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February 12 - Trump's Budget and the $1 Trillion It Adds to the Deficit; Trump's Infrastructure Plan Critics Call a Scam; America's Retreat Under Trump
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We begin with President Trump’s 2019 budget released today which guts diplomacy by 32% and environmental protection by 34% while slashing domestic spending by billions in food stamps, health insurance and federal housing subsidies at the same time boosting defense spending and immigration enforcement. Mike Lofgren, who has spent 28 years in Congress the last 16 of which as senior analyst on the House and Senate Budget Committees, joins us to discuss the $4.4 trillion budget which adds $7 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years and his article in tomorrow’s New York Times which is a detailed analysis of the budget. We look into the charges of Republican hypocrisy leveled by Senator Rand Paul over the GOP’s sudden abandonment of their mantra on the doom and gloom of mounting deficits, and assess how long it will be before Trump’s working class voters realize they have been scammed by a one-time bonus instead of a pay raise while consumer protection is eliminated, workplace health and safety stripped and collective bargaining outlawed. |
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Then we get an analysis of Trump’s much-ballyhooed infrastructure plan that critics are calling a scam and speak with Robert Puentes, the President and CEO of the ENO Center for Transportation, an independent, non-partisan think tank which focusses on infrastructure. He joins us to discuss a largely aspirational plan that takes $200 billion from existing infrastructure spending with the hope of leveraging that with state and local spending and private investment up to $1.5 trillion. This is far below what the American Society of Civil Engineers considers is the $4.59 trillion needed in infrastructure spending and would likely mean that more tolls and usage fees would be involved to create revenue streams to attract private investors. |
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Then finally with Trump’s budget taking an axe to American diplomacy, we examine the paradox of throwing more money at defense while the president’s ignorance, ineptitude and inattention has seen America lose ground in the Middle East with Russia moving in to Egypt, Libya, Syria and Turkey while China makes gains in Africa, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Southeast Asia. Historian Alfred McCoy, the author of “In the Shadow of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power”, joins us to discuss America’s retreat and his article at The Nation “Fortress America in Crumbling: Trump’s inept one-man diplomacy is wrecking U.S. foreign policy”. |
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February 11 - The Creeping Coup is Underway in America; Making the Case for Impeachment; Could Clashes Between Israel and Iran Lead to a Wider Escalation of the Syrian War
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We begin with revelations in The New York Times that American intelligence agents tried to buy back NSA and CIA hacking tools stolen by the so-called “Shadow Brokers” but were instead offered dirt on Trump cavorting with six Russian prostitutes in Moscow’s Ritz hotel. Trump has seized on this story to claim vindication tweeting out that “the Russians sold phony secrets on Trump to the U.S…Its all starting to come out now - DRAIN THE SWAMP!” We will examine this bungled operation with a former CIA operations officer Robert Baer who is now the national security analyst for CNN and discuss whether there is a creeping coup underway in America as Trump appears to be winning in his efforts to change the subject from investigations into him, his family and his business activities by turning the tables with constant calls for investigations of the press, the intelligence community, Hillary Clinton, the FBI, the DOJ and Democrats on the Intelligence Committees. Now that Trump has fired or forced out almost every official in the FBI and DOJ in change of investigating him, as he sits on the Democrat’s rebuttal to the phony Nunes memo, we will assess whether Trump will be able to either delay, neutralize or shut down the Mueller inquiry. |
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Then we speak with the American political historian Allan Lichtman, who has studied both the American right and the presidency and is the author of the national bestseller “The Case For Impeachment”, just out now in an updated edition. He joins us to discuss the apparent determination if not desperation on Trump’s part to prevent the evidence against him that Mueller has collected from seeing the light of day, and whether in terms of comparisons to Watergate, the reverse is true that this time Trump’s crimes are worse than the cover-up underway. |
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Then finally, we look into whether the Iranian drone incursion into Israel and the punitive airstrikes against Iranian targets in Syria that followed the downing of an Israeli F-16, could lead to a wider escalation of the many-sided war in Syria. Asher Kaufman, Director of the Kroc Institute for International Peace at the University of Notre Dame and author of “Contested Frontiers: Cartography, Sovereignty, and Conflict at the Syria, Lebanon, Israel Tri-Border Region”, joins us. We will discuss Russia’s fear of an escalation and the further complication that two NATO allies Turkey and the U.S. could also be drawn into a confrontation over the Kurds. |
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February 8 - Praising the White House Wife-Beater Until the Truth Emerges; Can Democrats Use the Threat of a Government Shutdown Without Repeating Recent Mistakes?; A Leading Expert on Intelligence Oversight Assesses the Damage Nunes is Doing
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We begin with the resignation of Rob Porter, the rising star in the White House who is dating Hope Hicks the young woman who spends more time with Donald Trump than any other aide. Although his history of spousal abuse was known, it was not acted upon until a picture of the first battered wife appeared, followed by testimony from the second who claimed he called her an “F-ing bitch” on their honeymoon, then a third woman, an ex-girlfriend working in the Trump Administration, came forward recently and told the White House counsel Porter had abused her as well as his ex-wives. Dahlia Lithwick, a senior editor and legal correspondent for Slate where she has an article “Rob Porter’s History of Domestic Abuse Wasn’t a Secret. It’s Just That No One Cared”, joins us. We will discuss how Porter’s boss General Kelly, after defending Porter and praising him effusively, has not just been exposed as a hardline ideologue and hardly the adult in the room everyone was hoping for, but the military disciplinarian is showing signs he is not diminishing the chaos at the White House but instead is adding to the incompetence.
