The DSR Network

The not-so-secret secret of Trump foreign policy is that there is no policy. But the better kept secret is that we have one seeming policy from the President himself and then another, which is the effort of professionals in the government to keep the President from getting us all killed. It's not really the Deep State conspiracy whack jobs would have you believe in. It's the hidden check of our sy...

This was the week the cracks began to show in Republican defenses of the indefensible. Oh sure, there were more distractions, shenanigans and lies. But between the abortive attempt to hold the G7 Meeting at Trump's not-so-nice, faltering Doral golf resort, new testimony in House impeachment inquiry that made the president's crimes clearer than ever before and the shocking case made by the presiden...

From describing Trump's violations of the Constitution's foreign and domestic emoluments clauses as the Trump Administration's "original sin" to grappling with a Manhattan phone book-length list of presidential crimes, Representative Jamie Raskin of the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees presents us with the current state of the impeachment efforts in the U.S. Congress. Raskin is one of Trum...

What if the problem is not Trump. Or Boris Johnson. Or the rest of the current occupants of the global leadership clown car? What if the problem runs deeper? What if something about our societies is fundamentally broken? What if that is democracy? What if each election to come takes us further from old ideals and toward deeper dysfunction? Ok, so maybe it's not what you want to hear about when you...

It has been a few days of staggering incompetence, ignorance, corruption and betrayal from the Trump Administration. The Kurds were betrayed not once but twice, most recently by a sham deal that facilitates Turkish ethnic cleansing. The White House Chief of Staff admitting a quid pro quo in the Ukraine scandal while, at the same time, announcing that the US would host the next G7 meeting at a Trum...

As every day brings new testimony from former members of the Trump Administration that confirms there was widespread acknowledgment that what the President and his agents were doing in Ukraine was wrong, new questions emerge. How much more testimony will be required before an impeachment vote will take place? What will be the scope of the charges brought? How will the Congress deal with the refusa...

Donald Trump gave the greenlight to a Turkish invasion of Syria that has already led to manifold calamities. We betrayed our Kurdish allies. They are already suffering atrocities and worse is likely ahead. We have thrown a lifeline to ISIS. We have strengthened Assad, Iran and Russia. And we are just a few days into this fiasco of failed foreign policy. Huge questions are raised by these events an...

You've been waiting for it. You've been talking about it. You've been listening to our Rosa Brooks say we weren't there yet for a year now. But, finally, thanks to the really extraordinary rejection of basic Constitutional principles like separation of powers and the idea that Congress and the Executive are co-equal branches of government, we're there! We know because Rosa Brooks, of Georgetown La...

Donald Trump has given the blessing of the U.S. to a Turkish invasion of Northern Syria that could lead to a humanitarian catastrophe for the Kurds, the alienation of an important ally, greater distrust among our other allies, and benefits for the Assad Regime, Iran and Russia. It has triggered a rare, bi-partisan chorus of condemnation of the president...and, within hours, military action on the...

With new scandals and controversies emerging every hour on the hour, it is hard to know which are serious, which are distractions and which are just hallucinations in the mind of a punch drunk nation. What does it mean? Where will it lead? We offer the expert and incisive perspectives of an extraordinary discussion between former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman, former FBI agent Asha Rangappa and our r...

The die is cast. Impeachment hearings are underway. The Trump presidency is in great (and well-deserved) peril. But, getting from where we are to an impeachment vote in the House and a conviction in the Senate will require a completely different tone and conduct from the Democratic leadership. And forestalling the end of the Trump presidency will require a change of pace from the White House. Edwa...

A week ago a substantial majority of Americans opposed even an impeachment inquiry. Today, a majority of all Americans support such an inquiry and fully half support impeaching Trump outright. That's a massive swing that makes the support for impeaching Trump vastly greater than what it was at comparable moments for either Richard Nixon or Bill Clinton. How did we get here? Ed Luce of the Financia...

