>> From WXXI News.

This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

>> Our connection this hour will soon be made at a polling place near you.

Allies of the Trump administration in states across the country have floated the idea of assigning Ice to watch the polls in November.

The administration has said that likely won't be necessary, but President Trump has other ideas for the coming midterms.

He has said he wants to nationalize the elections because he doesn't trust states to do it right.

If you're a Trump supporter, that might sound logical.

For everyone else, this sounds like a threat to steer the outcome.

After all, Trump said at the state of the Union that the only way for Democrats to win is to cheat.

He's essentially guaranteeing a Republican victory.

And what does Congress say about this?

By now, you know, that very question is just a joke.

The congressional majority doesn't say anything beyond praising the president.

Earlier this month, speaker Mike Johnson attended at an event at one of President Trump's Florida Golf Resorts, Doral.

Johnson said that Trump is, quote, the most active, energized and successful president of his lifetime.

He said that while Trump stays up late, often posting on social media in the middle of the night, he thinks.

Johnson says that doesn't matter because Trump has extraordinary stamina.

He said that Trump has relentlessly driven to help average Americans, adding that Trump has a work ethic, work ethic like no other president he's ever seen.

Does that sound like it's laying it on thick?

That's rather mild compared to cabinet meetings, which now resemble the staged events meant to prop up autocrats in foreign countries.

Yesterday, top White House adviser Stephen Miller spent nearly five minutes lavishing praise on President Trump, calling him the greatest leader in history.

They were on stage at an event titled Make America Safe Again.

Trump clearly loved hearing it, and when Miller was finished, here's how Trump then tossed it over to FBI Director Kash Patel.

>> So, Kash, see if you can top that.

I don't know, that's a tough one, Kash.

>> That is tough.

You know, Mr.

President, as I look around this venue, I see and I'm reminded again why we have the greatest warriors on God's green earth.

The men and women serving in uniform, the men and women serving and wearing the badge, and law enforcement, our police, our sheriffs around the state of Tennessee.

I'm reminded that Americans exist to protect this country day in and day out.

And they've done it like we've done it here.

But what we didn't have was you.

We didn't have a commander in chief who backed the blue, who resourced the blue, who funded the military, who did whatever it takes to safeguard every single life.

And here in Memphis, Tennessee, you have put on a show for the world.

You have allowed us to go out there and capture gang bangers, rapists, murderers, drug dealers at record historic levels.

And for me, a first generation Indian American kid whose parents fled a genocide in East Africa to become the ninth director of the FBI.

I'm living the wildest dream you could possibly imagine, sir.

>> That's Kash Patel yesterday with Donald Trump, now investigative journalist, author and educator David Cay Johnston recently said that the checks and balances that are supposed to animate the American government are failing.

Johnston said that Trump desires the adulation that dictators receive.

And on Thursday night, Johnston is delivering a lecture in Brockport titled Steps You Can Take to Restore Democracy.

But first, he's talking about that theme right here on Connections.

Welcome back to the program, sir.

>> Glad to be with you again, Evan.

>> What do you make of that clip from Kash Patel following Stephen Miller yesterday?

>> Well, it's all about him and it's all about militarism.

It's not about the ideals that are in the preamble to our Constitution.

We started this country as an idea, and the idea was that we can choose our own fate and that if we have a system of ordered liberty, that we can see what ennobling the human spirit in a system of ordered liberty will make possible, what can we achieve?

That's not what is being discussed by people like Kash Patel, who is abusing his position as FBI director in all sorts of ways, particularly, you know, the very thing he criticized Chris Wray, his predecessor, for using the Gulfstream jet assigned to the FBI director for all sorts of personal trips, including trips for his girlfriend.

Yeah.

any other administration, this would have been a scandal at both parties would have gone after.

But here, the Republicans just have completely handed their spines over to Donald.

I call them the Quisling Republicans.

For those who don't know, Quisling was the collaborator Prime minister of Norway in World War Two who was tried and executed as soon as the war was over.

And the leaders in both the House and the Senate in the majority are simply failing in their constitutional obligations to act as a check and balance on the executive and under our Constitution, the executive is supposed to basically be the errand boy of Congress, not our dictator.

>> David Cay Johnston here for the hour.

I have to say, David doesn't know this, but we're still in this multi-day effort to fix a put together a new phone system.

So if you want to reach out to us, you got to email us at wxxi.org.

We're not protecting David from callers.

David loves to joust with people, but you actually can call and leave a voicemail.

We just can't take it live.

So that's kind of what we're dealing with here.

So if you do want to call, it's 8442958442958255.

But again email Connections at WXXI dot the kind of praise that starts each cabinet meeting now is uncomfortable for me to watch.

And I cannot relate to the kind of person who not only is comfortable being on the receiving end of almost half an hour of praise, that is almost absurd in its grandiosity, but actually demands that kind of praise.

What does that say about the person?

>> Well, first of all, it says that human beings are by and large herd animals, and we follow leaders.

so whatever you think of Ronald Reagan, he was a great leader.

He led us out of the New Deal and into the era that we're in.

And Trump, in that sense is a leader.

