*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).
The Biden administration on Tuesday quietly launched its website for Americans to request free at-home COVID-19 tests, a day before the site was scheduled to officially launch.
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Cliff Albright, co-founder of the group Black Voters Matter, joins Cheddar Politics to discuss why he boycotted President Biden's voting rights speech this week, and the push from Senate Democrats to debate and vote on the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
Senator Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) has teamed up with fellow Democratic senator and former astronaut Mark Kelly to introduce the Ban Congressional Stock Trading Act, a bill to essentially end stock trading by sitting lawmakers. From the other side of the aisle, Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) introduced his own legislation to enact something similar. The dueling bills come at a time when it's popular to constrain members of Congress from owning and trading stocks. Karl Evers-Hillstrom, a business and lobbying reporter at The Hill, spoke to Cheddar about the significance of the bills, and what they could mean for lawmakers, their families, and staffers moving forward.
A second Starbucks location in the U.S. has officially voted to unionize. On Monday, the National Labor Relations Board announced workers at the Starbucks store located in the Buffalo, NY suburb of Cheektowaga voted 15-9 in favor of being represented by Workers United, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union. The New York Times reports votes were tallied in December but remained inconclusive as the union challenged the ballots of several employees it said did not work at the store. A Starbucks spokesperson has said that it may appeal the labor board's decision, which comes as several other Starbucks stores across the country are also pushing to form a union. Danka Dragic, shift supervisor for the second Starbucks store in the country to unionize, joined Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
Earlier today, Minnesota Republican Representative, Tom Emmer, introduced a bill that would prevent the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency directly to American consumers. According to the Congressman from Minnesota, requiring Americans to open a fed account to access a digital currency, would "put the Fed on insidious path akin to China's digital authoritarianism." Rep. Tom Emmer joined Cheddar's None of The Above to discuss more.
Sixteen of the country's most prestigious universities have been hit with a lawsuit claiming those schools illegally conspired to eliminate competitive financial aid offers for students. Just some of the schools mentioned include Yale, Brown, Columbia, UPenn, and Cornell. Author of "Who Gets In and Why" and Professor of practice at Arizona State University, Jeff Selingo, joined Cheddar to discuss more.
