Deep State Radio

It's that time of day. The sun is setting. You're a little parched. Maybe more than a little due to the fireball on the horizon. What's just the right cocktail for the moment? On this episode of Deep State Radio we speak with nuclear weapons specialist and amateur bartender Jeffrey Lewis about his new book "The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks on the United States." We discuss the current state of affairs with North Korea (good for Kim, bad for Trump...oh, and all the rest of us too) and where it may lead. And of course, just what is the right thing to drink when you're offering up your very last toast of the day. Of any day. Tune in!

The release of Bob Woodward's book "Fear" and the recent anonymous oped in the New York Times claiming to be by a senior official who is mounting the resistance to Trump from within the administration raise important questions about what is the best way to stop the threat posed by an unfit president. Our panel, Rosa Brooks of Georgetown, Mieke Eoyang of Third Way and Kori Schake of IISS offer an examination of what's right, what works and whether the two are in any way related. Join us!

Brick by brick the Trump team is not building a wall, it's dismantling the international order. The latest move--an attack on the International Criminal Court by National Security Advisor John Bolton. Should you care? Isn't this just an inside baseball attack on some other acronym that probably doesn't work that well to begin with? Or is it a signal of something more, something bigger, maybe even a watershed in international history? To answer the question we hear from IISS's Kori Schake, Georgetown University's Rosa Brooks and Third Way's Mieke Eoyang. Tune in for all that...and much more about Israel, Afghanistan, America, and bugbears.

Every report out of the Trump White House tells the same story. Whether it's the anonymous op-ed from a "senior Trump Administration official" in the New York Times or Bob Woodward's book "Fear" or the Omarosa book or the Wolff book or countless news reports--the president's unhinged, the people around him don't trust him, and some of them have decided to just by-pass the president and govern on their own, elections be damned. Trump blames the Deep State. But we know better! On this emergency episode Rosa "Anonymous" Brooks, David "Anonymous" Sanger and Ed "Anonymous" Luce join us for the kind of fresh, terrifying analysis you can't get anywhere else and shouldn't try at home. Tune in!

The White House is a shambles. The president is an object of ridicule among his closest aides. The Congress is looking the other way seeming to want to rush a Supreme Court nominee into office before the President is himself hustled before a judge. But that's not the worst of it. Dysfunction in Washington leads to big problems worldwide. This week, our panel including commentator and analyst Rula Jebreal, Georgetown Law School's Rosa Brooks and the Financial Times' Ed Luce consider the latest in DC and one of the places where Trump policies are making a bad situation much much worse--the Middle East. Tune in!

In a brilliant bit of turnabout, John McCain's last act was to use his own funeral to bury Donald Trump. By excluding him from the ceremonies and featuring leaders of both parties extolling values and virtues alien to Trump, McCain made an eloquent point. But will it have any lasting impact? Within just a couple of days the President was back Tweeting, his Supreme Court nominee was being rammed into office and a new book by Bob Woodward was dominating the headlines with new revelations of the president's unfitness to serve. Join our panelists David Frum of the Atlantic, author of Trumpocracy, Rosa Brooks of Georgetown University School of Law and Ed Luce of the Financial Times as they discuss a tumultuous few days in the nation's capital. Tune in!

Donald Trump's track record as an international deal-maker is perfect. He still has not made one major deal of any sort anywhere with anyone (except maybe with a nice gentleman in Moscow, but we'll leave that be for now.). He has undone a bunch of deals--from the Paris Accord to TPP to the Iran nuclear deal. He has announced some deals that weren't really deals--from the "breakthrough" with North Korea to the "breakthrough with Europe" on trade to the "breakthrough" with Mexico on trade. And he has also promised some deals that never materialized--from getting Mexico to build the wall to a Middle East peace agreement. On this episode of Deep State Radio join David Sanger of the New York Times, Rosa Brooks of Georgetown University Law School and Evelyn Farkas of the Atlantic Council as they discuss why Donald Trump may be the worst dealmaker in modern American presidential history. Who could've predicted such a thing?! Tune in!

Donald Trump has wrapped himself so tightly in the flag he could be America’s first July 4th mummy but while his true colors may be red white and blue it increasingly appears they may look more like the Russian flag than Old Glory. First, he showed this when at a school appearance he was unable to color in a flag properly. Next, despite all his attack on NFL-ers for disrespecting the flag, he broke the law to keep the flag over the White House flying at full-staff despite the death of beloved hero Senator John McCain. Our experts David Sanger of the New York Times, Evelyn Farkas of the Atlantic Council and Rosa Brooks of Georgetown University discuss McCain, Trump, patriotism, hypocrisy and coloring inside the lines. Join us!

