While most of the coverage of the President’s joint press conference with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland on Monday focused on what was widely seen as Trump’s deference towards the Russian president, the former KGB officer was hardly a shrinking violet when his time came to take the microphone. On this week’s TrumpWatch, Joshua Keating, a reporter for Slate and author of the book “Invisible Countries: Journeys to the Edge of Nationhood,” takes a deep dive on what Putin could be trying to say with his comments in Helsinki.

President Ronald Reagan appointed two men for the Supreme Court in 1987. The first, Robert Bork, was rejected by the Senate by a 42 to 58 margin  for his conservative views on personal privacy and the court's landmark Roe v.  Wade decision that protects access to legal abortion. Reagan’s second nominee, Robert Kennedy, was confirmed by a 98-0 majority. After a 30-year tenure on the bench, Justice Kennedy set off a firestorm in Washington, DC last month when he announced he was retiring from his post where he was the Supreme Court justice long considered the “swing vote” by observers on both sides. With President Donald Trump announcing former Kennedy clerk Brett Kavanaugh as his judicial nominee on Monday, the highest court in the land appears poised to make a major swing to the right, that is, if he can get confirmed. On this week’s TrumpWatch, Mark Walsh of SCOTUSblog considers which type of candidate Kavanaugh is.

Susan McWilliams is a professor of politics at Pomona College and the granddaughter of Carey  McWilliams, editor of The Nation magazine from 1955 to 1975. It was during that time that Hunter S. Thomson published his legendary article "Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs" for the publication. In a recent op-ed for The Nation entitled “This Political Theorist Predicted the Rise of Trumpism. His Name Was Hunter S. Thompson,” she writes that "this year, when people asked me what I thought of the election, I kept telling them to read 'Hell’s Angels.'" On this week's TrumpWatch, Professor McWilliams expands on why the “gonzo” journalist’s work on the motorcycle club continues to be such an effective window into the psyche of the President’s core base of supporters.

It’s been nearly two months since former CIA director and Kansas congressman Mike Pompeo was sworn in as the 70th secretary of state. Though the general sentiment at the State Department may be that he is an improvement from his inexperienced predecessor Rex Tillerson, according to a June 25 report by Nahal Toosi, foreign affairs correspondent for POLITICO,  Pompeo’s role representing the US internationally may not be as much of a step up as initially thought. On this week's TrumpWatch, Nahal explains why many career diplomats have been troubled by the former U.S. Army officer’s actions in his short time helming the State Department. 

Last month, when federal officials revealed that they had lost track of nearly 1,500 unaccompanied minors who had arrived on the southern border  alone without their parents, the admission caused a national outcry. On Monday, when ProPublica reporter Ginger Thompson released audio she  obtained of 10 Central American children separated from their parents by immigration authorities at the border, that outcry turned into an uproar. Yet, according to an exclusive report from Anita Kumar, White House correspondent for the news agency McClatchyDC, the actual number of children that the US Office of Refugee Resettlement has lost is actually much greater. On this week’s TrumpWatch, Anita expands on the disturbing findings in her article “US officials likely lost track of nearly 6,000 unaccompanied migrant kids.”

Though it only includes 393 words, the signed agreement that resulted from President Donald Trump’s June 12 meeting with North Korean leader  Kim Jong Un in Singapore was hailed as a big win by both sides. The President tweeted the day after the summit that there was “no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea” and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the administration expected “major disarmament” by Kim’s military before the end of Trump’s first term, as reported in the Washington Post. North Korean state media also hailed the meeting as a major victory, describing a “step-by-step and simultaneous” process aimed at achieving peace and “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” But where do the U.S. and North Korea actually stand in the effort to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula? On this week’s TrumpWatch, Jesse talks to Jenny Town, a research analyst at the Stimson Center and managing editor of 38 North.

Back in 2016, after the lack of safe drinking water in Flint, Michigan was declared a federal state of emergency it became a major talking point on the presidential campaign with candidates from both parties visiting the city for highly publicized photo ops. Yet, 500 days into the Trump presidency many Flint residents still don’t have safe drinking water. According to a study released last month by the non-profit organization Environmental Working Group, they’re not alone. 110 million Americans could currently have contaminated water coming out of their faucets. But will this be on the minds of voters as they enter the ballot box for the 2018 midterm elections? On this week’s TrumpWatch, Jesse talks to Intercept reporter Sharon Lerner whose article “Toxic Drinking Water Becomes Top Campaign Issue for Midterm Candidates Across the U.S.” examines the role unsafe H2O could play in the midterms by focusing on three congressional races where it looks poised to play a major role.

On May 29, the New England Journal of Medicine published a Harvard University study that estimates the number of deaths in Puerto Rico caused by Hurricane Maria as over 4,600, more than 70 times the official estimate provided by the Puerto Rican government. On this week’s TrumpWatch, Jesse speaks to Arelis Hernandez, a politics and government reporter for the Washington Post who was in Puerto Rico the week Maria struck the island.

It's been a year since Special Counsel Robert Mueller began his investigation into collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives in the 2016 election and (at least as far as public perception goes) the picture is foggier than ever. According to an online survey of registered voters released Wednesday by the polling  group Navigator, 59 percent of Americans don’t believe Mueller has uncovered any criminal activity despite five guilty pleas and 17 criminal indictments already handed down by the special counsel and his team. With the constant barrage of breaking news on the Russia investigation leaving even professional political pundits flummoxed, it’s not hard to see why Mueller’s efforts are being misunderstood if  not outright ignored by anyone who isn’t a political junkie. In this week’s TrumpWatch, Jesse takes a look at what we know one year in with David Corn, Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones and the co-author of the book “Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump.”

On his new album “Anger Management,” Colorado-based singer-songwriter Gerry Spehar takes aim at President Trump with a directness not often heard in country music. Formerly one half of the Spehar Brothers, Gerry performed heavily throughout the Midwest in the 1970s, sharing bills with giants of the genre like Boz Scaggs, Merle Haggard and Townes Van Zandt. But nothing in his musical past is as overtly political as “Anger Management.” His second solo album is both a dedication to that great folk hero of protest music Woody Guthrie and a refutation of the DOnald Trump presidency. In a special one-hour episode of TrumpWatch, Gerry talks about the feelings of dissent that inspired “Anger Management,” along with what it means to be a protest singer in the Woody Guthrie tradition now that the son of the folk hero's landlord (as immortalized in the Woody Guthrie song “Old Man Trump”) is the president of the United States.