December 21 - Keeping Donald Trump's Finger Off the Nuclear Button; Trump's Financial Ties to Russian Oligarchs and Gangsters; How Much are Trump and His Children Pushing the Ethical Envelope?

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with a way to address the main concern many Americans have over Donald Trump’s fitness to be Commander-in-Chief which has to do with his temperament as Hillary Clinton noted often and turned into a campaign theme; that we don’t want someone with such a thin skin close to the nuclear button. Joseph Cirincione, the president of the Ploughshares Fund and author of “Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons”, joins us to discuss his article at The Huffington Post” “Keep Donald Trump’s Finger off the Nuclear Button” and steps that President Obama can take such as, with a stroke of a pen, taking America’s nuclear missiles off high alert so that Donald Trump could not launch them rashly.

Part 2

Then we speak with James Henry, one of the world’s leading investigative economists who has written widely about offshore and onshore tax havens, kleptocracy, and private banking. He is a Senior Fellow at Columbia University’s Center on Sustainable Investment, a Global Justice Fellow at Yale, a Senior Advisor to The Tax Justice Network and the author of “The Blood Bankers”. He joins us to discuss his latest report at The American Interest “The Curious World of Donald Trump’s Private Russian Connections” and how, after Trump was blackballed by American banks following his many bankruptcies, he turned to financing from Russian oligarchs and gangsters, many of whom ended up residing in Trump Tower.

Part 3

Then finally we examine how much Donald Trump and his children are pushing the ethical envelope in terms of trading access for money and whether we are heading into a pay-to-play presidency with Trump’s children, who will be running Trump’s business enterprises, trading access for donations to their favorite charities or other entities as they have already tried to do. Sheila Krumholz, the Executive Director of the Center for Responsive Politics, who tracks money, politics and influence in Washington, joins us to discuss how much this new president who plays by his own rules, will follow the existing rules that govern money influencing politics.