Full Program

Part 1

We begin with President Trump’s “very friendly conversation” with the murderous president of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte who he invited to the White House despite the thousands of Filipinos who have been gunned down by vigilantes urged on by Duterte. Vikram Singh, who previously served as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for South and Southeast Asia at the Pentagon, joins us to discuss Donald Trump’s apparent affection for strongmen and how much the American president and Attorney General Sessions are sympathetic to Duterte’s brutal and arbitrary crackdown on drugs given Session’s obsession with marijuana and his plans to revive the war on drugs. We will also assess Duterte’s pivot to China and his coy remarks that he may be too busy to accept Trump’s invitation because “I’m supposed to go to Russia; I’m also supposed to go to Israel”.

Part 2

Then we examine Donald Trump’s ominous use of the word “criminal” to describe immigrants and political opponents alike and speak with Jason Stanley, a Professor of Philosophy at Yale University and author of “How Propaganda Works”. We discuss his article in The New York Times “Who is a Criminal” and investigate what agenda might be behind the dark and dystopian vision of chaos and carnage in American inner cities and at the border that Trump and Sessions are pushing as Trump dehumanize immigrants as he did on Saturday calling them “snakes” to wild applause from his followers.

Part 3

Then finally, on this May Day, we speak with historian Jefferson Cowie, the author of “Stayin’ Alive: The 1970’s and the Last Days of the Working Class” whose latest book is “The Great Exception: The New Deal and the Limits of American Politics”. We will discuss what happened to the champions of the middle and working classes, given the lack of political opposition to Trump and the Republicans today, compared to the 1970’s when the liberals and the Democrats dominated the House, the Senate and the Supreme Court. 

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with a new poll that finds the overwhelming majority of Trump supporters believe he is honest and trustworthy and will keep his campaign promises. At the same time they do not believe the mainstream media with 78% of Trump voters believing that news organizations regularly produce false stories. Ben Schreckinger, who covers national politics for Politico, joins us to discuss his latest article at Politico Magazine “Trump’s Fake War on the Fake News”, and the paradox that while Trump’s lies are working with cynical perfection on his base, he also wants the approval of the mainstream media that he demonizes as he spends a lot of his time obsessing over how he is covered and how his underlings like Sean Spicer are performing on his behalf. We will also look into the trickledown nature of the culture of lying in the White House that has junior staffers routinely lying to the press just for fun.

Part 2

Then we gauge the reactions to the highly touted but thinly supported tax cut and tax reform proposals announced at the White House yesterday and assess the impact of the tax cuts on the deficit with Frank Clemente, the Executive Director and co-founder of Americans for Tax Fairness. He joins us to explain how getting rid of the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax while cutting the corporate tax to 15% will benefit Trump and enrich him, his family, his friends and members of his cabinet.

Part 3

Then finally we get an update on the deteriorating situation in Venezuela where the son of a top official in the Maduro government made a heartfelt appeal to his father on video begging him “to end the injustice that has sunk this country”. Jennifer McCoy, a professor of political science at Georgia State University and author of “The Unraveling of Representative Democracy in Venezuela” and “International Mediation in Venezuela”, joins us to discuss plans for an intervention by the Organization of American States that may come too late as this heavily-armed country is poised to descend into violent chaos.