Guess what I’m doing on Super Tuesday? I’m registering as a Republican to vote for Donald Trump in the primary in California. They won’t allow me to vote as an independent for President of the United States, so for the first time in my life, I will be one of the people I used to judge and hate. I also plan to vote red straight down the line. Oh, I realize this is like spitting in the Pacific Ocean in my state. Still, if other residents in California are starting to see what anyone driving throug...
Mar 03, 2024•40 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit sashastone.substack.com It took me some time to consider an “extra” for paid subscribers, and I came up with a free-form podcast, not written as an essay but just an improvisational ramble. It’s meant to be casual so, of course, it is not perfect. I hope to get better over time. The first 20 minutes will be a free preview, and the rest will be behind the paywall. I hope you …...
Feb 26, 2024•21 min
Fear is trickling down the walls at the White House like blood from a crime scene. They try to wipe it away with a Lawrence O’Donnell monologue here, a Stephen Colbert freak out there. Any other president at any other time in American history would be sweating. But Joe Biden isn’t. It reminds me of this scene from the movie Quiz Show where the investigator, played by Rob Morrow, corners the President of NBC, played by Allan Rich, in an elevator. We have finally got you, Morrow says. Oh yeah? Ric...
Feb 25, 2024•29 min
Donald Trump isn’t Alexei Navalny. He wasn’t poisoned or beaten or tortured, then left to die in a Siberian gulag. We aren’t under the control of a dictator like Putin. But there is no getting around the ugly truth that none of this would happen if Biden weren’t trailing Trump in the polls. News of Navalny’s death sent shockwaves through both sides of the political aisle, as each tried to grapple with the many conflicts we’re now facing, the war in Ukraine and the war on Donald Trump, but it’s t...
Feb 20, 2024•37 min
A source tells Free Thinking what’s really going on. What old man in the White House? I didn’t see any old man in the White House. The President, you mean? Oh, that’s just Joe Biden. He’s fine. With age comes wisdom. Joe did nothing wrong, and even if he did, it was decided he could not stand trial. Hur is not a neurologist. He doesn’t know what’s going on in Joe’s brain. It was a stressful day. The attacks on October 7th were distracting. You can’t expect the President of the United States to h...
Feb 15, 2024•32 min
I don’t know what’s going to happen. All I can say is this: The man we saw speaking from the White House tonight, on February 8—that man will not be reelected president. Maybe Biden can become a new man. Maybe he’s had an off week. Maybe they can adjust his meds. Maybe. But probably not. Right? Probably not. —John Podhoretz, Commentary They’ve been lying about Joe Biden’s cognitive abilities since at least 2020. COVID allowed them to hide both Biden and Harris far from the prying eyes of the pre...
Feb 10, 2024•24 min
“So you’re voting for Du-taxus?” a woman said to me in 1988. I was a lowly receptionist at a gym called “Women Only,” which was probably later sued out of business. I had to answer the phone with, “ We have the way, Women Only, this is Sasha, may I help you? ” I was undoubtedly blurting out this mouthful when the client noticed my Dukakis pin, because why wouldn’t she? I told her yes, I was, though I wasn’t “political” back then, and I had no idea why I was voting for Dukakis. He was a Democrat....
Feb 07, 2024•31 min
Joanna Parker paces in her office. The media narrative successfully sank the Republicans and their efforts to steal some of the Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce energy. Amateurs. After all this time, they still haven’t learned that WE control everything. Making them look like fools, waking up a whole generation to how stupid the Republicans are, was worth all of the trouble it took to hire well-paid and well-placed social media actors to whip them up into a frenzy. The Pentagon? Please. Like they care ...
Feb 01, 2024•21 min
This election year promises to be one long “October Surprise” as the newly weaponized legal system, and Department of Justice go to unprecedented and extraordinary lengths not to stop Trump but to damage him enough that one of the least popular presidents in history can be once again dragged over the finish line in November. It’s so blatantly corrupt it’s hard to believe it’s actually happening. Whether you like Trump as a person or plan to vote for him or not, there should be no question that t...
Jan 29, 2024•31 min
I am not supposed to be rooting for Trump and MAGA. I’m supposed to be one of the million and change who huddles on my couch in terror, watching MSNBC as the results from Iowa trickle in. I’m supposed to somberly nod when Rachel Maddow tells her viewers they won’t show Trump’s speech. Shut down the speech! I am supposed to say, as if any of this is normal. I will not watch it . I will not listen for myself and think for myself and judge for myself. I will instead fill my head with what Lawrence ...
