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October 24 - The Urgent Need to Stop Trump's March to War in Korea; A Senator's Impassioned Plea to Stand Against Trump; The Family Who Profit From America's Opioid Epidemic
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We begin with the Trump Administration’s National Security Advisor threatening a military option against North Korea in addition to Japan’s Defense Minister sounding the alarm at a meeting in the Philippines with the US and South Korean defense ministers that the nuclear and missile threat from North Korea had reached an “unprecedented, critical and imminent level” requiring “different responses”. A former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea, Donald Gregg, who was Vice President George HW Bush’s National Security Advisor, joins us to discuss his concern that Donald Trump is the greatest threat to peace and stability in Asia. He urges the Trump White House to urgently take up the offer by former President Carter to act as an envoy to resume diplomatic dialogue with North Korea before the war of words and reckless threats lead to a war that could see the first nuclear weapons used since Nagasaki, in spite of General McMaster’s assertion that there are military options available to deal with North Korea.
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Then we assess the impact of Senator Jeff Flake’s impassioned resignation speech before the U.S. Senate today in which he lamented the damage being done to the country by Donald Trump and pleaded with his senate colleagues to show the leadership and courage necessary to oppose the destruction and desecration of American values, appealing to them in the name of our children who will ask “why didn’t you do something. Why didn’t you speak up?” Joining us to discuss the likelihood that both U.S. Senate seats in Arizona will be contested in the next election is Evan Wyloge, an investigative reporter with the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting who previously spent 5 years as a reporter for the Arizona Capitol Times. We will discuss the number of Republicans vying for the seats and how much this could be an opportunity for the Democrats and who they might run. |
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Then finally we speak about Trump’s expected announcement on what he will do about the opioid crisis with Dr. Andrew Kolodny, the Co-director of Opioid Policy Research at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University who is also the Executive Director of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing. He joins us to discuss the article in The New Yorker profiling the Sackler family who own Purdue Pharma and how these prominent philanthropists pushed their drug OxyContin to generate billions in profits while creating millions of addicts in what has become America’s opioid epidemic. |
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October 23 - Trump's New Low as He Attacks the Widow of a Fallen Green Beret; Niger and Why It Is Suddenly in the News; How the Adults in the Room Are Enabling Trump
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We begin with a new low for Donald Trump who in effect called the widow of the slain Green Beret killed in Niger a liar, following her remarks on ABC’s “Good Morning America” where she supported what Congresswoman Wilson had said about Trump’s botched condolence call, saying Trump “made me cry because I was very angry at the tone of his voice and how he said it. He couldn’t remember my husband’s name”. A highly decorated combat veteran who was awarded 2 Silver Stars, 2 Legions of Merit, and 2 Purple Hearts, Phillip Butler, who was shot down over North Vietnam and spent 8 years as a POW, joins us. Now that we are in day 8 of the continuing scandal over Trump’s handling of Gold Star families, we will discuss the national wound Trump opened when he accused his predecessors of not making condolence calls to the fallen, and the escalating war of words between Trump and Senator McCain. Having known McCain since they graduated together from the US Naval Academy in 1961 and later as Phil Butler spent 8 years in captivity compared to McCain’s 5, which Trump disparaged during the campaign, we will assess how Trump will react to being called a draft-dodger, which was clearly implied in McCain’s remark that rich kids avoided the Vietnam war by claiming to have bone spurs.
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Then we look into Niger, the country suddenly in the news, and the growing questions surrounding the US military mission there and the apparent failure of intelligence that led to the ambush of the four Green Berets whose deaths have led to frictions between our military and civilian authorities and between Trump and the family of one of the fallen. Laura Seay, a professor of Government at Colby College who studies African politics, conflict, and development with a focus on central Africa, joins us to discuss the activities of AFRICOM and Senator Lindsay Graham’s announcement that there will be more US aggression on the continent. |
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Then finally we speak with John Feffer, the co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies whose latest article at Foreign Policy in Focus is “Trump’s Enablers Should Be Shamed Out of Public Life”. He joins us to discuss how the generals, the so-called “adults in the room”, are in fact enabling militaristic policies around the world and are only restraining Trump’s personality defects and impulses, not his policies.
