August 14 – Russian Media Suggests Trump Needs Putin’s Help to Rig the Midterm Elections; To Impeach or Not to Impeach; Another Child Sex Abuse Scandal Shakes the Catholic Church

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with an examination of the Russian media’s coverage of Donald Trump who is routinely referred to on State TV as “our president” with a political joke doing the rounds on Kremlin-controlled State TV that Republican Congressmen are visiting Russia “to make deals with our hackers, so they can rig the midterms in favor of Trump’s team”. Julia Davis, the founder and editor of Russian Media Monitor which analyzes Russian media and the relationship between news and propaganda, joins us to discuss a recent broadcast of Russia’s “60 Minutes” news program in which a pundit implied Putin has leverage over Trump and that America’s president should stop the U.S. sanctions, which incidentally Trump is delaying and undermining, otherwise “If you want us to support you in the election, do what we say”. We will also examine the irony that while Trump uses Stalin’s term “enemy of the people” to describe the press that is not Fox News, Russian media has the same list of enemies as Trump does – Democrats, the “deep state” and the U.S. media.

Part 2

Then we speak with John Bonifaz, the co-Founder and President of Free Speech For People who previously served as the Executive Director and General Counsel of the National Voting Rights Institute and as Legal Director of Voter action. He joins us to discuss his new book “The Constitution Demands It: The Case for the Impeachment of Donald Trump” and we assess whether Trump has been violating the Constitution from the moment he took the oath of office and examine the eight categories in which Trump has already crossed the line into impeachable territory.

Part 3

Then finally, we look into a shocking report just issued from a grand jury investigation in Pennsylvania revealing that the Catholic Church in the state covered up child abuse by 301 priests over a 70 year period, with the report indentifying over 1,000 victims. Kenneth Briggs, who writes for the National Catholic Reporter and was a religion editor for The New York Times, joins us to discuss the continuing scandal that dogs the church and mires the pope in periodic purges of church leaders around the world in Chile, Australia and now in Pennsylvania.