March 26 – Civil War Within the GOP; More Murders of Russian Whistleblowers; Trump No Longer is the Leader of the “Free World”

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the emerging civil war within the GOP after the failure of the party that controls the White House and the Congress to repeal and replace Obamacare which Republicans voted to do 60 times, campaigned on in the 2016 elections, and promised to get done as their first priority in the new Trump Administration.  Norman Ornstein, a contributing writer for The Atlantic and the co-author of the bestseller “It’s Even Worse Than it Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism” now in an updated version “It’s Even Worse Than it Was”, joins us to discuss how much Paul Ryan is being blamed for the debacle that the businessman-in-chief and author of “The Art of the Deal” appears to be walking away from.

Part 2

Then we go to London to speak with Bill Browder, an American businessman who was the largest investor in Russia until he fell afoul of Putin and was refused entry into Russia. His lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was murdered by Russian government officials in league with organized crime and we discuss the assassination in Kiev of a member of Russia’s Duma who was close to the Putin inner circle and was about to testify against Yanukovych, the ousted kleptocratic former Ukrainian president who had Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort on his payroll.  We also examine the attempted murder of the lawyer representing Magnitsky’s widow who was about to testify about the laundering of stolen money through Cyprus banks.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with Ambassador Alexander Vershbow a distinguished fellow at the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security at the Atlantic Council who was the former deputy secretary general of NATO. We discuss the 60^thanniversary of the treaty of Rome that foundered the European Union and the extent to which the Trump Administration has abandoned the leadership of what we call the “free world” now that the battle between Communism and capitalism is over and we are in a struggle between autocracy and democracy.