May 17 - A Special Prosecutor as Events Close in on Trump; A Case For Helping Trump Succeed; Bridging America's Reality Gap

Full Program

Part 1

We will begin with the appointment by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein of former FBI Director Robert Mueller as a special prosecutor to oversee the Russian investigation and examine the possibility that the memo that Congress is now demanding about Comey’s Oval Office meeting with Trump, at which the FBI Director was allegedly asked by the president to back off the investigation into Michael Flynn, is the first shot across the bow and that Comey has a number of incriminating memos that could be leaked incrementally revealing even more explosive details of an amateurish and dysfunctional presidency. A former intelligence operative, Malcolm Nance, the author of “The Plot to Hack America: How Putin’s Cyberspies and Wikileaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election”, joins us to discuss the president’s remarks today at a Coast Guard ceremony where he avoided any mention of the Comey memo but portrayed himself as a victim of the press and other unnamed forces that are out to destroy his presidency. We assess the gathering storm engulfing a chaotic presidency and how long the few adults like General McMaster and General Mattis will allow themselves to be used as props making excuses for a Commander-in-Chief who increasingly is making it obvious that he is dangerously out of his depth.   

Part 2

Then we get a different perspective from the growing assumption that Trump is heading for impeachment and speak with Mark Perry, an author and historian specializing in military, foreign affairs and intelligence analysis. He joins us to discuss the possibility that a constitutional crisis could be averted by helping the president succeed rather than feeding into Trump’s combative impulses and his article at Politico “Why Americans Don’t Win Wars Anymore” that makes it clear we should be spending less on the military and more on combatting ignorance at home.

Part 3

Then finally we examine whether the political and cultural divide in the country can be bridged and speak with Robert Jensen, a professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas in Austin and the author of “Arguing for Our Lives: A User’s Guide to Constructive Dialogue”. He joins us from a Blue island in a deeply Red State and we will discuss how the information that the mainstream media reveals daily about Trump’s disastrous presidency does not penetrate the Fox, Sinclair, megachurch bubble that Trump’s supporters inhabit.