more reviews to come in the months ahead...
Why I am writing about this topic:
It has been a crazy 4 years of having President Donald J. Trump rule the United States and after what happened on January 6th insurrection at the Capital Hill it brought me to utter shock and anger that it was time to share some insights on the what I have read (many books) heard (on the news) and watch (documentaries) on the changing political landscape of the United State of America
Let's begin...
I visited Washington, DC in 1985 for 1 week and went to the White House. Capital building, Smithsonian, Washington Manuement and the mint. It was magical drip to see the iconic building up close and visit them and see them in-person.
Below you see two podcasts with Hisham Qaddoumi and I from Quantumly Leaping podcast we launched in March 2020 and continue today. We covered many topics but 2 were of extreme importance at that time and even more time the November 2020 elections and the Jan 6th insurecction of the capitol building.
There are number of books I have read from Hillary Clinton former Presidential candidate of 2020, Secretary of state, John Avalon CNN contributor, John Bolton National Secretary of State for 4 362 days, Mary L Trump (Trumps Niece) and Josh Rogin.
Additional resources of magazines, tv show and documentaries will be shared at the end.
Tentative Chapter topics:
It was a Strange Night November 2016 (see podcast below)
Misinformation Nation (see podcast below)
75 Million Followers!
Q'anon and others
ReTrumplicans!
Impeached Twice (see book below)
Internal Strive of GOP
The Russians
Removed by Twitter & Facebook (See book below - Like War)
Quantumly Leaping Podcast Season 1
US Elections (S01 - Special Live Episode)
On the day of November 3rd, 2020, the whole world will tune in to their TVs, radio stations and of course the internet to see what might happen in the US Presidential elections. The most important election in the world and this year probably the most critical one in the modern history. After the very unexpected and probably most shocking win of President Trump in 2016 the whole world has changed course and started to look a lot different. Nothing has been as the old usual anymore and in a very tough and eventful year like 2020 it’s even more interesting than ever. An election within an unprecedented political unrest, in the middle of a one-in-a-century fatal pandemic and the rise of extremism (especially white supremacy) and political tribalism, this election is definitely the most interesting and crucial to the USA and probably the whole world. This special live episode of Quantumly Leaping Podcast will be held “LIVE” on Facebook at the election night and will discuss in an open dialogue and in interaction with liv audience the main topics on everyone’s mind regarding the US elections 2020. The episode was recorded on Nov 3rd, 2020 (the elections day) on 7:00 PM EST. Episode Topics _______________ 00:00 Opening Title 00:20 Where is the US Politics going if either candidate won? 10:40 How will it affect Canada and the world? 22:04 The relationship with US and Canada after election 38:30 How will the upcoming administration handle global issues? 52:12 Election security. Is it affected by foreign interference or internal fraud? 55:45 Closing Remarks Follow Us __________ You Tube: https://bit.ly/3cx6hNe Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3ahzbzn iTunes https://apple.co/2yefoUh Google Podcasts https://bit.ly/2Rzusmk Web: http://podcast.hqmedia.ca #USElections #Elections2020 #Podcast #QLPodcast
Quantumly Leaping Podcast Season 2
Capitol Hill Riots Jan 6th, 2021 (S02 - Special Episode)
On a day that will mark US history as one of the darkest days, a group of Pres. Trump supporters rioted the Capitol Hill building on the day that the congress was set to certify the presidential election that Joe Biden won on Nov. 3rd, 2020 in a violent attempt to overturn his defeat. After breaching multiple police perimeters, they occupied, vandalized, and ransacked parts of the building for more than four hours. The insurrection, that was infuriated by Pres. Trump himself weeks before and in a rally right before it happened, led to the evacuation and lockdown of the Capitol building and disrupted a joint session of Congress assembled to count the electoral votes and formalize Joe Biden's election victory. The result of that riot was a significant damage to the capitol building, looting of many properties including two laptops one of which belongs to the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi that contains high classified government data, the delay of one of the most important Democratic processes in the USA and most importantly the loss of 5 lives including one of the Capitol’s Police officers and one rioter who was a decorated US veteran. In that dark day we witnessed the US democracy being under siege and the fire and fury of what words can do beyond being just tweets and social posts. Episode Topics _______________ 1- 0:00 Intro 2- 1:13 Opening remarks 3- 4:31 The beginning: How we received the news that day 4- 8:48 How did the event unfolded that day. 5- 18:50 How things led to this event in the weeks before and how Pres. Trump’s tweets and speeches infuriated it and the mental state of the rioters at the time of the attack (refer to our mental health episode). 