June 8 - Believing the Truth-Teller Over the Serial Liar; Outrage at Russian Meddling Overshadowed by Political Polarization; UK's PM Theresa May's Grave Miscalculation

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with today’s much-anticipated testimony from the fired FBI Director James Comey about his meetings with Donald Trump that after petty partisan attempts on the part of Republican senators to defend the indefensible, Comey’s damning testimony now leaves the American people with a momentous choice, do they believe the truth-teller Comey or the serial liar Trump? We speak with Elizabeth Goitein, the co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice about her op-ed at The New York Times, “James Comey’s Testimony: Comey was Playing Chess” and look into how Comey took careful notes from the outset because he saw Trump as different from Bush and Obama; as a president who could not be trusted and might lie about what was said. We discuss how Comey appears to have set the special counsel process in motion by leaking a memo to The New York Times which Trump’s private attorney has seized on claiming Comey should be investigated for illegal leaks.   

Part 2

Then an expert on political polarization, Daniel Drezner, a professor of international politics at Tufts University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution joins us to discuss his new book “The Ideas Industry: How Pessimists, Partisans and Plutocrats are Transforming the Marketplace of Ideas”. We assess the extent to which the alarming significance of the Russian attack on the very foundation of American democracy has been lost in a blizzard of spin and counterspin as tribal politics, plutocratic patronage and partisan propaganda have blurred the difference between lies and truth, selfishness and service, power and principle and demagoguery and decency.

Part 3

Then finally we analyze the results of the British election that Prime Minister Theresa May called for to increase her majority, but now in what looks like a grave miscalculation, it appears from exit polls that she may not even eke out a majority and that the U.K will be mired in political paralysis. One of the world’s leading analysts of popular culture, media and their connection to the politics of everyday life, Toby Miller, a Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at Cardiff University, joins us to discuss how Theresa May’s hand will be weakened in negotiations with the E.U. over Brexit.