Jan 18, 2024•36 min
On January 6th, Trump will give a rally in Iowa. He’ll do what he’s done for seven years as a hunted man - reassure his supporters that there is nothing to fear but fear itself. Joe Biden, the President of the United States, will also give a speech that day and do what he has been doing since taking office: offer the people nothing but fear itself. Biden’s message? Be afraid. Be very, very afraid of your fellow citizens. The guy who works at the gas station, the waitress, the bus driver, the con...
Jan 05, 2024•36 min
“Are you a Trump supporter now?” is the question my friends, acquaintances, and colleagues sometimes ask me. I know the answer to that question could end our relationship. So do they. Most of the time, they just don’t ask. They quietly assume that I might be, but what they don’t know can’t hurt them. Since 2016, being labeled “Trump supporter,” has given most people the green light to cut ties, publicly humiliate, attack, and dehumanize at will. What you will rarely see on the Left is empathy. W...
Dec 23, 2023•19 min
Rob Reiner was jolted awake. Just minutes ago, he could have sworn he was holding his wife and sleeping soundly. Now, he could barely move. What was wrong with his feet? “Michele!” Reiner calls out for his wife. Silence. He glances around the room he is somehow trapped in. A small bed. Trinkets on shelves. A snowstorm outside. Where is he? Suddenly, the door bursts open, and none other than Annie Wilkes from Misery greets him, with her pig oinking behind her. Reiner stares in disbelief. He was n...
Dec 22, 2023•28 min
[ Part One - Here ] Rob Reiner wanted to sleep. But his thoughts swirled around in his brain like a cage full of butterflies. Make it stop, make it stop. Haunted by Archie Bunker just hours ago , something about how January 6th was like the JFK assassination made Reiner’s Christmas Eve a nightmare. Maybe it all finally got to him, all those months of research looking into the history of the CIA, rogue agents, false flag operations, gaining public support for a cause, or a war, a president who wa...
Dec 20, 2023•47 min
Rob Reiner holds his phone in front of his face, and doom-scrolls Twitter. One after the other, all about the coming apocalypse, Donald Trump's potential win. The monster. The fascist. The BEAST is outpolling Uncle Joe - how is this happening? He’s indicted for felonies, a twice impeached crook, conman, and dictator. He waged an armed insurrection to attack the Capitol to overturn the election; he’s worse than Hitler, worse than Mussolini. Who are these people that support him? Why do we have to...
Dec 13, 2023•30 min
[Profanity warning…..] There is a scene in David Fincher’s The Social Network where Sean Parker (played by Justin Timberlake) has Mark Zuckerberg (played by Jesse Eisenberg) set up a meeting to have the most sought-after genius in tech, deliver an important message: “Sean Parker says f*ck you.” That’s what you do when you have the money Mark Zuckerberg was about to have, or if you’re the richest man in the world, like Elon Musk. Our government, in complete alignment with the most powerful entiti...
Nov 30, 2023•27 min
You wouldn’t know me if you met me in May of 2019, as I drove to a luncheon for Joe Biden sponsored by a big donor at one of the mansions in a wealthy pocket of Los Angeles. I’d been hand-picked as an influencer after rising in the ranks of Team Hillary on social media. I’d thrown myself into politics in 2015, panicking about climate change. “We have to win,” I thought. By the end of 2020, just one year later, I’d have left the Democratic Party for good, been yelled at by Neera Tanden on Twitter...
Nov 14, 2023•25 min
Everything you’ve heard is true. The Republicans are losing on abortion. They are not motivated to turn out the same way the Democrats are unless Trump is on the ballot, and even then, the GOP is losing at a time when they should be blowing the Democrats out of power for a generation. The war is over, and the GOP lost, at least for now. Just as they are on the right side of history with “gender-affirming care,” there is a chance that their desire to preserve life now might be well-regarded in 50...
Nov 09, 2023•22 min
Ron DeSantis has every quality a presidential candidate needs - good looks, youth, a nice family, and a strong governance track record in Florida. What he doesn’t have, however, is more charisma than his chief rival, Donald Trump. To be fair, not many candidates, or people for that matter, have as much charisma as Trump does. It’s a once-in-a-generation thing that defies explanation. It’s just there. Even those who hate him can’t stop watching him. It’s not his looks, particularly, or his speech...
Nov 06, 2023•29 min
Our country, at the hands of the Left, is falling apart. There is no center. It is as though termites have eaten away the foundation as we allowed so many activists to dismantle their “systems of oppression,” otherwise known as our heroes, our history, our movies, our achievements, our books, our poetry, our art. If America built it, it is corrupt, say the Woketopians. We’ve seen them edging ever so close to violence as a means to an end. We’ve ignored the warning signs because it was so much ea...