And to be in the Trump's inner circle, you must constantly praise fearless leader who is perfect in all ways.

I mean, this is cult like behavior.

It's not something that hasn't happened before.

In fact, just the other night I watched the new Nuremberg movie that was an Oscar nominee.

>> Russell Crowe.

Russell Crowe.

I've not seen it yet.

>> Russell Crowe is the reichsmarshall and Rami Malek as the psychiatrist who was assigned to learn about the 22 Nazi leaders.

We initially tried, and it is a movie very clearly aimed at today and what's going on with our government.

We do not live in a democracy right now.

We live in a dictatorship.

It is not a fully consolidated dictatorship, but even Hitler, who was elected to office, it took him years to fully consolidate his dictatorship.

But step by step, item by item, Trump is doing everything he can to force you to either accept what he says or be punished by the government for it.

which completely obliterates your first.

he is going after the second at the moment, but may, but your first fourth, fifth, 14th amendment rights.

>> But David, you know, the critics will say you can't invoke Hitler every time you're upset with Trump.

That's hyperbolic.

What are you doing?

>> Well, I didn't invoke Hitler until I saw Nuremberg.

To be honest, I have not been doing that.

There are plenty of other dictators around the world, but the the playbook of dictators is well studied.

It's well understood.

I've read the works of the leading scholars in this field and with journalists in this field.

And the, the key things dictators have to do are to quash any dissent, to use force or the threat of force to discourage people from standing up, to try to take away independent courts.

The most important guarantee of our liberties we have are independent courts to pass laws that punish people you don't like, and to find ways to financially reward your friends, and to make sure the government doesn't work.

One of the things common to dictatorships is you will point people you know are not competent to run government services, so that people will be angry that the government isn't providing those services.

>> Now, one of the interesting observations I've made recently is that foreign journalists are calling you because you've covered Trump for decades.

So they call you because they want to know what's going on in the United States.

And one example is a New Zealand journalist and a New Zealand journalist wanted to know how you saw the president's attempt to consolidate power.

And what you told him was essentially what you were telling us today, which is that we are not in this country in a democracy anymore.

We are also not fully in a dictatorship because of the still unfolding consolidation.

Tell us more about what you mean by that.

>> Well, it dictators need to build out their psychological and physical infrastructure.

And so that, you know, it takes time.

They need some laws passed that will, for example, make it harder for you to vote.

We're seeing that going on in real time restricting the franchise if you're a democracy, they need to replace military officers who are loyal to the Constitution with those who will be loyal to the leader of the cult or the dictatorship.

And we've seen some of that, not as much as I expected, but we clearly have seen a number of totally qualified people dismissed.

The Trump administration has dismissed the very best people dealing with Iran in a counterintelligence fashion, dealing with Russia and counterintelligence.

Then you reward people who you think will do anything for you.

So one of the things that we've astonishingly seen under Trump is the pardoning, not just of the J. Six people who tried to overthrow the government, what Trump calls a day of love.

but the former president of Honduras who was involved in or was convicted of 400 tons of cocaine, cocaine is sold by the gram.

There are 28g to an ounce, 16oz to a pound, and we're talking about 400 tons.

He's pardoned a number of pedophiles pardoned financial crooks who ran schemes and ripped off people for billions of dollars that they no longer have to pay back from their ill gotten goods.

They now get to keep the money they stole.

Donald is an actively pro-criminal president.

Now, one of the things that I've I've known Donald almost 40 years.

I've spent hundreds of hours with him, studied him closely.

It's important to understand that Donald is the third generation head of a four generation, white collar crime family.

It's not the only white collar crime family in America.

We have a bunch of them, but we focus most of our law enforcement resources on street crime, which is falling dramatically in this country, just as an example.

>> And it was in the Biden administration.

>> It was in the Biden administration, and it only upticked during Trump's first term.

The trend has been downward for a long time.

And a good example of this is when I was covering the LAPD for the L.A.

times.

we had 1028 murders in 1980.

Last year, they had 232.

And the city has a third more population than it did.

So the murder rate in Los Angeles has fallen 85%.

>> Since 1980.

>> Since 1980.

And all across the country, that's what we're seeing, less and less street crime, but we're seeing more and more sophisticated white collar crime with people who steal with a pen, who steal through economic extortion, not through threats of it that break your legs.

>> Is it that sophisticated?

I don't know if that's the right term.

From what I've seen.

>> I mean, it is it is.

I take your question that the Trump administration is selling clemency and pardons and, well, granting clemency or a pardon is an official act.

And therefore no president, no matter how outrageous the pardon is or the clemency, can be prosecuted, arranging to take money, even if it's not for yourself, it's for an ally, which is what's going on here.

that's a crime.

And Donald Trump should be prosecuted for that as soon as he's out of office.

Assuming he leaves office.

And that's not at all clear.

>> So what does the final consolidation of power in this particular government look like?

And the next 1 to 2, I mean, before the end of this term, what could it look like?

>> Well they must retain control of the House and the Senate.

At least one of them.

>> So these midterms really.

>> Make these midterms really matter.

If, if Trump is able to retain control by intimidating voters, having ballots seized by this new policy, the post office that well, we're not going to guarantee your post postage cancellation stamp will appear promptly.

