January 18 – A Russian View of Our New Authoritarian Leader; Covering Up Kremlin-Trump Collusion; The In-Your-Face Insult of Scott Pruitt at EPA

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Part 1

We begin with a view from Moscow and speak with a Russian journalist who sees a familiar authoritarian leader in Donald Trump and his handling of the American press after covering Vladimir Putin for 12 years. Alexy Kovalev, a Russian journalist who writes about propaganda, fake news and Russian state media on noodleremover.news and has an article at medium.com “A message to my doomed colleagues in the American media”, joins us. We discuss the similarities between these two authoritarian leaders with massive egos and a deep disdain for the press that Putin dominates and controls in his country with ease while Trump, who was elected with the help of $5 billion’s worth of free media while spewing contempt for the very media that could not get enough of him, has already reigned in the White House press corps while his media spokesperson Kelly Ann Conway spins the American press daily with breathless doublespeak as she delivers cleverly crafted talking points.

 

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Part 2

Then we assess yesterday’s appearance of Betsy DeVos before the Senate HELP Committee and today’s confirmation hearings of Scott Pruit at EPA, Tom Price at H.H.S. and Nikky Haley as the next U.S. Representative to the U.N. A former special assistant for national security affairs to President Clinton and counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, David Halperin, joins us to discuss the frenzied effort by Republicans to stop investigations into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin and his latest article at The Huffington Post “Lieberman, Introducing DeVos, Fails to Disclose That His Law Firm Represents Trump”.

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Part 3

Then finally we focus of Scott Pruitt’s hearing to head up the EPA and the in-your-face insult he represents to all Americans who care about the environment and are concerned about climate change from global warming. Eric Schaeffer, the Executive Director of the Environmental Integrity Project who was Director of the EPA’s Office of Civil Enforcement, joins us to discuss his article at The New York Times “Reject Scott Pruitt for the E.P.A.”  

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