Nov 02, 2023•37 min
A tweet about the Holocaust? Sorry, Gina Carano, you’re finished with Disney . A tweet about how violent protests lose elections got you fired? Sorry, David Shor, those are the consequences of your action s. You have to be held accountable. It’s not “cancel culture,” they insisted. It’s “consequence culture.” Intent doesn’t matter. Only impact does. Not even Thomas Jefferson was safe from the “Eye of Sauron” that sought to root out the thought criminals wherever they may have been hiding. If you...
Oct 26, 2023•17 min
“And so shines a good deed in a weary world,” that’s the line that ran through my head as I finished John Nolte’s first novel, Borrowed Time . The truth is that I didn’t want it to end. I didn’t want to leave that imaginative world and have to face the reality of ours. I had already started it over just before the last few chapters to stave off the inevitable. Was it the book’s protagonist I liked so much? A man blessed (or cursed) with immortality who falls in love for the first time in thousan...
Oct 20, 2023•19 min
Once upon a time, there was a Paper of Record. They proudly claimed that moniker because they valued journalism. They valued getting the facts before broadcasting the headline. For decades, they built the most trusted newspaper in the land. And that newspaper was called the New York Times. Then came the internet. A gaggle of hoodie-wearing flip-flop dudebros moving fast and breaking things nearly put the Times and other outlets out of business. Now, anyone could have a website and report the new...
Oct 18, 2023•23 min
As we watch the horrific images of Hamas's brutal attack on Israeli citizens, there is no mistaking the face of evil. This is brutality on a scale most of us here in America have never witnessed - the rapes of women who are dragged through the streets to cheers. Babies murdered in their cribs — beheaded — fathers shot while trying to help their families escape—charred remains of still-smoking corpses in gardens, doorways, and cars. For the past three years, our government has lied to us about wh...
Oct 12, 2023•39 min
I was part of a movement on the Left that endlessly softened language to avoid offending a single person we deemed marginalized. What we couldn’t say, what we had to say … The list just kept getting longer. The judgments more severe. That Trump is an existential threat not for anything he’s ever done, but what he says is proof enough that this war we’re fighting is a war of words. I’m not allowed to use the word “sterilize,” just like I’m not allowed to use the word “mutilate” to describe what’s...
Oct 07, 2023•34 min
“If they want a monster so badly, they ought to be provided by one.” ― Margaret Atwood Their monster is Trump. He is the entire economy of the media machine. Without him, whole news networks would die, social media would become stagnant, and, more importantly, there would be no named evil for the New Puritans to unite in fear and hatred against. Their God is Barack Obama. Yes, that’s right. We're caught in a clash of the titans that involves two movements, largely built and cultivated online, th...
Oct 03, 2023•29 min
Joe Biden lied about who he was when he ran for president. He said he was a moderate. He isn’t. He said he would unite the country. He hasn’t. He said he would revive the economy. He didn’t. Lying is nothing new to the Democratic Party. The lies are big - The exit from Afghanistan was fine, January 6th was a violent insurrection , lockdowns were successful , the vaccine was not risky, the economy is strong, gender is a construct . And their lies are small, S tephen Colbert is funny. One of the b...
Sep 29, 2023•27 min
“ We create the illusion that being informed is a kind of action in itself. So to wash that guilt out—to eliminate the shame and discomfort you feel over doing nothing as the world goes mad—you'll keep tuning in.” - Matt Taibbi, Hate, Inc. The other night on MSNBC, Nicolle Wallace reached her breaking point. Something must be done, or we will all live to regret it. “Something bad is going to happen,” she said. “What will we tell our children and grandchildren when it does”? Then she looked direc...
Sep 22, 2023•31 min
Yes, Trump can win. Many Conservatives worry that Trump can’t win. Democrats, they believe, have rigged the system in their favor, and there is no defeating them now so why even bother voting? Yes, that’s exactly where they want you to be. They want the grassroots movement that is MAGA to shut up and sit down and fade into obscurity. But here’s the truth. Trump can win on the economy alone. He can win on his own record on the economy, which ordinarily would have meant winning a decisive second t...
Sep 15, 2023•28 min
The 50th Annual Telluride Film Festival went off mostly without a hitch. It was the same beautiful town in the mountains of Colorado I’d been visiting for at least ten years. There were movies earmarked for the Oscar race, critics and bloggers, and film industry professionals scurrying from place to place. But something felt different. It wasn’t just the lack of celebrities that are usually the draw for such an exclusive, expensive fest. The actors’ strike meant they could not show up, even if a...
Sep 05, 2023•24 min
