Deconstructed With Mehdi Hasan

On Wednesday night, 6 of the remaining Democratic candidates faced off in Las Vegas ahead of the Nevada caucuses. All eyes were on former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who, despite sitting out the early contests and appearing in none of the previous debates, has surged in many polls thanks to a relentless self-funded ad campaign. Would he live up to his own hype?In a word, no. Bloomberg was unprepared for the barrage of attacks he faced from all sides, and suffered especially from a set of withering takedowns at the hands of Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. Intercept DC bureau chief Ryan Grim joins Mehdi Hasan to discuss Bloomberg’s debut performance and how the debate might affect the race going forward.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The United States has the biggest prison population of any country on the planet. The crime rate is down, but the incarceration rate continues to soar. With the 2020 presidential election around the corner, what hope is there for fixing the system? Mehdi Hasan sits down with John Legend and Patrisse Cullors in Los Angeles for a live conversation about criminal justice.Deconstructed interviews a variety of guests who share their views in order to educate and inform our listeners on the most pressing issues of the day and on the democratic process. Our guests’ views on the issues and on elected officials’ and candidates’ approaches to them are their own, and do not reflect of the views of First Look Media Works.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

As predicted, the Republican-controlled Senate voted on Wednesday to find President Donald J. Trump not guilty on both articles of impeachment brought by the House of Representatives. It was a party-line vote, with one notable exception: Utah Senator Mitt Romney became the first Senator in U.S. history to vote to remove a president of his own party. Democratic Senators Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Brian Schatz of Hawaii, who both voted to remove the President, joined Mehdi Hasan by phone shortly after the vote to discuss the implications of Trump’s acquittal for the future of the Senate.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On January 20th, The Guardian published an op-ed by New York attorney and law professor Zephyr Teachout entitled “‘Middle Class’ Joe Biden has a corruption problem – it makes him a weak candidate”. In it, Teachout argues that Biden’s history of taking big donations from the credit card, healthcare, and fossil fuel industries and then voting on their behalf makes him a poor choice against Trump in the Fall: “a lot of the voters we need,” wrote Teachout, “independents and people who might stay home – will look at Biden and Trump and say: “They’re all dirty.”” Teachout is a public supporter of Bernie Sanders and when the Biden camp took umbrage at the piece, Sanders publicly apologized for it. “It is absolutely not my view that Joe is corrupt in any way,” said the Vermont Senator. “And I'm sorry that that op-ed appeared.” But was that really the right reply from a candidate who has made the fight against big money in politics one of the cornerstones of his campaign? Zephyr Teachout joins Mehdi Hasan to discuss J

With the Iowa caucuses less than two weeks away, the Democratic primary increasingly seems like a two-way contest between former Vice President Joe Biden and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. The latest polls show Biden leading in Iowa and Sanders leading nationally, and calls are getting louder for the lower-tier candidates to drop out and allow support to coalesce around the leaders. Despite failing to poll above 4% nationally, California billionaire and philanthropist Tom Steyer insists he still has a path to the nomination, citing relatively strong recent polls in Nevada and South Carolina. Analysts estimate that Steyer’s campaign has already spent over $100 million on radio, TV, and digital advertising since launching back in July. Mehdi Hasan talks to the candidate about what he’s getting for all that money, and whether it might be better spent on house and Senate races around the country.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Six of the remaining Democratic candidates met in Des Moines, Iowa on Tuesday night for their final debate before the state holds its first-in-the-nation caucuses on February 3rd. With the state of the race still fluid, the top contenders were all looking for a moment that might help them to distinguish themselves from the field. In the runup to the debate, much of the media focus was on the apparent breakdown of the de facto non-aggression pact between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, with the latter claiming that Sanders had told her in a 2018 meeting that a woman couldn’t win a US presidential election. The two clashed over Warren’s claim during the debate; Sanders repeated his denial that such an exchange took place, while Warren declined to retract the accusation. Meanwhile, the moderators once again allowed Joe Biden to avoid serious or detailed scrutiny of his record in the Senate—in particular his vociferous early support for the Iraq War.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and op

