November 10 - How Will the Military and Intelligence Community Deal With Trump?; How a Trump Victory is Seen Abroad; The Left's Dereliction of Duty

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with Donald Trump’s unique lack of qualification for the presidency based on the country’s history where not one U. S. President has assumed the office with no prior government or military experience. Dr. Rachel Kleinfeld, a Senior Associate in the Democracy and the Rule of Law Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, joins us to discuss how the military and intelligence bureaucracy will find a way to deal with a new chief executive of the government who is also Commander-in-Chief, and whether there are any checks and balances on the president in the executive branch if Trump surrounds himself with the coterie of sycophants and enablers like Chris Christie, Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich and puts General Flynn in a key national security position in spite of Flynn’s murky ties to the Kremlin. 

Part 2

Then we assess how the election of Trump is seen overseas by going to the U.K. and speaking with 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. He joins us to discuss how world leaders have reacted to Trump’s win and the president-elect’s ties to Putin and the European far-right, in particular the architect of the “Brexit” vote, Nigel Farage who has campaigned with Trump and is elated by his election win that Farage has declared “is Brexit times three”. 

Part 3

Then finally with Russia escalating its bombing of Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, in conjunction with a ground assault by the Assad regime’s army and Iranian and Russia troops, we discuss the lack of concern for human rights among some in the European and American left who used to be opposed to dictators the U.S. supported in Latin America during the Cold War but nowadays make apologies for dictators like Putin, Qaddafi and Assad who not only have contempt for human rights but are capitalist kleptocrats. Evan Sandlin, a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Davis, joins us to discuss his article in the Los Angeles Review of Books, “Dereliction of Duty? The Left and the Syrian Civil War”.