The Bottom Line

Nicholas Burns spent 27 years in United States diplomacy, and now advises the campaign of presidential hopeful Joe Biden on international politics. He tells host Steve Clemons that Americans face “two very divergent paths” on Election Day.

Will Americans choose the incumbent, who routinely insults allies, shuns alliances and prefers short-term deals and partnerships with autocrats and populists? Or will they choose his opponent, who still believes in NATO, the United Nations and other US-led global institutions set up to protect the security and dominance of the West?

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In the early months of the pandemic, meatpacking plants emerged as deadly hot spots for COVID-19.

In the poultry industry, workers describe conditions that make physical distancing impossible inside plants - above all, the fast line speeds.

Chicken companies have reduced calls to slow the line speeds and space workers further apart. Federal regulators responsible for safety at the plants have issued optional guidance during the pandemic, not enforceable rules.

Fault Lines follows meatpacking workers and families who lost loved ones to the virus and asks what sacrifices have been made to keep poultry plants open.

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This week we talk to Rick Gates, who – as deputy to Paul Manafort, the head of President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential bid – had a front seat to the historic events of that campaign.

Gates and Manafort went on to be indicted in the Mueller investigation, and he has just published his memoir - Wicked Game: An Insider’s Story on How Trump Won, Mueller Failed, and America Lost.

With less than 20 days to the election, Gates tells host Steve Clemons that Trump still has the admiration of millions of Americans, who love his impulsiveness and distaste for protocol and bureaucracy.

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In 2019, a cache of Kim Darroch’s private cables to London was published in the UK media. The ambassador had described the Trump administration as “dysfunctional”. Trump launched a Twitter war attacking the ambassador as “wacky”, and four days later, Darroch resigned.

The former ambassador talks to host Steve Clemons about the “chilling effect” his experience has had on British diplomats and bureaucrats, who fear retribution if they write their candid assessments to their governments.

And he talks about how he encountered two Americas in the years that he worked in the United States: “Real America” and the “Washington bubble”.

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For 14 months, retired US Army Lieutenant General McMaster held one of the most important positions in America’s national security apparatus. Now he has published a book: Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World, about the threats facing American prosperity and power in the world.

McMaster says that extreme polarisation at home, paired with China’s efforts to spread its influence worldwide and Russia’s influence campaigns to sow doubt in America’s democratic institutions are chipping away at the world’s only superpower.

Watch the full interview with host Steve Clemons.

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UN Under-Secretary-General Mark Lowcock talks to host Steve Clemons about the challenges facing the United Nations in a disunited world.

When the UN was created by the "great powers" 75 years ago, it was meant to prevent another world war, and it has largely succeeded in that mission.

But in preventing regional wars and flareups, and securing humanitarian relief for the developing world, the UN faces an uphill battle - especially when governments are less inclined to compromise in international affairs.

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Do police reforms work?

Under the banner of Black Lives Matter, 2020 has seen what is likely the largest wave of protests in United States history: all centred on the crisis of police killing Black people.

For years, officials have introduced police reforms. But reforms have failed to stop police from killing Black people in astonishingly high numbers, people like George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Marqueese Alston - shot in Washington, DC in 2018.

The failure of reforms has driven protesters to a more radical demand: defund the police.

Fault Lines follows the US's moment of reckoning with racism and the police.

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Jeff Sharlet, executive producer of the Netflix docudrama, The Family, talks to Steve Clemons about the "born again" movement - the biggest voting bloc in the United States.

About one in three Americans consider themselves to be evangelicals, and despite the differences between them, they agree that the US should be a Christian nation.

President Donald Trump considers evangelicals to be the majority of his "base", and has focused his energy on the culture war, appointing conservative judges and supporting the Israeli government. Last month he said he moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem "for the Evangelicals".

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In the United States, there are more guns than people. Gun deaths are a daily occurrence, and the country is a world leader in public mass shootings.

Most attempts to curb gun ownership, control the types of weapons that can be sold, and reduce the number of guns in the streets fail, due to the strength of the weapons industry and its lobby in Washington, DC.

Join Steve Clemons as he speaks with Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who just published a book on the ideological, racial, sociological and financial reasons behind Americans' obsessions with guns.

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Faced with a choice between Democratic candidate Joe Biden and Republican incumbent Donald Trump, Harvard University Professor Cornel West is not optimistic about real change coming to the United States.

For decades, West has been a forceful voice arguing that neither party cares for the poor and voiceless except when it is time to vote every four years.

Meanwhile, the demands of maintaining the American empire grow, and military budgets continue to rise at the expense of education and healthcare, hurting not only working Americans, but people around the world.

Dive into Cornel West's expansive world view with host Steve Clemons.

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