Background Briefing: November 19, 2018

 

Trump Insults Admiral in Charge of Killing Bin Laden and Capturing Saddam

We begin with President Trump insulting the retired Navy SEAL who oversaw the killing of Osama bin Laden and the capture of Saddam Hussein, Admiral McRaven, and speak with Mark Perry, an author and historian who specializes in military and intelligence analysis. He joins us to discuss the disconnect between Trump who claims “I have done more for the military than any other president in many, many years” and his penchant for insulting military leaders, war heroes and gold star families. We will look into how Trump is using our soldiers as props for political propaganda which he is doing with the troops he deployed to the Southern border just before the election who are away from their families on Thanksgiving engaged in a pointless mission which the National Guard could be doing if the need were to arise. Having started early in his 2016 presidential campaign insulting John McCain as not Trump’s kind of war hero because he was captured, our bone-spur president who avoided the draft during the Vietnam war, claimed later on Howard Stern’s program that his personal Vietnam was a battle against venereal disease as a result of all the actresses and models he was having sex with. But now that Trump is commander-in-chief, senior officers like General McCrystal are coming forward to remark that Trump is not a suitable leader for the military, we will assess whether the rank and file are also beginning to see the obvious.

 

Pressure Mounts to End Saudi Arabia’s Cruel War in Yemen

Then with intense fighting underway at the main port in Yemen where a Saudi blockade is causing widespread famine in the country with half the population facing starvation, we speak with Kate Gould the Legislative Director for Middle East Policy for the Friends Committee on National Legislation, a Quaker lobby in the national interest. She lobbies on Iran, Yemen and Israel-Palestine and joins us to discuss the expected release of the Trump Administration’s report on the Saudi regime’s killing of a prominent dissident whose last column in the Washington Post was a critique of the Saudi Crown Prince’s disastrous and cruel war in Yemen in which half a million children are starving to death while MBS spends billions on French chateaux, luxury yachts and a fake Da Vinci.

Call 1 -8 3 3 – S T O P W A R to urge your senators to end US complicity in the war in Yemen

 

 Trump Alone Backs the Saudi Killer-in-Chief

Then finally we  examine further the impact of Khashoggi’s murder which has isolated Trump from world’s leaders and even his own Republican senators as he alone continues to cover up for MBS in defiance of the CIA’s finding that the Saudi Crown Prince was actively involved in ordering the assassination of the Saudi dissident. Carolyn Kenney, a senior policy analyst for National Security and International Policy and the Center for American Progress, joins us to discuss her article at The National Interest “Trump’s Long History of Financial Dealings with the Saudis Complicates the Khashoggi Affair”.