Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the ambitious to-do list the Republican Congress has with plans to hit the ground running early next year and actually make House members work Monday through Friday (instead of the three day weeks they are used to) enacting an aggressive agenda to overturn Obama’s rules and programs by repealing a host of regulations at once instead of one at a time under current law. Robert Johnson, the Executive Director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, who was previously the Chief Economist of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee and Budget Committee, joins us to discuss how the white working class bought into Trump’s right wing narrative that the downsizing and loss of jobs in the rust belt is a result of the influx of immigrants, government regulations and unions and that once those enemies are defeated, good jobs will return to the industrial heartland.

Part 2

Then we look into Saturday’s celebration in Washington by white nationalists of the alt-right basking in Donald Trump’s victory which they see as the first step towards a white ethno-state in North America. Adele Stan, a Washington D.C.-based journalist who covers the intersection of religion and politics and is a weekly columnist for The American Prospect, joins us to discuss the event’s press conference at which Richard Spencer, the head of a white nationalist think tank, prevented journalists from taking pictures of the attendees while claiming that the alt-right is going to change the world.  

Part 3

Then finally we examine the record of the man praised by the alt-right’s Spencer who is thrilled by the prospect that in the Trump Administration, Jeff Sessions will “be at such a high level is a wonderful thing…in terms of not prosecuting federal diversity and fair housing”. Garrett Epps, a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a Professor of Law at the University of Baltimore School of Law joins us to discuss his article at The Atlantic “The Signal Sent by Picking Jeff Sessions for Attorney General” and why this reflects the brazen nature of the racist and divisive campaign Donald Trump ran which is now placing a remnant of the old South in charge of enforcing our laws and protecting our rights.

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with indications that Donald Trump will be a hands-off president based on the chaos going on with the transition in which Vice President-elect Mike Pence is doing the serious work while Trump does photo-ops with a prizefighter and celebrity interviews for TMZ. Timothy McCarthy, a Lecturer on History, Literature and Public Policy and Director of the Sexuality, Gender, and Human Rights Program at The Harvard Kennedy School, joins us. The author of “Protest Nation: Words That Inspired a Century of American Radicalism”, we discuss what is needed to inspire the majority of Americans that did not vote for Donald Trump who will soon be subject to the passage of a radical right wing legislative agenda orchestrated by Mike Pence and pushed aggressively by Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, that along with a Supreme Court packed with reactionary corporatist judges approved by the Koch Brothers, will make America great again for plutocrats and their heirs.

Part 2

Then we assess the new White House national security team that is rumored to be headed by General Michael Flynn as the president’s national security advisor with Senator Jeff Sessions and Senator Tom Cotton reported as leading contenders for Secretary of Defense. David Phillips, the Director of the Peace-building and Rights Program at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University who is a foreign affairs expert and former senior advisor to the administrations of Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama, joins us to discuss his latest article at The Huffington Post “Lt. General Michael T. Flynn: Gun for Hire”.

Part 3

Then finally John Densmore, an original and founding member of “The Doors” who co-wrote and produced numerous gold and platinum albums, joins us to discuss how the emergence of Trump brings back echoes of his early resistance to the Vietnam war and his fellow radical anti-Vietnam war activist the poet Robert Bly who became the leader of the 1990’s men’s movement. We discuss the new film “Robert Bly: A Thousand Years of Joy” and how much Donald Trump is a throwback to the chauvinistic male patriarch his father was and the tragedy that America came so close to having a woman lead the nation but for the last-minute intervention of the right wing Republican patriarchy inside the FBI.