The Inside Story of How Trump Bungled the Pandemic and How it Began

We begin with Friday’s virtual meeting of the Quad in which the leaders of the U.S., India, Japan and Australia discussed getting a billion vaccinations to South East Asia but this potential new alliance is clearly in response to a more aggressive China with its “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy, border clashes with India, the squelching of democracy in Hong Kong and threats against Taiwan. Josh Rogin, a Washington Post foreign policy columnist and CNN political analyst joins us to discuss his new book, Chaos Under Heaven: Trump, Xi, and the Battle for the Twenty-First Century. We look into the inside story of how the pandemic began and why Trump bungled it in part because this naive amateur who thought he had a personal relationship with the head of China’s Communist Party, listened to Xi instead of his own National Security Council. We also examine the alarming findings in Josh Rogin’s article at Politico Magazine, “In 2018. Diplomats Warned of Risky Coronavirus Experiments in a Wuhan lab. No One Listened.” 

 

Conflicting Messages on Whether We Are Turning the Corner or the Mutations are Getting Worse

Then we get an update on the pandemic here at home with conflicting messages that we are turning the corner as more vaccines get into arms at the same time Republican governors are opening up states prematurely to pander to the Trump base of the GOP. We are also hearing warnings from epidemiologists that new more virulent strains like one from Brazil could cause reinfection. Shannon Bennett, the Chair of Science and Dean of Science and Research Collections at the California Academy of Sciences, a virologist who studies infectious diseases that can be transmitted from animals to humans, virus evolution, identification, and transmission, joins us.     

 

The Need to go to the Source of the Problem of Unaccompanied Minors From Honduras

Then finally with unaccompanied minors flooding into the U.S. mostly from Honduras we look into how House Republican Leader McCarthy will be leading a delegation of Republican congressmen to the Southern border on Monday to grandstand against what the GOP expects to be an issue to attack Biden on. Silvio Carrillo, a freelance film and news producer and the nephew of Berta Caceras, the environment and indigenous rights activist who was murdered by the Honduran government, joins us to discuss how Biden needs to go to the source of the problem which is the corrupt and murderous Honduran government led by a family fronting for drug traffickers who have made Honduras unlivable for ordinary folk trying to protect their children.