US POLITICAL COMMENTARY: “Reckoning with a Trump Presidency, and the Eite Democrates Who Helped Deliver It” / The Intercept / Betsy Reed, Jeremy Scahill, and Glenn Greenwald ☮

https://soundcloud.com/the_intercept/reckoning

THE UNITED STATES has been plunged into a state of purgatory following the election of Donald Trump. In all political quarters, people are engaged in their own post-mortem analysis of how this happened and what it means, not only for the future of this country, but for the world. Trump ran on a pledge to engage in mass deportations, deny Muslims entry to the U.S., strip abortion rights, and “bomb the shit” out of ISIS. Although Trump has staked out conflicting positions on a wide range of issues over the past several years, his campaign centered on an overtly nativist agenda. And his running mate, Mike Pence, is one of the key leaders of the radical religious right contingent of the Republican Party.

While many Democrats are pointing fingers outside their own ranks to make sense of the stunning defeat of Hillary Clinton, few are willing to examine how their choice of nominee and the campaign they ran shaped the result. In this podcast, Intercept Editor-in-Chief Betsy Reed and co-founders Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill break down how we got here and what a Trump presidency means for civil liberties, surveillance, war, abortion rights, and other issues. Below is a lightly edited transcript of the conversation.

Lightly edited transcript of the conversation may be found here . . .