Background Briefing: May 28, 2025
Trump Says the Quiet Part Out Loud About How He Protects Putin
We begin with President Trump saying today that he’ll know in two weeks if President Vladimir Putin is “tapping us along,” warning of a shift if Russia is not serious about peace in Ukraine. We discuss whether Trump is saying the quiet part out loud in his Truth Social post on Tuesday in which he said “What Vladimir Putin doesn’t realize is that if it weren’t for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia, and I mean REALLY BAD. He’s playing with fire!” Joining us is Daniel Treisman, co-director of the Center for European and Russian Studies and a professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles and a fellow at the Center for Advanced Research in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. A leading specialist on the politics and economics of post-communist Russia, he is the author of a number of books on Russia including The New Autocracy: Information, Politics, and Policy in Putin’s Russia and Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century.
Musk, JD Vance and Rubio Praise the German Neo-Nazi AfD Party While the Trump Administration Weaponizes Anti-Semitism
Then, with the Trump administration weaponizing anti-Semitism to extort universities and bring Harvard to heel, we examine the disconnect as top Trump officials JD Vance and Rubio praise the neo-Nazi AfD party which Musk campaigned for in the recent German elections. Joining us is Jacob Heilbrunn, the Editor at the National Interest, a non-resident senior fellow at The Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and a columnist for The Spectator. His books include They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons and America Last: The Right’s Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators. He is also editor-at-large of The Jerusalem Strategic Tribune, where he has an article we discuss, “A Warning from Munich.”
The Impact of the US Senate’s Republicans Revoking California’s Electric Car Mandate
Then finally we assess the impact of the Republican Senate having passed a bill against the advice of their own parliamentarian to block California’s ability via an EPA waiver to impose emission standards and mandate an all electric fleet, banning the sale of new gas-powered vehicles in the state by 2035. Joining us is David Victor, a professor and the Center for Global Transformation Endowed Chair in Innovation and Public Policy at the University of California San Diego where he also co-directs the Deep Decarbonization Initiative. He was a convening lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and is the author of a number of books including Natural Gas and Geopolitics and The Collapse of the Kyoto Protocol and the Struggle to Slow Global Warming. His latest book is Fixing the Climate: Strategies for an Uncertain World.