December 10 – The “Research” and Donors Behind Trump’s Policies; How Deep is the Well of Populist Anger and Hate?; The Filmmaker of “Brand: A Second Coming”

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with an analysis of the groups providing the so-called “research” behind Donald Trump’s policy pronouncements and the donors that fund them and speak with Ken Gude the Director of the International Justice and Security Program at the Center for American Progress. He joins us to discuss the network of right wing mega-donors behind groups like Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy that provides Donald Trump with conspiracy theories dressed up in bogus statistics on how Muslims want to impose Sharia Law on America and that violence against Americans in the U.S. is justified as part of the global jihad.

Part 2

Then, as Donald Trump’s Islamophobia and immigrant-bashing gains more and more traction among Republican primary voters, we discuss how ideas that used to be on the outer fringes of Republican discourse have now entered the GOP mainstream. Timothy McCarthy, a lecturer on History, Literature and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and author of “The Radical Reader: A Documentary History of the American Radical Tradition” and “Protest Nation: Words that Inspired a Century of American Radicalism” joins us. We discuss populist discontent on the left and right and assess how deep is the well of anger, hate and paranoia that Donald Trump is tapping into.

Part 3

Then finally Ondi Timoner, a documentary filmmaker whose latest feature documentary is “BRAND: A Second Coming”, joins us in studio. She has captured and created a fascinating, funny and moving portrait of the comedian Russell Brand as he makes a journey from drug addiction to celebrity to political activism in a search for meaning and truth in his own life and in a world in need of a revolution against inequality and injustice, a revolution that Brand is trying to ignite but not necessarily lead.