Day: January 28, 2025

Background Briefing: January 28, 2025

Trump’s Reality TV Theatre of Cruelty Underway

We begin with Trump’s reality TV theatre of cruelty underway as Fox and other right wing media are embedded in ICE raids with Dr. Phil showing up at a raid in Chicago as migrants are arrested, many with no criminal records and some US citizens or green card holders. We discuss how Trump is devaluing American citizenship with this “bread and circuses” spectacle at the same time planning to strip away Social Security, Medicare and Affordable Healthcare that US citizens rely on. Joining us is Michelle García, a journalist, essayist and former Soros Equality Fellow at the Open Society Foundations. A former Texas correspondent for the Columbia Journalism Review and a former columnist for the Texas Observer, she is the Director of the PBS documentary “Against Mexico-the making of heroes and enemies,” and is currently working on a book about borders and their powerful influence on U.S. identity, politics and culture of violence.

 

Trump Will Hurt the Construction Industry Now in Demand to Rebuild Houses Lost to Hurricanes and Wildfires

Then we examine whether Trump’s deportation TV show will be a fraud like everything else he does as he uses expensive military aircraft and rounds up the wrong people in what will end up hurting the construction industry now in demand to replace homes destroyed by the recent hurricanes and wildfires. Joining us is Sam Quinones, a journalist, author and storyteller whose two acclaimed books of narrative nonfiction about Mexico and Mexican immigration —True Tales from Another Mexico and Antonio’s Gun and Delfino’s Dream — made him, according to the SF Chronicle Book Review, “the most original writer on Mexico and the border.” His books include Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic and, most recently, The Least of Us: True Tales of America Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth.

 

Can Musk Buy Elections in the UK and Germany As He Just Did Here?

Then finally we assess whether Musk can buy elections in the UK and Germany as he just did here in the US spending $270 million to elect Trump. With Musk telling the far-right AfD party to get over Nazi war guilt less than a month ahead of critical elections in Germany, we speak with Thomas Berger, Professor of International Relations at Boston University who specializes in German politics, International Relations and Comparative Government in East Asia and Political Culture. He is the author of War guilt and world politics after World War II.