Trump’s War on Truth and Science (with James Morone)

Trump briefly talked about “cooling things down.” Then came the escalation.

This week on The Oath and The Office, Corey Brettschneider and John Fugelsang look at how President Trump is using political violence not as a reason for restraint, but as a weapon against his opponents. Jimmy Kimmel and Trevor Noah are targeted for jokes. A 60 Minutes interview becomes another venue for attacking the press. And the administration’s suit against the Southern Poverty Law Center raises a larger question: is law enforcement being turned into a tool of political retaliation?

We also turn to the Supreme Court’s major Fourth Amendment case over geofence warrants and cell location data. The old law-school hypotheticals about government surveillance no longer feel hypothetical. With companies like Palantir helping build the modern surveillance state, the threat of databases tracking protesters, dissidents, and political opponents is suddenly very real.

Then Corey is joined by James A. Morone, Professor Emeritus at Brown University and one of the country’s leading political scientists, to discuss his new book with David Blumenthal, "Whiplash: From the Battle for Obamacare to the War on Science". The book tells the inside story of how Obama, Trump, and Biden transformed health care politics, from the fight over Obamacare to COVID, Operation Warp Speed, anti-poverty policy, and Trump’s war on science itself.

Get the book from Yale University Press:
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300263480/whiplash/