Full Program

Part 1

We begin with Donald Trump’s foreign policy team and his worldview outlined to the editorial board of The Washington Post, as well as his speech to the AIPAC conference tonight in Washington and speak with Dr. Rachel Kleinfeld, a Senior Associate in the Democracy and Rule of Law Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the founding President of the Truman National Security Project who served as a security expert on the Foreign Affairs Policy Board at the U.S. Department of State.

Part 2

Then we get an update on President Obama’s historic visit to Cuba where today in Havana Obama said he believes that “change is going to happen here and I think that Raul Castro understands that”.  A former political analyst with the Cuban government who is now a lecturer at the University of Texas, Arturo Lopez Levy joins us to discuss where Raul Castro’s and Barack Obama’s views converge in private since they appear to diverge in public with Raul Castro, speaking at a joint news conference with Obama, denying that there are any political prisoners in Cuba, challenging the journalists to “give him a list’ and they would be released “tonight”.

Part 3

Then finally we examine the possibility that a growing national protest movement against Donald Trump will dog him all the way to November and create optics that may prove unsettling to most voters as Donald Trump could come to be seen as the candidate of chaos. Marilyn Katz, a writer, consultant and long-time political activist who is a partner with Democracy Partners and a founder and co-chair of Chicago Women Take Action, joins us to discuss whether student protests will hurt Trump or help him, and her article at In These Times “Stopping Trump: The Chicago Model”.

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Judge Merrick Garland’s strange trip to Capitol Hill today and speak with Elizabeth Wydra, the President of the Constitutional Accountability Center who frequently participates in Supreme Court litigation and has argued several important cases in the federal courts of appeals. She joins us to discuss whether simple courtesy was on display today and if Republican senators were able to bring themselves to shake the nominees hand in spite of the dictate from the Senate’s Republican Leader Mitch McConnell who on day one vowed to destroy Obama’s presidency and vowed to block a replacement for Justice Scalia within an hour of the announcement of Scalia’s death.

Part 2

Then we speak with John Judis, a senior writer at The National Journal who has a recent article at The Washington Post “After 2016 Will Political Parties Ever Look the Same”? He joins us to discuss his forthcoming book “The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession has Transformed American and European Politics”. We examine the rise of populism on the right and left in both Europe and the U.S. and assess whether Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders will be the main beneficiaries of populist anger at those who have rigged the economy and downsized the American Dream.

Part 3

Then finally we explore the electoral landscape ahead in terms of who is motivated and who is alienated, and speak with Katherine Newman, the Provost at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is the author of twelve books on poverty, the working poor and the consequences of inequality and joins us to discuss how much the enthusiasm deficit on the Democratic side will depress the vote while Trump is activating Independents and so-called Reagan Democrats on the Republican side.