Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the testimony today before the House Intelligence Committee by FBI Director James Comey and the Head of the NSA Admiral Rogers into on-going investigations into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians. James Henry, the author of “Blood Bankers”, who is an expert on offshore and pirate banking and kleptocracy, joins us to examine questions that focused on the money trail between the Trump campaign and the Trump Organization and Russian oligarchs that seemed to indicate that is where the investigation is perhaps heading, as well as the definitive rejection by both Rogers and Comey of the explosive charge Trump made that Obama had wiretapped him which he has yet to retract or apologize for given Trump’s accompanying smear of Obama who he called “a bad (or sick) guy!”.

Part 2

Then we look into the apparent death of the long-held notion that partisanship ends at America’s shores, which was on display today as members of the House Intelligence Committee appeared to be operating in two different universes, with Democrats probing reports of possible collusion between Trump and the Russians while Republican Congressmen went to extraordinary lengths to shift the focus onto leakers and press reports. Loch Johnson, Regents Professor of Political Science at the University of Georgia who served on the staffs of both House and Senate Oversight Committees, joins us to discuss the raw partisan nature of the probe that nevertheless established that there is an on-going investigation into collusion between Trump and the Russians and that there was no factual basis to Trump’s claim that Obama wiretapped him.

Part 3

Then finally we discuss the other major hearing today before the Senate Judiciary Committee into the confirmation of Donald Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court Judge Neil Gorsuch. Garrett Epps a Professor of Law at the University of Baltimore School of Law and author of “American Justice 2014: Nine Clashing Visions of the Supreme Court”, joins us to discuss his article at The Atlantic “Gorsuch’s Selective View of Religion”.

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with Trump’s budget proposal that increases spending on defense, homeland security, and veterans while cutting spending on diplomacy and the environment by one third, cutting Health, Agriculture and Labor by one fifth, followed by 10 to 15% cuts in Commerce, Education, Housing, Transportation and Interior down to smaller cuts in everything else. A former member of President Obama’s economic team who was the Chief Economic Advisor to Vice President Biden, Jared Bernstein, a Senior Fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, joins us. We will discuss a budget that Trump says is about keeping America safe even though the U.S. spends more than most of the rest of the world combined  on defense and faces no significant threats as China slows its military spending and Trump’s increase of $54 billion in defense is about the total of what Russia spends on defense per year.

Part 2

Then we examine the impact of the Trump budget on the poor and speak with David Bradley, the Executive Director of the National Community Action Foundation who has been one of Washington’s leading advocates on behalf of low income programs. He joins us to discuss how the eroding support for Trump’s replacement for Obamacare makes this budget dead on arrival with Democrats appalled by the harshness of the cuts while some Republicans are unhappy with a budget that does not go far enough in cutting the growth of entitlements.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with a former U.S. Ambassador to The Netherlands, Cynthia Schneider, Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at Georgetown University who is also a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution. She joins us to discuss the victory of the Dutch center right party meaning that Geert Wilders, the racist friend of Stephen Bannon and Nigel Farage, who came in a distant second will not form a government. We also look into the surprise victory of the youthful GreenLeft Party which made the most gains that is led by 30 year-old Jesse Klaver who is half Moroccan and half Indonesian.