I'm joined now by Matt Kinnard, investigative journalist and author of The Silent

Coup and The Racket.

Matt, thank you so much for coming on the Empire Files.

It's so great to talk to you.

Good to be with you.

Thanks for having me.

So the Rackett is such an important book, exposing the inner workings of global capitalism, the way that the U.S. Empire Mafia really operates.

I mean, today we live in this imperial wasteland under basically this neo-feudal tech dictatorship.

Matt, talk about, I guess, first, what the racket is and how it operates under Trump 2.0.

Yeah, well, so the racket, the title comes from a speech by Major General's Medley Butler,

who you and your sense will probably know he died the most decorated Marine in U.S. history.

He was a senior figure within the US military. He served in all the interventions in the early

20th century in Central America or in China and places. But interestingly, when he left,

he had an awakening about what he'd been doing in, uh, in those places and what interested

in serving. Uh, he said, I was a high class muscle man for big business. I was a racketeer

for capitalism. And I used that, uh, that quote, uh, starts the book and it's the title because

I feel, uh, having been at the financial times, I feel like his analysis was totally right. Um,

that the US empire, um feel like his analysis was totally right, that the US Empire is run in the interests of American corporate power and the American financial elite. And all these government

institutions that are funded by the US taxpayer are actually set up to promote their power around the world and make it easier for them to make money.

It was me collecting evidence from the inside, which I obviously couldn't publish in the

Financial Times because we should talk about this because it was quite an insight into how

the American Empire is protected by the corporate media,

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