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Welcome friends!
We went live with a hell of an “Amped Up” show this week. David Shuster and I dove straight into the chaos — from the overdue Netanyahu/Hamas ceasefire to Trump’s economic demolition derby.
We then brought in one of the sharpest minds out there to make sense of it all: Marlon Weems , founder of the first Black-owned financial services firm in Arkansas and one of the clearest, most principled economic voices in America today.
Marlon doesn’t mince words. He’s got the kind of insight that comes from decades on the inside of Wall Street’s machine, watching exactly how the gears of money, power, and politics grind ordinary people to dust.
He’s also got something that can be challenging to find in that world: a conscience.
We started with the global circus. Israel and Hamas had just announced a ceasefire, one Netanyahu could have had a year ago if he hadn’t been busy flexing his authoritarian muscles (this is meant in no way to exonerate the ghouls of Hamas, btw).
As David put it, the deal only happened because Trump’s crew outmaneuvered Netanyahu after his reckless strike on Qatar.
And you know what? As much as it pains me, we gave them credit—though let’s be honest, Trump himself had no idea what was going on [ [link removed] ]. Someone in his orbit must’ve made a rational decision while he was cheating at golf or trying on one of his extra-super-big-but-not-that-tall suits.
But as I said on air, we’ll give credit when it’s earned, even to people we despise.
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Then we pivoted to America’s slow-motion economic arson, a perfect segue to bring in Marlon.
Because if you want to understand how Trump and his little henchmen are dismantling both democracy [ [link removed] ]and [ [link removed] ] the economy [ [link removed] ], who better than someone who explores how money, markets, and politics intersect—and how those forces shape the lives of everyday people.
Marlon didn’t hesitate.
He said what most TV pundits are too timid or bought-off to say: Trump’s economic plan is chaos by design. Global tariffs that tanked U.S. farmers, deportations that wiped out entire sectors of the labor force, debt explosions that hollowed out the dollar.
It’s all self-sabotage, like sending troops into our own cities. [ [link removed] ]
Or, as Marlon put it so perfectly:
These guys aren’t idiots. They know exactly what they’re doing. They’re creating crisis so they can profit off the cleanup.
It’s disaster capitalism, MAGA-style, and it’s frightening how much it parallels what Putin did early on to consolidate power in Russia.
You wreck the economy, you drive the middle class into a panic, and while everyone’s too busy worrying about rent and health insurance, your billionaire pals swoop in to buy pieces of the country wholesale.
When I laid out all the pieces: tariffs, deportations, government shutdowns, credit downgrades, the hollowing out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Marlon connected the dots. The result?
A populace paralyzed by uncertainty. Nobody knows what comes next.
You can’t plan, can’t save, can’t even buy a damn car without wondering if the government will implode before your first payment clears. And that uncertainty isn’t accidental; it’s authoritarianism 101.
Keep people scared, exhausted, and too busy surviving to fight back. But fight back [ [link removed] ]we must. [ [link removed] ]
Become A Blue Amp Insider With *Special Benefits* By Getting A Paid Subscription For 20% Off! [ [link removed] ]
Then we talked bubbles. Housing. Crypto. The stock market.
Marlon broke down why the “booming” markets we keep hearing about are a mirage — inflated by tax code manipulation, corporate buybacks, and the so-called “Magnificent Seven” tech monopolies that distort every index. As he said:
You can’t have gold and stocks both soaring at the same time. Those are opposite signals. Something’s about to blow.
And if that wasn’t sobering enough, David reminded us that Trump’s crew is now folding unstable crypto holdings into people’s asset evaluations for home loans. It’s the same delusional math that crashed the economy in 2008.
But with fewer rules, more fraud and worse people in charge (and who thought that was possible??).
Marlon and I both tried to figure out what gives Bitcoin legitimate value, and we came up empty. My theory? “Give me a couple chickens over Bitcoin any day. At least chickens lay eggs so the brunches will be good.” The only thing less valuable?
On the bright side, though, you’re compelled to hurl if you look at it early in the morning, so you’ll keep your weight down.
We kept circling back to the same theme, the widening wealth gap and what happens when the billionaire class pulling up the life rafts from their yachts as everyone else drowns.
Marlon told us about a Citigroup report he’d seen years ago. A grotesque little memo teaching their richest clients how to profit from inequality.
Am I the only one who reads this and thinks it’s about time to start making movies like The Parallax View, Network and The China Syndrome again? Maybe it’d make few more people will think about the surreal, insane world in which we’re currently living.
As Marlon made clear, they only have one worry, that “the masses might eventually realize the game is rigged.” That’s the whole damn system right there in one sentence.
And I think not only do a lot of us already realize this, whether you’re impoverished, working class, middle class or upper middle class, but more of us are acting on the knowledge that the billionaires are robbing all of us via their middle men—Trump and other MAGAs.
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As David pointed out, two-thirds of Americans now say the American Dream is dead. People are working two jobs, drowning in student debt, and watching the same billionaires who caused it all lecture them about “hard work.” [ [link removed] ]
Combine that hopelessness with two guns for every person in this country and a tsunami of online disinformation, and you’ve got a recipe for a real American crisis.
Marlon agreed.
He said it feels like we’re “repealing the last half of the 20th century,” undoing every bit of progress from the New Deal to civil rights to The Great Society.
And, yes, middle class that made this country strong—the largest middle class in the history of the world—is being erased. Like they’re Trump’s name in the Epstein files with 1000 FBI officers working on redactions.
That’s when I said straight out what I’ve been saying a lot lately: this is our FDR moment. Either we rebuild institutions and create who new ones that actually serve the people, or we watch the fascists fill the void with demagoguery.
And damn if Marlon didn’t deliver the perfect closing shot.
Forget trying to win over Republicans. Go get the 250 million people who didn’t vote. That’s where democracy lives.
That’s the line that stuck with me. That’s the fight we’ve got ahead. Sure, I’m happy to bring some disaffected Republicans—and there are many of them—along for the ride. But that’s not our target audience.
Before signing off, we made sure everyone knew where to find Marlon: The Journeyman on Substack: thejourneyman.substack.com [ [link removed] ].
If you want smart, fearless analysis that ties together race, economics, and power—with some humor so you don’t crawl under the covers after reading it—that’s your next subscription, friends.
Marlon Weems is one of the good ones.
A brilliant analyst, a truth-teller, and, as David said, just a genuinely good guy. Conversations like this remind me why we do Amped Up in the first place: to shine a bright light through the fog, to connect the dots corporate media won’t touch.
To fight like hell for a future that still belongs to [ [link removed] ]all of us [ [link removed] ]. [ [link removed] ]
Because the stakes aren’t theoretical anymore. They’re our jobs, our rights, our democracy. And if we don’t fight smart, fight hard, and fight together, we’ll lose it all to the billionaires and their hired bullies.
That’s why we’re here. And that is why we’re Amped Up.
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