>> Yesterday he called.

He said it's not mail in voting, it's mail in cheating.

And he claimed that the United States is the only country in the world that does it, which is baloney.

>> Absolute nonsense.

Yes.

And then the post office just got a Supreme Court ruling that even if two postal workers refused to deliver your mail to you because they're racist and they don't like your race, which is the actual case in front of them, you don't have a case.

there is no requirement that the Postal Service actually deliver your mail to you.

That is an astonishingly helpful to a dictator decision.

The dissents in that are, I think, very important.

So but you need to you need to get control of the courts.

You need to maintain control of the Congress or at least get it to be neutralized.

And then you need to have the threat of state violence.

And one of the questions people should ask themselves is, why are we buying up these empty warehouses and not for reduced prices?

Because they've been sitting empty for a long time, but for premiums, in one case, we're paying six times.

the value of that building and perhaps ten times the value of it, depending on how you want to measure it.

And who owns this particular building.

It turns out to be a Russian oligarch.

Why are we putting money in the pockets of Russian oligarchs?

And why are we building detention centers to hold hundreds of thousands of people?

Well, you would only do that if you intend to round up people.

And so what did Donald Trump say over the weekend in writing on Truth Social?

Now that we've defeated the Iranians, we only have to deal with the the real enemy, the Democrats, the lunatic Democrats.

He's calling people who belong to the other party enemy.

And you shouldn't miss what he's planning to do here.

You will either obey Donald Trump or you will find yourself at risk of being locked up, of your employer being pressured to fire you.

Your banker is being pressured to call any notes you have.

unless you bend your knee or he loses his power because we put in a new majority in Congress.

>> So let's talk about this coming election then, because that consolidation of power hinges on that control.

You talked about his need for Congress to be, you know, completely.

>> Neutered.

>> Obsequious, whatever.

But they are they self neutered?

Yes, the majority has.

And I don't say this as a I hope as a partisan, although I got a an email yesterday from someone saying, you know, we're not representing the pro-Trump view enough here.

And I actually do try to find plenty of folks who would.

>> Yeah, people, a lot of people should hear unfiltered what the Trump argument is.

>> It's not easy to, to get them to come on.

>> This program.

>> But we try.

>> I do overseas TV almost every day of the week and often twice a day.

And the people I am put up against on a panel who are pro-Trump almost always are ill informed, don't know the most basic facts, but they do know how to express what Donald has said in his tweets or his truth socials.

>> Okay, well, I just want to kind of preface this part of the conversation by saying, you know, that that email, which I read on the air in full criticizing us and what we do here is I, we take it to heart.

We do want all I want to understand the way people vote.

I want to understand the way people think.

Yeah.

I think that's key to where we go next as a country.

but I don't consider myself an anti-Republican or anti-conservative.

I I think it is important to try to speak with clear eyes and, and a clear intentions here.

>> It is not good to have one party government.

I mean, we have some counties in the eastern quadrant of the U.S.

where one party or the other has controlled the county government for 100 years.

>> What about cities?

Cities are.

>> Cities, counties.

And when you have one party rule, eventually you get inefficiency, corruption.

that's why it's important to have two large parties.

we used to, have elections that pointed toward the middle of the country, but we have so developed gerrymandering with computers that we now have much more extreme people being elected both left and right in this country.

And that's just not good for democracy.

>> And so where this goes in November is hard to predict.

Sitting here in March, a couple weeks ago, that's when the buzz started that, well, the White House is going to deploy Ice to be poll watchers.

And DHS has said, well, we don't think we have to do that.

You know, we don't know.

We don't we don't think we have to do that.

But the president has said mail in voting should be disallowed.

He calls it Mail-In cheating, and he wants federal control over these elections because he says there's too many states that would rig it for the Democrats otherwise.

So.

So what are those options do you think is likely and what can people do about it?

>> Well, the first thing people should know is that there's a federal law that you can't have troops.

Law enforcement within 1000ft of a polling place.

On the other hand, put a them within 1000ft of a lot of polling places.

You could have a stop, a checkpoint on the road to intimidate people, right?

for a half century, the Republican Party was under a federal court order that they were not to call up people and say, if you show up at the voting place, we're going to arrest you.

We have a warrant for your arrest.

the court finally held that.

Well, this hasn't been a problem for half a century.

We're going to lift the court order.

And literally the next day, that policy was revived by the Republicans.

they're trying to limit the number of places you can go to vote to do this.

So limiting the vote, trying to get votes thrown out.

And then no matter the outcome, if you lose, claiming it was rigged are going to be fundamental elements.

You're going to see Donald is incapable of accepting that he didn't win.

Doesn't matter what the facts show.

He just that's not possible in his mind.

so I think you're going to see a lot of effort.

So one of the most important things to do is register to vote, get other people to register to vote, check two weeks out from the election and maybe again a couple of days before to make sure you're still on the voter rolls.

If you're a lawyer, every lawyer in this country should volunteer to take off.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of election week in November and make themselves available days training.

They can learn enough election law to go to court and go to election boards on behalf of people.