It’s been described as the worst human rights crisis in the world — the arbitrary detention in sprawling camps of a million or more Uighur Muslims in China’s northwestern Xinjiang province. The Chinese government has claimed that the camps are merely vocational training centers, but in November a trove of leaked documents, dubbed the China Cables, confirmed what the world had long suspected: the camps are Communist Party re-education centers in which Uighurs are forced to abandon their traditional religion and language. Nury Turkel is a U.S.-based attorney and Uighur rights advocate and he joins Mehdi Hasan to discuss the situation in Xinjiang — and why so much of the world doesn’t seem to care about it.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The House Judiciary Committee held its first impeachment hearing on Wednesday, with testimony from a quartet of legal scholars from major Universities. Republicans on the committee repeatedly attempted to slow down the proceedings using parliamentary stall tactics, and continued to focus on the perceived partisan motivations of the impeachment process rather than the facts of the case against the President — while Democrats used the hearing to build up the constitutional case for removing him from office. But while the minutiae of the legal case against Trump are important, so is the political history of the country’s three previous impeachment efforts. Princeton history professor Kevin Kruse joins Mehdi Hasan to discuss what the current congress can learn from the historical examples of Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon, and Andrew Johnson.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

If you're one of the many listeners who enjoys Deconstructed every week, we have a special favor to ask you. Today is Giving Tuesday - a day to celebrate and support the causes and organizations you believe in. The Intercept relies on readers and listeners like you to support the journalism we do here every day. Right now, you can head to theintercept.com/give and do just that.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In the days leading up to the November Democratic debate in Atlanta, everyone seemed to agree that attacks on Pete Buttigieg would be the order of the night. The South Bend Mayor had lept to the top of the pack in the latest Iowa polls, and the conventional wisdom was that other candidates hoping for a caucus victory there — Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden — would be directing their fire his way. But the rest of field was surprisingly cordial to Mayor Pete, with the real fireworks coming courtesy of a heated exchange between Kamala Harris and Tulsi Gabbard. Cory Booker also earned some good reviews for his joke that Joe Biden “might have been high” for opposing marijuana legalization. Intercept politics reporter Akela Lacy and Waleed Shahid of the activist group Justice Democrats join Mehdi Hasan to break down the debate.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Liberals across the West often imagine Canada as a progressive paradise — a tolerant land, welcoming to immigrants, where marijuana is legal and everyone gets free healthcare. But how accurate is that picture? In the wake of last month’s federal elections, in which Justin Trudeau held onto the Prime Minister's post but lost his majority in parliament, Deconstructed headed to Toronto for the HotDocs Podcast Festival. There, Mehdi Hasan talked to two of Canada’s leading politicians. Ahmed Hussen is the Immigration Minister in Trudeau’s cabinet, and is himself an immigrant who arrived in Canada from war-torn Somalia in the 90s. Jagmeet Singh is the leader of the New Democratic Party, or NDP, and the first Sikh to head a major political party in Canada. Hasan sat down with Singh and Hussen to discuss Canada’s reputation as a shining beacon of Western multiculturalism — and whether it’s truly deserved.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

With three months to go until the Iowa caucuses, Bernie Sanders finds himself fighting to make headway against the other frontrunners in the Democratic primary. While he appears to have bounced back from his recent heart attack—putting in a convincing performance in the last debate and picking up a coveted endorsement from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—the democratic socialist from Vermont has struggled to recapture the old 2016 magic in a more crowded 2020 field. Mehdi Hasan talks to Bernie about his campaign strategy, what separates him from his chief progressive rival Elizabeth Warren, and whether he’d be comfortable with an all-white—or all-male—ticket in 2020. Then, Intercept DC Bureau Chief Ryan Grim stops by to discuss the prospects for the Sanders campaign.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Linguist, activist, and political theorist Noam Chomsky has been speaking out against U.S. interventionism from Vietnam to Latin America and the Middle East since the 1960s. He’s the most cited author alive, but you won’t see him on the nightly news, or in the pages of most major newspapers. On this week’s Deconstructed, Chomsky sits down with Mehdi Hasan to discuss the impeachment inquiry, the 2020 Democratic field, and why he opposed Trump’s Syria troop withdrawal.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In a live taping of The Intercept’s Deconstructed podcast, host Mehdi Hasan is joined by two of America’s leading progressive voices: first-term Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar, the first Somali-American and one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress, and documentarian Michael Moore, whose latest film, “Fahrenheit 11/9", takes an incisive look at the 2016 election and the crisis of American democracy in the Trump era.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The twelve leading Democratic candidates met in Westerville, Ohio on Tuesday for the fourth debate of the 2020 primary season. The usual topics—healthcare, taxes, the impeachment inquiry—dominated the discussion, but the CNN moderators also asked the candidates to weigh in on a controversial proposal, gaining currency of late on the left, to expand the Supreme Court. So-called “court packing” is normally a taboo in U.S. politics, and predictably the top contenders were reluctant to endorse it. David Faris, professor of political science at Roosevelt University and author of It’s Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics, believes that court packing is precisely the type of radical structural reform that Democrats and progressives need to pursue if they want a chance at defeating the right in years to come. He joins Mehdi Hasan to discuss what the left can do to overcome minority rule in Washington.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out infor

