April 19 - Congress Wimps Out With the New AUMF; The Confirmation of a Global Warming Denier as Trump's Pick to Head NASA; How Right Wing Media Props Up Trump With a Bodyguard of Lies

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the bipartisan bill introduced in the U.S. Senate yesterday by Senators Corker and Kaine to replace the AUMF, the Authorization for the Use of Military Force. Elizabeth Goitein, the co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center who was previously counsel to the Chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Feingold, joins us. We will discuss her article at Defense One “The Corker-Kaine Bill Would Codify, not End, the Forever War” and how the Congress which under the constitution has the sole authority to declare war, would flip this constitutional power on its head allowing the president to declare war against any enemy anywhere while leaving Congress only with the power to un-declare that war. With a president under siege from mounting domestic scandals who might strike out and start a war as a distraction, whose closest advisor is an eager war hawk, a conflict could easily erupt with Iran and be justified under the Corker-Kaine AUMF. Since Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps are already designated a terrorist organization and they are also sheltering Al Qaeda leadership including Bin Laden’s son, under the Corker-Kaine Bill that would be twice the threshold needed to start the next war.

Part 2

Then we speak with Lawrence Krauss, Foundation Professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University who is on the board of the American Federation of Scientists. He joins us to discuss the close vote of 50 to 49 in the Senate today to confirm Trump’s pick to head up NASA, a Republican Congressman from Oklahoma Jim Bridenstine. A global warming denier whose previous experience was running the Tulsa Air and Space Museum into the ground, he will take over a $20 billion enterprise with 17,000 employees many of whom work on earth sciences projects that measure the effects of global warming.

Part 3

Then finally we examine the role of Trump’s “shadow chief of staff” the Fox News propagandist Sean Hannity who according to a presidential advisor, “basically has a desk” in the White House.  Hannity was recently outed as the third and only client of Trump’s embattled lawyer Michael Cohen and Adele Stan, a weekly columnist for The American Prospect joins us to assess the distortion of the media landscape by the big right wing outlets like Fox and Sinclair. We discuss the extent to which they are propping up the Trump presidency with a bodyguard of lies, and her latest article at The American Prospect “Our Media Problem is Bigger Than Sean Hannity”.