The Dworkin Report

Princeton political history Professor and CNN Commentator Julian Zelizer returns to the Dworkin Report to discuss his book, Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, the Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party.

Professor Zelizer tells us how Newt Gingrich’s rise to power in the Republican party was the turning point that led to the birth of the Tea Party movement, the catastrophic Presidency of Donald Trump, and the modern toxic GOP.

Zelizer gave us a breakdown of how it all ended for Newt Gingrich and what it can teach us about modern Republicans as we head into the 2022 midterms.

“If you go back to the eighties, the Reagan years, and you look at Gingrich and what he was doing on Capitol Hill, you see this new style of partisanship, from vicious takedowns of opponents to the use of any kind of toxic language that one wants to the constant prioritization of partisanship over governing,” says the Princeton professor. “This is now deeply embedded in the DNA of the GOP. And you need to understand that to make sense of why [Trump’s] support among Republicans remains pretty strong.”

We also discuss Newt’s “Contract with America,” which never materialized into actually passed laws but helped Republicans in the 1994 elections.

“It was a gimmick. A series of promises that focused on an eclectic mix of anti-politics, conservative law and order, and fiscal conservative promises,” says Zelizer. “And then it became a problem because after Republicans do take over, they’re unable to pass almost any of it. So it becomes just a reminder of what they didn’t do.”

Recently, Gingrich helped GOP House minority leader Kevin McCarthy construct a similar plan that CNN called “going small.”

This interview explores how Newt Gingrich’s GOP, over the course of a decade, rid the party of the inconvenient ideas that governance matters and that politicians have a responsibility to make sure our institutions work. Through political theater and criminalizing Democrats, Gingrich showed modern Republicans how to weaponize governance and partisan attacks. In many ways, it was the Georgia Republican’s hypocritical actions that laid the pathway for Donald Trump to take over the Republican party today.

Julian E. Zelizer is a Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University. Zelizer, a CNN Political Analyst and NPR contributor, is the author and editor of 24 books on U.S. political history. You can follow him on Twitter @JulianZelizer.

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We discussed his excellent book, Flipped: How Georgia Turned Purple and Broke the Monopoly on Republican Power. Greg takes readers through the run-up to the Special Election and gives a detailed look at how both parties successfully worked to play to their bases. He said the elections which flipped control of Congress to Democrats and how that can be used as a roadmap for another Warnock victory in the midterms.

We also talked about the circumstances and political environment that shaped those special elections, and Bluestein provided us with valuable insight into new voting laws that make it harder to vote in Georgia and what all of this may mean for the upcoming election.

Greg also warned our audience not to take Herschel Walker for granted.

“He makes a lot of blunders, a lot of gaffes, a lot of strange and bizarre compounding statements. And so in a head-to-head match-up with Walker, Democrats are pretty optimistic. Then again, you can't underestimate Herschel Walker's name recognition or the fact that Georgians like me grew up hearing stories of his legendary athletic feats. His name recognition is almost universally known in Georgia, and that counts for a lot.”

In this interview, we discussed Greg’s path to journalism, his love for Atlanta baseball, and how he thinks the 2022 midterms will play out in Georgia.

Greg Bluestein is an American journalist, author, and TV analyst who covers Georgia politics for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He has also written about former President Jimmy Carter and covered regional and national news as an Atlanta-based journalist for The Associated Press. He contributes to the Political Insider blog, is an MSNBC and NBC News contributor, and is a host of the Politically Georgia podcast. You can follow him on Twitter @bluestein.

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Scott interviews Philip Rucker, co-author of the New York Times bestselling book "I Alone Can Fix It: Donald Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year” with his Washington Post colleague, Carol Leonnig. Their book opens at the very beginning of 2020 when the COVID pandemic arrives, carries through the January 6, 2021 insurrection, and ends with Joe Biden's inauguration 14 days later.

The book includes material from 140 sources, including cabinet members, senior administration officials, advisors, and a bizarre interview with Trump himself. I Alone Can Fix It gives readers a thorough behind-the-scenes look at Trump's handling of the final year of his presidency.

Philip talks to Scott about Trump’s reaction to January 6th and how Mike Pence fulfilled the President’s duties that day.

Rucker set out to learn specifics about cabinet meetings with Trump. What was everybody saying around the table specifically? What were people writing in their diaries? What were people remembering?

In this interview, Scott discusses the highlights of some of Rucker’s work and asks probing questions about the reception of this crucial information to voters.

