Is Trump Just Doing the Crazy Things Republicans Always Promised?: Podcast
From ripping families apart to nominating a torture-enabler as CIA director, the administration is calling the GOP's bluff, Reason editors argue.
As Elizabeth Nolan Brown noted this morning, the Trump administration officially opened the new U.S. embassy to Israel today in Jerusalem, amid the horrific gunning down of scores of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers at the border in Gaza. "Like Lucy and the football," Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler had written back in 2012, "the pledge to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem is a campaign promise that is never fulfilled." But that was before the rise of Donald Trump.
On today's Reason Podcast, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, Peter Suderman and yours truly drill down into policy areas where Trump has actually gone through with some of the insincere promises Republicans have long made to their voters, starting with the harsh policy announced last week to use family separation—ripping children from their parents—as a conscious deterrent to illegal immigration and in-person asylum applications. Other subjects covered include the Gina Haspel confirmation process, the re-litigation of torture, Trump's attempted tamping down of drug prices, and some apologetics for pre-2008 Reason headlines.
Audio production by Ian Keyser.
Relevant links from the show:
"Trump Calls the Congressional GOP's Bluff," by Matt Welch
"Trump's Official Policy: If You Cross the Border, We'll Kidnap Your Children," by Jacob Sullum
"Undocumented Immigrants Make America Safer," by Steve Chapman
"Do Family Values Stop at the Rio Grande for Conservatives?" by Shikha Dalmia
"Trump's Tribal Immigration Policies Hit a Wall of Facts," by A. Barton Hinkle
"Gina Haspel, Susan Collins, and the Folly of the 'Good Soldier' Defense of Torture," by Eric Boehm
"Gina Haspel's Confirmation Hearing Is a Reckoning for America's Use of Torture During the War on Terror," by Eric Boehm
"Under Trump, Republicans Have Become the Party of No Ideas," by Peter Suderman
"President Trump: Competition Is the Solution to High Drug Prices," by Ronald Bailey
"'All Gov't Support of Higher Ed Should Be Abolished': Live Debate in NYC, 5/14," by Nick Gillespie
"Reason at FEEcon 2018, June 7-9 in Atlanta!" by Nick Gillespie
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