Peter van Buren discusses the media reaction to President Trump’s recent meeting with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki. He compares the entire story of Russian collusion to the birther conspiracy movement, in that swaths of Americans have been swept up in a campaign against the president with very little real evidence presented to support the claims. Van Buren argues that the divisiveness about Trump being a Russian agent is harmful for the country, and at this point Robert Mueller and the...

Foreign correspondent Reese Erlich comes back on the show to discuss Syria, the deep state, and President Trump’s foreign policy so far. Erlich explains how the war in Syria has devastated the lives of the Syrian people, and that there are basically no good actors there—the U.S., Assad, Russia, and the rebels have all committed horrible atrocities. Still, lots of Syrians are glad to have Assad’s forces regain territory from the rebels, just because it means an end to the fighting. In this...

Jason Ditz, news editor for Antiwar.com, discusses the Syrian conflict and what the current status of the fighting is between the Syrian Army and allied Russians, the rebels, and ISIS. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Zen Cash; The War State, by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com; Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Inc.; NoDev NoOps NoIT, by Hussein Badakhchani; LibertyStickers.com; and ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Check out Scott’s Patreon page.

Sheldon Richman, executive editor at the Libertarian Institute, comes on the show to talk about his recent article “Trump Turns to Gaza as Middle East Deal of the Century Collapses.” Richman explains the long history of Israelis trying to force Palestinians out of Palestine, which is not a new phenomenon. He goes so far as to say that this process is a genocide, as it is literally the destruction of a people and a nation. Luckily, it seems as though American Jews—young progressives in...

Gareth Porter returns to the show to talk about North Korea’s nuclear program and the chances for denuclearization. One roadblock to denuclearization, he explains, is that the U.S. doesn’t know precisely how many nuclear weapons the North Koreans have, nor where they keep them, so it would be impossible to verify with any certainty that all the weapons were destroyed. Another roadblock is that John Bolton seems dead set on stopping a peace deal, going so far as to leak details of a DIA report...

Journalist Franz-Stefan Gady joins Scott to discuss his recent article, “How the ‘Deep State’ Stopped a US President From Withdrawing US Troops From Korea”, about President Carter’s efforts to demilitarize and denuclearize the Korean Peninsula, before being stymied by an intelligence report claiming that North Korea’s military was much stronger than previously thought. Once the report made its way to congress, Grady explains, there was very little political will to follow through with Carter’s...

Mark Perry rejoins the show to talk about General Mattis’ position in the Trump administration, particularly in relation to Iran. Perry explains that although Mattis seems to have strong negative feelings toward Iran, he is unlikely to advocate military action there because he knows that it would be incredibly expensive in both lives and dollars, and probably still not have the desired effect of regime change. Trump has taken a more bellicose stance on Iran, but Mattis has shown that he’s...

Max Blumenthal is interviewed on the Congressional meetings of Andriy Parubiy, Ukrainian Fascist Leader and Neo Nazi. Parubiy’s connections to Ukrainian Nationalists, Neo Nazis, and AntiSemitic groups is explored in detail, as is the history of the conflict and especially the US’s role in supporting these groups in Ukraine and the new Ukrainian state’s connections with these groups. Max Blumenthal is the author of Goliath, on the Israeli Palestinian conflict, and made the documentary Killing...

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, a syndicated columnist and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer. He is interviewed on the wide ranging regional conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and how the Trump Administration fits in to all of the goings on. James M. Dorsey is also A veteran, award-winning foreign correspondent whose career focused on ethnic and...

Sheldon Richman, Executive Editor of the Libertarian Institute, is interviewed on his new article for the Libertarian Institute, “The Trump-Kushner Delusion on Palestine“.  The history of the peace deals in between Israel and Palestine, Kushner’s connections to the conflict, and why the current deal is a poison pill is discussed. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Zen Cash; The War State, by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com; Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Inc.; NoDev NoOps...

Scott hosts a joint interview with Jeffrey Kaye and Thomas Powell, who have both written about U.S. use of biological weapons during the Korean War. Because of Korea’s status as America’s “forgotten war”, most Americans are simply unaware of the brutality the United States inflicted on the Korean people, in the way many are with the Vietnam War. In particular, the military dropped “dud” bombs full of bugs carrying deadly diseases, something they had long alleged the Koreans to be doing, but...

Grant F. Smith rejoins the show to talk about the Israeli nuclear weapons program, and why no one seems willing to talk about it. He explains the scandalous facts that every American president quite literally agrees not to mention Israeli nukes, and that the U.S. government gives hundreds of billions in aid to Israel, even though U.S. law prohibits aid to countries that haven’t signed the Non-proliferation Treaty. Grant and Scott discuss anecdotes about Presidents Clinton and Trump meeting...

Patrick Cockburn joins Scott to talk about daily life in Baghdad. He explains that although things have gotten better now that Isis has been pushed back somewhat, people still fear for their return—it wouldn’t be the first time this has happened. One of the central questions for Iraq has been figuring out who will take power in the many majority-Sunni areas in the aftermath of Iraq War III. The Sadrists did well in recent elections on a platform of limiting U.S. and Iranian influence, and...

Sheldon Richman, Executive Editor of the Libertarian Institute, is interviewed on his new article for the Libertarian Institute, “Why Palestine Matters“. The history of the conflict is discussed, the current state of the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians is examined, and what the potential outcomes could be for peace in a wide ranging discussion. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Zen Cash; The War State, by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com; Roberts and...

Drone expert Alyssa Sims joins Scott to talk about the strikes in Libya and the difficulty in getting accurate estimates of civilian casualties. She explains that in some cases researchers have to resort to finding pictures of dead bodies on social media and cross-referencing the posts with times and locations of known drone strikes. Sims also discusses the unintended consequences from the UN intervention in Libya, supposedly to help the civilian victims of Gaddafi’s tyranny—but of course,...