Evidence That Putin Owns Trump is Staring Us in the Face
We begin with the latest display of Putin’s capture of Trump who, after standing next to Zelensky at Mar a Lago saying he was 95% of the way to a peace deal to end Russia’a war on Ukraine, reversed himself after a call from Putin accepting the lie that Ukraine had struck one of Putin’s residences which Putin is using as an excuse to scuttle any peace deal which he clearly has no interest in. Joining us is Olga Lautman, a Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis who is also the creator and co-host of the Kremlin File podcast series, which features expert discussions on the Kremlin’s internal affairs, global operations, and tactics used from their hybrid warfare toolkit to destabilize Western democracies. She has a Substack newsletter covering Russia, Ukraine, Eastern, and Central Europe with a focus on Russia’s intelligence operations available at olgalautman.substack.com where her latest article we discuss is, “Trump Delivers a Christmas Gift to Putin by Targeting Europe’s Democracies.”
How Google and Big Tech Are Trying to Stop States From Regulating AI
Then Sasha Linden Cohen interviews Luke Goldstein, an investigative reporter at The Lever. He was previously a writing fellow at The American Prospect, a reporter at The Washington Monthly, and served as a research associate at the Open Markets Institute. They discuss Luke’s recent article in The Lever, “Google Bankrolled Secret Summit For Key State Lawmakers.”
The Enduring Scandal That Above All His Other Outrages, Might Bring Trump Down
Then finally, with Marjorie Taylor Greene telling The New York Times Trump screamed at her for supporting the release of the Epstein files because “my friends will get hurt” (with Melania possibly included in the list), we will go to one of the more impactful interviews of 2025 on the enduring scandal that above all the other outrages might bring Trump down. We were joined on November 24th by Anand Giridharadas, the author of the international best-seller Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World. A former foreign correspondent and columnist for The New York Times for more than a decade, he is also an on-air political analyst for MS NOW. His latest book is The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy and he had an article at the New York Times, “How the Elite Behave When No One Is Watching: Inside the Epstein Emails”
Background Briefing offers an educational approach to providing information in an era of “fake news.”