The Case to Keep the Focus of the Impeachment Case Narrow
We begin with the debate among Democrats whether to focus article of impeachment solely on the Ukraine scandal or to add other charges like personal enrichment from emolument violations and obstruction of justice outlined in the Mueller Report. Caroline Fredrickson, the president of the American Constitution Society who served as a special assistant to the President for legislative affairs during the Clinton Administration and is the author of “The Democracy Fix: How to Win the Fight for Fair Rules, Fair Courts, and Fair Elections”, joins us to discuss her article at The New York Times “Democrats, Don’t Overreach on Impeachment: Like Nixon, Trump is accused of many
things. But only one matters.” We will assess whether the narrow focus on the bribery of the Ukrainian president by Trump which Nancy Pelosi appears to be pushing, will be sufficient to convince a majority of Americans that the president has committed an impeachable offense and should be removed from office. And will that be enough to sway the 20 Republicans senators needed to convict Trump given their apparent fear of Trump’s base who believe Trump’s absurd narrative which worked for him in 2016 to displace the blame for his criminality onto Hillary Clinton, now updated for 2020 to put Joe Biden on trial in the senate instead of him.
Is Nancy Pelosi Bungling the Impeachment Case?
Then we speak with Moira Donegan, a writer whose work has appeared in The London Review of Books and The Paris Review who is a columnist at the Guardian where her latest article is “Nancy Pelosi is bungling the impeachment inquiry into Trump”. We discuss her concerns that the timing of making the case for impeachment in the House will not be an exercise in educating the American people because they will be distracted by Christmas and New Year’s festivities. And then the trial in the senate expected in January, will effectively ground Senators, Sanders, Warren, Klobuchar and Booker from campaigning ahead of the Iowa caucuses giving an advantage to Biden and Buttigieg.
The Role of Saudi Wahhabi Islam in Motivating the Pensacola Killer
Then finally, following the killing of three trainee airmen and the wounding of eight by a Lieutenant in the Saudi Arabian Airforce undergoing pilot training at the Pensacola Naval Air Station, we will speak with Ali Al-Ahmed, the founder and director of the Institute for Gulf Affairs and a scholar and expert on Saudi political affairs including: terrorism, Islamic movements, Wahhabi Islam, Saudi-American relations, and the al-Saud family history. He is the author of a report at gulfinstitute.org “From U.S. Campuses to ISIS Camps” which documents over 400 Saudis who studied in the U.S. then joined ISIS, including 30 who were killed fighting the U.S. coalition against ISIS.