On today’s show, Joseph Cirincione (@Cirincione), President of the Ploughshare Fund, joins Michael to discuss the future of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and why elected officials on both sides of the aisle are pleading with President Trump and John Bolton to keep the 30 year old Cold War treaty in tact. We’re live at 12:00 pm EST.

Joseph Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund joins us to breakdown the history of nuclear and intercontinental missiles and how close we have gotten to using these weapons of mass destruction during the Cold War. Cirincione says there have been a dozen times where human error has brought us to the brink of nuclear annihilation–reason enough for both Democratic and Republican presidents to reduce our nuclear weapons for the better part of the last 50 years. However, that reduction process has stopped, and John Bolton has been at the forefront of ramping up ballistic missile production. Cirincione says the Democratic party’s gains in the House will help as a check against Bolton and the Trump administration and can lay the groundwork for the next set of denuclearization policies for America’s national security. Historically, the military has supported agreements like the INF treaty which allows them to monitor Russian arms and keep our national security abreast of what is happening with our adversaries. Cirincione says the current dialogue in Washington regarding nuclear arms and national security are basically recycled ideas from the 1950s–nukes everywhere. The current conservative call for nuclear proliferation goes had in had with the GOP’s border policy, practices of voter disenfranchisement, and calls for “law and order”: a drive for white American global hegemony. Meanwhile, in North Korea, Cirincione says progressives need to put aside their criticisms of Trump and root for the President to make further progress on a nuclear peace deal in North Korea–one that will lead to the removal of Kim’s plutonium enrichment plants. Michael and Cirincione end their conversation discussing the Iranian sanctions, Mike Pompeo’s insincere diplomacy in the Gulf, and what the 2019 congress can do to limit our role in Saudi war crimes.

And in the Fun Half: voting out of fear, Meghan McCain is who we thought she was, Dave Rubin claims social democracy can only work in entho-states, considering the “legacy” of Jeff Sessions, Trump’s acting AG, Matthew Whitaker, is the muscle-enforcer type he’s always loved, Whitaker was also once a scamming invention patent executive, how conservative commentators willfully misinterpret the transgender dialogue, where things stand in the Georgia and Florida race, plus your calls and IMs.

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