Background Briefing: September 12, 2024
Trump is Hanging Out With Laura Loomer Who Republicans Are Blaming For His Disastrous Debate
We begin with Republicans blaming right-wing conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer for Trump’s disastrous debate since Loomer has been hanging out with him lately and although his inner circle managed to stop Trump from giving Loomer an official position on his campaign, apparently the “adults in the room” were unable to stop her from travelling with him on the plane to the debate and filling Trump’s head with lunacy like the scourge of Haitians eating household pets. Joining us is Arthur Goldwag, an author whose books include Isms & Ologies, Cults, Conspiracies & Secret Societies, The New Hate: A History of Fear and Loathing on the Populist Right, and The Politics of Fear: The peculiar persistence of American paranoia.
Erdogan Inflames Tensions With the US and Israel While Secretly Profiting From Oil and Arms Sales to Israel
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Then we will examine rising tensions between the US and Turkey over the killing of a Turkish/American activist by the Israeli military which the dictator Erdogan is inflaming as he bashes Israel on the media he controls while secretly profiting from arm sales and a cut in the flow of oil from Azerbaijan to Israel which is enriching the kleptocrat and his sons. Joining us is Ahmet Yayla, a professor and the Director of the Center for Homeland Security at DeSales University in Pennsylvania who also teaches counter terrorism courses at Georgetown University and is a fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. He formerly served as Professor and the Chair of the Sociology Department at Harran University in Turkey and was a counterterrorism police chief in Turkey.
What America Would Be Like After a MAGA Takeover Based on the MAGA Takeover of Two Counties in Washington and Northern California
Then finally we will examine what America would be like if MAGA Republicans took over the country based upon the test cases of MAGA takeovers of small-town America that happened in Washington State and Northern California. Joining us is Sasha Abramsky, a writer at The Nation magazine and a lecturer at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of several books, including The American Way of Poverty, The House of Twenty Thousand Books, and his latest book, just out, is Chaos Comes Calling: The Battle Against the Far-Right Takeover of Small-Town America.