{"id":16474,"date":"2026-04-30T18:37:53","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T01:37:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=16474"},"modified":"2026-05-21T18:29:47","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T01:29:47","slug":"86-47-or-weekend-at-donnies-bradcast-4-30-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=16474","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;86 47&#8217; or &#8216;Weekend at Donnie&#8217;s&#8217;: &#8216;BradCast&#8217; 4\/30\/2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><center style=\"margin-bottom: 32px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/Images\/BradCast_SeaShells-8647_043026.jpg\" hspace=\"6\" vspace=\"3\" border=\"0\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s that time of the month on <a href=\"https:\/\/BradCast.BradBlog.com\"><i>The BradCast<\/i><\/a>! Our monthly-ish roundtable with two of our favorite guests. [<i>Audio link to full show follows summary.<\/i>]\n<p>Before they join us, we kick off with a quick news roundup on a bunch of items since airtime yesterday and in to today, including responses by a number of both <a href=\"https:\/\/talkingpointsmemo.com\/morning-memo\/scotus-gifts-gop-a-fighting-chance-to-hold-the-house\">Republican<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailykos.com\/stories\/2026\/4\/30\/800030538\/courts\/how-democrats-plan-to-fight-the-supreme-courts-racist-ruling\/#\">Democratic<\/a> states to <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=16430\">yesterday&#8217;s horrific ruling<\/a> by the corrupted, activist Republican <b>U.S. Supreme Court<\/b> majority ignoring the 15th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution to gut most of what was left of the landmark <b>Voting Rights Act<\/b> of 1965.<\/p>\n<p>Other news of note before we get to our guests today&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul style=\"margin-bottom: 16px;\">\n<li>The longest government shutdown in U.S. history, for most of the <b>Dept. of Homeland Security<\/b>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2026\/04\/30\/congress-ends-record-shattering-dhs-shutdown-00900777\">ends<\/a> after Republicans agree with what Dems have been trying to adopt for months: to reopen all DHS and all of its agencies (FEMA, TSA, Coast Guard, etc.) other than ICE and CBP. Those two out of control agencies will remain &#8220;shut down&#8221; until guardrails are put in place, as Dems insist &#8212; or Republicans pull off their scheme to fund them without Dem support. <\/li>\n<li><b>Maine<\/b>&#8216;s Gov. <b>Janet Mills<\/b> <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/janet-mills-maine-senate-platner-e26930c7ff77fcbb2b513f42b6092246\">drops out<\/a> of the Democratic primary for <b>U.S. Senate<\/b>, leaving popular (if controversial), political newcomer and oyster farmer <b>Graham Platner<\/b> left as the presumptive nominee to face off in November against one of the most vulnerable Republican incumbents this year, Sen. <b>Susan Collins<\/b>.<\/li>\n<li>Gas prices have spiked again over the past 24 hours, hitting a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2026\/04\/30\/energy\/oil-prices-iran-war-wartime-high-blockade-hnk\">four-year high<\/a> amid <b>Donald Trump<\/b>&#8216;s apparently endless and incredibly dumb war in <b>Iran<\/b>, to $4.30\/gallon (up from below $3.00 before the war), as the price of Brent Crude went as high as $126\/barrel today (up from about $70 before the war)! Also, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2026\/04\/30\/economy\/us-pce-fed-inflation-spending-march\">inflation was back up<\/a> to 3.5% as of March.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Little wonder Trump&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/ca.news.yahoo.com\/exclusive-trump-approval-sinks-record-171057069.html\">approval rating<\/a> on the economy among all Americans has sunk to just 27%. On cost of living it&#8217;s now 22%! Numbers lower than either Joe Biden or Jimmy Carter at the <i>end<\/i> of their Presidencies!<\/p>\n<p>But, don&#8217;t worry. Because it&#8217;s gonna be the biggest, best, most beautiful, most secure <i>ballroom<\/i> you&#8217;ve ever seen! What?!!<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re joined today by our old-school blogger pals, the great <b>HEATHER DIGBY PARTON<\/b> of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.salon.com\/writer\/heather_digby_parton\">Salon<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/digbysblog.net\/\">Hullabaloo<\/a>, and the inimitable <b>&#8216;DRIFTGLASS&#8217;<\/b> of the <a href=\"https:\/\/proleftpod.com\/\"><i>The Professional Left Podcast<\/i><\/a>, to try and make some sort of sense of all the ongoing and increasing madness of King Donald and related nightmares now surrounding us. <\/p>\n<p>It is, as usual with these guys, a very fast-paced, informative and occasionally very funny hour! We cover everything from the fallout from the SCOTUS VRA ruling (not so funny), to the ballroom (hilarious!), to the endless idiocy of Trump&#8217;s no-way-out war on Iran and whether or not it is &#8220;the worst foreign policy blunder in U.S. history&#8221;, his doomed second revenge-indictment of <b>James Comey<\/b> (86 47!), and his pathetic scheme to strip broadcast licenses from ABC-owned television stations because <b>Jimmy Kimmel<\/b> told a pretty funny joke referring to <b>Melania<\/b> as &#8220;an expectant widow&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p>A few samples from today&#8230;.