Background Briefing: October 11, 2020

 

Congress is Supposed to Play a Key Role in Invoking the 25th Amendment

We begin with the announcement on Friday by Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Jamie Raskin that they are introducing a bill to establish an independent commission under the 25th Amendment to evaluate a president’s health and mental state and oversee the transfer of power to a Vice President. John Nichols, The Nation magazine’s Washington Correspondent and bestselling author joins us to discuss his article at The Nation “It’s Time to Put Some Muscle Behind the 25th Amendment” and how this bill is not about trolling a troubled president who is lately exhibiting signs of mental instability perhaps stimulated by steroids he is taking, but rather is the unfinished business of those who sponsored the 25th Amendment back in 1967. The bill attempts to define the Commission that Congress is supposed to set up under the 25th Amendment which is composed of elder statespersons like former presidents, Attorneys Generals etc., as well as physicians and psychiatrists, which will evaluate future presidents should the need arise.  

 

Was Saudi, Emirati and Russian Money Funneled into Trump’s 2016 Campaign Via Micropayments?

Then we look into a possible explanation for the recent meltdown of Trump’s former campaign manager who is rumored to be under investigation for missing millions from the campaign and the RNC. Paul Wood, the former World Affairs Correspondent for the BBC who is a columnist for The Spectator, joins us to discuss an article he wrote in The Spectator back in February about a whistleblower who worked with the convicted pedophile George Nader to funnel micropayments into the 2016 Trump campaign via Internet payment processing credit card engines in small amounts under the FEC limits using stolen Chinese data on 10 million American consumers. Allegedly this is how Saudi’s MbS and the Emirati’s MbZ along with Putin laundered hundreds of millions in the Trump campaign and the speculation is they are doing the same now in 2020.

 

Republican Rats Are Deserting the Sinking SS Trump

Then finally we speak with Rick Perlstein, the bestselling author who is currently a contributing editor and board member of In These Times magazine whose latest book is Reaganland: America’s Right Turn 1976-1980 which the New York Times describes as “A Rosetta Stone for reading America and its politics today”. He joins us to discuss how the Republican rats are deserting the sinking SS Trump and whether the coalition of the Religious Right and white working class “Reagan Democrats” doing the bidding of the plutocrats which is Trump’s base, will split from the Republican Party if Trump takes the GOP down with him.