The Dworkin Report

Scott talks with Kristin Urquiza who told the Democratic National Convention her moving story of losing her father to Trumpism when he died of COVID-19. Kristen calls her father's support for Donald Trump and his trust of Arizona's Republican Governor Doug Ducey "a death sentence for him."  She's starting a new organization called Marked By COVID whose goal is to elevate the stories of people who've lost the ones they love to the American epidemic within the coronavirus pandemic. 

Meet the Candidates 2020: Kamala Harris is available from Amazon and with free shipping from Barnes & Noble.

Scott speaks with Rick Wilson, the GOP strategist, and The Daily Beast Editor at Large whose new group The Lincoln Project has provoked an outsized reaction by Donald Trump. Not only did we delve into the inners of Lincoln Project strategy, Wilson even explained what really makes him a Florida man and how that colors his distinctive viewpoint about politics.

This interview was conducted during the height of the Justice for George Floyd protests, and it really reveals Rick's inner thoughts about the most important issues of our day from racial justice to authoritarianism in America and even how to truthfully and politely avoid questions about Lincoln Project provocateur George Conway's wife. You'll laugh, you'll cry, but you'll DEFINITELY vote against Donald Trump after listening to this interview with Rick Wilson.

Rick's latest book is Running Against the Devil: A Plot to Save America from Trump--and Democrats from Themselves.

Meet the Candidates 2020: Kamala Harris is available from Amazon and with free shipping from Barnes & Noble.

Scott talks with Jean Guererro, who is an investigative journalist for NPR, the PBS Newshour, and the author of Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda. Jean’s new book explains all., and she took the approach of developing a deep biography of the advisor to understand his motivations which have become ever more influential over time within the White House. Guerrero writes that it was Stephen Miller's connections to federal law enforcement unions in 2016 that helped him sway national immigration policy from its prior status of having chronic problems both parties wanted to fix into a dystopian nightmare used as a racist cudgel by a sitting occupant of the Oval Office.

You can buy a copy of Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda here.

Our book Meet the Candidates 2020: Joe Biden is available at all major bookstores and online.

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Scott speaks with President Barack Obama's former speechwriter David Litt. He's the author of a new book that just hit bookshelves today entitled “Democracy in One Book or Less: How It Works, Why It Doesn't, and Why Fixing It Is Easier Than You Think.”  After starting work at the White House while 24-years-old, they gave David the privilege of authoring four of President Obama’s White House Correspondents dinner speeches, including the famous "drop the mic" speech that launched a thousand memes. After leaving public service, Litt went to Funny or Die! who made him their D.C. office’s head producer while he published his first book, “Thanks Obama: My Hopey Changey White House Years.”

Our wide-ranging interview includes inside details of David's new book and behind the scenes stories about his time with President Obama. It's a poignant picture of what an American president needs to do and what's missing from the White House today, in addition to a manual for how we can fix our democracy. 

Buy our book about the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden here.

Read the entire transcript here.

Scott speaks with Pennsylvania State Representative Brian Sims who released an emotional video calling out repugnant Republican state legislators who exposed elected officials on both sides of the aisle to the deadly coronavirus and shockingly hid their COVID infections from the Democratic caucus, of which Sims is a member. Rep. Sims’ clarion call isn’t about politics or partisanship, it’s about life. He literally caught Pennsylvania’s House Republicans lying to their colleagues about being infected with coronavirus while doing their own contact tracing in their own caucus and then casting a vote to re-open Pennsylvania right now. Rep. Sims gave us an update on the status of those efforts and their absurdity.

As a party, the actions Democrats have taken during the COVID19 epidemic in America show that they’ve claimed the true mantle of this country’s “pro-life party” Pennsylvania state Rep. Brian Sims personifies the efforts of elected Democrats at all levels to protect the lives of all of their fellow Americans and his patriotism practically bleeds through the speakers of this evocative interview.

You can buy our Meet the Candidates 2020 book series featuring Joe Biden or at Barnes & Noble.

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Scott speaks with March For Our Lives spokesperson Eve Levenson about how we can all achieve a future with a safer America, with smarter gun laws. She's a George Washington College student who represents the national group in the halls of Congress when she's not pursuing a unique professional career and helping lead the organization that mounted America's largest-ever youth protest in 2017. Eve started with a stark admonition of the horrid behavior of the NRA and the gun sales lobby during the coronavirus crisis but left our listeners with a reason to keep being hopeful while our country fights a life or death struggle against a pandemic.

"I think that one is that we really need to hold accountable the gun industry, which is taking advantage of this moment of crisis when people are getting killed to profit off of it," says Levenson. "You see, the NRA and other people affiliated with the gun industry are literally putting ads out there saying that 'you need a gun to keep yourself safe from the Coronavirus.' I think that the reality is that we know that the gun industry always profits off of moments like this. So we need to be holding them accountable. The other important thing is to acknowledge the fears that are leading individuals to want to go and get these guns."

You can buy our Meet the Candidates 2020 book about Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden here or at Barnes & Noble.

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Scott speaks with Professor Tim Bakken, a lawyer and Pentagon whistleblower who fought the system and won. His new book “The Cost of Loyalty: Dishonesty, Hubris, and Failure in the U.S. Military” recounts his personal experience exposing wrongdoing at the West Point Military Academy.

Professor Bakken also explained to us how retaliation against whistleblowers harms us all, and why the age of retaliation is hurting our democracy in an era where the truth is under constant attack. Going beyond that, Tim makes a fascinating point about how secrecy fuels a lack of government accountability that ultimately affects our country’s biggest political decisions and connects the current hospital shortages to that secrecy.

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On today’s 420 day podcast, we’ve got Alex Halperin, a special guest from the left coast who is both the news publisher behind WeedWeek and the author of a new book “The Cannabis Dictionary.” 

You can find Alex’s prior journalism in Slate, the Washington Post, and New Yorker, more recently he’s been writing full time about weed and brings an interesting perspective to the many questions about marijuana during the coronavirus crisis, and it's future. 

Many states are declaring marijuana businesses to be essential during the coronavirus pandemic which is a milestone moment for the nascent industry. 

We also discussed racial equality in the marijuana industry, political currents surrounding legalization and a whole lot more.

Partial Transcript

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Scott presents an interview with Producer Grant Stern and Princeton Professors Kevin M. Kruse and Julian Zelizer, who are co-authors of the new book “Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974," and explain how Trump's rise fits into decades of Republican party politics.

Stern caught up with them at the Miami Book Fair this past December to talk about their book, and the sad state of American politics today and how we got here. Kruse and Zelizer are both political historians who used to teach a course based on this material at Princeton University where they both still teach today. This podcast traces the history of American politics, starting in 1974 and focusing on the rise of the far-right in the Republican party beginning with Ronald Reagan’s insurgency through today, they deliver the unique insights you'll usually find on MSNBC or CNN.

You can buy our Meet the Candidates 2020 book about Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden here or at Barnes & Noble.

Disclosures: This post uses paid affiliate links.