Background Briefing: July 8, 2020
Trump’s Niece Portrays Her Uncle as a Fraud and a Bully Whose Ego is So Fragile it Must Be Bolstered Every Moment
We begin with the explosive new book by Donald Trump’s niece Mary which the family is trying to suppress but is now in the hands of reviewers and will be available to the public next Wednesday. Since Mary is a psychologist, the book is able to analyze Trump’s childhood and the toxic family environment that drove her father to an early grave and shaped the sociopathy and narcissism of Donald Trump. In the book Mary describes her uncle as a fraud and a bully who is “far beyond garden-variety narcissism. Donald is not simply weak, his ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be”. Dr. Lance Dodes, a training and Supervising Analyst Emeritus with the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute who was a clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and is a contributor to the book The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President, joins us. We discuss how Trump has no empathy and is both cruel and evil as thousands of American die because of his indifference and assess whether these damaging revelations from both Mary and Trump’s sister Maryanne about someone they grew up with will penetrate the Fox News bubble of lies about who the deranged clown in the Oval Office really is.
The Supreme Court Makes Birth Control Less Accessible and Abortion More Likely
Then we look into today’s Supreme Court decision that chips away at women’s reproductive rights by stripping away affordable birth control for mostly young and minority women who have gained coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Jamille Fields Allsbrook, the Director of Women’s Health and Rights with the Women’s Initiative at the Center for American Progress, joins us to discuss this decision that will make it easier for any employer or university to claim religious or moral objections to covering birth control for nearly 62 million women which has been saving them $1.4 billion in out-of-pocket costs each year alone.
The Left Wing and Right Wing Populists Meet For a White House Photo-op
Then finally we assess the visit today to the White House of Mexico’s leader known as AMLO who showed up to celebrate economic ties from the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade pact at a photo-op which Canada’s Prime Minister Trudeau decided not to attend. Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, a Professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University whose research focuses on U.S.-Mexico relations, organized crime, border security and human trafficking, joins us to discuss this awkward meeting of the left wing and right wing populists.