Join us for another great episode of What the Franklin, with Chip Franklin and Nikki Medoro to discuss the reasons why Trump might decide to skip the first debate against President Biden, and the looming presidential immunity decision from the Supreme Court.

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Our hosts make their bold predictions for the upcoming debate and Chip stresses the importance of this moment. It reminds him, “in some ways, of the Lincoln-Douglas debates when they were running for the U. S. Senate back in 1858,” he said. “The threat of civil war was in the air. It was a pivotal time in American history.”

We’ll break down the insanity of Trump’s xenophobic immigration rhetoric, and the MAGA refusal to take any real action on immigration policy.

You won’t want to miss our take on the recent “cheap fake” videos, or the real reason why we think Trump’s supporters are creating them.

Our hosts talk about next week’s much-anticipated Supreme Court ruling on Presidential immunity, and what impact that will likely have on the debate and the rest of the election.

You’ll hear Chip break down the hypocrisy of Trump’s racist death-penalty-for-drug-users statements. “This is a guy that has tailored his whole messaging towards people with white skin,” he said. “People with money who want to be protected from people like you.”

Nikki excellently skewers the alternative reality that MAGA lives in. “It's hard when we live in a society in which you could present facts and then people debate them,” she said. “Donald Trump filed 60 plus lawsuits over the last election and lost them. And then his supporters made up alternative facts to justify why he lost. That makes it so their truth - that the election was stolen - becomes fact, an alternative fact, but a fact for them.”

We’ll talk recent polling, Donald’s July 11 sentencing hearing, and Elon Musk deleting tweets to protect Ted Cruz. We’ll even discuss Justin Timberlake’s recent arrest, and so much more, on this awesome episode.

Chip Franklin and Nikki Medoro discuss winners and losers in a head-to-head debate between Biden and Trump, and are joined by National Correspondent for the Washington Post Philip Bump to dive into the ethical issues of secretly recording Samuel Alito, and possible debate game-changers for the presidential debate.

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Our guest on the show is “The guy behind the numbers,” Philip Bump. Bump is an author, analyst, and national columnist for The Washington Post where he focuses on the data behind polls. He also writes a weekly newsletter, "How To Read This Chart."

Philip shares his take on the question of journalistic ethics surrounding the recent undercover Alito recordings, and tells us if anything new can actually be gathered from the statements.

Bump also shares his expectations for the upcoming debates and tells our listeners what impact he thinks the events will have on polls and the election.

In this episode, we’ll discuss the question of presidential immunity, and call out Judge Cannon for delaying the classified documents case in Florida. We’ll also be talking about Republican hypocrisy in the ongoing immigration discussion, and what the new debate ground rules will likely mean for Trump’s performance on stage.

We’ll cover the Supreme Court's unanimous decision on the FDA-approved birth control pill, Mythopristone, and explore what the ruling actually means for reproductive rights in the future. “The decision does not dismiss the merits of a ban on the abortion bill and contains a little bit of a dog whistle to Congress and governors,” Chip said. “So they're leaving it open for states.”

You’ll also hear Chip break down the 4 magic numbers America needs to survive as well as a lively debate from our hosts on what Trump’s felony sentencing will look like.

So tune in for another great episode of What the Franklin.

Online criminal activity expert Katie Paul joins What the Franklin, with Chip Franklin and Nikki Medoro.

In this jaw-dropping episode, Katie, the Director of Tech Transparency Project, lays out how Congress and tech companies have failed to address the deep and ominous threats of extremism and bad actors on Facebook, in what she calls the “Wild West” of social media regulation.

“There’s no backlash for these companies legally, or policy-wise, or regulatory, or even fines that are significant enough to actually harm their business,” Katie said. “So there's no incentive for them to invest in addressing child pornography, extremism, and the development of those harms on the platform.”

Katie, an expert in tracking online criminal activity on social media platforms, gives our listeners the frightening truth about blatant ongoing foreign interference on Facebook, and the reasons why Congress has been unable to do anything about it.

In this interview, Katie explains how the Facebook algorithm is geared to radicalize users and drive them to extremist groups. She also gives an easy to understand recap of tech regulation history, and tells us why the harm, misinformation, and calls to violence we see in ads on Facebook should not be considered protected free speech.

We’ll also talk about how tech companies like Facebook and Google are making the problem worse by dismantling their safety and security teams, and discuss how they have been fighting legal battles and lobbying hard to avoid any accountability for the crimes committed on their platforms.

“We know now that they have the finances, technical ability, and the experts out there to actually address these kinds of really harmful, damaging networks on the platforms,” Katie said. “And at this point, it is a choice not to do so.”

Katie also provides some extremely valuable tips on how to talk to your kids about the dangers of the profit-driven algorithms on social media.

Chip summarized it very well when he said, “I love when Amazon can tell me I'm going to like this movie, or rotten tomatoes can tell me if I like that. The problem is that if they're not honest with me, it leads me down a darker path. And that's, of course, what we're facing.”

Be sure to check out Nikki’s show on YouTube and find out more about Katie’s work at techtransparencyproject.org.