If you go to a polling place and they tell you you can't vote, ask for a provisional ballot, that's a ballot that will be reviewed, and then they'll decide whether to count it, but do not turn around and walk away.

>> Do they want people to walk out?

>> Oh, absolutely.

And they do things like in Dodge City, Kansas.

That is the iconic city of the Old West in America.

Manifest Destiny Cowboys.

they created a single polling place.

It is at the end of the bus line and then a one mile walk outside the city, which is about 32% Hispanic.

deliberately done so that poor people without cars wouldn't vote.

We've seen in the most recent by elections, people standing in line.

And because the voting machines aren't working properly or there's some other problem, then we have when the time for the polls to close, there's an argument made by Trumpers.

Well, those people standing in line, they should have gotten there earlier.

Their votes shouldn't be counted.

And if a judge says no, everybody in line gets to vote, then there's challenges to those votes taking away the legitimacy of elections and making you question the legitimacy of elections is a key.

Dictators play.

And don't forget, there were 61 cases brought over the 2020 election.

And every time a federal judge would say, well, counselor, what evidence of fraud do you have?

The answer was the same.

Well, we don't have any evidence.

We just know there was fraud.

That's not how it works in courts.

You have to have actual evidence.

>> The the pro-Trump argument here would sound something like this.

They would say, you know, you talk a lot about how the president doesn't isn't going to allow for a legitimate election, but you sound like if you don't win, you want to go to court.

If you don't win, you want to marshal attorneys, you won't be able to accept losing.

>> I think that we have good reason to trust election results in this country.

we have had recounts of votes where in, for instance, Arizona, Trump and Kari Lake have claimed the election was stolen and recount after recount around the country at enormous expense has shown the voting counts were accurate.

There is absolutely no evidence of massive voter fraud, the Heritage Foundation, the right wing organization that wrote project 2025, which Trump blessed when it began and then said, I know nothing about and then has been implementing ever since their own research found a handful of fraudulent voting by non-citizens and all of them, if I recall correctly, were are almost all of them had a green card and they thought a green card entitled them to vote, but the Cato Institute found 23 cases over 20 years out of billions of ballots cast for various offices, 23 cases that is less than insignificant.

It clearly didn't change any vote.

any election outcomes.

>> Okay, so you're you and I say you as someone who wants votes to be counted.

You want everyone who is in line to vote.

You don't want people intimidated away from polls.

You'll accept any result as long as there isn't an intimidation, suppression.

>> Yes.

And I think it's I think it would be much better if we had much larger percentages of Americans voting.

Voting was set up originally in this country on Tuesdays, so that workers could be blocked from voting back in the days when only white men who owned property could vote, it was still limited, so business owners could check themselves out to go vote.

We've been expanding the franchise.

we still have a long way to go, but the broader swath of Americans who vote, the more our government will represent the will of the people.

>> So let's close the loop on this coming fall with what happens if the president loses and I say the president, he.

>> The his party.

>> Loses, his party loses control of at least the House, maybe even the Senate.

It is possible.

If you look at the polling now, all the data says if the election were tomorrow, they'd get killed in the House and they could lose the Senate.

They could lose races that they've got no business losing based on some of their voter registration rolls, but set aside the point of if the Republican Party wins or is able to hold control.

You've talked about that.

If Trump's party loses, at least the House does that effectively end the consolidation efforts, or do you think the next several years will still be very, very difficult?

>> Oh, it will intensify Donald's efforts to strengthen and shore up his dictatorship where he can, and to fold and withdraw from areas where he can't.

But if there's a change in the leadership of just the House, they will immediately begin issuing subpoenas, ordering the turning over of information.

>> taking the administration to court.

I mean, let's see, this is an administration let's remember that has gone into an unconstitutional and illegal war only Congress can declare war.

The president only has the authority for protecting in the face of an imminent threat, American citizens, property or military assets.

That's not at all what happened here in in Iran.

we, we have a system where courts are supposed to rule on matters and they can rule very quickly when they want to.

But we've seen judges, not only Trump appointees, some other judges as well, delay and delay and delay issuing decisions on cases that have weakened the rule of law and benefited the administration.

And if if the Republicans lose control of either chamber, and especially if they lose both, then you're going to see Trump do everything he can to stymie those efforts.

And in all of this, don't forget the Epstein files.

>> Well, I mean, I think in many ways that's been put on the back burner with a war in Iran and energy crisis growing by the day and affordability and.

>> The federal government is capable of chewing gum and walking at the same time.

>> If they desire to.

>> Exactly.

>> And that's, you know, Ro Khanna Thomas Massie, working across the aisle, have done what they can in Congress for the moment to try to compel more releases.

>> One of the things the Democrats, because they're in the minority, I suspect, haven't done as a strategy matter, is seek Epstein file records that are not in the possession of the FBI.

When the FBI raided the three locations of Epstein the government is required to turn over a detailed inventory of everything they took.

And we know that they took a lot of CD discs of audio and video.

likely those are central to the extortion racket that was being run by Jeffrey Epstein, where he got very wealthy men in compromising positions.

