Background Briefing: April 22, 2019
While Trump Does a Victory Lap, Democrats Wrestle with Impeachment
We begin with Trump using the Easter break, on the eve of which the redacted Mueller Report was released, to pound on his theme of no collusion while the Democrats in recess remained largely silent as they wrestle with whether or not to utter the I word, impeachment. Allan Lichtman, a political historian at American University who has studied both the American right and the presidency and is the author of the national bestseller “The Case For Impeachment”, joins us to discuss the contrast between Trump’s fact-free victory lap and the apparent inability of the Democrats to get the damning facts out which are in the Mueller report in spite of Barr’s redactions. We assess the greater danger of avoiding even bringing up impeachment for fear it will backfire, if the lack of a response from the Democrats means they are caving in out of caution and in doing so, are letting the absurd self-serving Trump narrative stand essentially validating his disastrous presidency and serial criminality. Furthermore in misreading the lessons from the Clinton impeachment, Democrats are losing sight of what a trial in the Republican-controlled Senate would reveal to the public as Trump’s enablers would be forced to defend the indefensible as damaging evidence from the Mueller report and subsequent investigations piles on.
Examining the Fine Print in the Mueller Report
Then we get an update on the fine print in the Mueller Report from Marcy Wheeler, an independent journalist who writes about national security and civil liberties at emptywheel.net and serves on the Advisory Committee for the House Fourth Amendment Caucus and is a senior fellow at George Washington University’s Center for Cyber and Homeland Security. She joins us to discuss how the 14 on-going investigations, 12 of which are secret, that have been referred by Mueller will add more to the case against Trump which will eventually reach the heartland and add to the growing movement for impeachment.
Links to Foreign Terrorist Networks Emerging from the Bombings in Sri Lanka
Then finally we examine the links to foreign terrorist networks emerging from the suicide bombing attacks in Sri Lanka that killed 300 and wounded over 500 and speak with Dr. Sumit Ganguly, who holds the Rabindranath Tagore Chair in Indian Cultures and Civilizations at Indiana University. He joins us to discuss how intelligence provided by India warning of an impending attack was not shared among top officials and the possibility that Christians and Westerners were targeted in revenge for the recent massacres of Muslims at the mosques in New Zealand.