meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
Deconstructed

“The Squad,” Part 1: The Rise and (First) Fall of Bernie

Deconstructed

The Intercept

News

4.84.7K Ratings

🗓️ 5 December 2023

⏱️ 32 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When Bernie Sanders launched his first presidential campaign in early 2015, the political world could not have been more different than it is today. His run set in motion a movement — or, really, a series of movements that clashed and blended over the ensuing years, reshaping both the Democratic Party and the country. On today’s episode of Deconstructed, we’re trying something new: Host Ryan Grim narrates the audio version of his new book “The Squad: AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution.” Macmillan Audio has allowed Deconstructed to run edited excerpts. But we’ve spliced Grim’s audiobook with interviews, speeches, and newscasts, making it into an audio documentary for the podcast. Our first episode takes you inside the first Sanders campaign, where we explore the tension between the right wing of the Democratic Party and Sanders’s “political revolution.” Part 2, coming out later this week, will look back at the historical forces that pushed members of the Squad into politics — and the spotlight. And Part 3, coming out next week, jumps further into the book, exploring the big-money pushback against the new insurgent energy.


You can find Grim's book here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250869074/thesquad


If you’d like to support our work, go to theintercept.com/give, where your donation, no matter what the amount, makes a real difference.


And if you haven’t already, please subscribe to the show so you can hear it every week. And please go and leave us a rating or a review — it helps people find the show. If you want to give us additional feedback, email us at [email protected].



Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Picture this, static cars, idling engines, angry horns.

0:08.0

Now, picture you, zooming past it all, light and breezy.

0:15.0

Ah, the sweet feeling of whizzing past traffic.

0:20.0

Book your train journey via Avanti westcoast.co. UK.

0:25.0

avante west coast feel good travel. Welcome to Deconstruct it. I'm Ryan Grim. For this week's episode, I think we have a pretty cool

0:40.9

innovation in the world of podcasting. So I did the narration for the audio

0:45.3

version of my new book that comes out today called The Squad, AOC, and the hope of a political revolution.

0:52.2

This shows producers Laura Flynn and Jose Olivares

0:54.9

edited the first chapter of the audiobook to bring in lots of outside sound

0:59.2

so it's not just me reading. My guess is that in the future this will be how good

1:04.0

audio books get made. Of course I also hope you pick up the hard cover today

1:08.6

because to me that's still what a real book is and it lets you mark it up and go back and find things in

1:14.3

where you just can't yet with audio. What follows is built from an excerpt from

1:18.8

the Squad audiobook published by McMillan Audio.

1:23.0

On April 30th, 2015, a clear spring day in Washington, D.C.

1:36.3

Bernie Sanders shuffled out of the Capitol building to a waiting collection of microphones

1:40.7

and a C-SPAN camera.

1:42.0

Despite his 25 years as the only microphones and a C-SPAN camera.

1:43.0

Despite his 25 years as the only Democratic socialists serving in Congress,

1:47.5

the US senator from Vermont was far from a household name.

1:50.9

About a dozen reporters and no other spectators gathered around him.

1:55.0

Being out here today, let me just make a brief comment and be happy to take a few questions

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Intercept, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Intercept and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.