Donald Trump has been busy issuing executive orders, with his move to ban immigration from a number of Muslim countries perhaps the most controversial. Mike and Jay look at this, as well as President Trump’s orders that froze government hiring, stopped foreign aid to groups providing abortion counseling, withdrew the US from the Trans Pacific Partnership, ordered the construction of a Mexico border wall, imposed a lengthy ban on lobbying for Trump appointees, and reshuffled the National Security Counsel to remove the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, while adding Trump advisor Steve Bannon.
The Guys also talk about vote fraud – only because President Trump refuses to let it go – and answer listener mail, some of which was in support of Jay, after a number of listeners criticized him for being not anti-Trump enough.
I really enjoyed listening to your podcast over the past few months. I just made a donation for your show as I find it refreshing to hear both sides of issues discussed by real adults. I have two requests:
1. Both of you like the TPP, yet others have said that it is a very good deal except for some critical “show stoppers.” I think it would be interesting to have someone on the show who can paint the down side of this deal. It can’t be all good. Nothing is. I’m curious to hear the other side for my own education.
2. You are often discussing issues that don’t have clear answers. When I hear Michael frequently say to Jay, “you’re wrong,” I find myself cringing from these assessments that can’t be proven decisively. If this were as simple as pulling out a measuring tape to find out definitively if the room were the dimensions that you claimed, that would be one thing. Saying, “your wrong” to Jay on issues that are not black and white comes across to me as inappropriate. Fortunately Jay just lets these accusation slide right by him instead of getting defensive.
Thanks so much for the comment and for supporting the show! You’re absolutely right about that it would be good to go into more detail on TPP. At some point in the not too distant future, we’d like to do a show exclusively on trade issues, with the TPP being a big part of it.
I can see your point about my saying ‘You’re wrong.’ to Jay without going into detail. Unfortunately, we sometimes don’t have the time to get into the nitty gritty of certain things without making the podcast way longer than we have time for (or listeners have patience for). I try to follow up the ‘you’re wrong’ with a ‘but we should talk about that in depth at some point’ comment, but I’m sure that sometimes I forget too add that. Thanks for the reminder – I’ll definitely try to remember to watch more carefully for this in the future. – Mike
I listened to this episode a week or so late, and I just wanted to comment on something from the beginning of the show – specifically, Jay’s response when Mike brought up the Mexico City policy. As I remember it, Jay scoffed and said he didn’t want to pay for anyone’s abortion, so he was in favor of it.
I’m not going to argue that Jay should be against the reinstatement of the Mexico City policy, but his response was simply factually inaccurate. The global gag rule is about speech, not direct US taxpayer funding for abortions (prohibited by the 1973 Helms amendment). It prohibits NGOs receiving government money from discussing families about abortion as an option, promoting changes to their own country’s abortion laws, and providing abortions with their own separate funds (not US funds).
I also want to say that it was not only disappointing to hear this inaccuracy, but the tone with which the health and wellbeing of women and girls around the world were dismissed with a scoff. They deserve more respect than that.
Thanks so much for the comment. We definitely don’t buy into ‘alternative facts’ and so we appreciate it when listeners catch something we didn’t get entirely right. – Mike