“Vice President Pence was on the phone with the Pentagon to make sure the National Guard were on the way and to make sure troops were coming to the Capitol to help secure it and to assist the Capitol Police, who were obviously seized and beleaguered,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist explained. “Pence was the one who fulfilled those presidential duties that day, in large part because Trump was AWOL. He was too busy watching the television.”

“He was fixated on November 3rd and making sure that he would be popular. And so at every turn during the coronavirus response.” Rucker told Scott about the one guiding principle for the former POTUS throughout the pandemic. “Trump was making decisions based on politics, not based on science or how to save lives, or how to level with the American people, but based on how to help himself politically. And that's not our opinion. That's the judgment of the people who worked with Trump in leading the response.”

Philip Rucker is the senior Washington correspondent at The Washington Post and led its coverage of President Trump and his administration as White House Bureau chief. He and a team of Post reporters won the Pulitzer Prize and George Polk Award for their reporting on Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Rucker joined the Post in 2005 and previously has covered Congress, the Obama White House, and the 2012 and 2016 presidential campaigns. He is an on-air political analyst for NBC News and MSNBC and graduated from Yale University with a degree in history.

This interview was originally recorded in July 2021. This post uses affiliate links.

Michael's New York Times bestselling book is Disloyal: A Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump.

But Cohen couldn't hide the frustration at Manhattan's newly elected District Attorney for ditching a multi-year investigation he cooperated with starting from when he was serving time for carrying out Trump's illegal orders.

As the former personal attorney for Donald Trump from 2006-2018, Cohen was also a vice-president of the Trump Organization.

Since then, Michael has come clean about his crimes committed at the behest of Donald Trump, served his time in prison, and has been one of the most prominent and poignant critics of his former boss, whom he emphatically compares to mob boss Al Capone.

"They couldn't get him on racketeering or any of the other crimes," said Cohen, "Instead, what did they do? They got him on tax evasion."

"And the point was, the American people don't give a shit what the charge against you is," says the first prominent person inside of Trump's circle to warn that he wouldn't relinquish the presidency without violence.

In the second part of this interview series, Michael Cohen once again provides valuable insights to our listeners on how he thinks the disgraced ex-president can finally be brought to justice. And he predicts it won't be the January 6th insurrection that does Trump in.

It's one of the reasons his frustration with the Manhattan DA boiled after his abrupt decision to abandon the yearslong case while New York Attorney General Letitia James methodically carried on investigating the Trump Organization.

Michael Cohen lives in New York City with his wife and two children. He currently runs one of the top 50 political podcasts in the country, Mea Culpa, with new episodes released every Monday and Friday at midnight eastern.

RELATED CONTENT: Lev Parnas just explained how Rudy Giuliani acquired Russian disinformation for Trump

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Scott talks with author and journalist Max Chafkin, who is a features editor and a tech reporter at Bloomberg Businessweek. Max is the author of "The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s Pursuit of Power," a biography about the enigmatic, controversial, and hugely influential power broker Peter Thiel who sits at the dynamic intersection of tech business and politics. Thiel is the co-founder of PayPal, who became a major influence in Facebook as an early investor and the founder of Palantir, a mass surveillance company with extensive government contracts.

As Max explains, Thiel went from being one of the most influential people in the tech industry to becoming an early supporter of Donald Trump and a key player in the rise of the alt-right movement in America.

Because Thiel was a significant contributor to the former President, many questioned the timing of the scores of government and military contracts that Palantir won soon after Trump was elected.

Chafkin explains how Peter Thiel was a central influence on Donald Trump’s grip on power. This was demonstrated when Thiel, a government contractor, made a political visit to Jared Kushner to build bridges between Facebook and the White House at a key moment before last year’s election. The outcome of the meeting was that Mark Zuckerberg agreed to allow Trump’s disinformation to stay on the ubiquitous social platform.

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We released part one of our interview with Officer Dunn last week, after the most-watched right-wing extremist Fox News opinion host mercilessly attacked him for having personal, political views so we advanced the release of this first part of a gripping two-part interview with Officer Dunn so the public can learn more about him as a person and as a cop.

In the first half of our discussion, Officer Dunn told us about his background as a football player, who is close to earning his master’s degree and wanted to give back to his community by working in the field he’d always dreamed of pursuing: being a cop. We left off just after he told us about the start of what he calls his worst day as a police officer which he described succinctly as “the worst day ever.”