And then how much would you pay as a multi-billionaire to not have your life ruined and spend the rest of your life in prison because you got lured into having sex with with a girl who is beneath the age of consent.

And that was his racket, plain and plain and clear.

There's no difficulty understanding what he was doing from what's already in the public record, but the FBI is not the only source of those documents.

There are copies and other places.

And why haven't the Democrats gone after him?

Because I don't think they want to help the Republicans.

I mean, both parties engage in, you know, long knives, political decisions about how they deal with things like hearings and oversight.

And they want the Democrats want to hang Jeffrey Epstein and pedophilia around the necks of every Republican running for office.

>> Okay, I was going to grab a break and come back to your emails because we've got a pile of them.

But before we do that, let me just say one other thing.

On Epstein.

You are a journalist who somehow ends up with tax returns before most of the other others in the public.

You've got your ways of getting your hands on documents.

You got anything on the Epstein files that we don't know about?

>> No.

And I, until Alice came about more recently, I didn't write about this.

Julie Brown.

>> Yeah, she's done an amazing job.

>> Who was at the Philadelphia Inquirer as I was as an extraordinary reporter, and she has done the most amazing job she has.

And the one thing that has come out that's very clear and people shouldn't miss is Jeffrey Epstein was not an anomaly.

He was part of a global ring of wealthy men who were into raping girls as young as nine years old.

And these men have not been held accountable.

Even though there's no statute of limitations in the U.S.

on federal crimes like this.

And the story some of them have given to explain what they're doing.

You know, Leon Black, I was getting tax advice from Jeffrey Epstein.

Jeffrey Epstein doesn't know Jack about taxes.

he was instead getting other things from him.

And one of them, we know.

>> He worked for Bear Stearns before he became Jeffrey Epstein.

>> And yes, he did, but he was more in sales than anything technical.

We now know from The New York Times exposé that ran yesterday that Leon Black was basically paying millions of dollars for women to have sex with him and funneling the money at some point through Jeffrey Epstein, who he had given around $100 million to manage.

>> One of the things that has been, I mean, revelatory in a way that it shouldn't be revelatory.

We should know this by now.

But if you read the emails and again, there's millions of pages that you can't read them all.

But, for example, the owner of the New York Giants Larry Summers, Elon Musk, on Christmas morning, 9 a.m.

on Christmas morning, Elon Musk is emailing Jeffrey Epstein.

He's now with his kids.

He's not having a nice holiday participating with as many, many children.

He's emailing Jeffrey Epstein, asking, when is the wildest party you got coming up here?

The brokenness of the souls of the wealthiest people in the world has been amazing to behold.

And that that, by the way, doesn't mean that they all were interested in underage women.

I don't I mean, for example, the owner of the New York Giants was asking for dating advice just in general.

He thought, here's this cool guy.

He's got an island.

You know, it's kind of pathetic.

Larry Summers the same thing.

You know, he doesn't know how to talk to women.

It's pathetic.

It's pathetic.

It's sad.

But I don't want you to speculate.

I want I want you to tell us when it comes to the president of the United States.

We've seen enough to know that he didn't.

At the minimum, he didn't seek Jeffrey Epstein to go down for his obvious crimes.

Right.

But is there anything that tells you there's more in there about Donald Trump?

>> Oh, yeah.

The simple answer to that is if this is a hoax and you are exonerated, why are you fighting so hard to hide more than half the records?

And why does it turn out?

There are even more records that you didn't tell anybody about that were found only because you did such a sloppy job redacting material.

>> But we don't know for sure what's in there.

>> We absolutely do not know to a certainty whether Donald Trump is a serial child rapist.

We know there's a lot of smoke.

Donald says it's not true.

So if if those files will exonerate you, why would you fight so hard to keep them hidden?

And, you know, in in court cases, juries are allowed to infer from your behavior what is the logical truth of this?

And, you know, if somebody accused me of something and I there's a file that'll clear me, I want that file in there right now.

I will sign any, you know, breaking and do not disclose agreement unredacted or release.

>> The record.

>> Yeah, yeah.

Clear.

Clear me.

and by the way, the argument you will eventually hear from justices, we can't release any of these video and photographic images because showing an image of a adult male having sex with an underage boy or girl is itself, criminal pornography.

And merely viewing that as a crime.

There's an exception in the law for prosecutors, judges, and juries.

And, so Congress should be able to see those things even if we can't.

>> When we come back, we got your emails for David Cay Johnston, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author, professor of practice in journalism at RIT.

He's got an event coming up on Thursday evening.

and I gotta ask, David, where is your event on Thursday evening?

>> It's at the tower at Suny Brockport.

And the talk starts.

The doors open at 530.

We're going to start at 630. the Lift Bridge bookstore in Brockport is bringing books of mine to sign.

If you have books of mine, you want them to sign them.

I'll be happy to sign those.

And we're going to talk about restoring our democracy.

>> That is Thursday evening.

Doors open at five 3630 for the event that starts out in Brockport with David Cay Johnston.

>> At the tower.

>> Your emails on the other side of this break.

Coming up in our second hour starting next year, New York State will become only the second state in the country to require K through 12 climate education in public schools.

So what does the climate curriculum look like?

