The DSR Network

Perhaps its his fear of an impending Oprah candidacy but Donald Trump seems to be embracing her tactic of great generosity to her audience. In his case, it is of course, the audience of one he covets most...the one in the Kremlin. And so in this week's episode of Trump's reality television show he has decided--after attacking our neighbors to the South (Mexico), a big American company (Amazon), an...

It looks like the Trump-Kim Summit is a thing. A real thing. That’ll likely happen this Spring. At least, all indicators were pointing in that direction following Kim Jong Un’s stealthy train trip from Pyongyang to Beijing this past week and the follow up announcement that meetings with Chinese leader Xi Jinping were productive and that Kim was willing to discuss the de-nuclearization of the Korea...

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! David Sanger of the New York Times, Rosa Brooks of Georgetown University Law Center, Evelyn Farkas of the Atlantic Council and Edward Luce of the Financial Times elucidate. Tune in! Support this show http://s...

He doesn't love democracy. He is aging. He, frankly, doesn't run with a very nice crowd. Oh, and there are all those invasions and murders and all that spying and so on. But Vladimir Putin has now won four elections to be Russia's president...and is two-for-two in major superpower elections in the past couple years. Where can this lead...and what happens if Trump turns up the heat on his patron an...

A recent article in the Atlantic echoed a discussion we had not too long on Deep State Radio about whether or not we are in a "constitutional crisis." The conclusion was we face "rot" not a crisis right now. But is that worse than a crisis because it inures us to a problem without motivating us to confront and change it? And is there something worse, an underlying cultural crisis that threaten our...

With so much focus on scandal, corruption, nuclear war, racism, isolationism, protectionism, and nationalism in the era of Trump, we sometimes lose site of the little things. Like the future. Or the urgent problems we have to solve. Or the truth. On this episode of Deep State Radio Georgetown University's Rosa Brooks, IISS Deputy Director General Kori Schake and Vice President for the National Sec...

Every feel like you're living inside a washing machine in the middle of the spin cycle? We hope it's not because you have a Tide pod in your mouth. Instead, if you're like the typical Deep State Radio listener its because you have a fairly acute addiction to cable news and social media. We'd cure it if we could. But for now, the best we can do is help you manage it by talking about the very latest...

It's an old rule of improv comedy that you have to play along with the premise you are presented with. It's a rule apparently that the old show biz wannabe who is currently president of the United States took to heart last week when he jumped on North Korean dictatorial dumpling Kim Jong Un's invitation to have a sit down. He said "yes" before he or anyone on his staff had the slightest idea about...

Russia scored its biggest recent victory in its on-going war against western democracies with the victories of the right wing in the recent Italian election. It ranks right behind the Trump victory and the Brexit vote. But the reality is some of what Russia is doing is winning and some of what is happening is just us losing. We're making mistakes and often, not even making the minimum basic effort...

What's more screwed up in the White House--personnel or policy? There's virtually no senior advisor to the President who hasn't left or been rumored to be on their way out. (With the exception of Trump's Igor, Stephen Miller, who will be flattering his boss and promoting institutionalized racism until the very last day of the administration.) There is almost no policy area where the policy approac...

Max Boot's great new book "The Road Not Taken" about American intelligence officer Edward Lansdale not only offers great insights into an intriguing character and a pivotal moment in American and modern world history, it is searingly relevant to today. Would an expert like Lansdale even be heard today by a disconnected president who is trying to discredit the intelligence community? Would the kind...

It is impossible to prove that Trump role model Tony Montana was actually speaking about former Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort when he said, "this country was built on laundered money" but he might as well have been. And it may be that the money laundered by Manafort ultimately brings him down...and possibly turns the tide against the president and his family. Or perhaps they did their own...

America's problems extend far beyond Russiagate. In fact, they extend far beyond porn stars and having half the cabinet under investigation, failures in Puerto Rico and near nuclear war with North Korea. They include unprecedented levels of overt corruption in the White House...but perhaps worse for a system that depends on checks and balances, they go further to the fact that no one in Congress s...