Texas Congressman Beto O’Rourke became the Democratic Party’s golden boy in 2018 thanks to his near-miss campaign against Senator Ted Cruz. Yet since declaring his campaign for the presidency back in March, his poll numbers have steadily declined. In recent weeks Beto has earned glowing reviews for his fiery rhetoric on gun control and Trump’s racism—and for his support for the Democrats’ nascent impeachment effort—but will it be enough to reinvigorate his bid for the White House? Mehdi Hasan talks to the candidate ahead of next week’s crucial debate. Then, Intercept DC Bureau Chief Ryan Grim stops by to break down Beto’s campaign.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

India’s clampdown on the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir is entering its third month, and while the right-wing government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has exerted tight control over the flow of information out of the region, a bleak picture has nonetheless emerged. Thousands have been imprisoned, including political leaders. Movement is tightly restricted. Phone lines have been cut off. Modi appears set on ending Jammu and Kashmir’s special semi-autonomous status and bringing it fully under the control of New Delhi, a move which residents of the Muslim-majority region strongly reject. Arundhati Roy, India’s most famous novelist and a passionate voice for Kashmiri self-determination, joins Mehdi Hasan to discuss the Kashmir crisis and India’s troubling rightward tilt.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

It finally happened: on Tuesday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced the beginning of a formal impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump. The final straw was a July phone call in which Trump pushed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate his potential 2020 rival, Joe Biden, and appeared to suggest that US aid to Ukraine might be contingent upon his compliance. Nearly all of the 2020 Democratic candidates have come out in support of impeachment proceedings. On this week’s Deconstructed, one of those candidates, former HUD Secretary Julián Castro, joins Mehdi Hasan to discuss the week’s developments. Intercept DC Bureau Chief Ryan Grim stops by to break down the political prospects for impeachment.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Israeli voters returned to the polls this week for the second time in five months to elect the 120 members of the Knesset, the country’s legislative body. The outcome remains too close to call, but it looks like Benjamin Netanyahu, the country’s longest serving Prime Minister, may be denied a majority. His likely successor is former army chief of staff Benny Gantz of the Blue and White Party. Yet missing from so much of the international conversation is the fact that five million Palestinian residents of the occupied territories remain unable to vote in elections that could determine their future. Given that Gantz, like Netanyahu, has adopted bellicose rhetoric toward Palestine in the past, can they really expect things to change? Noura Erakat, Palestinian American legal scholar and author of Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine, joins Mehdi Hasan to discuss whether it’s fair to describe Israel as an apartheid state.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Democratic candidates met in Houston on Thursday night for a third round of televised debates. This time the format was limited to a single night with 10 participants, which meant that for the first time, all the top-tier candidates were onstage together. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren defended their respective healthcare plans, but the center of attention was frontrunner Joe Biden, who spent the night fending off attacks from his rivals. As the evening wore on, Biden's answers became increasingly difficult to decipher. Intercept DC Bureau Chief Ryan Grim joins Mehdi Hasan to breakdown the latest debate, as do Justice Democrats Executive Director Alexandra Rojas and Pod Save the World host Tommy Vietor.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.