*By Max Godnick*
Russia's suspected interference in the 2016 election was so complex that even a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who's spent the past two years working on the story can't always keep things straight.
"It was impossible to stay up, it was impossible to make sense of a lot of it," Greg Miller, author of "The Apprentice: Trump, Russia, and the Subversion of American Democracy," said Monday in an interview on Cheddar.
In his new book, the national security correspondent for The Washington Post set out to provide a Readers' Digest version of Russia's involvement in the last presidential election and all of its fallout.
"The main objective was to try to write something that's comprehensive, that people can wrap their heads around," Miller said.
The book's title is not just an obvious reference to Trump's former NBC reality show. Miller said it also calls to mind the political novice's early experiences in The White House, behavior that resembles, in Miller's view, an "untrained apprentice."
But the title has yet a third meaning: Trump's relationship with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
"There's this aspect of subservience to the word," Miller said. "\[Trump\] sort of emulates, admires, imitates Vladimir Putin."
That relationship is the central dynamic around which the rest of his book orbits, Miller said.
"His inexplicable affinity for the Russian president is, of course, the most important idea and theme cutting through the whole book," he explained.
After over a month spent fixated on the Supreme Court confirmation, the political world is turning its focus back on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe on Russian involvement in the election.
Miller described the investigation as "absolutely leak-proof" adding that, despite its 32 indictments and guilty pleas, America has yet to see "Mueller's final act."
By contrast, the president can't seem to say enough about the investigation, tweeting and railing about the so-called "witch hunt" on a seemingly weekly basis.
"It's such an enormous clash of different ideas and different moral codes," Miller said of the dueling approaches.
It's been a long process as Mueller has conducted his investigation, but Miller predicts that, with under 30 days remaining before the midterm elections, the wait won't be much longer.
"You've got to believe that he's got just as much left up his sleeve," he said. "We're just around the corner from that now."
"The Apprentice: Trump, Russia, and the Subversion of American Democracy" is available in stores and online.
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/the-apprentice-goes-inside-trump-putin-relationship).
A new report from ProPublica and the Washington Post found that Facebook Groups played a major role in the spread of misinformation linked to the January 6 insurrection with more than 650,000 posts claiming that Joe Biden's election victory was illegitimate.
Millions of Americans with young children have relied on the child tax credit since the federal government began issuing checks in July 2021. The last round of payments was sent out just before the Christmas holiday — at the same time as the omicron variant surged. Leah Hamilton, associate professor of social work at Appalachian State University, joined Cheddar to discuss what the end to the tax credit means as the U.S. sees the end of many relief programs and its highest number of COVID cases since the start of the pandemic. "It'll become harder for families to meet their basic needs, increasing national childhood poverty rates and the proportion of families who have difficulty putting food on the table, maintaining stable housing, and paying their bills," Hamilton said. She also pointed to research that the credit as a long-term investment in children offsets claims that it contributes to macroeconomic impacts like inflation.
U.S. President Joe Biden spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky over the week-end, just days after he spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The call comes as Washington prepares to meet with Moscow on January 10, as tensions mount over Russia's military build up near its border with Ukraine. Cheddar News speaks with Mustafa Tameez, a former advisor to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, about the issue.
Several Silicon Valley insiders are being accused of contorting a 1990s-era tax break to avoid taxes on millions of dollars of investment profits. The tax break is known as the qualified small business stock exemption, and it allows early investors in certain companies to avoid half of the taxes on up to $10 million in capital gains. A piece recently published in the New York Times says venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz replicated the tax exemption by giving shares of companies to friends and family, who would otherwise face a 23.8% capital gains bill. The CEO of Roblox is also accused of replicating the tax break for his family members at least 12 times. Although the loophole known as 'stacking' is considered to be legal, the Times piece implies that the exemption has been manipulated for the ultra-wealthy to become more wealthy. Greycroft co-founder and Chairman Emeritus Alan Patricof joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
Chris Sommerfeldt, City Hall reporter for the New York Daily News, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell, where he discusses both the wins and losses of Bill de Blasio's eight years as New York City Mayor.
The push to regulate the gig worker economy is gaining steam as the share of workers who participate in freelancing through businesses like Uber and Lyft have also exponentially grown during the pandemic. Employment attorney Mark Kluger, founding partner at Kluger Healey, LLC, joined Cheddar to break down how the battle to reclassify gig workers will continue in the new year, and why the issue continues to generate conflict. "More and more workers are using gig work as their primary source of income and as a result of that they are not like employees in the sense that they don't have benefits like health insurance," Kluger noted.
2021 saw markets continue to be impacted by the onslaught of the coronavirus pandemic -most recently in the form of the Omicron variant- in addition to the global supply chain shortage, and increased inflation. But it wasn't all bad news, as crypto soared throughout the year, and meme stocks continued to have a moment. With the year coming to a close, investors are keeping an eye out to see if they should expect more of the same in the new year. Chris Vecchio, Senior Analyst, at DailyFX tells us what market trends to be on the watch for in 2022.