It's not just you. We're all lying beneath the rubble of substantial portions of American democracy trying to figure out what hit us. Fortunately, you have us. So, climb on the treadmill or save this for the drive home or a long walk tonight...and join former U.S. Attorney Mimi Rocah and Ryan Goodman of Just Security and NYU Law School as we explore the revelations from the Ukraine Whistleblower c...

The answer of course to the question posed in the title of this podcast is Greta Thunberg, the extraordinary young Scandinavian leader who has delivered the message that the climate crisis is real and urgent better than any world leader. America's president is a source of particular contempt for her as their recent passing encounter at the UN revealed. We discuss her impact, his impact, and the ot...

Few Americans in our history have had such wide-ranging and distinguished careers as Leon Panetta. A former Secretary of Defense, Director of Central Intelligence and White House Chief of Staff as well as a long-time Congressman from California, Panetta is one of the most respected, thoughtful and experienced observers of U.S. national security and foreign policy. Panetta presents his views on the...

Every few weeks Trump does something that leads everyone to exclaim, "Now he really has done it! This will be the end of him." And every few weeks after people can hardly remember what the last surefire last straw was. Will the Ukraine whistleblower story be an exception or just further proof that our system is broken and Trump has carte blanche to do whatever he feels like doing? We discuss with...

Our political system has built into it a kind of immune system to protect it from abuse and abusers. But just as how in life, bacteria develop that are resistant to drugs, so too in our system we have seen the emergence of a kind of threat that resists oversight, checks and balances and processes designed to keep us safe from corruption and tyranny. Donald Trump is just such a threat and recent re...

We're getting into the serious campaigning for president and so far it's fair to say foreign policy hasn't really been front and center. Or anywhere to speak of. Should it be? Does it matter? Would say, a war in the Middle East matter? Like if it started...real soon? Or what about future Russian interference in the election? Anything? We discuss with Rosa Brooks of Georgetown Law School, Kori Scha...

John Bolton may not be National Security Advisor any more but it hardly matters because he wasn't actually ever really National Security Advisor to begin with. Trump never empowered him. Trump doesn't want advice. And that's why the NSC has withered and died. And that's why in the next year you can expect Trump to push for a bunch of very bad deals worldwide because he thinks it will help his elec...

Today the House Judiciary Committee announced the new guidelines for its impeachment investigation. We are joined on this special edition of National Security Magazine by Representative Ted Lieu of California, a member of both the Judiciary and the Foreign Affairs Committees, who discusses where the investigation will go from here and shares his own view on the "mountains of evidence" pointing to...

We bet you think that there was plenty of crazy to go around this summer and that you were as unsettled by each day's news as you could be. Nonsense. We live in Trump times where yesterday's inconceivable outrage is wrapping today's fish and we're on to something we didn't even have a word for yesterday. That's not just true in the US either. Britain is reeling from its worst democratic crisis in...

In the second of two episodes following up on the G7 meeting in Biarritz, Joe Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund, Rosa Brooks of Georgetown Law and Evelyn Farkas of the German Marshall Fund discuss why the president of the US continues to play the role of emissary for the Kremlin. They also discuss the state of the campaign to replace to Trump and who might succeed him. Hint: There are only four...

If the president of the United States decides to launch a nuclear attack, our system is designed for him to be able to do so quickly and for virtually no one to be able to stop him. It takes four minutes from the moment he determines to do it until launch. This week, the president was revealed to have thought about using nuclear weapons against hurricanes and that wasn't the craziest thing he said...

In a far reaching and incisive conversation with Michael Morell, host of CBS News "Intelligence Matters" podcast and former Acting Director of Central Intelligence and Deputy Director of the CIA from 2010-2013, we discuss a world situation that in his view presents more challenges than any we have faced since World War II. However great the threats confronting us may be, they are however, compound...

The collusion hits just keep on coming on Deep State Radio. We don't just have the 2016 oldies that made the Mueller Report so great (or so long, anyway), we've got the on-going collusion between the Trump Administration and Russian disinformation warriors (special shout out here to Attorney General Bill Barr) and that between Mitch McConnell and The Obstructors and their pals back in the land of...