2 New Podcast Episodes Discuss How the Republican Party became the Party of Trump and CIA "Black Sites"

Tim Alberta: How the Republican Party became the Party of Trump

Author of “American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump.” 

Overview

The modern GOP branded itself on ideals of fiscal responsibility, fighting dictators from the Soviet Union to Saddam Hussein, and personal morality. The GOP change has been swift, stark, and you might be led to believe, all because of one person: Donald Trump.

But is that true? Was Trump the cause or the most logical outcome? Perhaps more importantly, is there any going back? Is the GOP now the POT – the Party of Trump? 

Alberta’s book is the most complete, thoughtful, and entertaining analysis to date of how we got here – of what happened to the Republican Party and whether Trumpism is its singular way forward.

A lot has been written about Tim’s book. Most headlines focusing on Paul Ryan’s quotes that the President knew nothing about government and the devil’s bargain that Ryan and others made. As you’ll hear in today’s conversation, the book is about much more than just that.

Philip Mudd: History of the CIA’s “Black Sites"

Author of  Black Site: The CIA in the Post-9/11 World

https://chrisriback.com/phili-mudd-trump-the-attack-on-u-s-intelligence-discussion-black-site/

Overview

Mudd has written an important, first of its kind book: "Black Site: The CIA in the Post-9/11 World." Mudd not only takes us inside the CIA, but reviews the history of one of the most hidden parts of the CIA, the part known internally as “The Program”: The secret Black Sites where the so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” and where our national debates on torture, waterboarding, counterterrorism, and the deep responsibility to prevent another attack were born.

How were those decisions made? How were they justified? What did CIA officers, deputy directors, directors – even people who interrogated prisoners – think and feel about what they were doing? And how do they feel about it now?