Trumpwatch With Jesse Lent

(10/3/18) According to most major surveys, Republican candidates for the US House of Representatives in November have a tough hill to climb in districts without overwhelming support for the President. Attempting to put some daylight between them and Donald Trump to appeal to independents, while not alienating the President’s core base of supporters is no small task. But, in an article published Oct. 2 entitled “The double lives of vulnerable House Republicans: A recording obtained by POLITICO highlights the conflicting advice GOP members in tough districts are getting,” Rachael Bade of POLITICO reveals that some members of the House’s right-wing Freedom Caucus, namely Virginia Congressman Dave Brat, appear to be attempting to have it both ways—appealing to moderates in their wider message while praising extreme right views and personalities at private campaign rallies. In this week’s “TrumpWatch” on WBAI, host Jesse Lent talks to Rachel about what her reporting reveals about the 2018 election.

(9/26/18) Much of the mainstream news coverage about President Trump’s second address to the United Nations General Assembly focused on the waves of laughter heard in the audience of world leaders after he made the claim that he “has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country.” But, after telling the crowd he “didn’t expect that reaction, but that’s okay,” the President proceeded to lay out a plan for US foreign policy more isolationist than has been seen in decades. On this week’s “TrumpWatch with Jesse Lent” on WBAI, White House reporter David Nakamura of the Washington Post examines the greater significance of what was said in President Trump’s speech and what it means for US foreign policy, moving forward.

9/19/18) Back in July, when President Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh, a U.S. Court of Appeals judge for the DC circuit, to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court, he appeared poised to sail through his Senate confirmation hearing. Yet, days before the Senate was to vote on Kavanaugh ascending to the high court, a confidential letter sent to Sen. Diane Feinstein written by clinical psychology professor at Palo Alto University in California named Christine Blasey Ford alleged that the Supreme Court nominee attacked her and tryied to remove her clothing while he was drunk at a party in 1982 when they were both high school students, allegations Kavanaugh has called “completely false,” according to Reuters. On this week’s “TrumpWatch” on WBAI, host Jesse Lent talks to Stef W. Kight of Axios about whether the allegations against Kavanaugh will be enough to sink his nomination. Stef wrote the Sept. 18 article “Anita Hill's advice to the Senate ahead of Brett Kavanaugh hearings.”

(9/12/18) Though his backstory is largely unknown, Vice President Mike Pence is often portrayed as the rational tactician, a mirror image to President Trump’s unrestrained id. But in his new book "The Shadow President: The Truth About Mike Pence,” co-written with Michael D'Antonio, Peter Eisner pushes back on this public perception and fleshes out the VP’s backstory with a riveting personal and political biography. A former political editor for the Washington Post, Peter joins host Jesse Lent for a closer look at exactly who Mike Pence is and what motivates him, on this week’s “TrumpWatch” on WBAI.

(9/5/18) Longtime environmentalists will recall the battle of the 1980s over the chlorofluorocarbons or "CFCs" the chemical company DuPont produced for aerosol spray cans that were found to be eating a hole in the earth’s ozone layer. Now, once again, a DuPont chemical is poised to unleash a new round of damage to the earth. “The phase-out of CFCs ultimately proved to be a boon to DuPont, as the company became one of the major suppliers of HFCs, the refrigerants that replaced ozone-depleting chemicals,” reports health and environment reporter Sharon Lerner of the Intercept. “Now, as the world moves ahead with the effort to replace those replacements, DuPont’s offspring, Chemours, could be headed for a similar payday from their next round of refrigerant gases. But the question of what replaces HFCs has the power to dramatically impact the climate and water pollution around the world.” In this week’s “TrumpWatch” on WBAI, Sharon discusses her latest article “How a DuPont Spinoff Lobbied the EPA to Stave Off the

(8/29/18) On Tuesday, US Court of Appeals judge for the DC Circuit Brett Kavanaugh will head to Capitol Hill for his Senate confirmation hearing to become the next Supreme Court justice. But as Kavanaugh appears poised to sail through the Senate thanks to a narrow Republican majority in the Senate, a new report from the nonprofit organization Public Citizen has uncovered a striking pattern of deference to corporate power in his 12 years as an appellate judge. In this episode of “TrumpWatch with Jesse Lent” on WBAI, Mother Jones staff writer Stephanie Mencimer discusses her August 29 article “Study says Brett Kavanaugh Inevitably Rules for Whoever Is More Powerful” and examines the ways that the Supreme Court could shift under his presence on the high court.

(8/22/18) “I have watched with dismay and increasing horror as my nephew [President Trump’s senior advisor for policy Stephen Miller], an educated man who is well aware of his heritage, has become the architect of immigration policies that repudiate the very foundation of our family’s life in this country,” writes Dr. David S. Glosser in his August 13 op-ed for the online publication POLITICO entitled "Stephen Miller Is an Immigration Hypocrite. I Know Because I’m His Uncle." A retired neuropsychologist and former member of the Neurology faculty of Boston University School of Medicine and Jefferson Medical College, Dr. Glosser felt he could remain silent no longer on Trump administration policies that Miller helped to formulate, which he felt would have kept Miller’s own relatives out of the country. In this episode of “TrumpWatch with Jesse Lent,” Dr. Glosser talks about what drove him to write a scathing indictment of his own nephew and shares the immigrant tale of Stephen Miller’s family.

