We've Got Issues

This week Liz Preza and Joshua Holland talk about Trump's war on Inspectors General, a QAnon wackjob running for the United States Senate and red states cooking the books on their Coronavirus numbers even as they reopen over the warnings of public health experts. 

 

Then, as the official unemployment rate nears 20 percent, we're joined by Nicholas Rush Smith, a political scientist at the City University of New York, to talk about the looming unemployment crisis. Smith has studied the impact of high levels of long-term unemployment in South Africa, and he sees some warning signs that the rest of the world must heed.

This week, Joshua Holland talks to Heather "Digby" Parton about #Obamaghazi, the FBI investigating Sen. Richard Burr for insider trading (but not Georgia Sen. Kelly Loeffler), the phony debate over reopening the economy before we have the capacity to do so safely and other issues that came up during a very crazy week in Trump's America.

This week, Liz Preza and Joshua Holland talk about Republicans showing Democrats how to really rig a primary and look at the fabulous grifting opportunities that come to those who defy lockdown orders. 

 

Then we're joined by Richard Kreitner, author of  the upcoming book, BREAK IT UP: Secession, Division, and the Secret History of America’s Imperfect Union. Kreitner looked at the history of secessionist (and devolutionist) movements, which may be the only kind of revolution available to us. A timely book given that one of our two major parties has embraced the idea of sacrificing lives to stimulate the economy.

This week, Liz Preza and Joshua Holland talk about Trump's latest, more subtle effort to promote wacky conspiracy theories about China and COVID-19, and note that red state governors are rushing to re-open businesses and schools even as new models project that doing so without adequate testing and contact-tracing will result in thousands of deaths. 

 

Then we're joined by Crooks and Liars Publisher John Amato, who has been covering Fox News' coverage of the pandemic. We also talk to John about MLB's plans to play some sort of baseball season in the midst of all of this madness.

This week, Liz Preza and Joshua Holland Talk about the right's new line of attack against Joe Biden -- and why it has a pretty good chance of back-firing. 

 

Then we're joined by Elie Mystal, legal correspondent for The Nation, to discuss Trump's "immigration ban," and why it (thankfully) isn't exactly what he promised the members of his cult. We also talk about these Astroturf protests against Democratic governors and the conundrum of covering a fake debate without lending it more weight.

This week, Liz Preza and Joshua Holland talk about how the Trump regime botched the rollout of their expert-free expert commission on re-opening the economy, Senators engaging in insider-trading and Captain Crozier's potential reinstatement on the USS Theodore Roosevelt. 

 

Then we're joined by journalist Lindsay Beyerstein to talk about her piece in The New Republic, "The Staggeringly Complicated Ethics of Ventilating Coronavirus Patients."

This week, Joshua Holland and Liz Preza go through the Kübler-Ross cycle of grief over the Democratic primaries now that Bernie Sanders has suspended his campaign and Joe Biden is the presumptive nominee. 

 

Then we're joined by veteran journalist and DC Report Editor-in-Chief David Cay Johnston to talk about Trump's disastrous mismanagement of our government's pandemic response and why he doesn't have the power to re-open the economy even if he tried.

This week, Liz Preza and Joshua Holland were intent to figure out something other than the COVID-19 outbreak to talk about but they failed as badly as the Trump regime has in managing this crisis.

 

And speaking of Trump's epic failures, we're then joined by journalist Matt Robison to discuss the Democrats' weak, scattershot attacks on Trump for the role he's played in creating this public health disaster. Robison wrote a piece on this titled, "Why Democratic messaging on Trump’s disastrous pandemic failures has been uncoordinated, passive and ineffective," for AlterNet this week.

This week, Joshua Holland and Liz Preza marvel at how quickly the conservative movement fell in line with killing off a few million people to bolster Wall Street's earnings. 

 

Then we're joined by Politico Senior Writer Mike Grunwald, author of The New New Deal: The Hidden Story of Change in The Obama Era, to talk about the $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief package that Congress passed this week, and contrast it with past emergency spending measures.

This week, Joshua Holland and Liz Preza talk about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Democratic primaries, and marvel at the levels of Trump sycophancy on display within the conservative media.

 

Then we're joined by Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent to discuss Trump's bumbling response to one-in-a-lifetime public health crisis, and how we might navigate voting safely if the infection rate remains high.