August 24 - Fox News and the Injured White Identity; The Koch Brothers' Connections to Mike Pence; Although Clinton Leads Now, Her Victory Could Be Narrow

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the Trump campaign’s claim on British TV today that hidden or “undercover” voters will come out of the woodwork to elect Trump in November and examine the influence of the “alt-right” on the campaign now that it is headed by Stephen Bannon who boasted his Breitbart Media is the platform for the alt-right.  Dan Cassino, a professor of political science at Fairleigh Dickinson University and author of “Fox News and American Politics: How One Channel Shapes American Politics and Society”, joins us to discuss how a sense of injured white identity defines the alt-right whose founding myth is that the disadvantaged groups in American politics, minority voters, are actually running things through a combination of fraud and intimidation that ends up oppressing white men.

Part 2

Then we be joined in the studio by Lisa Graves, the Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy who served as a senior advisor in all three branches of the federal government – as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department, as Chief Counsel for Nominations on the Senate Judiciary Committee and as Deputy Chief at the U.S. Courts. We will discuss the Koch brothers’ connections to Mike Pence and the lack of moral fiber on the Republican side in accepting Donald Trump as their nominee, as well as complacency among liberals and progressives who were alarmed by the prospect of Reagan and George W. Bush but don’t seem to recognize that the danger Trump poses is off the charts compared to them.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with Jonathan Darman, a former correspondent for Newsweek who covered the presidential campaigns of John Kerry and Hillary Clinton for Newsweek and is the author of “Landslide: LBJ and Ronald Reagan and the Dawn of a New America”.  He joins us to discuss whether the current double-digit lead that Clinton has is some polls is likely to shrink as no presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan, who beat Walter Mondale by 18 points in 1984, has won the presidency by a wide margin.