Scott speaks with award-winning journalist and author Edward-Isaac Dovere about his new book, “Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats' Campaigns to Defeat Trump." Isaac spent the 2020 campaign on the road for The Atlantic after leaving his post as Chief Washington correspondent for Politico. 

The advance copy of his book made global news the moment it came out because he reported President Obama’s private thoughts about his successor. If you follow the news or Democratic politics, you’ll want to read his deeply detailed book about the start of the Biden-Harris ticket, the dramatic ups & downs of Senator Bernie Sanders’ campaign, and how Democrats reacted to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss by building activist networks.

Dovere also spoke with President Biden early in the first hundred days of his presidency and included that material in the book. “Battle for the Soul,” tells two stories. One, about President Biden, defined himself within the campaign and produced a winning ticket. Secondly, it is the story of why Joe Biden is operating the most progressive administration since LBJ.

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Scott speaks with Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI) about her new book "Heart of Fire: An immigrant daughter's story" which chronicles her humble beginnings that led to her five-decade career in public service. Her fight to protect the vulnerable recently culminated in getting the typically obstructed Senate to pass her bill making it illegal to commit hate crimes against persons of Asian-American and Pacific Island (AAPI) descent, like herself.

Surprisingly, the senator from Hawai'i revealed that some of her Republican colleagues believed that her hate crimes legislation could have gone further in criminalizing racial violence, but she saved her clearest disdain for the junior senator from Missouri. But it's not unusual for the now-outspoken Sen. Hirono to express her true feelings after years of adapting to the fight against the Republican party's war against democracy.

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Scott speaks with novelist Gregg Hurwitz about his latest New York Times bestseller "Prodigal Son" his latest installment in the OrphanX series and his political activities that spanned the partisan divide, as well as his writing for The Bulwark. He even revealed for the first time how his own personal experiences partly inspired the creation of Evan Smoak, the heroic assassin from his book series.

"I didn't want to just write within publications that are read by people who agree with us already, because a lot of what I was trying to do is figure out ways to make good faith arguments, to win them across," Hurwitz explained about his deep dive into political writing. "And to understand that the value set that we, that we hold as liberals can be talked about through conservative language and a conservative understanding that lets them then make a good faith choice whether we represent some of their interests and values better than Donald Trump and the Trump Republican party does."

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Scott speaks with Stephanie Schriock, the President of Emily's List about her new book "Run to Win: Lessons in Leadership for Women Changing the World," as well as the impact and repercussions of the disgraced ex-President's insurrection against the Capitol, which led to his historic second impeachment. 

Born in Minnesota, Schriock became a key member of a presidential campaign before leading two successful senatorial campaigns in the midwest which led to her elevation to guide America's top progressive political action committee dedicated to finding and supporting women in campaigns for public office. Stephanie shared her reaction to this year's violence in D.C. as someone who used to work in the building and with a historical perspective that every American should appreciate the threats looming against our democracy.

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Scott presents an interview with Producer Grant Stern and Forbes editor and author Dan Alexander whose new book "White House Inc.: How Donald Trump turned the Presidency into a business" exposes the business ties that sent foreign cash directly into the hands of President Trump. While the Trump Administration is rife with apparent conflicts of interest, this interview focuses on the ties that Alexander uncovered exclusively between the gas-rich Persian Gulf nation of Qatar and the entire Trump family.

He told us about Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner who consummated a billion-dollar "bailout" deal with Qatar for a Manhattan skyscraper that had massive debt problems by using indirect means. Congress just opened an investigation into Kushner's ties to Qatar and this interview with Dan Alexander doesn't just present some of his book's stunning conclusions, but it also explains why conflicts of interest in high-ranking government officials pose a danger to American interests.

Read more at DworkinReport.com.

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Scott talks with elected DNC member Christine Pelosi about the Trump Administration's failure to adequately respond to the pandemic. They spoke about the Heroes Act coronavirus relief package Speaker Pelosi passed in May which Senate Majority leader "Moscow" Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump refused to pass before the election. They also spoke about her book “The Nancy Pelosi Way." You can find the book at Barnes & Noble and Amazon.

"Donald Trump's theory of the case is that he would be cruising to reelection," says Christine Pelosi. "As he told the people of Erie, Pennsylvania, he wouldn't have even been there campaigning asking them for their vote we're at not for COVID. So he says his theory is 'look, but for COVID I did a great job as president.' The facts say otherwise. Even, if you accept that theory, then you would have to say, 'Well, then. Why didn't you handle COVID better?'"

