August 1 – Fox News Sued Over Conspiracy It Pushed; Will Trump Sabotage Obamacare?; Is Pakistan’s Army Behind the Ousting of the PM Nawaz Sharif?

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with accusations in a lawsuit against Fox News by a former longtime Fox News contributor that implicate Sean Spicer and President Trump in an effort to deflect attention from connections between Russian intelligence and Wikileaks who released stolen date hacked from the DNC that was damaging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Paul Farhi, The Washington Post’s media reporter joins us to discuss his latest article “Sean Spicer claimed to be unaware of Seth Rich story after meeting with donor who pushed it” and how the tragic murder of a DNC IT staffer Seth Rich was used to whip up a conspiracy theory pushed by Fox News and the White House that Seth Rich was the source of the hacked DNC emails, not the Russians and Wikileaks.

Part 2

Then we look into the extent that Donald Trump might go to sabotage the Affordable Care Act in order to prove his constant refrain that it is collapsing, by withholding payments of subsidies to health insurers for low-income customers and by generally creating uncertainty in the insurance market to hasten its collapse. Gerald Kominski, a Professor of Health Policy and Management and Director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, joins us to discuss the fate and future of Obamacare and a new report that monthly Covered California premiums will rise by an average of 12.5% with Anthem Blue Cross announcing it plans to end its ACA coverage in most of California.

Part 3

Then finally we assess the fallout from last week’s ousting of Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif by the Supreme Court on the basis of corruption exposed in the Panama Papers. Shuja Nawaz, the author of “Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army, and the Wars Within” joins us to discuss whether the former cricket star Imran Khan, who has campaigned for Sharif’s removal from office, will benefit from this latest removal of an elected leader that many suspect has been engineered by Pakistan’s powerful army which many believe covertly supports Imran Khan.