The Cruelest Cuts in Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill
We begin the cruelest cuts in Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” just passed by the House now before the Senate and assess the impacts of the record cuts in Medicaid and SNAP (food stamps). Joining us is Mike Konczal, Director of policy at the Economic Security Project where he focuses on economics, inequality, and the role of public power in a democracy. He is a co-author, with Joseph Stiglitz, of Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy. His latest book is Freedom From the Market: America’s Fight to Liberate Itself from the Grip of the Invisible Hand and we discuss his article at his Substack “The House Just Passed The Biggest Medicaid Cut in History, Twice the Size of Reagan’s Cuts.”
Trump’s Golden Dome – A Massive Boondoggle and Payoff to Musk and Thiel
Then we look into the Golden Scam otherwise known as Trump’s Golden Dome which is a massive boondoggle and a payoff to his biggest campaign donor Elon Musk as well as JD Vance’s political patron Peter Thiel. Joining us is Joseph Cirincione, Vice Chair of the Board of the Center For International Policy in Washington DC and a national security analyst and author with over 35 years of experience working in Washington, D.C. He is the author or editor of seven books, including Nuclear Nightmares: Securing the World before It Is Too Late and Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons. He previously served as president of Ploughshares Fund, vice president for national security at the Center for American Progress and director for nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He also worked for over nine years on the professional staff of the Armed Services Committee and the Government Operations Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives. We discuss his article at The New Republic “Trump’s Golden Dome Won’t Work – But It’ll Make Elon Musk Richer.”
As Trump Monetizes His Presidency, Thanks to Crypto, His Family’s Net Worth Increased by $2.9 Billion to $ 5.4 Billion
Then finally we examine what is making Trump richer now that he has finally become the billionaire he always pretended to be thanks to his monetizing of the presidency. With his family’s net worth increasing by $2.9 billion from crypto scams to $5.4 billion, we speak with Jacob Silverman, a contributing writer for The New Republic and a contributing editor for The Baffler, covering tech and national security. He is the author of Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection, Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, the Golden Age of Fraud, which was a New York Times bestseller co-authored with Ben MacKenzie. And his forthcoming book is Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley. We discuss his article at The American Prospect “The Trump administration is removing every financial guardrail from crypto.”