threat to the homeland of the United States, he trusts the military to take that threat out — whether it's a drug boat off the coast of Venezuela or an al-Qaeda terrorist in the Middle East," a senior Trump administration official told Axios.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Navy blew up a suspected drug-running boat off Venezuela, killing its crew of 11, according to Trump and Pentagon officials.
The attack marked the first time a suspected "go-fast" drug-running boat was destroyed by a military missile, according to officials and drug-war experts.
"There's more where that came from," Trump said in announcing the strike.
All other details of the shocking, caught-on-video missile attack are classified, officials said.
The attack was denounced by critics accustomed to the U.S. conducting the drug war as a law-enforcement matter in which high-seas interdictions mainly involve the Coast Guard.
Until now, the goal was to try to capture drug runners and their narcotics to build a case for federal prosecution.
What happened Tuesday was "a murder anywhere in the world," Colombia's president, Gustavo Petro, wrote on X. "We have been capturing civilians who transport drugs for decades without killing them. Those who transport drugs are not the big narcos, but the very poor, young people from the Caribbean and the Pacific."
"Trump admits he ordered a summary execution — the crime of murder," former Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth posted on X. "Drug traffickers are not combatants who can be shot on sight. They are criminal suspects who must be arrested and prosecuted."
That thinking is no longer operative, Trump says. On his Inauguration Day, he signed an executive order declaring certain drug cartels, including Venezuela's Tren de Aragua gang, as "foreign terrorist organizations."
Under U.S. law that gave Trump the authority to employ the military, administration officials say, in the same way that President Obama authorized a drone program that killed 3,797 people in 542 strikes aimed at suspected terrorists.
Trump also loosened internal rules that slowed military officials from conducting lethal operations against alleged terrorists.
"The National Security Council has taken out nearly 300 jihadists," the senior official said. "We are conducting strikes against terrorists weekly that no one even knows about."

Democrat Voters Prefer Populism to Abundance

Politico:

A memo obtained first by POLITICO cautioned Democrats about relying solely on the emergent school of thought, which criticizes overly bureaucratic regulations for slowing progress on housing production needed to drive down costs and infrastructure projects. It was penned by Kamala Harris campaign veterans Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster, and strategist Brian Fallon, along with the liberal economic group Groundwork Collaborative.
The strategists were joined by Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.) in briefing Capitol Hill staffers and Democratic operatives this week on polling and focus group data to substantiate their argument. The group is expected to present its findings again to congressional Democrats early next week, according to a person directly familiar with the schedule and granted anonymity to discuss private meetings.
“While there are elements of the Abundance agenda that have appeal, and the choice on which messages to deliver is not zero-sum, a populist economic approach better solves for Democrats’ challenges with working-class voters,” the memo read. “If candidates are asking which focus deserves topmost billing in Democrats’ campaign messaging, the answer is clear: though some voters believe excessive bureaucracy can be a problem, it ranks far behind other concerns and tackling it does not strike voters as a direct response to the problem of affordability.”
It described affordability as voters’ primary concern, and posited they “see Abundance-style policy solutions as less responsive” to that problem.
The research — which tested populist-based messages versus the cutting-red-tape “Abundance” agenda — is among the first deep dives into the electoral potency of the movement, popularized by New York Times’ columnist Ezra Klein and writer Derek Thompson, who published a book by the same name last March.

Britain’s Turn Against Free Speech

Charles Lipson in The Spectator:

Free speech, the very bedrock of constitutional democracy, is writhing on its deathbed in England. It will take a mass movement to restore its vitality. Fortunately, one can see that movement emerging among a once-free people, tired of government suppression.
The dire state of British liberties was outlined Wednesday in Congressional testimony by British MP, Nigel Farage, who testified before the US House Judiciary Committee. He was backed by the committee’s Republican members and attacked, alas, by Democrats.
Powerful as his testimony was, it was overshadowed by an even more striking event: a phalanx of armed police arriving at Heathrow airport to arrest an Irish comedian for a tweet he posted in Arizona. His crime: he made fun of transgender people. Toss him in the dungeon.
This is the same law enforcement, mind you, that ignored decades of child rape and “grooming” by Pakistani Muslims in northern England.
How is the lax treatment of grooming gangs connected to the harsh treatment of tweeting? By more than the lunacy and hypocrisy. The deeper connection is that successive Labour and Conservative governments have considered it more important to “protect” minority groups against bad words and criminal investigations than to protect innocent children or ensure free speech and open inquiry. “Social justice,” don’t you know?
The collapse of free speech, under the repressive hand of British government, is deeply linked to the massive influx of immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East, who have little interest in adapting to English laws and customs and every interest in protecting the customs of their native lands. They have consistently refused to adopt the basic ideals of tolerance and forbearance that are fundamental to any functioning multicultural democracies.
Instead of pushing back against this illiberal tide – an essential task if liberal democracy is to survive – political leaders in the UK and most of Western Europe have appeased it. Just as bad, they have suppressed any opposition.
The common theme among these feckless leaders is their lack of confidence in their own cultural traditions and historic national achievements. They have refused to stand up for those basic values and traditions in the face of ferocious, illiberal assaults, stemming mainly from these hostile immigrant communities, often supported by progressive elites, who share the leaders’ lack of cultural self-confidence. Instead of resisting these illiberal assaults, halting immigration, and limiting the lifelong provision of free housing and income, those leaders have acceded to these demands and smacked down anyone who says different. The price has been enormous.
How bad is it? Bad enough that people are now being arrested in England and Scotland for putting up flags or wearing them on their clothes. Waving the national flag is somehow considered an insult to immigrants. This show of patriotism must be stopped and the miscreants arrested.

The Spectator: Watch — Nigel Farage warns Congress about UK speech laws

✍️ Feature

Hollywood Reporter: Inside the film Ponzi scheme of William Santor

🌍 Foreign

🏛️ Domestic

📰 Media

💻 Tech

The Spectator: Trump brothers become crypto miners

🧬 Health

✝️ Religion

City Journal: Annunciation Catholic Church shooting and transgenderism

🏈 Sports

🎭 Culture & Hollywood

🪶 Quote

“His education had been neither scientific nor classical—merely “Modern.” The severities both of abstraction and of high human tradition had passed him by: and he had neither peasant shrewdness nor aristocratic honour to help him. He was a man of straw, a glib examinee in subjects that require no exact knowledge (he had always done well on Essays and General Papers) and the first hint of a real threat to his bodily life knocked him sprawling.”

— C.S. Lewis

The Transom

The Big Ben Show: Matt Taibbi and Mark Schlereth

Cartels, censorship, and football

Trump’s Drug War is For Real

Democrat Voters Prefer Populism to Abundance

Britain’s Turn Against Free Speech