Full Program

Part 1

We begin with today’s testimony by Attorney General Sessions before the Senate Intelligence Committee and speak with Lisa Graves, the Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy and a former Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department. She joins us to discuss Sessions’ stonewalling as he easily answered softball questions from Republican senators but dragged out his answers to probing questions from Democrats to run out the clock by either pretending not to understand the questions, or answering a question not asked. We assess how theatrical Sessions’ indignation was when confronted with his stonewalling and the Attorney General’s assertion that he could not speak about what he discussed with President Trump on the grounds of executive privilege even though Trump himself has not invoked executive privilege.

Part 2

Then we speak with Russia expert David Satter, a senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and author of “The Less You Know, The Better You Sleep: Russia’s Road to Terror and Dictatorship under Yeltsin and Putin”. We discuss his latest article at The Wall Street Journal “From Russia With Chaos” and analyze the impact of the demonstrations that took place across Russia on Monday’s national holiday in which young Russians, some in high school, were roughed up and arrested by riot police and assess what this means for Putin’s open-ended rule into the future.

Part 3

Then finally David Michôd joins us in the studio. He is the writer/director of a new film starring Brad Pitt “War Machine”, now out on Netflix, that is based on the Rolling Stone journalist Michael Hasting’s book “The Operators”. We discuss his satirical dark comedy set around the downfall of the former commander in Afghanistan General Stanley McChrystal and, on a day when the Defense Secretary General Mattis testified to Congress that “we are not winning in Afghanistan” and that a new strategy will emerge in mid-July, we examine why after 16 years we keep doing the same thing in Afghanistan yet expect a different outcome.

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with political uncertainty in the U.K. following an inconclusive election that was another catastrophic miscalculation by a Conservative leader following David Cameron’s fateful miscalculation to call for the Brexit referendum. Craig Calhoun, the Global Distinguished Professor at New York University and Centennial Professor and former head of the London School of Economics who is now the President of the Berggruen Institute joins us. We  discuss whether Prime Minister Theresa May, who former Tory Chancellor George Osborne called a “dead woman walking”, can put together a government with the D.U.P., the tiny ultra-conservative Northern Ireland Unionist party, and whether in doing so she will undermine the “Good Friday Agreement” that has brought peace between the north and south of Ireland which could be threatened by putting up a wall along a border that has been largely erased by cross-border commerce.

Part 2

Then we examine whether there is a real possibility of an impeachment against President Trump happening soon as the special counsel Robert Mueller begins an investigation that is impacted daily by new revelations in the press, not to mention recent testimony by fired FBI Director Comey and contradictory claims by Trump that Comey both vindicated him in his testimony and lied. Lisa Kern Griffin, a professor of law at Duke University who clerked for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Conner and was a federal prosecutor in the Chicago United States Attorney’s Office, joins us to offer a practical assessment of the complexity and duration of Mueller’s investigation that may be completed around the time of the 2018 elections.

Part 3

Then finally we look into the explosion of hate and ignorance erupting around the country as “March Against Sharia” demonstrations took place in St. Paul, Seattle, Washington, New York City and San Bernardino, California, attracting counter-demonstrations that led to violence and a massive deployment of police to separate the sides. Brian Levin, a criminologist, professor of criminal justice and Director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, joins us to discuss why a non-existent threat such as Sharia Law is inspiring right wing hate groups to emerge from the fringes.