"We learned from Bob Woodward's tapes and recordings with the president that the president said he played down the dangers of the virus publicly," explained Pelosi, "including the fact that it was airborne. Very early on because he didn't want to put the American people into a panic. He didn't want to risk the economy. As it turns out he was risking the economy and people's lives. And so the second thing we learned was that when Jared Kushner - who has no government experience and no public health experience and no public health advocacy experience - decided that he was going to be in charge."

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Scott talks with Mary L. Trump in this fascinating and wide-ranging interview. Mary told us about the details of her NY Times #1 bestselling book "Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man," including why she went public. We also asked Donald Trump's niece for her insights into his failed coronavirus response, which she calls "criminal," as well as NBC's decision to air a town hall last week when her Uncle backed out of the formal debate because as she says, he is a "coward."

"When Mitt Romney got taken to the woodshed for saying to somebody he was debating, 'I bet you $10,000," because he was such an out of touch elitist," said Mary L. Trump about last week's dueling town hall debates. "And now here's Donald who probably doesn't have 10 bucks in the bank saying [owing] $410 million isn't a lot of money."

"What I worried about and have thought for a long time is that the worst possible scenario would be if he got COVID-19, but either had a mild case or a moderate case from which he recovered quickly," says the President's niece about his recent illness that forced him to go to Walter Reed hospital for experimental medical treatment. "And that's exactly what happened. [T]he reason I thought that that was going to be disasters because of what he did afterward, telling people that they should not let COVID-19 dominate their lives. That."

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Scott talks to S.V. Daté the world traveler who is now White House Correspondent for HuffPost. Daté is the author of a new book entitled, “The Useful Idiot: How Donald Trump Killed the Republican Party with Racism and the Rest of Us with Coronavirus.” Now only did S.V about what it's like to work in the White House as a journalist, he also diagnosed some of the problems that are plaguing American politics today and the GOP's failure to take responsibility for the security risk and governance problems Donald Trump causes.

"Part of the problem [Trump] has is he just lies all the time, and just says random things that have bare no relationship to reality," the veteran White House correspondent told Scott. "And I've often thought if he just kept quiet, locked himself in the face, you know, for three years, his [approval] poll numbers would probably be at like 55%, you know, given the economy that he inherited. Instead, he never exceeded like 45%."

"The Republican party, frankly, failed us," concluded Daté. "In a two-party system, each party has a responsibility to make sure that their nominee can do the job of commander-in-chief, and do the job of an emergency manager-in-chief, and they failed. And here we are."

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Scott speaks with author David Shimer, whose new book "Rigged: America, Russia, and One Hundred Years of Covert Electoral Interference" has received critical acclaim, including from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Shimer is a Yale fellow and associate of the Wilson Center think tank whose work has appeared in Foreign Affairs and the New York Times.

"I show how the Soviet Union in the United States interfered in elections all over the world during the Cold War," Shimer told us. "[The book shows] how Russia is interfering in elections all over the world, in this century right now. It shows how Russia interfered in America's 2016 election and gets into both that operation and its aftermath."

"What I'd like to emphasize to your audience is just not to fall for the temptation when something happens, like if emails are released or if a new tactic is introduced," David presciently explained two weeks ago, "I think that the daily media has a tendency to ring the alarm bells and induce almost, or provide a sense of panic." In light of the Russian election interference scheme we are witnessing President Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani's conduct in real-time, it's a must-listen interview for anyone participating in the 2020 election.

Find out more about our podcast at www.DworkinReport.com and please click the links to subscribe and donate today.

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Scott talks with Kristin Urquiza who told the Democratic National Convention her moving story of losing her father to Trumpism when he died of COVID-19. Kristen calls her father's support for Donald Trump and his trust of Arizona's Republican Governor Doug Ducey "a death sentence for him."  She's starting a new organization called Marked By COVID whose goal is to elevate the stories of people who've lost the ones they love to the American epidemic within the coronavirus pandemic. 

Meet the Candidates 2020: Kamala Harris is available from Amazon and with free shipping from Barnes & Noble.

Rick's latest book is Running Against the Devil: A Plot to Save America from Trump--and Democrats from Themselves.

Meet the Candidates 2020: Kamala Harris is available from Amazon and with free shipping from Barnes & Noble.

You can buy a copy of Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda here.

Our book Meet the Candidates 2020: Joe Biden is available at all major bookstores and online.

