Background Briefing (5am)

Gil Duran / George Beebe / William Hartung

A Manifesto to Stand Up in the Face Of Trump’s Firehose of Reactionary Initiatives

We begin with the Trump/Musk presidency’s steamroller of reactionary initiatives flattening the Democrats and intimidating the press into treating a sociopathic felon as a legitimate leader. We discuss a manifesto of persistence that is resistance in order to stand up to the firehose of unpopular outrages Trump is inflicting on the land as he frees thugs and vandals and drug kingpins. Joining us is Gil Duran, a San Francisco journalist who previously served as editorial page editor of The Sacramento Bee and The San Francisco Examiner. He currently writes the FrameLab Newsletter on Substack and regularly contributes to the San Francisco Chronicle and other publications. He served as Press Secretary for Kamala Harris when she was the Attorney General of California. We discuss his article with George Lakoff at FrameLab, “Woody’s New Year’s Resolutions and Ours?”

Trump Threatens to Sanction Putin and Calls on OPEC to Lower Oil Prices to Force Russia to End Its War On Ukraine

Then with Trump threatening to sanction Putin unless he comes to the negotiating table, then addressing Davos today calling on OPEC to lower oil prices to force Russia into ending its war on Ukraine, we speak with George Beebe, the Director of Grand Strategy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He served in government for nearly twenty-five years, including as director of Russia analysis at CIA and as a White House adviser on Russia matters for Vice President Dick Cheney. His latest book is The Russia Trap: How Our Shadow War with Russia Could Spiral into Nuclear Catastrophe.

The Tech-Industrial Complex’s Plans to Capture the Defense Budget

Then finally, we look into the tech-industrial complex’s plans to capture the defense budget, with Silicon Valley broligarchs like Musk already a major defense contractor, while heading up a government office and acting as a co-president. Joining us is William Hartung, a Senior Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute. His books include Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex. We discuss his article at The Nation, “High-Tech Militarists Are Hijacking the Trump Administration.”