July 31 - A White House in Chaos Facing a North Korea Crisis; Why Trump Is Putin's Puppet; The "Christian" Jihad Against What They Call "Government Schools"

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with a potential crisis facing a White House in chaos with yet another staff shake-up as Anthony Scaramucci, the newly-appointed Director of Communications, was shown the door today. In response to the latest North Korean missile test and threats coming from the White House, a bi-partisan group of top American officials who have had high-level dealings with North Korea, William Perry, George Schultz, Robert Gallucci, Sig Hecker, Richard Lugar and Bill Richardson, have written to President Trump urging him to open direct talks with Kim Jong-un. Adam Mount, the former project director of the Council on Foreign Relations’ independent task force chaired by Admiral Mullen and Sam Nunn, joins us to discuss how a dysfunctional White House will deal with a clear and present danger that does not lend itself to military force or rhetorical bluster, but rather requires mature and patient diplomacy. 

Part 2

Then with Putin kicking out American diplomats in a tit-for-tat Cold War-like reprisal, we examine Putin’s comments today that in their recent G-20 meeting, Trump agreed with Putin’s version of whether Russia meddled in our elections. David Halperin, who served on the National Security Council and was counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, joins us to discuss his article at The Huffington Post “”The Exxon-Treasury Fight and the Roots of Russiagate” which lays out a credible scenario of what the real ties are between Putin and Trump and why it appears that Trump is Putin’s puppet.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with Katherine Stewart, the author of “The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children” about her article in The New York Times “What the ‘Government Schools’ Critics Really Mean”. She traces the history of attacks on so-called government schools, meaning public education by religious fundamentalist who now have a champion in the new Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos who has funded crusades casting public schools as Godless government indoctrination camps.