6- 29:08 The US Election results and how it affected the Trump supporters to believe that their *freedom* is under attack (refer to our episode on US elections) 7- 39:14 How Social Platforms were used to organize this event and how they are fighting now against this type of hate and the spread of misinformation (refer to our episode on misinformation) 8- 48:52 Closing Remarks Referral Episodes Index Episode Title: Social Platforms Responsibility Against the Spread of Misinformation - Ep 10 Publishing Date: Jun 6, 2020 Episode URL: http://podcast.hqmedia.ca/index.php?p... YouTube URL: https://youtu.be/Me4mkbHkqto Episode Title: The United States Elections 2020 (Special live Episode) Publishing Date: Nov 8, 2020 Episode URL: http://podcast.hqmedia.ca/index.php?p... YouTube URL: https://youtu.be/Sbqe4KniS2E Episode Title: Privacy in the 21st Century - Ep 6 Publishing Date: May 9, 2020 Episode URL: http://podcast.hqmedia.ca/index.php?p... YouTube URL: https://youtu.be/QRB_04AX7As Episode Title: Mental Health and the Role of Society to Combat it - Ep 4 Publishing Date: Apr 25, 2020 Episode URL: http://podcast.hqmedia.ca/index.php?p... YouTube URL: https://youtu.be/6Z9v8gsukGI
John Bolton reads the epilogue!
As President Trump’s national security advisor, John Bolton spent many of his 453 days in the room where it happened, and the facts speak for themselves. The result is a White House memoir that is the most comprehensive and substantial account of the Trump Administration and one of the few to date by a top-level official. With almost daily access to the president, John Bolton has produced a precise rendering of his days in and around the Oval Office. What Bolton saw astonished him: a president for whom getting reelected was the only thing that mattered, even if it meant endangering or weakening the nation.
“I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by reelection calculations,” he writes. In fact, he argues that the House committed impeachment malpractice by keeping their prosecution focused narrowly on Ukraine when Trump’s Ukraine-like transgressions existed across the full range of his foreign policy - and Bolton documents exactly what those were and the attempts by him and others in the administration to raise alarms about them. He shows a president addicted to chaos, who embraced our enemies and spurned our friends, and was deeply suspicious of his own government. In Bolton’s telling, all this helped put Trump on the bizarre road to impeachment.
“The differences between this presidency and previous ones I had served were stunning,” writes Bolton, who worked for Reagan, Bush 41, and Bush 43. He discovered a president who thought foreign policy is like closing a real estate deal - about personal relationships, made-for-TV showmanship, and advancing his own interests. As a result, the US lost an opportunity to confront its deepening threats, and in cases like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea ended up in a more vulnerable place.
Bolton’s account starts with his long march to the West Wing as Trump and others woo him for the national security job. The minute he lands, he has to deal with Syria’s chemical attack on the city of Douma and the crises after that never stop. As he writes early on, “If you don’t like turmoil, uncertainty, and risk - all the while being constantly overwhelmed with information, decisions to be made, and sheer amount of work - and enlivened by international and domestic personality and ego conflicts beyond description, try something else.”
The turmoil, conflicts, and egos are all there - from the upheaval in Venezuela, to the erratic and manipulative moves of North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, to the showdowns at the G7 summits, the calculated warmongering by Iran, the crazy plan to bring the Taliban to Camp David, and the placating of an authoritarian China that ultimately exposed the world to its lethal lies. But this seasoned public servant also has a great eye for the Washington inside game, and his story is full of wit and wry humor about how he saw it played.
George Washington's Farewell Address was a prophetic letter from a "parting friend" to his fellow citizens about the forces he feared could destroy our democracy: hyper-partisanship, excessive debt, and foreign wars.
Once celebrated as civic scripture, more widely reprinted than the Declaration of Independence, the Farewell Address is now almost forgotten. Its message remains starkly relevant. In Washington's Farewell, John Avlon offers a stunning portrait of our first president and his battle to save America from self-destruction.
