Day: July 25, 2022

Should Crime Reporters Replace Political Reporters in Covering Trump?

We begin with the failure of the mainstream press to acknowledge the real evidence before them presented by the January 6 Committee as they continue to report on Trump and his cohorts as legitimate actors in a political drama instead of criminal outliers out to murder opponents and kill American democracy. Joining us is James Risen, the Senior National Security Correspondent at The Intercept and a former investigative journalist with the New York Times, and author of the New York Times bestsellers State of War and Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his stories about warrantless wiretapping by the NSA and is currently the director of the Press Freedom Defense Fund, which has provided financial assistance for Maria Ressa’s legal defense in the Philippines. We discuss his latest article at The Intercept, “The Cult of Donald Trump: On January 6, Trump was not much different from Jim Jones, as he urged his rabid followers to kill American democracy.”

The Growing Influence of White Christian Nationalism in the GOP

Then, following the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit this weekend in Tampa, Florida at which Trump’s favorite congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said “We need to be the party of nationalism… I’m a Christian, and I say it proudly—we should be Christian nationalists,” we look into the growing influence of white Christian nationalism in the Republican party. Joining is Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a professor of history at Calvin University and the author of A New Gospel for Women. She has written for the Washington Post, Christianity Today, Christian Century, and Religion & Politics, among other publications, and her latest book is Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.

The Pope Apologizes to Canada’s Indigenous Peoples

Then finally we look into the Pope’s visit to Canada where on Monday he said in apologizing for Canada’s residential schools, 60% of which were run by the Catholic Church from the 1880’s to the 1990’s, “I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous peoples, I am deeply sorry – sorry for the ways in which, regrettably, many Christians supported the colonizing mentality of the powers that oppressed the indigenous peoples”. Joining us is Linc Kesler, an associate professor of First Nations Studies and English and formerly the Director of the University of British Columbia’s First Nations House of Learning where he was also Senior Advisor to the University’s President on Aboriginal Affairs.