David Cay is the most knowledgeable Trump investigative journalist. His latest book; “It’s Even Worse Than You Think (What the Trump Administration is Doing to America)” is a must read (I got it last week and I haven’t finished reading it). It is inspiring me to read his previous book; “The Making of Donald Trump”.
On Wednesday I went to the Great Minds meeting in Santa Monica moderated by Greg Palast and featuring David Cay Johnston. (Long video, watch it later)
x xYouTube VideoWe met and we set up a phone interview for today.
We both agree (as we all do) on how sick Donald Trump is. I told him about my bizarre encounter with Donald back in 1994 and he did give me some insights that helped me understand what happened (one day I’ll write more about this). David has been reporting about Trump for over 3 decades. One thing that David told me that caught me off guard was that journalism is the fastest decreasing white collar profession;
40% of journalism jobs have disappeared. When I worked in the LA Times there were 1,200 journalists, now there are only 400. The newspapers in the whole Bay Area, all the way to Santa Cruz, employ less journalists than the San Jose Mercury News used to employ.
In his book, David talks about Trump’s “political termites” (great long audio interview covering his new book) and how they are destroying government as we know it in ways that are not being reported by MSM. This alone is a reason to read his latest book. Almost nothing is being reported at any levels, it’s not “exciting” and there are not enough investigative journalists to shine a light on them.
The Fourth Estate is not up to the job of checking and balancing the Trump regime.
My main question to David was; “Can Trump pull off a coup d’état”. Thankfully his answer was; “No”
He would need support from the military leadership who in his opinion would not happen.
Then again, he said, if something happens, like a war with North Korea, all bets are off.
Another significant question that I asked him is if impeaching Trump was possible and could happen. He is definitely in favor but he doesn’t think that Dems can get the 60 seats needed in the Senate in the 2018 midterms. (67 seats as eeff reminds us below). OTOH he believes that if Dems can take over Congress, the public hearings they could conduct would make it very difficult for him to get re-elected in 2020.
We also talked about what Trump would do if he doesn’t get re-elected. He said that he would seek revenge and incite violence. Uncharted waters.
BTW, we don’t agree on everything. We agreed that Hillary would have been much better for America even we both had issues with her. Putin sees her as an enemy, unlike how he sees Trump, so it was no surprise what he did in 2016 to sabotage her campaign. But as you know I was a Bernie supporter and David is not. He refreshed my memory about what he reported about Jane Sanders and he told me why he thought that Bernie would have been a bad president due to his lack of managerial skills. I don’t deny this but I do believe that Bernie attracted very capable progressives to help him with his vision for America.
So, read David’s latest book to really get an idea of how much trouble we are in, outside the Putin/Russian oligarchy issue. We need to fully understand what we are up against to effectively resist.