Wednesday's weekly series, In the News, is where the hosts looks at the most important ongoing developments of the week and puts them into perspective.
Wednesday's regular segment, Beyond Nuclear, is about nuclear issues, including weapons, energy, waste, and the future of nuclear technology in the United States. Kevin Kamps, the Radioactive Waste Watchdog at the organization Beyond Nuclear, and Sputnik news analyst and producer Nicole Roussell, join the show.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller has told the court that he is no longer obliged to maintain the plea agreement with Paul Manafort. Mueller asserts that Manafort has violated it by lying to the Special Counsel. Today, there are headlines proclaiming this to be true, because his legal team spoke with President Trump's. But the two legal teams have a defense agreement authorizing this — it's a common communication tool that the two parties have had in place long term. Brian and John speak with Bruce Fein, a constitutional law scholar and a former assistant deputy Attorney General of the United States.
International media outlets are in the crosshairs of Russiagate zealots once again, with a new hit piece in Politico that accuses a variety of outlets of shifting their coverage to become mouthpieces for the Trump administration. What do these outlets really cover? Meanwhile, journalists in mainstream outlets, like The Guardian's Luke Harding, spread misinformation. Joe Lauria, the editor-in-chief of Consortium News, founded by the late Robert Parry, and the author of the book "How I Lost, By Hillary Clinton," joins the show.
President Trump gave an interview to the Washington Post yesterday in which he threatened to cancel a meeting with Vladimir Putin and urged European countries to maintain a hostile posture towards Russia. Trump also railed against Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell and the interest rate policies the Fed has been pursuing. Steve Keen, the author of "Debunking Economics" and the world's first crowdfunded economist, whose work is at patreon.com/ProfSteveKeen, joins Brian and John.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has named former Wall Street Journal editorial writer Mary Kissel as his new senior advisor for policy and strategic messaging. It's not unusual that a journalist would enter the State Department. It actually happens all the time. But in 2016, Kissel went on MSNBC's Morning Joe to call Donald Trump "frighteningly ignorant" and to say that he had "no principles and no policies." Trump responded by tweeting that Kissel was "a major loser." Dave Lindorff, an investigative reporter and founder of This Can't Be Happening!, a columnist for CounterPunch, and the author of a major new article in The Nation titled, "The Pentagon's Massive Accounting Fraud Exposed," joins the show.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said yesterday that the UK Integrity Initiative is a British government-sponsored front organization aimed at defaming the Russian government. The UK Integrity Initiative purported to be an independent watchdog organization until hackers from the group Anonymous found documents proving that it was created by British intelligence organizations. Brian and John speak with Jim Kavanagh, the editor of thepolemicist.net.
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