At the end of his second term, Washington surprised Americans by publishing his Farewell message in a newspaper. The President called for unity among "citizens by birth or choice", advocated moderation, defended religious pluralism, proposed a foreign policy of independence (not isolation), and proposed that education is essential to democracy. He established the precedent for the peaceful transfer of power.
Washington's urgent message was adopted by Jefferson after years of opposition and quoted by Lincoln in defense of the Union. Woodrow Wilson invoked it for nation-building; Eisenhower for Cold War; Reagan for religion. Now the Farewell Address may inspire a new generation to re-center our politics and reunite our nation through the lessons rooted in Washington's experience.
As John Avlon describes the perilous state of the new nation that Washington was preparing to leave as its leader, with enduring wisdom, he reveals him to be the indispensable Founding Father.
YEAR AND NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK
“In the past, for reasons I try to explain, I’ve often felt I had to be careful in public, like I was up on a wire without a net. Now I’m letting my guard down.” —Hillary Rodham Clinton, from the introduction of What Happened
For the first time, Hillary Rodham Clinton reveals what she was thinking and feeling during one of the most controversial and unpredictable presidential elections in history. Now free from the constraints of running, Hillary takes you inside the intense personal experience of becoming the first woman nominated for president by a major party in an election marked by rage, sexism, exhilarating highs and infuriating lows, stranger-than-fiction twists, Russian interference, and an opponent who broke all the rules. This is her most personal memoir yet.
In these pages, she describes what it was like to run against Donald Trump, the mistakes she made, how she has coped with a shocking and devastating loss, and how she found the strength to pick herself back up afterward. With humor and candor, she tells readers what it took to get back on her feet—the rituals, relationships, and reading that got her through, and what the experience has taught her about life. She speaks about the challenges of being a strong woman in the public eye, the criticism over her voice, age, and appearance, and the double standard confronting women in politics.
She lays out how the 2016 election was marked by an unprecedented assault on our democracy by a foreign adversary. By analyzing the evidence and connecting the dots, Hillary shows just how dangerous the forces are that shaped the outcome, and why Americans need to understand them to protect our values and our democracy in the future.
The election of 2016 was unprecedented and historic. What Happened is the story of that campaign and its aftermath—both a deeply intimate account and a cautionary tale for the nation.
Mary Trump spent much of her childhood in her grandparents’ large, imposing house in the heart of Queens, where Donald and his four siblings grew up. She describes a nightmare of traumas, destructive relationships, and a tragic combination of neglect and abuse. She explains how specific events and general family patterns created the damaged man who currently occupies the Oval Office, including the strange and harmful relationship between Fred Trump and his two oldest sons, Fred, Jr., and Donald.
A firsthand witness to countless holiday meals and family interactions, Mary brings an incisive wit and unexpected humor to sometimes grim, often confounding family events. She recounts in unsparing detail everything from her uncle Donald’s place in the family spotlight and Ivana’s penchant for regifting to her grandmother’s frequent injuries and illnesses and the appalling way Donald, Fred Trump’s favorite son, dismissed and derided him when he began to succumb to Alzheimer’s.
Numerous pundits, armchair psychologists, and journalists have sought to parse Donald J. Trump’s lethal flaws. Mary L. Trump has the education, insight, and intimate familiarity needed to reveal what makes Donald, and the rest of her clan, tick. She alone can recount this fascinating, unnerving saga, not just because of her insider’s perspective but also because she is the only Trump willing to tell the truth about one of the world’s most powerful and dysfunctional families.
There was no calm before the storm. Donald Trump’s surprise electoral victory shattered the fragile understanding between Washington and Beijing, putting the most important relationship of the 21st century in the hands of a novice who had bitterly attacked China from the campaign trail. Almost as soon as he entered office, Trump brought to a boil the long-simmering rivalry between the two countries, while also striking up a “friendship” with Chinese president Xi Jinping - whose manipulations of his American counterpart would undermine the White House’s already disjointed response to the historic challenge of a rising China. All the while, Trump’s own officials fought to steer US policy from within.
