Day: May 24, 2026

With Comedians Leading the Resistance, Colbert is Taken Off the Air by a President Who Can’t Take a Joke

We begin with how comedians are leading the resistance against Trump and the right wing oligarchic takeover of the United States as billionaires like Larry Ellison buy up the media and fire Stephen Colbert at Trump’s behest, what emerges is that the majority of the American people like jokes and don’t like Trump, who as Bruce Springsteen says, “we have a president who can’t take a joke.” Joining us is Jonathan Alter, a former analyst and contributing correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC and a former senior editor and columnist for Newsweek who is the author of The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope, a New York Times bestsellers, and His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, A Life. His latest book is American Reckoning: Inside Trump’s Trial—and My Own and he runs the Substack newsletter Old Goats where he has an article that is also at The Washington Monthly, “Inside Colbert’s Success.”

Trump’s Conspiracy Theorist in Charge of US Intelligence Resigns

Then we examine the exit of the fourth woman to quit or be fired in the Trump administration, Tulsi Gabbard the Director of National Intelligence, and speak with a former top intelligence official whose security clearance was taken away by Donald Trump on his first day back in office. Joining us is Gregory Treverton, a senior adviser with the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a professor of the practice of international relations at the University of Southern California. He has served in government for the first Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, handling Europe for the National Security Council, and was chairman of the National Intelligence Council from 2014 to 2017 and his books include Dividing Divided States, Beyond the Great Divide: Relevance and Uncertainty in National Intelligence and Science for Policy.

The Fate and Future of the Iranian Opposition

Then finally we assess the fate and future of the Iranian opposition as the war may soon be ending according to the White House and speak with Afshin Matin-Asgari, a Professor of Middle East History at California State University, Los Angeles. Born in Iran, he was active in the 1970s anti-shah student opposition and participated in the 1979 revolution. He has published widely on modern Iranian political and intellectual history, focusing in particular on leftist thought and movements, and we discuss his new book, Axis of Empire: A History of Iran-US Relations.