Podcasting with John Metaxas

My talk with U.S. Ambassador to Greece, Geoffrey Pyatt, June 18, 2020, regarding Greece's successful response to the COVID pandemic.

Ambassador says response was guided by scientific advice. Such U.S. companies as Microsoft, Google and Cisco aided with technology. Silver lining of effort was the progress Greece made in digital governance.

The interview is an excerpt from the NHSTalks presentation by the National Hellenic Society: CONTROLLING COVID-19 & TOBACCO CHALLENGES IN GREECE. The program also included Dr. Vasileios Kikilias, Minister, Greek Health Ministry, and noted Pulmonologist Dr. Panagiotis Behrakis.

As the Michael Flynn legal drama comes to its denouement, the media narrative has focused on his guilty plea to lying about conversations with the Russian ambassador and the Justice Department’s late decision to seek to drop charges against Flynn. But Flynn’s other foreign entanglement, with Turkey, may be even more significant to U.S. security, foreign policy and democracy. In a wide ranging interview, John Metaxas speaks with Dr. Elizabeth Prodromou of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University about Flynn’s admitted lobbying for Turkey, his advocacy for the extradition of a Turkish cleric living under political asylum in the United States, and Turkey’s role as a destabilizing force within NATO.

Topics covered:

1:05 Why is the Flynn/Turkey connection so important?

2:20 What does this connection tell us about U.S. democracy?

4:36 Who is Fetullah Gulen?

6:56 Tell us about Gulenist schools opened around the world and in the United States.

9:30 What’s happening to many of those Gulenist schools around the world since the falling out between Erdogan and Gulen?

11:44 What are students learning at Gulenist schools in the United States?

13:34 Compare your nuanced description of Gulen with Flynn’s more one-sided portrayal in his op-ed in The Hill.

15:29 Would there be any justification in extraditing Gulen, as Flynn advocated?

17:00 Will we ever know whether Gulen was involved in the coup attempt against the Turkish government, as Erdogan alleges? And will we ever know where Gulen gets his funding?

19:00 Why is Turkey and what’s happening there important to the United States from a geopolitical point of view?

22:45 What is the status of Turkish forces that have encamped on Greek territory along the Evros River?

25:00 What are the implications of Turkish deployment of Russian S-400 missiles for U.S. nuclear weapons located at the Incirlik air base in Turkey?

26:52 President Trump has said he has a conflict of interest because he has a major building in Istanbul. He was willing to appoint Flynn as National Security Advisor despite his ties with the Turkish government. And he effectively gave Erdogan the “green light” to invade northern Syria in a phone conversation. What role does the Trump Administration play in all of this?

30:33 Discuss any apparent “carte blanche” given to Turkey in the light of the beating of U.S. citizens in Washington D.C. by Erdogan’s security detail.

32:24 What do Turkey’s soft power probings into the United States tell us about what’s happening to American democracy?

37:24 What is the status of the re-democratization movement within Turkey?

40:27 Why has Flynn’s Turkey connection not been central to the media narrative in the United States?

Dr. Elizabeth H. Prodromou is a faculty member at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, where she directs the Initiative on Religion, Law, and Diplomacy. She is non-resident Senior Fellow and Co-Chair of the Working Group on Christians and Religious Pluralism in the Middle East, at the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute, and was non-resident Senior Fellow in National Security and the Middle East, at the Center for American Progress. She is a Co-President of Religions for Peace International. Prodromou served as Vice Chair and Commissioner on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (2004-2012) and was a member of the U.S. Secretary of State’s Religion & Foreign Policy Working Group (2011-2015). Her research interests focus on geopolitics and religion, with particular focus on the Middle East and Southeastern Europe.

John Metaxas is an award-winning broadcast journalist for WCBS and Bloomberg Radio and previously anchored and reported for CNN, CNBC and WCBS-TV. John is an attorney and graduate of Columbia Law and Journalism. He is a member of SAG-AFTRA and serves on the union’s national broadcast steering committee. He podcasts on Apple and at JohnMetaxas.com.

Meet the Candidates for NYS Assembly 93rd District: Moderated by John Metaxas -- Wednesday April 29, 2020. Listen here or watch the video at: https://www.wallstreetnorth.com/2020/05/meet-the-candidates-moderated-by-john-metaxas/

My interview with Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal on WCBS, Sunday March 8, 2020.

