Day: January 7, 2025

The Normalization of Trump By the Press and Social Media as Its Owners Bezos and Zuckerberg Move to Flatter Rather Than Fact-Check Him

We begin with Trump’s rambling press conference today where he spent the first half hour ranting about electric cars, shower heads and windmills driving whales crazy before attacking our closest allies and wanting to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. Joining us to discuss how the press is dutifully treating the barking mad Trump as a normal president while the owners of the press and social media like Bezos and Zuckerberg move to flatter rather than fact check Trump is Scott Horton, a professor at Columbia Law School and a contributing editor at Harper’s in legal affairs and national security. He serves on the American branch of the International Law Association, and has represented a variety of journalists and whistleblowers.

At Today’s Rambling Press Conference Trump Does Not Rule Out Military Force to Take Back the Panama Canal, Grab Greenland and Make Canada the 51st State

Then we examine whether Trump really means it in not ruling out military force to take back the Panama Canal and grab Greenland while making Canada the 51st state and speak with Stephen Kinzer, an award-winning foreign correspondent who served as the New York Times Bureau chief in Turkey, Germany, and Nicaragua and as the Boston Globe’s Latin America correspondent. He is a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University and is the author of All the Shah’s Men, Overthrow, and The Brothers, John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles and their Secret World War. His latest book is Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control. We discuss his article at The Boston Globe, “Eyeing Greenland and the Panama Canal, Trump dusts off an old American playbook.”

Why is Trump Attacking Our Closest Allies While Cozying up to Our Worst Adversaries?

Then finally we assess why Trump’s priority appears to be attacking our closest allies like our neighbor Canada while cozying up to our adversaries like Putin and speak with Alexander Cooley, the former Director of Columbia University’s Harriman Institute for the study of Russia, Eurasia and Eastern Europe and the Claire Tow Professor of Political Science at Barnard College of Columbia University. His books include Great Games, Local Rules: The New Great Power Contest in Central Asia, Dictators without Borders: Power and Money in Central Asia, and most recently, Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order. We discuss his article at Foreign Affairs with Daniel Nexon, “Trump’s Antiliberal Order: How America First Undercuts America’s Advantage?”