August 9 – A Profile of the Latest Presidential Candidate; Hyping the Islamic State’s Claim They Were Behind the Quetta Atrocity; Russia and Turkey Make Up

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with a profile of the latest candidate running for president of the United States Evan McMullin and speak with Priscilla Alvarez, assistant editor at The Atlantic where she has an article “Never Trump’s Last-Ditch Effort” and discuss who is behind this apparently quixotic run by a 40 year old Mormon bachelor who used to be with the CIA before becoming the chief policy director for the House Republican Conference. With 50 former senior Republican national security officials in an open letter warning Trump “would be the most reckless President in American history” and Republican Senator Susan Collins saying “Donald Trump does not reflect historical Republican values” and a former presidential speechwriter for George W. Bush urging Trump’s running mate Mike Pence to ease Trump off the ticket, we will look into the piling on against Trump happening in Republican circles. Meanwhile Trump himself suggested today that gun rights activists he calls the second amendment people, might be able to stop Hillary Clinton, hinting that he means presumably with a bullet.

Part 2

Then we examine the nationwide strike in Pakistan by lawyers after a heinous suicide bombing at a hospital in Quetta where 74 were killed as they gathered to mourn the assassination of the head of the Baluchistan Bar Association. Christine Fair, a former United Nations political officer in Afghanistan who is a professor at Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program and the author of “Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army’s Way of War”, joins us to discuss the hyping of the Islamic State’s involvement in this attack in Pakistan and an earlier one in Bangladesh by so-called terrorism experts.

Part 3

Then finally we look into today’s meeting in St. Petersburg between Russian President Putin and Turkey’s increasingly autocratic leader Erdogan and speak with Dimitar Bechev, a visiting scholar at Harvard University’s Center on European Studies who is an expert on the politics and history of Turkey and Russian foreign policy. He joins us to discuss his article at Al Jazeera “What’s Behind the Turkey – Russia Reset?” and the irony that as U.S.–Turkish relations continue to deteriorate, ties between Russia and a NATO ally are likely to grow stronger.