The Bottom Line

Hedge fund manager Anthony Scaramucci - aka "The Mooch" - campaigned vigorously for candidate Donald Trump during the last US election, and was hired as White House communications director in 2017.

A few days later, he was fired.

He remained loyal to his ex-boss after his departure, but says that Trump's tweet last year demeaning "The Squad" - a group of four Democratic Congresswomen of colour, including Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - "was a bridge too far for me".

In this no-holds-barred interview with Steve Clemons, Scaramucci says he's now part of the "Republican Resistance" pushing back against what he calls the "Vichy Republicans" backing Trump's re-election.

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Millions of American children returned to school in the past few weeks, and millions more are scheduled to begin in September. Many school districts have given families a choice between face-to-face and virtual education. In many places, new coronavirus cases forced schools to shut down just days after opening.

President Donald Trump has threatened to punish schools that will not open for face-to-face learning, but many teachers have said it is not safe to return yet.

Host Steve Clemons speaks to Randi Weingarten, the president of one of the biggest teachers' unions, the American Federation of Teachers, to get her perspective on the debate.

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For 30 years, well-known pollster and wordsmith Frank Luntz has been helping Republican candidates and campaigns win elections. In this heartfelt interview with Steve Clemons, he talks about how his recent health scare changed his career focus from divisiveness to reconciliation.

After spending decades urging politicians to move away from the term "global warming" and use "climate change" instead, he now says we should all unite to tend to the environment.

Luntz says Trump is alienating Americans with his talk of "law and order" and "dominating the streets" instead of talking about racial reconciliation.

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In the past few weeks, US President Donald Trump has cast multiple clouds over the upcoming US election.

He disparaged mail-in voting, as many Americans look into that option to avoid lines at polling stations in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

He wondered out loud if it would be a good idea to delay the elections. And he said he would take a "wait and see" approach to accepting the results of the vote.

Trump has also repeatedly compared himself with Abraham Lincoln, who in his time was urged by some of his aides to consider delaying the 1864 election. But that vote proceeded as planned, and Lincoln won reelection.

The Bottom Line's Steve Clemons speaks to author and Democratic operative Sidney Blumenthal about Trump's strategy and his claims to Lincolnian greatness.

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Tensions are rising between Washington and Beijing after tit-for-tat consulate closures and a speech on "the China threat" by United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

The US says it wants to disengage with China because it is stealing intellectual property and becoming aggressive with its neighbours in Asia.

In this episode of The Bottom Line, our guest is Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Haass says the recent tensions are a classic display of an entrenched power (the US) trying to hold on to global power in the face of a rising power (China).

Watch the full interview with host Steve Clemons.

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Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Romer says it is crucial for the United States to fix its coronavirus testing system if the country is ever going to get back to normal.

Currently, some states have more than enough COVID-19 test kits, while others are struggling to find enough.

Often, people have to wait more than a week to get their results, which means they have likely already spread the virus.

Romer says the country needs tests that provide accurate results in 48 hours if it wants to stop losing lives and bleeding $300-$400bn per month in economic output.

Watch the full interview with The Bottom Line's Steve Clemons.

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Economist Nouriel Roubini is known as Dr Doom for predicting the global financial crisis of 2008 years before it happened.

Today Roubini sees a confluence of factors that could lead to a decade of instability around the world, as companies are forced to spend less on labour costs, and people get stuck in the "gig economy", without formal employment or benefits.

Roubini said that rising stock market indices are not necessarily a good sign for the economy at large; rather, "What's good for Wall Street is bad for Main Street".

Watch the full interview with The Bottom Line's Steve Clemons.

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Eduardo Padron knows a thing or two about running an institution of higher education.

For more than 20 years, he was the president of Miami Dade College, one of the biggest colleges in the United States, with more than 150,000 students.

In this conversation with Al Jazeera's Steve Clemons, Padron discusses his concerns about US higher education and the disruption caused by COVID-19.

With so many universities going online for the next academic year, will students remain engaged?

Will students and parents be willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars to expensive universities for an online education?

Will students miss out on the "college experience", where they can mix with fellow students from different backgrounds and experiences?

And with the Trump administration's recently announced rules further diminishing the presence of international students, what will the future look like for them on US campuses?

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Ibram X Kendi has been revolutionising African American academic studies for several years, with his deep dives into the history and root causes of racism in the United States.

Kendi argues there is no room for people to deny their racism.

Instead, Americans in the 21st century should look into their hearts and confess their bigotry and prejudice, and then consciously work to be "anti-racist", he says.

Two of his earlier books, How to Be an Antiracist and Stamped from the Beginning, shot back up into the New York Times's best-seller recently, after protests swept across the nation demanding racial equality and justice.

Kendi published a children's book, The Antiracist Baby, on June 16 because, he says: "If we're not deliberately raising them [children] to be anti-racist, then society is raising them to be racist."

On June 4, Kendi was appointed to build a new academic foundation in Boston University, the Center for Anti-racist Research.

Join The Bottom Line's Steve Clemons for a wide-ranging interview with one of the leading scholars on race in the US.

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Activist and scholar Angela Davis knows a thing or two about standing up to the establishment.

In the 1970s, she was a household name around the world, as she became the third woman in US history to make the "Most Wanted" list and was sent to jail for more than a year for her connections with the Black Power movement of the time.

For the past 50 years, she has not changed her tune, arguing that corporate capitalism was designed to serve the rich and powerful, and that the deck will always be stacked against the poor and people of colour.

In a wide-ranging conversation on fairness and justice around the world, she told Al Jazeera's Steve Clemons that the recent demands for change sweeping across the US are different from protest movements she had witnessed before.

"What's so exciting about this moment is that we are recognising that racism is indeed institutional and structural," Davis said.

"It is embedded in the very fabric of this country, and we're trying to figure out ways to begin to initiate the process of eliminating that racism."

She said she was proud to receive the Fred Shuttleworth Human Rights Award from the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute on June 19, after it was rescinded last year due to her activism on behalf of Palestine.

"Initially, I was very shocked and upset that this happened," she said.

"I later recognised that this was a teachable moment, that this was very important because enormous numbers of people began to reflect on the ways in which Palestinians have been marginalised in the struggle."

Watch Angela Davis's full interview with The Bottom Line.

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