December 5 - Trump Meets With Gore While Appointing Global Warming Deniers; Italy's "Brexit" Moment With Their Trump Who is Actually a Clown; Carson as Head of HUD is Dracula in Charge of the Blood Bank

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka’s meeting today with Al Gore who has been at the forefront of arguing for an urgent need to address the catastrophic effects of global warming, perhaps the most critical issues facing mankind, which Donald Trump has labelled a fraud. Michael Wara, a Professor of Law at Stanford University who is an expert on energy and environmental law and climate policy joins us to discuss the mixed signals from the Trump Transition where he has a global warming denier in charge of the EPA transition and a former Koch Industries lobbyist in charge of the Energy Department transition who is dedicated to reversing and rolling back policies and subsidies that promote green energy and renewables while keeping in place subsidies for coal, oil and nuclear. 

Part 2

Then we look into the political turmoil in Italy following a constitutional referendum that was a stinging defeat for Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and is widely seen as another populist political tantrum like “Brexit” and the election of Donald Trump in which an angry and alienated public voted to upend the political order and take their chances on the chaos that might follow. Alexander Stille, a Professor of International Journalism at Columbia University and author of “The Sack of Rome: How a Beautiful European Country with a fabled History and a Storied Culture was taken over by a Man Named Silvio Berlusconi”, whose latest book is “The Force of Things: Marriage in War and Peace”, joins us. We will discuss this upset victory by a former clown, Beppe Grillo, who has called for a new election within a week.

Part 3

Then finally we assess the nomination of Dr. Ben Carson to be the Trump Administration’s head of HUD, Housing and Urban Development, where the former neurosurgeon with no government experience will oversee an agency with a $47 billion annual budget. Ronnie Dunn, a Professor of Urban Studies at Cleveland State University joins us to discuss a man whose only background in housing has been to oppose attempts to desegregate public housing as “failed socialists experiments” and real estate deals with a convicted fraudster Alfonso Costa who heads up Carson’s charity and manages his real estate investments.