Background Briefing: January 14, 2021

On By gram

 

Is the Toxic Trump GOP Now a Captive of the Lunatic Fringe?

We begin with the majority of House Republican still standing by Trump after he had his supporters attack and ransack their workplace and threaten their Vice President’s life. Admittedly many more would have voted to impeach Trump but for the fact they are terrified that his mob could turn on them and threaten them and their family’s lives which just goes to show where we are with the toxic Trump GOP now a captive of the lunatic fringe. Mike Lofgren, a 28 year veteran of Congress who was a senior analyst on the House and Senate Budget Committees and is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Party is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted, joins us. We discuss his article at Common Dreams, “A Layman’s Guide to Spotting Sedition, Treason, and Lunacy in General” and the statement calling for Trump’s Removal From Office which he signed along with hundreds of former Republican Administration officials. With Democratic members calling for investigations into whether some of their Republican colleagues aided and abetted the domestic terrorists who stormed and vandalized to capitol, we assess what it will take to de-radicalize the GOP and whether Trump can keep his base funding his plans to run in 2024 after having shaken them down for a quarter of a billion dollars in his bogus “Stop the Steal “campaign. Or will McConnell see to it that Trump is banned from holding any future office?  

 

Polls Indicate 40% of Americans Still Think Trump is Doing a Good Job

Then we speak with Eric Levitz, who writes for New York Magazine’s Daily Intelligencer where his latest article is “Post-Capitol Hill Riot Polls Reveal Big Problem For GOP.” He joins us to discuss how even after a coup attempt against American democracy that got five people killed, including a police officer, 40% of Americans still think Trump is doing a good job.

 

Could the World’s Most Powerful Biometric Database Be Used Against the American People?

Then finally we examine how “Big Brother” technology employed by the Pentagon to gather biometric data on a huge percentage of the population of Afghanistan, is now being employed here in the U.S. by HHS to track the Covid pandemic. We speak with Annie Jacobsen, the author of the Pulitzer Prize-finalist in history, The Pentagon’s Brain and the New York Times bestsellers Area 51 and Operation Paperclip. She joins us to discuss her new book, just out, First Platoon: A Story of Modern War in the Age of Identity Dominance, which tells the story of a war criminal pardoned by Trump based on the wrong data from the world’s most powerful biometric database now deployed against the American people.