(8/15/18) “The newly engaged struggle for stronger labor laws and a stronger labor movement is a struggle for the future of our country, one all liberals and progressives should make a priority in future elections, legislative lobbying, and protest demands,” writes Professor of Politics at Occidental College Peter Dreier in his Aug. 13 article for the nonprofit online publication Rewire.News entitled “Want White Working Class Voters to Support Democrats? Strengthen Unions.” In this episode of TrumpWatch on WBAI, Prof. Dreier explains to host Jesse Lent why he believes that statistical data prove that labor unions hold the key to Democrats succeeding at the ballot box in 2018, 2020 and beyond.

(8/8/18) President Donald Trump famously tweeted back in March that “trade wars are good, and easy to win.” But from alienating America’s closest allies to an increasingly hard-line rhetoric towards China and Iran, is the President making irreversible changes to the global economy? In this week’s “TrumpWatch” on WBAI, host Jesse Lent talks to Soumaya Keynes, US economics editor for The Economist and co-host of the weekly podcast “Trade Talks” about what it means that “the world trading system is under attack,” as the title of her recent article reads, and what the permanent effects will be.

It’s been a bad couple of weeks for endangered species. In less than two weeks, Republicans in Congress have put forth 12 different measures aiming at loosening enforcement of the Endangered Species Act. As reported by Mother Jones assistant editor Jackie Flynn Mogensen, “on Thursday, the House passed an Interior appropriations bill that would cut funding for environmental and science programs by $400 million, prohibit funding to introduce grizzly bears into the North Cascades (one of only five grizzly ‘recovery zones’), and remove the gray wolf from the List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife under federal law.” On this week’s “TrumpWatch” on WBAI, Jackie tells host Jesse Lent about the multitude of ways that GOP lawmakers are attempting to loosen protection of animals facing extinction as reported in her July 23 Mother Jones article “Republicans Have Been Putting a Ton of Work Into Screwing Over Endangered Species.”

While most of the coverage of the President’s joint press conference with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland on Monday focused on what was widely perceived as Trump’s deference towards the Russian President, the former KGB officer was hardly a shrinking violet. In this week’s “TrumpWatch” on WBAI, host Jesse Lent takes a deep dive on Putin’s comments in Helsinki with Joshua Keating, a staff writer for Slate and the author of the July 16 article “What Putin Was Really Saying in Helsinki: Trump was there to make friends. Putin had a different agenda.” He also wrote the new book “Invisible Countries: Journeys to the Edge of Nationhood.”

President Ronald Reagan appointed two men for the Supreme Court in 1987. The first, Robert Bork, was rejected by the Senate by a 42 to 58 margin for his conservative views on personal privacy and the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that protects access to legal abortion. Reagan’s second nominee, Robert Kennedy, confirmed by a 98-0 majority, set off a firestorm in Washington, DC last month when he announced he was retiring from his post as the Supreme Court Justice long considered the “swing vote” by observers on both sides. With President Donald Trump announcing former Kennedy clerk Brett Kavanaugh as his nominee on Monday, the highest court in the land appears poised to make a major swing towards conservatism. But according to reporter Mark Walsh of the Peabody Award-winning SCOTUSblog, that all depends on whether Kavanaugh receives at least some of the bipartisan support that led to Kennedy’s 1987 Senate confirmation, or if his long record of opinions as a federal appeals court judge will doom him to the kin

It was 1965 when Hunter S. Thompson published his breakthrough article “The Motorcycle Gangs: Losers and Outsiders" for the magazine The Nation. But did the work, which Thompson expanded into a book the following year entitled “Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs,” uncover more than just the inner workings of this mysterious, potentially dangerous outfit? Susan McWilliams, professor of politics at Pomona College in Claremont, California, published her own Nation article, entitled “This Political Theorist Predicted the Rise of Trumpism. His Name Was Hunter S. Thompson.” just five weeks into the Trump presidency. The granddaughter of Carey McWilliams, editor of The Nation magazine from 1955 to 1975, Prof. McWilliams believes that in his reporting on the Angels Thompson discovered the political origins of Donald Trump’s rise to power. In this episode of “TrumpWatch” on WBAI, Prof. McWilliams explains to host Jesse Lent why the “gonzo” journalist’s work on the motorcycle cl

