Background Briefing: January 3, 2019
Trump Is Dangerous Because He Is Weak
As the Democrats take over the House of Representatives, we will explore the difficulty they will have trying to find someone capable and competent to negotiate with. Since Trump is so unstable and totally out of his depth, no sooner will Nancy Pelosi have left the Oval Office thinking the deal is sealed, will Trump take to Twitter and reverse everything he had agreed to. David Halperin, a senior fellow at Republic Report and a former White House speechwriter and special assistant for national security affairs to President Clinton who was counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, joins us to discuss his article at Republic Report “Say It With Me: Donald Trump is Weak”. Instead of playing into Trump’s hands by calling him dangerous, David argues that Democrats should point out that Trump is only dangerous in the way that leaving a child home with matches, an oven, and electrical outlets is dangerous. He is only dangerous because he is incompetent, narcissistic, insecure and WEAK.
Trump’s Sellout in Syria
Then we explore the looming consequences of Trump’s pullout from Syria where the latest American betrayal of the Kurds has them reaching out to the Assad regime for protection from the Turks. Thanassis Cambanis, a Lebanese-based journalist who writes “The Internationalist” column for The Boston Globe and is a contributor to Foreign Policy and the author of “A Privilege to Die: Inside Hezbollah’s Legions and Their Endless War Against Israel”, joins us. We will discuss Trump’s gift to Putin, Assad, Iran and Turkey and the tragic farce of an ally, the Kurds, having to turn to an enemy to protect them from another American ally, Turkey.
The Far-Right Rises Across Europe with Bannon’s Advice and Strategy
Then finally we speak with Adele Stan, a journalist based in Washington, D.C., who specializes in covering the intersection of religion and politics who is currently the editor of Right Wing Watch and a weekly columnist for The American Prospect. She joins us to discuss how the emergence in 2018 of neo-Nazis and white supremacists from the shadows under Trump, will metastasize on the global stage in 2019 as Steve Bannon continues to advise and strategize with far right wing parties who are taking over governments in Europe from Poland to Italy after having already paralyzed the U.K. with their Brexit fiasco.