March 21 – Trump’s Secret Deals Brokered by a Child Molester; “The Iraq Reckoning Still to Come”; Ignoring His NSC, Trump Congratulates Putin

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with a secret meeting of the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States in late 2015 that took place on luxury yacht in the Red Sea where a new strategy to realign the Arab states was plotted. A former European and Foreign Editor and bureau chief with The Guardian, David Hearst, the Editor of Middle East Eye, joins us to discuss his latest article at Middle East Eye “EXCLUSIVE: The secret yacht summit that realigned the Middle East” and how General Sisi and the Saudis, along with the Gulf leaders, sold out the Palestinians in a realignment with Israel against Turkey and Iran. But perhaps the most amazing revelation is that the person who brokered the secret meeting is the same person who, along with Erik Prince the founder of the Blackwater mercenary army, tried to set up a secret back-channel in the Seychelles between Trump’s inner circle and the Kremlin. And what is even more astounding is that George Nader, who is now cooperating with Robert Mueller’s investigation, has multiple convictions and arrests and served one year in prison for sexually abusing underage boys and possessing child pornography.

Part 2

Then on the 15^th anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War we speak with Colonel Andrew Bacevich, a graduate of West Point who served 23 years in the U.S. Army whose latest book is “America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History”. We discuss his latest article at the New York Daily News “The Iraq reckoning still to come” and the irony that the serial lair Donald Trump was the only politician who told the truth about America’s self-inflicted disaster in Iraq while others who voted to authorize the unnecessary war have remained silent.

Part 3

Then finally we assess whether an enraged Donald Trump will fire whoever leaked the briefing paper he got before his phone call to Putin that said in caps “DO NOT CONGRATULATE”, advice Trump ignored as he blithely overlooked how Putin rigged the vote and Russia’s meddling in our election, not to mention Putin’s use a WMD against a NATO ally. A leading expert on the politics and economics of post-communist Russia, Daniel Treisman, a professor of political science at UCLA and author of “The New Autocracy: Information, Politics, and Policy in Putin’s Russia”, joins us.