Background Briefing: November 16, 2022
Trump’s Boring Announcement and the Election Deniers Electoral Rebuke
We begin with Trump’s Castro-like long and boring speech as he announced his run for the presidency in 2024 to a captive audience of Trumpsters at Mar a Lago who were prevented from leaving early by the staff as even Fox News cut away from Trump’s big announcement. Joining us is Christopher Beem, the managing director of the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State University. He is also co-host of the Democracy Works podcast and his latest book is The Seven Democratic Virtues: What You Can Do to Overcome Tribalism and Save Our Democracy. We discuss his article at CNN, “Goodbye, Kari Lake. And good riddance to all election deniers” and whether the rebuke of the “stop the steal” movement in the elections will be enough to drive a stake through the heart of election deniers like Kari Lake.
The Work of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group of Almost 50 Nations
Then we examine today’s press conference at the Pentagon at which the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs outlined the efforts of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group of almost 50 nations who are supplying arms to Ukraine to defend itself against Russian aggression. Joining us is Aram Shabanian, the Open-Source Information Gathering Manager at New Lines Magazine. He recently taught Non-Proliferation and Terrorism Studies at Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey where his research focused on the Cold War and contemporary histories of Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
Inside the Black Box of Chinese Communist Leadership
Then finally we get an inside look into the black box of Chinese Communist leadership with insight from a researcher who has had access to the politburo’s archives and speak with Frank Dikötter, Chair Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong. His books include The Discourse of Race in Modern China and People’s Trilogy which documents the lives of ordinary people under Mao and How to be a Dictator. We discuss his latest book, just out, China After Mao: The Rise of a Superpower.