President Trump set off another Twitter storm this weekend after tweeting out a GIF of himself body-slamming CNN. Was it promoting violence? Or is the president allowed to have a sense of humor? We want AirTalk listeners to weigh in on how they process Trump's tweets. We also get the latest on the Senate health care bill; talk cybersecurity with the company that shut down Wannacry; and more.
Week in Politics: Trump’s CNN tweet and Senate health care bill
President Trump’s propensity to air his grievances over Twitter has again landed him in the spotlight.
This time, it’s over a tweet he fired off against CNN, which contains a doctored GIF showing Trump slamming a figure whose head has been replaced by the news network’s logo in a wrestling match.
Critics say that the tweet is an endorsement of violence against the press? What do you think?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
#FraudNewsCNN #FNN pic.twitter.com/WYUnHjjUjg
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 2, 2017
We’ll also discuss the Senate’s next steps in its effort to replace the Affordable Care Act. And, AirTalk wants to hear from listeners on how they plan to navigate the tricky terrain of the July 4th barbecue with politics so much on the forefront of everyone’s minds.
Guest host Libby Denkmann in for Larry Mantle
Guests:
Sean T. Walsh, Republican political analyst and partner at Wilson Walsh Consulting in San Francisco; he is a former adviser to California Governors Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger and a former White House staffer for Presidents Reagan and H.W. Bush
Caroline Heldman, associate professor of politics at Occidental College and author of the forthcoming book, “Protest Politics in the Marketplace: Consumer Activism in the Corporate Age” (Cornell University Press, 2017); she tweets @
Did the Trump Administration's OneWest Bank inquiries cause conflicts of interest?
Last week, House Representatives Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) and Al Green (D-Texas) launched an investigation on Trump’s dealings with OneWest Bank.
The Pasadena-based financial institution was headed by the current Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin. “There’s room for considerable doubt as to the impartiality and the adequacy of this administration’s investigations into this administration’s investigations into OneWest,” said the two House Democrats. Guest Host Libby Denkmann sits down with Jim Puzzanghera, business reporter for the LA Times, on the role of OneWest Bank in the Trump administration.
Guest:
Jim Puzzanghera, business reporter for the LA Times, D.C. bureau; he tweets@JimPuzzangher
Talking cybersecurity with the CEO of the company whose researcher shut down WannaCry
Last week, cyber virus Petya spread from Ukraine to Europe and parts of the U.S., as well as Asia and South America, taking down thousands of computers and disrupting ports from Long Beach to Australia.
NATO said the attack was likely state-backed, meaning it could be seen as an act of war, which would trigger Article 5, the principle of common defense.
This ransomware exploited the same security flaw as the WannaCry attack in May, which locked up computers in British hospitals, before a 22-year old computer security researcher found a kill switch in the code.
That researcher is part of Kryptos Logic, a small cybersecurity company based here in Los Angeles, and co-founded by Salim Neino. For Neino, these attacks didn’t come as a surprise. He believes they’re a bellwether and he’s urging lawmakers to prepare themselves. After the WannaCry attack, he testified before Congress and proposed a “Richter scale” to prioritize cyber threats and help companies create the necessary structures to ward off future attacks.
Guest host Libby Denkmann sits down with Neino to discuss the future of cyber security. What have we learned from these recent ransomware attacks? And what can we do to protect ourselves in the future?
Guest:
Salim Neino, CEO and co-founder of Kryptos Logic, a cybersecurity company based in Los Angeles; one of their researchers found the kill switch for the WannaCry ransomware attack in May
Could parent-friendly practices be the key to fixing Hollywood’s gender problem?
Last week, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences made a big jump to include women filmmakers in its exclusive Hollywood club, according to a report by the Los Angeles Times.
These invitations are an important step in increasing female recognition at the Oscars every year, as women made up only 27 percent of the body that voted on nominees in 2016, but they still don’t touch on the larger problem behind the numbers: the overall lack of women working in Hollywood. Though gender discrimination in hiring practices is an issue, a recent op-ed in the Los Angeles Times argues Hollywood could fix its gender disparity by implementing a more parent-friendly work culture.
Fill-in host Libby Denkmann speaks with the op-ed’s author Mathilde Dratwa about not only the lack of women working in Hollywood, but also the lack of mothers. Dratwa explains that of The Hollywood Reporter’s list of the 100 Most Powerful People in Entertainment this year, only 10 percent are mothers – up from 8.8 percent the year before.
Mathilde: You’re looking at two percentages. There’s a very low percentage of women working in film, and then of those women, a low percentage of women are mothers. So mothers are really underrepresented compared to other fields… When you look at the workforce across the board, the number of mothers is actually closer to 85 percent of women.
Dratwa, a filmmaker and mother herself, founded the nonprofit Moms-In-Film, which aims to energize the careers of mothers in the entertainment industry through community, funding and advocacy. She says the entertainment industry is not friendly to parents by nature due to the prevalence of freelance positions with irregular schedules.
Mathilde: As a freelancer, you’re not getting a job that gives you benefits. You don’t have on-site childcare, and on top of that, you’re required to work for approximately 12 to 15 hours a day... So if you have a child and you’re looking for some kind of childcare for your kid – and this is keeping in mind that there is a childcare crisis right now across America generally – you’re looking for someone who can watch your kid for more hours than is typical.
Moms-In-Film piloted a possible solution to this problem at the South by Southwest Film Festival this year: a mobile childcare unit, which they were able to provide through a grant from the festival. The nonprofit is continuing to push for affordable and accessible childcare options for parents working in film, but Dratwa says making the industry more parent-friendly could be as simple as adding parenthood into the conversation during the hiring process.
Mathilde: It could be just being very communicative with mothers when they’re thinking of employing them and really discussing their needs – making sure that you’re very vocal about the fact that your set is child-friendly. Making sure there is a place to pump or nurse, and that all the people working on a production know where that place is.
Guest:
Mathilde Dratwa, filmmaker and founder of the nonprofit Moms-In-Film; her op-ed “Hollywood's gender problem is really a mom problem” was published in the LA Times last week