Background Briefing: September 25, 2018
Plowing Kavanaugh Through in Spite of Mounting Evidence Against Him
We begin with a posse of angry old white men in the White House and the Republican Senate determined to “plow through” with the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court regardless of Thursday’s testimony by Dr. Blasey Ford and have a vote of the full senate on his confirmation as early as next Monday or Tuesday. Bob Schiff, an attorney who served as Chief Counsel for former Senator Russ Feingold for 12 years and is the co-author of an article at Time Magazine“Brett Kavanaugh Can’t be Trusted. We Know Because We Worked as Counsel to Senators When He Was in the Bush White House”, joins us. We will discuss the contrast between the growing evidence against Kavanaugh and the increasing resolve of the Republicans to ram his confirmation through the senate, in stark contrast to the 8 months Mitch McConnell held up Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court who never even got a hearing. We will assess whether Kavanaugh’s third accuser who her lawyer Michael Avenatti is scheduled to unveil on Wednesday, could be sufficient for Senators Collins and Murkowski to break from the lockstep of GOP determination not to have an FBI investigation into these new and perhaps even more damning charges. Apparently she is accusing both Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge who the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee are preventing from testifying.
Trump Embarrasses America Before the World
Then we speak with the founder of PassBlue, Dulcie Leimbach, who has covered the United Nations for decades and was an editor of The New York Times for more than 20 years. She joins us to discuss President Trump’s address to the United Nations General Assembly at which his absurd boasts about being the greatest president ever who has achieved a miraculous turnaround having made America great again in just two years, was greeted with mocking laughter from the leaders of the world gathered in the chamber. We assess whether the two thirds of Americans who are embarrassed by Trump’s pandering to the ignorant isolationist delusions of the one third minority of the country who believe a global bureaucracy is about to destroy America’s sovereignty, will stand up and be counted in November.