January 5 – Why Trump Persists in Disparaging the US Intelligence Community; Big Oil Fights Back With a US-Russia “Drill Baby Drill” Union; GOP Maneuvers to Gut the Affordable Care Act

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with an appraisal of the Senate hearings today on Russian hacking ahead of tomorrow’s briefing of president-elect Trump who has persistently disparaged the intelligence community’s conclusions that Russia hacked the election and that President Putin authorized the operation. Steven Pifer, who served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia on the National Security Council, joins us to discuss what possible motives Trump has for going out of his way to defend Putin in the face of mounting evidence that the Russian leader was behind an attack that struck at the heart of American democracy itself which may have sowed the seeds of illegitimacy and instability in the U.S. presidency and exposed divisions within the ruling Republican Party.

Part 2

Then we look further into the Senate hearings and the growing rift between the president-elect and the intelligence community with Simon Rosenberg, the President and Founder of the New Democrat Network and a columnist for U.S. News and World Report. He joins us to discuss whether the choice of the head of Exxon as Secretary of State represents big oil fighting back against growing concerns over global warming and lessening dependence on oil with Putin and Trump forming a “drill baby drill” union in the name of the U.S. getting along better with nuclear-armed Russia.

Part 3

Then finally we examine the dilemma facing Republicans who want to immediately repeal Obamacare but do not have anything to replace it with. A veteran insider from the for-profit health industry who was chief corporate spokesman at CIGNA and head of corporate communications at Humana, Wendell Potter, joins us. He is now a Senior Analyst on Healthcare at the Center for Public Integrity and we discuss Republican plans to pass a budget resolution that would shield repeal legislation from a Democratic filibuster thus enabling them to gut the Affordable Care Act in the form of a reconciliation bill.