Loud & Clear

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Jim Kavanagh, the editor of ThePolemicist.net, and Mark Sleboda, an international affairs analyst living in Moscow. President Trump today expelled 60 Russian diplomats from the United States and closed the Russian consulate in Seattle in reaction to the poisoning of a spy in the UK, which accuses Russia of the act. 16 EU members in addition to Britain have also followed suit and expelled Russian diplomats. The move is a major step up in the worsening of relations between the US and Russia.President Trump’s announcement last week that he will impose nearly $60 billion in tariffs on Chinese imports sent the Dow Jones Industrial Averages down more than 1,000 points. But over the weekend, the Chinese response was muted and Washington’s talking heads said on the Sunday morning news shows that cooler heads will prevail. Patrick Lawrence, the author of “Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century” and a columnist at Salon a