Background Briefing: October 28, 2024
Trump and His Warm-up Acts Spew Racist Hatred at Sunday’s Madison Square Garden Rally
We begin with Trump’s campaign-capping rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday at which warm-up acts spewed racist hatred and threats of retribution only to be crowned by Trump’s attacks on immigrants and his so-called “enemies within.” Joining us is Anne Nelson, an author and lecturer in the fields of international affairs, media and human rights who was the director of the international program at the Columbia School of Journalism where she created the first curriculum in human rights reporting. Her books include Red Orchestra: The Berlin Underground and the Circle of Friends Who Resisted Hitler and Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right, now out in an updated paperback version. The new film BAD FAITH: Christian Nationalism’s War on Democracy, based on her book Shadow Network, is streaming on many platforms.
Billionaires and CEOs Suck Up to Trump Hedging Their Bets in Fear of Retribution
Then we look into how billionaires and the CEOs of the world’s biggest companies Apple, Google, Amazon and Meta are hedging their bets pandering to Trump in fear of his vengeance. Joining us David Cay Johnston, a professor at The Rochester Institute of Technology and a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and bestselling author of The Making of Donald Trump. A 13 year veteran of The New York Times, he won the Pulitzer Prize for reporting that uncovered loopholes and inequities in the U.S. tax code and he has uncovered so many tax dodges that he has been called the “de facto tax enforcement officer of the United States”. His latest book is The Big Cheat: How Donald Trump Fleeced America and Enriched Himself and His Family. He’s also the co-founder of DCReport.org where his latest article is “A Democracy-Threatening Dereliction of Duty, But No Reason to Cancel Subscriptions.”
The Disputed Election Results in the Former Soviet State of Georgia
Finally we assess the disputed election results in Georgia after which the pro-Putin oligarch and kingmaker is declaring victory while the opposition is crying fraud. Joining us is an expert on the former Soviet state, Lincoln Mitchell, who teaches in the School of International and Public Affairs and the Department of Political Science at Columbia University. He has written numerous books and articles about international affairs, American politics and baseball. His 9th book Three Years our Mayor: George Moscone and the Making of Modern San Francisco will be published next spring and he is the author of the popular Substack Kibitzing with Lincoln where his latest article is “The Election and the Possibility of Democracy.”