Friends:
I’m thrilled to announce that my new investigative series with Academy Award winner Alex Gibney is launching on 10/28. The series is called MELTDOWN, and it explores how the financial crisis and Democrats’ weak response to it created the conditions for Donald Trump’s ascent, and for the right-wing authoritarian movement threatening America today.
Click here to read the new Deadline story about the series, and click here to listen to the short audio trailer previewing the series. (Make sure to listen all the way to the end — you'll get a laugh out of it).
We are going to have some exclusive events for Daily Poster subscribers around the launch date.
If you are a member of the media and are interested in an interview or an embargoed excerpt of the series, please email us at editor@dailyposter.com.
This series goes hand-in-hand with the follow-the-money reporting that we do every day here at The Daily Poster. It represents more than 16 months of original reporting and includes exclusive interviews with whistleblowers and former top government officials — including a former top aide to Joe Biden. It also includes never-before-aired audio of me asking Barack Obama some tough questions.
This project is incredibly timely. As Democrats debate their reconciliation bill, the series looks at how the last time Democrats held power they backed off challenging Wall Street — and how that fueled a backlash that Republicans were able to maximize, first in the midterm elections and then with the 2016 election.
We are in the exact same situation right now — and whether or not Democratic leaders learn the lessons from the last time around will determine whether or not history repeats itself.
If you don’t feel like clicking the links, here’s summary of the project from Deadline:
It looks at how this event and the government’s botched, multibillion-dollar bailout is the skeleton key that unlocks almost every big thing that’s gone wrong in America in the 21st Century, from climate change, to the all-out assault on democracy, to the rise of white nationalism. Meltdown explores why the financial crisis happened, how the bailout went so wrong, why politicians covered up Wall Street’s crimes and what the lasting impact of the meltdown was on America’s political, social and economic fabric. It is a search for answers that stretches from Bogotá, Colombia to Madison, Wisc., to Washington, D.C. Sirota talks to politicians who made the laws, the investigators who uncovered massive fraud and ordinary people who lost homes, families and livelihoods, in order to shed light on why the economic disaster happened, why nobody succeeded in fixing it, and why the country soon embraced the politics of rage.
The series is produced by Jigsaw Productions and Transmitter Media and will be available on Audible, which offers all new users a free 30-day trial (don't sign up for that until closer to the 10/28 launch date!). So you’ll be able to access it there.
We are also planning to do some live events exclusively for Daily Poster subscribers around when the series comes out.
We’ll send out an email closer to the launch date with all the information on how to access it.
Rock the boat,
Sirota
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