Month: June 2020

Briefings

Background Briefing: June 21, 2020

On By gram

 

To Avoid a Growing Likelihood of Humiliation, Could Trump Walk Off the Job he Doesn’t Like Doing

We begin with AG Barr’s firing of the US Attorney for the SDNY and Berman’s refusal to leave followed by Barr saying the president had fired him which Trump claimed he know nothing about, then finally a compromise in which Berman resigns with the understanding his deputy continues the on-going investigations against Trump’s lawyer Giuliani, his friend Epstein and his inauguration which was showered with illegal foreign money. Then, following Trump’s humiliating reboot of his campaign in Tulsa at which a million failed to show amid sick staff and empty seats to be regaled by a lackluster diatribe of his grievances over the press coverage of his walk down the ramp at West Point and demonstrators outside he characterized as “thugs”, we speak with David Rothkopf.  The CEO of TRG Media producers of the podcasts “National Security Magazine” and “Deep State Radio”, he was the editor of Foreign Policy magazine and is the author of the forthcoming book Traitor: A History of American Betrayal from Benedict Arnold to Donald Trump and joins us to discuss the possibility that as poll numbers worsen and revelations about Trump’s incompetence and unsuitability for office pile up while the death toll from the pandemic climbs and the economy tanks, that Trump might just walk away from the presidency. Given Trump’s extreme narcissism, when reality finally penetrates the delusionary world that revolves around him, rather than face the awful truth and suffer defeat from someone he considers a “loser”, Trump could just walk off the job he has no interest in to form Trump TV and conduct rallies at which he would blame the “deep state” for denying “real Americans” the opportunity to “make America great again.”  By installing Pence in the Oval Office, Trump could get a blanket pardon for him and his family and Pence could possibly have Congresswoman Stefanik as his running mate to counter Biden’s choice of perhaps Tammy Duckworth. On the other hand the pandemic may subside as the economy comes roaring back in the fall, then Trump could run as America’s savior.

 

The Real History of Putin and How the KGB Never Went Away

Then we go to the U.K. to speak with Catherine Belton, the former Moscow Correspondent for The Financial Times and author of the new book, just out, Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took on the West. She joins us to explain the real history of the end of the Soviet Union and Russia today led by Vladimir Putin whose career in the KGB was far from the cover story of a nobody in the backwater of Dresden, East Germany. In effect the KGB never went away, they just bided their time during the interregnum from Gorbachev to Yeltsin and acting as both the arsonist and the fire brigade, they threatened to leak dirt on Yeltsin’s family only to have the unassuming Putin come in and clean up the mess for the family then quietly take over. With a bridgehead built in the West from stolen Soviet assets laundered through Trump’s casinos and properties, Putin set up a system of oligarchs as cut-outs for ongoing operations against the West, successful examples of which are Brexit and the ruinous presidency of Donald Trump.