author and former talk show host
Charlie Sykes is the author of Fail U: The False Promise of Higher Education, Why the Right Went Wrong: Conservatism -- from Goldwater to Trump and Beyond, and How the Right Lost Its Mind. He is a former editor-in-chief of RightWisconsin.com and former host of WNYC's Indivisible, a public radio program about America in a time of change.
The state of the GOP and scrambled political lines Some Republicans feel like their party was the victim of a hostile takeover by Donald Trump. These #NeverTrumpers are still nursing their wounds -- and a number of them are reaching across the Left-Right divide to form unlikely alliances.
Sexual harassment hits both sides on Capitol Hill Segment description: Democrats may be in a precarious position on harassment allegations. Should the public differentiate between the Roy Moores and the Al Frankens?
The 'bully pulpit' in a divided nation After condemning Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan on Monday, President Trump spoke again yesterday of this weekend’s violence at the University of Virginia. The White House scheduled a press conference to change the subject from Saturday’s violence at the University of Virginia to infrastructure repair, but President Trump turned it into another defense of armed white racists and the demonstration they called Unite-the-Right. He seemed to find moral equivalence between armed white racists supporting a Confederate symbol and those who protested. David Duke and other white nationalists say they’re grateful for those words; Republicans are almost unanimous in their outrage. What are the consequences when a President provokes ideas and emotions that go back to the Civil War?
Trump attacks the integrity of the election in final debate Last night’s final presidential debate was almost traditional at the beginning—with disagreements on substantive issues crisply delivered by both candidates. But Hillary Clinton got under Donald Trump’s skin with a comment about his relationship with Vladimir Putin.
Trump versus the media: can either side win? Every politician battles the media, including Hillary Clinton. But her toxic relations with reporters are nothing like Donald Trump's. Now, after helping Trump start his campaign with $2 billion worth of free air-time, are the media turning against him? Even one right-wing talk-show hosts says, "We've created a monster." Mainstream reporters insist Trump's contradictions and outright falsehoods are changing the rules. But others say Clinton's getting a free pass. Is media credibility already too compromised to survive this year's campaign?
Replacing Obamacare: Now you see it… now you don’t As the Senate deliberates replacing Obmacare, health coverage for millions of people is at stake. There've been no public hearings, and a draft measure won't be made public. Is the House version so unpopular that that Senate is hiding a version that looks much the same?
Who's to blame for the opioid crisis? Some of the lawyers who took on Big Tobacco are now going after Big Pharma. It’s all about the deadly epidemic of opioid use. Are the drug companies to blame? What about the users? Later, on today’s Talking Point: making sense of Britain’s upset election.
Trump's new look at civil rights and global warming President Trump is reportedly ready to pull the US out of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. We look at the possible consequences. On the second half of the program, we hear about cuts in Obama-Era civil rights programs called for by the Trump Administration's first budget plan.
