Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the recent investigative article by the Associated Press “The Princes, the president and the fortune seekers” which details the role of the convicted child molester George Nader who is now cooperating with Robert Mueller and the deals he brokered with Elliot Broidy, a top fundraiser for Donald Trump and the crown princes of the Emirates and Saudi Arabia that led to a secret meeting in the Seychelles with Erik Prince to set up a backchannel between Trump and the Kremlin as well as use Prince’s mercenary force in the Gulf to start a war with Iran. Following on from the AP report we will speak with Paul Campos, a professor at the University of Colorado Law School about his articles at New York Magazine “Here’s a Theory About That $1.6 million Payout From GOP Official to a Playboy Model” and “Hey Look: More Evidence That Broidy May Have Been Covering for Trump in That Playmate Affair”. We will discuss the extraordinary coincidence that two days after the $1.6 million payoff to the pregnant Playmate Shera Bechard to get an abortion, Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen arranged for an Oval Office photo opportunity for Elliot Broidy with Trump which Broidy then used to get a $600 million Arms contract with the Emirates. With no evidence of a supposed two year- long relationship that Broidy was supposed to have had with the Playmate and plenty of evidence Michael Cohen has been paying off Playmates and porn stars who had relationships with Trump, enquiring minds want to know more.

Part 2

Then with the vote in the House of 258 to 159 to roll back the Dodd Frank regulations and the expected soon watering down of the Volcker Rule which stops big banks from making risky bets with depositors’ money, Nomi Prins joins us to examine how much we will soon be back on the path of freeing up the “banksters” to run wild and bring about the next Wall Street crash. She is a former managing director at Goldman Sachs and ran the international analytics group at Bear Sterns in London and is the author of a new book “Collusion: How Central Banks Rigged the World” which looks into what happened to the $21 trillion created out of thin air by central banks in the aftermath of the 2008 crash.

Part 3

Then finally Chris McGreal a senior writer for The Guardian U.S. and their former correspondent in Jerusalem and Johannesburg joins us to discuss his latest article at The Guardian “Rudy Giuliani won deal for OxyContin maker to continue sales of drug behind opioid deaths”. We will examine how Trump’s new lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who represented the makers of OxyContin Purdue Pharma, tried to thwart the federal prosecutor and blame the opioid epidemic caused by Purdue pushing their drug on the doctors who prescribed it, while managing to prevent Purdue from being banned from doing business with Medicare, Medicaid and the V.A. to the point where Purdue was able to make $5 billion more out of OxyContin, then the leading cause of the 300,000 overdose deaths in America.

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with Ken Vogel, a reporter with The New York Times Washington Bureau joins us to discuss his latest article “Advising Bolton Is a “Shadow N.S.C.”  We look into the role of a group of neocon activists and lobbyists close to the new National Security Advisor John Bolton which means that now, with like-minded neocons dominating the NSC, there will be no diversity of opinion or dissenting views presented to Trump.  With both North and South Korea blaming Bolton for the shaky ground that the summit between Trump and Kim Jong-un is now on because Bolton tied the upcoming talks to the “Libyan model” which Kim interprets as regime change by a mob tearing a dictator apart, it looks like the tail of the neocon is wagging the big dog in the Oval Office.

Part 2

Then we get an analysis of the Supreme Court’s 5 to 4 decision led by Trump’s new justice Neil Gorsuch which kills off a vestige of the 1935 New Deal in terms of worker’s rights, doing away with class action suits for redress such as wage theft and forcing employees into arbitration which is heavily weighted in favor of employers over their employees. Celine McNicholas, the Economic Policy Institute’s Labor Counsel and a core member of their Perkins Project on Worker Rights and Wages, joins us to discuss the court’s corporatist tilt and today’s stinging dissent by Ruth Bader Ginzberg.  

Part 3

Then finally we examine the Secretary of Treasury announcement “we’re putting the trade war on hold” after the completion of talks with Chinese negotiators in what looks like a win for China since they appear to have given up little in return for the U.S. holding off on imposing tariffs of $150 billion on Chinese imports. 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, joins us to discuss whether the self-proclaimed ultimate dealmaker Donald Trump has been smoked by Xi Jinping.  Given the recent case of a Chinese bank investing in a Trump-related Indonesian deal which appears to be a quid pro quo to get the Chinese telecomm giant ZTE off the hook, we will assess whether calling Trump’s bluff with money is an advantage the Chinese and others can exploit if Trump can be bribed with financial deals that enrich him at the expense of our economy and U.S. national security. With Jared Kushner having already shown that a bad investment by the Kushner Company in 666 Fifth Avenue can be rescued by the Trump Administration using the instruments of statecraft against Qatar to get them pay up to have a blockade lifted, then how can we be confident that the Trump family business does not take priority over our economic and foreign policy?