Background Briefing: May 12, 2020
Debunking Trump’s Bonkers “Obamagate” Conspiracy
We begin with Trump’s bonkers Obamagate conspiracy theory he launched in a frenzy of deranged tweets over the Mother’s Day weekend about which he was challenged yesterday in the Rose Garden press conference by the Washington Post’s Phil Rucker who asked the following question… “In one of your Mother’s Day tweets, you appeared to accuse President Obama of the biggest political crime in American history, by far’ — those were your words. What crime exactly are you accusing President Obama of committing, and do you believe the Justice Department should prosecute him?” Trump gave a rambling non-answer “Uh, Obamagate. It’s been going on for a long time. It’s been going on from before I even got elected, and it’s a disgrace that it happened, and if you look at what’s gone on, and if you look at now, all this information that’s being released — and from what I understand, that’s only the beginning — some terrible things happened, and it should never be allowed to happen in our country again.” Rucker pressed on trying to get an answer… “You appeared to accuse Obama of a crime yesterday. What did he do?” To which Trump replied “Obamagate”. Rucker persisted, “What is the crime?” Then Trump resorted to his usual insults, “You know what the crime is. The crime is very obvious to everybody. All you have to do is read the newspapers, except yours.” Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist David Cay Johnston, the author of the bestseller The Making of Donald Trump and co-founder of DCReport.org, joins us to discuss his article at DCReport.org “How Barr is Advancing Trump’s Quest to Become President For Life”. With Attorney General Barr leading the effort to turn Trump’s “Obamagate” conspiracy into something that might have some connection to a grain of truth through his appointment of John Durham to investigate the investigators, we will assess whether a case could be manufactured that could ever make a dent in the overwhelming evidence that the Russians helped elect Trump in 2016 and will try harder to reelect him in 2020. We will look into the record of the disgraced National Security Advisor Michael Flynn who for all intents and purposed is a traitor although Trump now calls him a “hero” even though Flynn took money from the Russians, lied about meeting with their spymaster in the U.S. and hatched a plot to kidnap a cleric who is a legal U.S. resident but a thorn in the side of the corrupt dictator Erdogan, and rendition him to Turkey.
The Upcoming Testimony From the Whistleblower Trump Fired Dr. Bright
Then we discuss the forthcoming testimony on Thursday from Dr. Bright the former head of vaccines who was fired because he questioned Trump’s touting of an unproven malaria drug. This following Dr. Fauci’s testimony today to the U.S. Senate in which he warned of the grave consequence of prematurely opening up the country while acknowledging that in spite of the U.S. having six times more cases of Covid-19 than any other country and four times more deaths, the death count is likely undercounted and is higher than the shocking number of 81,000. Nick Schwellenbach, a senior investigator at POGO, the Project on Government Oversight who previously worked in the Office of Special Counsel, joins us to discuss his report at POGO, “The First 100 Days of the U.S. Government Covid-19 Response”. Now that the Office of Special Counsel has found the removal of the whistleblower Dr. Bright appears to be retaliation, we assess what might be revealed by Dr. Bright in Thursday’s hearing before the House Subcommittee on Energy and Commerce which is chaired by Congresswoman Eshoo who helped set up Dr. Bright’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, BARDA..