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October 22 - Will the Release of the JFK Assassination Files Clear the Air?; The Author of "How the Right Lost Its Mind"; How Voter Suppression Threw Wisconsin to Trump
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We begin with Thursday’s expected release of the last of the JFK files on the Kennedy assassination following a 1992 order from Congress to the National Archives to release the documents 25 years later. Along with MLK and RFK, the JFK assassination has long been the subject of a cottage industry of conspiracy theories, and now with a conspiracy theorist in the Oval Office who claimed Ted Cruz’s father was seen with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before Kennedy’s death, we have Trump tweeting out on Saturday that “I will be allowing, as President, the long blocked and classified JKF FILES to be opened”. Philip Shenon, the bestselling author of “The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Commission” and a former reporter with The New York Times for 20 years, joins us to discuss his latest book “A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination” and his article at Politico “The JFK Document Dump Could be a Fiasco”. We examine whether Thursday’s release will satisfy conspiracy theorists and whether there will be further redactions before the release of the last of the classified documents. |
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Then we speak with Charlie Sykes, a longtime host of the #1 conservative talk radio show in Wisconsin who is now a regular contributor to MSNBC. He joins us to discuss his new book, just out “How the Right Lost Its Mind” and the paradoxical place the Republican Party is now in with control of all branches of government and the judiciary but with all that power they can’t seem to get anything done and are becoming increasingly unpopular. We look into why Republicans have abandoned facts in the Trump era, why they can’t govern and when will traditional Republicans fight back in Steve Bannon’s “season of war” against the GOP. |
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Then finally we examine how voter suppression in Wisconsin may well have been the deciding factor in Trump’s narrow win of 23,000 votes in that key swing state. Ari Berman, a senior reporter at Mother Jones covering voting rights and author of “Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America”, joins us to discuss his article at Mother Jones “Rigged: How Voter Suppression Threw Wisconsin to Trump”. We look into the key role in enabling voter suppression that the judiciary played, and now that Trump is stacking the Federal Courts with reactionary judges, how Wisconsin’s “success” in voter suppression will be expanded nationwide. |
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October 19 - The Cost of "Containing" Trump to US Foreign Policy; It Cost the University of Florida $600,000 to Have An American Nazi Speak Today; Russia's Kim Kardashian to Run Against Putin to Split the Opposition Vote
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We begin with recent criticism of Trump’s domestic and foreign policy coming from Senator McCain, former President George W Bush and former Vice President Joe Biden and speak with a foreign policy advisor to Joe Biden, Dr. Michael Carpenter, a former deputy assistant Secretary of Defense and Director for Russia on the National Security Council. He joins us to discuss the price the US is paying for the absence of leadership in US foreign policy because of a disengaged and disruptive president who has little knowledge of or interest in global affairs, and has not staffed his government with foreign policy and national security professionals. With Iraq about to explode as our allies the Kurds are being squeezed by Iran whose influence in Iraq and Syria grows with the emergence of the “Shia Crescent” land corridor from Tehran to Damascus, we assess how much the generals around Trump who are preoccupied “containing” him, are not able to pay sufficient attention to the roiling global events that demand daily attention if not a strategy to deal with them. |
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Then we look into the latest expensive headline-grabbing by fringe groups on the far right wing like Breitbart, David Horowitz and Richard Spencer’s National Policy Institute who deliberately choose to speak on liberal campuses like Berkeley where they are not welcome, to provoke students from minority communities with racist insults in the hope that they can extort media attention and become martyrs for free speech. Clay Calvert, the Brechner Eminent Scholar in Mass Communication and Director of the First Amendment Project at the University of Florida, Gainesville joins us to discuss the $600,000 expense incurred by his public university today because Richard Spencer decided to speak there even though a handful of students wanted to hear him while thousands showed up to protest Spencer shouting “Go home Nazis!” |
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Then finally we speak with another professor at the University of Florida, Gainesville, Michael Gorham about a different subject, the latest Kremlin-approved straw man to run against Vladimir Putin in Russia’s next presidential election. A Professor of Russian Studies whose latest project is “Russia’s Digital Revolution: Language, New Media, and the (Un)making of Civil Society” joins us to discuss how this time the daughter of Putin’s political mentor who is Russia’s equivalent of Kim Kardashian or Paris Hilton, will be running to split the opposition vote.
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October 18 - The Self-Coronation of China's Leader; The Growing Bitter Feud Between Trump and Families of the Fallen; Americans Need Higher Wages, Not Lower Taxes
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We begin with China’s leader Xi Jinping’s coronation of himself at the 19th Communist Party Congress where he promised a “new era” of Chinese power with his nation transforming itself into “a mighty power” that will lead the world politically, economically, militarily, and on environmental issues. In drawing a contrast to Trump without mentioning his name, Xi noted that China has “taken a driving seat in international cooperation to respond to climate change”. Scott Kennedy, the Director on the Project on Chinese Business and Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and author of “Global Governance and China: The Dragon’s Learning Curve”, joins us to discuss Xi’s vision of a China he will lead with him at the top of the Communist Party, the Communist Party on top of China, and China on top of the world.
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Then we speak with Lawrence Korb, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense during the Reagan Administration who was in charge of manpower to get an assessment of how the bitter and growing feud between Trump and families of the fallen is impacting morale and the important relationship between the men and women serving in the military and their families and dependents. We will discuss the apparently callous insensitivity of Trump who, in consoling a widow on her way to meet the body of her dead husband, is alleged to have said that the slain Special Forces sergeant “knew what he was signing up for, but I guess it hurts anyway.” |
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Then finally we speak with Jonathan Tasini, the author of “The Essential Bernie Sanders and His Vision for America” who is President of the Economic Future Group and the host of the “Working Life” podcast whose new book “Resist and Rebel: The Peoples’ Uprising in America” will be out soon. He joins us to discuss his article at CNN “America needs higher wages: not lower taxes” and how increased unionization and a higher minimum wage, not lower taxes for the rich, will boost the American economy.
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