The 11th Democratic primary debate on Sunday was an unusual one. It was a one-on-one encounter between Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, held without an audience in Washington D.C. due to mounting fears surrounding the coronavirus outbreak. The two sparred over healthcare, social security, the Iraq War, and the 2005 bankruptcy bill. Intercept D.C. bureau chief Ryan Grim joins Mehdi Hasan to break down the debate.

Deconstructed with Mehdi Hasan

Bernie Versus Biden: Who Won the Debate?

From just a handful of cases a few weeks ago, the COVID-19 outbreak in the US has ballooned to over a thousand cases nationwide. The Trump administration’s public response has ranged from incoherent to incomprehensible: denialism about the scale of the problem, failure to test in sufficient numbers, a reluctance to take coordinated, large-scale government action. It’s also raised questions about the US healthcare system’s capacity to respond effectively to a health crisis on this scale. Columbia professor and economist Jeffrey Sachs joins Mehdi Hasan to discuss American capitalism’s failure to deal effectively with the coronavirus.

Capitalism Vs. The Coronavirus

It’s being described as one of the biggest turnarounds in presidential primary history. After disappointing results in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada, Joe Biden appeared to be fading in Bernie Sanders’ rearview mirror. Then came his crushing win in South Carolina, after which Tom Steyer, Amy Klobuchar, and Pete Buttigieg all dropped out of the race. Klobuchar and Buttigieg, along with former candidate Beto O’Rourke, then endorsed Biden, cementing the growing consensus among establishment Democrats that the former Vice President is the best positioned candidate to stop Bernie. Where does all this leave the Democratic race? Mehdi talks to Intercept DC bureau chief Ryan Grim and to Larry Cohen of Our Revolution about Biden's big night and about Bernie’s path forward.

Can Biden Still Be Stopped?

With victories in New Hampshire and Nevada and a firm lead in the national polls, Bernie Sanders is now unquestionably the frontrunner in the Democratic race. On Tuesday night the top contenders met for their final debate before the South Carolina and Super Tuesday primaries, and all of his opponents had their sights set firmly on the senator from Vermont. Mehdi Hasan talks to writer, activist, and Sanders surrogate Shaun King about Bernie’s performance and his groundbreaking answers to questions on foreign policy. 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 how elected officials and candidates approach those issues, do not reflect the views of First Look Media Works.

Debate Special: The One Where Everyone Attacks Bernie

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.

How Bloomberg Blew it In Las Vegas

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.

Live from L.A. with John Legend and Patrisse Cullors

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.

Rigged: The Acquittal of Donald J Trump

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 Joe Biden and the culture of corruption in Washington.

Does Joe Biden Have a Corruption Problem?

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.

Why is Billionaire Tom Steyer Running for President?

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.

Truth, Lies, and the Democratic Debate

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.

Why Don’t We Care About China’s Uighur Muslims?

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.

Nixon, Clinton, and What the Right Gets Wrong About Impeachment

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.

It's Giving Tuesday!

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.

Who Won Last Night’s Democratic Debate?

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.

Does Liberal Canada Have a Dark Side?

Journalist Mehdi Hasan is known around the world for his televised takedowns of presidents and prime ministers. In this new podcast from The Intercept, Mehdi unpacks a game-changing news event of the week while challenging the conventional wisdom. As a Brit, a Muslim and an immigrant based in Donald Trump's Washington D.C., Mehdi offers a provocative perspective on the ups and downs of American—and global—politics.

hubhopper

Deconstructed with Mehdi Hasan

hubhopper