It's about cause effect and even solutions for climate change.

We're going to talk to some of the people who have tried to help shape that, and some educators as well.

That's next.

Our.

>> Support for your public radio station comes from our members and from Mary Cariola, center, proud supporter of Connections with Evan Dawson.

Believing an informed and engaged community is a connected one, Mary Cariola dot.

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>> This is.

Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Let me start with Linda.

Linda says, I believe that Trump has known all along, like the rest of the world, has known that Putin's plans were to continue with aggression in Ukraine and that Trump knowingly helped Putin with this endeavor through Trump's stalling techniques and maneuvers regarding Ukraine that have continued to occur.

I believe that Putin likely has blackmail type material on Trump, and that they likely have a mutual agreement regarding the stalling of any peace process in Ukraine, as well as an agreement regarding a possible crisis creation in the future that would help Trump's position.

What do you think about that?

That's Linda.

That's a lot of speculation.

>> Well, we know that Donald has kowtowed to Putin in Helsinki in 2018.

He said, I don't trust any of the American intelligence agencies, but I take Vladimir Putin at his word.

He's had at least two meetings with him where there was no one else in the room from the American side, which no president has ever done.

If any previous president had done that, you would hear bipartisan screaming and yelling about the impropriety of that.

And Donald Trump just handed a huge benefit to Putin.

The Russian economy is in serious collapse.

It's a one product economy, fossil fuels.

And Trump just lifted the sanctions that will now allow Russia to sell as much oil as it can get out of the country.

And at the current very high prices, which will help revive his economy and allow him to continue pressing the war against Ukraine.

Now, I want to be also clear, though, Joe Biden made a terrible mistake in the beginning.

He tried to diplomatically deal with for tat every time the Russians did something, we did something in response.

He should have said to Putin, you will not have one soldier put one foot across the border.

And if you do, we will supply unlimited war material, including the latest Himars artillery.

>>, aircraft.

>> Aircraft, rockets training without limitation to stop you.

And he didn't do that.

And so we now have had this war drag on more than four years with an unbelievable butcher's bill.

But in all of this, Donald has been the friend of Putin, not the friend of liberty, not the friend of democracy.

>> Certainly the president would benefit politically from being able to declare that he or Steve Witkoff and his team struck a deal.

But every time I see the outlines of a deal, it looks a lot like what Russia wants.

>> Yeah.

No, all the deals they put forward are Russian deals.

And hey, Steve Witkoff was a real estate guy.

Jared Kushner, who comes from another white collar crime family.

he has no experience in this diplomacy.

You know, there there are serious diplomats who know how to do this, but it's very clear that the Russian game here is attrition.

Just let it drag out and eventually we will succeed.

And Putin doesn't care how many young Russian men he has to kill to do that.

>> Rachel in Canandaigua says, thanks for bringing David Cay Johnston back.

If anyone has the answers, he will.

Every day it seems we have a new.

This is Rachel's email.

A new fresh hell to contend with from this administration.

Please discuss effective ways to fight back against the nightmare.

The latest news from Steve Bannon is that putting ice in the airport is.

Practice for deploying them at polling places.

How can we stop that?

>> Well, we can stop the polling places very simply.

It's against the law.

And that's where if you're listening to the show, if you're a lawyer or if you know a lawyer, you really need to try and talk them into taking off.

So that Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of election week in November the, the lawyer can, having gotten some training help with ballots that people are not being allowed to cast.

Now, this is not particularly a problem in Monroe County or anywhere in New York State, but it's not very far away to Pennsylvania.

It's not very far away to Ohio.

And there will definitely be problems there.

As an individual, hook yourself up with people who care about election integrity, indivisible, a whole variety of other groups reserve a hotel room somewhere go and agree to drive people to the polls with GPS in your car.

You can go to a town you've never been to and drive people does take two people.

You need to have two people, husband and wife.

This is perfect for.

But you know, be a citizen at the end of the day, votes matter.

>> I do.

It's an interesting point about what connects citizenry and all the different ways that people feel disconnected from their society, their country, their communities.

I wonder if this kind of thing will galvanize people.

>> Well, we'll get a bit of a touch of that on the 28th of this month when they have the next no Kings March.

Not well timed in my opinion, because it's not warm enough yet, but you got to get out twice the size of the last.

No Kings demonstration to really begin to have a serious political effect.

It is significant that many of the no Kings demonstrations that have drawn a lot of people are in very deep red districts.

>> We're going to listen to a voicemail that we have.

Again, I want to say we are continually working.

We'll have it fixed soon where we can take live calls, but just dealing with the phone system issues, it's tech.

It happens.

my guest is David Cay Johnston Johnston.

We're talking about his upcoming presentation in Brockport on restoring democracy with the average citizen can do and what we ought to know from his perspective as a journalist who has covered this president in one form or fashion for four decades.

So Kevin and Victor, we're going to listen to the whole voicemail, and we'll have David respond.

Let's listen.

>> Hello, Evan, this is Kevin from Victor.

I just wanted like to reiterate a couple things that David Cay Johnston said on past shows that are truly.

Well, one is that they're going to be firing squads under Donald Trump.