While the intelligence and law enforcement communities reel from the president's attacks, Donald Trump has sent further signals that he expects personal loyalty above loyalty to the nation from all of his team across the whole of government. He has even go so far as to trash the once hallowed concept of independence of the Fed. But it may be that the biggest problem affecting the government is not the president's impulse to suppress dissenting views but rather is his lack of intellectual curiosity and his professed skepticism of expertise. It's not that he wants political loyal intelligence analysts, for example, it is that he wouldn't read what they wrote no matter what their political views were. On this episode, veteran CIA analyst Nada Bakos, Georgetown's Rosa Brooks and the Financial Times Ed Luce, discuss--and Rosa follow's in the footsteps of a giant pre-historic chicken!

This week in important Steven Tyler news, the Aerosmith front man demanded that Donald Trump stop playing his band's song "Livin' on the Edge" at their rallies. And he makes a good point. Trump is past that point and may want to consider more appropriate alternatives for upcoming rallies, like "I Fought the Law (And the Law Won)" or "Jailhouse Rock." Certainly, that seemed to be the message prosecutors and jurors were sending this week as the Trump re-elect effort lost the votes of both Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen who will now, as convicted felons, never be able to vote in a federal election again. What does this mean? Where will it lead? Is this the beginning of the end? The end of the beginning? What can we expect? Our experts David Sanger of the New York Times, Katie Phang, an attorney and a legal analyst for NBC and MSNBC and Sharon Weinberger, DC Bureau Chief for Yahoo News answer these questions and more in this special limited collector's edition of Deep State Radio in which we also ask: Is Australia the only country in the world whose politics are more screwed up than America's? Tune in!

As reports have come in of Russia escalating its attacks on American democracy, our President has hopped into action escalating his war against the people who are protecting us from the Russians. Trump has begun a campaign of stripping security clearances from America's most experience national security officials in an effort to punish them for disloyalty. Our experts, Susan Hennessey of Lawfare, Rosa Brooks of Georgetown University Law School and Ed Luce of the Financial Times, discuss which of the effects of this misguided policy will be worse--chilling free expression, alienating the security community, reducing the expertise available to the government or just ushering in more authoritarianism. But don't worry. You don't have to choose. All will be bad. Also: we discuss the president's lawyers and why they may mean he needs more lawyers.

With great fanfare Donald Trump did the presidential equivalent of stuffing a pair of athletic socks down his pants and announced the new defense spending bill. It was, as might be expected, yuge. Once again we will outspend China by four or five times and Russia by perhaps a dozen times. Are we safer? Does it matter that if we spend that much we can't have the schools, roads and health care system we need? Does it matter that the future of warfare may be a lot cheaper than the old-style industrial military we keep building and rebuilding? Kori Schake, Rosa Brooks and David Sanger discuss and debate. Tune in!

Nothing is more core to the life of the Deep State than marking documents classified. After all, if just anyone could read them, who'd want to? On the other hand, if documents are classified, they can't be shared which is a bit of a problem in the cyber era when our most important defenses may be in the private sector. What's a secret-loving country to do? The NY Times' David Sanger, Georgetown University's Rosa Brooks and IISS' Kori Schake discuss. (And, yes, they also discuss Omarosa and Peter Strzok and all that other mishigas as well. So tune in for goodness sake!)

Summer Reading Edition: On this special episode of a podcast so special it doesn't need special episodes but can't help doing them anyway, we delve into the world of books. Georgetown's Rosa Brooks, IISS' Kori Schake and the Financial Times Ed Luce reveal what they're reading, what they're avoiding, why they are academic pariahs, what sucks and what sucks so bad they don't even feel comfortable discussing it. Summer fun!!! Join us.

Did you know that Ed Luce was once on a cricket team that Imran Khan occasionally would coach during breaks in his high profile high society dating life? That Rosa Brooks briefly played on a cricket team at Oxford? That Kori went to a cricket match and was not bored to tears? Well, you will if you listen to this episode of Deep State Radio which also has the president admitting to a felony, America's Iran policy going from bad to worse and Israel's Nation-State Law giving apartheid a fresh new look for the 21st Century. Tune in!