Today I speak with Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling author and a good friend, Chris Hedges.

Hey, Chris.

Hey, Lee.

Over the past few weeks, we've seen protests across the country in a way we hadn't, I think, in a while, at least many months or a year or so.

And, you know, there many people are focusing against, it's focused against trump and musk and many of the protesters

seem to have the message get rid of trump problem solved why is that the wrong approach well because as

i have long said trump is the symptom he's not the disease uh the problem is the capture of

economic and political power by corporations and oligarchs.

And I really looked at this last presidential election as a battle between the corporatists who supported the Democrats and the oligarchs.

And within the system of capitalism, oligarchs and corporations want different things.

Arpertists want stability.

They want trade deals that are set up in perpetuity because they make things, not in our country, unless it's weapons.

But they make cars, and GM makes its cars in Monterey, Mexico,

Apple works in Foxcom, sweatshops, and China. And they make big investments. It takes time for them

to get a return on those investments. So it's different. Oligarchs, think of private equity firms

as oligarchic.

They don't actually, not only do they not make anything, they destroy things.

And that's what, like KKR, for instance, KKR, one of the biggest private equity firms in the country,

which just bought my publisher, Simon and Schuster.

What do they do?

They buy up, usually through debt. They don't

actually put much of their own money in it. But the famous KKR stories, they bought up a national

...