Month: November 2019

Dr. Fiona Hill’s Mentor

We begin with one of the country’s leading experts on Russia who is considered the mentor of Dr. Fiona Hill whose uncompromising testimony in the impeachment inquiry of the House Intelligence Committee was stunning in its clarity and alarming in its conclusions. Angela Stent, the former National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasian on the National Intelligence Council who is now the Director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Affairs at Georgetown University and author of “Putin’s World: Russia Against the West and with the Rest”, joins us. We discuss how the Ukrainian leader Zelensky has been damaged and weakened by Trump’s Burisma blackmail while Putin is gloating, trolling us by remarking that “Thank God no one is accusing us of interfering in the U.S. elections anymore. Now they’re accusing Ukraine”. Furthermore, instead of heeding the dressing down Fiona Hill gave the Republicans on the Intelligence Committee about the ridiculous conspiracy theories they have offered up, warning them, “This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves”, President Trump doubled-down on “Fox and Friends” on Friday spinning absurd fictions that Hillary Clinton and the FBI conspired with Ukraine to release damaging dirt on Clinton herself which was passed on the Wikileaks.

Senator Sherrod Brown on a New Progressive Era

Then we speak with Senator Sherrod Brown, Ohio’s senior U.S. senator who is the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee as well as the Senate Committee on Finance. He joins us to discuss his new book, just out, “DESK 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America” which profiles eight of the progressive senators who sat at the current desk Sherrod Brown occupies in the senate; Hugo Black, Theodore Francis Green, Glen Taylor, Herbert Lehman, Al Gore Sr., William Proxmire, Robert Kennedy and George McGovern. We discuss how the pendulum swings back and forth between liberal and conservative eras and assess whether we are on the cusp of a new progressive era.

Can the Democrats Prevent Trump Putting Another Reactionary on the Supreme Court?

Then finally, with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginzburg back home after being admitted to hospital for chills and fever, we discuss the anxiety many feel about how this already conservative Supreme Court could become even more reactionary if Trump gets to appoint another Federalist Society justice. Lisa Graves, the co-founder of Documented who served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department and as Chief Counsel for Nominations on the Senate Judiciary Committee, joins us to discuss whether the Democrats could adopt a similarly ruthless strategy which Senator McConnell used to block President Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland.