Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the epic failure of the Democratic Party to win a presidential election against one of the least qualified and most controversial candidates to ever run for president. Ed Kilgore, a political columnist for New York Magazine and the Managing Editor of The Democratic Strategist joins us to discuss his article at New York Magazine about the much-vaunted Democratic ground game “Trump Did Not Need an Organization: He Let Conservative Groups Organize For Him”, and what went wrong with the Clinton campaign, apart from the intervention by the FBI Director, that explains their failure to reach out to working class voters and inspire the seven million who voted Democratic in the last presidential election who sat this one out.

Part 2

Then, with today’s phone call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, we examine the role of Russian finance and Russian Intelligence in supporting Trump and helping elect him. We assess whether, like Nixon, who won an election then eventually his Watergate break-in to the DNC caught up with him, Trump could suffer the same fate since there has already been an electronic version of a Watergate break-in to the DNC by Russian hackers. Michael Kelley, an editor at Yahoo Finance who was formerly the front-page editor at Business Insider where he reported on Military and Defense issues, joins us to discuss the role that Wikileaks and the Russians played in feeding the Trump campaign damaging opposition research on Hillary Clinton.

Part 3

Then finally we explore four scenarios of what a Trump presidency might be with Darrell West, the vice president of Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution and author of “Megachange: Economic Disruption, Political Upheaval, and Social Strife in the 21st Century”. We discuss his article at Brookings “Four Scenarios for a Trump Presidency” to determine whether we will have in the White House a traditional Republican Administration – a Popular Rogue – a Failed President or an Authoritarian Leader.

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with Donald Trump’s unique lack of qualification for the presidency based on the country’s history where not one U. S. President has assumed the office with no prior government or military experience. Dr. Rachel Kleinfeld, a Senior Associate in the Democracy and the Rule of Law Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, joins us to discuss how the military and intelligence bureaucracy will find a way to deal with a new chief executive of the government who is also Commander-in-Chief, and whether there are any checks and balances on the president in the executive branch if Trump surrounds himself with the coterie of sycophants and enablers like Chris Christie, Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich and puts General Flynn in a key national security position in spite of Flynn’s murky ties to the Kremlin. 

Part 2

Then we assess how the election of Trump is seen overseas by going to the U.K. and speaking with one of the world’s leading analysts of popular culture, media and their connection to the politics of everyday life, Toby Miller, a Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at Cardiff University. He joins us to discuss how world leaders have reacted to Trump’s win and the president-elect’s ties to Putin and the European far-right, in particular the architect of the “Brexit” vote, Nigel Farage who has campaigned with Trump and is elated by his election win that Farage has declared “is Brexit times three”. 

Part 3

Then finally with Russia escalating its bombing of Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, in conjunction with a ground assault by the Assad regime’s army and Iranian and Russia troops, we discuss the lack of concern for human rights among some in the European and American left who used to be opposed to dictators the U.S. supported in Latin America during the Cold War but nowadays make apologies for dictators like Putin, Qaddafi and Assad who not only have contempt for human rights but are capitalist kleptocrats. Evan Sandlin, a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Davis, joins us to discuss his article in the Los Angeles Review of Books, “Dereliction of Duty? The Left and the Syrian Civil War”.