Full Program

Part 1

We begin with a White House in chaos with a torrent of leaks fanning the flames of intramural fighting amongst top officials blaming each other for the dysfunction. David Graham, a staff writer at The Atlantic, joins us to discuss his latest article “Who Will Be the First Victim of White House Chaos” and the tenuous fates of National Security Advisor Michael Flynn who appears to have lied to the Vice President, Press Secretary Sean Spicer who has been mercilessly lampooned by Melissa McCarthy, Reince Priebus who is increasingly isolated from Trump’s inner circle and Kellyanne Conway who has managed to provoke the slavishly friendly Republican Congress into questioning her ethics. We look into how the real world is colliding with reality TV inside the White House as it emerges that Trump is running the U.S. government like  “The Apprentice” in what is becoming “Survivor: The West Wing”.

Part 2

Then we look further into the fate of General Michael Flynn who Press Secretary Sean Spicer said today is being “evaluated” by Donald Trump. William Danvers, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, who served as a special assistant to President Clinton for National Security Affairs and worked for Leon Panetta at the CIA and the Pentagon in the Obama Administration, joins us. We will discuss the extent to which the knives are out in a White House in a state of turmoil that could soon be thrown into even more chaos.

Part 3

Then finally Rodrigue Tremblay, professor emeritus of economics and international finance at the University of Montreal, who was a member of the Committee of Dispute Settlements of the North America Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, joins us to examine the discussions that took place today in the White House between Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and President Trump as well as the women’s business forum that Trump’s daughter Ivanka presided over to set up a cross-border council to advance women into executive positions and encourage entrepreneurship.    

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the growing concern that the biggest political story since the Watergate scandal, the Russian interference in our elections and the yet-to-be-explained connections between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, is in the process of disappearing from the political-media landscape in Washington as the daily antics of Donald Trump distract the public and consume the news cycle. David Corn, the Washington Bureau Chief for Mother Jones, joins us to discuss his latest article at Mother Jones “The Mysterious Disappearance of the Biggest Scandal in Washington” and the concerns that political appointees to head up the CIA and the DNI, along with a partisan Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee who worked on the Trump campaign, could slow-walk the inquiry into a political graveyard unless sufficient Democratic and grassroots pressure is brought to bear and sustained.

Part 2

Then Kenneth Briggs, a professor at Lafayette College and a former New York Times religion editor who writes for the National Catholic Reporter, joins us to discuss the alliance between Trump’s chief strategist Stephen Bannon and hard liners in the Vatican who oppose Pope Francis. We will examine Bannon’s friendship with the conservative traditionalist American Cardinal Raymond Burke who the pope fired as head of the “Knights of Malta”, an elite secret society whose theological underpinnings go back to the crusades and align with Bannon’s apocalyptic vision of an impending war with Islam.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with Andrew Faas, an author, activist, philanthropist and management advisor promoting psychologically healthy, safe and fair workplaces. He joins us to discuss his new book “From Bully to Bull’s-eye: Move Your Organization Out of the Line of Fire” and we assess the extent to Senator Elizabeth Warren is a victim of bullying or of just old-fashioned misogyny and male chauvinism in Majority Leader McConnell’s put-down and shut-up of her on the senate floor, and whether Donald Trump is a bully when he threatens to destroy someone’s career, supposedly in jest.