DAVID CORN wrote the Mother Jones cover story – The Most Important Election of Our Lives, declared that “The Russia scandal is the most important scandal in the history of the United States”, and co-authored with Michael Isikoff, Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump. Who better to talk to at this moment…less than two weeks till the midterms.

https://www.motherjones.com

I read an interview by Dahr Jamail with today’s guest, cultural communication expert Milton Bennett, at Truthout.org. Titled Is There a Cult of Trump? It spells out the methods utilized – consciously or unconsciously – by Trump to turn his followers into a cult – impervious to outside or contrary influence and united in defense of their aims and their leader. It’s a story of tactics and behavior that transform the Trump phenomenon into something more dangerous than a simple political divide.

https://www.idrinstitute.org/

Donald Trump proudly admitted at a rally that he had made stuff up in his meeting with Canadian PM Trudeau. CHARLES LEWIS titled his 2014 book 935 Lies because that was the number of untruths the Bush-Cheney administration used to justify the US invasion of Iraq. Trump has taken lying to a unimaginable level (at least 2000 lies in his first year), but the book lays out the conditions that made Trump’s election possible. Lewis is a former 60 Minutes producer and founder of two Pulitzer Prize-winning organizations, the Center for Public Integrity and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

https://www.charles-lewis.com/

PETER SCHRAG, longtime editor of The Sacramento Bee, makes the case that “no party, no lobby, no organization has been as formidable an adversary to the Washington of Donald Trump, Paul Ryan, and Mitch McConnell as California has. None has both the will and the heft that California brings to this fight. None has been as determined.” And he reminds us that California has come a long way since 1994 and Prop 187.