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Scott speaks with President Barack Obama's former speechwriter David Litt. He's the author of a new book that just hit bookshelves today entitled “Democracy in One Book or Less: How It Works, Why It Doesn't, and Why Fixing It Is Easier Than You Think.”  After starting work at the White House while 24-years-old, they gave David the privilege of authoring four of President Obama’s White House Correspondents dinner speeches, including the famous "drop the mic" speech that launched a thousand memes. After leaving public service, Litt went to Funny or Die! who made him their D.C. office’s head producer while he published his first book, “Thanks Obama: My Hopey Changey White House Years.”

Our wide-ranging interview includes inside details of David's new book and behind the scenes stories about his time with President Obama. It's a poignant picture of what an American president needs to do and what's missing from the White House today, in addition to a manual for how we can fix our democracy. 

Buy our book about the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden here.

Read the entire transcript here.

You can buy our Meet the Candidates 2020 book series featuring Joe Biden or at Barnes & Noble.

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Scott speaks with March For Our Lives spokesperson Eve Levenson about how we can all achieve a future with a safer America, with smarter gun laws. She's a George Washington College student who represents the national group in the halls of Congress when she's not pursuing a unique professional career and helping lead the organization that mounted America's largest-ever youth protest in 2017. Eve started with a stark admonition of the horrid behavior of the NRA and the gun sales lobby during the coronavirus crisis but left our listeners with a reason to keep being hopeful while our country fights a life or death struggle against a pandemic.

"I think that one is that we really need to hold accountable the gun industry, which is taking advantage of this moment of crisis when people are getting killed to profit off of it," says Levenson. "You see, the NRA and other people affiliated with the gun industry are literally putting ads out there saying that 'you need a gun to keep yourself safe from the Coronavirus.' I think that the reality is that we know that the gun industry always profits off of moments like this. So we need to be holding them accountable. The other important thing is to acknowledge the fears that are leading individuals to want to go and get these guns."

You can buy our Meet the Candidates 2020 book about Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden here or at Barnes & Noble.

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Scott speaks with Professor Tim Bakken, a lawyer and Pentagon whistleblower who fought the system and won. His new book “The Cost of Loyalty: Dishonesty, Hubris, and Failure in the U.S. Military” recounts his personal experience exposing wrongdoing at the West Point Military Academy.

Professor Bakken also explained to us how retaliation against whistleblowers harms us all, and why the age of retaliation is hurting our democracy in an era where the truth is under constant attack. Going beyond that, Tim makes a fascinating point about how secrecy fuels a lack of government accountability that ultimately affects our country’s biggest political decisions and connects the current hospital shortages to that secrecy.

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On today’s 420 day podcast, we’ve got Alex Halperin, a special guest from the left coast who is both the news publisher behind WeedWeek and the author of a new book “The Cannabis Dictionary.” 

You can find Alex’s prior journalism in Slate, the Washington Post, and New Yorker, more recently he’s been writing full time about weed and brings an interesting perspective to the many questions about marijuana during the coronavirus crisis, and it's future. 

Many states are declaring marijuana businesses to be essential during the coronavirus pandemic which is a milestone moment for the nascent industry. 

We also discussed racial equality in the marijuana industry, political currents surrounding legalization and a whole lot more.

Partial Transcript

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Scott presents an interview with Producer Grant Stern and Princeton Professors Kevin M. Kruse and Julian Zelizer, who are co-authors of the new book “Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974," and explain how Trump's rise fits into decades of Republican party politics.

Stern caught up with them at the Miami Book Fair this past December to talk about their book, and the sad state of American politics today and how we got here. Kruse and Zelizer are both political historians who used to teach a course based on this material at Princeton University where they both still teach today. This podcast traces the history of American politics, starting in 1974 and focusing on the rise of the far-right in the Republican party beginning with Ronald Reagan’s insurgency through today, they deliver the unique insights you'll usually find on MSNBC or CNN.

You can buy our Meet the Candidates 2020 book about Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden here or at Barnes & Noble.

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Scott talks with Fred Guttenberg, the Parkland dad who lost his beloved teenage daughter and redirected his life towards tireless activism with his nonprofit group Orange Ribbons for Jamie. Fred also recorded a public service announcement recently for The Masks Now Coalition (text masks to 50409) and shared his thoughts on the coronavirus crisis from the perspective of someone who has coped with multiple family tragedies, which ultimately propelled him towards activism. Our wide-ranging conversation touched on newsmaking events in Congress and what's going on in the drive for gun reforms. Fred Guttenberg didn't hold anything back in this interview.

You can buy our Meet the Candidates 2020 book about Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden here or at Barnes & Noble.