He said that four different times, alarming some of your listeners.

He said that Mueller was going to find all kinds of collusion between Trump and Russia, which of course didn't.

he said that the six conservative justices on the Supreme Court were five white supremacists and one incompetent black man who did not belong in any court.

So who's the white supremacist?

David Kaye?

But I mean, of course, that's absurd.

Amy Coney Barrett has adopted children from Haiti.

Neil Gorsuch has been articulate in defending Native American rights.

and of course, the last, the last time he was on, he said that he was sure Donald Trump had sex with a 12 year old girl in the past.

>> I could go on and on.

But those things, I think, disqualify David Cay Johnston as being a legitimate voice for truth.

And I don't know why you keep bringing him on, because a lot of people, he's just kind of a crazy buffoon as far as concerning the email you read last night, asking you to have more conservative perspectives, I think you can do that.

I don't think it's because people won't come on your show.

I think it's maybe you're not trying hard enough, so I hope you do.

Evan, I love you like a nephew.

God bless you.

See you later.

>> That's a very nice sign off, Kevin.

And I do appreciate that.

I sincerely, David Cay Johnston.

There's a lot there.

Go ahead.

>> Well, all dictatorships ultimately have firing squads.

That's what I've said about Donald Trump.

I haven't in fact, I've been very careful to say it may not happen while he's president.

But if we become a dictatorship, there will be filing firing squads of their equivalent.

Show me a dictatorship that doesn't have them.

Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, North Korea.

but.

>> Again, Kevin says that is so hyperbolic here that you're just taking that leap four miles down the road.

>> It is the nature of dictatorships.

they also have to purge people in the inner circle.

Why?

Because that's part of maintaining discipline and total obedience to the dictator.

But there are there are lots of books Kevin can go get and read on the how dictatorships work.

And they will all confirm what I've said.

on Mueller Mueller found numerous crimes and you don't need the Mueller report to know there was collusion because in July of 2015, a Russian emissary sent an email to Donald Trump Jr.

saying the Kremlin wants to help you win the election for president.

The only thing a patriotic American does to an email like that for any office is pick up the phone, call the FBI and say, I need to speak to someone in counterintelligence.

Instead, the Trumps took the meeting.

They lied about it for a year.

They came up with a cover story that is patently ridiculous, and anybody who knows anything about spycraft.

And by the way, I have exposed spies and foreign agents in my career, knows that their story is utter nonsense.

yes.

I stand by the fact that there are five white supremacists on the Supreme Court.

you know, there are white supremacists out there who have black children during the enslavement era.

Strom Thurmond was a white supremacist.

He had a child who was black with the maid, in the household, and the court has again and again adopted policies that favor white supremacy in this country.

In fact, Chief Justice John Glover Roberts original job with the federal government when he was a freshly minted lawyer, was to work on suppressing nonwhite votes during the Reagan administration and finally on Donald Trump with 12 year old.

We have sworn testimony from victims that at least two of them that Donald Trump raped them, sworn testimony, and the FBI under the Trump administration will not go speak to these women who have, under oath, sworn that this happened.

Now there's lots of other side evidence to support this.

but there is no proof.

I don't dispute that for a minute.

Donald says it's a hoax.

And so, you know, Occam's razor, the simplest answer is usually the right answer.

Why in the world if the Epstein files clear you, would you be fighting so hard to hide them?

And why would you be redacting names in such a sloppy fashion?

Not once or twice, but again and again and again and again and again.

That allow identifying young women who have been operating through a pseudonym like Jane Doe.

And the only logical answer to that is because it's to intimidate other women from coming forward.

But hey, if Donald, if we release all the files and shows Donald didn't do it, I'll be the first person to say I was completely, totally wrong.

>> Well, I will say this.

You can release the rest of the files and his name could be in zero of them.

And it doesn't change the fact that he was aware for years what Epstein was doing, and the most he did was by 2017 said, I don't want him back at Mar-a-Lago, not call the feds, not not use the power of politics.

>> And even that story about.

>> Yeah.

>> Sure is now under attack from people who who know the inside part of that.

So if I can just.

Kevin, your last point, Kevin Donald has hired some of the very best lawyers in this country.

Lawyers.

I have enormous respect for as litigators to come after me.

And after almost 38 years, he has never shown a single factual error.

He's never gotten a comma changed.

Everything is held up.

And that includes when I said Donald was up to his eyeballs with one of the biggest cocaine traffickers in the world, and the things he did for him that are all in my book, The Making of Donald Trump only makes sense if Donald was in the cocaine trafficking business with his partner.

>> last thing, just briefly here, he says that you're the white supremacist because of your criticism of Clarence Justice.

Clarence Thomas.

>> I Clarence Thomas is, I think, unfit to be a judge on any bench.

I'm far from the only person who holds that view.

Thomas has in numerous decisions and statements, including what's called dicta, made it clear he's unfit.

And I'll give you a good example.

He's argued that Utah could choose to become a theocracy.

No, it can't, not under the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court and not under the First Amendment.

And Article six, which says there shall be no religious test for any office.

That's how incompetent he is.

Plus, he's a crook.

