Background Briefing: April 7, 2025

Trump Urges Americans Not to Be “Weak or Stupid” as the Meltdown on Wall Street Continues

We begin with the meltdown on Wall Street as stocks tumble and prominent investors warn of “an economic nuclear winter” while Trump urges Americans not to be “weak or stupid” which, since every accusation coming from Trump is a confession, clearly describes who the madman in the Oval Office is. Joining us to discuss what senior bankers and investors on Wall Street are saying as Trump threatens China with an additional 50% tariff is William Cohan, a former senior Wall Street investment banker for 17 years at Lazard Frères & Co., Merrill Lynch and JPMorganChase, as well as a New York Times best-selling author whose books include Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World, House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street, and, most recently, Power Failure: The Rise and Fall of an American Icon. He is a founding partner at Puck News where his latest article we will discuss is “Wall Street’s Tariff Hunger Games.”

 

Who Benefits From Trump and Musk’s Deliberate Destruction of the American Economy?

Then we examine who benefits from the deliberate destruction of the US economy, our government and our standing in the world by Trump and Musk and speak with Mike Lofgren, who has spent twenty-eight years working in Congress, the last sixteen as a senior analyst on the House and Senate Budget committees. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Party Is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless and the Middle Class Got Shafted. We will discuss his latest article at Salon, “Goose-steppers in the name of freedom: The nonsensical cult that now rules America”

 

Saturday’s 1,200 “Hands Off” Demonstrations Around the World 

Then finally, we assess the impact of the 1,200 “Hands Off” demonstrations on Saturday in towns and cities in America and across the world and speak with Michael Kazin, a professor of history at Georgetown University and editor emeritus of Dissent Magazine. He participated in the demonstration in Chicago and his books include American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation, The Populist Persuasion, War Against War: The American Fight for Peace 1914-1918  and A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and editor of The Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History, and his latest book is What It Took to Win: A History of the Democratic Party. He has an article at The Nation, “How the American Left Became Conservative.”