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Scott speaks with patient advocate Peter Morley, who is a lupus patient taking the drug that Donald Trump is selling to the public at large as a coronavirus medication without any scientific data whatsoever, for which he was recently featured in Rolling Stone magazine. Morley is literally fighting for his own survival now that the bully pulpit is being used to sell drugs to the general public. His frightening story in the dystopian America of 2020 must be heard to be believed. 

Peter wrote an op-editorial in the New York Daily News about the importance of bolstering Social Security Insurance which he believes will be even more important after COVID19 victims suffer continuing respiratory difficulty in the wake of the lethal epidemic in America.

You can buy our Meet the Candidates 2020 book series here, featuring Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders or at Barnes & Noble.

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Scott talks with Erin Brockovich who told us the intensely personal story behind her story. Erin is one of America’s most successful activists, but also someone who is very busy duplicating her efforts for others to take up the mantle of environmental activism at CommunityHealthBook.com. She told us the story of what kept her going while juggling being a single mom, a legal professional staffer, and an activist and how you can use that in your every day lives. Erin Brockovich's new book "Superman's Not Coming" just hit store shelves in 2020, and you can see her in the documentary Last Call at The Oasis.

You can buy our Meet the Candidates 2020 book series here, featuring Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders or at Barnes & Noble.

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Scott talks with Dr. Rob Davidson, who an ER Doctor in Western Michigan on the front lines of the fight to save COVID19 patients and the Executive Director of the Committee to Protect Medicare, a national advocacy group to improve the health of every American. Dr. Davidson made national headlines by confronting Vice President Mike Pence about Republicans’ planned cuts to healthcare spending in a video recorded encounter from Iowa earlier this year, but nobody imagined his medical advice would become so urgently necessary as it is today. Now, we've got his exclusive medical advice on how every resister should deal with the coronavirus outbreak and even when kids will be able to see their grandparents again.

You can buy our Meet the Candidates 2020 book series here, featuring Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders or online at Barnes & Noble.

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Scott speaks with Kurt Bardella who is a national columnist and television commentator who left the GOP to become a Democrat and is leading the fight against Donald Trump’s overt program of racial discrimination against Asian-Americans during the coronavirus crisis. His journey from being a Republican insider to becoming a Democrat has been publicly documented in his columns for USA Today where he's on the board of contributors and on MSNBC where he is a contributor. Kurt had the brilliant idea of discontinuing unfiltered coverage of Trump’s daily coronavirus misinformation press conferences and made it go viral on twitter before Rachel Maddow closed her emotional program last week by calling on the media to stop spreading his lies. Bardella is also the publisher of the Morning Hangover, a country music newsletter.

You can buy our Meet the Candidates 2020 book series here, featuring Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders or online at Barnes & Noble.

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Scott presents an interview by producer Grant Stern with David Plouffe who is President Barack Obama’s former campaign manager and the author of a new book “A Citizen’s Guide to Beating Donald Trump.” He guided both of President Obama's successful runs to the White House and this podcast is a detailed breakdown of his outlook for the 2020 general election. Plouffe explained his blueprint for every member of the Resistance to chip in and make a difference by fighting disinformation and informing their friends; it's easier than you might imagine.

You can buy our Meet the Candidates 2020 book series here, featuring Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders or online at Barnes & Noble.

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You can buy our Meet the Candidates 2020 book series here, featuring Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders or online at Barnes & Noble.

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Scott speaks with Yale professor Dr. Bandy X. Lee about Donald Trump's failed response to the coronavirus pandemic. Dr. Lee is president of the World Mental Health Coalition and author of "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump" which brings together the professional opinion of 37 mental health experts. Her diagnosis is that Trump's avoidance of reality is so dangerous, no leadership would be safer, but there is a lot more inside this interview that speaks to each individual listener about how they can cope with the national public health crisis roiling our stock markets and shutting down our country. 

Find out more at tonight's live-streamed webinar on March 13th at 9pm EDT which you can access at DangerousCase.org: "CAN DONALD TRUMP’S MENTAL IMPAIRMENT BE DEADLY FOR AMERICAN FAMILIES PATHOLOGICAL NARCISSISM, INFORMATION SUPPRESSION, AND A GLOBAL PANDEMIC."

You can buy our Meet the Candidates 2020 book series here, featuring Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders or at your local Barnes & Noble.

