JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-host: Larry Kudlow, Director of the National Economic Council under US Pres Donald Trump.
 
Hour One
Tuesday 17 July 2018/ Hour 1, Block A:.  Elizabeth Peek, Fox News and The Hill, in re:  Pres Trump spoke awkwardly at the news conference yesterday in Helsinki; however, the reporter’s question was most untoward.  . . .
Tuesday 17 July 2018/ Hour 1, Block B:   Elizabeth Peek, Fox News and The Hill, in re:  Economically are we at Peak Trump?  We’re on our way up – good growth and low infati0n for he foreseeable future, according to Jay Powell, the Fed head.  . . . Jeremiah Fleming, age 30, will earn $140K this year running flatbeds, hauling rigs in Texas.  America’s heartland is roaring back. Tariffs against China?  Needs to be resolved in the next several months.  Note that the Chinese have made some soft accommodations to the US and EU, revising WTO and not excluding the US this time. A sort of olive branch.  Shanghai stock mkt down 22% and the yuan down 7%, while the US mkts are about flat. Its all costing China a lot more than it’s costing us.
Tuesday 17 July 2018/ Hour 1, Block C:  Bill Whalen, Area 45 host at Hoover, in re:  The  Kennedy-Khrushchev crisis, June 1961.  George Kennan told JFK: “Don't go speak with Khrushchev.”   Somewhat comparable to Pres Trump’s predicament yesterday.  Scotty Reston (NYT).  Trump hears “Russian collusion” and [falls into his blind spot].  Commentariat called the Finnish faux pas “Pearl Harbor” and “treason,” which are impossibly silly.  A week ago, the world was melting down because Kavanaugh would be a Supreme Court Justice. Who was it who demanded that Pres Trump read a pre-written apology speech today at the White House?
Could be that there’s some perception that Trump will not be damaged by Mueller; this might occasion the frankly hysteric reaction we’ve survived.
Tuesday 17 July 2018/ Hour 1, Block D:   Ying Ma, Washington Examiner and  author, Chinese Girl in the Ghetto, in re:  Ivy Leagues are refusing to admit many Asian students who perfectly qualify for acceptance simply in order to limit the percentage of East Asian students.  Prime culprit:  Harvard.  If a Black or Latino applicant with good grades from an inner city applies, s/he gets swift acceptance and lots of financial support.  Lawsuit ending vs Harvard, with lots of data and tape recordings. “Personal rating measure” that Hvd applies: “Personal likeability” leadership, helpfulness, and the like.  Harvard alumni who've gone out and actually met with the declined Asian applicants have found them to be delightful; it's the Admissions staff who manage to refuse East Asians.  Harvard remains unrepentant, not at all embarrassed, will “aggressively fight the lawsuit.”  DoJ investigation into the matter of race-based acceptance.  All a very sordid racial classification scheme that’s gone on for a long time and needs to end soon.
 
Hour Two
Tuesday 17 July 2018/ Hour 2, Block A:  Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; American Committee for East-West Accord (eastwestaccord.com); author: Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War,  &  The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag after Stalin;  in re: Rex Tillerson at Exxon was on good terms w Igor Sechin, who’s close to Pres Putin. . . . Current events are too improbably to be the basis of a novel.  Dragnet: Detective Joe Friday saying, “Just the facts, Ma’am.” . . . Paul Krugman yesterday wrote that “Trump won the Electoral College only thanks to foreign intervention.” [!!]  NYT wrote, “Trump surrounded himself with Kremlin lackeys.”[!!]
Tuesday 17 July 2018/ Hour 2, Block B:  Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; American Committee for East-West Accord (eastwestaccord.com); author: Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War,  &  The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag after Stalin;  in re: [more]
Tuesday 17 July 2018/ Hour 2, Block C: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; American Committee for East-West Accord (eastwestaccord.com); author: Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War,  &  The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag after Stalin;  in re:  [more] . . . The sanctions causing real pain to Russia are not from the US; are from the EU, which imposed them after Russia’s annexation of Crimea. 
Tuesday 17 July 2018/ Hour 2, Block D: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; American Committee for East-West Accord (eastwestaccord.com); author: Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War,  &  The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag after Stalin;  in re: . . . what’s driving the lethal hostility against trump? The establishment hate hate him.  They can’t say they lost to a real person, so they've turned him in to a fictitious character. Before mtg Putin, Trump tweeted: “Relations between the US and Russia are very bad, due to policies of my predecessors.”  On his return, he revised it to, “. . . policies by both sides.” 
Mass media demand that it be all the fault of Russian bad behavior.  See: Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives.   Unwise US policies brought us to where we are today.  Sometimes I’m asked how to quantify it; it's not 50/50; more like 80/20.   . . . [Bush 43’s expanding wars and others. Decapitating Libya despite US avowal not to.] Trump has said that the bad relations are the responsibility of both sides, which bangs against the received wisdom of the American establishment that largely created this mess.
 
Hour Three
Tuesday 17 July 2018/ Hour 3, Block A:  Bill McGurn, WSJ editorial page; in re:  Working on a speech for Pres Trump, anent what to be done about the Mueller investigation and getting information to voters. What went on in 2016?  Need declassifying.  . . . 
Tuesday 17 July 2018/ Hour 3, Block B:  Andrew C. McCarthy, III, National Review columnist; served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York; in re: . . .  https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/07/trump-putin-meetings-unnecessary/
Tuesday 17 July 2018/ Hour 3, Block C:   Robert Zimmerman, BehindtheBlack.com, in re:  Developments in private space. NASA’s odd genius.
Tuesday 17 July 2018/ Hour 3, Block D:   Robert Zimmerman, BehindtheBlack.com, in re:  Developments in private space.
 
Hour Four
Tuesday 17 July 2018/ Hour 4, Block A:   Simon Hall, author, 1956, the World in Revolt.  In 1956 in Florida, Pres Eisenhower at a pick-up baseball game between the press corps and the Secret Service.
Tuesday 17 July 2018/ Hour 4, Block B:  Simon Hall, author, 1956, the World in Revolt. . . . The secret speech in Moscow.
Tuesday 17 July 2018/ Hour 4, Block C:  Simon Hall, author, 1956, the World in Revolt.
Tuesday 17 July 2018/ Hour 4, Block D:  Simon Hall, author, 1956, the World in Revolt.