Background Briefing: May 13, 2020

On By gram

 

Holding Trump Responsible for the Death’s He’s Caused at TrumpDeathClock.com

We  begin with the Trump Death Clock which displays the growing avoidable death count in America for which Trump can and should be held responsible due to his reckless mishandling of the pandemic. Eugene Jarecki, an Emmy and Peabody award-winning film director and Executive Director of The Eisenhower Project and author of The American Way of War: Guided Missiles, Misguided Men, and a Republic in Peril, joins us to discuss how the billboard he is renting in Times Square can be easily replicated on billboards and projected on buildings in every city and town across America by going to TrumpDeathClock.com  With deaths so far approaching 85,000 which experts including Dr. Fauci consider an undercount, the Trump Death Clock counts the deaths due to Trump’s unconscionable dithering and narcissism during the critical period when Dr. Fauci and heath experts were begging him enact mitigation. But Trump only thought of himself and his reelection rather that the fate of the American people. Leading epidemiologists estimate that 50% to 80% of Covid-19 deaths in New York and 90% of all American Covid-19 deaths can be attributed to the administration’s delay between March 2 and 16.

 

Lies From the Anti-vaxxing Movement When the World Awaits a Vaccine

Then we speak with Anna Merlan, an investigative journalist specializing in politics, crime, religion, subcultures and women’s lives. The author of Republic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power, she is a Senior Staff Writer at Vice Features where her latest article is “Plandemic is Dangerous, Viral Nonsense: A pseudo-documentary full of outrageous, verifiably false claims is still going viral, despite being removed from YouTube and Facebook“. We discuss how the anti-vaxxing movement behind this dangerous New Age misinformation is actively spreading baseless lies and debunked nonsense at a time when the whole world is waiting for a vaccine to end the deadly scourge of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Faithless Electors” and Electoral College Campaigns to Change the Vote

Then finally we examine the arguments before the Supreme Court today over whether states can penalize so-called “faithless electors” who go rogue and do not fulfill their pledge and vote for the state’s popular vote winner in the Electoral College or in some case whoever they please. Robert Alexander, the Founding Director for the Institute of Civics and Public Policy at Ohio Northern University whose latest book is Representation and the Electoral College, joins us to discuss his article at CNN “Electoral College’s glitches can’t easily be fixed“. We investigate a number of efforts, particularly in the interregnum between the 2016 November election and the Electoral College vote when efforts were made to get Republican electors to vote against Donald Trump because he was not considered fit for office.