By the time the COVID-19 pandemic erupted in Wuhan, Trump’s love-hate relationship with Xi had sparked a trade war, while Xi’s aggression had pushed the world to the brink of a new Cold War. But their quarrel had also forced a long-overdue reckoning within the United States over China’s audacious foreign-influence operations, horrific human rights abuses, and creeping digital despotism. Ironically, this awakening was one of the biggest foreign-policy victories of Trump’s fractious term in office.
Filled with shocking revelations drawn from Josh Rogin’s unparalleled access to top US officials from the White House and deep within the country’s foreign policy machine, Chaos Under Heaven reveals an administration at war with itself during perhaps our most urgent hour.
Wingnuts exist on the extreme edges of the political spectrum. They're the professional polarizers and the unhinged activists, the hardcore haters and the paranoid conspiracy theorists. They're people who always try to divide us instead of unite us. And at a time when the fringe is blurring with the base, they've hijacked American politics.
The Obama era has been a boom-time for Wingnuts, kicked off by a financial collapse and the election America's first black president. For some, losing an election feels like living under tyranny. John Avlon tracks down preachers who pray for the president's death, goes inside the growing "Hatriot" militia movement, and identifies the fright-wing swamp where the Obama "Birthers" and the Bush-era "9/11 Truthers" bubble up.
Wingnuts echo earlier fear-fueled movements in American history. But bolstered by the rise of hyper-partisan media, the Wingnut echo chamber is more influential than ever before and it has led directly to the division and dysfunction in Congress. Avlon asserts that the time has come for the moderate majority of Americans to straighten their civic backbone and hold the extremes accountable while restoring a sense of perspective to our politics.
As Congress prepares articles of impeachment of President Trump, read the definitive book on presidential impeachment and how it should be used today.
Impeachment is our ultimate constitutional check against an out-of-control executive. But it is also a perilous and traumatic undertaking for the nation. In this authoritative examination, Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz rise above the daily clamor to illuminate impeachment's proper role in our age of broken politics.
To End a Presidency is an essential book for anyone seeking to understand how this fearsome power should be deployed.
Two defense experts explore the collision of war, politics, and social media, where the most important battles are now only a click away.
Through the weaponization of social media, the internet is changing war and politics, just as war and politics are changing the internet. Terrorists livestream their attacks, “Twitter wars” produce real‑world casualties, and viral misinformation alters not just the result of battles, but the very fate of nations. The result is that war, tech, and politics have blurred into a new kind of battlespace that plays out on our smartphones.
P. W. Singer and Emerson Brooking tackle the mind‑bending questions that arise when war goes online and the online world goes to war. They explore how ISIS copies the Instagram tactics of Taylor Swift, a formerWorld of Warcraftaddict foils war crimes thousands of miles away, internet trolls shape elections, and China uses a smartphone app to police the thoughts of 1.4 billion citizens. What can be kept secret in a world of networks? Does social media expose the truth or bury it? And what role do ordinary people now play in international conflicts?
Delving into the web’s darkest corners, we meet the unexpected warriors of social media, such as the rapper turned jihadist PR czar and the Russian hipsters who wage unceasing infowars against the West. Finally, looking to the crucial years ahead,LikeWar outlines a radical new paradigm for understanding and defending against the unprecedented threats of our networked world.
In this explosive memoir, a political consultant and technology whistleblower reveals the disturbing truth about the multi-billion-dollar data industry, revealing to the public how companies are getting richer using our personal information and exposing how Cambridge Analytica exploited weaknesses in privacy laws to help elect Donald Trump—and how this could easily happen again in the 2020 presidential election.
When Brittany Kaiser joined Cambridge Analytica—the UK-based political consulting firm funded by conservative billionaire and Donald Trump patron Robert Mercer—she was an idealistic young professional working on her fourth degree in human rights law and international relations. A veteran of Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, Kaiser’s goal was to utilize data for humanitarian purposes, most notably to prevent genocide and human rights abuses. But her experience inside Cambridge Analytica opened her eyes to the tremendous risks that this unregulated industry poses to privacy and democracy.
Targeted is Kaiser’s eyewitness chronicle of the dramatic and disturbing story of the rise and fall of Cambridge Analytica. She reveals to the public how Facebook’s lax policies and lack of sufficient national laws allowed voters to be manipulated in both Britain and the United States, where personal data was weaponized to spread fake news and racist messaging during the Brexit vote and the 2016 election. But the damage isn’t done Kaiser warns; the 2020 election can be compromised as well if we continue to do nothing.
