Background Briefing: August 11, 2022
Merrick Garland Speaks After Trump Makes Wild Claims About the FBI Whose Office in Cincinnati Was Attacked
We begin with Attorney General Merrick Garland’s brief appearance today before the press where he called Trump’s bluff in announcing the public release of the search warrant and inventory of documents taken from Mar-a-Lago in Monday’s FBI raid on the former President Trump’s home. Garland also offered a passionate defense of FBI and DOJ personnel which might have something to do with an attack on the FBI field office in Cincinnati today given that Trump has riled up his supporters claiming the FBI planted incriminating documents at Mar-a-Lago. Joining us is Sean Wilentz, an historian who briefed President Biden last week on the gathering threats to American democracy and historical comparisons between events leading up to the Civil War and the emergence of American fascism in the 1930’s. He is the George Henry Davis 1886 Professor of American History at Princeton University, where he has taught since 1979. His books include The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln, The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008, Bob Dylan in America, and The Politicians and the Egalitarians. His latest book is No Property in Man: Slavery and Antislavery at the Nation’s Founding. We discuss the threat to American democracy posed by Donald Trump who could return to head the executive branch in 2024 together with the Republican Party he controls which could return to power in control of the legislative branch in November. In addition, we examine the right wing takeover of the judicial branch and the extent to which the Supreme Court will undo our democracy and usher in plutocratic rule accompanied by a “Handmaid’s Tale” moral authoritarianism.