Had All the Democrats Boycotted the State of the Union, Trump Would Have Been Left Insulting Empty Chairs
We begin with last night’s long and winding State Of The Union address which had Trump throwing red meat to the MAGA crowd while hurling barbs at the Democrats in the chamber, making the decision by many members to boycott the event seem wise since it would have been harder for Trump to insult empty chairs. Joining us is Rick Wilson, a renowned political strategist, infamous ad-maker, writer, speaker, and political commentator. A 30-year veteran of national Republican politics, he got his start in the 1988 Presidential campaign of George Herbert Walker Bush. In December 2019, he co-founded the Lincoln Project and his books include Everything Trump Touches Dies and Running Against The Devil – A Plot To Save America from Trump And Democrats From Themselves. He writes at therickwilson.substack.com where his latest article we discuss is, “The State of Trump’s Chaos.”
The Performative Nature of US/Russian Negotiations as Putin Strings Trump Along
Then we look into the performative nature of Witkoff and Kushner’s negotiation with Putin who is clearly stringing Trump along and assess what is behind the apparent hold Putin has over Trump who appears anxious to abandon Ukraine and do business with the Kremlin. Joining us is Angela Stent, the senior advisor and former Director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Affairs and a Professor of Government and Foreign Affairs at Georgetown University. She is also a Senior Fellow at The American Enterprise Institute and co-chairs the Hewitt Forum on Post-Soviet Affairs at the Brookings Institution. She served as National Intelligence Office for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council, and, prior to that, served in the Office of Policy Planning at the U.S. Department of State. She is the author of The Limits of Partnership: U.S.-Russian Relations in the Twenty-First Century and, most recently, Putin’s World: Russia Against the West and with the Rest, and contributed to an article at Foreign Policy “Four Years of War in Europe.”
The Top 10 Companies Profiting From ICE’s Cruelty
Then finally we speak with Nick Schwellenbach, a senior investigator at the Project on Government Oversight who was previously the communications director at the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, the main federal agency in charge of protecting whistleblowers, during a period when it won bipartisan praise for restoring trust in the agency. Nick’s work on excessive secrecy covering up serious misconduct by Justice Department attorneys won the Society of Professional Journalists-D.C. Chapter’s Robert D.G. Lewis Watchdog Award in 2015, its highest prize. His current work focuses on DHS, the Justice Department, and oversight of the executive branch, and he has a new report at The Project On Government Oversight we discuss, “ICE, Inc.: The Top Companies Profiting from Trump’s Immigration Crackdown.”
