Full Program

Part 1

We  begin with the looming showdown in the U.S. Senate now that it is clear the Democrats will filibuster the nomination of Judge Gorsuch to the Supreme Court and in return Mitch McConnell, whose finger is itchy on the trigger, will go nuclear and blow up the Senate rules eliminating the filibuster.  A 21 year veteran of the Senate, Jim Manley, who served as a senior advisor to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for six years and before that served for 12 years as an aide to the late Senator Ted Kennedy, joins us to discuss the recognition that it no longer makes sense to pretend that normal business can be conducted with the Trump presidency. He argues against going along with the Republican charade pretending their Supreme Court nominees are not judicial activists like John Roberts who promised to uphold president then made radical changes to increase corporate power and perpetuate Republican rule while restricting worker’s rights and weakening political competition.   

Part 2

Then we speak with Aziz Huq, a Professor of Law at the University of Chicago and a former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He joins us to discuss the difficult and dismal choices facing Senate Democrats and the increasingly phony nature of Supreme Court confirmation hearings in which candidates now say as little as possible in as many words as they can muster.

Part 3

Then finally with Donald Trump’s lavish praise in a White House greeting for the Egyptian military dictator General Sisi who overthrew the country’s first freely elected president in a coup, we examine Trump’s disregard for human rights and the throttling of a free press and the filling of prisons with political opponents. Mokhtar Awad, a Research Fellow in the Program on Extremism at George Washington University who specializes in Islamist and Salafist groups and insurgencies in Egypt, joins us to discuss his article at Politico “What Trump Should Ask Sisi” and whether this new era of transactional politics with bring about the peace that both leaders promised today.

Full Program

Part 1

We will begin with the warning about high-level decision making by former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld that there are “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns”, and discuss the current decision maker-in-chief who does not know what he knows and does not know what he doesn’t know. Steven Nadler a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin, joins us to discuss the scary fact that Donald Trump is ignorant of his own ignorance. We examine the ignorance of not just Trump but also of his supporters who he once proudly complimented saying “I love the poorly educated”, and the change in American politics since the arrival of Sarah Palin as a candidate for high office to assess the extent to which any kind of meritocracy is at play anymore in our politics or do people vote for someone they want to have a beer with rather than someone who is competent, knowledgeable and experienced.

Part 2

Then we look into today’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee and speak with Jacob Heilbrunn, a Senior Editor at The National Interest and author of “They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons”. He joins us to discuss the White House’s increasingly tortured denials about their collusion with Devon Nunes, the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee to effectively drive the House investigation into a ditch and whether the Senate investigation will be able to pick up the pieces.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with national security reporter Ali Watkins who covers the Senate Intelligence Committee for BuzzFeed News about today's surprising testimony of Clinton Watts, a senior fellow at the Center for Cyber and Homeland Security at George Washington University who testified that Russian hacking and fake news is still influencing our politics and that Trump parroted Russian fake news and was susceptible to being fed fake news.