Background Briefing (5am)

Background Briefing with Ian Masters – November 14, 2023

On Veterans Day Trump Channels Adolf Hitler

We begin with Trump’s Veterans Day speech on Saturday in which he channeled Adolf Hitler in calling his enemies “vermin” with his campaign spokesman vowing that “their entire existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House.” Joining us to discuss Trump’s charge, as he praised foreign dictators in Russia, China, North Korea and Hungary, that the enemy is within, is Matthew Dallek, an historian and professor of political management at George Washington University’s College of Professional Studies. The author of The Right Moment and Defenseless Under the Night, his latest book is Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right.

Why Does the Mainstream Media Treat Trump With the Equal and Opposite Convention of So-Called Balance?

Then we examine the role of the mainstream media in treating Trump, who is the leader of one of America’s two major parties, with the normal binary, equal and opposite media convention of so-called balance. Joining us is Will Bunch, who is an award-winning national opinion columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, and he blogs at attytood.com. He is the author of The Bern Identity: A Search for Bernie Sanders and the New American Dream and, most recently, After the Ivory Tower Falls: How College Broke the American Dream and Blew Up Our Politics—and How to Fix It. We discuss his latest articles at the Philadelphia Inquirer, “U.S. 2025 dictatorship threat just got real” and “As the World Burns, A Cowardly News Media Endangers US Democracy.”

Should the US Prepare For a Post-Putin Russian Nuclear Meltdown?

Then finally we speak with Bennett Ramberg, who was a foreign policy analyst in the Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs at the Department of State during the George H.W. Bush administration. He is the author of Nuclear Power Plants as Weapons For The Enemy: An Unrecognized Military Peril and we discuss his article at Project Syndicate, “Preparing for a Russian Nuclear Meltdown.”

 

Playlist

Artist Song Album Label
The Rolling StonesSympathy For The DevilHot Rocks 1964-1971Universal Music
Tim HeideckerMAGAToo Dumb for Suicide: Tim Heidecker’s Trump SongsJagjaguwar
John LennonGimme Some TruthBody Of War: Songs That Inspired An Iraq War VeteranSire
Los LobosOne Time One NightJust Another Band From East L.A.: A CollectionRhino/Warner Bros.