Tag: covid-19

Briefings

Background Briefing: November 11, 2020

On By gram

 

The Purge at The Pentagon and The Coup Underway Against the Transition

We begin on this Veterans Day and speak with Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, the former Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell who now teaches at the College of William and Mary and joins us to discuss the purge underway at the Pentagon and the unprecedented sabotage of Biden’s transition which amounts to a coup. With rabid Trump loyalists like Miller, Bannon, Patel and Cohen-Watnick let loose on the Pentagon and running wild at the White House where paintings and furniture are disappearing, we will discuss how Wilkerson and Powell were impacted by the delay in the 2000 transition due to the undecided vote in Florida and its effect on national security which contributed to the new Bush Administration overlooking Al Qaeda. This time however it is likely to be much worse for Biden since Senator Thune let the cat out of the bag in admitting that Republican senators won’t acknowledge Biden’s victory because they need Trump to rile up the MAGA base until the Georgia run-offs are decided on January 5, 2021 in order to stay in the majority. In putting partisanship over patriotism, Republicans are crippling the incoming Biden Administration which will only have a two week transition to get up to speed on the latest intelligence and to staff and form a government.

 

This Manufactured Election Crisis is Far Worse Than 1876 or 2000

Then we look into the history of presidential election crises and speak with Alan Hirsch, Instructor in the Humanities and Chair of the Justice and Law Studies program at Williams College whose latest book is A Short History of Presidential Election Crises (And How to Prevent the Next One). He joins us to discuss how the anti-democratic coup underway is far worse than 1876 and 2000 and the irony that the day after the Georgia run-offs is the day Congress is supposed to certify the election.

 

With 135,000 New Covid Cases on Tuesday, the Pandemic is Out of Control

Then finally with 50 million Covid cases worldwide and 10.3 million in the U.S. which has suffered 240,000 deaths so far, on Tuesday a record was set with more than 136,000 new cases reported. Lawrence Gostin, University Professor and Chair of Global Health Law at Georgetown University Law Center and Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on National and Global Health, joins us to discuss the uncontrolled pandemic in this country and what it will take to bring it under control.