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March 12 - Putin Blames Election Meddling on Jews; The Multi-Billion Dollar Saudi Royal Shakedown; The Amazingly Ignorant Secretary of Education
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We begin with the backlash from Israeli officials, Jewish groups and prominent Senators and House members to remarks that Russia’s president Putin made in an interview with NBC’s Megyn Kelly in which he blamed meddling in our 2016 election on Jews and other minorities. With Britain’s Prime Minister May today telling parliament that it is “highly likely” Russia was behind the attack in the U.K. on an exiled Russian spy and his daughter, who were poisoned by a type of military-grade nerve agent developed by Russia, we will look into how the Russian media is dealing with both the pushback from Russian election meddling and yet another assassination on British soil of former spies Putin has labelled as traitors who “will kick the bucket, trust me”. Julia Davis, the founder and editor of Russian Media Monitor, which analyzes Russian media and the relationship between news and propaganda, joins us to discuss how, ahead of Russia’s March 18 election, Putin is becoming more brazen in signaling to the Russia people via state-controlled TV that he is their strong leader at war with the West, claiming in a two-hour documentary titled “Putin”, that he had ordered the downing of a Turkish passenger plane that was reported to be hijacked and heading for the Sochi Olympics. |
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Then, with the announcement today by the White House that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, MBS, who is soon to be crowned king, will meet with Trump on March 20, we speak with Ali Al-Ahmed, the founder and director of the Institute for Gulf Affairs who is an expert on Saudi Arabian political affairs and Saudi-American relations. He joins us to discuss the extraordinary confiscation of wealth underway as MBS shakes down the fortunes and holdings of prominent Saudi princes including the multi-billionaire Prince Alaweed Bin Talal, as well as the war MBS is bogged down in Yemen in which thousands of innocent women and children are being bombed and starved to death. |
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Then finally we review the Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s interview on “60 Minutes” which the Christian fundamentalist billionaire stumbled her way through, struggling to answer basic questions in a performance that even alarmed the White House. Mitchell Robinson, Chair of Music Education at Michigan State University’s College of Music and author of “Privatize, Monetize, Weaponize: How the DeVos family devoured Michigan’s schools”, joins us to discuss the damage done so far to American education by this dim-witted dilettante. |
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March 11 - Trump Covers His Bets Ahead of the Summit With Kim Jong-Un; Our Reality TV President to Sit Down With the World's Most Ruthless Dictator; Trump and the Republicans Are Running Out the Clock on Robert Mueller
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We begin with the sudden summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un announced by Donald Trump that is to take place in May at a place yet to be determined. Already Trump has covered his bets by saying “I may leave fast or we may sit down and make the greatest deal in the world”. Sung Yoon Lee, a Professor of International Affairs at the Fletcher School of Diplomacy at Tufts University, joins us to discuss Trump’s claim about the North Korean’s that “I think they want to make peace, I think it’s time” and how much that seems to miss the point that Kim’s primary goal is the perpetuation of his family’s cruel and criminal regime. We will also speculate about the see-sawing diplomacy underway with an about-face from having Vice President Pence getting stiffed by the North Korean delegation at the Winter Olympics, to Kim Jong-un’s invitation for a summit with Trump delivered to the White House by South Korea’s National Security Advisor and the head of South Korea’s intelligence service after their recent meeting with Kim which followed the thawing of relations between the North and South on display at the Winter Olympics. |
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Then we examine further the fast-track war-to-peace change from Trump threatening “little rocket man” with “fire and fury” to quickly deciding to be the only prominent American, apart from Dennis Rodman, to meet with Kim Jong-un, an American who also happens to be the President of the United States. Kent Harrington, a former senior CIA analyst who served as the National Intelligence Officer for East Asia, joins us to discuss the unusual approach to international diplomacy underway with a former builder of sky-scrapers starting construction on the penthouse before he has laid the foundations. |
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Then finally we look into the growing legal jeopardy Trump has from his pre-election cover-up of an affair with Stormy Daniels and the $130,000 payoff his lawyer made to the porn star along with an NDA which could soon be broken. Nina Burleigh, the National Politics Correspondent at Newsweek joins us to discuss her article “Stormy Breaks Trump’s Favorite Legal Tactic: The NDA” and her cover article at Newsweek “”The Star-Mangled Banner: Can the American Legal System Survive Donald Trump?” |
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March 8 - Could a Porn Star Bring Down Trump?; Trump Shoots America in the Foot and Starts a Trade War; How Trump is Hurting 214 Million Women as 830 Die Everyday
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We begin on this International Women’s Day with the ironic possibility that it will not be the press, or the Democrats or even the Mueller investigation that will bring down Donald Trump’s presidency, but instead it looks like it might be a porn star Stephanie Clifford who goes by the name of Stormy Daniels. An expert on leadership and women’s relationship with power, Gloria Feldt, the author of “No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power” who was president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, joins us to discuss how Trump, who has bullied and intimidated women into silence and labelled the many women who have come forward charging him with sexual harassment “liars”, may have met his match with Stormy Daniels. She appears to have broken Trump’s NDA, Non-Disclosure Agreement that came with the $130,000 Trump’s lawyer paid Stormy for her silence shortly before the 2016 election. We will discuss how NDA’s have been used by powerful men to silence women who have been sexually abused, but more and more women are coming forward to break these agreements such as has been the case with Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly, Harvey Weinstein and now Donald Trump. |
