No President in the history of the United States has inspired more alarm and confusion than Donald Trump. As questions and concerns about his decisions and qualifications for office have multiplied, they point to one primary question: Does Trump pose a genuine threat to our country? In his book, Trump On The Couch, Dr. Frank answers this question by observing Trump’s actions through a psychiatric lens, using years of study to connect Trumps’s actions to the psychosis of narcissism, misogyny, pathological deception, racism, and lack of empathy. While for years the American Psychiatric Association’s Goldwater Rule has precluded psychiatrists from offering diagnoses on public figures who are not patients, Dr. Frank feels the actions of our President are too destructive for him to remain silent. According to Dr. Frank, Trumps’s Presidency caps a lifetime of dysfunction and disorder, stemming from his childhood. His mother was known for riding around Queens in a rose-colored Rolls Royce with vanity plates to collect the change from laundry machines in her husband’s buildings. His ruthless father and grandfather made their fortunes in dubious ways – brothels during the gold rush, seedy housing deals during the Great Depression – and took financial advantage of government-funded programs originally meant to benefit WW11 survivors. Cut to the present day, Dr. Frank observes that we find ourselves with a President whose verbal idiosyncrasies range from deception to hyperbole, and a whose inability to experience empathy permits him to express misogyny and racism/sexism toward anyone he sees as a critic. 

There are questions that the Mueller report couldn’t—or wouldn’t—answer. What actually happened to instigate the Russia investigation? Did President Trump’s meddling incriminate him? There’s no mystery to what Trump thinks. He claims that the Deep State, a cabal of career bureaucrats—among them, Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page, and Peter Strzok, previously little known figures within the FBI whom he has obsessively and publically reviled—is concerned only with protecting its own power and undermining the democratic process. Conversely, James Comey has defended the FBI as incorruptible apolitical public servants who work tirelessly to uphold the rule of law. For the first time, bestselling author James B. Stewart sifts these conflicting accounts to present a clear-eyed view of what exactly happened inside the FBI in the lead-up to the 2016 election, drawing on scores of interviews with key FBI, Department of Justice, and White House officials and voluminous transcripts, notes, and internal reports. In full detail, this is the dramatic saga of the FBI’s simultaneous investigations of both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump—the first time in American history the FBI has been thrust into the middle of both parties’ campaigns for the presidency. Stewart shows what exactly was set in motion when Trump fired Comey, triggering the appointment of Robert Mueller as an independent special counsel and causing the FBI to open a formal investigation into the president himself. And how this unprecedented event joined in ongoing combat two vital institutions of American democracy: the presidency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. At stake in this epic battle is the rule of law itself, the foundation of the U.S. Constitution. There is no room for compromise, but plenty for collateral damage. The reputations of both sides have already been harmed, perhaps irrevocably, and at great cost to American democracy. Deep State goes beyond the limits of the legally constrained Mueller report, showing how the president’s obsession with the idea of a conspiracy against him is still upending lives and sending shockwaves through both the FBI and the Department of Justice. In this world-historical struggle—Trump versus intelligence agencies—Stewart shows us in rare style what’s real and what matters now. And for the looming 2020 election.

From two excellent books focusing on these Unprecedented Times, we focus on talented folks making noteworthy music. Arizona-based dark rock outfit Audra return with Dear Tired Friends their first album in 10 years. They say the LP deals heavily with loss and letting go. A testimony to the effect the last decade had on each band member. Comprised of 10 tracks, this album was mastered at The Cage Studios in Coventry, UK by Martin Bowes of Attrition, well known for his work with Nine Inch Nails, Psychic TV and Steven Severin of Siouxsie & the Banshees. You’ll hear two cuts from Audra, Drinking Yourself To Sleep and Sunglasses. Shore Dive Records is an enterprising indie label based out of Brighton on England’s south coast. They have an optimistic tag-line we appreciate, “We hope to surprise you.” This is an imprint that appears to be open to different genres and where music or artists hall from. For this show we selected Privative Heart out of Brooklyn with, Dying To Live (Memoryhouse Remix). With an exciting catalog, you can expect to hear more from Shore Dive on Life Elsewhere and Life Elsewhere Music.

Show #346