Today on Boston Public Radio:
Dr. Katherine Gergen Barnett offered her medical perspective on the latest headlines around President Donald Trump’s fight with COVID-19, helping parse together exactly how sick the president actually is. Gergen Barnett is the vice chair of Primary Care Innovation and Transformation and residency director in the Department of Family Medicine at Boston Medical Center and Boston University Medical School.
Jennifer Braceras and Michael Curry weighed in on the wider political implications of President Donald Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis, from his election chances in November to his efforts to appoint Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. Braceras is a political columnist and director of the Center for Law & Liberty at the Independent Women’s Forum. Curry is Deputy CEO & General Counsel at the Mass. League of Community Health Centers, and member of the national NAACP Board of Directors, where he chairs the board’s Advocacy & Policy Committee.
Next, we opened lines to talk ask listeners: Is the Trump administration blowing an opportunity to use his diagnosis as a teachable moment?
Juliette Kayyem discussed the growing number of Trump administration officials testing positive for COVID-19, and the national security implications of having a physically compromised president. Kayyem is an analyst for CNN, former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security and faculty chair of the homeland security program at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
Mike Astrue discussed the origins of the 25th amendment, his time drafting the first operational plan during the George H.W. Bush administration, and implications for President Donald Trump, now that he’s at risk of COVID-related incapacitation. He also recited some of his poetry. Astrue served as Commissioner of the Social Security Administration from 2007 to 2013, and Associate Counsel to the President of the United States at the White House in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. He also writes and translates poetry under the alias A.M. Juster, and his latest book of poetry is "Wonder and Wrath.”
Irene Monroe and Emmett G. Price III discussed the lighter tone of some COVID-era funerals taking place on Zoom, and some new local art by muralist Rob “ProBlak” Gibbs. They also reflected on the life of Reverend and civil rights activist James P. Breeden, who died in September. Monroe is a syndicated religion columnist, the Boston voice for Detour’s African American Heritage Trail, and a visiting researcher in the Religion and Conflict Transformation Program at Boston University School of Theology.
Jared Bowen debated the merits of ephemeral art, in a conversation about conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan’s “Comedian.” He also reviewed two new documentaries, “The Sit-In” and “Aggie,” and discussed a new exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum about the Salem Witch Trials. Bowen is GBH’s Executive Arts Editor.
