Such an important interview. - Molly
From Democracy Now!
transcript interview with longtime investigative journalist Allan Nairn...
From Attorney
General Jeff Sessions to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, many of Trump’s key
administration members are far-right-wing figures who are seeking to dismantle
the very agencies that they have been picked to head. For more on this
right-wing revolution, we speak with longtime activist and journalist Allan
Nairn.
AMY GOODMAN: This
is Democracy
Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report.
I’m Amy Goodman. Our guest for the hour is investigative journalist Allan
Nairn. I wanted to play for you, Allan, just a few clips, excerpts of not Fox,
but of MSNBC and CNN introducing
their guests.
JOY-ANN REID: Joining
me now, MSNBC contributor
Malcolm Nance and former CIAanalyst
Fred Fleitz.
ERIN BURNETT: The
former CIA counterterrorism
official Phil Mudd.
ANA CABRERA: I’m
joined by former CIA undercover
operative Lindsay Moran.
HALLIE JACKSON: Jeremy
Bash, former chief of staff at the CIA and Department of Defense
and an MSNBC national
security analyst.
AMY GOODMAN: So
there you have just a couple people, some of the hosts, introducing their
commentators on not Fox, but CNN and
MSNBC—FBI, CIA,
military, increasingly populating the pundit classes on the airwaves.
ALLAN NAIRN: Yeah,
many liberals are relying on authoritarian institutions to save them from the
authoritarian, authoritarian institutions like the CIA, FBI, Pentagon. If you come from
one of those places, you have a better chance of getting on, say, MSNBC than
you do if you’re an activist.
AMY GOODMAN: So
what about what’s happening today in the media? What about the coverage that
we’re seeing and what’s happening? You talk about a rightist revolution taking
place. The main thrust of CNN and MSNBC, a number
of liberals—this is not Fox, which was talking a lot about how much President
Trump has accomplished—in the six-month mark that we just passed, they were
saying something like that he’s tweeted 900-something times, passed no laws and
only got one Supreme Court justice, that basically no laws—nothing has happened.
He’s a do-nothing, speak-everything president. You feel very differently about
this.
ALLAN NAIRN: Yeah.
First, they have a radical agenda to roll back, essentially, all social
progress.
AMY GOODMAN: The
Trump administration.
ALLAN NAIRN: Well,
the Trump administration and also the very radical Republican Party, which now
controls both houses of Congress and 34 governorships and state legislatures.
And they’ve already done a lot. I mean, Trump has an executive order demanding
that two regulations, on things like health, safety, labor rights, air
pollution, water pollution—everything you can imagine—get revoked for every new
one that’s put in. They’re allowing institutions like Sinclair Broadcasting,
which had an actual financial deal, exchange, with the Trump campaign, a
radical right-wing outfit, to expand their TV station holdings nationwide to
twice the level that would usually be allowed under the regulatory regime.
There’s many steps that are being taken that are not going to be rolled
back, even if there is a change in administration. Even if you got, you know, a
left-wing president, once Sinclair takes over ownership of those stations,
they’re not going to—there’s no piece of paper they can sign to roll that back.
Many of these actions they’re taking have—are either very difficult to reverse
or they are irreversible, like death. You know, the various estimates about the
repeal of Obamacare perhaps causing 28,000 deaths, 43,000 deaths, that’s not
even to mention the amount of deaths that are occurring, the tens of thousands
that are occurring, because of our failure, day by day, to implement a full
coverage, as under single payer. You know, these consequences are irreversible.
And they’re not—they haven’t achieved nearly as much as they could, because of
Trump’s craziness. But they are moving.
And they are seeking to take advantage of the fact that the U.S. system
is much less democratic than many people realize. There are a series of levers
that can be used to overcome democracy, ranging from the Electoral College to a
Senate system where a minority of voters have a vast—a large majority of
senators, to congressional and state legislative-level gerrymandering, to the
possibility of voter suppression, to the House and Senate rules which allow you
to block a bill even if it has big support from a majority of the senators or
House members. The only way to overcome these structural obstacles is through a
mass wave of democratic participation, a grassroots surge. And that’s why
they’re so interested in voter suppression, because they want to block that.
They want to shrink the pool of voters to be dominated by their supporters.
AMY GOODMAN: So,
if the media were covering these issues—let’s talk about what the media is
covering. If you turn on MSNBC or
you turn on CNN and
you go away for an hour or two and you come back, you might think that you had
put it on hold and that you just—they were just completing a sentence. And it’s
invariably about Russia. Talk about the coverage.
ALLAN NAIRN: Yeah,
for many months, you’ve seen like an 80/20 ratio of coverage, Russia/other
matters. And I think the fact that the press has done that and that many
liberals have let these two commercial outfits, CNN and MSNBC, largely
dominate, set their political agenda, that’s one reason why Trump’s approval
rating is as high as it is, you know, in the mid to high thirties.
AMY GOODMAN: You’re
saying it’s high because of their Russia coverage, their contention that—
ALLAN NAIRN: Yeah,
I think if the ratio were reversed and you were giving 20 percent coverage to
Russia, 80 percent to the actual substantive acts of Trump and the Republican
Congress and the Republican governors, I think Trump’s rating would be down in
the twenties, because the fact—
AMY GOODMAN: Well,
now it’s only at 33 percent.
ALLAN NAIRN: Yeah,
because the facts are so outrageous. But because of the structural levers that
the right has—now has control over on every front, because of the structural
advantages, I—my own personal guess is if the Trump-Clinton election were rerun
today, if the congressional elections were held today, I think Trump would
squeak out another win. I think the Republicans would lose seats but narrowly
retain control of Congress.
Please continue this transcript, or to
watch the full interview, please go here: https://www.democracynow.org/2017/8/9/a_rightist_revolution_allan_nairn_on?utm_source=Democracy+Now%21&utm_campaign=db5c641381-Daily_Digest&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fa2346a853-db5c641381-191574905
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