In the aftermath of the U.S. election, as she became aware of the horrifying reality of what Cambridge Analytica had done in support of Donald Trump, Kaiser made the difficult choice to expose the truth. Risking her career, relationships, and personal safety, she told authorities about the data industry’s unethical business practices, eventually testifying before Parliament about the company’s Brexit efforts and helping Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, alongside at least 10 other international investigations.
Packed with never-before-publicly-told stories and insights, Targeted goes inside the secretive meetings with Trump campaign personnel and details the promises Cambridge Analytica made to win. Throughout, Kaiser makes the case for regulation, arguing that legal oversight of the data industry is not only justifiable but essential to ensuring the long-term safety of our democracy.
The inspiration for The Comey Rule, the Showtime limited series starring Jeff Daniels premiering September 2020
In his book, former FBI director James Comey shares his never-before-told experiences from some of the highest-stakes situations of his career in the past two decades of American government, exploring what good, ethical leadership looks like, and how it drives sound decisions. His journey provides an unprecedented entry into the corridors of power, and a remarkable lesson in what makes an effective leader.
The inspiration for The Comey Rule, the Showtime limited series starring Jeff Daniels premiering September 2020
In his book, former FBI director James Comey shares his never-before-told experiences from some of the highest-stakes situations of his career in the past two decades of American government, exploring what good, ethical leadership looks like, and how it drives sound decisions. His journey provides an unprecedented entry into the corridors of power, and a remarkable lesson in what makes an effective leader.
Mr. Comey served as director of the FBI from 2013 to 2017, appointed to the post by President Barack Obama. He previously served as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, and the U.S. deputy attorney general in the administration of President George W. Bush. From prosecuting the Mafia and Martha Stewart to helping change the Bush administration's policies on torture and electronic surveillance, overseeing the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation as well as ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, Comey has been involved in some of the most consequential cases and policies of recent history.
Movie Plot:
An instant New York Times bestseller.
Critics agree: Michael Wolff’s Landslide is THE book on Trump.
“Landslide . . . is the one to leap upon. Smart, vivid and intrepid . . .” ―The New York Times
“I inhaled Landslide, gobbled it up.” ―Slate
“Wow. Just wow . . .” ―Evening Standard
“Cruel, unforgiving, muckraking, scandalous. I couldn’t stop reading it.”―The Telegraph
We all witnessed some of the most shocking and confounding political events of our lifetime: the careening last stage of Donald J. Trump’s reelection campaign, the president’s audacious election challenge, the harrowing mayhem of January 6, the buffoonery of the second impeachment trial. But what was really going on in the inner sanctum of the White House during these calamitous events? What did the president and his dwindling cadre of loyalists actually believe? And what were they planning?
Michael Wolff pulled back the curtain on the Trump presidency with his #1 bestselling blockbuster Fire and Fury. Now, in Landslide, he closes the door on the presidency with a final, astonishingly candid account.
Wolff embedded himself in the White House in 2017 and gave us a vivid picture of the chaos that had descended on Washington. Almost four years later, Wolff finds the Oval Office even more chaotic and bizarre, a kind of Star Wars bar scene. At all times of the day, Trump, behind the Resolute desk, is surrounded by schemers and unqualified sycophants who spoon-feed him the “alternative facts” he hungers to hear―about COVID-19, Black Lives Matter protests, and, most of all, his chance of winning reelection. Once again, Wolff has gotten top-level access and takes us front row as Trump’s circle of plotters whittles down to the most enabling and the president reaches beyond the bounds of democracy as he entertains the idea of martial law and balks at calling off the insurrectionist mob that threatens the institution of democracy itself.
As the Trump presidency’s hold over the country spiraled out of control, an untold and human account of desperation, duplicity, and delusion was unfolding within the West Wing. Landslide is that story as only Michael Wolff can tell it.
Here is a scrupulously documented account—much of which is based on unprecedented access to previously undisclosed documents—of the agency’s tireless hunt for intelligence on enemies and allies alike. Body of secrets is a riveting analysis of this most clandestine of agencies, a major work of history and investigative journalism.
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