April 27 - How Trump's Lies Work For Him; The Impact of Trump's Tax Cuts; Venezuela Poised to Descend Into Violent Chaos

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with a new poll that finds the overwhelming majority of Trump supporters believe he is honest and trustworthy and will keep his campaign promises. At the same time they do not believe the mainstream media with 78% of Trump voters believing that news organizations regularly produce false stories. Ben Schreckinger, who covers national politics for Politico, joins us to discuss his latest article at Politico Magazine “Trump’s Fake War on the Fake News”, and the paradox that while Trump’s lies are working with cynical perfection on his base, he also wants the approval of the mainstream media that he demonizes as he spends a lot of his time obsessing over how he is covered and how his underlings like Sean Spicer are performing on his behalf. We will also look into the trickledown nature of the culture of lying in the White House that has junior staffers routinely lying to the press just for fun.

Part 2

Then we gauge the reactions to the highly touted but thinly supported tax cut and tax reform proposals announced at the White House yesterday and assess the impact of the tax cuts on the deficit with Frank Clemente, the Executive Director and co-founder of Americans for Tax Fairness. He joins us to explain how getting rid of the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax while cutting the corporate tax to 15% will benefit Trump and enrich him, his family, his friends and members of his cabinet.

Part 3

Then finally we get an update on the deteriorating situation in Venezuela where the son of a top official in the Maduro government made a heartfelt appeal to his father on video begging him “to end the injustice that has sunk this country”. Jennifer McCoy, a professor of political science at Georgia State University and author of “The Unraveling of Representative Democracy in Venezuela” and “International Mediation in Venezuela”, joins us to discuss plans for an intervention by the Organization of American States that may come too late as this heavily-armed country is poised to descend into violent chaos.