The Mueller indictment charging 13 Russians for their efforts to illegally influence America's 2016 presidential election rocked Washington and sent shockwaves worldwide. The President of the U.S. tried to frame it as vindication because it did not point to his own personal collusion with the Russians (or that of any other U.S. individual). But...as our experts Evelyn Farkas, Kori Schake and Ed Lu...

America has an unrealistic Korea policy (denuclearization) that it is not really pursuing that hard (what with not having an ambassador to South Korea, gutting the State Department and leaving it to Mike Pence who is actually not a human being but a not-so-lifelike cardboard cutout). This might not work out so well, argue our experts like our Kori Schake, Rosa Brooks, David Sanger and Joe Cirincio...

We’ve had nuclear weapons for more than 70 years. But we have never had a president quite as deranged as Donald Trump before and the result has made more people pay much closer attention to U.S. nuclear weapons policy than they did in recent years. We bring together this week a great panel to discuss the Nuclear Posture Review, Trump and how to save the world including Joe Cirincione, Jeffrey Lewi...

The Olympics in Korea have prompted a temporary thaw in North-South relations on the Korean peninsula and plenty of political theater including some from the mummified human remains known to the world as U.S. Vice President Mike Pence. Join our experts, Rosa Brooks of Georgetown, Kori Schake of IISS, Evelyn Farkas of the Atlantic Council and Ed Luce of the Financial Times for a discussion about wh...

There's intelligence and then there's basic common sense. Much of the discussion about the recent memo the House released has been lacking in both. Fortunately, however, our experts at Deep State Radio, Georgetown University's Rosa Brooks, IISS' Kori Schake, the Atlantic Council's Evelyn Farkas and the FT's Ed Luce, have plenty of both and on this episode they put the memo in perspective...while a...

There were so many candidates. And Ed Luce of the Financial Times, Kori Schake of IISS and Rosa Brooks of Georgetown University are keenly aware of some of the biggest dopes on the international stage. But in this first ever awarding of this prestigious prize (which Ed made up on this very episode) we have landed on a great choice…and hopefully established a great new milestone in the history of p...

Calm down. We don’t mean “Trumpocalypse” as in the end of the world. We mean it in the sense of the end of the Trump presidency. Who knows, with some luck this could be Trump’s last State of the Union. And that would be good on so many levels. For example, as our experts Rosa Brooks, Kori Schake and Ed Luce note, it would save us from having to listen to the inevitable tedious and misleading stori...

Contrary to what those outside the Deep State may think, the U.S. government has recently undergone an explosion of creativity. Recently we have seen a National Security Strategy, a National Defense Strategy and a Nuclear Posture Review. Some think these are just empty academic exercises. But others, like our guests the Atlantic Council’s Christine Wormuth, Georgetown’s Rosa Brooks and Kori Schake...

Do you ever get the impression people are laughing at you, America? More so recently? It could just be your imaginations. But in the view of our experts, Ambassador Nick Burns, Rosa Brooks and Kori Schake, the reason is all the actual laughter you are hearing from everywhere in the world. The world’s view of America, as recent polls have shown, is at a low point. The question is whether this is so...

Among other things, our amazing Rosa Brooks is part of an elite team of hypocrisy specialists who travel the globe in search of hypocrites in government. Recently, she and her fellow hypocrinauts visited Turkey where they found a rich vein to explore...and plenty of Turks who say the Trump Administration has taught them a lot. MAGA. Join us for the latest episode of #DeepStateRadio and then Tweet...

While the people of Hawaii were terrified by an errant alert indicating an incoming ballistic missile attack, the rest of the country remained frightened by what would happen even if there were not such an attack. Judging from Donald Trump's plans for nuclear weapons and his temperament, of course, the risk of going without further such scares decreases daily. On this episode of Deep State Radio,...

Mike Pompeo, Director of the CIA and yet oddly, a former Congressman who still seems to be running for something, threw down the gauntlet to the true Deep State when he said that New York Times reporter and Deep State Radio stalwart got it wrong on how the CIA missed the sudden acceleration of North Korea's nuclear program. Tune in to this episode to hear the man known to all as "David You're Exac...