Full Program

Part 1

We begin with a veteran journalist and editor of a progressive publication whose interview with Stephen Bannon appears to have been the final straw that led to the firing of the White House’s chief strategist. Robert Kuttner, the co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect and a former chief investigator for the Senate Banking Committee whose latest book is “Debtors’ Prison: The Politics of Austerity Versus Possibility”, joins us. We will discuss his article at the American Prospect “”Steve Bannon, Unrepentant” and the battle lines in the White House that Bannon declared between the economic nationalists who want to make American great again and Bannon’s enemies at the Defense Department, State, Treasury and the National Economic Council, and those inside the White House who want to “contain” Trump. Now that Bannon is gone, will the war still rage on with Trump poised to stir up ethno-nationalism again on Tuesday in Arizona where he will insist on building the border wall and may pardon a racist sheriff famous for his harsh treatment of Latinos?

Part 2

Then we speak with Robert Weissman, the President of Public Citizen about the contrast between Trump’s plans to slash government spending and cut the budgets of agencies that protect public health and the environment and help low-income Americans, and Trump and his family’s lavish spending on frequent travel to and from luxury resorts at home and abroad for which the taxpayer picks up the tab for the 1,100 Secret Service agents protecting Trump and his family. Spending which has drained the Secret Service budget with costs already meeting federally mandated caps for overtime and expenses meant to last for all of 2017.    

Part 3

Then finally we get an analysis of why there have been four expensive ships of the U.S. Navy’s 7th Fleet involved in collisions or run aground this year prompting the Navy’s top admiral to order a fleet-wide “operational pause”. A former commissioned officer in the U.S. Navy who served aboard the USS Ticonderoga, Christopher Preble, the vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute and author of “The Power Problem: How American Military Dominance Makes Us Less Safe”, joins us to discuss the latest collision off Singapore between a tanker and the USS John S. McCain that has left 10 sailors missing.

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with a prominent Republican Senator Bob Corker sounding the alarm today that Trump hasn’t demonstrated the stability or competence to be successful and that radical changes are needed at the White House. An expert on the GOP, conservatism, the Tea Party, social movements, race and elections, Joseph Lowndes, a Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon and the author of “From the New Deal to the New Right: Race and the Southern Origins of Modern Conservatism”, joins us. We discuss the despair being expressed by the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at a time when President Trump is defending neo-Nazi’s, one of whom mowed down pedestrians with his car in Charlottesville killing Heather Heyer, at a time when a similar terrorist act for which the Islamic State has claimed credit, has taken place in Barcelona where a van mowed down tourists killing 13 and injuring 100. We discuss Trump’s focus on Confederate statues at a time when moral leadership in renouncing acts of terrorism is needed both at home and abroad.

Part 2

Then we speak with Leonard Zeskind, the President of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights and author of “Blood and Politics: The History of White Nationalism from the Margins to the Mainstream”. He joins us to discuss the changing face of white nationalism and neo-Nazism in America with clean-cut, college-educated leaders like Richard Spencer exploiting the fear of demographic changes that will make whites a minority in this country, to inflame the anxiety that simply being born white will no longer confer privilege.

Part 3