He he took this $260,000 land yacht from this super rich guy who has Nazi memorabilia in his garden.

he's a tax cheat.

He didn't report that as income.

Clarence Thomas is unfit to hold office.

If he were serving on any other bench in the country, he would have been removed by now for misconduct.

>> Alex writes to say people concern trolling about mail in voting or voter I.D.

fraud have just never witnessed the process.

I volunteered with Monroe County for the 2022 general elections with absentee and mail in ballots.

There are so many fail safes and sets of eyes, bipartisan sets of eyes that fraud is statistically impossible.

People put more trust in institutions with crappier track records, such as boomers and Facebook.

It's best to understand this as a racialized push to remove poor Black and Hispanic Americans from voting populations.

That's from.

>> Alex and audit after audit has failed to turn up any evidence of significant fraud.

Is there?

People shouldn't vote here and there.

Yeah, 25 of them in 20 years or 23 and 20 years in the whole country.

That's just bupkis.

>> Charlie, we've got to go fast here.

Says thanks for having Mr.

Johnson on the show.

The average American is ill informed, and I truly believe a lot of people are not nice people.

Exactly what philosopher Viktor Frankl discovered during the Holocaust.

The majority of people turned out to not be good.

And the challenge is to join the good people.

Do you agree with that?

>> I think most people are in fact, good, but it's very easy to get people to do things they shouldn't do.

And that's why I strongly encourage people to watch the Russell Crowe Rami Malek movie Nuremberg.

it is very educational on how it is that, that people come to embrace evil and become blind to it.

>> And justice.

Jackson, Robert Jackson.

>> The chief prosecutor for the U.S.

at Nuremberg.

>> We talked to the folks down in Jamestown, New York with the Jackson Center is and they're very proud of that movie.

Deborah writes to say your guest has said that having ice at polling stations is illegal, but this administration has done so many illegal things and nothing has happened.

So here's a scenario.

they put ice at polling stations on Election Day in November.

It's illegal, but they do it anyway.

It suppresses a lot of people from voting.

And then after the fact you can sue.

But if the election is taking place, what do you do about that?

That's what Deborah.

>> Yes, that's why we need to get every single lawyer to take off the first three days of election week.

I mean, every single lawyer doesn't matter that you don't know election law.

You can go to a seminar or online and learn enough election law to be effective, because it's going to be crucial to get in front of judges instantly, and particularly if Ice is at a location to get a judge to issue an order and tell the local sheriff or police chief you're to remove these people and you arrest them.

If they don't leave.

>> and finally got to go quick here.

Wendy says, I'm an election worker in the city.

Tell your listeners to always ask for an affidavit ballot, which is what we call a provisional ballot, no matter why they are being turned away, they always have that right.

>> Sound advice.

Absolutely sound advice.

>> Okay.

She says, have the bipartisan Monroe County election Teams on your show before the upcoming election.

>> That's a good idea.

>> Done.

We try to do that every election season.

Absolutely.

Yes.

and David, you know, here we are.

We've got I could just do emails all day here.

You want to come back sometime?

I guess we're gonna have to have you back sometime.

>> But let's, let's make sure our democracy recovers from this.

Because if we lose our democracy, we lose everything.

The whole idea of this country, we lose if we don't get back our democracy.

And right now, by Donald's own mouth, we are a dictatorship.

>> Thursday evening in Brockport.

The event starts at 630.

The doors open at 530 at the.

>> Top of the tower at the Suny Brockport campus.

>> That's David Cay Johnston.

You can meet him there on Thursday night.

We've got more Connections coming up in just a moment.

>> This program is a production of WXXI Public Radio.

The views expressed do not necessarily represent those of this station.

Its staff, management or underwriters.

The broadcast is meant for the private use of our audience.

Any rebroadcast or use in another medium without expressed written consent of WXXI is strictly prohibited.

Connections with Evan Dawson is available as a podcast.

Just click on the Connections link at wxxinews.org.

>> Main principles that we've been using.

I. For everything right?

So okay.

Dr.

has direct your teacher programming as Paleontological Research Institution Center for Climate Change Education.

That's me.

Okay.

And doctor Marrero.

Yes.

Director Stephen Miller.

West Irondequoit Central School District.

That's correct.

Okay.

and obviously we've got Joseph and Kelly who are going to be joining us remotely.

I think three of the four of them were, I don't know if you were like on this on the teams that have developed curriculum or what is that?

How do we describe that?

So three of the four of us are part of the climate and Resilience Education Task Force, which worked to lobby legislators and, and work with, and I said to get the regulation crafted and implemented education, transportation.

>> Jenna Lorence.

You cannot be too close to your microphones when you're speaking about.

40s.

So I mean, like, you see, I'm almost touching my face when you see, when I see that would be nice to help me.

Okay.

All right.

>> Great support for your public radio station comes from our members and from Eastman Presents welcoming the Doric String Quartet with a program exploring the enduring influence of Beethoven, culminating with a performance of Beethoven's String Quartet in E flat major.

Sunday, March 29th in Kilbourn Hall.

Tickets at e.s.m.e.

rochester.edu.

Events and Excellus.

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