May 29 - Donald Trump's Finger on the Nuclear Button?; How Bernie Sanders Has Broadened America's Narrow Political Debate

We begin with an assessment of what it would be like to be on the National Security Council with Donald Trump as president and having the so-called “football”, the nuclear launch codes, only feet away from President Trump at all time. Roger Morris, who served on the Senior Staff of the National Security Council under Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon joins us to discuss the frightening turn in American political life with Donald Trump having just become the presumptive Republican candidate for President of the United States, an unprecedented moment in our 240 year old democracy where a reality TV star who has manifestly visible personality disorders such as extreme narcissism and a child-like propensity to lash out at any critic or opponent, if elected president, will have his finger on the nuclear button.

Part 2

Then we look into the contribution that Bernie Sanders has made to the American political discourse that has long been circumscribed by a narrow spectrum of ideas and issues dominated by the far right, the right and the center-right, with occasional inroads but not lasting influence from the left. Richard Parker, who teaches economics and public policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and is a former managing editor of Ramparts, was a cofounder of Mother Jones magazine, and serves on the board of The Nation, joins us. We discuss the broadening of the political debate as a result of the Bernie Sanders campaign and the impact on contemporary politics of the Internet and social media that brings both the promise of unfettered access to boundless information and enlightenment, as well as the peril of a virtual world of Twitter and Instagram that Donald Trump inhabits, a Kardashian culture in which people live vicariously in thrall of the every move and utterance of tawdry celebrities.