It’s been nearly two months since former CIA director and Kansas congressman Mike Pompeo was sworn in as the 70th secretary of state. And though the general sentiment at the State Department is that he is considered an improvement from his predecessor Rex Tillerson by most career diplomats within the government agency, according to a June 25 report by Nahal Toosi, foreign affairs correspondent for POLITICO, Pompeo’s role representing the US internationally may not be as much of an improvement as initially thought. In the article, entitled “Pompeo gives U.S. diplomats 'dose of reality' after early high hopes: State Department employees hoped the new secretary of state would be a clear improvement over Rex Tillerson, but now see some unsettling early signs,” Nahal explains why many career diplomats have been troubled by the former U.S. Army officer’s actions in his short time helming the State Department. In this week’s “TrumpWatch” on WBAI, Nahal explains to host Jesse Lent exactly what those actions were and

Last month, when federal officials revealed that they had lost track of nearly 1,500 unaccompanied minors who had arrived on the southern border alone without their parents, the admission caused a national outcry. On Monday, when ProPublica reporter Ginger Thompson released audio she obtained of 10 Central American children, separated from their parents by immigration authorities at the border, that outcry turned into an uproar. Yet, according to an exclusive report from Anita Kumar, White House correspondent for the news agency McClatchyDC and her colleague Franco Ordonez, the actual number of children that the US Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) has actually lost is much greater. In this week’s episode of “TrumpWatch” on WBAI New York, host Jesse Lent talks to Anita about the disturbing findings in her article “US officials likely lost track of nearly 6,000 unaccompanied migrant kids” and the wider government response to the crisis at the border.

Though it only includes 393 words, the signed agreement that resulted from President Donald Trump’s June 12 meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore was hailed as a big win by both sides. The President tweeted the day after the summit that there was “no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea” and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the administration expected “major disarmament” by Kim’s military before the end of Trump’s first term, as reported in the Washington Post. North Korean state media also hailed the meeting as a major victory, describing a “step-by-step and simultaneous” process aimed at achieving peace and “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” But with both sides making bold proclamations that weren’t included in the language of the agreement, where do the U.S. and North Korea actually stand in the effort to denuclearize and demilitarize the Korean Penninsula? In this week’s TrumpWatch from WBAI New York, host Jesse Lent tackles these questions with Jenny Town, a research a

Back in 2016, after Flint, Michigan was declared to be in a federal state of emergency due to the city’s lack of safe drinking water, it became a major talking point on the presidential campaign, with candidates from both parties visiting the city in what became widely publicized trips. Yet, 500 days into the Trump presidency, many Flint residents still don’t have safe drinking water due to continuing problems with the infrastructure. According to a study released last month by the non-profit organization Environmental Working Group, they’re not alone. 110 million Americans could currently have contaminated water coming out of their faucets. But will this potential environmental calamity be on the minds of voters as they enter the ballot box for the 2018 midterm elections? In this week’s “TrumpWatch” on WBAI, host Jesse Lent talks to Intercept reporter Sharon Lerner whose June 4 article “Toxic Drinking Water Becomes Top Campaign Issue for Midterm Candidates Across the U.S.” examines the influence unsafe drink

On May 29, the New England Journal of Medicine published a Harvard University study that estimated the number of deaths in Puerto Rico caused by Hurricane Maria as surpassing 4,600, more than 70 times the official estimate provided by the Puerto Rican government. In this week’s “TrumpWatch” on WBAI, host Jesse Lent examines what these new fatality estimates mean for the ongoing Puerto Rican relief effort with Arelis Hernandez, a politics and government reporter for the Washington Post who headed to the island in late September, the week that Maria made landfall there, to report on the aftermath. She co-wrote the May 29 article “Harvard study estimates thousands died in Puerto Rico because of Hurricane Maria” with her Post colleague Laurie McGinley.

It's been one year since Special Counsel Robert Mueller began his investigation into collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives in the 2016 election and (at least as far as public perception goes) the picture is foggier than ever. According to an online survey of registered voters released Wednesday by the polling group Navigator, 59 percent of Americans don’t believe Mueller has uncovered any criminal activity, despite five guilty pleas and 17 criminal indictments already handed down by the special counsel and his team. With the constant barrage of breaking news on the Russia investigation leaving even professional political pundits flummoxed, it’s not hard to see why Mueller’s efforts are being misunderstood if not outright ignored by anyone who isn’t a political junkie. But with the Russia probe casting an elongating shadow over the Trump presidency and throughout Washington, now more than ever, making sense of it all matters. In this week’s “TrumpWatch” on WBAI, host Jesse Lent takes a lo

On his new album “Anger Management,” Colorado-based singer-songwriter Gerry Spehar takes aim at President Donald Trump with a directness not often heard in country music. Formerly one half of the Spehar Brothers, Gerry performed heavily throughout the Midwest in the 1970s, sharing bills with giants of the genre like Boz Scaggs, Merle Haggard and Townes Van Zandt. But nothing in his musical past is as overtly political as “Anger Management.” His second solo album is both a dedication to that great folk hero of protest music Woody Guthrie and a refutation of Trump’s presidency. In a special one-hour episode of “TrumpWatch” on WBAI, host Jesse Lent talks to Gerry about the feelings of dissent that inspired “Anger Management,” along with what it means to be a protest singer in the Woody Guthrie tradition now that the son of the folk hero's landlord, “Old Man Trump,” is the president of the United States.