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Then we speak with Katheryn Russ, a Professor of Economics at the University of California, Davis who worked for the Obama Administration’s Council of Economic Advisors as Senior Economist for International Trade and Finance. She joins us to discuss her article at Econofact “Will Steel Tariffs put U.S. Jobs at Risk?” and analyze the many reasons why Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum make no sense economically or in terms of national defense. But worst of all they have taken the focus away from China as the bad actor on trade and intellectual property and instead have turned the U.S. into the bull in the global china shop. |
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Then finally we address the damage Trump is doing to women all around the world following his decision shortly after taking office to impose the Global Gag Rule along with defunding the U.N. Population Fund, impacting family planning programs for the world’s most vulnerable population of 214 million women with unmet needs for modern contraception, where every day 830 women die from preventable pregnancy-related causes. Jamila Taylor, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress joins us to discuss her new report at the Center for American Progress “On International Women’s Day, Resist Trump’s Global Gag Rule”. |
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March 7 - A Super-Hawk Could Land as the White House National Security Adviser; Could Democratic Fratricide Stymie the Blue Wave?; The Author of "The Fight Against This Age: On Fascism and Humanism"
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We begin with the alarming possibility that a hawkish ideologue who sees war as the first not the last solution, and who desperately wants to bomb North Korea and Iran, will soon be the National Security Advisor in the Trump White House where John Bolton will be able to indulge his bloodthirsty fantasies with real world consequences. Jacob Heilbrunn, a Senior Editor at the National Interest and author of “They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons”, joins us to discuss the expected departure soon of the embattled National Security Advisor General McMaster and Bolton’s visit to the Oval Office yesterday where Bolton was auditioned again, after having been turned down for a top job last time because Trump did not like Bolton’s moustache. With the resignation of Gary Cohn, who tried to prevent a trade war but was outmaneuvered by a corrupt Secretary of Commerce and an outright crank serving as Director of the White House National Trade Council, we will assess how much the bar is being lowered at the White House, given the exit of 43% of the White Houses’ senior staff in just one year.
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Then we get an analysis of yesterday’s primaries in Texas that saw a huge uptick in Democrats coming to the polls and speak with an award-winning television news correspondent in Texas, James Moore, the co-author of the bestseller “Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential”. He joins us to discuss his article at CNN “Democrats are taking a dangerous gamble in Texas” and whether fratricide between the Sanders wing and the Clinton wing of the party will stymie the Blue Wave, given the intervention by the DCCC in a hit job against a liberal Democrat in Houston, which appears to have backfired since Laura Moser made it to the May runoff in the Texas 6th District. |
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Then finally we are joined in the studio by Rob Riemen, the founder of the Nexus Institute in The Netherlands whose latest book, just out, is “The Fight Against This Age: On Fascism and Humanism”. We assess the growth of far-right, populist and fascist parties across Europe and the extent to which Donald Trump has encouraged this illiberal global trend towards authoritarianism. And we will also discuss what can be done to restore democratic values and reinvigorate democratic movements. |
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March 6 - The Banking Lobby's Successful Rollback of Reforms That Followed the 2008 Crash; West Virginia's Teachers Take on a Corrupt and Indifferent State Government; Fighting Back Against the Global War on Democracy
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We begin with the Senate rolling back banking reforms instituted after the 2008 Wall Street crash in what Senator Elizabeth Warren called “a dangerous, wrong bill” which the Majority Leader Mitch McConnell put forward as a way to distract from the Senate’s total lack of activity on dealing meaningfully with the pressing issue of gun violence. Mike Konczal, a Fellow with the Roosevelt Institute, joins us to discuss his article at The New York Times “Why Are Democrats Helping Trump Dismantle Dodd-Frank?” and assess whether the moderate Democrats who voted with the Republicans on a bill dubbed “The Bank Lobbyist Act” which claims to be helping small banks while removing restrictions on the big banks, will be rewarded by their constituents for doing the bidding of Wall Street and not standing up for Main Street. In spite of Senator Warren’s efforts, the vote today to deregulate banks passed 67 to 32, ignoring her warning that the bill will make the American taxpayer take all the risk if banks fail again while all the profits will be going to giant banks. |
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Then we look into the wildcat strike by low-paid teachers in West Virginia who are deeply distrustful of the governor and the legislature after a deal offering a 4% raise went nowhere and a new deal offering 5% is in the offering although it is supposed to be offset by other budget cuts yet to be announced. Anne Marie Lofaso, a Professor of Law at West Virginia University College of Law who spent 10 years as an attorney with the National Labor Relations Board’s Appellate and Supreme Court Branches, joins us to discuss the low priority given to public employees in a state that has a budget shortfall because it lavishes tax cuts on the wealthy while giving big breaks to coal and oil industries. |
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Then finally we speak with Yascha Mounk, a Lecturer on Political Theory at Harvard University’s Government Department who is the author of a new book, just out, “The People Versus Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It”. He joins us to discuss the latest in the global retreat of democratic values, this time in Italy where far-right anti-immigrant parties made gains. We will examine the growth of illiberal regimes around the world and what steps can be taken to reverse this alarming trend which the head of the world’s most powerful democracy is encouraging rather that reversing, as Trump congratulates China’s leader for declaring himself dictator for life.
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