Day: September 27, 2023

After Losing His Business License in New York, Trump Could Lose All His Businesses Built on Fraud

We begin with a judge today dismissing Trump’s appeal against the business fraud case brought by the New York Attorney General which goes to trial on October the second and could shut down most or all of Trump’s businesses. Joining us is someone who has known Trump and investigated his business practices for decades, David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and bestselling author of The Making of Donald Trump.  A 13 year veteran of The New York Times, he won the Pulitzer Prize for reporting that uncovered loopholes and inequities in the U.S. tax code and he has uncovered so many tax dodges that he has been called the “de facto tax enforcement officer of the United States”. His latest book is The Big Cheat: How Donald Trump Fleeced America and Enriched Himself and His Family. Also the co-founder of DCReport.org, we discuss his latest article there, “Judge Gives Trump Organization the Corporate Death Penalty.”

Voters Care More About the Economy Than Losing American Democracy

Then with polls indicating American voters don’t care about the fate of democracy so much as what the economy is doing for them, we examine the problem for Biden of being a good president who has accomplished an amazing record of success in spite of the weak hand he was dealt but is not necessarily the best candidate in the age of contention and clickbait. Joining us is Robert Kuttner, the co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect and the Ida and Meyer Kirstein Chair at Brandeis University. He was formerly an assistant to the legendary I.F. Stone, a chief investigator for the Senate Banking Committee, and for 20 years wrote a column at Business Week. His books include Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism?, Going Big: FDR’s Legacy, and Biden’s New Deal, and the Struggle to Save Democracy, and we discuss his article at The American Prospect, “Winning the Ideas, Losing the Politics.”

Will Trump’s Call to Shut Down the Government Backfire?

Then finally, with the Republican House rejecting the Senate plan to avoid a shutdown, we assess whether Trump’s call to the Freedom Caucus “UNLESS YOU GET EVERYTHING, SHUT IT DOWN!” will backfire. Joining us is Sidney Blumenthal, the former assistant and senior adviser to President Bill Clinton, and senior adviser to Hillary Clinton. He has been a national staff reporter for The Washington Post, Washington editor and staff writer for The New Yorker and his books include the bestsellers The Clinton Wars, The Rise of the Counter-Establishment and The Permanent Campaign. His latest book is All the Powers on Earth, The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln 1856-1860 and he is a columnist at The Guardian, whose latest article we discuss, “Congressional Republicans are trapped in a dangerous absurdity of their own making.”