Month: June 2024

The Oligarchs Lining Up to Line Trump’s Pockets

We begin with billionaires rallying to support Trump with the late casino mogul’s wife Miriam Adelson poised to drop $100 million or more this week as Wall Street’s Schwartzman, Ackman and Peltz, who condemned the insurrectionist-in-chief after January 6, line up to line Trump’s pockets. Joining us to discuss the cynicism and short-sightedness of the oligarchs pitching in to buy the next election is Chuck Collins, a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, where he directs the Program on Inequality and co-edits Inequality.org. He is the author of Born on Third Base: A One Percenter Makes the Case for Tackling Inequality, Is Inequality in America Irreversible?, and his latest book, The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions.

The Upcoming Ukraine Peace Conference That China Won’t Attend Because Russia Won’t Go and Now Saudi Arabia Won’t Attend Because China Isn’t Going 

Then we assess the upcoming peace conference in Switzerland to end the war in Ukraine that China will not attend because Russia won’t go and now Saudi Arabia will not attend because China isn’t going. Joining us is Aram Shabanian, the Open-Source Information Gathering Manager at New Lines Institute. He recently taught in Non-Proliferation and Terrorism Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey where his research is focused on the Cold War and contemporary histories of Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

Will Scheinbaum’s and Morena’s Blowout Victory Lead to an Institutional Collapse in Mexico?

Then finally we look into the landslide victory of Claudia Scheinbaum who captured Mexico’s presidency by a 58% to 30% margin while her party Morena appears to have a veto-proof majority in both chambers. Joining us to discuss what he sees as the further destruction of Mexico’s institutional machinery by the populist policies of Lopez Obrador and Morena is Emiliano Polo, a Mexican lawyer with expertise in international law and political analysis. He has worked on political risk analysis in Latin America with Control Risks and the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. and we discuss his article at The Wilson Center, “The Day After the Election: Mexico’s Potemkin Government.“