Background Briefing: April 23, 2025
The Incredible Shrinking Billionaire Who is Destroying Our Government Blames Tesla’s Sales Slump on “Paid” Demonstrators
We begin with the incredible shrinking billionaire and co-president of the United States who on his earnings call yesterday with worried investors, blamed cratering sales and earning for Tesla on “paid” and “very organized” protesters who have been showing up a Tesla dealerships across the country and around the world in growing numbers. Joining us to discuss how Trump’s biggest campaign donor shares similar delusions and lives in his own reality like Trump does is Fred Turner, the Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication at Stanford University. He is the author or co-author of five books including Seeing Silicon Valley: Life inside a Fraying America, The Democratic Surround: Multimedia and American Liberalism from World War II to the Psychedelic Sixties, From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism, and Echoes of Combat: The Vietnam War in American Memory.
Vance Announces a Shameful Sellout of Ukraine Allowing Russia to Conquer and Subjugate What Putin Could Not Win on the Battlefield
Then with VP Vance outlining U.S. plans to sell out Ukraine to Putin after Secretary of State Rubio announced the US is prepared to walk away from peace talks, we examine the shameful misuse of American power to force a victim to surrender while rewarding the aggressor. Having invaded Ukraine and bombed its cities, destroyed its infrastructure and murdered its people, Trump and Vance are allowing Russia to conquer and subjugate what Putin could not win on the battlefield. Joining us is Olga Lautman, a Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis who is also the creator and co-host of the Kremlin File podcast series, which features expert discussions on the Kremlin’s internal affairs, global operations, and tactics used from their hybrid warfare toolkit to destabilize Western democracies. She has a Substack newsletter covering Russia, Ukraine, Eastern, and Central Europe with a focus on Russia’s intelligence operations available at olgalautman.substack.com where her latest article we discuss is, “The Kremlin’s Payoff? Russia Prepares ‘Hooks’ to Buy Off Trump.”