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Scott speaks with Shannon Watts, who founded Mom's Demand Action to fight the gun manufacturer's lobby for sensible gun reforms who is also the author of “Fight Like a Mother: How a Grassroots Movement Took on the Gun Lobby and Why Women Will Change the World” out on Harper-Collins books. Shannon's fascinating story is the topic of her book, which doubles as a manifesto and a memoir aimed at how-to instruction for people in every American city and town who might want to follow in her footsteps. Watts also delivered a detailed review of the gun reform legislation passed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and the House Democrats, which resides in Sen. "Moscow" Mitch McConnell's legislative graveyard.

You can buy our Meet the Candidates 2020 book series here, featuring Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders or at your local Barnes & Noble.

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Scott speaks with Karine Jean-Pierre, the national spokeswoman for MoveOn.org and NBC/MSNBC commentator whose new book "Moving Forward: A Story of Hope, Hard Work, and the Promise of America" is an inspirational story that anyone who wants to get into politics needs to read. Karine's journey into politics started later in life but blossomed rapidly on the Obama campaigns, and into the White House giving her a font of wisdom for activists, knowledge which she shares with Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs as a lecturer.

You can buy our new series of Meet The Candidates 2020 books about the top Democratic presidential candidates here on Amazon or at your local Barnes & Noble.

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Scott speaks with author and elected DNC member Christine Pelosi about her new book "The Nancy Pelosi Way" as well as about impeachment, about #TrumpsWar with Iran and about her personal story as a lifelong political activist. Our in-depth chat reveals new material you can't find in her hot-telling book and also Christine Pelosi's deep insight into the politics of war and peace during an interview we recorded after Trump's provocative decision to target and kill Iran's second-highest government official in Iraq, as well as her commentary on the impeached forever president. You can find the book at Barnes & Noble.

Our political Meet the Candidates books are profiles of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, and Pete Buttigieg are the only place to find an objective comparison of the top four candidates and Scott's opinion on the politics of theirs campaign. Buy our Meet the Candidates 2020 books here.

Scott presents an interview with Malcolm Nance about his latest book, “The Plot to Betray America: How Team Trump Embraced Our Enemies, Compromised Our Security and How We Can Fix It” which made the prestigious New York Times Bestseller list by producer Grant Stern from his appearance at the Miami Book Fair. Nance is an MSNBC contributor who became the first person in the American mainstream media to uncover and expose Russia’s attack on the 2016 presidential election, which was the topic of his first book on the subject “The Plot to Hack America” which he released during the campaign. He explained in this interview how Russian intelligence uses disinformation and what America can do to fight back.
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Scott speaks with Juli Briskman about her journey from a morning bike ride with an unexpected interlocution by the President that led her eventually into an elected office. Supervisor-elect Briskman will be sworn in to represent the Algonkian District in Loudon County, Virginia where the Trump National Golf course is situated after flipping the bird at President Trump while he drove back to the White House from a golf outing. Briskman told us that there was a Trump effect even on the local level, which helped her flip her county commission blue. Most importantly, she stood up for what’s right by denouncing a demagogue, and in so doing set an example for every member of the resistance by getting involved. 

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Scott speaks with Navy Commander (ret.) Guy Snodgrass, whose new book “Holding the Line: Inside Trump’s Pentagon with Secretary Mattis” is a personal memoir of his eighteen-month tour of duty at the Pentagon as Chief of Communications and speechwriter for former Defense Secretary General James Mattis. Cmdr. Snodgrass wrote a nonpartisan account of his time working with Secretary Mattis but didn’t hold back in our interview about the harm to America’s allegiances being done by President Trump’s duplicitous public messaging, or on any other topic. He also revealed the serious complications of Trump’s tweets, for example when he canceled military exercises with our South Korean allies or falsely told the public that he consulted with the Pentagon before tweeting a ban on military service by transgendered persons. It’s a unique, insider’s account of the top of the Department of Defense and how they handled an arbitrary and unpredictable Commander-in-Chief. You can find his first-hand account inside the Pentagon during the Trump Administration on your local store’s bookshelves at Barnes and Noble.

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Scott speaks with Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) who is a member of the House Judiciary Committee overseeing an impeachment inquiry into President Donald J. Trump. Rep. Raskin shared what he believes is one of the most likely, and likely provable impeachable offenses that he believes will find its way into Articles of Impeachment against Trump. He also explained why it’s finally time for Congress to dust off its powers of inherent contempt to punish Cory Lewandowski for refusing to answer questions about the President’s attempts to obstruct the Mueller Probe. Transcript

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Our last installment in the series, Meet the Candidates 2020: Cory Booker, is also at Barnes & Noble.

