TLPP: Inside the Democratic Socialists of America w/ Stu Smith

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4.8 • 676 Ratings

🗓️ 7 April 2026

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Lou is joined by Stu Smith, investigative analyst at the Manhattan Institute, who has spent months going deep inside the DSA — Democratic Socialists of America. What he's found is far more radical than the "point of personal privilege" memes would suggest. TOPICS COVERED: 00:00 — Intro: Who is Stu Smith and what is the Manhattan Institute?03:00 — What most people get wrong about the DSA 07:00 — The DSA's internal "right wing" — people who just believe in elections 11:00 — The Red Rabbits: DSA's new armed security task force 16:00 — The Doctor Phil clip: Black Redguard's origin story 20:00 — DSA's global travel: Cuba, Colombia, Sweden, Brazil, and beyond 26:00 — The F-35 supply chain and DSA's quasi-national security threat 31:00 — Salting: how DSA plants operatives inside companies to organize 36:00 — Zoran Mamdani, the Overton window, and how DSA took NYC 42:00 — DSA's youth wing: getting a Cornell student on Ithaca City Council 47:00 — DSA's social media machine and what the political establishment can't replicate 52:00 — The Calla Walsh pipeline: from DSA delegate to Hezbollah apartment in Lebanon 01:00:00 — North Korea tourism, tanky influencers, and where the far left is trending 01:06:00 — The Weathermen are still active — Stu has been on Zoom calls with Bill Ayers 01:12:00 — DSA's Iran statements and members rooting for the Ayatollah 01:18:00 — What to watch: Mayday, upcoming primaries, and the Socialism Conference STU SMITH:Follow Stu on X: @thestustustudioManhattan Institute: https://www.manhattan-institute.org Lou's book — That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore: On the Death and Rebirth of Comedy:https://amzn.to/3VhFa1r The Lou Perez Podcast:Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-lou-perez-podcast/id1535032081Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2KAtC7eFS3NHWMZp2UgMVU TheLouPerez.com | info@thelouperez.com Newsletter: https://substack.com/@louperez#DSA #DemocraticSocialists #Mamdani #Politics #Socialism #ManhattanInstitute #LouPerezPodcast #Communism #NYC Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey guys, welcome back to the Lou Correst podcast on the Lions of Liberty Podcast Network. Today, I'm really happy to be joined by Steve Smith. He is an investigative analyst at the Manhattan Institute. And Stu is somebody who I've been following for a while on X.
0:22.6	It makes sense that he's an investigator because the stuff that he finds is pretty amazing.
0:28.6	So Stu, thank you for joining me here.
0:30.6	I'm so happy to be here.
0:32.6	Cool.
0:33.6	So, yeah, so I think you have a pretty interesting beat over at the Manhattan Institute, at least for the past few months in particular, you've been doing a lot of stuff in regards to the DSA, Democratic, Socialists of America.
0:49.3	And can you, you know, just kind of go into that and let's talk about that for a little bit?
0:53.4	When I think of the DSA and how they exist in like the popular Zike, guys,
0:57.9	I imagine a lot of people go back to that clip from 2019 of the DSA where their convention
1:05.8	is all about my personal point of privilege and they don't take the DSA seriously.
1:12.5	Or they take the DSA to be like Bernie Bros.
1:16.6	who have maybe evolved a little bit,
1:19.1	but they don't understand that the DSA is increasingly a very radical organization.
1:26.5	And when I say radical, I'm talking about really being
1:30.6	animated by this third worldist kind of position where they are very pro these like resistance
1:42.4	organizations, resistance groups, terrorist groups groups all manner of just kind of
1:46.6	insanity from everything from thinking Cuba is a regime that's doing a good job just under the
1:55.0	boot of American imperialism to thinking Maoism is the future and it's something that I think the average person doesn't really understand.
2:04.6	And I've seen a lot of people, like, even with the Mom Donnie campaign,
2:09.3	where they joined the DSA and then they had this kind of realization of,
2:14.7	wait, they're Maoists in the DSA and not realizing, oh, you're getting in bed
2:20.5	with an organization that is a lot more complex than, you know, affordability. Yeah. Even though
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