Diemer & DiBello · Matthew Diemer: Politics, Cleveland, Congress, Senate, Ohio, News, Commentary

USAID Scandal, DOGE Drama, Amy Acton?

February 9, 2025·1 hr 30 min·15 clips

They start close to home. Joe Jones comes up first, along with the text-message chatter around him. Amy Acton's campaign is the next stop, and one host says he mostly read the article while the other watched the video. That mismatch sets the tone for what follows. The conversation stays loose, quick, and willing to correct itself, with one point sliding into the next and then circling back again. From there the hosts widen the frame to USAID and DOGE, treating the federal drama as part headline and part punchline. Trump's Gaza comments get folded in, along with Kanye West, the Trump transgender order, Kamala on 60 Minutes unedited, the Schumer-Maxine Waters-Al Green protest scene, and the new DNC vice chair. Most of the heat lands on the Democratic Party. The hosts keep circling age, term limits, hypocrisy, and the sense that the party keeps talking past its own values. They want a moral code. They also want a clearer answer for what the party is actually running on. That leads into the bigger complaint about billionaire politics. The show comes back again and again to the gap between condemning oligarchy in public and making room for donor money in practice. The idea of good billionaires becomes a target. So does the notion that a billionaire is somehow acceptable if the billionaire is useful to the right side. Pritzker, Soros, the Daily Show joke, and the DNC chair discussion all get folded into that same criticism. The ending cools off into judges, sentencing, consequences, and a friendly close about how it has been an interesting week and they are glad to talk it through together.

As heard by us

A politics conversation that starts local, widens fast, and keeps returning to billionaire hypocrisy and moral clarity.

PlayNext's News & Politics shelf suits this one well. It starts with Joe Jones and Amy Acton, then widens into USAID, DOGE, Trump, Kamala, Schumer, Maxine Waters, and Al Green.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Cleveland politics, national chaos, and donor hypocrisy in a gym-side rant.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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