Background Briefing: October 10, 2018

On By gram

 

Trump’s Torrent of Lies in His Op-Ed Against Medicare-for-All

We begin with the op-ed in today’s USA Today by President Trump attacking the Democrats for wanting to expand Medicare to Medicare-for-all, using the familiar tropes of “socialism”, “big government takeover!” and “bureaucrats making decisions for you instead of your doctor”. Dr. John Geyman, a professor emeritus of family medicine at the Washington School of Medicine in Seattle whose latest book, just out is, “Trumpcare: “Lies, Broken Promises, How It is Failing, and What Should Be Done”, joins us. We will discuss how many lies Trump piled into such a short space which prompted the fact-checker Glenn Kessler to write “almost every sentence contained a misleading statement or a falsehood”. And since it appears that the Republicans are afraid that Medicare and its expansion is popular, and that single-payer healthcare is becoming increasingly popular among younger voters, we look into the extent to which the Republican sabotage of Medicare and Obamacare is working. With the Republicans being both the arsonists and the fire brigade as they undermine what is working for the American people so that they will be forced to go back to the model that has never worked. A model which has made American healthcare the most expensive in the world with some of the worst results. We will look into the Trump Administration’s plans to take the Healthcare.gov website offline for hours at a time for “maintenance” during the upcoming Obamacare enrollment season.

 

Two-Time Pulitzer Prize-Winning National Security Reporter Greg Miller on His New Book “The Apprentice: Trump, Russia and the Subversion of American Democracy”

Then we speak with two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning national security reporter for The Washington Post, Greg Miller, the author of the new book, just out, “The Apprentice: Trump, Russia and the Subversion of American Democracy”. We examine what has been called the political crime of the century and the greatest intelligence operation since the Germans put Lenin in a boxcar and sent him to Russia in 1917. Having investigated the Kremlin’s covert attempt to destroy Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump win the presidency from before, then during, the 2016 campaign right up to the present, with the help of the entire Washington Post’s national security team, Greg Miller has had face-to-face confrontations with many of the key players such as Mike Flynn and the former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. We assess where the Mueller inquiry is heading and when the American people will wake up to the possibility that their president is a traitor.