Background Briefing: February 23, 2020
Putin’s Mob Boss in the Oval Office – the Gift that Keeps on Giving
We begin with the brazen in-your-face cover-up of Russia’s on-going interference in this year’s elections by the Trump administration with Trump’s National Security Advisor in an ABC News interview broadcast Sunday contradicting the Intelligence Community’s assessment as the White House installs a loyal flunky as DNI to corral and bury the evidence from the American people. David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and bestselling author of The Making of Donald Trump who is the co-founder of DCReport.org joins us to discuss whether the mob boss in the Oval Office will get away with such a blatant effort to hide his collusion with the Kremlin whether it is active or passive. We assess what it might take to get the majority of the American people to see what is staring them in the face. Clearly Trump is the gift that keeps on giving for the Kremlin as he weakens America’s alliances and destroys its institutions while undermining democracy itself, which appears to be Putin’s ultimate goal along with spreading chaos with the chaos president his useful idiot.
Could We Have a Government That Takes Care of the 99% Instead of the 1%?
Then with Bernie Sanders looking like a sure bet to be the Democratic candidate to take on Trump in the general election, we speak with one of his advisors Robert Hockett, a Professor of Law at Cornell Law School who helped write Bernie Sanders’ Corporate Accountability and Democracy Plan joins us to discuss why he thinks Bernie is unstoppable because he is awakening a huge constituency of young and minority voters along with traditional Democrats to the possibility that America could have a government that takes care of the 99%, not the 1%.
Putin Should Fear a President Bernie
Then finally we speak with David Adler, a fellow at the School of Transnational Governance at the European University Institute about his article at The Guardian “Hawks say Sanders will be weak on Russia. But Putin should fear a President Bernie.” In response to news from an intelligence briefing Bernie had a month ago that Putin was helping his campaign, Sanders’ condemned Putin as a thug saying “My message to Putin is clear. Stay out of American elections, and as president I will make sure that you do.”