The Maddow media empire is growing. Rachel Maddow is the producer of a new documentary film about a key side-character from the first Trump impeachment called From Russia With Lev.
Lev Parnas — for those to whom the initial Trump impeachment already feels a lifetime ago — is a Soviet-born former Rudy Giuliani associate who got mixed up in the naughty business of scouring Ukraine for supposed dirt Giuliani believed the nation held on Hunter Biden and the Biden family, as well as in trying to orchestrate the ouster of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.
Parnas first hit the news as a would-be fugitive, who had tried to flee the country on an airplane to Germany. But he got caught and arrested — and then made the interesting decision to yap. The film is based in part on Maddow’s blockbuster exclusive interview with Parnas in January 2020, which drew a massive audience and earned an Emmy nod for Maddow. The film is augmented with selections from dozens of hours of new interviews with Parnas and his associates, as well as what the production team are billing as “secret footage.”
Parnas would ultimately testify under oath against Trump before Congress, describing the coordinated campaign to falsely tar the Bidens with allegations of corruption in Ukraine. His criminal wrongdoing did not go unpunished. Parnas was later convicted, and spent time in prison for laundering illegal donations to the Trump campaign. (Parnas also talked to Rolling Stone about dropping a dime on Trump: “They thought I would shut up and be quiet, but I just want to get the truth out.”)
The award winning director of the documentary is Billy Corben (known for the film Cocaine Cowboy). The Parnas saga mixes international intrigue with strangely agreeable slapstick, Corben says. Parnas had aptly and hilariously been linked to a company called “Fraud Guarantee,” for example. The director insists: “Lev Parnas’ story is like Tom Clancy, if Jack Ryan was played by Jackie Mason.” Corben refers to the film’s genre as Florida Men Behaving Badly with World-Changing Geopolitical Stakes.
The film, acquired by MSNBC films, will premiere Sept. 7 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music as part of an event billed as MSNBC Live: Democracy 2024. It will gain a wider airing in theaters and on the network later that month.
For Maddow, the movie represents another foray into mass media, expanding on her long-running cable show, her podcast “Ultra,” and a companion book Prequel about a fascist plot to take over the country in the pre-World War II era.
Touting the Parnas movie, Maddow describes his story as “un-put-down-able.” She also argues that the world should be populated with “more documentaries from an insider’s perspective about the Trump presidency,” wishcasting a Mike Pence documentary, a John Kelly documentary, and even a Rex Tillerson documentary. “But it takes someone like Lev Parnas,” Maddow says, “to be brave enough to speak up first.”
President Donald Trump discussing Venezuela at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago.
Why Venezuela Could Be a Turning Point in Gen Z’s Support for Trump
When Donald Trump called himself “the peace president” during his 2024 campaign, it was not just a slogan that my fellow Gen Z men and I took seriously, but also a promise we took personally. For a generation raised in the shadow of endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it felt reassuring. It told us there was a new Republican Party that had learned from its failures and wouldn’t ask our generation to fight another war for regime change. That belief stood strong until the U.S. overthrew Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Growing up in the long wake of the wars in Iraq in Afghanistan shaped how my generation learned to see Republicans. For us, “traditional” Republican foreign policy became synonymous with unnecessary conflicts that caused young people to bear the consequences. We heard how Iraq was sold to the public as a necessary war to destroy weapons of mass destruction, only to become a long conflict that defined the early adulthood of many millennials. Many of us grew up watching older siblings come home from deployments changed, and hearing teachers and coaches talk about friends who never fully came back. By the time we were old enough to pay attention, distrust of Bush-era Republicans wasn’t ideological, it was inherited from what we had heard.
As the 2024 election was rolling around, that dynamic had flipped. After watching wars in Ukraine and Gaza dominate headlines while Joe Biden was president, the Democrats were now the warmongers. My friends constantly told me how a vote for Kamala Harris was a vote to go to war. On the other hand, Donald Trump and the Republicans were the ones my friends thought could keep us safe. “I’m not voting for Trump because I love him,” one friend told me. “I’m voting for him because he cares about us and I don’t want to go fight in a stupid war.” For many of my friends, much of their vote came down to one question: Who was less likely to send us to fight? The answer to them was pretty clear.
Fast forward to now, and Venezuela has begun to complicate that belief. Even without talk of a draft or a formal declaration of war, the renewed focus on U.S. involvement and troops on the ground has brought back the same language of escalation my generation was taught to distrust. Young men online have been voicing the same worries, concerned that the ousting of Maduro mirrors the early stages of wars they were raised to fear. When I asked a friend what he thought about Venezuela, he shared that same sentiment. “This is how all these wars always start,” he told me. “They might try to make it sound like it’s not actually a war, but people our age always end up being the ones that pay the price for it.” For young men who supported Trump because they believed he represented a break from interventionist politics, Venezuela blurs the line between the “new” Republican Party they thought they were backing and the old one they were raised to reject.
For many young men, Venezuela has become a major part of a broader shift of how they view Trump. A recent poll from Speaking with American Men (SAM) found that Trump’s approval rating has fallen 10 percent among young men, with only 27 percent agreeing with the statement that Trump is “delivering for you”.
Gen Z men’s support of Trump was never about ideology or party loyalty, it was about the idea that he had their back and would fight for them. But that’s no longer the case. Recently, Trump proposed adding $500 billion to the military budget. Ideas like that will only hurt the president with young men. My friends don’t want more military spending that could get us entangled in foreign wars; they want a president who keeps them home and fights for their economic and social needs. As Trump pushes for a bigger military and more intervention abroad, the promise that once made him feel like a protector of young men now feels out of reach.
For my generation, Venezuela isn’t just another foreign policy dispute, it’s a conflict many young men worry they could be the ones sent to fight. Gen Z men didn’t support Trump because he was a Republican, but because they believed he was different from the old Republicans. He would be a president who would have their back, fight for their interests and keep them from fighting unnecessary wars. Now, that promise feels fragile, and the fear of being the ones asked to face the consequences has returned. For a generation raised on the effects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the idea of another war isn’t abstract, it’s personal.