Month: February 2025

Is Putin Trump’s Case Officer?

We begin with an assessment of why Trump is selling out to Putin as he throws Ukraine under the bus while gutting our intelligence agencies with unqualified and even compromised leadership as his co-president Musk rips into the US government destroying its soft power and weakening it across the board. Joining us to speculate on what hold Putin has over Trump is Alexander Motyl, a professor of political science at Rutgers University. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction including Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires and Why Empires Reemerge: Imperial Collapse and Imperial Revival in Comparative Perspective. We discuss his article at The Hill, “Was 40-Year-Old Trump Recruited by the KGB?”

Will Trump be Able to Turn the Press Into His Propaganda and PR Arm as Putin and Orban Have Done?

Then with Trump’s head of the FCC going after the so-called “liberal media” as he promised to do in the chapter he wrote in Project 2025, we assess how much Trump will succeed in turning the press into his own propaganda and public relations arm as Orban did in Hungary. Joining us is Victor Pickard, a Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania where he co-directs the Media, Inequality & Change Center. He is the author of America’s Battle for Media Democracy: The Triumph of Corporate Libertarianism and the Future of Media Reform, and his latest book, Democracy without Journalism?: Confronting the Misinformation Society.

Since Musk’s Assault on the Federal Workforce is Only Saving a Pittance, the Real Intention Then Must Be To Cripple the US Government

Then finally we examine the performative nature of Musk’s evisceration of the US government under the pretext of cutting spending in order to give massive tax break to oligarchs like himself which is so far is saving a pittance but is crippling the federal workforce which appears to be the real intention of DOGE. Joining us is Brooke Harrington, a professor of economic sociology at Dartmouth College, a certified wealth manager, and an advisor to the OECD and European Parliament, among other organizations. She is the author of several books, including the best-selling Capital without Borders. Her latest book is Offshore: Stealth Wealth and the New Colonialism and she has an article at The New York Times we discuss, “Trump Is Like F.D.R. — Only in Reverse.”