Leid Stories

President Donald Trump’s stunning announcement yesterday that transgender people will be banned from all parts of the military set off a torrent of negative reaction across the country.

“After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail,” Trump’s statement said.

Not only is Trump fulfilling the expectations of his religious-right base, but his own hate-filled personal obsession with obliterating Obama-era policies.

A simple question: Does it matter if U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions quits or is fired? What’s your answer?

At a campaign-style rally in Youngstown, Ohio, last night, President Trump boasted a significant Republican victory in repealing and replacing Obamacare in a Senate vote earlier in the day. Although the vote was a direct hit against Obamacare, party leaders said it was meant simply to authorize discussion and debate on certain aspects of the health-care law, which went into effect in 2010. With no Democrats supporting the vote, Republicans split evenly on it. Vice President Mike Pence broke the deadlock with a “yes” vote favoring further debate.

Leid Stories discusses the significance of the Republicans’ dead-even vote.

Charles Ortel, a leading expert on charity fraud who has been reporting on the staggering financial and administrative irregularities of the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Foundation and its relation entities and programs, reports on new signals of legal trouble for the Clinton empire.

The U.S. Senate takes a pivotal vote today. With Sen. John McCain, recently diagnosed with brain cancer, on hand to personally cast his vote, the Senate is expected to decide whether to open formal debate yet again on repealing and replacing Obamacare.

House Republicans have tried more than 50 times to tinker with or torpedo Obamacare since it went into effect in 2009, but with President Donald Trump and predominantly Republican-controlled state legislatures backing the repeal-and replace demand, Republicans in Congress feel compelled to fall in line. Democrats, however, have beaten back every major challenge to Obamacare, which they consider a historic accomplishment of the party.

Even if the Republicans succeed with today’s vote, none of them, including Trump, can say what their replacement for Obamacare is. 

The duopoly is big trouble, but to hear them tell it, both the Republican and Democratic parties are merely adjusting themselves to post-election realities. Move along, nothing to see here.

But this being politics, almost nothing should be accepted as the truth.

As Leid Stories noted in earlier commentaries, both parties in fact are imploding, and it is unlikely that even their revved-up “[re-]messaging” campaigns will bring back the faithful any time soon. The kind of damage they’ve done, and continue to do, has hit hard and deep; worse, the leadership won’t claim responsibility for dragging their parties down.

It’s “Free Your Mind Friday” on Leid Stories, where for years we’ve been repealing and replacing fake news with listeners’ unscripted, well-thought-out opinions and analyses of the issues of the day.

Join us for an exciting, purposeful hour of programming. Call 888-874-4888 and let’s hear what you have to say!

We continue yesterday’s discussion on President Donald Trump’s chaotic administration and disastrous policies. Particularly noteworthy and troubling is Trump’s obsession with utterly destroying or supplanting President Barack Obama’s record and achievements, domestic and foreign, over Obama’s eight-year term.

Then there are other major issues that ensnare him: nepotism; conflicts of interest and secret dealing; open attacks on his own governmental agencies; inability to work with Congress; continuous lying; treating the country and its assets as his own personal possessions. He is the most unpopular of all U.S. presidents rated at the six-month mark.

Trump has quickly worn out his welcome, but it’s hard to tell with his maniacal tweeting about how great he is and how lousy or rotten his “enemies” are. Leid Stories asks: How much longer do we tolerate this misfit president?  

On July 17 and 18, Donald Trump raged behind closed doors. The repeal-and-replace victory he was hoping to declare over Obamacare came to naught, after several Republicans backed away from two separate versions of a bill to win their support. They balked a full repeal-and-replace bill, and then turned against a repeal-only bill that was floated as a compromise.

Trump’s political defeat made, and is making, big news. But it’s the personal angle to the story that intrigues Leid Stories. 

Listeners discuss their views of the Trump administration’s first six months, and in what ways it has shaped, and shaping, America’s and their own political attitudes and choices.

It’s been a long time since the business of the people was at the top of the agenda and legislators, working together, wrestled with delivering the best possible results. Instead, we’ve been mired in never-ending rounds of partisan politics that stall, or cancel all together, opportunities for true progress. Case in point: what’s happening now—the rise of the Uniparty, both parties barely distinguishable from the other in their allegiance to big money and its antidemocratic vision for society.

The system is badly in need of an overhaul, says Leid Stories, and since it’s working just fine for the Uniparty, we’ll have to do it. Any ideas on getting that process started?

On Leid Stories’ “Free Your Mind Friday,” callers take the program wherever they want it to go—whether on the issues of the day, or topics they consider worthy of further discussion or debate.

An opinion and a phone call. That’s all it takes to join the best open forum in Radioland!