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Then, after Nancy Pelosi’s 8 hour-long defense of the “Dreamers” before the House yesterday, we assess what strategies the House Minority can employ against a majority of Republicans who are anti-immigrant and a White House that is stirring up xenophobic and nativist anger, we will speak with Margaret Hu a Professor of Law at Washington and Lee School of Law. She served as special policy counsel in the Office of Special Counsel for Immigration at the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department and we will discuss how Democrats can leverage the threat of a government shutdown to achieve their goals without repeating the mistakes of the recent government shutdown. |
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Then finally we speak to one of the nation’s leading experts on intelligence organizations, Loch Johnson, the author of a timely new book “Spy Watching: Intelligence Accountability in the United States”. He was staff director of the Senate Committee on Intelligence and was at the forefront of the reforms that brought about the House and Senate Intelligence oversight committees and we discuss how Trump’s stooge Devin Nunes, the Chair of the House intelligence Committee, is single-handedly wrecking his committee and destroying the bi-partisanship that is essential in protecting our national security.
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February 7 - 73% of Republicans Have Fallen for Trump's Smear of the DOJ and FBI; Poland's Law Against Historical Inquiry; Immigration Again Will Be the Trigger for Another Government Shutdown
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We begin with the amazingly successful smear campaign the Trump Administration and the Fox News echo chamber has done on fabricating a distraction from the Mueller probe by demonizing the DOJ and FBI to the point that 73% of Republicans believe these institutions that Trump controls are undermining his presidency. As recently as 2015, 84% of Republicans admired the FBI but today only 38% do and we will look into why Republicans have gone along with Trump in destroying one of the GOP’s major assets as the party of law and order. Alex Whiting, a professor at Harvard Law School who was formerly a prosecutor at the International Criminal Court and the Department of Justice joins us to discuss his article at Just Security “President Trump and Concealing Evidence in the Russia Probe” and Trump’s record of not just tearing down democratic institutions, but tearing down people who were widely admired such as Barack Obama, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, James Comey, Andrew McCabe and now Rod Rosenstein. |
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Then we analyze the criticism from around the world following the right wing Polish government’s attempt to safeguard Poland’s image abroad by passing a law outlawing any accusation of Poland’s complicity in the Nazi crimes committed during the holocaust. James Kirchick, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution whose latest book is “The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues and the Coming Dark Age”, joins us to discuss how Poland is joining in an unfortunate trend of outlawing historical inquiry as Putin has done in Russia by passing a law making it illegal to mention the Hitler/Stalin Pact, which ironically set the stage for the Nazi/Soviet invasion of Poland at the start of World War 11. |
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Then finally we speak with Eric Olson, the Deputy Director of the Latin American Program and Senior Advisor of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars about how immigration again will be at the heart of whether there is another government shutdown. Now that the Senate has passed a budget bill without addressing the “Dreamer” issue which the Democratic leader of the House Nancy Pelosi said in a marathon speech means that her caucus will not support a budget package that does not commit to a debate over DACA. So the prospect of another shutdown, which Trump said he would love, looms large. |
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February 6 - Behind the Stock Market's Wild Fluctuations; Trump's Cynical Exaggeration of the Threat Posed by MS-13; Trump's Termites Eating Away at the Foundations of American Democracy
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We begin with the wild fluctuation of the stock market after its biggest-ever plunge on Monday and examine the underlying causes with economist James Galbraith, Chair of Government/Business Relations and a professor at the School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas and author of “Inequality: What Everyone Needs to Know”. He joins us to discuss how much of a factor the fear of inflation and rising salaries played as the market closed at the end of today up 567 points after a loss of 1175 points on Monday following a loss of 666 on Friday. All this taking place as the new head of the Federal Reserve was sworn in while the President of the United States Donald Trump displayed even greater volatility, venturing into the rhetorical world of egomaniacal dictators like Qadaffi by calling Democrats who did not applaud during his State of the Union address with the same sycophantic enthusiasm as Republicans , traitors. Then today before law enforcement officials Trump announced his willingness to have the United States government grind to a halt as he threatened to hold the fate of “Dreamers” hostage to his wild exaggerations about an imaginary invasion of the country by the MS-13 street gang who he claims are continuing to kill Americans, warning “I’d love to see a shutdown if we don’t get this stuff taken care of”. |
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Then we separate Trump’s fiction from the facts about the El Salvadoran street gang MS-13 which was founded in Los Angeles in the 1980’s and speak with Cora Currier, a journalist who writes about national security, immigration, human rights, and press freedom for The Intercept where she has an article “El Salvador’s Youth are Trapped Between Gang Violence and Police Abuse”. We discuss the cynical use by Trump of this criminal gang that mostly preys on immigrant Latino communities while wreaking havoc in El Salvador where its ruthless tactics force young El Salvadorans to flee north to the U.S. or either be killed or become killers. |
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Then finally we speak with Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter David Cay Johnston, the co-founder of DCReport.org about his latest book, just out, “It’s Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration is Doing to America”. He joins us to discuss how Trump continues to win with his supporters in spite of how much the majority of Americans are appalled by his behavior and how by concentrating of his daily outrages, the press are missing the damagse that his Administration which Johnston characterizes as “termites”, are doing as they eat away at the foundations of American democracy. |
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