Month: August 2024

Background Briefing: August 12, 2024

A Former Republican Opposition Researcher on What Damaging Material Might Be In the Leaked Vetting of J.D. Vance by the Trump Campaign

We begin with a former Republican opposition researcher who worked for Trump in 2016 against Hillary Clinton and assess what kind of damaging information there is about J.D. Vance in the 271-page vetting document on Vance prepared by the Trump campaign that has now been leaked to Politico, The Washington Post and The New York Times by Iranian hackers according to Microsoft. Joining us is Justin Higgins, who has worked as a lobbyist for a Fortune 400 Agribusiness and as a policy advisor to a Tea Party, now House Freedom Caucus Member of Congress. He worked on Trump’s 2016 campaign at the RNC and now hosts the Politics + Media 101 podcast.

 

Trump’s Plan to Deny a Harris Victory by Stalling Certification of the Vote at the Local and State Levels to Delay Results and Cause Chaos

Then we look into Trump’s plan to deny a Harris victory even in a landslide by rather than sending a mob to the Capitol to stop the certification, having the certification of the votes stalled at the local level cascade into stalling the states’ certifications thus delaying results and causing chaos. Joining us is Richard Hasen, Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is a nationally-recognized expert in election law and campaign finance regulation, and is co-author of a leading casebook on election law. He served as founding co-editor of the quarterly peer-reviewed publication, Election Law Journal, and is the author of a number of books including The Voting Wars, Plutocrats United, The Justice of Contradictions, and Election Meltdown. His latest book is A Real Right to Vote: How a Constitutional Amendment Can Safeguard American Democracy.

 

How Much Humiliation is Driving Iran’s Promised Response to Netanyahu’s Provocations

Then finally we assess how much Iran’s leader and the IRGC are driven by humiliation in the pending and promised response to Netanyahu’s provocative assassination of a Hamas leader who was blown up in an IRGC guest house in Tehran where Haniyeh was attending the inauguration of Iran’s new President. Joining us is Mohsen Milani, the Executive Director of the World Center for Strategic & Diplomatic Studies and Professor of Politics at the University of South Florida. Professor Milani has served as a fellow at Harvard, Oxford University, and Foscari University, Italy, and is the author of The Making of Iran’s Islamic Revolution. He is currently writing a book about Iranian foreign policy.