Scott speaks with E. Jean Carroll, whose Elle Magazine column “Ask E. Jean” is the longest-running magazine column in America. She told us about the events in her new book “What do we need men for? A modest proposal” without any limits or boundaries, and recounted the details of two terrible encounters with powerful men, including a real estate developer who would go on to leave the Democratic Party and run for president, Donald J. Trump. This unfiltered, barely edited forty-minutes-long interview lays bare Carroll’s unique view of the state of gender relations in America.

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Scott speaks with investigative journalist Vicky P.J. Ward. Not only was she the first major journalist to thoroughly investigate Jeffrey Epstein, but she talked with us extensively about her recently released a New York Times bestseller book entitled “Kushner, Inc.” which exposes the Trump inner circle’s self-delusion and greed.

It was Ward’s recent reporting in The Daily Beast about billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein caused a ruckus yesterday when an AP reporter asked Trump’s embattled Labor Secretary about it in a nationally televised press conference. Ward tried to warn us about the sleazy billionaire in 2003, but Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter cut the allegations of underage sex crimes that she uncovered, and now, other former writers for the magazine report similar problems happening.

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Scott speaks with Jennifer Rubin, a columnist at the Washington Post and MSNBC contributor who left the GOP in 2016 after the rise of Trump. We discuss what Dems need to win in 2020, as well as on a variety of topics including America’s newly close relationship with toxic Saudi Arabia, and a lot more. Rubin also shared her opinion is on impeachment, and on that issue she offered a novel idea, but one that depends on winning in 2020. 
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Editor’s note: The featured photo is not meant to imply support or disparagement of any of the candidates on stage.

Scott interviews White House correspondent Brian Karem who works for Playboy and is also a CNN contributor. He explains what’s really going on behind the scenes at the White House, and why they’ve canceled the regular press briefings Americans have been accustomed to for decades, and why that matters. Karem famously confronted outgoing WH Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders over the administration’s horrifying policies to separate children from families at the border and more recently caused a stir when his relentless questioning irritated Donald Trump during one of his chaotic media appearances.

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Just last night, the Trump Administration formally dropped sanctions on RusAl, EN+ and one other company owned by his top Russian-American donor’s business partner. GOP Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell and his Senate allies voted against a resolution that overwhelmingly passed the House, which would have kept those sanctions in force. To make matters worse, Donald Trump has some pretty obvious kompromat over leader McConnell by virtue of his wife’s position in his Cabinet. Scott first revealed in February 2017 shortly after Donald Trump’s inauguration in tweets about one of the Senate majority leader’s major political donors sparked reporters across the country to document the flows of Russian-linked cash to high ranking Republicans. Read the complete transcript here.

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Scott talks with Director Rob Reiner who leads the Committee to Investigate Russia and has become a leading critic of the Trump Administration. Reiner has become an outspoken voice in the political arena since the rise of Putin’s preferred presidential candidate and explained the scenarios he believes will lead to Donald Trump’s early exit from the Oval Office. “There’s no question about it. This is the most corrupt and criminal presidency that we’ve ever seen,” says Reiner who hopes Trump will resign, “Not only corrupt and criminal. He’s inept. He’s not qualified, and he’s incredibly stupid.”

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Scott reveals the Democratic Coalition’s latest report (embedded below) about Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) Russian-linked donors and his role in accepting illegal foreign campaign donations funneled into his senatorial campaigns by the CEO of a virology research company who is now serving more than seven years in federal prison for the scheme. Graham helped the CEO obtain $19.6 million in spending earmarks, but the company has since folded after wasting millions on lobbying expenses and a real estate deal instead of research. Script

House Republican Rep. Chris Collins conspired with friends and family to break insider trading laws, warning them of an impending stock price collapse in the public drug company which he served as a Board Member and major shareholder, to help them save $768,000 in losses. Collins did it all from the White House lawn under the literal gaze of President Trump according to SDNY prosecutors’ indictment. Washington Post reporter Emily Heil posted a picture of the crime-scene onto Twitter last year.  Rep. Collins was on Trump’s transition team and helped get another Republican shareholder in the same company, Tom Price, named to head HHS which oversees the Food and Drug Administration. Transcript.

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Scott interviewed A Duty to Warn psychologist and founder Dr. John Gartner who is leading the charge to warn America about the malignant narcissist that Republicans put into the Oval Office with a minority of the popular vote. To help these psychologists, donations are welcome at www.unfitcrowdfund.com.

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