February 26 - Trump's Firewall Against Impeachment; China's Reaction to North Korea's Use of VX Nerve Gas; Can Perez and Ellison Unite the Democratic Party?

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with increasingly desperate denunciations of the press by Donald Trump who, having created a firewall at the DOJ with Sessions, the CIA with Pompeo, the DNI with Coats, the Senate Intel Committee with Burr and the House Intel Committee with Nunes, appears to be constructing a cover-up against mounting evidence of his collusion with Putin by pushing the narrative of “fake news” in the hope that when the truth comes out, enough Americans will not believe it so that Trump could be saved from impeachment. Malcolm Nance, a globally recognized counterterrorism expert who has been deployed to intelligence operations in the Balkans, Middle East, and sub Saharan Africa, and is the author of “The Plot to Hack America: How Putin’s Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election”, joins us to discuss whether Trump has succeeded in putting a cork in the bottle or if the truth will find a way of leaking out.

Part 2

Then we get a strategic overview of broader issues that might be at play in Putin’s relationship with Exxon’s Rex Tillerson, now the U.S. Secretary of State, and how energy deals and pipelines underway in Siberia and Russia’s Pacific regions are aimed at realigning Russia’s relations with China, Japan and South Korea. Gilbert Rozman, a Professor of Sociology at Princeton University specializing in societies of China, Japan, Korea and Russia, joins us to discuss the politics of energy in that region and the significance of China’s cutoff of coal imports from North Korea and the likely consequences from the North Korea’s leader’s use of VX nerve gas to assassinate his older brother in Malaysia.

Part 3

Then finally we assess whether the election of former Labor Secretary Tom Perez to head up the DNC, with his rival Congressman Keith Ellison appointed as his deputy, will unify the progressive and centrist wings of the Democratic Party as its leadership tries to play catch-up to the explosion of demonstrations, activism and energy erupting at the grassroots against the Trump Administration. Matt Angle, who directs the Texas Democratic Trust and the Lone Star Project and served as Executive Director of the Democratic Campaign Committee and the Executive Director of the House Democratic Caucus, joins us.