Full Program

Part 1

We begin with an analysis of how much Trump is a trapped animal inside the Oval Office with Robert Mueller closing in on him. Lance Dodes, a Training and Supervising Analyst Emeritus with the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute who was a clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and is a contributor to the recent book “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump”, joins us. We discuss the psychological manifestation of projective identification that Trump exhibits as he blames Hillary Clinton and others for what he does and who he is, turning them into crooks, liars, cheats and bullies while Trump lashes out with mounting fury against Robert Mueller. We will speculate about what would happen if Trump were to shut down the investigation, which, if completed, will likely be the only time in Trump’s life that he has not gotten away with cheating people and breaking the law.

Part 2

Then we explore further the possibility that Trump will not be able to contain his impulses and will suddenly fire Sessions or Rosenstein to shut down Mueller, despite assurances that he has no intention to do so, which was what he was saying before he fired Tillerson. David Halperin, a senior fellow at Republic Report who was a special assistant for national security affairs to President Clinton and counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, joins us to discuss what outrage on the part of Trump would be sufficient for the Republicans to take a moral stand which so far they have failed to do.

Part 3

Then finally, with Facebook’s stock taking a hit and users abandoning the platform while politicians call for investigations and transparency, we examine the fallout from the revelations about Cambridge Analytica and Facebook’s abuse of personal data. A leading voice in warning about the monopoly power of the tech giants and their business model of surveillance capitalism, Jonathan Taplin, joins us to discuss an overdue reckoning and his recent book “Move Fast and Break Things: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy”.

Full Program

Part 1

We will begin with today’s White House visit by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman known as MBS whose arrival coincided with a rare vote in the U.S. Senate on the War Powers Act being invoked to end U.S. involvement in a devastating war in Yemen that MBS escalated in 2015 with a brutal bombing campaign and a blockade that has created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Brian Katulis, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress who focuses on national security policy in the Middle East and recently met with MBS in Saudi Arabia, joins us to discuss the public relations campaign underway to portray MBS as a reformer ahead of his expected promotion as the next king of Saudi Arabia, replacing his ailing father on the throne. We will assess the extent of the co-mingling of statecraft and business interests between MBS and his new friend Jared Kushner, and remarks made by MBS in a recent 60 Minutes interview in which he talked of Saudi Arabia acquiring nuclear weapons. With a likely step in that direction being an announcement by Trump that the U.S. will sell the Saudis dual-use nuclear reactors.

Part 2

Then we look into the war MBS is waging against Yemen and the vote today in the senate of 55 to 44 which killed a bi-partisan resolution to end U.S. complicity in the bombing and starving of Yemeni women and children. Shireen Al-Adeimi, a graduate student at Harvard University who is originally from Yemen, joins us to discuss the nature of U.S. military support for MBS’s war on Yemen and the complex internecine fighting that is destroying Yemen which is already the poorest country in the Middle East.

Part 3

Then finally we go to the U.K. to speak with Mike Harris, the CEO of 89up and the publisher of Little Atoms. He writes on human rights, surveillance and free speech and joins us to discuss the angry reaction in the British parliament to revelations that Cambridge Analytica used personal data from Facebook to influence the Brexit vote along with helping Trump win the U.S. election. We will discuss a video sting by Channel Four in the U.K. that exposes the head of Cambridge Analytica boasting on hidden camera about his role in defeating Hillary Clinton and his offer to supply Ukrainian girls to entrap rival politicians.