We Should Take Trump at His Word That He Wants to be a Dictator and Jail His Opponents and the Press
We begin on this New Year’s eve as we broadcast on the last day of 2024 with a retrospective from a compilation of programs throughout the year starting back in January and ending this month as we work back through the major stories of the year as they evolved to the present. We start off today with a broadcast of Background Briefing from September 10, 2024 titled We Should Take Trump at His Word That He Wants to be a Dictator and Jail His Opponents and the Press. We spoke then with Jason Stanley, the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University and the author of How Propaganda Works and How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. His latest book is Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future,and we discuss how we should take Trump at his word that he wants to be a dictator like his idol Putin and that he’ll put his opponents and the press in gulags as promised and open up the treasury to Jared and Ivanka, not ot mention Don Jr., Eric and Lara etc.
A Deep Investigation of the Far-Right Cult Opus Dei and Its Infiltration of American Politics at the Highest Level
Then we go to a broadcast of Background Briefing from October 3, 2024 titled A Deep Investigation of the Far-Right Cult Opus Dei and Its Infiltration of American Politics at the Highest Level when we investigated the role of a secretive far-right Catholic sect, Opus Dei in infiltrating American politics at the highest level having stacked the Supreme Court and the Federal Judiciary with far-right justices while placing cult members in the Trump White House as well as influencing J.D. Vance who wrote the foreword to a new book by Opus Dei’s Kevin Roberts, the head of Project 2025. Joining us from the UK was Gareth Gore, a financial journalist and editor with close to two decades of experience, who has reported from over twenty-five countries and covered some of the biggest financial stories. His writing has been published by Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters, and International Financing Review. He is the host of The Syndicate, which tells the behind-the-scenes stories of the biggest financial deals in history and is the author of new book OPUS: The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking, and Right-Wing Conspiracy inside the Catholic Church.
With the Blame Game Underway, the Democrats Need to Focus on Accountability and a Coherent Strategy
Then finally we go to a broadcast of Background Briefing from November 10, 2024 just after the election titled With the Blame Game Underway, the Democrats Need to Focus on Accountability and a Coherent Strategy. We began as the blame game was underway with Nancy Pelosi blaming Biden for not stepping down earlier and looked into the need for accountability as the Democrats are dazed and confused following such a resounding defeat by a disastrous former president who should be in jail, not back in the Oval Office. Joining us was Timothy Shenk, a professor of history at George Washington University and a senior editor at Dissent magazine. He has written for the New York Times, the Nation, the New Republic, and Jacobin, among other publications. His new book is Left Adrift: What Happened to Liberal Politics, and we discussed his article at The New York Times, “It’s Time to Resist the Resistance.”
