Background Briefing: September 9, 2024
The Mein Kampf of the MAGA Republican Party, Project 2025
We begin with the blueprint for a Trump dictatorship, the Mein Kampf of the MAGA Republican Party, Project 2025, a plan that will enable the wannabe Mafia boss and despot to realize his dream to be like his idol Putin and turn America into Putin’s Russia which is what is in store for us if Trump is reelected. Joining us is Nina Burleigh, a senior editor at The New Republic, best-selling author, documentary producer, and publisher of the Substack American Freakshow. A professor at New York University’s Arthur J. Carter Journalism Institute, she’s written seven books, the latest of which include Virus: Vaccinations, the CDC, and the Hijacking of America’s Response to the Pandemic and Golden Handcuffs: The Secret History of Trump’s Women, and her latest, a novel on disinformation, Zero Visibility Possible. She is the producer of a recent documentary series on Apple TV, “Epstein’s Shadow” and we discuss her article at The New Republic, “Project 2025 Should Haunt Donald Trump Every Day Until the Election.”
Today’s Republican Report on the Withdrawal From Afghanistan is a Political Hit Job on VP Harris
Then we look into the House Republicans’ release today of a report on the US withdrawal from Afghanistan which is a political hit job against VP Harris whose name was mentioned 251 times even though in the transcripts of the Foreign Affairs Committee’s 3,288 pages of interviews, her name only came up three times and she was in Singapore and Vietnam when the chaotic withdrawal and deaths of 13 servicemen happened. Joining us is a leading expert on Afghanistan, Thomas Barfield, who is a professor of Anthropology at Boston University and the President of the American Institute of Afghanistan Studies. He is the co-author of Afghanistan: An Atlas of Indigenous Domestic Architecture and his latest book now out in a second edition is, Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History.
How Putin’s Shadow Fleet of “Ghost” Tankers Are an Accident Waiting to Happen
Then finally we investigate how Putin is paying for his war on Ukraine with oil revenues from India and China shipped by a shadow fleet of “ghost” tankers that are an accident waiting to happen since the tankers sail with their transponders turned off to avoid detection and therefore are prone to collisions or running aground. We go to the UK to speak with Stephanie Baker, an award-winning investigative reporter and senior writer at Bloomberg News and Bloomberg Business Week on the projects and investigations team where she writes about business, politics and science delving into everything from Russian oligarchs and sanctions to Donald Trump’s finances, art market fraud and Covid-19 vaccines. Previously, she was a reporter for The Moscow Times in Moscow and she is author of the new book, out tomorrow, Punishing Putin: Inside the Global Economic War to Bring Down Russia.