<\/p>\n<ul style=\"margin-bottom: 16px;\">\n<li><b>On the ballroom.<\/b> Digby: &#8220;a perfect metaphor for [his] overwhelming megalomania.&#8221; Driftglass: &#8220;He&#8217;s a lunatic&#8230;building a temple to himself&#8230;hoping to outrace the facts of his reputation.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li><b>On Iran.<\/b> Driftglass: &#8220;This is Stupid Iraq [and] the dumbest war America has ever fought for any reason.&#8221; Digby: &#8220;So we&#8217;ve proved that Iran has leverage, we&#8217;ve proved that our bunker busters don&#8217;t work that well, and we&#8217;ve proved that we can execute regime change, only we make it worse. So, good job!&#8221;<\/li>\n<li><b>On the Comey indictment.<\/b> Digby: &#8220;Can I just point one thing out? &#8217;86&#8217; is NOT a Mafia term. The term is &#8216;deep six&#8217;!&#8221;<\/li>\n<li><b>On threat to Kimmel and ABC<\/b>. Driftglass: &#8220;Every time Trump loses &#8212; and he&#8217;s racked up a staggeringly impressive record of losing &#8212; a little bit of power leaks away.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li><b>On whether Trump (and the rest of us) can survive the madness for three more years?<\/b> Tune in&#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=16449\">our latest <i>Green News Report<\/i><\/a>, with still more fallout from the <b>Iran War<\/b>, but at least one really really cool thing that is now and will soon be happening to the <b>fossil fuel industry<\/b> because of it!&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\".\/Images\/Speaker_Icon_24.png\" style=\"width: 24px; float: none; vertical-align: middle;\"><span style=\"font-size: 18px; line-height: 18px;\"> <b><i><a href=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/audio\/BradCast_BradFriedman_HeatherDigbyParton-Driftglass-Ballroom-CallaisVRA-Iran-Comey-Kimmel_043026.mp3\">CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!&#8230;<\/a><\/i><\/b><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><center><b>* * *<\/b><\/center><i>While we post <a href=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/BradCast\"><\/i>The BradCast<i><\/a> here every day, and you can hear it across all of our great affiliate stations and websites, to automagically get new episodes as soon as they&#8217;re available sent right to your computer or personal device, subscribe for free at <a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/the-bradcast-w-brad-friedman\/id803467610\">iTunes<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pandora.com\/podcast\/the-bradcast-w-brad-friedman\/PC:1000025838\">Pandora<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/tunein.com\/radio\/The-BradCast-with-Brad-Friedman-p477565\/\">TuneIn<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.iheart.com\/podcast\/256-the-bradcast-w-brad-friedm-30973643\/\">iHeart<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/The-BradCast-w-Brad-Friedman\/dp\/B08JJRN86R\/ref=sr_1_1\">Amazon<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/podcastgen\/bradcast\/feed.xml\">our native RSS feed<\/a>!<\/i><\/p>\n<p><!--BB-DONATEPITCH-START--><\/p>\n<div style=\"background:#f5f0e0; border:2px solid #6b5a2e; border-radius:6px; padding:10px 14px; text-align:center; font-family:Georgia,serif;\"><span style=\"display:block; margin:0 0 8px 0; color:#3a2e0e; font-size:0.95em; line-height:1.5;\"><strong>The BRAD BLOG<\/strong>, <em>The BradCast<\/em> and <em>Green News Report<\/em> are all 100% independent and 100% listener and reader supported!<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/Donate\" style=\"display:inline-block; background:#6b5a2e; color:#ffffff; padding:6px 18px; border-radius:4px; font-weight:bold; text-decoration:none; font-family:Georgia,serif; font-size:0.9em;\">Please CLICK HERE to help support our work today!<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!--BB-DONATEPITCH-END--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s that time of the month on The BradCast! Our monthly-ish roundtable with two of our favorite guests. [Audio link to full show follows summary.] Before they join us, we kick off with a quick news roundup on a bunch of items since airtime yesterday and in to today, including responses by a number of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[326,192,89,675,299,513,479,390,2053,242,1110,2133,49,134,1139,635,1282,1045,199,350,540,300,839,233,313,1932,517],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2106],"class_list":["post-16474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abc","category-accountability","category-media-appearance","category-bradcast","category-democrats","category-dhs","category-donald-trump","category-economy","category-election-2026","category-france","category-gerrymandering","category-graham-platner","category-illinois","category-iran","category-jb-pritzker","category-james-comey","category-janet-mills","category-jimmy-kimmel","category-louisiana","category-maine","category-oil","category-republicans","category-susan-collins","category-us-senate","category-us-supreme-court","category-uae","category-voting-rights-act","bb-type-bradcast"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16474"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16940,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16474\/revisions\/16940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16474"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=16474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}