Background Briefing: July 15, 2018

On By gram

 

Trump Meets with Putin in Spite of His Own Government’s Warnings

We begin with growing doubts about why Trump is meeting with Putin in Helsinki and what is the nature of their relationship. Malcom Nance, a career U.S. Intelligence officer and author of “The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West” joins us to discuss the extraordinary disconnect between the latest indictments by Robert Mueller of 12 Russian military intelligence GRU officers and the Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats’s warning that the red light is blinking as it was before 9/11 warning that “Today, the digital infrastructure that serves this country is literally under attack” by Russia, and our president’s eagerness to get along with Putin who is orchestrated the meddling in our 2016 elections and is now orchestrating Russia’s on-going cyber attacks on our infrastructure and election systems. When asked by CBS News what is the biggest foe America faces globally, the first thing out of Trump’s mouth was the European Union, not Russia and we  examine the evidence which suggests Trump is either Putin’s “useful idiot” or a traitor who has bought into Russia’s agenda, which if true, would make Putin Trump’s case officer and the spymaster behind the most significant intelligence operation since the Germans sent Lenin in a boxcar to Russia in 1917.

 

Trump’s Trail of Wreckage

Then we go to London to speak with Polly Toynbee, a columnist with The Guardian and the author of “Dismembered: How the attack on the state harms us all”. She joins us to examine the trail of wreckage in Donald Trump’s wake as he trashed NATO, undermined the women leading Germany and the U.K. by in effect campaigning on behalf of their political opposition, then advised Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May to sue the E.U. rather than negotiate with them over Brexit. We also assess the impact of massive demonstrations in London and Scotland and the indignation felt by many in response to Trump posing smugly in Winston Churchill’s armchair.

 

How Discredited Foreign Policy Ideas and Blunders Contributed to Trump’s Election

Then finally we get an analysis of the radical break from traditional U.S. foreign policy and diplomacy with a president intent on destroying treaties, alliances, democratic institutions and diplomatic norms and speak with Stephen Walt, Professor of International Affairs at Harvard University and author of the forthcoming book “The Hell of Good Intentions: America’s Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy”. We discuss how discredited ideas and policies and blunders like Iraq, ironically contributed to Trump’s election which has led to a dramatic worsening of these trends.Then finally we get an analysis of the radical break from traditional U.S. foreign policy and diplomacy with a president intent on destroying treaties, alliances, democratic institution and diplomatic norms and speak withStephen Walt, Professor of International Affairs at Harvard University and author of the forthcoming book “The Hell of Good Intentions: America’s Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy”. We discuss how discredited ideas and policies and blunders like Iraq, ironically contributed to Trump’s election which has led to a dramatic worsening of these trends.