A Partisan and Conspiracy Theorist as Our New Head of Intelligence
We begin with Trump’s shocking nomination of a political hack and a conspiracy theorist to become the next Director of National Intelligence, apparently after Trump’s first pick Devon Nunes, who is even worse, turned the president down. A 30 year veteran of the CIA, Paul Pillar, the former National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia who also headed the Assessments and Information Group of the Director of Central Intelligence’s Counterterrorist Center, joins us to discuss the dangerous implications of having a DNI who not only will not speak truth to power, but is a political partisan who believes it was the Democrats who colluded with Russia, not Trump. With the departure of Dan Coats who Trump tried to fire earlier because he was doing his job presenting threat assessments which contradicted Trump’s claims over North Korea and Iran, only to be talked out of it by Vice President Pence whose political mentor is Coats, America is now at the mercy of having the blindly loyal lead the blindly delusional as we face national security threats and an all-but-inevitable foreign policy crisis. Furthermore Trump chose the Texas Republican two-term Congressman because of his loony attacks on Robert Mueller during last week’s hearing, which means John Ratcliffe will be tag teaming with Attorney General Barr in creating an alternative universe as they investigate the investigators to feed the desperate narrative that Trump is a victim of a witch hunt as opposed to a likely traitor, a possible pedophile and a money-laundering crook who has been one step ahead of the sheriff throughout his business career.
Is Trump Saying That the Residents of Baltimore Are Less Than Human?
Then with Trump doubling down today on his attacks on Congressman Cummings and the City of Baltimore, along with the Reverend Al Sharpton who held a press conference today in Baltimore with Maryland’s former Republican Lieutenant Governor and head of the RNC, Michael Steele, we speak with D. Watkins, Editor at Large for Salon and a lecturer at the University of Baltimore. The author of “We Speak for Ourselves: A Word from Forgotten Black America”, he joins us to discuss whether Trump’s charge that the city D lives in is where “no human being would want to live”, means that Trump considers people like D to be less than human.
Who Will Be Annoying and Who Will Stand out in Tomorrow’s Debate?
Then finally, ahead of tomorrow’s debate with half of the Democratic candidates running for president, followed by the other half on Wednesday night, we speak with Ryan Grim, the D.C. Bureau Chief for The Intercept and author of the new book “We’ve Got People: From Jesse Jackson to AOC, the End of Big Money and the Rise of a Movement”. He joins us to assess who on the crowded stage will be annoying and a waste of time, and who has a chance of becoming the nominee not withstanding they will have precious little time to make their case.