▪ Harvard Law Prof Waffles on Scope of His Role

▪ Asserts ‘I’m not a full-fledged member’ of impeachment defense team

▪ Claims Sekulow is not conflicted by Parnas Allegations

▪ Dershowitz arguably should be considered an expert witness in this case and Dems should get a rebuttal witness.

▪ Sekulow should be called to testify on Parnas representation.

When is a lawyer an advocate and when is he or she a witness? And if a lawyer is a witness, should he or she be allowed to represent their client in that case?

More specifically, if Senate Leader Mitch McConnell and the Republican majority are not going to allow witnesses at the impeachment trial of President Trump, should two of the President’s lawyers, who arguably fall into the category of witnesses, be allowed to represent him?

Those issues are central to the live on-air interview I conducted with Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz about his role on President Trump’s impeachment defense team in my 2pm hourly newscast on WCBS Newsradio 880 on Saturday.

American Hellenic Institute PODCAST #2: AHI board member James Marketos, Esq., recounts a genocide taunt by Turkish soccer fans this year and speaks on the importance of remembering the Smyrna Catastrophe of 1922 and the need to hold Turkey to account for the destruction of the Christian population of the city. Marketos’s remarks, which served as an introduction to a talk by Georgetown Professor Ismini Lamb in Washington, D.C. on October 4, 2019, are juxtaposed to the audio from a production by republicofplato.org, “The Destruction of Smyrna.”

Lamb delivered her talk on “Correcting Three Misconceptions about the 1922 Catastrophe in Smyrna” to a packed house at AHI’s headquarters in Washington.

November 15, 2019: Columbia Law Prof. John Coffee interviews SEC Commissioner Robert Jackson about the latest issues of corporate law that the Commission is considering. Commissioner Jackson recently dissented in a partisan 3-2 vote regarding proposed proxy solicitation rules that he says will make it easier for CEOs to spend shareholder money. The Commissioner makes a compelling case for the SEC's role in protecting investors. Among the other topics Professor Coffee brings up are new practices in short selling, the failure of the WeWork IPO, and whether the Commission has the right to seek disgorgement for violations of SEC regulations.

This interview was conducted at Columbia Law School for the podcast of the Blue Sky Blog, http://clsbluesky.law.columbia.edu, an offering of the law school's Center on Corporate Governance, which Professor Coffee leads. Ren Holding, the Blog's editor, introduces the podcast.

The podcast was produced by John Metaxas of WallStreetNorth Communications, Inc., https://wallstreetnorth.com. John is an alumnus of Columbia Law.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis tells John Metaxas that Greece’s Brain Drain Can be Reversed. The prime minister answered the question during a public conversation he had at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, moderated by former Ambassador Nicholas Burns, on September 26, 2019.

Economist Dr. Carl Weinberg of High Frequency Economics says “Money has died.” He talks about the effects of negative interest rates in Europe. This is an excerpt from his talk at an economics briefing held by the Summit, N.J. law firm Brown Moskowitz & Kallen for their clients on September 23, 2019.

Retired U.S. Ambassador Dr. Susan Elliott tells us that back channel diplomacy is currently going on in ways unimagined by most citizens, through her organization, the National Committee on American Foreign Policy. She became the organization’s President and CEO in August 2018. Officially known as Track II Diplomacy, these closed­-door and off­-the­-record conferences provide opportunities for senior U.S. and foreign officials, subject experts, and scholars to engage in discussions designed to defuse conflict, build confidence, and resolve problems, including recent talks on North Korea.

Says Ambassador Elliott, “Our organization is playing a critical role at a time when perhaps governments don’t talk to each other, we can help promote dialogue.”

Ambassador Elliott gives us an inside look into the world of U.S. foreign policy and the current hot spots in the world from the perspective of her 27-year career in the foreign service, where she rose to the rank of U.S. Ambassador to Tajikistan from 2012 to 2015. Dr Elliott also served as Civilian Deputy and Foreign Policy Advisor to the Commander of the United States European Command, as well as Director of the Executive Secretariat Staff of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.